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Winter
Books Words from the hot and muddy Mexican jungle
OUR WORD IS OUR OUR
WEAPON: SELECTED WRITINGS OF SUBCOMANDATE INSURGENTE MARCOS Edited by
Juana Ponce de León, Foreword by José Saramago Seven
Stories Press, 456 pages, $27.95 |
REVIEWED By NEVE GORDON
The opening chapter of Our Word is Our Weapon describes the
first offensive launched by the Zapatista National Liberation Army in southern
Mexico during the cold early hours of Jan. 1, 1994, the day the North Atlantic
Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, was to be implemented. It tells the story of a
group of indigenous women commanders, each one leading her troops to capture
towns or strategic posts in the Chiapas region. Many Zapatista commanders are
women.
After being robbed, oppressed and subjugated for centuries, the
indigenous people finally decided to initiate a courageous struggle against the
Mexican government and its neoliberal economic policies. Through the cursory
portrayal of those critical hours of fighting, one gets a sense of the people
involved, their motivations, aspirations and dreams. These are the kind of
people who would know exactly what the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was talking
about when he wrote the powerful lines: I stood by truth:/to establish
light in the land/I wanted to be common like bread:/so when the struggle
came/she wouldnt find me missing.
Our Word is a compilation of the writings of the leader
of that movement, Subcomandate Marcos. Many of his communications were written
in the hot and muddy Mexican jungles and first distributed via the Internet to
thousands of readers. Marcos was perhaps the first insurgent to use a laptop
connected to cyberspace as a strategic weapon in the service of guerrilla
warfare.
The book is divided into three parts: It begins with essays
describing the Zapatista movement, its political views, actions and objectives,
then turns to Marcos personal reflections, including letters to
politicians and other activists, and concludes with a section introducing the
reader to indigenous folk tales and myths that in many ways inform the
Zapatistas revolutionary project.
Marcos is the man behind the ski mask, which he wears not only as
a precaution against assassination attempts by security forces, but as Juana
Ponce de León explains in her introductory remarks, because the mask
has a transformative power that allows Marcos to shed the idiosyncrasies
of his birth and assume a communal identity. The non-self makes it possible for
Marcos to become the spokesperson for the indigenous communities. Indeed,
the mask reveals much more than it hides because it urges people to look beyond
the persona of the rebel and, in this way, helps expose the injustices
perpetrated against the 10 million indigenous people of Mexico.
Before the Zapatista rebels donned the mask and began their
struggle, most people were unaware that 54 percent of the indigenous population
suffer from malnutrition, 15 percent do not have access to medical services, 10
percent are illiterate, and the vast majority have to cope with grinding
poverty on a daily basis. Many of us didnt even know where Chiapas was
located.
The thick mantle with which they try to cover their
crime, Marcos writes, is called neoliberalism, and it represents
death and misery for the original peoples of these lands. Marcos
goal, as he explains in the book, is not to usurp power but to exercise
it, that is, to democratize it. This is precisely the reason the mask has
become such a threatening symbol to the privileged few, for it has come to
represent the momentous struggle to empower the people and to create a more
egalitarian economic and political system.
It is therefore no surprise that in the New York Times
April 8 review of Our Word, Tim Golden, the reviewer, rushes to tear
away the mask so as to expose Marcos identity. He wants to undermine the
Zapatistas goals. But the significance of the mask, as Marcos
essays reveal, is even deeper, for it reflects the worldview underlying the
Zapatistas struggle, a view informed by many of the beautiful folk tales
that appear in the books third section.
The Zapatistas are attempting to open a crack in
history by transcending the ubiquitous practice that reduces politics to
a sphere of contestation among competing egotistical interests and by
(re)introducing in its stead a politics that is concerned with questions of
equality, justice and freedom. While it is hard for us to imagine a politics
that is not intricately tied to interests, it is important to note that the
word interest does not appear in the Hebrew Bible, nor do interests
inform the words, deeds and political struggles of the great Jewish
prophets.
The Zapatistas appear to recognize that even if they were to
attain the upper hand, appropriating an interest politics standpoint would
undermine their demand for social justice. Thus, the mask becomes a device that
enables Marcos to lead a struggle that is not about his interests or those of
the people he represents, but rather one that is seeking a common ground. It is
precisely this message that the book so eloquently conveys.
Neve Gordon received his doctorate in the department of
government and international studies at the University of Notre Dame, and is
currently teaching politics at Ben-Gurion University, Israel.
National Catholic Reporter, October 26,
2001
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