To the artistic and intellectual community of Mexico and the World:
Listen… We know you are busy with Trump, but -I don’t know if you have noticed-, things are happening that would terrify the most grounded. They are not isolated or extraordinary events, they are frequent, daily, “common”, “normal”.
Here we remember that in the past you used to organize and participate in concerts, exhibitions, auctions, raffles, articles and round tables to support the indigenous peoples.
We do not deny that we are no longer fashionable, nor that some of you found shelter and salary in the 4T or in the equivalents in your geographies.
But there are noble, just, true causes, right here, in the house across the street, around the corner, an hour away from the hustle and bustle of the city. A girl, a boy, a girl, a young girl, a young man, an adult, a woman, someone behaving himself, disappears. But someone remembers him, someone misses him, someone needs him, someone is looking for him.
The searchers’ collectives are not in the budget (although now they are trying to “buy” these people off by giving them a government post), they do not receive daily attention from the media, although their work is daily and has been going on for years, many, several administrations. And it is necessary to open the crack of terror that defines the daily life of this nation as a real nightmare, so that people turn their eyes to them. Yes, it will only be for a few days… until a new scandal covers the current one.
Unless you believe the same as the leader of the Senate (who maintains that in reality it could be a garage sale, or a business selling half-used shoes and clothes, and not the clothes of hundreds of murdered people), you must be moved by the testimonies, the images, the screams, the candles, the clumsy declarations of the authorities, their lack of empathy, their bet that this country is already armored against horror, death, and cynicism.
This cause, the one of searching and finding missing persons, is not a partisan cause. Moreover, these collectives have made an effort to keep out the coyotes and vultures of the political parties and acronyms that accompany them.
It is something human, or it should be. So, why not a campaign where the arts and the thinking are present in the face of that horror, yes, but also in the face of the nobility and dignity of those who seek truth and justice?
Ok, we know that you have planned your vacations, tours, engagements, birthdays, weddings, that the weather, the cold, the heat, the rain; but one day, just one day in which the arts and thought manifest themselves and let those searching people know that, at least, they have already found humanity in those of us who have this geography, Mexico, as a space of pain, of shame… and of struggle.
These people, men and women, are not looking for money (something that Mr. Beltrones will never understand), nor a position (although there is no lack of vultures around them), something that the 4T does not understand.
They are looking for their loved ones, the ones they are missing.
And whether they find them or not, they should have the satisfaction of having made us ALL see that these absentees are also our absentees.
Each one with his own, in his own geography, in his own way, with his knowledge, imagination, creativity. A day to embrace those who search tirelessly. A little light for those who seek to break the night of oblivion. A day at least to remind them and remind us that shame, empathy, anger, dignity are also human.
So brothers and sisters of the Arts and Thought, if you keep silent now, nothing and no one will be able to find you.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
On behalf of the Zapatista girls, boys, women, other women, men and elders.
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.
Mexico, March 2025.
Original text ublished by Enlace Zapatista on March 17th, 2025.