“Both above and below the earth’s surface, the bad governments and bad rich people, all neoliberal capitalists, want to turn into a commodity everything they see” –
Editorial Page Zapatista Magazine – Rebeldía Zapatista (Zapatista Rebellion), the Word of the EZLN
We rebellious female and male Zapatistas, along with our Mother Earth, are threatened with destruction in our Mexican homeland. Both above and below the earth’s surface, the bad governments and bad rich people, all neoliberal capitalists, want to turn into a commodity everything they see.
They want to own everything.
They are destructive, they are murderers, criminals, rapists. They are cruel and inhuman, they torture and disappear people, and they are corrupt. They are every bad thing you can imagine, they do not care about humanity. They are, in fact, inhuman.
They are just a few and even so they decide everything about how they will dominate those countries that allow themselves to be dominated. They have turned those underdeveloped countries into their plantations, and those so-called governments of the capitalist underdeveloped countries were turned into their foremen.
This is what has happened in Mexico. The neoliberal transnational corporations are the bosses, their plantation is called Mexico, the current overseer is named Enrique Peña Nieto, the administrators are Manuel Velasco in Chiapas and the other so-called state governors, and the badly named municipal “presidents” are the foremen.
This is why we rose up against this system at dawn on January 1, 1994.
For 30 years we have been constructing what we think is a better way to live, and what we have built is available for the people of Mexico and of the world to see. It is humble but healthily determined by tens of thousands of men and women who decide together how we want to autonomously govern ourselves.
Nothing hides what we do, what we want, what we seek; it is all visible.
The bad government on the other hand – that is, the three bad powers-that-be and the capitalist system – does everything behind the people’s back.
We are sharing our humble idea of the new world that we imagine and desire with female and male comrades from Mexico and all over the world.
That is why we decided to have the Zapatista Little School [Zapatista Freedom School].
The Little School is about freedom and the construction of a new world different from that of the neoliberal capitalists.
In addition, it is the people themselves, that is, the Zapatista communities, who are sharing these ideas, not just their representatives. These people, not their representatives, are the ones who will say if they are doing well or if the way that they are organized is working well. That way others can see if things are really like the people’s representatives say they are.
This great “sharing” between all of us, fellows from the city and the countryside, is necessary because we are the ones who must think about how the world we want should be. It can’t just be our representatives or leaders who think and decide how that world should be, and they certainly can’t be the ones who say how we are doing as an organization. It is the people, the base, who must speak to this.
You can tell us if this has helped to those who attended.
As you will read in the writings in this issue of our magazine REBELDÍA ZAPATISTA, this process has helped the female and male comrades who are part of the grassroots Zapatista supporting communities to meet good people from across Mexico and all over the world. This is important because in Mexico no government recognizes the Indigenous people of this country. The government only remembers them during election time, as if they were electoral paraphernalia.
It is only through organization and struggle that the communities have defended themselves for 30 years now.
The Zapatista autonomous communities have done everything possible, and everything that seemed impossible, over these 30 years and this is what they are sharing.
We worked to create the Little School so that the words of the female and male comrades who are Zapatista support communities could reach much further. With the Little School, their voices carry thousands and thousands of miles, not like our bullets on January 1, 1994, which only travelled 50- 100 meters, and maybe some 300 or 400 meters. The teachings of the Little School crossed oceans, borders, and skies to reach you, female and male comrades.
We rebellious indigenous know that there are other indigenous rebellions which also know what neoliberal capitalism is about.
There are also rebellious brothers and sisters who are not indigenous but who write to share in this magazine issue what they think and how they view this system that is destroying planet earth. That is why we include the words of our anarchist female and male comrades, compañeras and compañeras, in this issue of the magazine.
Well, comrades of the Sixth Declaration, it is good that those who came saw in their own eyes and heard with in own ears what is happening here, and they left ready and willing to communicate this to those who couldn’t come.
In this first issue of the magazine we will begin to share some of the words and ideas of our female and male comrades who are Zapatista support ranks and files, families, female and male guardians, and teachers, about how they viewed the students at the Little School [The Zapatista Freedom School]. Throughout the first issues of our publication we will share the evaluations made by the Little School teachers, Votanes [guardians], families, and coordinators from the zones of the five caracoles [autonomous communities].
Just as you have talked about or published what you lived, heard, and saw in our Zapatista territory, here you can read how we saw and heard those who came and raised the flag of ZAPATISTA REBELLION.
Sub-Commander Insurgent Moisés
Mexico, January 2014, 20 years after the beginning of the war against oblivion.
(Original Link: http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2014/02/28/editorial-revista-rebeldia/)
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