The Zapatistas began a series of meetings with different segments of civil society of the Left to listen to proposals for how to go forward with the “other campaign” generated by the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle. It appears that all of these meetings will take place within the jurisdiction of the Tzeltal Jungle Caracol headquartered in La Garrucha. The first of the six meetings was held in the new community of San Rafael, within the autonomous county of Francisco Gomez, on the weekend of August 5-7. San Rafael was formerly the El Zapote finca (estate), located on the road between San Miguel and Agua Dulce. Representatives from Mexican political organizations of the Left were the invitees.
The headline grabbing news about this gathering is that Subcomandante Marcos appeared in public for the first time in four years (since the 2001 March of Indigenous Dignity to Mexico City) and spoke to those in attendance. Marcos was accompanied by members of the Sixth Committee of the Tzeltal Jungle Zone (nine women and seven men, all commanders), and a guard of four insurgents. Marcos addressed the EZLN’s controversial position of criticizing Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, apparent candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in Mexico’s 2006 presidential elections.
This is a burning issue to many who plan to vote in the 2006 elections and, therefore, is important and worth explaining. Many Mexicans who consider themselves “left” or “progressive” also view the PRD that way. It is thought to be the left of center party. It controls the huge and sprawling Federal District (Mexico City and its environs). Lopez Obrador has been a successful and popular mayor of the Federal District. He is the leading pre-candidate (no one has yet been nominated) in public opinion polls. The federal government made him even more popular by attempting to take away his eligibility to run for president through a trumped-up allegation of wrongdoing. Masses of supporters filled cities across Mexico in protest and the feds had to back off.
However, let us not forget that the PRD voted (cut a deal) in favor of the counter reform (law) on Indigenous Rights and Culture which watered down the San Andrés Accords between the EZLN and the government to meaningless drivel. Marcos also reminded us that members of the ORCAO peasant organization which sacked the Zapatista store at Cuxulja and threatened the lives of EZLN members in various Ocosingo villages all belong to the PRD. The gang of thugs who shot at Zapatistas in Zinacantan (Los Altos) belong to the PRD and were allegedly put up to their paramilitary-like behavior by elected PRD municipal authorities. In Las Margaritas county, a Zapatista was kidnapped and tortured by PRD members belonging to the CIOAC peasant organization. Enough said about the ?party of the Left.?
For those of us unable to vote in Mexico’s 2006 elections, however, what seemed of great importance to me as I read the transcript of that meeting was how Marcos approached the myriad of differences between organizations of the Left. Saying that it did not matter if those organizations which joined the Other Campaign held differing positions on Cuba, China, Bolivia or Ecuador, he invited them all to make proposals for the campaign. What matters in the Other Campaign, according to Marcos, is that they all agree with respect to Mexico. It seemed to me that perhaps there is a lesson in that logic which we might think about here in the USA. He referred to the campaign as “an anticapitalist movement against exploitation.”
Second Meeting in Javier Hernandez

Moving on down the road a piece to the community of Javier Hernandez, the EZLN held its second weekend meeting with representatives of 60 or so indigenous organizations this past weekend (August 12-14). Located in the Patiwitz Canyon about halfway between Ocosingo and La Garrucha, the community is also on “recuperated” land; i.e., land which originally belonged to indigenous people, was taken away, and has been taken back since 1994. Marcos attended the meeting and likened the taking back of the land on which they were meeting to what the other campaign would do to the political class in Mexico - drive it away and take back the country. The community, which was formerly San Juan Ranch, is named for Javier Hernandez, an insurgent who died in the 1994 Uprising. What made the headlines in Mexico from this meeting was that Marcos challenged Lopez Obrador to a debate! Lopez Obrador predictably responded “No way.”
Marcos said that the “other campaign” would last for several years and asked the indigenous peoples to host the comandantes who travel around the country. On to Dolores Hidalgo, San Manuel County
The third weekend of meetings took place in the community of Dolores Hidalgo, located in the autonomous Zapatista county of San Manuel, sister municipio to the Chiapas Support Committee of Oakland, California. Marcos clarified the EZLN’s position on the 2006 elections: the EZLN is not telling people not to vote; an important clarification. He also clarified that the objective of the other campaign was to listen to those from below.
Meeting with 100 Mexican social organizations, Marcos opened the meeting by telling the history of the community Dolores Hidalgo this way:

I am going to tell you a story. The Zapatista Compañeros and Compañeras related some parts to me, and others I saw and I lived through. If there is something imprecise, leave its clarification to the historians. With its provable facts, its legends, its imprecision and empty spaces, this is part of our struggle, the story of the EZLN.
This place where we are was a finca by the name of Campo Grande. The history of this place is a squeezed synthesis of the history of the Chiapan Indigenas. And, in some parts, of all the Indigenous people of the Mexican southeast, not just the Zapatistas.
Campo Grande did honor to its name: more than one thousand hectares of good land, on level ground, with abundant water, roads especially made to take out cattle and precious wood, landing strips so that so that the owners would not get dusty or stuck in the mud traveling over the dirt roads and could arrive in their airplanes; thousands of Indigenous people who they exploit, scorn, rape, cheat, incarcerate and murder. Then, the PRI?s agrarian reform, the institutionalized revolution, was concretized in Chiapas like this: the good lands and the level ones for the finqueros; the stony lands and hills for the Indigenous.
The owner of Campo Grande was Segundo Ballinas, known among the inhabitants as an assassin, rapist and exploiter of the Indigenous, principally of women and children. After the finca was divided: one part was called Primor and its owner was Javier Castellanos, one of the founders of the Union of Property Owners of the Second Valley of Ocosingo, one of those associations with which the finqueros disguised their guardias blancas (hired guns). Another part was called Tijuana and its owner was a coronel in the Mexican Army, Gustavo Castellanos, who kept the people subjugated with his personal garrison. And another part was the property of Jose Luis Solorzano, a member of the PRI and its candidate to different positions, known in the zone for his unfulfilled promises, his shameless lies and his dominant and disparaging treatment towards the Indigenous. Like that, in these lands were synthesized the Power of Chiapas: finqueros, military and the PRI-Government. For that evil trinity, Chiapas was able to be a pasture for cattle, an estate for exercising the right of rape, even with little girls; a shooting range on human targets and one of the laboratories of the most modern “democracies” of the PRI: here it wasn’t necessary to know the candidates, not even their names or proposals, nor know the date of the election nor what the options were, not to have identification. Well, not even was it necessary to take oneself to the polling places.
In each electoral process, in the country seat of Ocosingo, in the local offices of the associations of property owners and cattle ranchers, one was paid with a sandwich and a soft drink for stuffing ballots all day. It’s clear that that “democracy” had its excesses: in one election before that of 1994 the PRI obtained more than one hundred percent of the votes. Perhaps there were too many sandwiches and soft drinks.
In an August like this that receives us here, but in the year 1982, the finqueros and their guardias blancas violently evicted the inhabitants of Nueva Estrella village (ranchería). They shot, beat and took the indigenous men prisoner. Some were murdered. They separated the women and obligated them to watch as they were burning their houses. They took away everything. In time they returned. When someone asked them why they returned after every thing that was done to them, they responded with this gesture (Marcos opens one hand with the fingers towards above, meaning: “because of huevos”).
In 1994, on January first, thousands of Indigenous of this Tzeltal zone, together with thousands more from the Tojolabal, Chol and Tzotzil zones, after ten years of preparation, covered their faces, changed name and collectively named themselves as the “Zapatista National Liberation Army” and rose up in arms. The finqueros fled, the same as their guardias blancas did, and left the weapons on which they sustained their domination abandoned. The Zapatistas recuperated the lands. Look: they didn’t “take” them, but they ?recuperated? them. That?s how the Compañeras and Compañeros call this act of justice that had to wait dozens of years to be completed. These lands that were Indigenous lands and were usurped, are now Indigenous lands again. They have been, pues recuperated. The lands were distributed. Hundreds of Indigenous families, who before were piled up on a space of two hectares (5 acres), founded, together with other Indigenous people without land from other villages of the zone, this Zapatista village that now receives us. This village is now inhabited, among others, by those who were attacked by the finqueros in 1982.
This village is called Dolores Hidalgo and, according to what the founders tell me, veterans of the 1994 Uprising, the significance of “Dolores” is that of the pain we have from more than 500 years of resistance, and the name of “Hidalgo” is for don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, who struggled for independence. Check it out that they said “500 years of resistance” and not 500 years of domination. That is to say, in spite of the domination they have never stopped resisting it. And when we speak of domination, that is to say, when we tell our history, we speak also of resistance. And now I am not talking of our history as the EZLN, but our common history, that which we share with you, with your social organizations and your movements. Our common history, that which, where it says “I govern and dominate,” we and you say “I resist and I rebel.”
But the Zapatistas that founded Dolores Hidalgo do not refer only to resistance. They name also the sorrow of it. The sorrow of the length of the road; the sorrow of exhaustion, the sorrow of those who betrayed on the trajectory, the sorrow of the failures, of the errors and, above all, the sorrow of continuing forward in spite of all the sorrows.
From your history as organizations and as movements, of your sorrows of your resistance and rebellion, you will tell us. Surely in more than one we will recognize ourselves. Many others will seem foreign. But in all we will be learning from you. And we will tell you what we have said to others: that we want to continue learning. We learn with you, and with many more like you, to think well, to say well and feel well when we say “companero, companera.”
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There is another three weekends of meetings with different segments of civil society. Marcos explained that when all the meetings were over, a document would be produced for all those who adhered to the campaign to sign. It would be a document containing all the proposals from the organizations that attended the meetings. The next meeting is with NGOs and rumor has it that it may be in the new community of San Pedro, San Manuel County, future site of the Pharmacy/Warehouse, the Chiapas Support Committee’s next project with the companeros of San Manuel.
This writer is on her way to the inauguration of the autonomous warehouse in San Manuel and afterwards hopes to attend the fifth weekend meeting somewhere in the Canyons of the Lacandon Jungle. She hopes to send another summary upon her return.

by: Mary Ann Tenuto Sanchez
Chiapas Support Committee
P.O. Box 3421
Oakland, CA 94609
Tel: (510) 654-9587
email: cezmat@igc,org
www.chiapas-support.org