Dear friends -
Normally I would try for a more graceful and natural English, but this
time I was trying to keep the structure and rhythm of the original,
as far as possible, as it reflects, in Spanish, the way Mayan
people would express their thoughts in their own languages.
If I knew any of the Mayan tongues I could have done a better job,
but since I haven't seen any Maya linguists volunteering, I went ahead.
!Que vivan el corazon y la voz de nuestros hermanos indigenas!
- Que viva un man~ana de paz entre el EZLN y todos los hermanos.
Desde las montan~as del Sureste de Estados Unidos -- Bonnie.
*****************************************************************
Zapatista National Liberation Army Mexico, March 12 1995
To the people of Mexico:
To the peoples of the world:
Brothers:
With old pain and new death, our heart speaks to you so that your hearts
listen. Our pain was in being, hurting it was. Becoming silent, our
voice was passing away. Our voice had been of peace, but not of yesterday,
not of old peace that was death. Of peace was our voice, of tomorrow's
peace. The fire had stayed behind, kept in the days gone by, the fire that
spoke for our race when all were deaf to death. Another way our tears asked
for, still lost in the arroyos of the mountains. So spoke our dead. The
oldest ones then counseled us to look where the sun walks, to ask other
brothers of the race, of blood and hope, where our hurt pain should walk, our
tired step. This we did, brothers. The silence arrived to put out the fire
and there was no arrogance in the word of the true men and women for those
who, in other lands and other races, shared the pain and wishes for a
tomorrow.
We opened our heart, brothers. We learned to see and to listen to other,
different brothers. We listened to their word and saw in their heart.
And we saw in their step the same longing that put the fire in our hands,
that broke up our face until it was nothing but a gaze, that hid our
name and erased our past: the struggle to command, obeying; to leave free,
the free word and heart; to give and receive what is deserved. The struggle
for democracy, freedom and justice. No more, never less.
The word of these brothers, your word, asked us to try another path,
to leave pending and waiting the fire that armed the breast. To talk, and
that through the words, would come the destination. It was they, you, the
others. Like us, the always forgotten. The always humiliated, like us. The
brothers. This we did. Our voice spoke with the powerful lord. Obeying,
we sent our word to the great house of money. We spoke and we listened.
We were following that path when the treason, again, put arms above words.
Our voice was silenced all at once by the noise of the cars of war. Terror
was unleashed again in the Mexican lands. He who from arrogance and power
looks at us with contempt, denied our name and gave death as a response
to our thought.
It wasn't enough for him to deny us a face and life, he wanted to humble
our step of dignity, trample our just demands, take truth from our song,
sink our flag in oblivion. With the complicity of the big monies and the
foreign vocation, he wanted to impose humiliating conditions on us, just to
speak. Turning backward the wheel of history, he wanted to force us, by the
power of his bayonets, to deny our history. Our women suffered the
harassment and the humiliation of the machines of war. Our children grew
with bitterness and impotence between their hands. Some, the ones who didn't
die. In the men hate sharpened the breast. The greatest grandparents looked
again to the earth and asked counsel of the first dead. They spoke. The
dead of forever. We. They said this: "Our hand did not rise armed to listen,
kneeling, to insults and humiliations. Our step did not rise so that he who
is double in his face and in his word could humiliate us, filling hope with
lies.
"For justice our hand was armed and our step raised. And justice is only a
false promise that the powerful dresses himself with.
"For freedom our hand was armed and our step raised. And freedom is sold
for a fistful of coins to the foreign skin.
"For democracy our hand was armed and our step raised. And democracy is
still absent by the work of he who cynicism, crime and lies carried
into government.
"Everything, brothers, but dignity trampled again.
"Everything, brothers, but lies again on our table.
"Everything, brothers, but to forget once again tomorrow.
Thus they spoke. This our dead said. The war came. Then again we saw the
brother come in other clothing. He came to kill. To die. Our hand did not
want to again confront he who was sent to kill and to die among the same. For
that reason, our past ones went to the mountains; to the caves of those
before, we went. Death cornered us and pursued lives that always passed away
obscurely, shades of death and of the shadow of a forgetful country. Death
came to wield again its knife-edge of oblivion. To kill memory it came.
Now our hand filled again with fire to avenge the pain of our own, animals
again eating earth, dying persecuted and forgotten.
Now the drums called to war again. Now the bat men and women prepared again
their flight of mortal death. Now the night of pain came again to cover the
vengeance of the true men and women.
But there came, from where the sun walks, another voice that was not of
death. It came great, with the wind it came. Our hurting heart waited
and heard what that voice spoke. That the war not go on, it said. That
death wait. That the heart of the true men and women not be, yet, a mirror
of pain. This we did. The bitterness was put away in the caves and our
pain waited for that voice to shout. The voice spoke strongly. How could
we not hear it! Many steps was that voice. Great, the song of its drums.
Only the arrogant closed his heart. Without fire, with a name and face, that
voice raised again the banner of human dignity. For that voice, we were not
animals. Men and women again, we were. From other lands came walking
that voice. From far away. From the heart of other lands, from other
mountains, from other hopes, sisters to ours. It became strong and great.
It is a voice. Relief came to our pain, and the waiting harvested hope. A
seed, was that voice, in the collective heart that walks in our step.
Brothers: A name, that voice gives us. No more are we the unmentionables.
A name have we, the forgotten. Now our flag can cover, not hiding itself,
our dead and our history. We have now a place in the heart of our brothers,
- you - and a small corner in the history that really counts: that of the
struggle. Having now a collective name, we discovered that death shrinks,
and ends up small on us. The worst death, that of oblivion, flees so
that the memory of our dead will never be buried together with their bones.
We have now a collective name and our pain has shelter. Now we are larger
than death.
We have also the hope that just as we received a name, these brothers,
- you - will give us tomorrow a face; finish by putting out the fire that
lives in our hands; and, instead of the past, give us a future.
They smile, these lives of tomorrow and dead of forever. They dream,
the bones of the men of wood in the mountains. They dance, the men and
women of corn. Joyful is our heart, although the body hurts. A light lights
up these shadows that always dance with death, the true men and women, those
of forever.
We are named.
Now we will not die.
Come, brothers, we cannot go. Great is the the strength of you all if you
make yourselves one. Come, there will be no fire to receive your step, nor
will our heart be closed to your word. Come.
A name we have. Now we will not die. Let us dance.
Now we shall not die. Named are we.
Health, brothers! Death to Death! Long live the EZLN!
Democracy!
Freedom!
Justice!
>From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee - General Command of the EZLN.