Ponce de León José María - Our word is our weapon: selected writings

Table of Contents

A portion of the royalties for Our Word is Our Weapon goes to Enlace Civil, based in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.

THE ORIGINAL WORKS OF SUBCOMANDANTE MARCOS ARE NOT COPYRIGHTED.

COPYRIGHT 2001 BY JUANA PONCE DE LEN FOREWORD 2001 BY JOSE SARAMAGO AFTERWORD 2001 BY ANA CARRIGAN TIMELINE 2001 BY TOM HANSEN AND ENLACE CIVIL

Permission granted for all noncommercial use of material in this book credited to Subcomandante Marcos. Copies of all such usage is requested.

All rights to commercial use of any material in this book are reserved by the publisher.

FIRST TRADE PAPERBACK EDITION MAY 2002
SEVEN STORIES PRESS
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New York, NY 10013
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IN AUSTRALIA: Tower Books, 9/19 Rodborough Road, Frenchs Forest NSW 2086

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Marcos, subcomandante.
[Selections. English. 2000]
Our word is our weapon: selected writings / Subcomandante
Insurgente Marcos; edited by Juana Ponce de Len.
1. cm.

ISBN: 1-58322-036-4; 1-58322-472-6 (pbk)

1. Marcos, subcomandanteCorrespondence. 2. Revolutionaries
MexicoChiapasCorrespondence. 3. Chiapas (Mexico)History
Peasant Uprising, 1994Causes. 4. Ejrcito Zapatista de Liberacin
Nacional (Mexico) 5. MexicoPolitics and government1988- I. Ponce
de Len, Juana. II. Title.

F1256.M285 2000
972.75dc21 00-030791

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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BOOK DESIGN BY POLLEN/Stewart Cauley and India Amos

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

This book is dedicated to Aureliana and
La Realidad, for helping us learn to see,
and to Nico and Ana, that they may be
touched by so much understanding.

Acknowledgments

THIS BOOK could not have been were it not for the generosity of spirit, talent, and daring of many people, more than could possibly be named in this short page or retained in this faulty memory of mine. To the dedicated people who translate the Zapatista communiqus so that they may circulate the world through the Internet, we owe a great debt for keeping the issues in Chiapas ever-present and for helping breach the Mexican governments cordon of silence and denial.

In Mexico, first and foremost, to the organization of Enlace Civil for the bridges they build between the communities of resistance and civil society, and for the guidance and care they shared with us during our visits to Chiapas. To Javier Elorriaga and the FZLN for providing a valuable reference point from within the struggle. To Luis Hernandez Navarro and David Brooks of La Jornada for their invaluable help in piecing together the complicated Mexican political puzzle, and to Carmen Lira for opening the doors for us to that important journals talented writers and their photography archives. To Susana Cato and Lorena Crenier for giving shape and color to the puzzle. To Lourdes Sanchez, I thank for the many insights into Mayan mythology and customs. To Lydia Neri for careful fact checking. To Armando Ponce of Proceso for giving me the gift of special issues of the magazine to further my research, and for giving me shelter while in Mexico. To the mysterious Nixim for her help finding images. To all the photographers, including Yuriria, Antonio Turok, Mat Jacob, and Pedro Valtierra, thank you for the amazing images that appear in this book.

Thanks to Tom Hansen of Mexico Solidarity Committee, thanks for giving us time and invaluable information. To Michael Eisenmenger and Amy Melnick for many hours of conversation and impressions and solidarity during our long journey into Chiapas. And to Juan Haro of Azul and Tamara Ford for their commentary.

At Seven Stories Press, profound thanks to Dan Simon, who understood the importance of publishing these writings. To all my colleagues and friends at the press who pitched in and made working on this an even greater delight, in particular to Jill Schoolman, who spent countless hours, late into the night, assisting me in this process. Thanks as well to Adriana Scopino for her fine-tuning and to Stewart Cauley for designing a beautiful book.

A heartfelt thank you to the many translators whose names didnt make the downloads intact. And our gratitude to Cecilia Rodriguez and la matre, and very especially to Michele Cheung and irlandesa for the translations of the following communiqus: 7, 14, 18, 19, 21, 24, 30, 31, 32, 35, 37, 39, 41, 69-84, 91-95, 99. Many of the communiqus of the past years would simply not have been available without these translators commitment, and the ability of sleuths like Michele Cheung to locate missing texts and narratives.

There are no words ample or deep enough to express my gratitude to Greg Ruggiero, my editor at Seven Stories Press, for having involved me in this endeavor. His profound commitment to the struggle for human rights, his boundless energy and good spirit have sustained me and the project every step along the way. And, finally, I must acknowledge Nico and Ana, my son and daughter, who endured many days of household havoc while I was engaged in this project.

Juana Ponce de Len

Forgive me,
friend, for making you a madman, by persuading
you to believe, as I did myself, that there have been formerly,
and are now, knights-errant in the world.

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote , II.74

The word

Was born in the blood,
Grew in the dark body, beating,
And took flight through the lips and mouth.

Farther away and nearer
Still, still it came
From dead fathers and from wandering races,
From lands which had turned to stone,
Lands weary of their poor tribes,
For when grief took to the roads
The people set out and arrived
And married new land and water
To grow their words again.
And so this is the inheritance;
This is the wavelength which connects us
With dead men and the dawning
Of new beings not yet come to light.

Pablo Neruda, from The Word, Fully Empowered

Poem in Two Beats and a Subversive Ending

Prologue

Chiapas, a Name of Pain and Hope

JOS SARAMAGO

IN 1721, with a feigned innocence that couldnt conceal his tart sarcasm, Charles-Louis de Secondat asked, Persians? But how is it possible for someone to be Persian? Its been almost three hundred years now since the Baron de Montesquieu wrote his famous Lettres Persanes, and even today we havent succeeded in putting together an intelligent answer to this most essential of all questions on the historical agenda of human relationships. As a matter of fact, we still cant understand how it was ever possible for someone to have been a Persian, and furthermore, as if such a peculiarity were not out of the question, to persist in being one today when the world seeks to convince us that the only desirable and profitable thing to be is what in very broad and artificially conciliatory terms is customarily called Western (in mentality, fashions, tastes, habits, interests, manias, ideas)-or, in the all too frequent case of not succeeding in reaching such sublime heights, to be Westernized in some bastard way at least, whether through force of persuasion or in a more radical way, if persuasion should fail.