Let us suppose, without conceding, that you can imagine the following:
You were born to a native people. In a community you acquired your language, your culture, your way. All this makes you different. For official anthropology, your language is a “dialect” and your people is an “ethnicity.” You are what progressives call “an Indian”. It doesn’t matter your skin color, because as soon as you start to say something, you will notice the gesture of contempt from your non-Indian interlocutor. You will see, too, how that person instinctively reaches into his or her pocket to give you a coin. That person will assume that you are inferior, ignorant, dirty, poor, superstitious, manipulable… and stupid. But, anyway, that’s the way you were born. No matter what you do, nothing will change that attitude. Just as one is are culturally indigenous, so too one is culturally racist, even if it is a “cool” racism.
Now let’s suppose, without conceding, that your indigenous people, your language, your culture, your way of life, is the Cho’ol, a people of Mayan roots, who live in the southeastern Mexican states of Chiapas, Tabasco and Campeche.
Let us suppose, without conceding, that, like all native peoples, you have suffered scorn, racism, injustice, beatings, deceit and mockery – in addition, of course, to forced disappearances, imprisonment, rape and murder – just for being who you are: a Cho’ol indigenous person.
Let’s suppose, without conceding, that you know that part of the original peoples in Chiapas, including the Cho’ol people, are part of an organization called ezetaelene (also known as “the Zapatistas of Chiapas” or “neozapatistas” or “transgressors of the law” or whatever is in fashion), which took up arms on January 1, 1994, in what they called “the beginning of the war against oblivion”, and thus put an end to Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s plan for a trans-sexennial Power (it used to be the wet dream of the Salina eras, and now it is the wet dream of Morena).
Let us suppose, without conceding, that you are not an official anthropologist or historiographer, that is, that you know that, for centuries, native peoples have been treated by modernity (different but similar governments and stages) with a mixture of disgust and pity. And who knows that these natives exist, live and struggle beyond books, museums, tourist destinations, handicrafts and governmental speeches.
Let us suppose, without conceding, that you know that these Zapatista peoples are in rebellion and resistance because they have embarked on the path of a terrible and marvelous construction: another world, one where all worlds fit.
Let us suppose, without conceding, that you, like Cho’ol, had the bad luck to be born and live near the estate of a powerful character.
Let us suppose, without conceding, that your name or your grace is José Díaz Gómez, and you are a prisoner in a Chiapas jail accused of being a Cho’ol and of… being a Zapatista.
Now, changing the channel, let’s suppose that you can have access to what is said in the courts, police stations and jails of Chiapas. Not without chagrin you hear the following: “He is a Zapatista, one of those who criticize and do not support the president.” “The boss is going to be happy that we punish one of the conservatives who refuse to be saved by modernity and progress (i.e. the 4T).”
Now, let’s assume, without conceding, that your freedom, as a cho’ol and Zapatista, depends on multiple factors: the mood of the judge that day, the public prosecutor, the police, the other finqueros (that is, besides the one who has his finca in Palenque), the need for little gray men to ingratiate themselves to superiors who don’t even know they exist.
Let’s suppose that you know that a non-governmental human rights organization (one of those so vilified by the supreme court – along with paid media workers), has demonstrated your innocence, and the accusing party cannot even present the slightest proof against your freedom – and that of other persecuted comrades of yours. But it is useless because you are not innocent of the 2 crimes for which you have been imprisoned for almost 2 years: being indigenous and being a Zapatista.
Now, let us suppose, without conceding, that you go, simultaneously, to the Zócalo of Mexico City and contemplate an iron and papier-mâché structure which, it is assumed, without conceding, is a replica of a pyramid of the Mayan people.
Let us suppose, without conceding, that you then reflect and conclude that this is indigenism in Mexico: a papier-mâché simulation as a tribute to a distant past (and manipulable in the official historiography), and thousands of injustices “administered” by the government in office, against native peoples in the present. For the governments, the native peoples are the raw material for their factory of “historical” alibis … and culprits.
Now, let us suppose, without conceding, that you have been commissioned -given your capacity and, above all, the fact that you are not a Zapatista cho’ol- to give a magisterial conference at the school for cadres of EL PARTIDO, called “The revolution of consciences in the Fourth Transformation.”
Would you feel bad? At least uncomfortable? Out of place?
Or, like most of your co-religionists, would you say to yourself “everything is for the good of the movement and so that the extreme right does not return,” “the Zapatistas had their moment, but they have gone out of fashion”?
Then you could conclude that, if you were not indigenous, if you were not a Zapatista and if you were not critical of the government in office, you would be free and would not have wasted two years of your life?
Of course, all this is assuming, without conceding, that you have imagination, sensitivity and a sense of justice.
And, of course, that you are not a scoundrel. Or a (feminine) scoundrel, (not wanting to forget gender parity).
Okay then. Cheers and stop looking up, the struggle for life is below.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.El Capitán.
August, 2024.
P.S.- All “modern” justice systems are unreformable. They are based on an assumption that is contradicted daily by reality: “all people are equal before the law”. And no, it is not so, because “he who pays the piper, calls the tune.”
Original text published at Enlace Zapatista on August 2nd, 2024.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.