Chiapas News Summary, 5/16 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - amanecer@aa.net Wed May 17 23:35:55 2000 CHIAPAS NEWS SUMMARY ********************************** by irlandesa May 16, 2000. "... Learning to dream, they learn how to make themselves great, to make themselves dignified, they learn to struggle. That is why, when true men and women say 'we are going to dream,' they are saying, and they are saying to each other, 'we are going to struggle'..." The News It could have been scripted anywhere, and most likely was. The immediate reaction to the government's swift sending in of the PFP - or the "official" paramilitary group, as Carlos Fazio calls them [La Jornada, Carlos Fazio, 'La Provocacion' 15/5/00] - was one of chaos and impromptu bungling. The erstwhile Secretary of Government, Diodoro Carrasco, who, on May 8, had been assuring everyone that the ambushes and bloodshed in Chenalho were regrettable, but absolutely no way, cross his heart, were they "within the jurisdiction of the Federal Preventive Police." [La Jornada, Aranda and Roman, 9/5/00]. Three days later - the PFP having scuttled into the state en masse - he was being equally adamant that the newly arrived PFP boys would not be a "destabilizing influence" in Chiapas. [La Jornada, Jesus Aranda, 12/5/00] Then there was Emilio Rabasa Gamboa, ever the comic relief, opining as to how there was absolutely no way the PFP would ever, cross his heart, do anything in Montes Azules. He was swiftly contradicted by the PFP officer in charge of a group combing the municipality of Pantelho, who confirmed to La Jornada reporters that the force was indeed also carrying out operations in Montes Azules [La Jornada, Juan Balboa, 14/5/00]. In the meantime, we had: - The Comandancia of the CCRI of the EZLN issuing a terse communique, a refreshing change from the improvisational theatre above, calling a spade a spade, and, among other things, condemning government complicity in the recent paramilitary assaults in Chenalho. Which they had then turned around and tried to blame on zapatista support bases. - The state government then did indeed - oops - have to turn around and admit that the second of the three ambushes had not only been absolute theatre, but had not, in fact, even opened. It was pure fantasy: the names of the victims and perps, the incident, all of it. One only hopes that, at the very least, the paramilitaries will not be getting their usual royalties for that one. - Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, presidential candidate and Pablo Salazar Mendiguchia, candidate for governor of Chiapas, in a 3 day swing through the state, vowing to honor the San Andres Accords, demilitarize the state, disappear the paramilitaries, and, simply, put in place an honorable government. The State of the State As so often happens, the latest news out of Chiapas - the innumerable signs, consistently pointing to the possibility that the government is planning a final strike against the EZLN, or "merely" increasing its death grip on the people or stepping up its acceptable level of State terrorism or trying to secure a win for the PRI in Chiapas by putting a checkpoint at every polling place or whatever - is already slowly drifting off the front pages. The PFP will remain. They are there. They will not be retreating to any barracks. And they will be doing whatever they are told by whomever happens to be doing the telling, whether it be the Department of Government, Peace and Justice or the Cisen. The Imperatives Shining light, as ever. Being informed, getting the material [and there is plenty of it: from Gilberto Lopez y Rivas' terrific report on the paramilitaries in Chiapas to the FZLN Backgrounder and many, many in-between. Just ask, I'll send any of it. In English or in Spanish. Go after media persons. Local papers are always desperate for material. Give it to them. Talk about the autonomias, about paramilitaries, about the socio-economic indices in Chiapas, about the police state, about Subcomandante Marcos [see below], about globalization and local layoffs, about Mayday and the World Bank and the IMF and the WTO and NAFTA. If you're in the UK, talk about the Ford closing. Give them paper and maps and pictures and poetry [see below]. Talk about the zapatistas in Mexico City, and the rest of the country. Give them the words they spoke there. Give them the words however you wish. On paper planes or in neat binders. Give them videos and tapes and music and facts and dreams. Give them the struggle. [** Please know, as many of you do, that I will be more than happy to swiftly send you any of the above mentioned words - or any others - in English or in Spanish, in text or neatly packaged in Word, ready for printing out for your favorite congressperson/media connection/lover]. Marcos, On Not Losing the Page The History of Dreams "The history I am going to tell you was not told to me by anyone. Well, my grandfather told it to me, but he warned me that I would only understand it while I was dreaming. And so I am telling you the story which I dreamt, and not the one my grandfather told me." Old Antonio stretches his legs and rubs his tired knees. He releases a puff of smoke which clouds the reflection of the moon in the sheet of steel which rests across his legs, and he continues... "In every furrow of the skin which appears in the faces of the great grandparents, our gods keep themselves and live. It is the faraway time which comes towards us. The truth of our ancestors travels through time. The great gods speak through the oldest of the old, we listen. When the clouds settle over the land, barely grasping the hills with their little hands, then the first gods come down to play with the men and women, they teach them true things. The first gods reveal little, their faces are night and cloud. Dreams which we dream in order to be better. "Through dreams the first gods speak to us and instruct us. The man who does not know how to dream remains very alone and he hides hid ignorance in fear. So that they could speak, so that they could know and make known, the first gods taught the men and women of the maize to dream, and they gave them nahuales so they could walk through life. "The nahuales of the true men and women are the jaguar, the eagle and the coyote. The jaguar in order to fight, an eagle in order to fly the dreams, the coyote in order to think and to pay no mind of the tricks of the powerful. "In the world of the first gods, those who formed the world, everything is dream. The land we live and die in is a great mirror of the dream in which the gods live. The great gods live all together. They are partners. There are not those above and those below. It is the injustice which the government makes which breaks apart the world and puts a few above and many below. Not like that in the world. The true world, the great mirror of the dream of the first gods, those who created the world, is very large and everyone fits together. It is not like the world of right now, which they make small so that the few can remain above and the many remain below. The world of now is not complete, it is not a good mirror to reflect the dreams where the first gods live. "For that, the gods gifted the men of maize with a mirror which is called dignity. In it, men see themselves as equals, and they become rebels if they are not equal. That is how the rebellion of our first grandparents began, those who now die in us so we might live. "The mirror of dignity serves to defeat the demons spread by darkness. Seen in the mirror, the man of darkness sees himself reflected as the nothing which forms him. As if he were nothing, the man of darkness, the uncoupler of the world, becomes undone in front of the mirror of dignity. "The gods set four points so that the world would be put to bed. Not because it was tired, but so that the men and women would walk in pairs, so that all would fit, so that no one would put themselves above the other. The gods set two points, in order to fly and to be able to be on the land. The gods set one point so that the true men and women would be walking. Seven are the points which give meaning to the world and work to the true men and women: in front and behind, the one side and the other, above and below, and the seventh is the path we dream, the destiny of the men and women of maize, the true ones. "The gods gave mother women a moon in each breast, so that they could nurture the new men and women with dreams. History and memory come with them, without them, death and the forgetting consume. The land, our great mother, has two breasts, so that men and women may learn how to dream. Learning to dream, they learn how to make themselves great, to make themselves dignified, they learn to struggle. That is why, when true men and women say 'we are going to dream,' they are saying and they are saying to each other, 'we are going to struggle'." Old Antonio fell silent. He fell silent or I remained asleep. I dream that I dream, I dream that I know, I dream that I understand... Above, the bosom of the moon brought luck along the road of Santiago. The dawn was queen and everything remained to be done, to be dreamt, to be struggled for. The Sup, packing memories and munitions. -- Subcomandante insurgente Marcos, 12/25/95. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-05.18.00-13:20:59-15147