Date: Thu, 2 Nov 1995 07:10:58 -0700 (MST)
Subject: INTERVIEW OF SUBCOMMANDER MARCOS,"BRECHA", URUGUAY, 10-2 (fwd)



*PART 2 OF 6*

"Brecha"___Then, the farmers are the new revolutionary class?

S.Marcos___No.  I don't think so.  We are planning a revolution which 
will make a revolution possible. We are planning a pre-revolution.  That 
is why they accuse us of being armed revisionists or reformists, as Jorge 
Casata~eda says.  We are talking about making a broad social movement, 
violent or peaceful, which will radically modify social relationships so 
that its final product might be a new space of political relationship.  I 
think that the main actor has not been defined.  It is what we call 
"civil society" and which cannot be delimited by the bourgeoisie, the 
proletariat, the farmers, the middle class.  This process of 
globalization, at the State national level, touches upon so many wounds 
and so many spots that everyone is ill of the same thing, even though one is 
light skinned and the other dark skinned; even though one is a university 
professor and the other a member of the working class... 

"Brecha"__The structural changes will emerge from that pre-revolution, 
from that revolution for the revolution?

S. Marcos__Yes, but they do not necessarily derive from a new social 
system.  That new social system will be the product of the new political 
game.  We can be mistaken.  But we are not saying that neoliberalism 
colapses and at the same time a new social system is installed.
"Brecha"__It is not, in short, the concept of the stages of the struggle 
toward socialism of the sixties and seventies in Latin America, the phase 
of national liberation, where the actors are many?
S. Marcos__It's not the same.  We are planning that in the new stage of 
capitalism, neoliberalism, there will be a destruction of the national 
State.  For us, a fundamental thesis of the national front is that of the 
existence of the national bourgeoisie.  We say that there is no 
motherland/fatherland.  The concept of fatherland/motherland and of 
nation is destroyed, not only within the bourgeoisie but even among the 
ruling classes.  It would be very difficult to think that there are 
sectors of the government that are in favor of defending the national 
project.  Those who defend the national project are either assassinated 
or thrown out.  The neoliberal project demands this internationlization 
of history; it demands the erasing of national history to turn it into 
international history; it demands the erasing of cultural borders.  The 
great cost for humanity is that for the finantial  capital there is 
nothing, not even fatherland/motherland or private property.  Finantial 
capital only has numbers of bank accounts.  And through that entire game the 
concept of nation disappears. A revolutionary process must begin by 
recuperating the concept of nation and fatherland/motherland.

Neoliberalism's main error is to think that one can go against history.  
That interference in the problem of land tenure pretends to do away with 
history, and to make believe as if here there was never a history,a 
culture or anything.  And it is then when they touch and create one of their
enemies, perhaps not the most powerful,but indeed the most tenacious:  
Zapatismo.  The new Zapatismo, understood as the insurrection of the
Indigenous farming communities, and which was born in Chiapas when the
champion of neoliberalism,former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari (today 
"exiled" in the United States to avoid having to settle his account with 
justice), modified Article 533 of the Constitution, and abolished the main
inheritance of the Mexican Revolution: the land belongs to those who work 
it.  The landing of neoliberalism in the land tenure question, looking for
its privatization, only managed to get the Indigenous farmers to rise up
in arms.

______________________________________________________________________________

DEMOCRACY

"What there is right now isn't working"

In Chiapas, the guerrilla had to surrender before the Indigenous 
communities, Marcos tells us.  That surrender imposed some  changes upon the 
strategies, the objectives, and even some basic concepts, like that of 
democracy.
S.Marcos__I was saying that the communities are promoting democracy.  But 
the concept seems vague.  There are many kinds of democracy.
That's what I tell them (the Indians).  I try to explain to them:  You 
can do that (to solve by consensus) because you have a communal life.  
When they arrive at an assembly, they know each other, they come to solve 
a common problem.  But in other places it isn't so, I tell them.  People 
live separate lives and they use the assembly for other things, not to 
solve the problem.  And they say, no, but it means that yes, it works for 
us.  And it indeed works for them, they solve the problem.  And they 
propose that method for the Nation and the world.  The world must 
organize itself thus.  That is what they call "to rule while 
obeying"("mandar obedeciendo").  And it is very difficult to go against 
that because that is how they solve their problems.  And the one who 
doesn't work out, they dismiss him, and there is no big scandal.  When 
the "ejido"'s head authority makes a mistake, they remove him and he goes 
on to become a member of the assembly.
We have insisted upon the fact that what the EZLN proposes is not a 
representative democracy, that of the political parties.  And they tell 
us in articles, and in the newspapers, that we are wrong, that in reality 
the Indigenous communities have been defeated, because what is worth here 
is the individual, and the communities want to have the collective will 
valued.  Yes.  That's why we say:  we need another, different non-partisan 
political force.  When we propose that, we do it as when we started the 
war in 1994.  At that time I used to tell them (the communities who had 
decided to start the offensive), we are going to go to hell, they are 
going to fuck us up; the international correlation of forces is against 
us, they are going to cut us to pieces.  And the brothers saying:  Let's 
go, let's go, and let's go to war.  And now it's let's go, and let's go 
for this type of democracy.  And how do you tell them that it is no 
good.  If they have used it for years...What better result than to have 
resisted all the annihilation campaigns!  That is why they say:  the 
country must organize itself like this.

"Brecha"__How is that about the non-partisan political force?  The 
political parties do not help the type of democracy that is being proposed?

C. Marcos__Try to place yourselves on this side of the ski mask.  On this 
side there are people who have lived twelve years in Indigenous 
communities.  Who have lived with them.  He is an Indian, as they say.  
"Marcos is an Indian like us".  And he thinks like them.  For them, what 
do the political parties do?  A political party arrives to divide a 
community.  The parties look for the people to back them up, and those 
who don't follow another party.  The strongest one wins.  Political 
parties divide the communities and fracture everything.  That's how the 
communities were fractured when the EZLN arrived.  That's the truth.  
When we first went into the communities we did it as a political 
rganization.  And it was only until they began to look for a consensus 
that we were able to go in. Otherwise we would have been unable to do 
so.  We were coming in to divide, as the Federal Army is doing now.  It 
is putting its arms to the service of one part.  Just like our weapons 
were at the service of one of the parts.  And that's not good.  What's 
good is for the community to agree.  And political parties prevent the 
community from agreeing, because a political party is out to win 
individuals.
Then it is necessary to build a political force which will not divide.  
Which will not confront.  And these people who are behind these ski 
masks have to find a way to translate this to those on the outside.  And 
if in order to find that I have to quarrel with Mu~oz Ledo (President of 
the opposition party" Party of the Democratic Revolution" or PRD), I'll 
quarrel with him.  My duty is to convey that.  Maybe it is succesful, 
maybe not.  Maybe it's another January 1st of 1944 and it's successful.  
Maybe it's a February 9, 1995 and it fails.
A political force that looks for that and not for power is needed.  
Political parties come in and they as:  "Who is going to be the 
"ejido"'s head authority?"  The brothers say:  "The problem is not who 
is going to be the head authority of the "ejido" but that this 
authority complies with the wishes of the community."  Then, what is 
needed is a political force which organizes the community to be able 
to demand that the "ejido"'s head authority, the mayor, the governor, 
the president of the republic, and congress serve the community and 
the nation...I know I am delirious...

"Brecha"__ They are going to tell you:  "Enter the Parliament and 
impose your view point by majority vote."

S. Marcos__  Yes, I know.  But the brothers are saying:  "That 
Parliament should obey those it claims to represent."  I know I am 
talking about something new which is difficult to understand...       

"Brecha"__What you are saying is to take over the power...

S. Marcos__To exert it.

"Brecha"__What you are not saying is how to embody that.

S. Marcos__Because we don't have the fucking idea of how to do it.  I can 
imagine an assembly in a "ca~ada" (canion), even within an ethnic group.  
Why?  Because I have seen it.  I know how they organize themselves and 
how they go on solving their problems in the midst of a sort of mixture 
of representativity and assembly.

"Brecha"__And you honestly believe that that can function for a nation?

S. Marcos__I know that the other way does not work.  What there is right 
now does not work.

"Brecha"__And you are giving the people the idea that this is something 
that might work?

S. Marcos__We are going to "dialogue" it, as we say.  We have that 
experience, but maybe the Yaqui Indians, or the workers, or the 
transporttion workers of "Ruta 100", or the National Meeting of Citizenship 
Rights ("Encuentro Nacional de Derechos Ciudadanos",)have other ideas 
that can be amalgamated.

"Brecha"__What you are proposing...Isn't it the political arm of the 
guerrilla?

S. Marcos__No.  It is a new world.  It's that simple.

Trans.  ML.














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