TUXTLA GUTIÉRREZ, CHIAPAS. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) highlighted the struggle of the searching mothers and families and criticized the government’s apathy and impunity in the face of these demands for justice.
Captain Marcos expressed that the searching mothers and families, with their aching hands and hearts, “knock, grope for the door that believes itself powerful, eternal, unbreakable.”
“Those hands don’t beg, that heart doesn’t plead. They only calculate where to vent their dignified rage and find, finally, truth and justice,” he affirmed.
Faced with this struggle, Marcos asserted that the door of impunity, cynicism, apathy, complicity, and contempt hides absences behind it “(like the door that says Colima Prosecutor’s Office and charges 200,000 pesos to hand over body parts).”
The searchers not only carry picks and shovels, they now carry sledgehammers and axes. That’s how challenging their endeavor is, he noted.
In a statement, the Zapatista warned that no one is safe from “the storm.” Listen to someone who has already suffered it, to searchers, to indigenous peoples, to all those people “who live from day to day, working from darkness to darkness for a few cents.”
Then, he specified, you will know that you are or were normal people, who thought they were safe with what they had built through their own efforts.
Learn, he said, “how the nightmare came kicking down your doors. How anguish became commonplace and changed your agenda and your daily life.”
Understand, he added, that no one is safe anywhere, regardless of skin color, gender, social position, or playlist.
Marcos suggested taking a look at what “those at the top” are planning for “the day after.” They don’t take you into account; they even plan to “impersonate” you.
Even more, the EZLN captain shared, “those at the top” dream of an artificial intelligence that develops enough to simulate vocation, spark, ingenuity, creativity, soul, or whatever you want to call “that which makes them human.”
Original article by Óscar Gutiérrez, El Universal, April 12, 2025.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.