WHEN THE DEAD SILENCE OUT LOUD.
(Rewind 1)
(In which the
absent, the biographies are reflected upon, it tells of Durito’s first
encounter with the Cat-Dog, and talks about other matters which are irrelevant,
or unrelated, according to what the impertinent postscript will go on
dictating)
November-December 2013.
Methinks
we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they
call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at
things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the
water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is
but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say,
it is not me.
Herman Melville “Moby Dick.”
For
a while now I have held that the majority of biographies are nothing more than
a documented lie, and sometimes, not always, a well written one. The average
biographer has a previous conviction and the margin for tolerance is very
reduced, when not nonexistent. With this conviction he begins to rummage around
in the puzzle of a life which is foreign to him (the reason for his interest in
making the biography), and goes on collecting the false pieces which allow him
to document his own conviction, not the life in review.
The fact is that perhaps we can know
with certainty the date and place of birth and, in some cases, date and place
of death. Aside from that, the majority of biographies should be categorized as
“Novelized History” or “Science Fiction.”
What is it that is left then of a life?
A little or a lot, we say.
A little or a lot, depending on memory.
Or,
rather, on the fragments which on collective memory that life imprinted.
If this does not matter for biographers
and editors, it is of little importance for the common people. It often happens
that what really is important does not appear in the media, nor can it be
measured in surveys.
Ergo, of an absent person we only have
arbitrary pieces of the complex puzzle made from shreds, tears, and tendencies
which are known as “life.”
So, with this confusing beginning,
allow me to lift up some of those fragmented pieces to embrace and embrace
ourselves for the step that today we are missing and need…
-*-
A concert in the Mexican silence. Don
Juan Chávez Alonso, Purépecha, Zapatista, and Mexican, makes a gesture like
shooing off an annoying insect. It is his answer to the apology which I give
him for one of my clumsy outbursts. We are in Cucapá territory, in the middle
of a sandy plot of land. In those geographic coordinates and when on the
calendar the Sexta 2006 is marked in the Northwest of Mexico, in the large tent
which serves as his accommodations, Don Juan grabs the guitar and asks if we
want to hear something which he composed. He had just finished tuning and a
concert begins which, without any lyrics, tells of the Zapatista uprising from
January First 1994 until the presence of Comandanta Ramona in the formation of
the Indigenous National Congress.
A quiet then, as if it were one note more.
A
quiet in which our dead silenced out loud.
-*-
Also in the Mexican northwest, Power’s bloody craze paints
with absurdities still unpunished the calendar of below. June 5th,
2009. Governmental greed and despotism have lit fire to a daycare. The mortal
victims, 49 boys and girls, are the collateral damage when incriminating files
are destroyed. The absurdity of parents burying children, is followed by that
of a weak and corrupt justice: the responsible do not receive an arrest
warrant, but rather positions in the cabinet of the criminal who, under the blue
of National Action, will try to hide the bloodbath into which he plunged the
entire country.
Where biographers close their notes
“because a few years of life are not profitable,” the history of below opens
its notebook of other absurdities: with their unjust absence, these children
have given birth to other men and women. Their fathers and mothers have raised
since then the greatest demand for justice: that for injustice not being
repeated.
-*-
“The
problem with life is that in the end it kills you,” Durito had said, whose fantastic
knightly stories so much entertained Chapis.
Although she would have asked, with that impertinent mixture of naïveté and sincerity which disconcerted those who
did not know her, “and why is that a
problem?” Don Durito de La Lacandona, beetle by birth and knight errant by
trade, would have avoided arguing with her, since, according to a supposed rule
of knight errant-hood, one must not contradict a lady, (above all if the lady
in question has influence “high up,” added Durito who knew that Chapis was religious, a monk, sister, or
however you wish to call women who make of faith, their life and profession).
Chapis did not
know us. I mean to say, not as those who look at us from outside and about us
write, speak… or misspeak (you now see how fashions are fleeting). Chapis was with us. And she was some
time before an impertinent beetle appeared in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast
to declare himself knight errant.
And
maybe from being in us it was that that thing of life and death did not appear
to trouble Chapis too much. Like that
attitude so much ours, of the Neozapatistas,
in which everything is invested and it is not death which worries and concerns
us, but life.
But
Chapis not only was in us. It is
clear that we were only a part of her walk. And if now I tell you something
about her it is not to provide notes for her biography, but to tell you what
here we feel. Because the story of this believer, her story with us, is of
those who make the fanatic atheists doubt.
“Is
religion the opium of the people?” I do not know. What I do know is that the
most brilliant explanation that I have heard about the destruction and
depopulation which neoliberal globalization brings about was given, not by a
Marxist-Leninist-atheist-and-some-more-ists
theorist, but… by a Christian, Apostolic and Roman Catholic, adherent to the
Sixth Declaration, and exiled by
the high clergy (“for thinking a great
deal,” he told me as if apologizing) to one of the geographical deserts of
the Mexican Altiplano.
-*-
I believe (maybe I am mistaken, it
would not be the first time and, certainly, will not be the last), that many
people, if not all, who approached what is known as Neozapatismo, did so looking for answers to questions made in the
personal histories of each one, according to their calendar and geography. And
who took only the minimum amount of time to find the reply. When they realized
that the answer was the most problematic monosyllable in history, they turned elsewhere
and started walking. It does not matter how much they say and tell themselves
that they are still here: they left. Some people more quickly than others. And
the majority of them do not look at us, or they do so with the same distance
and intellectual disdain as that which calendars brandished before dawn broke
January 1994.
I
believe I have said it before, in some other missive, I am not sure. But
however it may be I say, or repeat here, that that dangerous monosyllable is “you.”
Like that, with lower case letters, because that answer was and is intimate to
each one. And each takes it with respective terror.
Because
the struggle is collective, but the decision to struggle is individual,
personal, intimate, as is that to continue or capitulate.
Am
I saying that the few people who stayed (and I am not referring to geography
but to the heart) have not found that answer? No. What I am trying to say is
that Chapis did not come looking for
that answer to her personal question. She already knew the answer and had made
from that “you” her walk and goal:
her being a believer and person of principle.
Many
others like her, but different, had already been answered in other calendars
and geographies. Atheists and believers. Men, women, and others from all
calendars. They are those who always, alive or dead, place themselves before
Power, not as victims, but to challenge it with the multiple flag of the left
of below. They are our compañeras, compañeros, and compañeroas… even if in the majority of cases nor them nor us know
it…yet.
Because
rebellion, friends and enemies, is not the exclusive heritage of the Neozapatistas. It is humanity’s. And
that is something which must be celebrated. Everywhere, every day, and at all
hours. Because rebellion also is a celebration.
-*-
They are not few nor weak the bridges
which, from all corners of planet Earth, have been held to these soils and
skies. Sometimes with looks, sometimes with words, always with our struggle, we
have crossed them to embrace that other who resists and struggles.
Maybe
“being compañeros” is about that and not about something else: about crossing
bridges.
Like
in this embrace made letters for the sisters of Chapis who, like us, miss her and, like us, need her.
-*-
“Impunity,
my dear Matías, is something which only justice
can grant; it is Justice exercising injustice.”
can grant; it is Justice exercising injustice.”
Tomás
Segovia, in “Cartas Cabales.”
I
have already said before that, in my humble opinion, each one is the hero or
the heroine of their own individual history. And that in the soothing
self-satisfaction of telling “this is my personal history,” facts are edited,
the most incredible fantasies are invented, and the narration of anecdotes
looks too much like settling the accounts of the miser who steals what isn’t
his.
The
ancestral urge to transcend death itself finds in biographies the substitute
for that elixir of eternal youth. Of course, also in descendants. But the
biography is, to say it in some form, “more perfect.” It is not about someone
who is resemblant, it is the “me” extended in time thanks to the “magic” of the
biography.
The
biographer of above goes to the documents of the period, maybe to testimonies
of family members, friends, or compañer@s of the life whose death is
appropriated. The “documents” have the same certainty as weather forecasts, and
the testimonies walk the fine line between “I think that…” and “I know that…”
And so the “veracity” of the biography is measured by the quantity of footnotes
per page. For biographies it is of the same value as for the receipts
documenting expense on governmental “image:” the more voluminous they are, the
more true they are.
In
the present, with the internet, twitters,
facebooks, and equivalents, the
biographical myths round away their fallacies and, voilá, the story of a life is reconstructed, or fragments of it,
which have little or nothing to do with the real story. But it does not matter,
because the biography is published, printed, circulated, read, cited, recited…
just like lies.
Check
in the modern documentary sources of future biographies, that is to say,
Wikipedia and the blogs, Facebook,
and the respective “profiles.” Now compare it with reality:
Does
it not send shivers down your spine to realize that, maybe, in the future…
Carlos
Salinas de Gortari will be “the visionary
who understood that selling a Nation was, in addition to a family business (of
course, understanding as family the blood family and the political family), an
act of modern patriotism,” and not the leader of a band of traitors (don’t
play tricks, there in the “mature and responsible” opposition are several of
those who supported the reform of Constitutional Article 27, the watershed
moment of the National State’s surrender in Mexico);
Ernesto
Zedillo Ponce de León will not be the “Statesmen” who took a whole Nation from
one crisis to another worse one (in addition to being one of the intellectual
authors, together with Emilio Chuayffet and Mario Renán Castillo, of the Acteal
massacre), but who took the “the country’s reins” with a peculiar sense of humor…
to end up being what he always was: a second-rate employee in a multinational;
Vicente
Fox will be the proof that the position of president of a republic and of a
soft drink subsidiary is interchangeable… and that both positions can be
occupied by useless people;
Felipe
Calderón Hinojosa will be a “brave president” (so that others would die) and
not a psychopath who stole the weapon (the presidency) for his war games… and
who ended up being what he always was: a second-rate employee in a multinational;
Enrique
Peña Nieto will be a cultured and intelligent president (“all right, he is ignorant and stupid but skillful,” it is the new
profile which is constructed in the political analysts’ huddles), and not a
functional illiterate (what can you do?, as the popular proverb goes: “what nature does not give, Monex does not
buy”)…?
Ah,
biographies. More than a few times they are autobiographies, even if they are
the descendants (or buddies) those who promote them and thus adorn their family
tree.
The
criminals of the Mexican political class who have misgoverned these lands will
continue to be, for those who suffer their mishaps, unpunished criminals. It
does not matter how many lines are paid for in the media; nor how much is spent
on spectacular things in the street, in the written press, on the radio and
television. From the Díaz (Porfirio and Gustavo) to Calderón and Peña, from
Castellanos and Sabines to Albores and Velasco, the only mediator is the
overlooking (through social networks, because in the paid media they continue
to be “responsible and mature people”) of the ridiculous frivolity of the
“newbies.”
But
the world is round and in the politics of above’s continuous rise and fall, it
can pass, in a short time, from the front page of “Hola,” to “WANTED; DANGEROUS CRIMINAL;” from NAFTA’s December debauchery,
to the hangover of the Zapatista uprising; from “man of the year,” to the
“hunger strike” with “chic” brand
bottled water (what can you do my dear, even for protests there are social
classes); from applause for the bad jokes, to putative filicide about to take
shape; from nepotism and corruption adorned with incidental ideas, to
investigation for ties to drug trafficking; from XL military uniforms, to
fearful and blood-stained exile; from the debauchery of defeatist December to…
-*-
With all this and what follows, am I
saying that one must not write/read biographies? No, but what makes the old
wheel of history go round are collectives, not individuals. Historiography
feeds on individualities; history learns from peoples.
Am
I saying that one must not write/study history? No, but what I am saying is
that it is better to do it in the only way that it is done, that is to say,
with others and organized.
Because
rebellion, friends and enemies, when individual is beautiful. But when
collective and organized it is terrifying and marvelous. The former is the
material of biographies, the latter is what makes history.
-*-
And
not with words we embrace our Zapatista compañeros and compañeros, atheists and
believers,
those
who at night carried on their backs a backpack and history,
those who took with their hands lightning and thunder,
those who put on their boots without future,
those who covered their face and name,
those who, without expecting anything in return, in the long night died,
so that others, everyone, one morning still to come,
may be able to see the
day as it must be done,
that is to say, head-on, on their feet, and with gaze and heart upright.
For
them neither biographies nor museums.
For
them our memory and rebellion.
For
them our cry:
freedom!
Freedom! FREEDOM!
Vale.
Cheers and may our steps be as great as our dead.
El
SupMarcos.
P.S.
ON OBVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS.-Now, do be so kind as to read, in reverse-date order,
from Rewind 1 to 3, and maybe like so you’ll find the cat-dog and some doubts
will be clarified. And yes, be certain that more questions will arise.
P.S.
WHICH RESPONDS TO, ASKS OF THE PAID MEDIA.- Ah! Moving is the effort of the
opposers in the paid media to try to provide arguments for the few opposer
readers/listeners/viewers who they have left. But, feeling generous due to the
Christmas season, I send you here some tips
for you to use as journalistic material.
-If
the conditions of the Zapatista indigenous communities are the same as 20 years
ago and no part of their quality of life has advanced, why does the EZLN—as it
did in 1994 with the paid media—open up with the escuelita so that people from
below may see and know directly, WITHOUT INTERMEDIARIES, what there is here?
And
already being in a “questioning mood,” why in the same time period, also
exponentially, was the number of the paid media’s readers/listeners/viewers
reduced? Psst, psst, you can respond that
you do not have less readers/listeners/viewers—that would reduce advertizing
and payola—that what is happening is that now they are more “selective.”
-You
ask, “What has the EZLN done for indigenous communities?” And we are responding
with the direct testimony of tens of thousands of our compañeros and
compañeras.
Now,
owners and stockholders, directors and bosses, respond to this:
What
have you done, in these 20 years, for the media workers, one of the sectors
hardest hit by the crime adopted and encouraged by the regime which you so
adore? What have you done for the journalists, the threatened, kidnapped, and
murdered journalists? And for their families? What have you done to better the
living conditions of your workers? Have you raised their salary so that they
can have a dignified life and not have to sell their word or their silence in
the face of reality? Have you created conditions so that they may retire, after
years of work for you, with dignity? Have you given them job security? I mean
to say, does the job of a reporter no longer depend on the editor-in-chief’s
mood or on the sexual “favors” or those of another type, which are demanded of
all genders?
What
have you done so that being a media worker may be an honor which does not come
at the price of loss of freedom or life for being honest?
Can
you say that your work is more respected by the rulers and governed than 20
years ago?
What
have you done to counter imposed or tolerated censorship? Can you say that your
readers/listeners/viewers are better informed than 20 years ago? Can you say
that you have more credibility than 20 years ago? Can you say that you survive
thanks to your readers/listeners/viewers and not due to advertizing, mainly
governmental?
There
you may respond to your workers and readers/listeners/viewers, just as we
respond to our compañeros and compañeras.
Oh,
come on, don’t be sad. We are not the only ones who have eluded your role of
judge and executioner, begging for your acquittal and receiving always your conviction.
There is also, for example, reality.
Vale
de nueve, o, mejor, de sesenta y nueve.
El
Sup saying that a thumbs down is better than a middle finger up.
It
is Zapatista territory, is Chiapas, is Mexico, is Latin America, is the Earth.
And it is December 2013, is cold like 20 years ago, and, like then, today a
flag blankets us: that of rebellion.
Translated
from Spanish by Henry Gales
Originally published on December 28th,
2013
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