I think the proper solution is to do a survey to determine the wishes of
our community with respect to such matters as well as to a number of
others, but it will take time and some assistance to organize and conduct.
Meanwhile, I'd be interested in any informal comments you might care to
send to me, either on the particular matter of essays like the one that
follows, the materials coming from the EZLN (either in English or Spanish),
or the overall matter of the kinds of materials you have been receiving
via this NATIVE-L mailing list. Thanks. --Gary (gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us) ]
/* Written 11:48 AM Jun 6, 1995 by moonlight in igc:reg.mexico */
/* ---------- "The Herons and Eagles/EZLN communiq" ---------- */
*****************************************************************
Letter from Subcomandante Marcos to John Berger
A history about herons and eagles in the Lacandon jungle
Heriberto, Eva and the image of an English Countryside
Zapatista Army of National Liberation
Mexico, May 12, 1995
To: native-l@gnosys.svle.ma.us
High Savoy, France
From: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
CCRI-CG of the EZLN
Chiapas, Mexico
I. "A reader could ask himself: What is the relationship between
the writer and the place and peoples about whom he writes"?
(Berger, John, BOAR LAND. Gushing Stream Literatures, Publisher.
Translation Pilar Vazquez, p. 18)
Agreed, but he could also ask himself: What is the relationship
between a letter written in the jungle of Chiapas, Mexico and the
response that it receives from the French countryside? Or, even
better, what is the relationship between the slow beating of the
wings of the heron with the hovering of the eagle over a serpent?
For example, in Guadalupe Tepeyac (now an village empty of
civilians and filled with soldiers), the herons took over the sky
night of December. There were hundreds. "Thousands", says
Lieutenant Ricardo, a Tzeltal insurgent who sometimes has a
propensity to exaggerate. "Millions", said Gladys who, despite
being 12 years old (or precisely because of it), does not want to
be left out. "They come every year", says the grandfather while
the small flashes of white hover above the village, and maybe
disappear towards? The East?
Are they coming or going? Are they your herons, Mr. Berger? A
winged reminder? Or a greeting filled with premonition? A
fluttering of wings of something which resists death?
Because as a result, months later, I read in your letter (in a
dog-eared clipping from a newspaper, with the date hidden under a
mud stain), and in it (your letter) the wings of dawn are
hovering once again in the sky and the people of Guadalupe
Tepeyac now live in the mountain and not in the little valley
whose lights, I imagine, are of some significance on the
navigation maps of the herons.
Yes, I know now that the herons about which you wrote me fly
during the winter from North Africa, and that it is improbable
that they have anything to do with those that arrived in December
1994 in the Lacandon jungle. In addition the grandfather says
that every year the disconcerting tour above Guadalupe Tepeyac is
repeated. Perhaps southeastern Mexico is an obligatory lay-over,
a necessity, a commitment. Perhaps they were not herons, but
fragments of an exploded moon, pulverized in the December of the
jungle.
December. 1994.
Months later, the indigenous of southeastern Mexico again
reiterated their rebellion, their resistance to genocide, to
death... The reason? The supreme government decided to carry
out organized crime, essence of neoliberalism, that money, the
god of modernity, had planned. Dozens of thousands of soldiers,
hundreds of tons of war materials, millions of lies. The
objective? The destruction of libraries and hospitals, of homes
and seeded fields of corn and beans, the annihilation of every
sign of rebellion. The indigenous Zapatistas resisted, they
retreated to the mountains and they began an exodus that today,
even as I write these lines, has not ended. Neoliberalism
disguises itself as the defense of a sovereignty which has been
sold in dollars on the international market.
Neoliberalism, this doctrine that makes it possible for stupidity
and cynicism to govern in diverse parts of the earth, does not
allow for inclusion other than that of subjection to genocide.
"Die as a social group, as a culture, and above all as a
resistance. Then you can be part of modernity", say the great
capitalists, from the seats of government, to the indigenous
campesinos. These indigenous people irritate the modernizing
logic of neo-mercantilism. Their rebellion, their defiance,
their resistance, irritates them. The anachronism of their
existence within a project of globalization, an economic and
political project that, soon, will decide that poor people, all
the people in opposition, which is to say, the majority of the
population, are obstacles. The armed character of "We are here!"
of the Zapatista indigenous people does not matter much to them
nor does it keep them awake (a little fire and lead will be
enough to end such "imprudent" defiance). What matters to them,
and bothers them, is that their very existence, in the moment
that they [the indigenous Zapatistas] speak out and are heard, is
converted into a reminder of an embarrassing omission of
"neoliberal modernity": "These Indians should not exist today, we
should have put an end to them BEFORE. Now annihilating them
will be more difficult, which is to say, more expensive." This
is the burden which weighs upon neoliberalism made government in
Mexico.
"Let's resolve the causes of the uprising", say the negotiators
of the government (leftists of yesterday, the shamed of today) as
if they were saying: "All of you should not exist, all of this is
an unfortunate error of modern history". "Let's resolve the
causes" is the elegant synonym of "we will eliminate them". For
this system which concentrates wealth and power and distributes
death and poverty, the campesinos, the indigenous, do not fit in
the plans and projects. They have to be gotten rid of, just like
the herons...and the eagles... have to be gotten rid of.
II.
"Mystery is not what can be hidden deliberately, but rather, as I
have already shown, the fact that the gamut of the possible can
always surprise us. And this, is hardly ever represented. The
campesinos do not present papers as do urban personalities. This
is not because they are "simple" or more sincere or less astute;
simply the space between that which is unknown of a person and
what all the world knows of him--and this is the space of all
representation--it is extremely small. (Berger John Ibid).
December. 1994.
A cold dawn that drags itself between the fog and the thatched
roofs of the village. It is morning. The dawn goes away, the
cold remains. The little paths of mud begin to fill with people
and animals. The cold and a little footpath accompany me in the
reading of Boar Land. [see note at end on this title --Gary ]
Heriberto and Eva (5 and 6 years old respectively) come and grab
("they snatched" I should say, but I don't know if the
distinction is understood in English) the book. They look at the
drawing on the front cover (it is a Madrid edition from 1989).
It is a copy of a painting by John Constable, an image of an
English (?) countryside. The cover of your book, Mr. Berger,
summons a rapid connection between image and reality. For
Heriberto, for example, there is no doubt that the horse in the
painting is La Mu$eca [The Doll] ( a mare that accompanied us in
the long year during which the indigenous rebellion governed
southeastern Mexico), whom no one could mount except Manuel, a
playmate who was twice the age, size and weight of Heriberto, who
was Chelita's brother, and consequently, also his future brother-
in-law. And what Constable called "a river" was really a river
bed, a river bed that crossed through "La Realidad" ("La
Realidad" is the name of a village, a reality of which is the
limit of Heriberto's horizons. The farthest place that his trips
and running around has taken him is "La Realidad".
Constable's painting did not remind Heriberto and Eva of the
English countryside. It did not take them outside of the
Lacandon jungle. It left them here, or it brought them back. It
brought them back to their land, their place, to their being
children, to their being campesinos, to their being indigenous,
to their being Mexicans and rebels. For Heriberto and Eva
Constable's painting is a colored drawing of "La Muneca" and the
title, "Scene on a Navigable River" is not a valid argument: the
river is the river bed of "La Realidad", the horse is the mare La
Muneca, Manuel is riding, and his sombrero fell off, and that's
it, on to another book. And we do that, this time it is about
Van Gogh and for Eva and Heriberto, the paintings of Holland are
scenes from their land, of their being indigenous and campesinos.
After this Heriberto tells his mother that he spent the morning
with the Sup. "Reading big books", says Heriberto, and I
believed that this earned him a free hand with a box of chocolate
cookies. Eva was more far sighted, and asked me if I didn't have
a book about her doll with the little red bandanna.
III.
"The act of writing is nothing more than the act of approximating
the experience of what is being written about; in the same
manner, it is hoped that the act of reading the written text is
another act of similar approximation".
(Berger, John, Ibid.) Or of distancing, Mr. Berger. The
writing, and above all, the reading of the written text could be
an act of distancing. "The written word and the image", says my
other, which to add problems paints himself, alone. I think that
yes, that the "reading" of the written word and the image could
approximate the experience or distant it. And so, the
photographic image of Alvaro, one of the dead combatants in
Ocosingo in January 1994, returns. Alvaro returns in the photo,
Alvaro with his death speaks in the photo. He says, he writes,
he shows: "I am Alvaro, I am an indigenous, I am a soldier, I
took up arms against being forgotten. Look. Listen. Something
is happening in the closing of the 20th century that is forcing
us to die in order to have a voice, to be seen, to live". And
from the photo of Alvaro dead, a far-off reader from the distance
could approximate the indigenous situation in modern Mexico,
NAFTA, the international forums, the economic bonanza, the first
world.
"Pay attention! Something is evil in the macroeconomic plans,
something is not functioning in the complicated mathematical
calculations that sings the successes of neoliberalism", says
Alvaro with his death. His photo says more, his death speaks,
his body on the soil of Chiapas takes voice, his head resting in
a pool of blood: "Look! This is what the numbers and the
speeches hide. Blood, cadavers, bones, lives and hopes, crushed,
squeezed dry, eliminated in order to be incorporated into the
'indices of profit and economic growth'".
"Come!" says Alvaro, "Come close! Listen!"
But Alvaro's photo also can "be read" from a distance, as a
vehicle which serves to create distance in order to stay on the
other side of the photo, like "reading" it in a newspaper in
another part of the world. "This did not happen here", says the
reader of the photo, "this is Chiapas, Mexico, a historical
accident, remedial, forgettable, and... far away". There are, in
addition, other readers who confirm it: public announcements,
economic figures, stability, peace. This is the use of the
indigenous war at the end of the century, to revalue "peace".
Like a stain stands out on the object that is stained. "I am
here and this photo happened over there, far away, small", says
the "reader" who distances himself.
And I imagine, Mr. Berger, that the final result of the
relationship between the writer and the reader, through the text
("or from the image", insists my other self again), escapes both.
Something is imposed on them, gives significance to the text,
provokes one to come closer or go farther away. And this
"something" is related to the new division of the world, with the
democratization of death and misery, with the dictatorship of
power and money, with the regionalization of pain and despair,
with the internationalization of arrogance and the market. But
it also has to do with the decision of Alvaro (and of thousands
of indigenous along with him) to take up arms, to fight, to
resist, to seize a voice that they were denied before, to not
devalue the cost of the blood that this implies. And it also has
to do with the ear and eye that are opened by Alvaro's message,
whether they see and hear it, whether they understand it, whether
they draw near to him, his death, his blood that flooded the
streets of a city that has always ignored him, always...until
this past January first. It also has to do with the eagle and
heron, the European campesino who is resisting being absorbed and
the Latin American indigena who is rebelling against genocide.
It has to do with the panic of the powerful, as the trembling,
that is growing in its guts, no matter how strong and powerful it
appears, when, without knowing, it prepares to fall...
And it has to do with, I reiterate and salute it in this way, the
letters that come from you to us, and those that, with these
lines, bring you these words: the eagle received the message, he
understood the approach of the hesitant flight of the heron. And
there below, the serpent trembles and fears the morning...
Vale, Mr. Berger. Health and follow closely the heron up above
until it appears as a small and passing flash of light, a flower
that lifts itself up...
>From the mountains of Southeastern Mexico
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, May 1995
TRANSLATED BY: Cindy Arnold and Cecilia Rodriguez. National
Center of the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico, USA.
Subject: Correction to "Herons and Eagles" Letter
Date: Thu, 08 Jun 1995 07:27:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: National Commission for Democracy in Mexico <moonlight>
Subject: Correction to "Herons and Eagles" Letter
Dear Friends:
J. Moore from Vermont Chiapas Action Center brought it to my attention that
the name of John Berger's book that Subcomandante Marcos' was talking about
in his recent letter is "Pig Earth" not Boar Land as I translated it.
According to him, the book is by a famous British Marxist literary critic and
is the first part of a trilogy on Europe's dying peasantry.
Sorry for any confusion my error caused, and thanks to Joe for letting me know.
Cindy