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Customs clearance in Mexico is conducted by a bizarre system in which you press a button and either a green light or a red light comes on. The green means you pass freely and red means you get searched. This is supposed to be random, but any fool knows that there's really someone out of sight watching you and operating a switch. I don't know if this is some form of psychological trap or if it's just a product of mexican people's dislike of being seen to impose their will on other people.
Anyway, without intending to, i managed to avoid the red light and what would have been the second customs hassle in a few hours, by approaching the officer on duty to ask about some food stuff i was carrying. When i eventually pressed the button, the light was mercifully green.
Naturally, my birthday's marked by a public holiday in Mexico, as in all the civilized countries of the world. But this promised to make things a bit more awkward for the first time visitor to the world's largest city.
I got through customs at about half past one in the morning. Mexico's something like sixteen hours behind Malaysia, so this meant the flight from K.L. had taken more than twenty four hours, which seemed incredible, as that's about the same time as from Sydney to London. However, it's obviously a very long way - right the way around the rim of the pacific, perhaps half the total circumference. This also meant i'd been travelling for thirty hours since leaving Penang.
Naturally, i was feeling pretty buggered, but i'd decided i didn't want to spend any time in Mexico city at this point - i'd wait till i was a bit more familiar with the country before tackling that. so i reckoned it wasn't worth going into the city to find a hotel just to get a couple of hours sleep, with all the hassle i thought that would involve. So i hung around the airport till morning.
In fact, i realised later it would have been a lot less hassle than i'd imagined, Mexico's a very friendly city and easier to deal with than a lot of capitals.
At about six o'clock, i discovered the metro wasn't going to open till seven as it was a public holiday. But i also found out that the bus station i wanted was within walking distance. I bought a map from one of the shops in the airport and set off on foot.
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TAPO - Terminal de Autobuses de Pasajeros del Oriente - the bus station that serves routes to the east of Mexico city, is a big circular building with a domed roof. This houses the ticket offices and all the other things you find in a bus station. The buses park all the way round the outside and pedestrian access is through a tunnel. Although it's not a very tall building, about two storeys, it stands out above its surroundings as you approach it, looking like a flying saucer that's just landed. It's also reminiscent of some of the round buildings in London, like Chalk Farm tram shed and the entrances to the foot tunnel between the Isle Of Dogs and Greenwich.
Anyway, i got the seven o'clock bus from there to Oaxaca, which was about nine hours away. The whole thing was a bit mental really, getting off a plane after a twenty-four hour flight and almost straight away getting on a bus to somewhere i had no idea about only that it was on the way to where i wanted to go - although i had no idea how far that was from Oaxaca, or even the faintest clue how to get there. Also, leaving Mexico that morning was a serious mistake, as i was to discover later.
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The bus trip to Oaxaca wasn't much fun either. I'd really done enough sitting for a while and another nine hours wasn't what i needed. However, i did get an interesting first glimpse of Mexico, as the bus drove through what seemed to be semi-desert all the way. It had the look of human-made desert about it too, although i wouldn't like to say how much of it that might apply to.
I chatted a bit with the old man sitting next to me and i was quite amazed that after ten years of not being in a spanish-speaking country, i could still use the language well enough to have a reasonable, but basic, conversation. I told him i'd just arrived from Malaysia, a country he'd never even heard of and certainly had no idea where it was. I gave him the handful of malaysian coins i had left, which pleased him a lot. I pictured him inviting everyone in the village around at one time or another, to show them his malaysian coins, which would have been much more of a novelty than the occasional "yanqui" dollar which probably finds its way there. I doubt many of the other people in his village would have heard of Malaysia either.
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At Oaxaca bus station i somehow managed to find out that to get to Zipolite, you have to catch a bus to Pochutla, which was another six hours or so. This was a serious drag as i was well fucked by this point. I had the choice of getting a bus in an hour or two and then arriving in Pochutla at one in the morning, or waiting a few hours and arriving at fiveish. I couldn't be fucked dealing with trying to find somewhere to stay in Oaxaca, which would have been only putting off the journey and adding to the aggravation involved. I just wanted to get where i was going and stay there long enough to recover properly. The bus station seats were uncomfortable and all i wanted to do was sleep. I decided i could best do this on the bus to Pochutla and caught the first one.
Pochutla at one in the morning, when you've never been there before, is actually a much better situation than a lot of places. However, i didn't really know what i was doing and unfortunately i didn't appreciate my situation. I ended up catching a taxi to Zipolite, which the driver said would cost me forty pesos, which was actually not as far over the odds as it could have been. I'd asked someone else how far it was beforehand, and they'd told me it was ten kilometres. The taxi driver said it was twenty and i had absolutely no idea of what sort of place i was heading for anyway.
The driver had a mate with him and when they realized i didn't know where i was going and that i'd hardly slept in the last couple of days, they started acting strangely and glancing at each other. Naturally, i began to feel a bit nervous, although i had nothing of value except two passports and some travellers cheques. And it was probably not without cause, either, as more than one tourist had been robbed by taxi drivers in that area.
They also started giving me some bullshit stories about how everything would be closed in Zipolite and that it would actually cost me eighty pesos to go where i wanted to go.
Wecame into Puerto Angel, which, although i didn't know it at the time, is only three kilometres from Zipolite, and i told the driver to stop. I got out and paid him his forty pesos and went to the nearest hotel. It cost me fifty pesos for a bed for what little was left of the night, but by that point i didn't give a shit.
The next morning, i discovered Zipolite was only just around the corner and i walked there in under an hour.
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Zipolite. The name means something along the lines of "death beach" in the local indigenous language, as i came to understand in a very vivid way later on. But i didn't know that when i walked off the road and onto the dark-coloured sand of the beach. It was certainly good to see the ocean again. The Pacific - the same ocean i'd been swimming in in Thailand a couple of weeks before. The same ocean i'd swum in in Australia hundreds of times over the previous nine and a half years. I walked along the beach and found the Posada del Tiburón, where Paula was staying. The name means "The Shark" guesthouse.
The beach at Zipolite is in a gently curving bay, about a kilometre long, with a rocky headland at each end. It's lined for almost all of its length with guest houses and restaurants, all constructed with palm-thatched roofs on timber frames. There's not much in the way of walls to be seen. Most of the guest houses provide a roof, a couple of ropes to hang a hammock from and a hammock, if you haven't got your own.
The best thing about Zipolite is you don't have to wear clothes. the worst thing is the currents are so strong and unpredictabe that even good swimmers stand a fair chance of getting drowned if they go out further than about knee deep. I've been in some fierce rips on australian beaches, but i've never seen anything like this place, where the currents are powerful and constantly changing.
Well, Paula wasn't there when i got there, she'd gone off to the bank, which is a couple of hours away in Huatulco. I started talking to an oldish american geezer called Bill, who was also staying at the Tiburón. Bill was a vintage hippy from the sixties, not quite so hippyish any more, perhaps, but still a vegetarian. He was at Zipolite to sort out renting one of the guesthouses on the beach, which he'd lined up on his previous visit.
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The next day, i saw a copy of La Jornada. It's a left-wing national daily paper, generally pretty radical in its political stance - for a mainstream paper anyway. The big stories in the 2nd of May edition were about the massive May Day demonstration in Mexico City the day before. For the first time there hadn't been an official march, called by... well, basically by the government really, as the mexican government seems to have somehow absorbed virtually all political outlets that exist in that country. But that May Day a million people had assembled in the centre of Mexico City spontaneously.
There was a big show of support for the EZLN, who are struggling for indigenous land rights in the south-eastern state of Chiapas, and a bunch of anarchists had had a party gluing up cash machines in banks all over the city. Needless to say, i was severely pissed off to realize that i'd left the place only hours before the march action had started.
It hadn't been that i wasn't aware of the significance of the day, or didn't know what day it was - after all, it was my birthday. It was that i'd just never been anywhere before where anything interesting's been happening on that day. In Britain and Australia, there's usually a boring, half-hearted turnout of a bunch of workers who know damn well they've been defeated and have given up hope of ever changing anything - anyway, the whole rest of their lives belong to the bank now, to pay for the house, car, colour television etc., so they couldn't have a revolution even if they wanted to. The bank just wouldn't allow it!
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Friday, May the 5th, was the second public holiday of the week. This one, i think, was to commemorate the battle of Puebla, where the mexican spanish successfully defeated the french army who were trying to take over Mexico, some time in the past - or some nationalist colonialist crap.
I'd just had a lateish breakfast, in a restaurant a few places up the beach from El Tiburón, and i was sitting at the table looking out over the ocean, when three people suddenly got into difficulties swimming more or less in front of where i was. There were a few volunteer lifeguards at Zipolite, mainly visitors who are staying for a while. Four of them quickly began to swim out to help them get back to the beach safely. But with three people to go for and the currents moving them around quite rapidly, it wasn't an easy job. They managed to get two of them out eventually, one having to be almost carried up the beach, but the third one, a woman disappeared from sight in the waves.
After what seemed like an eternity, some of the lifeguards managed to get out to where she was and slowly struggled back through the waves and the currents towards the shore with her. She'd been under for quite a long time and it seemed obvious to me that she was be past saving. I sat there watching the whole thing and it made me feel really depressed. I went back towards El Tiburón, but stopped at the place before it and decided to have a beer. Bill joined me not long after. He was a bit of a pisshead too and he felt like a beer then for the same reason i did. We sat there, having our own private little wake for the woman who'd drowned, while they were bringing her body ashore and while they spent an hour or more trying to resuscitate her. A large crowd was gathered around them the whole time they were working at it.
Eventually they gave up and carried her body into a half-finished building, about twenty feet from where we were sitting. Pretty soon, some locals came and told them they shouldn't have moved her, because they'd get locked up for it when the cops came. So off she went, back down the beach again. If it wasn't so sad, it would have been funny.
Eventually, after she'd been lying there for a good couple of hours all up, couple of plain-clothed cops came, wrapped her body in plastic and took it away.
She was really young, a Mexican from the hills near Oaxaca, there with her boyfriend, probably just for the day or the weekend.
That same day, another person drowned in an unconnected incident. He just got washed out by the current and disappeared below the waves - never to be seen again.
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At Huatulco, we had a half hour walk to the bank, which was near a strange little harbour that seemed to be dedicated solely to tourist boat trips. There's a Club Med near Huatulco and the whole purpose of the town nowadays seems to be servicing the tourist industry. It was a horrible place, like all exclusively tourist towns, and i was glad to get out of the place when we eventually got on the bus back to Pochutla.
At Pochutla we bought tickets for the bus that evening to San Cristobal and then got another bus back to Zipolite. By the time we got back to the beach, we were completely buggered, but we had a good few hours to recover before we had to head back to Pochutla to catch the bus.
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We arrived at San Cristobal at seven o'clock the next morning and it was fucking freezing! We'd climbed a long way up into the mountains since we'd left the coast and the climate had changed drastically as a result.
From the Cristobal Colón bus station, we walked up Avenida Insurgentes towards the Zocalo, the square in the centre of town. It felt strange in a way, walking through the chilly San Cristobal streets, early in the morning. But it was an indefinable strangeness. It was strange on a physical level, because, apart from a few hours that first morning in Mexico City and a brief stop during the bus journey from Oaxaca to Pochutla, i hadn't experienced much in the way of cold for quite a few months. At least, not this sort of cold, the hard, stone cold you only get in town. It had been chilly in Moni, but in the country the cold isn't quite so solid, so deep and powerful.
It was strange in another way, a sort of architectural way. Avenida Insurgentes reminded me of Spain in a certain sort of way. There was something slightly incongruous about the buildings around me. Maybe it was the age of the town. Maybe it was a feeling of it being displaced somehow. It certainly wasn't spanish - but it certainly wasn't mexican either.
But i think more powerful than either of those was the feeling of having arrived in a special place. San Cristobal de las Casas was a name i'd only ever heard of in relationship to the Zapatista uprising. And i'd first heard of it in a letter from Marcos, one of the spokespeople for the EZLN - the Zapatista National Liberation Army - which i'd received via internet in January that year. That particular letter - one of many which Marcos had written over the period of a year and a half between the uprising and when i arrived in Chiapas - had moved me so much i'd published it myself in booklet form, in spanish and english, not long after i first read it. Somehow i'd been drawn to this place. From the moment i read that article, it had been inevitable that i would end up there. And here i was...
Despite the cold and the long bus ride, i felt good. The morning mountain air was fresh and clear, despite the flow of cars up that street, and somehow i felt a flow of energy cutting through the exhaustion caused by too much travelling and chronic lack of sleep.
I had a quick look at the menu outside Madre De Tierra, which is described as a vegetarian restaurant in the Lonely Plonker guidebook. But it wasn't very inspiring as it included meat dishes. We ended up at Casa Margarita, a guesthouse on Avenida Real De Guadalupe (all the streets seem to be called 'avenues' in San Cristobal)
Casa Margarita was a very pleasant spot. You went in off the street through a large doorway and came out into a paved courtyard, with a kind of stone veranda, or covered walkway around the outside. There were a few tables in the middle, with thatch-covered umbrellas over them, and plants scattered around here and there. The three of us (me, Paula and Dominique) took a triple room, which worked out reasonably cheap. It had a door onto the courtyard and was clean and comfortable.
San Cristobal was founded by the Spanish colonizers in 1528, right in the middle of the state of Chiapas and two thousand two hundred metres above sea level. It's quite a big town, with a population of a hundred thousand, but it had an open and friendly feel to it, which seemed unusual in that sort of a place. It was visually pleasant - for a town - although i couldn't say what gave it that effect, but i felt comfortable there right from the start
However, my first impression of San Cristobal wasn't very inspiring, but i was really exhausted. I still hadn't recovered from the flight and i hadn't slept well at Zipolite at all - as i can't sleep in a hammock and, sleeping on the sand floor, i was constantly being bitten by sand fleas and the odd scorpion. So after going out for a bit of breakfast, i went back to the hostel to bed and ended up sleeping most of that day and right through the night.
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The next day, i bought a copy of "Tiempo", which was a local San Cristobal daily paper. It was magazine size and only about six pages, but it ran some interesting stories, with a pretty radical political perspective. They always printed the EZLN communiques in full too. That day, it had the following story in it, which i translated sitting at one of the tables in the courtyard at Casa Margarita:
When i read this story, i felt excited. This was going on close not far away from where i was. I wanted to go there and see what was happening, make contact with the occupiers somehow and maybe spread their story internationally somehow. I looked at a map of Chiapas, which was hanging on the wall of the covered walkway round the courtyard at Casa Margarita, and found the area where it was, but i couldn't find the exact place. I held the idea in my mind all that day, of going to try and find it, but it seemed like it might be difficult, a bit like groping in the dark.Sierra Madre Peasants Armed To Repel Agressions
(from Tiempo, Wed, 10th May, 1995.)El Triunfo (AEI) - The armed peasants that operate in the Sierra Madre mountains of Chiapas and are in control of a number of coffee estates are prepared to repel "any attack actions" on the part of "white guards or police elements".
They say they don't belong to the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), although they cover their faces with scarves and balaclavas so as not to be recognized.
Taking refuge behind barricades built from sacks of sand and gravel under huts of timber and corrugated iron, from which hang camouflage trousers and shirts and army-style boots, the peasants, who don't wear a uniform and say they belong to the Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organization National Plan of Ayala Co-ordinating Committee (OCEZ-CNPA), received a group of journalists to explain to them that their struggle is for land, not political power.
(Translator's note: the National Plan of Ayala was initiated by the original Zapatistas and was a land reform program, giving the land back to the peasants.)
They explained that they are awaiting the dialogue on the 12th of May, in San Andres Larrainzar, between the government and the EZLN in order to decide what action to continue with. "We back the civil resistance actions called by the EZLN, but we're not militants of that group. If we were, we would be in the Lacandon forest."
A committee of approximately thirty people - who didn't give their names "because there are no leaders here" - with reservations towards the correspondents, from whom they demanded clear identification, with name, telephone number and address, said that Abel, who the small landowners of the region and the civil authorities refer to as Commandante Abel, isn't in the area. "He's probably in Frontera Comalpa, San Cristobal or Las Nubes."
Before arriving at the site of the interview, after a two and a half hour journey through the depths of the Chiapan mountain range, we came to a board with black writing on it: "No entry for trucks between 9pm and 4am. EZLN", with a rifle painted below it. On the other wall it said: "Respect to the taking of land" and the face of subcommandante Marcos, to whom they offer their support.
Since the 10th of April this group has been in possession of the properties San Luis Andes and Buenos Aires, both owned by Mario Garcia Trevino, who's also landlord of the Gavilancillo, Bandera Argentina, El Recuerdo and La Fortuna estates. The peasants announced that they will initiate the occupation of other estates if their demands for agrarian reform are not listened to.
From the top of a large rock, a lookout pointed out directions to the local and national media representatives. Meanwhile, passing along the road unmolested, there were trucks of the Conasupo Solidaridad, which supply basic products to rural shops in San Antonio Miramar and Hoja Blanca, in the Chiapan sierra.
The peasants are accused of being Zapatista guerillas by the propietor of the Las Nubes estate, Manuel Ferrara Gutierrez, who's asking for the intervention of the Mexican army. Holding rifles, shotguns and some sort of machine gun, the peasants are momentarily agressive. They point out that they work in the civil resistance and they "intend to take some coffee estates if the government will not solve the agrarian problems by means of dialogue".
A total of about 150 peasants, all armed, keep watch over the 500 hectares which comprise the San Luis Los Andes and Buenos Aires estates. They say they come from San Antonio Miramar, Jamaica (a village, not the island - translator), San Joaquin, Caban~as and other extremely poor communities in the municipalities of Escuintla, Acacoyagua and Motozintla.
At the site of the interview there was a white three ton truck with the legend "This unit is property of the EZLN" on the sides. We were refused access to a building constructed of material which stood out among the huts.
"Abel is one of us but he's not here now. They say he's the commander of the group, but he's only one more comrade who's struggling for land, dignity and justice for the peasants."
Before saying goodbye, the men warned the press that they would come looking for them if they didn't "tell the truth".
The next day's Tiempo, however, had another story which led me in a different direction completely. There were several articles about the "dialogue" which was due to start the next day, between the EZLN and the government. One of the articles mentioned there was a "peace cordon" being organized and fifteen hundred people had been signed up for it already. The paper didn't give any details about how to get involved, but i happened to have noticed a sign about it pasted up on the wall of the church near the zocalo.
I went out and had another look at this notice. It gave the address of Conpaz, the organization doing the accreditation and directions on how to find it. The name stands for Coordinadora de Organizaciones Non-gubernamental de la Paz - or Coordinating Committee of Non-government Organizations for Peace. I didn't realize then, but the wall the notice was pasted up on was the Fray Bartolome Human Rights Centre, which is in some way related to the catholic cathedral in San Cristobal - at any rate, it's in part of the cathedral building.
I followed the directions on the notice and arrived at an ordinary looking house in an ordinary street. But when i went through the street door and walked into the internal courtyard, there were quite a few people around and a desk with a couple of people sitting behind it in one corner. One of these, a woman from Madrid, told me they needed foreigners to act as observers at the peace talks. All that was required was two photocopies of your passport and twenty pesos to cover the costs of accreditation and transport to San Andres Larrainzar, where the talks were being held. I went off to get my passport photocopied and went straight back.
The house was a fairly typical San Cristobal house, with the door in the street wall leading into a courtyard. Around the courtyard were roofed, open-air passageways, with the rooms off them.
I handed over my photocopies and twenty pesos and that was about it. I was given a sheet with a bit of information on it. I asked about transport and somebody told me to come back at midday for a meeting to find out about that.
I met Jabi and Joserra, a couple of men from Bilbao and Ana, a canadian woman and we talked a little bit. I hung around a while longer and then went.
I returned at midday and hung around for a while, but there was no sign of anything happening or about to happen. But now there were sheets of paper for names of people wanting transport. I put my name down for the next day and left again.
It was cold at night there, in those tropical mountains, and it was likely to be raining, so there were a few things i needed to get before i went to Larrainzar. The first thing was a raincoat - or rather a plastic sheet, with a hole in it for your head and a hood. I can't remember the name of this garment now, but they're a common form of rain gear in rural areas of Chiapas. It just hangs down over your front and back, leaving your arms completely free inside or outside it. Then i got a couple of blankets and a length of rope to tie up my bedroll with. I was a bit confused in the hardware shop at first, as they quoted my a price for the rope by the kilo. But it turned out i didn't have to specify how much i wanted by weight, that was just how they charged you. I got four metres to be on the safe side - there's nothing worse than trying to tie your bedroll up with a bit of rope that's too short! It was fairly stiff and bright yellow, but it would do the job. I needed to get food, but that could wait till tomorrow.
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The following is an extract from a report i wrote for the community radio station, 4ZZZ in Brisbane, during my stay in Chiapas. Hopefully it will explain concisely a bit of the background to what was going on in Chiapas at that time:
At the beginning of January, 1994, a new chapter began in the five hundred years long struggle of Mexico's indigenous people against colonization. Under more and more pressure - now mainly from U.S. imperialism - the indigenous Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) rose up and succesfully created an autonomous zone in the Lacondon Forest in the Mexican state of Chiapas. This zone covered a large number of indigenous villages in what is one of the last remnants of forest left in Mexico. (Like everywhere else in the world, the imperialist agenda of total environmental destruction is nearing completion here.)click here to go to the next chapterThis autonomous zone existed and flourished all through 1994, giving everyone living there equal control over the running of their communities. But in February 1995, under extremely powerful economic and political pressure from the U.S. goverment, the mexican army was sent in to destroy it. Realizing that the high price of defending the zone would be paid for in indigenous blood, which has been considered cheap for far too long, the EZLN decided against a fight.
The Mexican army took control of the area, using standard and well-tested colonial techniques. With beatings, rape, torture and murder, they drove the indigenes out of their villages and forced them to seek refuge deeper in the forest. Then they completely destroyed all the villages and poisoned the water supplies to prevent them from returning. They also set up their own camps and occupied the area themselves.
In April, May and again in June, the government and delegates from the EZLN held peace talks, which they call "dialogues", in the Tzeltal indian village of San Andres Larrainzar (or San Andres Sacamch'en), which is near San Cristobal de las Casas, a small city over 2000 metres up in the Chiapas altiplano. A fourth dialoge there is scheduled for the 4th of july.