EZLN comminque 9/13/97 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Zapatista Army of National Liberation Mexico, September 13, 1997 To the participants in the Founding Congress of the Zapatista Front of National Liberation: Brothers and Sisters: In the name of all the men, women, children and elderly, the support bases and combatants of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, we give a great salute to all of you. Today begins the work of the Founding Congress of the FZLN. The hopes which hang on the results of this Congress are not a few. From all the corners of the Mexican Republic voices and ears have arrived which have found hope and a challenge in the birth of the Zapatista Front of National Liberation. The challenge of constructing a political organization of a new kind which does not struggle to take power. The hope that this new political organization can grow in all the national territory and in all the social sectors which struggle for a Mexico with democracy, liberty and justice. 20 months ago, on January 1st of 1996 from the mountains of the southeast came the call to form this new organization. This was our answer to the national consultation for peace and democracy which was carried out in August of 1995. The Fourth declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, launched from behind ski-masks and Zapatista weapons, called for the organization of a civic and peaceful Zapatista organization. An organization of a new kind which would not struggle for power but for a new relationship between those who are governed and those who govern. An organization which would promote all over the country the idea of "governing by obedience." Today the founding congress of what we called for that January of 1996 will take place. The Zapatistas of the EZLN are not present at this founding congress as direct participants but as observers. Many of you, many Mexicans ask themselves why the Zapatistas are not within the FZLN, within the organization for which we asked. Many ask themselves why we have come only to observe your congress and not to participate directly. Many ask why, in recent days, we have declared time and again that the EZLN will not form part of the FZLN and that we will be two sister organizations, which are different. Everything has an answer. The responsibility for our inability to become part of the FZLN belongs to the bad government. It is the government which refuses to resolve our just demands. It is the government which obliges us to keep our faces hidden and our hands armed. It is the government which denies us all possibility of a political and peaceful solution, with justice and dignity. It is the government which keeps us separated. It is the government which wants us to surrender through the declarations of its bureaucrats who say that we are going to transform ourselves into a political force, that the war no longer exists in the Mexican southeast. That the armed potential of the Zapatistas no longer exists. It is the government which lies saying that the Zapatistas have left their weapons without winning anything and now enter the institutional political life of Mexico. That is not so. We are not going to transform ourselves into a civic and peaceful force, the war continues in the Mexican southeast, and the Zapatistas are still armed and ready for combat. The EZLN continues to defy the supreme government with their arms, with reason and with history. This is the truth, brothers and sisters of the Frente. In our mountains our pain still waves in the black of our flag and tomorrow is still painted in its red. And it will continue to be so until our demands are satisfied and fulfilled, and until the armed struggle is converted into an absurdity and an obstacle for the revolutionary transformation of our country. So the EZLN remains armed, clandestine, rebel, it lives still. But the Zapatistas are not just in the EZLN. There are not only armed and clandestine Zapatistas. There are also civil and peaceful Zapatistas. There are also Zapatistas in the FZLN and in other parts. When we called for the formation of the FZLN we believed that peace was near and that our rebellion had to find new paths and forms of struggle to continue our obstinate path.. We thought that in little time we would be with you and next to you. With the same rebelliousness in relationship to the powerful, but without the necessity of weapons. With the same dignity for tomorrow, but without our faces hidden by the darkness of our pain or the red of our blood. However we were mistaken brothers and sisters of the Frente. Peace was not near. Peace is still far away. Before and today the government used and uses the lie of a peace which it does not imagine as anything other than surrender and punishment. However we cannot continue to hold you back or ask you to wait for us, we cannot ask you not to move forward, not to grow, not to become bigger, not to get organized until there is peace with justice and dignity and the EZLN can share with you the present and the future. It will not be military force which will direct your civilian step and place you at risk. This cannot and should not be. In the last 20 months, what will today become the FZLN has grown in all the national territory. It has workers and farmers, indigenous people, intellectual, artists, religious people, teachers, professionals, students, housewives, squatters, small businessmen, unemployed, the elderly, children, young people, women, men, homosexuals, lesbians. It contains the rebels and the forgotten ones of all of Mexico and of all the social sectors. This rebel organization which is the FZLN must continue forward, it must continue to grow, it must have its own face and make of reason, dialogue and tolerance, its weapons. This organization has to complete its birth. This should happen without those who looked for it one dawn as it is now, as a hope. The hour has arrived then, brothers and sisters of the Frente. You must be born now and begin to walk without us inside your body=85 Your country, which is called Mexico, needs you and you should respond to the call which history makes upon you. Many are the tasks which you will have before you. We only ask that you add one. That you fight for a peace with justice and dignity for the EZLN and for all of Mexico. But today we cannot walk at your side, knowing that although you are different you are brothers. The day will come when we look at the mirror and find that the wound which separated and hurt us has disappeared, that one of "us" and "you". That day will come and no one should doubt it. It will come plain and simply because we are going to win. Because we are already making history and it will turn out as it should: round. Because the earth is round, and the struggle is round and life is round, and because by dying we will be born again next to you and next to those who are not you but who struggle for a better Mexico. It is time for the powerful to tremble once again because the Zapatista Front of National Liberation is about to be born again. A salute to you brothers and sisters of the Frente! Long live the Zapatista Front of National Liberation! Long live the Zapatista Army of National Liberation! Democracy! Liberty! Justice! From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos. Mexico, 13 September of 1997 ================================================================= 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-09.16.97-01:47:16-8754