Day 2 of the Encuentro Intergalactico (December 31, 2006)

Oventik, Chiapas December 31st, 2006

The second day of the ¨First Encounter of the Zapatista Communities with the Peoples of the World¨ took place on the last day of 2006. The New Year’s Eve workshops included presentations by the five Caracoles on the topics of education, health, and women. Representatives of the Juntas de Buen Gobierno, or the Good Government Councils, elaborated on the work of the education promoters, the health promoters, and the revolutionary women in each community. The members of the Zapatista bases explained the experiences of their alternative educational system, the achievements of the alternative healthcare system, and the struggles for equality that women face in the community. After 13 years of fighting for autonomy and against the neoliberal world order, the Zapatistas have achieved huge gains while confronting the challenges and problems faced in constructing this anti-capitalist project. As the communities construct autonomy, they have faced many issues in the creation of a world where many worlds coexist.

Education

The session on education provided a space to give information about the process, challenges, and advancement of each of the five caracoles Zapatistas. The educational system imposed by the Bad Government is individualistic and mal-informed with respect to the history and cultures of indigenous peoples, and since the inception of the Zapatista movement, the communities have created their own education, or as they call it, ¨the other education¨. The workshop explained that the base of the Zapatista education is centered on a collective form of teaching. Education for the Zapatista community is a transformative action which is contrary to the traditional education that uses methods of memorization and individualistic forms of capitalist ideology promoted by the Bad Government. Some of the challenges in education are due to financial shortcomings, but they have managed to open various schools in their municipalities and have capacitated various promoters for their community schools. It was expressed that Zapatista education is ¨liberating, analytical, critical, conscious-raising, and reflective¨. This is revolutionizing the concept of education promoted by the Bad Government. Following each of the Zapatista presentations, people asked questions which the community representatives answered. Afterwards, adherents from throughout the world were given time to share the way they practice their autonomy in their particular communities.

Health

Each Caracol spoke about health issues and some of the themes included: the lack of support from the government, the lack of medicine for curable diseases, and the lack of access to hospitals for rural communities which can become expensive in case of emergencies. The Caracoles have worked to meet the needs of the communities through ¨la otra salud¨. Some Zapatista communities now operate 24 hour clinics and provide vaccination to children from throughout the municipalities in each caracol. The lack of vaccinations was one of the main ideas that the workshop focused on. The health promoters work in the Zapatista communities to educate others about the importance of maintaining sanitary conditions by creating spaces for trash and waste away from the people and the plants. They briefly spoke about working to get ecologically-friendly ovens in homes, so that women won’t be exposed to so much smoke, and especially when they are pregnant. Other issues that were brought up included, alternative medicines, sexual education, abortions, physical abuse, mental health, oral hygiene, civil marriages, and diets.

Women

Being a mujer in Mexico was enough reason for the Zapatista mujeres to identify with the struggle. Women were looked at as property and as a source of labor prior to the 1994 rebellion, but the uprising changed all of that. The indigenous women of Mexico have no place, no voice, and no control in the machista society. It was explained during the forum that womyn suffered three times more exploitation than the man; one for being poor, another for being indigenous, and finally for being a woman. Womyn who live in poverty must struggle to make a living for themselves and also for their families. They typically work from sun up to sun down with little or no monetary compensation. The indigenous people of Mexico have traditionally been seen as second class citizens and are not taken into account in national debates. Mujeres have no voice in terms of matrimony or in domestic work. They could not choose their husbands or the amount of children they wished to bear prior to the Zapatista uprising and the 10 Revolutionary Women’s Laws. Womyn also could not own property or hold positions of power equal to their male compañeros. It is safe to say that the mujeres in Mexican society are second class citizens who have no control over their lives or choices. However, the Zapatista women hold many different positions in the Good Government and are equal to men in their society. Today, the Zapatista womyn have the right to marry whomever they please, they have the right to work in their home, as well as in the battlefields. They are part of the collective community and everyone is taken into account so that each person’s voice is heard. Zapatista women are contributing to a society that recognizes them as people and they are struggling to preserve the same indigenous society for the generations to come.

The Celebration

The celebration for the 13^th anniversary of the First Declaration of the Selva Lacandon began after midnight and lasted until 5AM the next morning. The festivities included a presentation of the Mexican and EZLN flag as well as the Mexican national anthem. The featured speakers included Comandante David and Comandante Moises, but the main speech was given by Comandanta Hortencia and Subcomandante Marcos. In an interesting twist, Marcos began his acto by giving his speech in the indigenous Mayan language of Tzotzil, while Hortencia translated the same speech in Spanish. The discourse centered on the theme of the EZLN resistance, with an eye to the pueblos of the world via the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle. The comandancia through its spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos explained that La Otra Campaña is the vehicle used to transport the hopes of the EZLN which is to unite with other indigenous communities in Mexico as well as the pueblos of the world. They spoke about the start of their public battle with Neoliberalism in 1994, the fallen comrades, and their goals and dreams. The Comite Clandestino Revolucionario Indigena (CCRI) also remembered their political prisoners and gave a special message of solidarity to the struggles in Oaxaca and Atenco. The EZLN hopes that after La Otra Campaña’s first stage, that together with the rest of the country, they can form a national agenda of social change in Mexico from below and to the left. The ceremony concluded with the Zapatista national anthem and a huge dance that went on until the wee hours of the morning. Apart from the inspiration felt by the participants at the sight of thousands of Zapatista in a liberated community, the most important thing is that the cultural events are family affairs free of drugs, alcohol, and other vices found throughout the world. The Intergalactic continued on the third day and concluded on January 2^nd, 2007.

The purpose of the Intergalactic Encuentro was for the Zapatista communities to speak on their experiences in the construction of autonomous governments and to exchange ideas with the pueblos of the world. In reality, the workshops on the second day were like a mirror that the Zapatistas held up to the rest of the work to help us reflect on our own struggles at home to become educated, healthy, and more egalitarian in our relationships with men and womyn. In the United States, our communities fight for educational and bilingual opportunities, for access to healthcare, and to become equal and respected members of society. The neoliberal world model has made it clear that its priority is not to educate, cure, or treat human beings as equals; many communities including the Zapatistas have chosen to create autonomous alternatives. Since the creation of the Caracoles and the Juntas de Buen Gobierno in August of 2003, the Zapatistas have made it their priority to take care of their community’s needs. The compañeros no longer are asking for permission to be free, and since the bad government won’t do it, the Zapatistas decided to create their own system of justice, liberty, and dignity.

Collectively written by members of Autonomous Peoples Collective in Los Angeles