150 000 mennesker møter opp for å vise sin støtte til Zapatistene, og det
politiske klima i Mexico synes for meg å være meget godt for et parti på
deres politiske grunnlag, slik som PT har klart å bygge i Brasil. Men i
sin infantile venstreradikalisme nekter zapatistene å gå for politisk
makt.
"We are rebels, not revolutionaries."
Mvh,
Per
---------- Forwarded message ----------
On the Road With the Zapatistas
by Rachel Neumann
Hundreds of Thousands Cheer as Zaps Take the Stage in Mexico City
Part 6: Rebels Enter Capital
The Zapatistas did not, as some rumors had it, arrive in Mexico City on
horseback. They did not, as some had insisted, march in on foot. Instead,
they entered the Zócalo, the city's main square, on the roof of the same
green-and-white tour bus that carried them more than 1500 miles from the
mountains of Chiapas to the Mexican capital.
From the reaction of the crowd of hundreds of thousands, most of whom had
been waiting in the hot sun for more than seven hours, they might as well
have dropped from the sky. Shouts of ³No están solos!² (³You are not
alone!²) filled the plaza as the Zapatistas stood on the ramshackle wooden
stage and declared, ³Brothers and sisters, indigenous and nonindigenous,
we are here for one thing: to declare that we are here and we are here
with you.²
History did not repeat itself this Sunday in Zócalo: neither the history
of 1919 when Zapata was shot on his way to the capital to sign a peace
agreement, nor the history of 1968 when several hundred students were
killed while protesting a few blocks north in Tlatelolco.
Instead, history was remade as the rebels who declared war on the
government just over seven years ago were welcomed right outside the
government palace in the central plaza. Through their journey, the
Zapatistas have grown from a small military rebellion with international
support to a vast national and international social movement. ³There is no
more Œyou¹ and Œus¹ because we are all now the color of the earth,²
Subcomandante Marcos said on Sunday. ³And this is what they fear.²
The Zapatistas have announced that they will stay in Mexico City until
Congress votes on the San Andrés Accords and meets the group's three
conditions of dialogue. In keeping with the spirit of the caravan, during
their open-ended residence in the city they will stay not in a hotel but
in a makeshift space at the National School of Anthropology and History.
President Vicente Fox, after expressing his welcome, has urged the
Zapatistas to meet with him personally and sign a basic peace agreement.
But for the Zapatistas, constitutional recognition is just one step in
their long struggle. Although a few more conservative newspapers, such as
El Universal, have ruminated on the possibility of ³Marcos for President,²
the Zapatistas have made very clear that they are not interested in
political power. ³We are rebels, not revolutionaries,² said Marcos in a
personal interview with Julio Sherer of the magazine Proceso. ³Political
power poisons the blood and muddies thought,² he has said.
For the Zapatistas, this is no time to rest. In the next few days, they
will meet with legislators, intellectuals, and activists, and set the
details for their address to Congress. Congress plans to vote on the
Cocopa law‹the congressional version of the San Andrés Accords‹sometime in
the next month. And the next big fights are already visible on the
horizon. Marcos has directly laid out the Zapatistas' opposition to Plan
Puebla-Panamá, an international development deal signed by Fox that would
create a corridor of tax-free high-tech and clothing factories from
southern Mexico down to Panama.
No one, probably not even the Zapatistas themselves, knows what steps they
will take in the next stage of their struggle. But it is clear that the
triumphant arrival in the heart of Mexico is only the beginning: ³Those
(in power) say we're few, we're weak, we're a photo, an anecdote, a
spectacle, a product whose expiration date is here,² said Marcos in the
Zócalo. ³We can be with or without faces, with or without arms or
firepower, but Zapatistas we are; we are and always will be.²
(http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0109/zap6.shtml)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Mar 15 2001 - 14:47:12 MET