The Uncomfortable Dead

by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

  These people from that Televosa started talking about the child stealers here and the child stealers there and a lot of people started gathering. Yes, they were in front of that school. And then people started to get all excited and hot under the collar. But it wasn’t true at all. They just wanted to film the reaction of the people. Yeah, they were filming a program. No, I don’t remember the name. Well, thing is, those policemen were passing by in their civilian clothes and one of the TV people started screaming that those were the kidnappers of the children. No, I suppose they were meaning to explain that it was just a television film and that it wasn’t true and that it was just acting, but things got out of hand, as they say, and they just left. Yes, the television people just up and left all those people in a fury. Later, the television owners paid the government a load of money so no one would say what really touched things off. Yes, that’s why I get so mad with some of the media when they claim they’re really concerned about what happened. All lies! They’re the first ones who go around saying that we policemen are all crooks and delinquents, and now they’re crying and moaning. Of course, there are some policemen who are worse than the crooks, but then there’s others of us who are good. No, they don’t care about the dead, just about selling lies. Oh, and it also helps them get officials in or out of office, according to their convenience. And now it’s the mass media that’s actually governing. Mainly the television channels. You got it: We on the bottom put up the dead bodies and they on the top pay for the commercials. Like to make you vomit. No, I have to give you the ticket anyway because one of your brake lights is broken. Hey, you don’t have to insult me. You have to go to the Good Governance Board to pay the fine. To anybody over there. There’s one in Oventic, in La Realidad, another in Morelia, another in Roberto Barrios, and another in La Garrucha. Yeah, they know me there. Yes, everyone I give a fine to, I tell them to go over there so they’ll learn. Yes, of course.

  The Time of Nobody

  Now let me tell you about how we met with El Sup to think about all the reports we got together on that Morales person. That was around the 4th or 5th of February of this year, 2005. Now, the thing is that besides all the stuff I got together with Belascoarán on my trip to the Monster—that is, Mexico City—over here in Chiapas they were doing a lot of getting together also and all the information was about this thing, or this case, depending, and it had to do with this one Morales that I got in the distribution of the Bad and the Evil that we had done in that other meeting over in the place where Belascoarán works. One of the information reports El Sup had was sent by Frayba to the Good Governance Board of Los Altos, which is Oventic, answering the letter sent by the comrades, where the autonomous authorities asked Frayba for help with information about the paramilitary. A few days later, on Febuary 9, 2005, to be exact, on the tenth anniversary of Zedillo’s betrayal of the Zapatistas, the Mexican newspaper known as La Jornada published part of that report from the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center, or Frayba, which is how us Indians here in Chiapas call this here organization that’s in Jovel—that is, in San Cristóbal de las Casas—and that keeps watch so they won’t violate the human rights of the indigenous peoples. So that report was about the paramilitary and how they get support from the bad governments.

  So I don’t have to tell you what it was they said in that report, cause it’s already published in that newspaper called La Jornada, but it made it real clear that all the bad governments have an agreement to fuck the indigenous Zapatista peoples using what they call the Dirty War, which means that it’s secret, that they don’t say it’s on and they make like nothing’s wrong, but it is and there’s killing and disappearing and people displaced and a whole lot of misery for the screwed. So the problem is that they not only did what they did way back in the Zedillo administration, but the guilty ones, they’re still around doing the same evil on account of us Zapatistas won’t give up and we won’t sell out; what I mean is, we don’t forget what we’re fighting for, and that’s why they need to defeat us any way they can.

  So like I was saying, we were with El Sup looking over all the reports we had all together and you could see right there that a great evil was, or rather is, taking over our country, which is called Mexico. So what we were doing is we were drinking some coffee, only we couldn’t really drink it cause it was real hot and it burned our tongues, so while we went on smoking and waiting for the coffee to cool down a bit, we were thinking how the Bad and the Evil were doing all their tricks and cheating and no one ever said anything. And we got to asking ourselves if it was that people didn’t notice or that they didn’t care. And then we saw how people just don’t see the Bad and the Evil, but not cause they’re hiding or anything like that, cause they’re right out in the open everywhere. So they’re not hiding, but people don’t see them, like it was magic. And right there I remembered what it was that the magician Alakazam said, and I told El Sup, and El Sup said that that was what it was, that we were all looking the other way. So the powerful, which is the rich, which is the bad governments, have the people looking the other way, and they can’t realize things, and that’s how the Bad and the Evil come to do everyone harm and we can’t even tell. About then I tasted my coffee again to see if it was going to let me drink it, but it wasn’t, so I commented to El Sup that they were destroying our country, which is Mexico, and then we’re all going to be like orphans: sad, lost, not knowing where we came from, and like forgetting our own selves. And then El Sup didn’t say anything, but he took a big sip from his coffee and really burnt his tongue, and that got him to saying some big dirty words and people’s mothers and all, and I couldn’t really tell if it was cause he got burnt or cause they were killing our country while we were looking the other way. So I figgered that it was like we were watching television while they were robbing the house, and people say they have a lot of information and that they know a lot of things, or cases, depends, but what they don’t know is that they’re stealing our hearts. Then I remembered how in the news they jump from one thing to another and it kinda hurts your eyes just to keep jumping.

  Well, just then we noticed that the coffee was fit to drink and we began to enjoy our coffee without danger of burns, and that’s when El Sup said: “As you can see, Elías, it seems the time of nobody has arrived.”

  Nobody

  The strategic location of the Southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas awakened the interest of the world’s great powers. Because of this, the governments of the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, China, and those of the European Union have all posted agents of their respective intelligence services there. If you add to this the agents of the different sectors of the Mexican government, you get what they call saturation of the theater of operations. As anyone knows, that saturation brings about what is called intoxication, which means that the information compiled is not only worthless, but actually harmful to the intelligence agency in question.

  It may be due to these factors of saturation and intoxication that none of those agencies ever caught on that the organizational structure of the Zapatista National Liberation Army contains a branch equivalent to the Special Forces or elite guard of other armies. Its existence is known only to a few: the members of the General Staff of the EZLN and some of the older comandantes of the CCRI. That part of the neo-Zapatista structure is made up of six people who have carried out extremely delicate and important missions, in utmost secrecy, at different moments in the history of the EZLN. One such mission was the protection of Sup Marcos at the time of the betrayal, about ten years ago, in February of 1995. According to some accounts, when the community of Guadalupe Tepeyac was completely surrounded by paratroopers of the Federal Army, it was this group who got El Sup out of the encirclement and delivered him to a safe place. The special unit was also responsible for finding out, in just twenty-four hours, the truth about the events that took place in Acteal on December 22, 1997. The information they uncovered became the foundation for a series of communiqués issued at the
time, which, along with additional data contributed by some of the media and NGOs, discredited the government strategy of representing the massacre as an internecine fight among indigenous peoples. In January of 1998, it was this unit that saved the Supreme Command of the EZLN when the Federal Army tried to take the La Realidad community on the same day that Francisco Labastida Ochoa was sworn in as Minister of the Interior.

  While few know of the existence of this unit, even fewer know the names of the members: the members themselves and Insurgent Subcomandante Marcos. And only they know that their code name is … NOBODY.

  1. Erika. Insurgent. Indian woman. Fifteen years old, going on sixteen. She was four years old at the time of the uprising. Her father was killed in the fighting at Ocosingo and she was brought up by the resistance. She decided to become a member of the insurgent forces in 2001, after the March of the Indigenous Peoples. Elías talked to her, and that’s when she lied. She said she was already sixteen, but she was only eleven, going on twelve. She is a radio operator. Sometimes, when El Sup and the Monarca don’t manage to get up the radio hill in time, she starts on her own with the transmissions of Radio Insurgente, the voice of the voiceless. She is also reputed to be ready to fight any of the males in the Zapatista troops if they make disparaging remarks about women or make fun of them. Very good with both the military angle and the political. Expert in radio communications. Loves poetry, the songs of Juan Gabriel, Los Bukis, and Los Temerarios. In the evenings, she makes illegal use of a lamp to read a tattered book of verses by Miguel Hernández that she found at an old mountain drop point. She goes off-key when she sings the song of the Zapatista caracoles. She is NOBODY’S radio operator.

  2. Doña Juanita. Indian woman. They say she’s the widow of Old Antonio, who died in 1994. No one knows how old she is, but she’s an adult. She knows a great deal about herbal medicine, has a good clinical eye, and the patience of 500 years. She knows how to make sweet toast and marquesote, which is a bread made with sugar and butter. When she speaks at her town assemblies, everyone listens with attention and respect. She was one of the comrades who drafted the so-called Revolutionary Law on Women, and she was the first to state that women can become authorities too. Even the bravest of the men come to her for advice and guidance. She is NOBODY’S nurse.

  3. Toñita. Indian woman. About ten years old, going on eleven. Daughter of insurgent parents. Her mother was carrying Toñita in her belly when she participated in the storming of Las Margaritas in January of 1994. She is very talented at obtaining and interpreting information. She is handy with disguises and can pass undetected anywhere, and in almost any situation. She loves to draw and to run. There isn’t a man among them who can get up a tree faster or shoot more accurately with a slingshot. She attends the autonomous school, and when she graduates, she says, she’s going to become an authority and then outlaw mathematics, because she suffers a lot with her numbers. She’s in charge of intelligence for NOBODY.

  4. Maa Jchixuch (Maa means macaw in Tojolobal, and Jchixuch means porcupine in Tzeltal; macaw is also Moo in Tzeltal, and porcupine is ixchixuch in Chol and tek tikcal chitom in Tzotzil). Young mestizo man. Must be close to twenty. Wears a punk-style haircut with his hair up in spikes like a porcupine and dyed a bunch of different colors like a macaw. He has a stand in the Mercado de los Ancianos, in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. He sells anything, depending on which way the wind is blowing. From dealing in fireworks, he became an expert in explosives. He is also a singer-songwriter Well, he makes up songs and sings them, but he doesn’t set them to music. They say he writes the lyrics and sends them off to someone else who does the music. One example is the song known as “Other Caresses,” which goes as follows:

  In some corner of the world/Some skins meet./They speak, they listen./They ask, they answer./They caress each other./For a caress is a question./For a caress is an answer./A piece of flesh asks: Here? Like this?/And another piece of flesh answers: Yes, there, like that./But not always./There are men and women in the world./And there are ghosts as well./The ghosts are very different./The ghosts get wounded when they caress./But that is not the worst of it./Those caresses don’t leave scars./Because those caresses never heal./Worst of all is that ghosts devote all their clumsy tenderness/To caressing the whole world/And preventing it from healing the memories./When a ghost caresses/It asks and answers/Rebellion.

  He sent that song to some rockers in Europe and, according to them, this and some of his other songs will become part of a record they are putting together called Ghosts. Maa Jchixuch is NOBODY’S explosives expert.

  5. El Justiciero. Male mestizo. About forty years old. Black as night. Formerly a plumber’s assistant. Presently drives a construction truck. The sticker on El Justiciero’s rear bumper reads, Historical and Dialectical Materialist, just above the one that reads, Old, But Still Able. He got to talking to Elías one night when his truck broke down at the La Garrucha caracol, and they say that when the sun rose they were still at it. After that he became a militant Zapatista. He talked to his friends and colleagues and they all registered with the Good Governance Board. He recruited taxi drivers, tortilla vendors, table servers, and even a few soldiers. He is the driver-mechanic for NOBODY.

  6. Elías, Investigation Commission. You already know a bit about him. He is the commanding officer of NOBODY.

  7. La Magdalena. We already know her background; she was co-opted temporarily, on Elías’s recommendation, as the seventh element. She’s just barely part of NOBODY.

  Cry Me a River

  What I did was I talked to Magdalena and told her she should wait till I got back, cause I had to go grab the Bad, but he/she said she wanted to help any way she could, so I took her to meet with the group we call NOBODY.

  When we got there, I introduced her to everybody and I told them that he/she was my daughter, or my son, depending on your perspective, and they said hello, and that was about it. I told the unit that we had to make a plan to catch this Morales and that we didn’t have much time to do it, cause we had to get it done by February 9, which means right away. So we got to studying the reports we had and looked at them with perspective. Course, I had to explain what perspective means, and they all jotted it down in their vocabulary pads. So when we had done the collective analysis of the Morales thing, or case, depending, from all angles, we came up with a plan and an agenda. (I also explained what agenda was, and they all wrote it down.) So then Erika started setting up her toaster, which is what we call her communications equipment, and she screwed on the antenna and did all the calibration and tuning so’s the signal would reach far’s it could, and she settled down to communicating with all the radio bases in the Zapatista towns and insurgent outposts.

  Meanwhile, Toñita was writing down the messages Erika was receiving. Maa Jchixuch began to get the things ready that we were going to need to grab this Morales, and El Justiciero did all the checking he always did before a mission so that nothing could go wrong—I mean, if he could avoid it. Doña Juanita filled her knapsack with herbs and pozol and toast, cause what if it took longer’n we thought, and Magdalena got together the makeup and clothes she was going to use. Now me, Elías Contreras, Investigation Commission, I was going over and over in my head the plan to catch the Bad and the Evil, this Morales person who was doing his evil things in Zapatista lands. So that’s what I was doing, and every time I got a new idea I would tell everybody to stop and listen up. Then I remembered something and I called everybody in and told them to pull out their vocabulary pads and take down the word aforementioned, and I explained that in this case, or maybe thing, the aforementioned referred to Morales. Then they went back to doing what they were doing before to get ready to catch the aforementioned Morales—that is, to bring him up before Zapatista justice.