A fig-tree scuffs the breeze
with sandpaper branches.
The mountain, a thieving cat,
bristles its sour agaves.
But who will come? And where from?
(Sleepwalking Ballad.
Federico García Lorca)
Yes, the wind and the mountain seem to have known each other for a long time. I could tell you the exact date, but that’s beside the point… or the thing, depending. You may not understand this firm but apparent resignation or resistance: the mountain in enduring one blow after another; the wind in its apparent retreat, giving up to return later. Always the same, always different.
But it is not these hasty twists and turns that worry the mountain. It has seen worse, if you ask it. No, what bothers it are the storms that come with bulldozers, excavators, mineral prospectors, tourist companies, factories, shopping malls, trains, governments that pretend to be what they are not, destruction, death. In short: the system.
So, it would not be surprising if they reach an agreement, mountain and wind. After all, they share the same mother: Ixmucané, the most knowledgeable.
No, I will not tell you the exact date of their first meeting. But let us say that they have known each other for a long time, that the skeptical gesture and sneer of the mountain at the first rays and gales is something already routine. The same is true of the insolence of the wind when it tears off locks of the mountain’s green hair with the force of rain, wind and thunder. The scratches that the wind throws with clumsy passion, wounds like watery ditches, do not manage to attenuate the mountain’s bitter rejection. They meet, they part ways, and, in the end, they end up hugging and saying goodbye without promises or confessions. A complex relationship that has a lot to do with acceptance and rejection. “Love”, then.
-*-
They say that they say that they tell of a legend yet to be written, that there was a meeting and that the family of Votán, guardian and heart of the people, was summoned to it. And so the mountain said:
“My children, the most beloved, what you read before in my skin and hair is coming. The brother wind, Mr. Ik´, brings fierce news of another storm, the deadliest of all. We already know it. And it is up to the whole family to resist and defend. You are the guardians who were created to protect. Without you, we die and wander without meaning. Without us, you become lost beings, with only emptiness in your heart and no hope in your existence. The Ik´ tells what his heart saw: that, in heaven and on earth, the animals share the restlessness and the anxiety.
They hear it in Cauca and in the neighborhoods of Slovenia. In Japan and in Australia. In Canada and in SLUMIL K´AJXEMK´OP. In Norway, in Sweden, in Denmark and in Nicaragua that neither surrenders nor sells out, never! In La Polvorilla and in the festering wound that the Transisthmus Train, a suppurating open wound, makes in the hearts of the natives who fight. In the homelands that war multiplies like misfortunes and in those who have Open Arms to help the helpless. In Ostula and in Greenland. In tortured Haiti and in the Mayan cenotes defiled by the rails of demagogy. In the displaced and in those evicted from life by extortion. In the libertarian @ who has been warning for some time that the State is not a solution but a problem. In the Palestinian girl who with that bomb received the unknown of life… and the certainty of death.
This is how they speak to the brother Saami people, to the Mapuche, to the gypsy with his home on his back, to the native of all lands and seas, to those who fight and resist in the land that grows upwards, to the fisherman who works life in the sea. They tell it to girls who understand the forgotten language. To children with serious eyes. To women who search for the disappeared. To people who are already old and make up their scars like painful wrinkles. To those who are neither he nor she and fuck Roma. To all human beings who, like corn, have all the colors and on the table, on the ground, the lap has all the ways.
But not everyone listens. Only those who look far and deep understand what that word spoken by Ixmucané, the wisest, says and warns.
So, look for the way, my children. And look for whom. Raise the word with Mr. Ik´ in one hand and my heart in the other. Remind the world that death and tomorrow are gestated in the shadows of the night. Light is forged in darkness”
-*-
Yes, the wind and the mountain met again. But this time it was different. The dawn had lengthened its arrival, perhaps suffocated by the heat, but at the first ray splitting the huapác, it immediately came with a rain like a slap.
In the hut, the sound of the drops on the tin roof barely allowed anyone to hear. But one could clearly see, thanks to the wobbly benevolence of a lighter, on the table – burned and with bits of damp tobacco – a paper with multiple scribbles. On it, the only thing that could be read clearly was:
“Patience is a warrior’s virtue.”
Okay. Cheers and may the night find us as it should be, that is, awake.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
THE CAPTAIN.
August 2024.
P.S.- Yes, of course, and of the female warrior. Yes, and of the non-binary warrior. Of the neutral warrior? Seriously? *
* P.D.- Sí, claro, y de la guerrera. Sí, y de loa guerreroa. ¿De le guerrere? ¿En serio?
Original article at Enlace Zapatista, August 1st, 2024.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.