by Sergio Pitol
That night we spoke to priests whose stories of oppression inflicted on the Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Ch’ol, and Tojolabal people were so atrocious that the memory of the checkpoints on the roads, the Indian families standing in the countryside next to buses and trucks, the military who did not allow even children to sit on the ground, the tanks and patrol cars, the streets in Ocosingo, seem like the details of a delightful fairy tale. The Catholic Church in Chiapas, especially the Bishop of San Cristóbal, had begun to be attacked by journalists, politicians, and the “good” people of San Cristóbal, the coletos, the white elites among whom racism has been endemic. According to one of the priests, they are trying to implicate the bishop in the uprising, which is wholly false. The work of the Church in Chiapas began four hundred years ago with Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, the first great apóstol de los indios, and has continued until today. The bishop’s actions, another priest says, remain the same. We learned that a few years ago the Church sent out thousands of catechists (I thought I heard more than eight thousand) to live in the most inhospitable regions of Chiapas. They penetrated into the heart of darkness: the Lacandon jungle. They lived as poor as the Indians, in the same conditions; taught them to have faith in Christ, but also to be proud of being Indians. And for that the Chiapas ranchers, the cultural Hispanics of the state, and the coletos of San Cristóbal have never forgiven them.
The ideology of the current movement was amassed from the teaching of the catechists, from the action of some student groups who survived the repression of 1968, from the branches and stumps that broke off from the most radical leftist movement of the sixties and seventies, and from the despair and the abuse of the indigenous communities. It is not difficult to imagine the many controversies that have been produced, the suspicions, resentments, internecine ruptures, defenses of orthodoxy against the onslaught of the modern, over and over and again, until that once-unformed embryo succeeded in achieving a degree of coherent efficacy and manifesting itself in the armed movement that, as the Subcomandante said with undeniable awareness, was determined not to repeat the patterns of earlier guerrillas.
The next-to-the-last day of our stay in Chiapas, Paz and I visited San Juan Chamula, that is, his church, that indescribable place where among the assorted stench of alcohol, wax, incense, urine, and sweat one approaches ecstasy. It takes time to grow accustomed to that undulating chiaroscuro. The light comes from hundreds of candles, votives, and tapers placed in different places and at different heights. There are areas that remain forever in the shadows. It was Sunday. A mass baptism was being celebrated. Dozens of infants were screaming in unison. Entire families apostrophized loudly, furiously, before this or that altar, this or that saint, as they passed bottles of aguardiente from hand to hand. A decrepit old Indian woman carded the wool-like hair of small children who rolled nimbly on the floor, which made the task of picking their lice more difficult. A ceremonial procession of dignitaries, the village stewards, dressed in their Sunday best, roamed the premises. They beat the floor with their canes, made speeches in their language, bowed first to one side and then the other, then continued their rounds in ritual step. In a corner, a couple slept sprawled on the ground, the man still had a bottle of aguardiente in his hands; several children, surely theirs, intoned a sad, monotone song. And above and beside the crowd of the vivid, haggard, and moribund chatterboxes, the sacred was imposed. They must have prayed this way once in the Roman catacombs and temples built to the new faith in Antioch and Trebizond. The shepherds would arrive with their animals and skins of wine; they would pray and sing until reaching a delirium that united them with that which was higher than themselves. And in San Juan Chamula, beside us, all this continued to live and was amazing and terrible, luminous and crepuscular. I emerged from there as if I were far away, as if I were exiting a thick, mottled dream, and while still in this state Paz Cervantes put me in the car and took me to Zinacantán, a clean and prosperous town, which in those parts was a miracle.
In the village church, small and ascetic, unlike the whirlwind we had just left, there was only a couple, most certainly married; the husband and wife, very young, were wearing clothes embroidered in splendid colors. There were also in the church a couple of children, five or six-years-old, the children of that exceptionally attractive couple. When we arrived the husband and wife were kneeling before the main altar, praying; the children sat in the front row, behind their parents, just a step away. Suddenly, the man let out a horrible, terrifying howl. Upon hearing this, the woman began to wail in anguish. Later, it was she who howled; she became a thunderclap, a whip, a relentless storm, while he rolled on the floor, crying, babbling, and pleading. Later, both of them began to moan in unison, prostrate on the stone floor. This was only the introit. They recovered suddenly, jumped up, and began to run around the walls, each in opposite directions; they crossed and kept running, screaming and crying like two desperate souls. The pain was excruciating, indescribable, unbearable. It felt as if staying there would give me a heart attack. Paz’s cheeks were awash in tears. At one point, the children, who until then had behaved normally, like spectators at a play they had already seen, walked up to us as if they knew us, and one of them, the eldest, I think, said to me: “¡Dame chicle!” “Give me gum!” I said I didn’t have any, but he returned to the charge: “¡Dame un lápiz!” “Give me a pencil!” I gave him a disposable pen, and they returned calmly to their seat as if the parents’ wailing and mourning didn’t faze them. We, however, left the temple like cockroaches that had just been given a beating. What had just happened? What was that? Suffering caused by unavoidable misfortune? The death of a close relative? An unspeakable offense that brought terrible dishonor to them and their relatives? The knowledge that one of them was suffering from a disease from which he would soon die? Or was it merely a routine ceremony, a form of catharsis that was elicited from time to time and for which the community had left them alone in church that Sunday? Just as before in San Juan Chamula, I had the feeling of moving through a strange land, in Ultima Thule, where reason was reduced to the ineffable. The enormity of my gaps was revealed to me. One learns something always in fits and starts, in fragments, he’s aware of effects, but when he can’t identify the causes it is as if he didn’t know anything. When was the Christian liturgy that we know today standardized? What elements could be defined as Christian, and which were Quiché or Maya in these religious practices? Which were added in the last five hundred years? When everything has passed—and hopefully everything goes well!—I promised myself that I would return to San Cristóbal de Las Casas and San Juan Chamula and to Zinacantán. But then I will be better informed, with more readings to be able to discern a bit of its reality.
We returned that night to San Cristóbal. We dined for the last time in the restaurant in our hotel. We said hello to a great deal of journalists and members of non-governmental organizations, some friends from many years ago, and others we’d met during the last few days. The restaurant and bar are like a scene from a motion picture. It could be Saigon, for example, during the Vietnam War. There were war reporters and television teams from many countries. All the major languages were being spoken. According to what we heard, some of them had managed to penetrate the jungle and visit the Zapatistas. It was not clear whether it was in jeeps or on foot. They took on a mysterious air as they spoke about their experience; they seemed to imply that any misstep could jeopardize their contacts; it would be denouncing them. They themselves are amazed at what is happening. They came to Chiapas with little or no sympathy for the guerrillas. They were only interested in finding out what had happened, why that hiccup in the Mexican economic miracle and Free Trade Agreement had occurred. The guerrilla no longer enjoys the prestige that it did in the fifties or sixties. On the contrary, all of Che’s followers ended up being inept or fanatics. And suddenly they’ve found a person and a situation they did not expect. Of course, the monstrous presence of extreme poverty in which the Indians live and the always active racism of the
white landowners are the appropriate framework for this young masked man whose language is different from all previous guerrilla leaders. Among the various registers he handles—and this truly is unbelievable!—is humor.
After talking about the still incipient charisma of the Subcomandante, the conversation in every restaurant and bar in San Cristóbal branches off, but not too far. When were the negotiations finally going to take place? What role would the Bishop of San Cristóbal play in them? Would it end in a win for Camacho Solís? Would Camacho still have complete official support? Could it be true that cracks had appeared in the Mexican political system?
Suddenly, I feel that everything that Paz and I have seen today are but pieces of the same puzzle. Foreigners in San Cristóbal with their bulky film equipment, the church of San Juan Chamula, the ceremony witnessed in Zinacantán, the Subcomandante’s invisible presence in the air, the indigenous mass that has come to San Cristóbal, fleeing the bombings, the Indians who surround the cathedral in vigil for their bishop are but particles, all of them fragments of the same phenomenon, water from the same river, moments from the same time.
III. FROM THEN UNTIL NOW
I left that day infected by the negotiating climate that existed in San Cristóbal. And, indeed, the meeting between the government representatives and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation took place shortly after in the city’s cathedral. There were three protagonists: Manuel Camacho Solís, Bishop Samuel Ruiz, and Subcomandante Marcos. Mexico watched in fascination as the Zapatista delegation entered and exited the cathedral. The ski masks covering their faces and the rifles and bandoliers strapped to their chests added intensity to the epic story. These were scenes that took us back seventy years or more, to the time of Zapata and Villa, whom we only knew from the movies, and not to one when treaties are signed today by attorneys in suit and tie. The Subcomandante was playing his cards for the second time. The tragic engine was granting him the force needed to fulfill his destiny, as it had done the first of January of that year. The image of the Subcomandante rose dramatically among both his admirers and his detractors. No one knew anything about him save his eyes, hands, and pipe.
The drive to engage in dialogue decreased suddenly, and did so in a dramatic fashion. Camacho Solís was replaced by gray, irrelevant characters—second- or third-rate bureaucrats. His lack of imagination complemented the superior orders perfectly. It had become necessary to bog down the dialogue.
The designs of power are always difficult to pin down. Politicians speak of peace as the only way to resolve the Chiapas conflict, but they also allow the growth of the paramilitary guardias blancas, encourage the most virulent racist groups, especially the coletos in San Cristóbal, harass the supporters of Zapatista Army, co-opt anyone they can, intensify the smear campaigns against the Subcomandante and the Bishop of San Cristóbal. Those campaigns are carried out without many successes, rather with setbacks. Because as time goes by—from the beginning of the uprising until today two and a half years have passed!—the Zapatista rebellion has acquired characteristics of both gale and spring; it has toppled gigantic fallacies, and has shown a vitality, a moral strength, and an admirable political imagination. It owes its existence still to these virtues.
The armed rebellion having just emerged, its leaders are already noticing that the struggle should be fought more in the media than on the battlefield. Marcos’s capabilities, his imagination, speed, humor, have allowed his figure to be taken seriously beyond our borders. Just a few months after his appearance as the Subcomandante of the Zapatista Army, Marcos announced that his destiny and that of his troops should be placed in the hands of civil society, ceding to it all his triumphs and attributes. It was civil society that should grow and take the great strides that would lead the country toward democracy. The action of civil society would cause the insurgent army to forfeit its raison d’être. The Convention of Aguascalientes, in the Chiapas jungle, in Marcos’s keynote speech, urged parties to the convention to move in that direction: “Fight to make us unnecessary, to eliminate us as alternatives!” And he insisted in the end: “Fight relentlessly. Fight and defeat the government. Struggle and defeat us!”
His thinking is fundamentally democratic. And prominent foreign figures saw that sooner than those in Mexico. On 2 March 1995, in La Jornada a letter was published signed by some prestigious Italian intellectuals, among them Norberto Bobbio and Michelangelo Bovero. Allow me to quote one paragraph:
The Zapatista movement with its demands for democracy, freedom, and justice, its proposals for constitutional and anti-authoritarian reforms, and, above all, its surprisingly persuasive ability to communicate and disseminate them has surpassed the paradigms of the old Latin American guerrillas. Even as the dramatic option for armed insurrection, in January 1994, has raised and continues to raise distressing questions, it is clear that during the course of events the movement has been able to position itself as one of the principle actors in the process of democratic transition that appears to have produced a response in a broad plan of reforms. Thus, the neo-Zapatista movement, by contributing to the debate on the different path to democracy, has benefited recently from a spirit of solidarity that once again has countered an attempted military liquidation of the insurgents.
One of the official obsessions was to identify the Subcomandante and reveal his true face before the country. They achieved it. They believed that the virtual unmasking would destroy the figure, eliminate his epic halo. The fiasco was tremendous. They were sure that they had found a fossil with an appalling criminal record. On February 9, 1995, what appeared to be his real name and a photo of his prerevolutionary period were shown on television. Officials said the man was a criminal, a fugitive from justice, and therefore should be immediately arrested. The information that then appeared in the press played against the persecutors: the Subcomandante “turned out to be the son of businessmen, a Catholic school student, a brother of a former member of the PRI, philosophy student, decorated by President López Portillo for academic achievement, a student at the Sorbonne. His thesis adviser was the philosopher Cesáreo Morales, who became Luis Donaldo Colosio’s chief of staff,” writes Juan Villoro. “The government needed an ideological troglodyte, enrolled in some ‘frequent flyer’ program to North Korea, or a psychopath willing to use a power saw at the direction of Quentin Tarantino. Instead, it found the perfect son-brother-in-law-boyfriend for the Gran Familia Mexicana.”
For several weeks Proceso documented the celebrity’s life through testimonies from family, friends, fellow students, and teachers. A photo of him taken from an experimental film impresses me because of its Beckettian loneliness, as well as the fact that during his adolescence he acted in several plays, including, precisely, Waiting for Godot. Despite the reports, no one calls him by name, neither his supporters nor his enemies, neither the press nor TV, not even members of the government. He continues being Subcomandante Marcos for all purposes.
It has been two and a half years, and we have yet to enter the First World, quite the contrary. We have experienced a permanent economic crisis. As for politics, if we look at the PRI party family, we seem to be witnessing something akin to the end of the world. There have been high-profile murders, that of Luis Donaldo Colosio, candidate for president of the Republic, Francisco Ruiz Massieu, the leader of PRI, others. The pressures to prevent the truth from coming to light must be immense. Investigations seem like very complex, byzantine amusements that do not allow us to get to the bottom of anything. Crimes committed by leaders and officials, tried and proven, go unpunished. Corruption among the leadership during the previous administration and its relationship to drug trafficking and organized crime have become public knowledge. This collapse, this decline in social morality, favors the development of a civil society that has rendered a military solution in Chiapas impossible. One must remember that all the public demonstrations have been for peace and none in support of the armed path. Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatistas understood this immed
iately. Now we have to achieve a just and worthy peace. Not only that: there is a desire to move toward a peaceful means and defend the causes they hold through political action. And the Subcomandante, “once granted, his glittering arms he will commend to rust / his barbed steeds to stables,” as a character says in Shakespeare’s Richard II.
Are there discernible victories in Zapatista actions? It seems to me that the strengthening of civil society is one of them. It is also important, although now less visible, to support publicly in Chiapas the problem of inequality and to demand that different sectors, including the indigenous, initiate a conversation on racism. The maturity with which this discussion is being carried out suggests that we are witnessing the beginnings of an irreversible phenomenon.
During the moments when a military solution seemed imminent, demonstrations for peace multiplied. At times the motto was, “We are all Indians.” The reaction of some journalists or broadcasters was sarcastic. To conceive of oneself as an indio? To want to be a Tzeltal, a Ch’ol, a Tojolabal? I suppose it seemed so preposterous to them that they weren’t even aware of the deep racism that their rejection implied. I do not know if this attitude has softened. It is possible that after seeing the violent reaction of the powers that be of San Cristóbal against the indigenous population of the city, the lynch-mob mentality of the ranchers and of their guardias blancas, they will remember the King of Denmark who, during the German occupation, went out into the street wearing an armband on which was sewn a star of David, the very day it was made mandatory for the Jews to wear it outside their homes as a visible sign of belonging to a despicable race. There will be a day, I imagine, when it will not be necessary to shout that we are also Indians. I think about Chiapas and about what it might become. I think about the Indians I saw in early February 1994 detained by the dozens at military checkpoints. I think about the hunt for girls to feed brothels, about the two Indians tied to huge anthills, as a priest from San Cristóbal told me, “to teach them how to behave.” I think that all of this needs to disappear. Or is that too much to ask? Maybe so. But we must think that if it is true that we are living in cruel times, it is also true that we are in a time of wonders.