File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-04-21.135, message 2


Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 19:33:46 -0600 (CST)
From: Sendic Estrada Jimenez <sestrada-AT-fcfm.buap.mx>
Subject: M-I: E;Marcos:Letter to "Commander in Chief Zapata", Apr 10 (fwd)








					Movimiento Estudiantil ESPARTACO.
	
					Sendic Estrada Jimenez

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 17:21:47 -0500 (CDT)
From: Chiapas95 <owner-chiapas95-AT-mundo.eco.utexas.edu>
To: chiapas95-AT-mundo.eco.utexas.edu
Subject: E;Marcos:Letter to "Commander in Chief Zapata", Apr 10


This posting has been forwarded to you as a service of 
Accion Zapatista de Austin.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 17:55:46 -0400
From: " Monique J. Lemaitre" <tc0mjl1-AT-corn.cso.niu.edu>
Reply-To: mexico2000-AT-mep-d.org
To: Multiple Recipients of List Mexico2000 <mexico2000-AT-mep-d.org>
Subject: Letter to "Commander in Chief Zapata" ("La Jornada", 4-12-97)]

> Letter to " Commander in Chief Zapata"
> 
> April 10, 1997.
> 
> To:  General Emiliano Zapata.
> 
> Top Commander in Chief of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
> 
> Over there, where he usually lives.
> 
> My General:
> 
> With the novelty that we are still here.  Don Emiliano, here we are.  You  probably
> already know that I am writing to you in the name of all men,
> women, children, and the elderly of this your Zapatista Army of   National Liberation.
> 
> Here we are, my General, here we remain.  Here we are because these
> governments continue to display a lack memory towards the Indians and because the rich landowners, with different names, keep on stripping the farmers of their land, Like when you called to fight for land and liberty, today the Mexican lands are turned over to the wealthy foreigners.  Like it happened then, today, governments make up laws to legitimize the theft of lands.  Like then, those who refuse to accept injustices, are persecuted, jailed, killed.  But just like then, my General, there are righteous men and women  who do not keep silent and fight not to be victimized, they organize to demand land and liberty.  That is why I write to you Don Emiliano, so that you know that we are here, that we continue to be here.

You already remember what you wrote to a Gringo president named Woodrow 
Wilson, because it is good that foreign governments know and understand 
the struggle of the Mexican people.  And then you wrote him that part 
which said..."And it is that the large landowners, stripping by 
stripping, today with one pretext, tomorrow with another, have been 
absorbing all the properties which legitimately belong and have belonged 
>from time immemorial to the Indigenous people, out of whose cultivation 
they used to get their sustenance and that of their families."  And that 
was in 1914.  Now, in 1997, the story hasn't changed.

There are now laws which attack the communal property and the "ejido", 
which favor the monopolizing of lands, which allow the sale of our 
riches to the foreigner's monies.  And the laws were drafted by the bad 
Mexican governments, we call them "neoliberal", which rule this country, 
yours and ours, my General, as if it were an Hacienda in full decadence, 
a large property which must be advertised for sale with all of its 
peons, that is to say with all Mexicans, my General, included in the 
bargain.  Yes, you are right Don Emiliano, it is a shame.  And we could 
no longer live nor die with such a shame and then we remembered the word 
"dignity" and we remembered to live by it and die by it, and so we rose 
up in arms, and we tell everyone that it is enough, that this is as far 
as they get, that no more, that we demanded shelter, land, bread, 
health, education, independence, democracy, liberty and peace, and that 
we say that everything is included in democracy, liberty, and justice, 
and that everything for everyone and nothing for ourselves, and many 
ears and hearts listened to your words, my General, which were spoken 
through us.

As in your time, Don Emiliano, the governments have tried to deceive us.  
They talk and talk and no promisses are kept, except for the killings of 
farmers.  They sign and sign papers and nothing materializes, except for 
the evictions of Indigenous people and their persecution. And they have 
also betrayed us, my General, and Guajardos and Chinamecas *( ref. to 
the town in the state of Morelos where Carranza had Zapata murdered) 
have not lacked, but it turns out that we don't allow ourselves to get 
killed that easily.  It looks as if we learned something, Don Emiliano, 
as if we are still learning.  So that I don't want to bore you, my 
General, what would be the sense of it if these are things you already 
know, since when all is said and done you are us.  And you see, the 
farmers keep on being landless, the Indians keep on being forgotten, the 
bad governments continue, the rich keep on getting fatter, and, that's 
for sure, the peasant rebellions continue.  And they will continue my 
General, because without land and liberty there is no peace.

Now the governments are saying that there is no war because the law says 
there is no war.  But there is, my General, that is why we are your 
army, because before, the war was only from there to here, and now it 
will also be from here to there.  And if they want to kill farmers then 
governments will have to die.  Because just demands are not answered 
with death, because death will bounce back.  If only the demands for 
democracy, liberty and justice were to be answered with truth, history 
would dance to a different tune.  But not now, my General, now that 
dance they call history does so to a tune of sheer destruction...

But like in those days, my General, there are now people with great 
thoughts and a big heart.  There is, for instance, a gentleman by the 
name of Fernando Benitez, who wrote a great work called "The Indians of 
Mexico" and in that work he explains that modern history, the one 
written by governments and by the powerful, was made to render the 
Indigenous population invisible.  That's what bad governments usually 
do, Don Emiliano, you know that.  They think that by forgetting or 
killing a problem they solve it.  But this problem we Indians represent 
we will not let it be forgotten.  We have to fight to have a place in 
this country and in its history, the true one, we have to make ourselves 
visible, to make them see us, to make them take us into account.  And 
that can only happen with justice.

And yes, my General, just like you, we understood that land and liberty, 
that memory in other words, can only become true in justice.  That is 
why we rose up in arms, like you taught us, Don Emiliano, for liberty 
and justice.  And we also saw, like you did, that they could only be 
gotten through democracy.  And we understand, like you, that we have to 
fight against the bad governments to obtain what is ours.

The landless farmers in Mexico are many, Don Emiliano,as many are the 
forgotten Indians.  They are both obstacles for the bad governments and 
the very wealthy.  They both are persecuted by the armies and the police 
forces, as criminal as those who give them orders.  But the landless 
Indigenous people and farmers, the many that  are not many are many also 
in the rebellion and the struggle.  We are like you, my general, exactly 
like that, rebellious and struggling.

And I was only writing to you, my General, to tell you that here we are, 
here we remain, and here we will remain even if they persecute us with 
weapons and lies, even if they want to buy us, even if they want to 
deceive us, even if they want to forget us.  Here we are going to remain 
because we listened with our innermost being and we made ours those 
words of yours which say:  "Let us keep on fighting and let us vanquish 
those who have recently become powerful, who help those who take lands 
away from others, those who make a lot of money for themselves out of 
the work of those who are like us, those deceivers in the haciendas, 
that is our honorable duty, if we want to be called men of a good life 
and truly good inhabitants of the community".

As a final note I only want to tell you Don Emiliano so you get to laugh 
for a while, that these bad governments we have, still believe they were 
able to assassinate you that April afternoon in 1919.  They don't know 
you didn't die, that you simply became us and that you thus went on 
hiding and reappearing in us and in all the landless peasants, in all 
the forgotten Indians.  You see, my General, how short of memory these 
governments are.  They forget the most important thing, what you and us 
know well, Don Emiliano, that is, that Zapata lives, that the struggle 
continues.

"Vale" my General Zapata.  Health and plenty of heart, because there are 
still many accounts left to settle in the Mexican lands.
>From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast

For the Indigenousb Revolutionary Clandestine Committee-General Command 
of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Mexico, April 10, 1997

Translation:  Monique J. Lemaitre.

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