When a Woman Rises

by Christine Eber

“No. Not Ramona. It wasn’t her. It was Ángel de Jesús.”

  “How strange,” she said. “What made Ángel de Jesús want to help Lucia?”

  “Well, that’s a long story,” I chuckled. “But I guess that’s what I’m doing here, telling long stories.”

  “Yes, Mother, so keep going!”

  Well, one afternoon Lucia came over, and we talked about the problems with men in the base who didn’t want to stop drinking. She told me about a meeting the week before when some of the men proposed a punishment for base members who refused to give up pox.

  As you know, to be a Zapatista, a person can’t drink. But Lucia didn’t like the punishment the men wanted to give the drinkers. First, they would give the man a warning, with a talk about how pox keeps people from thinking clearly. Then if the man still didn’t stop, they would give a second warning, with a stronger talk—a scolding.

  Then if the person still kept drinking, they would go to his home early in the morning and take him to a tree near the church. They would tie him to the tree and leave him for about four or five hours. I guess the idea was to give him plenty of time to think about the error of his ways. While he was tied to the tree, his family could bring him food and water.

  Lucia was very angry about the men’s idea. She thought the punishment was cruel. She told me, “If the men tied me to a tree, it would make me so furious I would leave the base. What right do the men have to shame a person so? Anyway, even if the person stopped drinking afterwards, it wouldn’t last. They would go back to drinking. You can’t force someone to stop drinking. Their hearts have to want to stop and they need time to change.”

  I nodded in agreement. Lucia had taught me a lot about what it takes to stop drinking. She continued. “At the meeting, Ángel de Jesús kept his head lowered and looked at the floor while the men talked. A few times he raised his head and looked over at me as if he wanted me to say something. But I didn’t know what to say. The punishment shocked me. When they asked me what I thought, I said I would have to think about it. They also asked Ángel de Jesús and he said what I said, but so softly I could barely hear him.

  “Early the next morning I heard Ángel de Jesús coming down the path toward my house. He was calling to me in the bik’it snuk’ as he approached the door. I smiled to hear the high voice spoken to me and welcomed Ángel de Jesús into the kitchen. From the way he fingered the rim of his hat, I could see that there was something on his mind. Mother had gone to the market and wouldn’t be back until afternoon. So fortunately we had time to talk. Ángel de Jesús sat down and told me what was on his mind.”

  “‘Older sister, I have something to tell you,” he said. “‘I know I can trust you because you’re an j’ilol, and you drank in the past. You lost your soul, but you got it back. Now you’re even stronger than before, and everyone respects you. You deserve to be a Zapatista representative, and so do the other representatives.

  “‘But I don’t deserve this cargo. I’m not worthy of it. You see, I’m still drinking. I drink at home, so only my parents know. They don’t say anything because they hope that my cargo in the base will help me stop drinking. But no cargo is going to make me stop. I’m drinking because I need courage to be myself. Drinking helps me forget that I don’t fit in Lokan. There’s no place for a man like me here.’”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I wasn’t being completely honest with Ángel de Jesús because I had an idea what he meant. I’d been aware of him for a while, even before he joined the base.

  “Once when I was coming home from a healing just as night was falling, I heard a rustling sound in the trees. I hurried along, but when I was a ways down the path, curiosity made me glance back. Although it was dark, I saw two young men walk onto the trail and embrace. They were saying goodbye in the way lovers do, not wanting to let the other go. One of them was Ángel de Jesús. I had never known an antsil vinik in Lokan, but it seemed that he and the other man were like that.

  “When I saw Ángel with his lover, a feeling of relief flooded over me. Although I didn’t know a woman in Lokan who loved another woman, I now knew there were at least two men who loved each other. I let Ángel de Jesús tell me what I already knew, even though it was very hard for him.”

  “‘You probably wonder why I’m not married, since I’m almost twenty-three,’” Ángel de Jesús said. “‘It’s because I can’t imagine marrying. I’ve never been attracted to women. When my friends used to tell me that they wanted a girl, I didn’t understand them. Instead, I wanted them! I know this must sound strange to you. You must think the Earthlord has my soul and is making me the opposite of what I should be. But my soul isn’t lost. It’s not lost. It’s not the Earthlord’s prisoner. My soul is well-seated inside me. I’m just not like other men in Lokan.’”

  “When he finished, Ángel de Jesús lowered his head, waiting for me to say something. ‘I don’t think you’re strange,’ I said. ‘As a healer I have been inside hundreds of homes, and I know how many different kinds of people we live amongst. But also, I accept who you are because I understand how you feel. You see, I never married because I’m a woman who doesn’t want to be with a man.

  ‘I only want to be with a woman, but here in Lokan that’s not possible. It’s taboo. I drank to manage my sadness. I almost killed myself because I couldn’t accept living without my heart’s desire.

  ‘I still wonder what my life could be like if I had the freedom that comes with living in the city. There must be people like us who go to San Cristóbal where no one will care who they love. You’re a man, people would understand if you went to San Cristóbal to work.

  ‘I hear there are Zapatista bases there so you wouldn’t have to leave the organization. There’s also something called Alcoholics Anonymous—groups of people who help each other stop drinking through talking and prayer.’

  After Lucia finished, Ángel de Jesús told her that he was afraid to live in the city because his brother was murdered in Cancún. He went with his parents to bring his brother’s body back to Chiapas. When he was in the city, he felt as if it would swallow him up, like it did his brother. After that, he never wanted to live anywhere but Lokan.

  Lucia tried to think of how to advise him. But nothing came to her at the time. Instead she told Ángel that she would pray a special prayer to help him stop drinking. He seemed relieved. Then Lucia told me that that night Ángel had a dream.

  “Ángel’s dream combined the dream I had when the Moon Virgin came to give me my cargo to be an j’ilol, and the one I had about eight years ago when she came to help me stop drinking. When Ángel told me about his dream, I worried that the Virgin was asking too much of him, to learn to be a healer while he was still drinking. Maybe she thought he could do it because I was there to help him. After all, she had called me her chosen child. Chosen for what, I often asked myself? To help others, I concluded.”

  The morning of the prayer, Ángel de Jesús met Lucia at the chapel. He brought three bottles of soda, candles, incense, and pine boughs. Lucia prayed with her whole heart for Ángel de Jesús. I think she had become fond of him because he reminded her of herself.

  Lucia told me that she had to pray two more times for Ángel de Jesús, but that she had a good feeling about what the outcome would be. I attended a meeting of the whole base soon after the third prayer and was pleased to hear Ángel speak in a confident voice. Many people nodded in agreement, because his words made good sense. Later Lucia told me that she was teaching Ángel to pray and heal with herbs. It seemed that his heart really wanted to change because he was enthusiastic and learning fast.

  So that’s the story of Ángel de Jesús. Now thirteen years later, he’s still with us, healing and serving his cargo in the base. He says that his cargo is his glass of water, that it quenches his thirst for justice. He says that Jesús and Zapata walk on each side of him, giving him their strength. But he always seems a little sad to me. I think he misses Lucia because they went everywhere together.

  Veró
nica was quiet after I finished. Then she said, “Why don’t I know about Ángel and Lucia? There’s so much I don’t know! So many stories exist in a place like Lokan. I’m really glad you told me these stories, Mother. Listening to you I feel like the archaeologist on TV, uncovering layer after layer of an ancient Maya city.”

  It was time to put the corn on to boil and prepare for bed. After we were done in the kitchen, Verónica followed me outside into the dark patio but didn’t come into the sleeping house with me. The sky was filled with stars, and she was looking up at them. As I folded the clothes on my side of the bed to make a little pillow, I looked through the half-open door to see if Verónica was coming. But she hadn’t moved. She was still looking up at the sky.

  WHEN A WOMAN RISES

  WE HAD COME TO THE LAST CHAPTER in my story of Lucia. Verónica and I couldn’t believe that more than eight months had passed since our first talks. It was now early June, and the rains had started. Back in November when we began, Verónica was afraid of her tape recorder and of erasing my words by accident. But she shouldn’t have been. Lucia’s story was engraved in both our hearts, and nothing could erase it.

  Rain was coming down hard the day we finished Lucia’s story. When it hit the metal roof, it sounded like bullets. Not that we’d ever heard bullets, but I imagine if we did they would sound that way. Since the beginning of the struggle, the Zapatistas and the Bees have been trying to keep arms out of Lokan and they’ve succeeded. But we haven’t been spared the sadness of losing friends who died in the struggle in other communities.

  I’ll never forget December 1997. I remember that Lucia had only been gone a few weeks when bullets rained down without mercy on forty-five women, men, and children in a chapel in Acteal, a community about an hour from Lokan. The people who perished that day were Bees, and they were in a chapel praying for peace when they died. Many children died that day. I still can’t understand how men, not that different from the ones in our community, could have killed their neighbors. We know that the bad government gave guns to a paramilitary group called the Red Mask and taught them to kill, but that still doesn’t explain how the men could have separated themselves so far from their souls. When we heard that the soldiers at the military post could hear the shooting and did nothing, we were even more horrified.

  Verónica and I were both a little sad and nervous waiting for the rain to stop and to record the end of Lucia’s story. Our special time together was ending, and now Verónica had to write up what she had learned from me. I wouldn’t be able to help her with the writing part. She would be alone from now on. I thought to myself that I hope Verónica learned from Lucia’s story to be strong and believe in herself.

  I pushed my fears down and tried to think of this day as just another day of talking about Lucia. Verónica looked in her notebook for remaining questions. After she didn’t find any, she signaled me to begin.

  By the end of the first year of her cargo, Lucia was really struggling to pay her transportation to Zapatista meetings in Polhó and to help her mother out as she worked in other people’s fields. Your father and I loaned her money when we had it, and I’m sure other people did too.

  She was still praying for people and getting a little food and money that way. She also started embroidering squares of cloth designed with women Zapatistas wearing bandanas over their faces and working in the fields with babies on their backs. On the cloth she embroidered words like, “When a woman rises, no man is left behind.” She earned a little money selling her squares to foreigners who came to Polhó to learn about the Zapatistas and find out how to show their solidarity.

  But it seemed that every time I saw Lucia she looked thinner and more tired. The base members thought that it would be easier for single women to be representatives. We were thinking of single women living with two parents and perhaps several siblings, like Ramona. Ramona had five brothers. In contrast, Lucia only had her mother.

  One night about a year after we joined the Zapatista base, I talked to your father about how hard it was for Lucia to be a representative. I didn’t expect what happened. We had an argument! Maybe you don’t remember us yelling at each other, but I’m sure your brothers do.

  All I said to your father was that Lucia and her mother could barely maintain themselves and that made it really hard for Lucia to serve a cargo. I said that except for Ramona and Lucia, our community had no other single women who felt comfortable taking on a big job for the community. I added that all the married women have too much to do to take on extra work. Then I said that if men helped their wives cook, wash clothes, or take care of the children maybe then women could serve cargos.

  I finished by saying that wives help their husbands in the fields, but husbands don’t help their wives in the house. Even though I was pointing out the obvious, your father didn’t like what I said and got angry. He raised his voice and said, “What are you saying? That I don’t help you?”

  I answered, “That’s not what I’m saying exactly, but it’s true that you don’t do as much as you could.”

  Then your father said, “But how can I do more? I’m already barely home with all the meetings and working in the fields. And even if I was home more, I can’t do the things you do. They’re women’s work. My father taught me men’s work. You know that. Now you want to change everything overnight!”

  Your father’s face turned reddish brown and the scar on his face stood out like a bolt of lightening on a dark cloud. He wouldn’t look at me. I tried to calm him down and still get my point across. I said to him, “It’s not just me. It’s the organization. They say that things have got to change, so women can be leaders too. You know I have a lot to say and so do the other women. You’ve seen how we can analyze the word of God and then act on it in our lives. Can’t you see that we just want to keep growing?”

  Your father looked really angry, like he wanted to hit me. Thank God, he didn’t. Maybe he stopped himself because he didn’t want to have to say a prayer asking for forgiveness for arguing in front of our children!

  Neither of us said anything for a while. You children just drank your matz in silence. I tried to contain my anger, but I couldn’t control myself completely. Instead of yelling at your father, I slammed the lid down hard on the pot of boiling corn.

  Your father got up without speaking and began to gather his hoe and other things he needed to take to the milpa. I pressed a ball of matz into his hands. He accepted it, but he didn’t look at me. Then he told the boys to get ready to go to the fields. They had a lot of weeding to do, he said.

  Later that day your father returned from the milpa as usual, but then he did something he had never done. He took off his pants and shirt and went behind the house to the rocks near the rotoplas. While I worked on my loom, I listened to the sound of water sloshing furiously over clothes! Then your father hung his shirt and pants out to dry on the line in front of our house.

  I didn’t say anything about what he had done until we were in bed that night. Before we fell asleep, I thanked him for washing his clothes. He turned toward the wall and grunted, “You’re welcome.”

  I paused and Verónica said, “I’ve always wondered why Father washes his own clothes when many men don’t. I thought it was because they don’t have a rotoplas like us and are embarrassed to wash at the water hole where only women and children go. But now I know that you could defend your rights and other women’s too.”

  “I don’t know if I defended myself so much. But, yes, somehow we women managed to do all our work and still be Zapatistas. Looking back, I don’t know how I did it. During the early years of the organization, you were still a little girl and couldn’t help me much. But I was young and had more energy. I could do more in a day back then.”

  Not long after our discussion that day, your father began to help me in different ways, not only washing clothes. I think that the example he set for your brothers encouraged them to help their wives. Today they help a lot in the house and with their children, compa
red to how it was in the beginning with your father. I’m just glad that men and women are more equal now.

  For a while Lucia could fulfill her duties with Ángel’s help. He was like her assistant, not just in her work for the base, but in her healing. They were like siblings who went everywhere together.

  Soon people began to say that Ángel was Lucia’s kexol, her replacement. I was one of the first to say it, because I watched how Lucia was preparing Ángel to take her place. I don’t think she even knew she was doing it. But the Moon Virgin knew. I think that she chose Ángel to replace Lucia because she knew Lucia wouldn’t be with us very long. The Moon gently helped Lucia transfer her gifts to Ángel. When we finally accepted that Lucia was not coming back, Ángel became Lucia’s official replacement. Little by little he earned the authority to speak during meetings on behalf of women, as well as men.

  One day in October of 1997, Lucia came to tell me that she was going away for a while. I couldn’t believe my ears. My whole body became cold. She said she had to go away to make some money. She was going to Sinaloa to work on a tomato farm, just like her father had done. She assured me that she wouldn’t go to the same farm where he had gone and that she wouldn’t be gone long, just until Holy Week. I counted in my head, five months.

  While Lucia was talking, I wanted to ask her, “But what about the rule that Zapatistas aren’t supposed to migrate for work? We need to stay here and help each other. Who are you going to find to take your cargo while you’re gone?”

  Lucia interrupted my thoughts. “Comadre, I know it’s a lot to ask, but can you serve my cargo while I’m gone?”

  I didn’t say yes right away. Images flashed through my mind of traveling to meetings and sleeping on the ground far from home. I wondered how I could cover all my work at home and for the weaving co-op and the Zapatista co-op store if I was always in meetings.