"The streams, when they descend, have no way of returning to the mountains except beneath the ground." May 28, 1994 To the national magazine Proceso: To the national newspaper La Jornada: To the national newspaper El Financiero: To the local newspaper Tiempo: Dear Sirs: This communique is about the end, finally, of the consultations. In addition, we have sent several letters with different destinations. We are totally surrounded. We have been "heroically" resisting the avalanche of reactions to the event of May 15th. As of three days ago, helicopters joined the airplanes that watch us from overhead. The cooks complain that there won't be enough pots to cook all the food we will need if they all fall at the same time. The superintendant argues that there is enough firewood to have a barbecue and that we should invite some Argentinian journalist to it because the Argentinians know how to barbecue. I think about it, but it's useless: the best Argentinians are guerillas (Che), or poets (Juan Gelman), or writers (Borges), or artists (Maradona), or chroniclers (Cort zar). There aren't any famous Argentinian barbecuers. Some ingenous person proposes that we wait for hamburgers from the CEU. Yesterday we ate the XEOCH's control console and two microphones. They had a rancid taste, like something rotten. The medics are giving out lists of jokes instead of analgesiacs. They say that laughter is also a cure. The other day I surprised Tacho and Moi as they were crying. . . of laughter. "Why are you laughing?" I asked. They couldn't answer because their laughter had left them short of breath. A medic explained, "It is because they have headaches." Day 136 of the military blockade. Sigh. To top it all off, To$ita asks me to tell a story. I tell her a story as it was told to me by old Antonio, the father of the Antonio that appears in "Chiapas: The Southeast in Two Winds, a Storm and a Prophecy": "In the time before the world came into being, the gods came together and decided to create the world and to create men and women. They thought to make the first people very beautiful and very strong. So they made the first people of gold, and the gods were very content because these people were strong and shining. Then the gods realized that the golden people never moved; they never walked or worked because they were so heavy. So the gods came together again in order to figure out a way to resolve this problem. They decided to make another group of people and they decided to make this group of people of wood. The wooden people worked and walked and the gods were again content. Then the gods realized that the golden people were forcing the wooden people to work for them and carry things for them. The gods realized that they had made a mistake, and in order to remedy the mistake, they decided to make some people of corn, a good people, a true people. Then the gods went to sleep and they left the corn people to find a solution to the problem. The corn people spoke the true tongue, and they went to the mountains in order to find a path for all the peoples. . . " Old Antonio told me that the golden people were the rich, the whites, and the wooden people were the poor, the ones who forever work for the rich. They are both waiting for the arrival of the corn people. The rich fear their arrival and the poor hope for it. I asked old Antonio what color was the skin of the corn people, and he showed me several types of corn with different colors. He told me that they were of every sort of skin color, but that nobody knew exactly, because the corn people don't have faces. Old Antonio has died. I met him ten years ago in a community deep in the jungle. He smoked like nobody else I knew, and when he was out of cigarettes he would ask me for some tobacco and would make more cigarettes. He viewed my pipe with curiosity, but the one time I tried to loan it to him he showed me the cigarette in his hand, telling me without words that he preferred his own method of smoking. Two years ago, in 1992, I was travelling through the communities attending meetings to decide whether or not we should go to war, and eventually I arrived at the village were old Antonio lived. While the community was discussing whether or not to go to war, old Antonio took me by the arm and led me to the river, about 100 meters from the center of the village. It was May and the river was green. Old Antonio sat on a tree trunk and didn't say anything. After a little while he spoke, "Do you see? Everything is clear and calm. It appears that nothing will happen. . . " "Hmmm," I answered, knowing that he wasn't asking me to answer yes or no. Then he pointed out to me the top of the nearest mountain. The clouds laid gray upon the summit, and the lightning was illuminating the diffuse blue of the hills. It was a powerful storm, but it seemed so far away and inoffensive that old Antonio made a cigarette and looked uselessly around for a lighter that he knew he didn't have. I offered my lighter. "When everything is calm here below, there is a storm in the mountains, " he said after inhaling. "The mountain streams run strongly and flow toward the riverbed. During the rainy season this river becomes fierce, like a whip, like an earthquake. Its power doesn't come from the rain that falls on its banks, but from the mountain streams that flow down to feed it. By destroying everything in its path, the river reconstructs the land. Its waters will become corn, beans and bread on our tables here in the jungle. Our struggle is the same. It was born in the mountains, but its effects won't be seen until it arrives here below." He responded to my question about whether he believed the time had come for war by saying, "Now is the time for the river to change color. . . " Old Antonio quieted and supported himself on my shoulder. We returned to the village slowly. He said to me, "You are the mountain streams and we are the river. You must descend now." The silence continued and we arrived to his shack as it was growing dark. The younger Antonio returned with the official result of the meeting, an announcement that read, more or less, "We, the men, women and children of this village met in the community's school in order to see if we believed in our hearts that it time to go to war for our freedom. We divided ourselves into three groups, one of men, one of women, and one of children to discuss the matter. Later, we came together again and it was seen that the majority believed that it was time to go to war because Mexico is being sold to foreigners and the people are always hungry. Twelve men, twenty-three women and eight children were in favor of beginning the war and have signed this announcement." I left the village in the early morning hours. Old Antonio wasn't around; he had already gone to the river. Two months ago I saw old Antonio again. He didn't say anything when he saw me and I sat by his side and began to shuck corn with him. "The river rose," he said to me after a bit. "Yes," I answered. I explained to the younger Antonio what was happening with the consultations and I gave him the documents that outlined our demands and the government's response. We spoke of what had happened in Ocosingo during the offensive and once again I left the village in the early morning hours. Old Antonio was waiting for me at a turn in the road. I stopped alongside him and lowered my backpack to look for some tobacco to offer him. "Not now," he said to me as he pushed away the bag of tobacco that I was offering him. He put his arm around me and led me to the foot of a tree. "Do you remember what I told you about the mountain streams and the river?" he asked me. "Yes," I responded whispering as he had when he had asked me the question. "There is something I didn't tell you," he added looking at his bare feet. I answered with silence. "The streams. . . " he was stopped by a cough that wracks his entire body. He took a breath and continued, "The streams, when they descend. . . " Once again he was stopped by a cough and I went for a medic. Old Antonio turned down the help of the compa$ero with the red cross. The medic looked at me and I made a sign that he should leave. Old Antonio waited until the medic left and then, in the penumbra of the dawn, he continued, "The streams, when they descend, have no way of returning to the mountains except beneath the ground." He embraced me rapidly and left. I stayed there watching as he walked away, and as he disappeared in the distance, I lit my pipe and picked up my backpack. As I mounted my horse I thought about what had just occurred. I don't know why, it was very dark, but it seemed that old Antonio was crying. I just received a letter from the younger Antonio with his village's response to the government's proposals. He also wrote me that old Antonio became very ill and that he had died that night. He didn't want anyone to tell me that he was dying. The younger Antonio wrote me that when they insisted that I be told, old Antonio said, "No, I have already told him what I had to tell him. Leave him alone, he has much work to do." When I finished the story that old Antonio had told me, six- year old To$ita solemnly told me that yes, she loves me, but that from now on she won't kiss me because "it itches." Rolando says that when To$ita has to go to the medic's area, she asks if el Sub (a shortening of "Subcomandante" - translator) is there. If she is told that I'm there she doesn't go. "Because the Sub only wants kisses and he itches," says the inevitable logic of a six-year old. The first rains have begun here. We thought that we would have to wait for the arrival of the anti-riot water cannons in order to have water. Ana Mar!a says that the rain comes from the clouds that are fighting on top of the mountains. On the summits of the mountains the clouds fight their ferocious battles with what we call lightning. Armed with infinity, the clouds fight for the priviledge of dying and becoming rain to feed the land. We Zapatistas are similar to the clouds, without faces, without names, without any payment. Like the clouds we fight for the priviledge of becoming a seed for the land. Health, >From the mountains of Southeastern Mexico, Subcomandante Marcos May, 1994 Postscript - To those of you who are wondering if Marcos is homosexual: Marcos is a gay person in San Francisco, a black person in South Africa, an asian person in Europe, a chicano in San Isidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, an indigenous person in the streets of San Crist"bal, a gang-member in Neza, a rocker in the Ex-Soviet Union, a Jew in Germany, an ombudsman in Sedena (Secretaria de Defensa - translator), a feminist in a political party, a communist in the post-Cold War period, a prisoner in Cintalapa, a pacifist in Bosnia, a Mapuche in the Andes, a teacher in CNTE (Confederaci"n Nacional de Trabajadores de Educaci"n - translator), an artist without a gallery or a portfolio, a housewife in any neighborhood in any city in any part of Mexico on a Saturday night, a guerilla in Mexico at the end of the twentieth century, a worker of the CTM on strike, a sexist in the feminist movement, a lone woman in a Metro station at 10pm, a retired person standing around in el Z"calo, a peasant without land, an underground editor, an unemployed worker, a non- conformist student, a dissident against neoliberalism, a writer without books or readers, and a Zapatista in southeastern Mexico. In other words, Marcos is a human being in this world. Marcos is every untolerated, oppressed, exploited minority that is resisting and saying, "Enough already!" He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every untolerated group searching for a way to speak, their way to speak. Everything that makes Power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable - this is Marcos. Your welcome, dear sirs of the PGR (Procuradur!a General de la Republica - translator), I'm here to serve you. . . by filling you full of lead. Postscript for the PRD - About the logic of the dead: The compa$eros read what you wrote about "having had more causulties than the EZLN" and immediately they started to count up the causulties. They added and multiplied the casualties starting from more than ten years ago when we began to lay ambushes along the footpathes and roads "against bandits." The compa$eros say that when it comes to counting the dead, nobody beats them. "We are well trained in this," says Gabino. The discussions among the different "tendencies" in the EZLN have become more heated: The most radical compa$eros want to start counting from when the Spanish began their violent advance toward the jungle and the mountains, but the more prudent compa$eros want to start counting from when we formed the EZLN. Some ask whether we should count those who have died during the 136 days that the military has had us surrounded. They ask if we should count Amalia, 25 years-old and with seven children. She began to become "a little ill" at six in the evening on day 125 of the military blockade. Then began the fever, the diarrhea, the vomiting, and the bleeding and at midnight we were asked for an ambulance. The ambulance said it couldn't make it and at four in the morning we managed to get some gasoline and we went to get her in a three-ton truck. One hundred meters from the medical compound where Teniente Elena was she said, "I'm going to die." And she did die, 98-meters from the medical compund and Teniente Elena, the life and blood flowing out from between her legs. When I asked if she was dead, Teniente Elena said yes, she died "at once." The morning of day 126 of the military blockade, Amalia's second daughter looked upon the body of her mother on the stretcher and told her father that she was going to ask the neighbors for some stew, "because mother can't make it anymore." The compa$eros ask if they should count Ibarra's daughter, who died "as if she had become bored with coughing. Everyone is counting up the dead. Some are using a calculator taken from the town hall in Ocosingo. They are still doing this when Juana comes to ask them to count old Antonio, "who died of sorrow." Later Lorenzo comes and asks them to count his son Lorenzo, "who died during the night." Self-criticism is always opportunistic. Finally, you might accuse us of not taking into account the scale of the different political forces, you might accuse us of political clumsiness, of not having a satellite so that we could view the debate ourselves, of not having subscriptions to the principal newspapers and magazines so we could read the post-debate analysis. You might accuse us of not being friendly, of being discourteous, of not recognizing possible allies, of being sectarians. We wish you health and hope that you leave the animosity for the lazy fools. Greetings from this side of of the military blockade, the impertinant Subcomandante.