November 2, 1995
To: Cecilia Rodriguez
National Commission for Democracy, USA
From: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
CCRI-CG of the EZLN
Chiapas, Mexico.
Cecilia:
I write these lines to you during this dawn in which the dead, our dead
accept the bridge extended to them through thousands of offerings in the
indigenous mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
The reason for it is not pleasant, it is not a salute, yet it is a salute.
We want you to know that we repudiate, together with all honest men and
women, the criminal intent to which you were subjected. Yes, "subjected",
because that kind of aggression consists of making a thing, an object of a
human being and "using" that human being as things are used. Those
responsible for the attempt will be hunted. Yes, hunted like animals, which
is what they are.
But we also want you to know that we salute your determination, your
refusal to be humiliated and converted into what the Powerful call a "normal
woman", a conformist, a resigned, quiet and objectified woman. As you have
well pointed out, the aggression against you is part of a "silent" war, a
"discrete" war, a war beyond the reach of the headlines in the press and
therefore, distant from the financial markets. We salute your wisdom in
reminding everyone that here, in this country called mexico, there is a war,
a war by those who would preserve irrationality and eternal omnipotence
against those who want a democratic change. We salute all that, this is
true. But above all we salute you as a Zapatista woman, your "I will not
surrender!" your "I am here!", your "enough is enough!". We salute the
fact that being a Zapatista is not limited by borders or customs
checkpoints, that it jumps walls and mocks the "border patrol", that it
finds voice and a banner in the Latino blood upon which, among others, rests
the power of the American Union.
The body of a woman is also a battle ground in this "new type" of war
designed for extermination. They wound you as a woman, but above all as a
Zapatista. And, more so because you are a Northamerican citizen who
sympathizes with the EZLN and its cause of peace with democracy, liberty and
justice.
Some women, among which are those who say they are close to Zapatismo,
take advantage of the dilemma of rape to denounce..the Zapatista machos!
They now demand that we take off our ski-masks, they say, in order to
distance ourselves from the rapists and so that we will not promote, they
say, crimes such as the one you suffered. We are not the enemy, and our
ski-masks do not hide criminals. They remain indignant, they demand a
denial, an explanation, a penance for the simple fact that we are men. This
is the new crime of which we are accused; of being men. Because of it, they
say, we are accomplices of the rapists. Because we have taken up arms, they
say, we have created a climate of violence against women.
But this is not a position common to everyone. The great majority of
women close to Zapatismo (in other words close to you) understand that this
crime forms a part of a belligerent chain which has found in the body of a
woman a battle ground. They and we understand that it is the political,
economic, social and cultural system which holds up as its banners crime and
impunity, which promotes, nurtures, protects and permits this and other
aggressions. We understand, they and us, that we should fight to transform
the entire world into something better: a world with democracy, liberty, and
justice.
Before January 1st of 1994, in this land there were rapes of all kind. Not
just of women, and also of women. The fact of being indigenous added a
double silence to the fact of being women. Here, and I do not just refer to
Chiapas but to the entire country, the human being is raped, dignity is
raped, history is raped.
The indigenous Zapatista women, those women who do not belong to us but
who march at our side, those women who are so far from the Peking Summit,
those women who fight against everything and everyone (and this includes us
Zapatista men), those Zapatista women, have decided to stop being women in
order to win the right to be women. You know all this well. In the year or
more that you have been our legal representative in the American Union, you
have discovered us and have found thousands of those women (and men) who are
your sisters and with whom you are united by something which is in your
blood: human dignity.
The companera comandantes of the CCRI-CG of the EZLN will give your our
communique in regards to this aggression which you have suffered and that
all of us Zapatistas, suffer with you. They are the ones with the best
ability for it. Personally, I feel incapable of putting in pen and paper
the bridge of support, sympathy and admiration which you inspire in me. My
clumsiness, or perhaps my fear at being clumsy tie up my words. They, our
companeras, are not free because they are Zapatistas. But the fact that
they are Zapatistas, as you are, makes them fighters who fight to change
everything, including us. Rape is not solely the concern of women, it
involves all men, not only because men are capable of its perpetration, but
because we can be accomplices as well, by engaging in harmful ridicule and
by our silence. But the struggle for respect for the specificity of gender,
can also include us, by acknowledging what we are, what we are not, and
above all, what we are capable of becoming.
So I do not write to you as though you were someone who sympathizes with
Zapatismo and is wounded for that reason. I write to you as a companera, as
a Zapatista. Perhaps this can explain the paucity of these thoughts and the
hesitant lines which try to express it. I only write to you, in the name of
my Zapatista companeras and companeros, to remind you and to remind all of
us that we are one, we are the intuition that something new is possible and
that the fight in order to win it, is worth it.
Vale. Health and a hope that humiliation not be the present or future of
women, or of any human being.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast,
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, November 1995