First he snorted in irritation. His fur bristled like a surly and rebellious cat, disdainful of boxes and pyramids. Just like that, without even warning.
Then, for those who do not know, a kind of tender caress. Then the clawing, increasing in quantity and strength. And then, a whirlwhind of discontent. Before long, it was a runner. The fury of the wind was joined by a rain as if to tell the windstorm that it shared its rage. It threw men and leaves against the walls of the champas and, I swear, the foundations of the concrete pavilion creaked.
Wind and rain. Nowhere to turn. Better to be left in the middle of the fury than to risk the guillotine flight of the torn sheet metal as if defying the modest modesty of the galleries already cleaned, with paint and walls renovated.
But, strangely enough, the storm respected the periphery and concentrated in the center. There, where the skeleton of a pyramid rose not a few meters from the gravel.
As if to say: “No pyramids here”.
And the blankets that simulated the walls of the pyramid, swelled with that mixture of wings and sails that at times resembled a wandering ship and at times a lost aircraft, with no land in sight, only with the certainty that below was the ground waiting without haste, as if saying “just right here”.
We tried to talk to it, but, between the rain and the gale force winds, we barely managed to get it to let up long enough for the fellows who had climbed to the top to place the money sign to come down. Immediately, a strong, concentrated blowing blew the sails off and the blanket flew up the mountain.
“That’s how ghosts are born,” I thought.
We began to explain in a rushed manner that it was not to be left per se, but rather as an explanation of the policy. To reveal, that is. That there were no true or false gods. That, of itself, is going to be destroyed. Not only that one, but all the pyramids. Yes, in the whole and in the parts. Yes, in all the corners of the planet.
He slowly faded away, as if doubting our commitment.
He left later but not quickly, as if to say “if the human being does not comply, we, the parts of the first mother, will comply”.
-*-
SubMoy checked the construction and said: “It’s not going to fall easy”.
A compa, as it were, made a nick in one of the crossbeams with his machete. He only muttered: “It’s going to fall, it’s going to fall. It might delay, but it falls because it falls”.
“The most difficult thing will be the central column, it is very solid,” he added, “we will have to put a lot of strength, a lot of desire and not just a few of us, but many”.
“That is: in common and organized,” said a young painter. We all laughed, although we were still frightened by that irritated wind, who knows where it came from.
“That post is well rooted. Even if they knock it down, it will resprout. You have to pull it up to the roots,” said an elderly woman, planted in jars in front of the wooden construction, as if defying it.
“It is the soul of the system,” responded a companion to a girl’s question about the central mast, “the private property of the land, of the machines, of the houses, of the people, of nature, of dreams and nightmares, of the skies and the seas, of what is seen and what is not seen, of the world, therefore. It is not only at the foundation of the system. It is also in our head, in our heart and in our history.”
“But how many are coming?” they asked me.
“A good many,” I replied.
“But do they bring their will to fight?” they insisted.
“Saber,” I said to myself, “as SubMoy says: it remains to be seen.”
“Hey captain, is that thing going to be there all my life,” a militia woman asked me.
“No, how do you think, it’s for the Zapatista talk, why do you ask?”
“Because I think a soccer team is coming and that thing is in front of one of the goals, where our dining room is. So there will be neither game or food. The soccer game, whatever, but the food, well…”
The afternoon began to sprout from the trees. For an instant, the moon, the sun, the rain and the wind coincided, appearing before the mountain.
-*-
Is that going to be there forever?
Well, no, that’s why we are fighting. It might linger, but there are going to be more of us.
And in the wind followed the warning that the rain engraved on the earth:
“If the human being does not comply, we will comply, the parts of the first mother. The pyramid will fall.
-*-
Not far away in calendars and geographies, Palestine remained a tear of blood on the indifferent face of the world’s governments.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
The Captain
July 2025
Original text published at Enlace Zapatista on July 16th, 2025.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.