ZAPATISTA
ARMY OF NATIONAL LIBERATION.
MEXICO.
December 31st, 2014 and January 1st,
2015.
Compañeras and compañeros, family members of the
students from Ayotzinapa murdered and disappeared by the evil government of
this capitalist system:
Compañeras and compañeros of the Indigenous National
Congress:
Compañeras, compañeros, and compañeroas of the Sixth Declaration in Mexico and in the world:
Compañeras and compañeros Support Bases of the
Zapatista Army of National Liberation:
Compañeras and compañeros comandantes and comandantas,
leaders of the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee-General Command
of the EZLN:
Militia compañeras and compañeros:
Insurgent compañeras and compañeros:
Compas:
Through my voice speaks the voice of the Zapatista Army
of National Liberation.
May all who are and are not present receive the
greeting of the Zapatista men, women, boys, girls, and elderly.
May the step, the voice, the ear, the look, the
collective heart from below and to the left, be welcome.
We have as guests of honor the family members of those
who we are missing in Ayotzinapa, in Mexico, and in the world.
We are grateful at heart for the honor which they give
us by being present here with our Zapatista peoples which we are.
Their silences and words honor us also.
Their pain and their rage make us family.
We the Zapatistas do not lose sight of nor close our
ears to the sorrow and the anger of Ayotzinapa which the family members show us
and speak of.
The sorrow because of the deaths and disappearances.
The anger because of the evil governments which hide the truth and deny
justice.
What we know and remember in this struggle for
Ayotzinapa is that only as organized peoples are we going to find the truth.
Not only the truth which disappeared in Ayotzinapa,
also all the truths which have been kidnapped, imprisoned, and murdered in all
corners of planet Earth.
Over that now-absent truth we will be able to build
justice.
Because we the Zapatistas, think that we must no longer
trust the evil governments which there are throughout the world.
Those evil governments which only serve the great
capitalists.
Those evil governments which are only employees of
capital. The foremen, stewards, and corporals of the great capitalist plantation.
Those evil governments are never going to do any good
for the peoples.
It does not matter how many words they say, those evil
governments do not command, because the head honcho is neoliberal capitalism.
That is why we must not believe the evil governments at
all.
Everything that we want as peoples we have to build
among ourselves.
Just as the family members of the murdered and
disappeared from Ayotzinapa are building their search for truth and justice.
Just as they are building their own struggle.
We want to tell the fathers and mothers of the
disappeared compañeros not to rest, to fight, and not to stop fighting for
truth and justice for the 43.
The struggle of the Ayotzinapa family members is
example and nourishment which they give to those of us who want truth and
justice on all the planet’s soils.
And so we are to take the example of the fathers and
mothers, of leaving the home and the family to work and encounter other families who have their same pains, rages, and resistances.
Hope is not in an individual man or woman, as they make
us believe and say “vote for me” or “come to this organization because we are
going to win the fight.”
That’s what they say.
But, what fight? If we know that what they want is to rise
to power and then later they forget about everything and everyone.
That is why it is better for us to take the example of
the family members of Ayotzinapa, of organizing.
It is necessary to build and grow organization in each
place where we live.
Let us imagine how the new society could be.
For that we have to study how we are in this society in
which we live.
We the Zapatistas say that we are in a society where we
are exploited, repressed, disappeared, and plundered by centuries of bosses and
leaders, and as of today, the end of 2014 and beginning of 2015, society
remains this way.
Since then they have wanted to cheat us telling us that
they, those from above, are the baddest of badasses and that we are good for
nothing.
That we are stupid, that is what they tell us.
That they know how to think, imagine, create, and that
we are only peons in what they do.
“To hell with that!” “Enough!” That is what we the
Zapatistas said in the year 1994, and so we had to govern ourselves
autonomously.
Like so we the Zapatistas see that the disappeared
students’ family members’ effort of work and struggle with rebellion and
resistance with dignity, it is that they are calling us to organize so that the
same does not happen to us.
Or so we may know what to do before the same happens to
us.
Or what to do so that what happened to them because of
this capitalist system which we are in never happens to anyone.
Because the family members of Ayotzinapa have explained
it very well. Like good teachers the family members have explained that the one
responsible for the crime is this system by way of its foremen.
And the system too has its schools for foremen,
stewards, and corporals, and those schools are the political parties which only
seek positions, posts.
There is where the evil governments’ servile ones are
prepared, there they learn to steal, to cheat, to impose, to command.
From there emerge those who force these laws to be
fulfilled with violence, who are the presidents, governors, and mayors, with
their armies and police.
From there emerge those who judge and condemn those who
do not obey these laws, who are the judges.
And well we see that it does not matter if those
foremen, stewards, and corporals are men or women, if they are white, black,
yellow, red, green, blue, brown, any color.
The work of those above is to not let those of us below
breathe.
At times the one who orders to kill has the same skin
color as the one who is killed.
At times the murder and the victim have the same color
and language.
And neither the calendar nor the geography matters.
What the struggle of the family members and compañeros
from Ayotzinapa has made us think is that those who kidnap, murder, and lie are
the same.
That those who preach lies are not going to seek the
truth.
That those who impose injustice are not going to make
justice.
And it is that we think that it cannot continue like
this forever, everywhere and at all levels.
And this is what the family members from Ayotzinapa
teach us, that it is better for those of us who suffer from this disease which
is called capitalism to seek and find each other.
Hand in hand with the family members of Ayotzinapa we
seek the disappeared which there are in all the worlds which we are.
Because those disappeared and murdered every day and at
all times and in all places are truth and justice.
Hand in hand with the family members of the 43 we
understood that Ayotzinapa is not in the Mexican state of Guerrero, but rather
is everywhere in the world of below.
Hand in hand we understand that the common enemy of the
countryside and of the city is capitalism, not only in one country but
throughout the world.
But this capitalist world war encounters, in all
corners, people who rebel and resist.
These people in rebellion and resistance go along
organizing according to their own thought, according to their place, according
to their history, according to their way.
And in these struggles of rebellion and resistance they
go along meeting each other and making their agreements to achieve what is
desired.
They meet but do not judge each other.
They do not enter into competition to see who is
better. They do not ask each other who has done more, who is going forward, who
is the Vanguard, who commands.
What they ask each other is if there is some good in
what is capitalism.
And as the response which they find it’s that there is
NOTHING good, but entirely the opposite, it creates for us a thousand forms of
evils, so it is logical that we have a thousand forms of response to this evil.
In other words, the question goes on to be, what is to
be done to rebel against evil? How does one resist so that that evil of
capitalism does not destroy? What is to be done to rebuild what was destroyed
in a way that it is not the same but better? How are the fallen to be raised?
How are the disappeared to be found? How are the prisoners to be freed? How do
the dead live? How are democracy, justice, and freedom constructed?
There is no one response. There is no manual. There is
no dogma. There is no creed.
There are many responses, many ways, many forms.
And each one goes along seeing their results and
learning from their own struggle and from the struggles of others.
While those from above enrich themselves with payment,
those from below enrich themselves with experiences of struggle.
And, sisters and brothers, we tell you clearly that we
the Zapatistas have learned from watching you and listening to you, and from
watching and listening to the world.
It has not been, nor is it, nor will it be from an
individual that the gift of freedom, of truth, of justice, is going to arrive
to us.
Because it turns out, friends and enemies, that
freedom, truth, and justice are not gifts, but rights which must be conquered
and defended.
And collectives are what achieve them.
We already are the peoples, men, women, and others of
the countryside and the city, those who have to have freedom, democracy, and
justice in-hand for a new society.
That is what the fathers and mothers of the disappeared
compañeros are posing to us.
We will have to struggle with a thousand ways to conquer
this new society. We will have to participate with different levels of
commitment for that new society.
We all must accompany the family members of Ayotzinapa
in the struggle in their search for truth and justice, plainly and simply because
that is the duty of anyone from below and to the left.
And we say accompany, because it is not a matter of
leading them, of manipulating them, of managing them, of using them, of scorning
them.
It is a matter of struggling together with them.
Because no honest human being can celebrate this pain
and this rage, this injustice.
Sisters and brothers, family members of those absent
from Ayotzinapa:
The Zapatistas support you because your struggle is
just and is true. Because your struggle must be all of humanity’s.
It has been you and no one else who has put the word
“Ayotzinapa” into global vocabulary.
You, with your simple word. You with no leader other
than your pained and infuriated heart.
And that which you have shown has given much strength
and spirit to us simple folk from below and to the left.
Because there outside they say and shout to each other
that only the great minds know how, that only with leaders and bosses, the only
with political parties, that only with elections.
And there they are in their clamor which even they do
not hear, they do not even hear reality.
And so your pain, your rage, appeared.
And so you taught us that it was and is our pain also,
that it was and is our rage also.
That is why we asked you to have our representation in
those days of the First Global Festival of Resistances and Rebellions Against
Capitalism.
We do not only wish for the achievement of the noble
objective of those who we are still missing today returning with life.
We also will continue supporting with our small forces.
As Zapatistas we are sure that your absent ones, who
are also ours, when they make themselves present again they will be amazed not so much because their names took many languages and many geographies. Nor
because their faces traveled the world. Nor because the struggle for their
appearance with life was and is global. Nor because their absence has
demolished the lie made government and denounced the terror made system.
They will be amazed indeed, but upon realizing the
moral stature of their family members, of you, who at no point let their names
fall. And who, without giving up, without selling out, without giving in, continued looking
until finding them.
So, that day or that night, your absent ones will give
you the same embrace that we the Zapatistas now give you.
An embrace of love, of respect, of admiration.
And in addition, we give you 46 embraces, one for each
one of the absent.
- Abel García
Hernández
- Abelardo
Vázquez Peniten
- Adán
Abraján de la Cruz
- Antonio
Santana Maestro
- Benjamín
Ascencio Bautista
- Bernardo
Flores Alcaraz
- Carlos Iván
Ramírez Villarreal
- Carlos
Lorenzo Hernández Muñoz
- César
Manuel González Hernández
- Christian
Alfonso Rodríguez Telumbre
- Christian
Tomás Colón Garnica
- Cutberto
Ortiz Ramos
- Dorian
González Parral
- Emiliano
Alen Gaspar de la Cruz.
- Everardo
Rodríguez Bello
- Felipe
Arnulfo Rosas
- Giovanni
Galindes Guerrero
- Israel
Caballero Sánchez
- Israel
Jacinto Lugardo
- Jesús
Jovany Rodríguez Tlatempa
- Jonás
Trujillo González
- Jorge
Álvarez Nava
- Jorge
Aníbal Cruz Mendoza
- Jorge
Antonio Tizapa Legideño
- Jorge Luis
González Parral
- José Ángel
Campos Cantor
- José Ángel
Navarrete González
-José Eduardo
Bartolo Tlatempa
-José Luis
Luna Torres
-Jhosivani
Guerrero de la Cruz
-Julio César López
Patolzin
-Leonel
Castro Abarca
-Luis Ángel
Abarca Carrillo
-Luis Ángel
Francisco Arzola
-Magdaleno
Rubén Lauro Villegas
-Marcial
Pablo Baranda
-Marco
Antonio Gómez Molina
-Martín
Getsemany Sánchez García
-Mauricio
Ortega Valerio
-Miguel Ángel
Hernández Martínez
-Miguel Ángel
Mendoza Zacarías
.-Saúl Bruno
García
.- Julio
César Mondragón Fontes
.- Daniel
Solís Gallardo
.- Julio
César Ramírez Nava
.- Alexander
Mora Venancio
-*-
Compas all:
You are here with us, the sisters and brothers of the
native peoples who struggle in the great agreement which is called the
Indigenous National Congress.
Since more than 500 years ago we have sought each other
as native peoples in the paths of rebellion and resistance.
Since more than 500 years ago pain and rage have been
the day and the night in our path.
Since more than 500 years ago it has been our endeavor
to conquer freedom, truth, and justice.
Since more than 18 years ago we have found each other
as the Indigenous National Congress by the hand of the late Comandanta Ramona.
Since then we have tried to be students of her wisdom,
of her history, of her endeavor.
Since then we have been revealing, together, the passage
of capitalism’s dismal carriage over our bones, our blood, our history.
And we name exploitation, plunder, repression, and
discrimination.
And we name the crime and the criminal: the capitalist
system.
But not only, also with our bones, blood, and history
we name the rebellion and the resistance of the native peoples.
With the Indigenous National Congress we raised the
dignified color of the land that we are.
With the Indigenous National Congress we learned that
we have to know how to respect each other, that we are going to have our place
in our demands.
We understand that now the most urgent thing is truth
and justice for Ayotzinapa.
Today the most painful and infuriating thing is that
the 43 are not with us.
Tomorrow we do not want such things to happen to us to,
for this, let us spread the word there in our towns, nations, neighborhoods,
and tribes.
Let us call upon our peoples to no longer allow them to
continue cheating us with miserable handouts, only to keep us quiet, and for
the head honchos to continue enriching themselves at our expense.
Let us join our rages and organize and struggle with
dignity without selling out, without giving up, and without giving in, for our
political prisoners, who they have in prison for struggling for the injustices
in which we live.
As native peoples we fight for what is our right, we
know how to do this, our great great grandparents taught us this, that they
cannot do away with us as the native peoples that we are on these soils.
That is why we exist in so many languages, because our
ancestors knew how not to let themselves be done away with, now the same thing
is our responsibility.
We all must say NO to the transnationals.
From our towns, nations, neighborhoods, and tribes, we
all have to think what we are going to do, how we are going to do it, we have
to think how we have to communicate about what the evil governments are doing
to us.
And so we are to organize and take care of each other.
Because they will want to buy us, want to give away
handouts, want to offer us positions.
They are going to look for all the ways to divide us
and for us to fight and kill each other.
They are going to want to dominate and control us with
other ideas.
They are going to spy on us and want to introduce all
types fear.
And they are going to put thousands of traps for us to fall
and no longer struggle for our people.
But are we really going to allow them to continue
another 520 years of treating us like their garbage?
We only want to live in peace, without the exploitation
of man by man, we want equality among men and women, respect for those who are
different, and to decide together our destiny, the world which we want in the
countryside and the city.
We are sure that we are going to know the best way of
life which we want other than that which they impose upon us.
We the Zapatistas, want to ask the native peoples of
the Indigenous National Congress to reach out to the family members of
Ayotzinapa receiving them in their territories.
We ask you to invite their steps and their hearts.
We ask you, for them, for the honor of their word and
of their ear.
Great is the knowledge which roosts in the hearts of
the native peoples, and it will grow more upon sharing the word of pain and
rage with these people.
As the guardians of mother Earth which we are, we know
well that our step is long and needs company.
There is much to walk still and we cannot stop.
So we will continue walking.
As native peoples we know the earth well, let us work
mother Earth, let us live with what she gives us, without exploiting.
Let us care for, love, and rest in peace in her.
We are the guardians of mother Earth.
With her we can do everything, without her everything
dies uselessly.
As native peoples it is our time now and forever.
-*-
Compañeras, compañeros and compañeroas of the national and international Sixth Declaration:
In these days, being and not being present, an exchange
has taken place which is not but one more of the steps which we have to take
together as the Sixth Declaration and each one in their own place of struggle,
with their ways, with their history.
There are times in history which run, put us before
something in which we unite, without matter for the geography which our dream
travels and without matter for the calendar of our struggle.
Ayotzinapa has been a point where we have reunited.
It is not enough.
Let us work, organize, and struggle for our disappeared
compañer@s and struggle for our prisoners.
Let us form a whirlwind in the world, so that they give
us our disappeared alive.
Let us make one. We are in fact one as human beings,
but there are some beasts who disappear us, they are the capitalists.
Let us form one wave and envelop those beasts and drown
those wicked ones who have done us so much harm in the world.
Let us matter to each other, as the family members from
Ayotzinapa are teaching us.
Like them, without resting, without taking advantage to
get a cut for other interests.
Compañeros and compañeras, let us remove from our heads
the bad meaning of the phrase “take advantage.”
Let us think of the good meaning of the word, let us
take advantage of our common good. We already live the bad which those who have
taken advantage make by exploiting us.
And still it disappears us, tortures us, imprisons us.
Freedom, justice, democracy, and peace is our destiny.
It is now time for us the poor of the world to begin by
constructing another more just world, where we leave the generations prepared
to not allow Savage neoliberal capitalism to return.
Let us hear the cry of the 43 young student compañeros,
who tell us “look for us and find us, do not allow them to cover our cry, the
43 who are the same as you, they deprive us of our freedom, we are seeing if
you are going to fight for us, and if you do not fight, it means that you are
not going to fight for the rest, that it is going to come for theirs.”
The cry of the 43 compañeros is telling us, “help,
accompany, struggle, organize, work, move together with our family members, for
they are already leaving you alone because the elections are now approaching,
this is what it is doing to us for them to forget about us.”
Let us join our struggles which we have, the struggle
for the disappeared. Let us name the absent. Let us point out the crime
clearly. Let us point out the criminal.
The family members of Ayotzinapa have nourished our force
of rebellion and resistance, they have opened our eyes more and they have made
our dignified rage grow.
They are indicating a path and they are saying that
giving their lives does not matter if it is necessary for their disappeared.
And they show us also about how all of us must
organize, those with disappeared and also those without disappeared for now,
but who are going be with disappeared if we do not organize, because the
narco-governments are still there.
They show us that it is necessary to struggle, not to
care if we do not appear in the paid media, what matters to us is life and no more
deaths and disappearances.
They show us that it is time for us to organize.
That it is time to decide for ourselves, our destiny.
It is that simple and that complicated.
Because that means organization, work, struggle,
rebellion, and resistance.
Only with movement and organization will we from below
defend ourselves and free ourselves.
-*-
Compañeras and compañeros of the Zapatista Army of
National Liberation:
It has been a difficult year.
The war against our spirit of peace continues.
The head honcho continues wanting to kill our freedom.
The lie continues wanting to hide our endeavor.
Our blood and our death continue fertilizing our
mountains.
Like since some time ago. Pain and death which before
were only for us continued extending themselves to other places and reaching
others in the country and the city.
Darkness is made longer and heavier in the world which corresponds
to each one of us.
We, in fact, knew.
We, in fact, know.
For this we prepared for years, decades, centuries:
Our look does not only look close.
It does not only look at today nor only at our soil.
We look far in the calendar and the geography and like
so we think.
Ever more pain unites us, but also rage.
Because now and since some time ago, we see that in
many corners lights are lit.
Lights of rebellion and resistance.
Sometimes small like ours.
Sometimes large.
Sometimes they last.
Sometimes they are only a flicker which quickly goes
out.
Sometimes they continue and continue, without going out
in memory.
And in all those lights it is predicted that the tomorrow
which follows will be very other.
We, in fact, knew it 21 years ago, 31 years ago, 100
years ago, 500 years ago.
We, in fact, know that we have to struggle every day,
at all times, in all places.
We, in fact, know that we will not give up, that we will
not sell out, and that we will not give in.
We, in fact, no that what is lacking is lacking.
-*-
Compas all:
In the following days, weeks, months, more of our word,
of our thought on how we see the small world and the large world, will be
released.
They will be difficult words and thoughts because they
are simple.
Because we see clearly that the world is not that of
100 years ago, well it is not even the same as 20 years ago.
As the Zapatistas that we are, although small, we think
the world.
We study it in its calendars and geographies.
Critical thought is necessary for struggle.
Theory is what they call critical thought.
Not idle thought, which conforms with what there is.
Not dogmatic thought, which makes itself head honcho
and imposes.
Not crooked thought, which argues lies.
Thought which asks, which questions, which doubts.
Not even in the most difficult conditions should the
study and analysis of reality be abandoned.
Study and analysis are also weapons for the struggle.
But not only practice, not only theory.
Thought which does not struggle, makes nothing more
than noise.
Struggle which does not think, repeats its errors and
does not get up after falling.
And struggle and thought gather in warriors, in the
rebellion and resistance which today shake the world even if its sound is
silenced.
We the Zapatistas think and struggle.
We struggle and think in the collective heart which we
are.
-*-
Compañeras, compañeros, compañeroas:
There is not only one path.
There is not a sole step.
Those who walk and struggle do not have the same way.
The walker is not one.
The times and the places are varied and many are the
colors which shine below and to the left in the land which hurts.
But the destination is the same: freedom. Freedom.
FREEDOM.
-*-
Compañeros, compañeras, compañeroas:
Sisters and brothers:
21 years after the beginning of our war against
oblivion, this is our word:
TRUTH AND JUSTICE FOR AYOTZINAPA!
TRUTH AND JUSTICE FOR MEXICO AND THE WORLD!
MAY THE DEATH WHICH CAPITALISM IMPOSES DIE!
LONG LIVE THE LIFE WHICH RESISTANCE CREATES!
FOR HUMANITY AND AGAINST CAPITALISM!
REBELLION AND RESISTANCE!
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine
Committee-General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.
Mexico, January 2015.
Translated
from Spanish by Henry Gales.
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