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FIRST ENCOUNTER BETWEEN THE ZAPATISTAS AND THE PEOPLES OF TH
zap - 03.01.2007 00:08
Informational Bulletin 02 on the Encounter between the Zapatistas and the Peoples of the World
Bulletin 02
31 December 2006
Compañeros and compañeras
The last day of the year started today at the Zapatista Caracol of Oventik, in Chiapas, with two morning workgroups during which the zapatistas shared the everyday construction of their autonomy in the areas of education and health, in the context of the discussions of the First Encounter Between the Zapatistas and the Peoples of the World.
Thousands of community supporters of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and over 1,500 men and women from 40 countries around the world joined at 8:00 AM the two workgroups where autonomous education, the development of educational curricula in resistance, the zapatistas’ health system, the challenges, obstacles, and small achievements of their work are being discussed.
Yesterday afternoon and evening representatives from each of the five zapatista Good Government Councils discussed the topic: Autonomy and the Other Government. During the session, 35 compañeros and compañeras from several countries also shared their experiences.
The compañeros Jesús and Roel, from the Good Government Council of the Caracol La Realidad, explained that “one of the most important challenges of the Other Government is the participation of women as authorities. When the Councils were created,” explained Roel, “there was only one woman, but after three and a half years of work we can now say that we are almost even, although there is still a long way to go.”
To “command by obeying,” they informed, “means that the people decide the direction and the ways in which we are to work.” And they explained that there are seven principles for the Other Government: to obey and not to command, to represent and not to substitute, to go down and not up, to convince and not to conquer, to construct and not to destroy, to propose and not to impose.
On the controversial issue of zapatista justice, the speakers explained that there are different types of problems, to which “we look for solutions ourselves. The first thing we do is investigate the case, and then we bring together the parties in conflict. The authority remains neutral in order to be able to listen to the arguments of the parts and, based on that, to apply justice to the guilty, where the punishment is usually to do work for the benefit of the town, the municipality, or the zone. In the Other Government justice can’t be bought or negotiated. The power of money doesn’t have a say in zapatista justice,” concluded the autonomous authority of one of the regions of the jungle.
In turn, Oventik’s Good Government Council pointed out that, for the zapatistas, “autonomy is a universal right that allows us to live in a humane way, with freedom, justice, democracy, and our own laws anywhere in the world. Autonomy can’t be understood with one word; instead, we need to speak of the different aspects and rights: the right to life, to politics, to justice, to freedom, to democracy, to health, to education, to the territory, etc.”
Oventik’s autonomous representatives denounced that during these 13 years of struggle “the bad government has betrayed us, has tried to annihilate us to do away with our just struggle. Many compañeros and compañeras have been assassinated by the military and by paramilitary groups, and there are still thousands of people displaced by the war.”
Currently, they explained, there is no single law or judicial system to apply justice. Rather, each municipality develops its own internal rules. Because of that, “we see the need to develop general norms that can guide us in all municipalities in the region.”
Representing the Good Government Council of the Morelia Caracol, the compañera Ofelia and the compañero Beto pointed out that in that region “the autonomous educational and health systems are being developed in an equitable way.” In this context, they explained, one of its responsibilities is “to promote, develop, and improve autonomy in the towns and municipalities.” Another of its functions, said Ofelia, is “to distribute equitably the economic resources that, thanks to the solidarity of men, women, children, and older people of Mexico and the world, reach us directly or through other means.”
On the topic of justice, Beto said that “our role is to search for and build a common agreement, not to apply the law. As authorities of the Good Government Council we are a bridge, we build a dialog and not a negotiation, and through this dialog we reach an agreement. Even though,” he admitted, “it’s not always easy.”
Josefina and Miguel, representing the autonomous authorities of the Roberto Barrios Caracol, said that “now, we the zapatistas are rescuing our culture… As indigenous peoples, we must organize ourselves again. We are capable of governing ourselves, of serving the people, of making our own decisions and agreements, of making proposals, and of having our own thoughts.”
They explained that the zapatista authorities do not receive a salary for their work. “We the zapatistas are free to organize ourselves, to govern ourselves, and to make our own decisions without being exploited by capitalist ideas. Because of that we had the idea to build a new society and a new struggle, the idea to build unity as indigenous peoples of the world…”
As residents of one of the regions with the greatest paramilitary presence, the representatives from Roberto Barrios denounced that “the harassment by the paramilitaries in the region and in the autonomous municipalities continues, as well as the bad government’s programs, which are based on capitalist ideas and are designed to divide or discourage the people, because this is a low intensity war against the people.”
Representing the Caracol of La Garrucha, Elías, Estefanía, Joaquín, and Isabel stated that “indigenous peoples have the right to autonomy within the Mexican state,” and they reaffirmed “our way of being and working collectively, our language, and our ideas, which are different.”
“We, as peoples, have been practicing autonomy in our everyday acts, so what we are demanding is that what already exists be recognized. But the bad government doesn’t want to recognize our autonomy because, as we’ve already explained, they would not be able to take over and deprive us of our riches and natural resources. It would be hard for them to apply their economic plans to exploit our resources for their own benefit,” said the autonomous authorities.
They explained that “the autonomy we want and for which we struggle isn’t against the country’s sovereignty. We don’t want to separate ourselves from the country to form a different nation. That’s the excuse used by the enemies of indigenous peoples to deny us the right to autonomy that we demand as peoples. What we are definitely sure of is that autonomy strengthens democracy in our country.”
The talks by the representatives of the Good Government Councils were followed by a question and answer session where zapatista autonomy was further discussed. Afterwards, compañeros and compañeras from other countries of the world shared their experiences and struggles, in particular in defense of political prisoners.
Today, in addition to the workgroups on the Other Health and the Other Education, a workgroup is scheduled this afternoon to discuss the issue of women, their challenges and horizons. And, in the evening, the zapatistas and the peoples of the world gathered together today in Oventik will celebrate, with music, dance, and cultural activities, the thirteenth anniversary of the armed uprising that surprised the world on January 1, 1994.
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| Lees meer over: globalisering Oaxaca | | aanvullingen | | Het 'andere' onderwijs | zap - 03.01.2007 16:11
THE OTHER EDUCATION
31/12/2006
Today, the second day of the first meeting of the Zapatistas with the people of the world and with the grounds of Oventik still covered in mist, began the first work session on autonomous education - the ‘other education’. The table began with a discussion of the autonomous education system that has been established in Zapatista communities since government teachers were run out of the communities in 2000. Members of the Good Government Councils representing the 5 caracoles – La Realidad, Oventik, La Garrucha, Morelia and Roberto Barrios – along with representatives from the education commissions of many of the autonomous municipalities spoke of both the gains and obstacles of the past 6 years constructing autonomous education. Following this period, which allowed each Council 20 minutes to speak to education in their region, was a short question and answer period and the table was closed with the commentaries and participation of delegates from throughout Mexico and the world.
It made clear the differences in the pace with which the schools and educational promoters are advancing, but also clear was the shared desire for the creation of an educational system of liberation rather than domination. All members addressed the history of education in their communities and the reasons for the rejection of government teachers. In addition to the facts that the teachers often came from the cities and therefore had little real commitment to the communities, couldn’t communicate with the students in their native tongue and were often abusive towards the children, after the uprising in 1994 there were fears that teachers came to the communities as spies and the military was often involved in bringing supplies to the communities. Beyond these problems was the recognition that the material being taught, created by a government that is not only abusive but also ignorant of life in the communities, was not serving either the children or the community to address their own problems.
In 1999, after communities had been meeting to discuss this situation, it was decided in assembly that they would begin to name people from their own communities as educational promoters that would take the place of government teachers. The testimonies shed light on the difficulty of this process, which involves training educational promoters and constructing schools in a situation where resources are scarce, but nevertheless all Councilors demonstrated their commitment to the process as the only way to return dignity and respect to their schools. Although the process continues slowly, the hundreds of educational promoters that are currently providing thousands of Zapatista children with a bilingual education in the basic subjects of mathematics, history, language and natural sciences, as well as special focuses on the Zapatista demands, agroecology, and the integration of the theory of the classroom with the practice of community work and life.
Following this presentation and a brief question and answer period, Otra Campaña adherents from throughout Mexico and the world took the microphone to speak of their own struggles for autonomy in education. Representatives from the autonomous schools of Xinaxcalmecac in Los Angeles, La Platforma Mexicana in Madrid joined members of Ya Basta! from Italy, Acción Zapatista and RadioZapatista from California, U.S.-based Mexicanos Sin Fronteras, the Normal Mactumatzá in Chiapas and representatives of Section XXII of the Teachers Union in Oaxaca to speak to the various struggles that organized communities throughout the world are encountering in education.
Whether with the discourse of autonomy or popular power, there was general agreement that institutions of education only serve to educate within a certain, in this case capitalist, framework. As much in the city as in the countryside, there is a realization that it is only working against or outside of these systems that a truly liberatory and critical education can be achieved. Merely changing the content does not affect the relations of power exercised within the classroom and with that in mind, not only the Zapatistas in Chiapas, but people throughout the world are struggling to teach by learning, speak by listening, and govern by obeying.
Table 4 : The 'Other Communication, Art and Culture
summary of the fourth working table, the 'other' communication.
TABLE 4
THE ‘OTHER’ COMMUNICATION, ART AND CULTURE
Only a handful of hours after the Cumbia rhythms stopped dancing through the air from the New Year’s celebration, the 4th working table of the Zapatista meeting with the people of the world got underway, talking about alternative forms of communication and preservation of art and culture. As has been the case for all of the working tables, representatives from the 5 Caracoles – La Realidad, Oventik, La Garrucha, Morelia and Roberto Barrios – began the day speaking of the forms of communication that have been and continue to be established in the Caracoles. Members of the Good Government and Autonomous Municipal Councils explained that the massive and mainstream media are little more than mouthpieces for those who seek to dominate, and that in the capitalist system this domination is as much social, cultural and artistic as it is economic. Since the poor and dispossessed are excluded from these conventional media, it is necessary that alternatives be sought so that they too can have access to forms of communication within and between their communities.
Good Government and Autonomous Municipal Councilors addressed subjects as wide as transportation, radio, internet, murals, traditional music and dress, video editing and production, childbirth and many others. Most important among these has been the installation of internet in the Caracoles and community radios, Radio Insurgente, in communities in many regions. Radio Insurgente, although it transmits via internet as well, is most important in the internal communication, relaying news and cultural events to the communities in Spanish as well as the local dialect – Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Ch’ol, Zoque y Mam. Radios still need to be installed in many more communities, but they are currently in the process of training community members to set up, maintain and transmit via community radios in communities in all 5 regions. The process is slow and often difficult and one Councilor from Caracol V, Robert Barrios, told of the difficulties they had encountered as one of the transmitters failed and burst into flames, discouraging those who were being trained from continuing with the effort.
Training and formation in technical skills to run and maintain computers, navigate the internet and audio and video production have also been vital both internally and externally in the 13 years since the uprising. Within the communities, to augment radio transmissions, news can be taken from the internet in order to create newspaper murals to inform communities of local, national and international news. In the past year, since the launch of the Other Campaign, this has been a vital medium for informing community members of the Campaign’s progress, especially during its halt following the May 3 and 4th repression in San Salvador Atenco. Audio and video production have been just as important for this kind of internal communication as for informing the national and international communities of developing events in the Zapatista communities.
Groups such as Promedios, who have been working with the compañer@s since the uprising developing necessary technical skills produce video documentaries, were also credited for helping a great deal in this aspect of the struggle. Documentaries produced have been showed nationally and internationally, contributing a great deal to the widespread support for the Zapatista struggle on these levels.
Compañer@s from a number of collectives and organizations throughout the world then participated, sharing experiences and struggles from their own communities. A Los Angeles Radio Station, working with the ‘Otra del Otro Lado’, shared its struggle to increase progressive Spanish-language programming in the greater L.A. area, especiall given the ever increasing number of Spanish speakers in the country. Another man from TV Kurdistan, representing the Kurdish territories in Syria, Iraq and Turkey, even invited the compas for training in TV production in their studios. Various member from the Otra Cultura collective in Mexico City shared their experiences, one of the most powerful describing a theatrical event they recently realized in the jail Santiaguito, which ended in family members embracing for the first time in 8 months, and all of the prisoners shouting ‘ATENCO VIVE’, ‘LA LUCHA SIGUE’. Additionally, representatives from the APPO, CIPO-RFM, East Side Café, Soul Rebel Radio, Pintar Obedeciendo, Pulpo Mecanico, Subversion Sonora among others participated sharing their achievements and struggles.
The struggle for retaking communication media is a slow one, and filled with obstacles, but one that needs to continue, and as one comandante said on first day of the meeting, ‘even if we can’t ultimately change the world, we must at least make sure that it doesn’t change us.’
TABLE 6: Possession of land, agrarian destribution, recovered land, harassment. t
The land belong to who works it, the fight for land and territories.
"To sell the Land, it would be to sell our mother", that fullfill the thought of a representative of the Council of Good Government, in the table of Land and Territory, that took place the afternoon of first of January. And it is that to say, for the zapatistas the "mother earth" is the inheritance of their ancestros and practically the only way to survive. Therefore, during three hours l@s zapatistas explained the importance of the control and ownership of the Earth, as well as its efforts to defend the land recovered in the 1994 from paramilitary aggressions and neoliberal plans like the PROCEDE.
The circumstances are different in each Caracoles, because while in the Highland is scarce and is very little fertile, in the warmest Caracoles as Morelia or Roberto Districts there is more land and different cultures, but the pressure of the "bad government" is much greater. On the one hand, the companer@s has denounced the threats of eviction that have undergone in Aguazul and neighboring communities, and by another one they have explained the resistance to the PROCEDE, a governmental plan that it tries "to clear the land of the ejidatarios and the community goods", through land division and the imposition of monoculture.
Another one of the flags of fight in this question is the resistance to the pesticide and the transgénics seeds, that damage the Land and its fruits and force the dependency towards corporations. For that reason, in Robert Districts they have implemented a center of qualification in agroecology that allows to improve the Land yield by means of natural techniques.
After the intervention of the Council, the Consejo National Indigena invited all the original inigenous people to add to the autonomy and resistance to "Capitalism and its governors, guilty of the poverty, repression and extermination of our communities". Also they dedicated a words to the political prisoners of the Cucurah community () in danger of extinction after that for months they hasn't been allow to fish, its only source of sustanibility.
Next we could listen to the word of compañer@s worldwide that fights day to day by for the ownership of the Land which they work and they explained us their experiences of agrarian distribution and colectivización. "Land is not for sale, it has to be work and defended"
 Website: http://chiapas.indymedia.org
| | 3e Informatiebulletin | zap - 03.01.2007 16:55
03 Informative Bulletin about the Encounter between the Zapatista peoples and the peoples of the world
December 31st, 2006
With the participation of around 2 thousand compañeras and compañeros of 44 countries the second day of the Encounter between the Zapatista Peoples and the Peoples of the World began, in which there were several workgroups: the Other Education, the Other Health, and the women’s struggle.
In the Other Education round table, like the rest of the workgroups, there was the participation of autonomous authorities of the five Good Government Committees and Zapatista Rebel Autonomous Municipalities (MAREZ), who explained how the communities organize education in autonomy and in resistance.
The autonomous representatives spoke about the number of schools built in their territory, some with solidarity resources and many more with the donations from the communities themselves. They spoke of the importance of the formation of the education promoters who are elected in community assemblies to be trained and to teach classes in the communities.
They also explained that Zapatista education relates the 13 demands of the struggle with 4 areas of knowledge: life and the environment, mathematics, history, and language. True education, they said, is that which comes from the people and not what is imposed by the bad governments.
Following the participation of the Zapatista authorities were the compañeras and compañeros of many countries of the world. Mixper, a chicana with huichol ancestors, of the APC and of the education project Semillas del Pueblo (Seeds of the People), spoke of the people of color in the United States, the children of immigrants and indigenous people who are marginalized and ridiculed, treated like inferiors and whose dreams are robbed in the government schools.
The school “Academia Semillas del Pueblo” was made with the many dreams of the people of the community to recover their identity and indigenous traditions and to create students that have a strong indigenous identity.
Juan Chávez, of the technology students in resistance in Oaxaca, spoke of the alternative education project called “Brigada Communitaria”, which consists in giving free assessment in mathematics, physics, and the history that the government hides from us.
From Argentina a compañera from the Migrating Network (Red Trashumante) explained that this project came about in 1998 in a difficult context of much despair and fatalism. A group of people had the idea of going around the country to ask how people were feeling. On the yellow bus called “Quiquincho” they gave workshops on reflection about their reality with voice and art. It’s called migrating because they go in search of better lands.
From the University of Berkeley, California and Radio Zapatista, a compañero explained that in the University there is a collective forming of Zapatista students and teachers that make change through, for instance, Spanish classes for latino students, children of immigrants which is a way to recover their identity.
There was also participation on the part of brothers and sisters of Mexicans Without Borders, as well as compañerxs from Ya Basta of Italy; of Schools for Chiapas, also from the US; and from an popular adult school in Prosperidad in Madrid.
Simultaneously there was a round table discussion about the Other Health in which autonomous representatives of the five Good Government Committees highlighted the importance of recovering traditional medicine in the indigenous communities. They spoke of how they organize health in resistance through the training of health promoters and the construction of small health houses, micro-clinics, and Zapatista hospitals.
The representatives of the communities in resistance spoke of their position on abortions. They spoke of how many times women have miscarriages without trying to and how life is in the communities. “Many women suffer this problem, without practicing or looking for it, these are the conditions in the indigenous lifestyle”, they said.
In the question and answer session the importance of strengthening sexual education and reproductive health was underlined. Mental health problems we also discussed, as well as the importance of the vaccination campaigns without the participation of the government, the use of ecologic stoves that help prevent the damages provoked by the inhalation of smoke from the firewood which women suffer from, and the importance of family planning education.
The Zapatistas explained that their precarious health system attends without charge to all the people of the Zapatista communities and also offers health services to indigenous people who are not Zapatistas as “health is a right that should distinguish like the bad government does”.
20 compañeras and compañeros from many parts of the world put forth their different experiences with alternative health. The Street Brigade Collective (Colective Brigada Callejera), of Mexico City talked about their work with sex workers in Mexico City while another collective of Michoacán talked about the importance of physiotherapy in health. “Capitalism sickens and only gives partial solutions as cures”, the collective said.
From Chile, Ximena Castillo spoke about mental health and her work in the community center of rehabilitation for schizophrenic people; while Gisela Morales from Monterrey spoke about working in a marginalized zone where communities hunt snakes to eat. “It necessary that we don’t reproduce the system inside of us, to create a paradigm. We have to remember that the earth and nature are the most ancient doctors and hospitals”, said Gisela.
Edgar Ibarra of the South Central Los Angeles Farm, in California talked about their self-run community based project that started in 1992 and worked with 14 hectares where people could cultivate their own food, as well as have workshops on traditional medicine and agriculture. They were evicted from the land but have maintained a space where they can continue offering health services based on medicinal plants.
One of the people who spoke was an independent missionary, another was a doctor from Mexico City who worked with barefoot doctors in China, another was a compañero from the Sierra Totonaca that started a community health project. Another person spoke from a collective in Yucatán, as well as someone about an experience with music therapy in Buenos Aires, and a moving story of an indigenous person from Canada. There were also brothers and sisters from Guatemala, Amatlán (Morelos), Costa Rica, and Mexico City.
THE WOMENS´ STRUGGLE
A symphony of 20 Zapatista women presented themselves today to very clearly and bluntly discuss the challenges of the indigenous woman, what she has to face in the struggle, the participation of the women Zapatistas in autonomy, their small victories, their enormous problems, their horizon and the long path of the struggle for equality in the communities.
One by one the Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolabal, Chol, Zoque, and Mame Zapatista women spoke about their lives in the villages in which they live and suffer machismo; communities in which their very compañeros deny them political participation or laugh at them or their spouses for being involved in work that is not traditionally done by women.
They spoke again and again of the importance of organizing themselves as women, participating in whatever resistance work, and consider their own limitations for not speaking Spanish and many times not being able to read and write. “But we are learning little by little and becoming more and more conscious”, they said.
Facing the crowd and without fear, the Zapatista women responded to each question from the crowd eager for answers about their way of organizing and about the difficulties they face. They said that they now have the right to decide their partners and the number of children they want to have, although many times “there are husbands who don’t obey”.
All of them agreed that “it is necessary to organize an Encounter among women to exchange ideas and organize the struggle together”.
In the list of the small and big advances, the EZLN women highlighted that there are men who now do house work (take care of children, cook food, take care of the animals, etc.); and that there is more and more female participation in the work of autonomy (health, trade, education, municipal authorities, members of the Good Government Committees, etc.); and underlined that there are insurgent women with different military ranks, as well as militia and members of the Revolutionary Indigenous Clandestine Committee.
As well as the participation from Mexico and from other parts of the world, there was a message from women of Kurdistan who are part of a brigade named after the Comandanta Ramona. There was also the participation of the collective Infant Care Regeneration, from New Cork; compañeras from the Other (Campaign) on the Other Side; from Zapatista Support Network in Madrid; the Independent Women´s Movement of Chiapas, the Front of IMSS Women Workers; the Woman´s Rights Center; the Breaking the Night collective from Nuevo León; and the Lucio Blanco Collective of Tamaulipas.
When culminating the round table discussion, the Zapatista women proposed a question to the participants: “What do you plan to do about the mistreatment, rape, and beatings of women around the world?”. From among the crowd an answer appeared: “Lift our voices, educate, speak out and condemn…”
The round table discussion was facilitated by the Comandanta Sandra and the Comandante Moisés, both of the Morelia region, who reminded us that on the 31st of December “it will be 13 years since we began our struggle, since we said Ya Basta (Enough) to the discrimination and the disrespect towards indigenous women”.
A programme of culture, dance, and songs continued to close the year and welcome the 14th year of the Zapatista struggle.
Website: http://chiapas.indymedia.org
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