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Subcomandante Marcos at the Bridge
“We Don’t Recognize this Border.”
Words of El Subcomandante Marcos at the Stanton Street International
Bridge, El Paso-Juárez
November 1, 2006, 10:30 am
WE’VE
COME HERE
today to symbolically shut down this international bridge in
solidarity with the people of Oaxaca and also to protest the many
injustices that we’ve seen in Ciudad Juárez, in the state of Chihuahua
and throughout the entire border that we’ve traveled through from
Tijuana to this point.
We have seen that this wall that the government
of Bush is building with the complicity of the Fox government is
intended to kill our people. There was the wall formed by the desert,
the wall of the river and now this wall. Our compañeros who go to work,
not to do any harm, but who cross the border to work in the United
States are being treated like terrorists. We’ve seen that here in
Ciudad Juárez there is no justice. Young women are killed without
anyone finding out who committed these murders. The governments of
Juárez and Chihuahua are each day more and more complicit with this.
We’ve come here to tell Oaxaca that it is not alone and to tell the
people of Juárez, El Paso and Texas that we support your struggles. For
the first time two persons without a brain have found each other—Mister
Bush and Mister Fox. Both sides of the border are suffering the
injustice of having governments that we don’t deserve. The The Other
Campaign doesn’t recognize this border. [At this point a Black Hawk
Customs and Border Patrol helicopter appears. It hovers about 100 feet
on top of the 2,500 demonstrators at the bridge spreading a coat of
brown dust over them.] The Other Campaign considers our compañeros on
the other side as a part of Mexico, a part of ourselves, part of our
blood and our struggle. Our fight doesn't recognize neither this
helicopter, nor this line, nor this flag that waves above. Compañeros,
there is no other side. Those on the other side are those up there,
sitting on that helicopter, in the White House and in Los Pinos. And
those of us here at the bottom will make sure that they fall to the
bottom. This is our proposal, that people from below be the ones that
give the orders and that the governments be the ones who obey.
“Whose Land is This? Resisting Conquest.”
Subcomandante Marcos at the Preparatoria Altavista in Juárez
November 1, 2006, 1 p.m.
(Excerpts
from Subcomandante Marcos' talk to a group of activists from El Paso,
New Mexico and other parts of the U.S and Mexico. Members of the Paso
Del Sur Group and members of the Civic Front for Ciudad Juárez
were at
this discussion. The connection was made between Santa Teresa-San
Jeronimo plan and the PDNG Downtown- Segundo Barrio plan. The same
secretive and vicious pattern of carrying out their binational urban
development plan has been adopted on both sides of the border by
William Sander's Verde Realty Group—on the
American side—and Eloy Vallina and the Zaragoza Group—on
the Mexican
side. This is no coincidence, since they sit on the same boards and
coordinate their actions. The Zaragoza Group first tried to buy out the
working-class residents of Lomas de Poleo who are in the way of their
redevelopment schemes. When that didn't work, they resorted to violent
methods of intimidation to
get rid of the Lomas de Poleo residents including burning down homes
and the alleged murder by guards paid by the Zaragoza family of
Luis Alberto Rodríguez, one of the community activists resisting
the forced relocations. Read La Jornada on Lomas de Poleo.)
A
FEW YEARS ago, we crossed over to the other side through Ciudad Juárez,
to El Paso. We stayed in the Segundo Barrio for a while. From there we
took the highway to Albuquerque, then Phoenix, San Diego and finally
arrived in Los Angeles. That’s why my English is rather pocho, we’ll
actually it’s not rather pocho, it’s very pocho. (Laughter.) And when
we first arrived in El Paso, we asked ourselves the question which I’m
sure many of you have asked yourselves as well: “Who is the real
foreigner on this side of the river? Is it those with Mexican blood in
their veins or is it those sitting in positions of power, those with
Anglo-Saxon blood or maybe even Latin blood in their veins? Whom does
this land truly belong to?”
...I would like you to consider as
part of your analysis of our situation, a concept which many have
forgotten—the idea of war and conquest. We are here today representing
the indio communities of the National Indigenous Council and from our
perspective we see that what is taking place on both sides of the Rio
Grande is a process of conquest. In the past, this conquest was carried
out by Spanish armies with horses, harquebuses and cannons. Today, on
both sides, it is carried out by political means, with their laws, their senators and
governors and political parties.
The original plan of the
North American government was to push the border down to central
Mexico. This is essentially what the Puebla-Panama Plan was about. It
was about creating a barrier—a social, political, legal and even a
physical one—right along the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in central Mexico.
South of this line everything would be considered South America, and
north of it, North America...
But what we, as members of The
Other Campaign are proposing—as our response to the North American
government’s war of conquest— is to push the border northward. The
reason we are here on the border today is to understand not only other
communities that are fighting against this process of conquest but
other realities and experiences as well. We understand that this other
Mexico that is located north of the Rio Grande, this Mexico that is
living within the “belly of the beast”—as José Martí put it—has its own
way of being and its own way of seeing things. We won’t allow La Otra
Campaña to become the ultimate body that organizes and homogenizes
everything. La Otra Campaña will only be successful when every
difference that makes up our collectivity has its own space to manifest
itself and to shine. The moment we decide to to create a hegemony that
gives out orders, that decides what the new model should be, that’s the
moment we begin to homogenize ourselves. This has been a problem since
even before the Spanish conquest. If we change chiefs, political
parties and governments, but things remain the same as far as los de
abajo are concerned, then we haven’t changed anything. The indigenous
communities know this well. The War of Independence and the Mexican
Revolution took place, but for them everything remained the same. And I
think many communities can add their own testimonies of suffering and
disillusionment when changes comes from the top but at the bottom
things remain the same. And I know that those who have joined The Other
Campaign have joined with the belief that this time things will be
different. But this won’t depend on Subcomandante Marcos or the
Zapatistas or The Other Campaign. It will depend on whether or not the
different communities are able to organize themselves to take back
their own space. They have to first create their own reality
collectively in their own terrain. The Chicanos and Chicanas and
Mexican immigrants—it doesn’t matter if they are from New York or
Chicago or El Paso or San Diego—have to organize and define their own
identity before linking to other struggles.
And I’m not
talking about organization that begins at the top. I wish to respond to
the student [from MECHA] who asked, “Where do we start? From the bottom
or from the top? Should we try to change the political system from
within?” We the Zapatistas do not believe we should start from the top.
You build things, like a house, from the bottom. In a similar sense,
the world that we aspire to, the world we wish to build, needs to be
constructed from the bottom up. We begin this process by identifying
ourselves and saying, “This is who we are.” This process of
construction includes remembering our past, as the compañero from the
Segundo Barrio [Paso del Sur member] said, “This is our history.” And
it is also means telling the other, “Look at me. Listen. Because if you
don’t recognize my dignity and humanity then nobody will.” Because the
powers that be depend upon atomization, they prefer to have everyone go
their own way. And if groups exist they make sure to pit them against
each other, to create barriers between them.
But we from The
Other Campaign propose to tear down those walls, these borders. We
don’t recognize their lines and their flags. And it’s not about jumping
over the aisle so that we can be on the first row as spectators, to get
a view as close to the action as possible. We have to get rid of these
divisions between the actor and the spectator. We have to get things
done ourselves because no one else will do them for us.
We are
here to tell those of you that came from El Paso: “You are not
alone.”
We are united by our attitude toward those in power, toward those on
top. We are united by our choice to cast our lot with los de abajo. The
world we are going to build has little to do with the world that
existed before. It will be infinitely better than the world we have
today. That same creativity and determination that you have shown in
your struggles within the belly of the beast is the same creativity and
determination that you will need to imagine a better future. We imagine
a Juárez where women are not murdered. We imagine an El Paso and
Juárez
without a line to divide them. We imagine a place where those rivers
that are sold to us as walls—whether its the Rio Grande or the
Usumancinta—will become, once more, sources of life, which is
what they always were before the builders of walls arrived. We have to
learn to imagine these things. We have to lose the fear of imagination,
the fear of stating our dreams. For the day we begin to dream and to
name things is the day that those things begin to exist.
This is the Other Campaign’s message and challenge to you. Thank you. Read La Jornada article (Spanish).
(Photograph of Subcomandante Marcos at Preparatoria Altavista by Bruce Berman.)
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