The book arrived a few days earlier. At that time the Zapatista leaders were in a meeting. They analyze, evaluate, propose. The theme is “the common.” Hopefully, Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés will someday let them know the result of the assessment. In other words, how all this of the commons is going in Zapatista lands.
The thing is that I was preparing a talk that I had to give. And then the book arrived. I just leafed through it. It is in a language that we don’t know, that I don’t know, and that, after researching, I learned that it was “Slovenian.” I guess there is an English edition (you can guess in the index), but we were sent the “Slovenian” edition.
I then took the book to the meeting and showed it to the bosses. I asked them why or what had happened for their word, as Zapatistas, to appear in a language that, more than 30 years ago, we didn’t even know existed.
I waited a few seconds and continued: “I am going to tell you why. And I am going to tell you a story. Your story. The story of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.”
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When they were done talking and it was time for pozol, they gathered around the book. I asked them what the book said. Smiling, they answered that they did not know. I told them: “What if they are insulting us and we don’t know, because we don’t understand that language.” “I don’t think so,” replied one of them, part of the delegation, ”because they invited us and they don’t even know us, they fed us, they put us up in their places and showed us what their struggle is. They taught us, you see. So it means that they respect us, just as we respect them. I don’t think they are talking badly in this book”.
A compañera, also a delegate, stared at the book. She took it in her hands and told me, with a defiant look: “Listen captain sup, sure, we do not understand their word that is written here. But we know and understand their struggle because these people showed it to us. Which is to say we saw it and we learned it. So it doesn’t matter the language of these people, what matters is what they are. And what we saw is that they are people in the struggle.”
Another compa interjects, “and they are like us Zapatista peoples, because it doesn’t matter to them if you are from ‘another’ planet, what matters is that you fight against the Hydra. Because ‘the’ system doesn’t care what language you speak, it exploits you, represses you, steals from you, scorns you.”
One compañera hasn’t stopped laughing. She says to me: “How can you believe that, Captain Sup, if they received us so beautifully, with songs and fireworks? It was clear that their hearts were very happy and content.”
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“It turns out that when we arrived in that place we were afraid, embarrassed. We were afraid to talk. Because we saw that the people there are very different. I mean, they are very tall and we are short. They are also dark-skinned and we are dark-skinned. What was more difficult for us is that they don’t speak Spanish, rather they speak their language. When it was our turn to give the talk, since we were with another team of compas, the compas encouraged us to start giving the talk, and we did start. Although the truth is that it was difficult, because when we were explaining, the translator stopped us every few minutes because he had to translate each part. That’s how we got settled in. We had to speak bit by bit so that it could be translated well and completely. And the translator doesn’t understand some words in Castilian. We had to be very attentive and concentrated so as not to lose in our heads what we had to explain. So they are different in everything, but they are like us in the struggle.”
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“It’s in the Balkans,” Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés clarified to me earlier. “They were not organized as countries for the Tour for Life, but for a whole zone, which is what they call the Balkans. They were well organized. Since they don’t recognize borders, they are not fighting about whether you are from this country or that country. When I was telling them about Zapatismo, I told them that they accused us of wanting to “balkanize” the country. And then they applauded and shouted. Later I understood that for them that word meant “to unite when there is agreement,” because, in spite of very bitter wars, they are fighting together, but separately. They unite in the struggle against the division imposed on them by those above. But it is not that there are those who command and those who obey, no. They come to agreement. They coordinate. And they also work the land. So they also fight for life. For us, with the trip, which was the Tour, what changed is that before we did not know that there are other peoples like us who do not surrender to the monster and who rebel. The Balkans was a very good learning experience, because they unite, but they do not lose their independence, that is to say, their particularity. When there is something in common, then they quickly agree and, without losing what each one is, they become one. In other words, they are separate, but together. If anyone will understand the commonality that we propose, it is these sister organizations. On the Balkan route there was the whole and the parts.”
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Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés continues, “Since, like the Saami people, they did not present themselves as a country, I met with them to see how they wanted to be named. They answered things like this:”
For us, the correct wording is the Balkan route. This is not (just) a geographical description, but primarily a political one.
For centuries, the Balkans have been the Other of Europe, the wild, untamed, uncivilized part of Europe: a testing ground of all kinds of colonial, war, capitalist and extractivist exploitation on the one hand, and a space where all the orientalist stereotypes of Europe are present, projected on the other.
It has been a space of great nationalist conflicts, resulting in many wars, including that of the 1990s which was for our generation, born in the last decade of socialist Yugoslavia, a very formative experience when we were children.
Then, when we, as anarchists, anti-fascists and anti-authoritarians started to become politically active, the Balkan perspective was always clear to us: the only way to overcome nationalist divisions and hatred is to build the Balkans from below, connecting every collective and movement in them. During the last two decades (since the years of anti-globalization, the struggle against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and later all the struggles of workers, students, migrant solidarity, feminists, environmentalists, etc., were carried out through the Balkans.
We are not connected in one organization, rather, we operate as independent collectives in each territory (known as different Balkan states, such as Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Kosovo, etc.). We have a common event once a year (Balkan anarchist Bookfair), which is a meeting and reflection space for all collectives otherwise operating in their own territories. Sometimes, as in the case of the Zapatista visit, or the migrant route in 2015, we work together in this decentralized network of Balkan solidarity.
So, in short, for us the concept of Balkan Route is a political concept, and we prefer to use it, rather than talking about activities in each country. The preparation of the Zapatista visit was done through common meetings of all the national coordinations in different territories, and it always had that international Balkan feeling, to work together and create a common space of struggle.
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Alright then. Cheers and may the attempts of hegemony and homogenization not ruin everything… again.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
El Capitan.
August 2024.