Giordano: 106 Hours of Listening in the Mexican Southeast
September 13, 2005
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Momentum is building in the Mexican state of Chiapas, reports Al Giordano today, and "an expanded Zapatista movement is
on the verge of coming out." In his fourth weekly report from the series of meetings the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation is holding with Mexican civil society, Giordano writes:
"In this sixth meeting in six weeks of the Other Campaign launched by the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, a
rainbow began to form in the shape of a fist: a fist with a punch that rings in the ears.
"Five previous meetings grouped rebels, like fingers, in five units: political organizations as one, social
organizations as another, collectives, non-governmental and artistic organizations as yet another; individuals without
organizational title brought new strengths and ideas together to constitute a fourth digit in this evolutionary leap.
The thumb on this hand - the left hand, the one closer to the heart, of course - consists of indigenous organizations
(what the Zapatistas have called the 'spinal column' of the fight to come), themselves a diverse mix of 62 ethnic groups
each bringing 513 years of experience resisting impositions from above.
"This past weekend all those of each of the five categories (or fingers) that couldn't attend the previous meetings set
for their genres were invited, in a second and last chance to help form this phase of the rebel Other Campaign. In this
canyon between Ocosingo and San Quintin, what seemed to be a mere rainbow - one of those colorful but intangible
lighthouses of the heavens that conjure dreams out of human beings and point the way to so far undiscovered treasures -
took solid form. Its prismed rays agglutinated and the boundaries between 'identity groups' and distinct political
tendencies dissolved into one living organism with thousands of feet that will soon swarm over all that is dead and
dying about electoral politics and other charades from above. There is no historic model to copy or imitate here. The
path to the end of that rainbow does not yet exist. It will be tread, Zapatista style, by those who walk it."
In the full report, Giordano documents many of the most important things said at this meeting, and provides further
insights as to what is to come at the final grand plenary session later this week. Read it today in The Narco News
Bulletin:
From somewhere in a country called América,
Dan Feder Managing Editor
The Narco News Bulletin