Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés told me this anecdote a few days ago: the children of former ranchers invaded some reclaimed land. Claiming that the land had belonged to their parents in the past, they moved in and began building their houses. A group of compañeros arrived to explain to them that they couldn’t do that, that the land belonged to the commons—meaning it wasn’t anyone’s property, not the state’s, not private property, and not communal land. When they saw the compañeros arrive, the squatters thought they were going to be kicked out, so they started saying that the army, the police, the judges, that they had a lawyer relative, that Trump, that Sheinbaum, that they weren’t going to be removed, that they would only that only over their dead bodies would they leave.
The compañeros smiled, listened patiently, and, once the would-be small farmers had finished with their threats, they said, “Well, brothers, we have heard your side of the story; now listen to what we have to say.” And they began to explain the concept of the commons to them—that they could work the land alongside other brothers from other towns and communities, but that the land belonged to no one. The parents of the would-be landowners understood the language, because they had grown up in that area, so the compañeros explained everything to them in the indigenous language, much to the despair of their children, who were “college graduates” from the city. During the conversation, the parents nodded in agreement with the compañeros’ arguments. When they finished, they told their children: “It’s not like what the Morena party people told us back there; these brothers are right in what they say, and they’re not going to kick us out—they’re going to be our neighbors.” They gave their children the Spanish version (which will always be poorer than the original language). Cornered by reason, the children argued: “But they won’t be able to pull off that ‘Common’ thing. People are selfish; they want to have more and more. People don’t want to share or look out for others. And it’s worse if they’re… they’re… like you guys.” They tried hard not to say “if they’re Indigenous,” perhaps fearing they’d be attacked. The compañeros replied with the blunt, “Well, we’ll see in practice whether it can be done or not.”
Since they had run out of arguments, these people moved on to their main point: “It’s just that you’re Castroists.” “What does ‘Castroists’ mean?” they asked. And they replied: “Castroists are communists, which means women are common property—they belong to everyone.” Our compañeros laughed, and one of us asked, “Then why don’t men belong to everyone?” The would-be beneficiary of the Sembrando Vida program (who actually didn’t want to become a farmer, but rather to divide up the land, request government support, and then sell off the plots) was left pondering, as if weighing the advantages of switching from “common women” to “common men,” but a compañero intervened and asked him, “So your wife is your property? “Have you already told her that you are her lord and master, that you control what she feels, what she thinks, what she wants, what she dreams?” The man hesitated. Perhaps he imagined the row he’d have with his wife if he even hinted at that, and that marriage was nothing more than a contract where he, the husband, took possession of her, the wife, “until death do them part.” A contract, then, of sale and purchase, just as one buys livestock or televisions to watch the World Cup. In other words, human trafficking, but with legal blessing.
The compañeros explained to him that the “commons” referred only to land ownership, not to labor. “So,” said the man, already on the defensive, “what I get from my work is mine?” “That’s right,” they replied. He insisted: “So, if I plant, say, bananas on my land, you’re not going to take them away from me or ask for a cut?”
“There you go again,” they told him, “it’s not YOUR land, it belongs to the Commons. And your labor, the product of your labor, is yours, and no one—at least no one from the Zapatistas—is going to take it from you or ask for a share. Just as your underwear, your car, your clothes, your house, your property, your toothbrush—your things, that is—aren’t communal. But the land is communal, and we work in shifts. You work, you harvest your crop, then others come in to work that land, then others, and so on. Only in this way will humanity be able to survive the storm. Or are things really that peaceful back in the city? Don’t you struggle with food, transportation, water, violence, disappearances, health care, education, clothes, shoes? Isn’t it true that those in power, no matter what party they belong to, are just like criminals?”
“That said, we want to make it clear that drugs cannot be consumed, produced, sold, or trafficked. And activities that harm Mother Earth—such as mining, fracking, deforestation, and water hoarding—are not allowed. Nor are alcoholism, prostitution, human trafficking, violence against women and children, contempt and neglect for the elderly, mockery and aggression against those who are different, and all those things with strange names that only serve to deceive people into thinking that the harm being done is for their own good.”
“But the land is for production,” he argued. One of the compañeros, recalling the long discussions, debates, and arguments in the Zapatista assemblies, spoke up and said: “Yes, but it’s one thing to produce for the market and another to produce for life. The land of the Commons is for life, not for profit.”
“So,” they asked, “if the land belongs to no one, what are you?”
“Guardians,” we replied. Another comrade added, “and Guardianesses.” One more said, “And (non-binary) Guardians.”
They said goodbye. They said they understood, but that they were going to consult their religion’s Bible to see if this idea of the Commons didn’t go against the word of God.
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This argument that “they won’t be able to,” based on the inevitability of individualism, selfishness, and greed, is not just an argument of capitalism. It is also found among those who call themselves leftists and patiently wait for us to fail. Not only because of individualism, nor merely because the idea of the Commons didn’t spring from their great minds with footnotes, but also because they don’t follow the “sacred” precepts of the orthodox left: first publication and propaganda to raise awareness and mobilize, then the party, then the seizure of power, then the State as representative owner and regulator. And then, many centuries later—God forbid they’re still alive—the Commons.
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But since the issue of “Castroism” has come up, and since the Cuban people are suffering under a blockade (no longer euphemistically called an “embargo”) and a new threat of military intervention, now, today, let us say a few words about that people whom we respect and admire.
We believe their resilience and defiance are evident. Not only have they sustained a social project amid every possible threat, in the face of every conceivable and inconceivable aggression, enduring global campaigns of slander and lies; but also the “sensible” reflections of those who are “neither fish nor fowl,” who pretend to be neither here nor there, and whose “kindest” remark is “it was beautiful at first, but over time it turned into a dictatorship.” That is nothing more than another way of saying: “it used to be fashionable to support Cuba; now it’s fashionable to attack it.”
Anyway, this isn’t the first time—nor will it be the last—that the death (at least in the media) of what the people themselves call “the Cuban Revolution” has been declared. In recent decades… okay, well, ever since that January of ’59, it’s been said, repeated, recited, and spouted: “Cuba won’t survive… unless it betrays itself.” Well, not in those exact words.
And it’s not just about forgetting Girón and Fidel Castro waving his hands with his team because they wouldn’t let him go to the front lines (back in those days when commanders marched at the head of their troops). Nor is it about the futile efforts of the ineffable Central Intelligence Agency, the gringo CIA, to take down the leadership. Suffice it to recall the desperation of an American congressman from those days, when he summoned those responsible for “solving the Cuban problem”: the agent explained, in great detail, the plan to poison Fidel Castro… so that his legendary beard would fall out. The congressman, his eyes and voice filled with passion, demanded: “So we’re spending all these millions to take Castro’s beard away, to shave him? Wouldn’t it have been simpler to just shoot him?”
And the downed planes, the terrorist attacks, the acts of sabotage, the “embargo,” the media rants from know-it-alls who know nothing.
And one might ask: if they managed to achieve all they have despite all that working against them, just imagine what they could have accomplished if they’d been left in peace?
Above all, it’s about forgetting the fundamental point: whether or not it’s true that they have made, are making, and will make mistakes, these are THEIR mistakes, THEIR successes, THEIR history, THEIR present, and THEIR future. And that’s hard to grasp from the desks of academia, sterile theory (without practice, then), and banal, useless commentary that doesn’t even get the requisite likes.
But set aside the trends on social media and in the news. Why haven’t they been able to break them? Why would a U.S. military intervention be necessary if, with the kind of support the Cuban opposition has had, they’d already achieved “liberation”? Listen, something about that just doesn’t add up. It’s as if there’s something about that people that can’t be understood and has nothing to do with individualism, selfishness, greed, and the like. Maybe—I don’t know, it could be a wild guess—but it occurs to me that it’s a matter of language: perhaps the Cuban alphabet lacks the letters to spell the word “surrender.”
And Cuba also comes up because, as far as I recall, the July 26 Movement did not follow the manuals of the communist orthodoxy of the time, which had confined the work of the Latin American left to the dictates of the then “socialist camp.” In short: they made their own history. Not for books, analyses, or reflections without consistent practice, but for life.
Cuba, so close to the United States and so far from understanding, will endure. Because there are those who hope the island will become a Mariel (the nearest port and to the United States and designated Special Development Zone, marked by a submarine base, a power station and cement works) from end to end, but there are those who know that it will be a Playa Girón (the site of the thwarted U.S. Bay of Pigs invasion, and an area of pristine natural beauty, wetlands and coral reef) , which was that the sun will behold as it rises… the day after.
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These thoughts have occurred to me now that I have attended some of the “Interzonas” meetings (I put it in quotes because its name will change at any moment), in assemblies of autonomous and responsible authorities, theater artists, art and culture coordinators, members of Como Mujeres que Somos, young women and men, and “sensible” men and women (that is, older folks), where they discuss and debate something new. Yes, new—new.
I think I’ve said before that we Zapatistas don’t seek how to be happy, but how to be unhappy. Since it is our way to impose new challenges on ourselves, work, changes unexpected the day before, ruthless internal criticism, sleepless nights, stomachaches (with or without raw tamales), worries, long discussions, falls, and getting back up. And so I understand that the problem—our problem—is that we try to live out what we dream. And that’s how it goes for us.
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Dreams remain dreams until they are planted in reality. What follows is a long and bumpy road, full of stumbles, setbacks, and more downs than ups. And, of course, the inevitable presence of those who insist that it can’t be done this way, that it’s not time yet, that it won’t work, that it’s impossible. The establishment has always demanded obedience and submission in its daily capitulation.
The late Marcos used to say that everything is impossible the day before. He said it with December 31, 1993, in mind, and he repeated it and repeats it every time a new idea, a new initiative—internal or external—is heard in indigenous languages of Mayan origin and in Spanish… in the mountains of southeastern Mexico.
Because there will always be someone—someone on the margins—who takes that dream into their own hands, prepares the ground and the timing, the schedule and the geography, and, without ritualistic ceremonies, ostentatious declarations, or empty promises, begins to work toward that dream.
Then, and only then, do dreams cease to be just dreams and become… a possibility.
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So, is it that there are more changes coming? Yes, I’m afraid so—and I’m glad there are (sigh).
(To be continued…)
From the mountains of southeastern Mexico.
Original text published at Enlace Zapatista on May 17th, 2026.
Translation published by Schools for Chiapas.