by Sergio Pitol
And later:
We believe that the events in Chiapas are a wakeup call for the entire national consciousness and an invitation to reflect on the risks of continuing a modernizing policy that benefits the ruling elite while marginalizing the country’s popular majorities. They are also a call for the government to take seriously the path to democracy.
Let us therefore acknowledge that the problem is essentially social and political, although it has now been expressed through violence due to the absence of legal channels. For this reason, a military solution would leave untouched the root causes and not lay the foundations for progress toward an enduring harmony and peace in that state. Paths of dialogue and of real agreement on acceptable terms for the parties involved must be opened.
And it concluded:
Consistent with the above, we demand that:
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC, in accordance with the political measures recently taken, establish an immediate ceasefire and lift the de facto state of siege that it has imposed on some two thousand indigenous communities of Chiapas.
We believe that at this time a political will is urgently needed to initiate means by which to place the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) in the hands of the civil society.
THE ZAPATISTA ARMY OF NATIONAL LIBERATION take a clear and flexible position in favor of a dialogue of reconciliation with the aim of achieving the necessary changes that led it to the decision to take up arms.
ALL BELIEVERS, as part of the Church in Mexico, undertake the self-examination necessary to be more attentive to the suffering of our people, to be companions to them and find, with them, effective paths to achieve the justice they deserve as children of God.
ALL MEXICANS open their consciousness to overcoming the racism within us and accept the indigenous as brothers, children of the same Father, and as members of the national community, with equal dignity and rights.
SIGNED: José Morales Orozco, S. J. Provincial
This is perhaps the most surprising and most serious thing published during these hysteria-filled days: the violence was not committed by insurrectionary indigenous peoples, rather by those who have exploited them for five hundred years. Right, then, is on the side of the indigenous groups, whom despair has compelled to manifest themselves in armed counter-violence. The letter serves as a brake on the unbridled racism that has begun to spread. Recently, one hears unbelievable things said against the Indians; sometimes the most violent are spoken by people whose faces are marked with indigenous features. They are relentless. They advocate for extermination. I suppose they believe at that moment their listeners are seeing them in a different light: blue eyes and Viking hair.
15 JANUARY
In Cuernavaca, at the home of an industrialist friend and former classmate at university. For a while we talked about nothing in particular until someone mentioned the name of the president. My host almost jumped out of his chair. He got up from the table and began to pace the room, violently cursing him. He spoke of the murder of his servant, the slaughter of his mares, of his obsession with power, of his arrogance, and the problems of misgovernment we owe to him… I was dumbfounded. So the hatred toward him and the current group in power has taken root in the different strata of society! In some cases, and this may be one of them, it’s probably a matter of interests…
16 JANUARY
Another day without being able to focus on my work! I have done nothing but read newspapers. Hours and hours of consternation. I seem to understand the situation less and less. I’ve read all kinds of editorials. I went through some excellent parodies by Carlos Monsiváis, his incisive criticism of José Córdoba and his disciple Salinas in El Financiero, and the visceral feelings of some journalists from other newspapers who seem almost to be calling for the final solution for the Indians, the guerrillas, and their handlers; the latter, according to one of them, are headquartered in the UNAM and the state of Michoacán, where they are devising new plots against the nation and other evil deeds and things of that sort. I was dizzy and very exhausted. I still do not understand much. Who encourages and supports rebellion? The Church in Chiapas expresses support for the indigenous…The Pope himself has declared himself in favor of peace and relief for the extreme poverty in which the Chiapas Indians are living.
18 JANUARY
It looks like things are on a good and fast track. The government has declared an amnesty and the rebel army is beginning to send signals that they could initiate contact and later negotiations. Monsiváis says that the Zapatista positions are quite realistic. Perhaps we’ll be at peace again soon. What will happen next? Will Colosio continue his electoral campaign? Will the many questions that have been posed be answered? I find it impossible to think about anything else.
19 JANUARY
…Since the first of January, I’ve not been able to do anything except read newspapers, watch the news, and talk about Chiapas.
21 JANUARY
I’m copying a communiqué by the Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos that has been discussed widely today. It has impressed me more than any of his other statements:
Until today, 18 January 1994, the only thing we’ve heard about is the federal government’s formal offer to pardon our troops. Why do we need to be pardoned? What are they going to pardon us for? For not dying of hunger? For not accepting our misery in silence? For not accepting with humility the enormous historical burden of contempt and abandonment? For having risen up in arms after finding all other paths closed? For not having heeded the Chiapas penal code, one of the most absurd and repressive in memory? For having shown the rest of the country and the whole world that human dignity still exists even among the world’s poorest peoples? For having prepared well and with conscience before beginning our uprising? For having brought guns to battle instead of bows and arrows? For having learned to fight before doing it? For being Mexicans? For being mainly indigenous? For calling on the Mexican people to fight by whatever means possible for what belongs to them? For fighting for liberty, democracy, and justice? For not following the models of previous guerrilla armies? For refusing to surrender? For refusing to sell out?
Who should ask for pardon, and who can grant it? Those who for years and years sat before a table of plenty and had their fill while we sat with death, so frequent and familiar to us that we finally stopped fearing it? Those who filled our pockets and our souls with promises and declarations? Or the dead, our dead, so mortally dead from “natural” death, that is from measles, whooping cough, dengue fever, cholera, typhus, mononucleosis, tetanus, pneumonia, malaria and other gastrointestinal and pulmonary niceties? […] Those who deny our people the gift and right of governance and self-governance? Those who refused to respect our customs, our culture, and our language? Those who treat us like foreigners in our own land and who demand papers and obedience to a law whose existence and justness we don’t accept? Those who tortured, imprisoned, assassinated, and disappeared us for the grave “crime” of wanting a piece of land, not a big piece, not a small piece, just a piece on which we can grow something to fill our stomachs?
Who should ask for pardon, and who can grant it?
The President of the Republic? The Secretaries of State? The Senators? Deputies? Governors? Mayors? The police? The federal army? The magnates of banking, industry, commerce, and land? The political parties? The intellectuals? Galio and Nexus? The media? Students? Teachers? Neighbors? Laborers? Farmers? Indigenous people? Those who died in vain?
Who should ask for pardon, and who can grant it? Well, that’s all for now.
Health and a hug, and with this cold both will be appreciated (I believe), even if they come from a “professional of violence.”
Subcomandante Marcos.
This statement left me even more perplexed. The letter exudes an aura of Dostoevskian religiosity entirely different from the verbal habits of Latin American guerrillas. I do not detect traces of Castro or the Maoists. Nothing like the Shining Path; nothing that recalls that archaic lexicon fro
m the manuals of Nikitin or Konstantinov, which were used so often in my student days. The statement by Aspe, the finance secretary, saying that we Mexicans had invented a great myth, that of our misery, is shattered before the torrent of extreme, excessive, and desperate poverty that the cameras capture every time they do a report from Chiapas—that is, every day—as well as the statements by Salinas about our entrance into the First World through the Free Trade Agreement. Who the hell is the masked Subcomandante! A seminarian, perhaps?
22 JANUARY
…A photo on the cover of the magazine Macrópolis sums Chiapas up for me: a child of seven or eight years old carrying a bundle of firewood on his back, his head toward the ground, a rope across his forehead, a mecapal, sustains the load. The picture moves me more than any description. All the images that appear on television nowadays, especially of children and old people, are terrible. It is the hidden world we were barely able or wanted to recognize. The press says that Marcos may be a Jesuit, a former student of the Polytechnic, a student expelled from the National University, a Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Venezuelan guerrilla, a retired professional soccer player.
23 JANUARY
I just saw an account of the events in Chiapas on television. Subcomandante Marcos, as well as the other rebel officers, insist that their army has been preparing for several years and that they have people positioned in many parts of the country, perhaps in order to look bigger in the eyes of the nation and to arrive at the negotiating table with a force otherwise difficult to verify. Because Marcos is apparently now willing to hold talks with the government, or at least that’s what I thought I heard. It’s at moments such as this that I despise my deafness. My impression, contrary to what some of my friends think, is that the solution to the conflict is still distant and so far the guerrillas have been able to play government just like they wanted, like a cat with a mouse. There is a lot of talk that the PRI will have a big surprise before the end of the electoral campaign. At least the greyish outlook we’ve lived with in recent years has completely changed. We find ourselves suddenly in something that, for better or for worse, is a different Mexico. In La Jornada, Octavio Paz criticizes intellectuals for their irresponsibility when speaking about the events in Chiapas. I have the impression it was a veiled rebuke of Carlos Fuentes for his recent statements about a first post-socialist rebellion. The reproachful tone at the beginning notwithstanding, it is an extremely nuanced text. Paz states that the Subcomandante’s letter of pardon moved him, and he recognizes that Mexican society, especially the landowners and politicians in Chiapas, owes a heavy moral debt to the Indians.
24 JANUARY
I watched the news this morning. Everything the President said about the path to peace being the only solution seemed farcical. In practice, they’ve begun to obstruct Camacho because he’s gained too much stature. Deep down, the politicians don’t give a damn about the country.
26 JANUARY
I’m stunned. I still do not understand what is going on in Chiapas. They say the government now knows who’s leading and protecting the insurgency and within a week everything will be explained. Already today Camacho Solís was not mentioned on the news. During dinner someone said there was an open break between him and the president. If I only knew for sure it was true! What in fact is true is that some of the journalists that receive money from the PRI or from government offices have pounced on him with renewed ferocity. There are times when one feels very discouraged.
27 JANUARY
The Zapatistas’ victory will not be military but moral. They’ve managed to produce a considerable upheaval, both nationally and internationally. Perhaps this will make a transformation in Chiapas possible that would otherwise be impossible to dream of. I’m not getting my hopes up about the acceptance of humanitarian changes by the Chiapas farmers and politicians. Or in the priístas. They still haven’t swallowed their fear and are already mobilizing to put an end to Camacho Solís.
II. WATER FROM THE SAME RIVER
Toward the end of January, I felt the need to visit the theater of events in an attempt to put certain things in order. It seemed to me that around those dates I was making too much in my journal of the circumstances as well as of the Subcomandante. I had many unanswered questions. Perhaps visiting the places where most of the action was taking place, learning the opinions of the witnesses to the occupation of San Cristóbal, for example, could help me see things more clearly. I mentioned it to Paz Cervantes, and she immediately joined the project. Paz knows Chiapas well. She began to organize the trip. We would fly from Mexico to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, and there, at the airport, we would rent a car to drive to San Cristóbal and everywhere the army would allow. She would be responsible for booking the hotel, flights, everything.
On February 3rd I traveled by car from Xalapa to Veracruz, where I would fly to Mexico City, spend the night, and start the trip to Chiapas with Paz early the next morning. A few hours before leaving Xalapa, I received from Italy Tabucchi’s last novel: Pereira Declares, the first book I would read after abstaining for several weeks. I started reading in Xalapa, continued in the car, then on the plane in order to finish it that night in Mexico City. It was the best preparation for beginning the journey, that pilgrimage deep inside myself I hoped to undertake. Tabucchi declares through his hero Pereira that every man harbors within his breast a confederation of souls, a theory that is not new; on the contrary, the concept that multiple personalities coexist for better or worse within the same individual has become a cliché of contemporary culture. Tabucchi, however, resurrects an all-but-forgotten theory of Pierre Janet in which one of the souls that inhabits us maintains hegemonic control over the others, without conceding to that hegemony the possibility of being eternal or immutable. An ego, one of the many that make us up, may, at a given moment and as a result of some stimulus, defeat the heretofore ruling ego, thus becoming the new hegemonic ego that will unify the confederation of souls that is each one of us. Tabucchi’s Pereira is a cautious man in the midst of a dirty and dangerous world; he attempts to remain outside politics, to not swim in murky water, to close his eyes to certain situations. The appearance of a young man who could be the same age as the son Pereira never had will allow the emergence of a new hegemonic ego, which will turn the old man whose only desire is to escape the ugliness of his time into an active enemy of the Salazar regime.
The book was predestined for me, and I read it at the most opportune moment, as I was beginning to feel the impulses that were a prelude to the emergence of a new ego. I would know when I confronted the signs of a new reality if this was true or merely wishful thinking. Four days in Chiapas were enough to shake off thirty years or more. Excitement, astonishment, enthusiasm, pain, and anxiety were some of the feelings I experienced simultaneously during those days. It was like witnessing the outbreak of a repulsive tumor and watching the pus furrow through its edges. The nation, the body where the abscess was located, was visibly trying to come out of its lethargy, to breathe, to dust itself off. The journey to Chiapas allowed me to approach reality; at the same time, the accumulation of diffuse and distant circumstances at times made the trip seem unreal, dreamlike, free from the ties of this world.
Traveling with Paz Cervantes, a friend par excellence, was a veritable godsend: she knew the area very well; but not only that, she also knew how to observe, she was able to separate what seemed fused and unite what was dispersed. What’s more, my being there with Carlos Monsiváis and Alejandro Brito for two of those days was another stroke of luck. Thanks to them, I was able to hear Camacho Solís’s statements as well as those of his entourage; we spoke at length with the historian Alejandra Moreno Toscano, who gave us guidelines to orient us in Chiapas’s intricate labyrinth, with politicians of different stripes, with priests, and local as well as foreign journalists. Paz and I also spoke to the everyday people of San Cristóbal. In all of them, we encountered hope for a quick peace, if not tomorrow then the next day. They wished for it, yet at the same time they hoped
it would not mean a return to the situation prior to December 31, the day the uprising began. Most claimed that the uprising had been necessary so the world would know the climate of terror Chiapas had endured throughout its entire history, but above all—and they put special emphasis on this—during the last fifteen years. It was four solar days, painful, exhilarating, and hopeful. Paz and I attended with Monsiváis and Alejandro Brito a crowded press conference with Manuel Camacho Solís, in which he announced it would be only a matter of days before they knew when and where the peace talks would be held; we attended at the cathedral a mass for peace celebrated at night and officiated by Don Samuel Ruiz, Bishop of San Cristóbal, attended by the commissioner, several journalists, foreign observers, and hundreds of Indians, who saw in the bishop their most loyal defender, their father.
The four of us: Paz, Carlos, Alejandro, and I traveled one morning to Ocosingo. After passing countless military checkpoints and seeing hundreds of Indians of all ages huddled beside stationary trucks who apparently had been detained by soldiers, we arrived at the locale. I have known few cities as ugly, as lacking in appeal, as Ocosingo. Its ugliness and its clumsiness were, perhaps, the inevitable product of those days. The streets were empty, the shops were mostly closed; in the market some stalls were covered with black cloths. This was the place where the bloodiest encounters between the army and the Zapatistas took place. The city was still tightly guarded. The air was oppressive and detestable. That evening we returned to San Cristóbal in a very somber mood.