Road Team Uncloaks Yucatán with Video & Reports

Today the road team of The Other Journalism With the Other Campaign uncloaks from Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula reporting to you the words of the humble and simple people who struggle for a better Mexico and a better world.

These stories can be read, seen and heard via the Other Journalism page at Narco News…

http://www.narconews.com/otroperiodismo

We lead off our coverage of Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos’ upcoming visit to this oft-forgotten part of Mexico with a nine-minute video newsreel, available in English and in Spanish through the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism’s Salón Chingón cinema:

Yucatán Awaits Marcos (9:12 minutes):

http://salonchingon.com/cinema/otra_yucatan.php?city=ny

Complimenting this newsreel is a detailed report sharing with you the voices of many of the people of Yucatan state that we have listened to over the past 12 days as we have crisscrossed this gigantic Caribbean peninsula researching the battles that are fought daily by people like you and me:

- Yucatán Awaits the Arrival of Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos

- In the Capital City of Mérida, Many Don’t Know Who “Delegate Zero” Is… But in the Farmlands, the Air Is Heavy with Expectation and a History of Rebellion

- By Al Giordano

- The Other Journalism With the Other Campaign in Yucatán

http://narconews.com/Issue40/article1546.html

Listen to accompanying radio reports at the same link:

- "The Enemy is a System"

- Public Opinion in Mérida on the Eve of the Zapatista Visit

- By Karla Lorena Aguilar

http://salonchingon.com/audio/otra_karla1.php

- Mérida, Yucatán... otro espejo de México

- Recorriendo las calles de la capital yucateca, escuchamos a la gente

- By Quetzal Belmont (in Spanish)

http://salonchingon.com/audio/otra_quetzal1.php?city=mx

Your road team – a group of Authentic Journalists who were together at the 2004 School of Authentic Journalism in Bolivia – reassembled on New Year’s Eve here on the Yucatan Peninsula to provide you full coverage from the first states outside of Chiapas that the Zapatista spokesman will visit in his six-month tour of all of Mexico. In addition to Karla, Quetzal and I, here with us are Greg Berger, Sarahy Flores, Barrett Hawes and Teo Ballvé, as well as various native colleagues here in Yucatán and Quintana Roo.

As the man now known as “Delegate Zero” told reporters last week in Palenque, Chiapas, three days into his six-month marathon:

“A mountain of stories and memories will begin. The work of the alternative media will be the spinal column in the first part of the Other Campaign. A lot of work is coming for us and I think even more for you. I want to tell you of the importance of this work. Don’t make me sad. Follow all six months… it is important that these stories are known all over so that we can begin to construct the mirror that we are from below.”

- Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos

January 3, 2006, Palenque, Chiapas

This important work was made possible by those of you (you know who you are) that threw a few coins into the cup last month via The Fund for Authentic Journalism – http://www.authenticjournalism.org - to put these Authentic Journalists on the road. Now you can view, listen to, and read the first results. We hope this is only the beginning. But, honestly, I must tell you, as we do this work we feel at times like Mad Maxx out there on the highway searching for our next half-tank of gasoline to go a few steps further.

As colleagues from the Chiapas end of the Other Journalism with the Other Campaign have reported, the schedule of this tour was delayed by the days of mourning for the passing of Zapatista Comandanta Ramona. Thus, instead of wrapping this first leg of the coverage on January 16 as we had originally planned, we’re going to be here on this peninsula until the 21st, bringing many unforeseen costs for travel, lodging (my own luxurious sleeping quarters is a couch in a donated office space) and keeping our journalists in tortillas and beans (and the occasional Yucatan papadzul). Your collaboration is crucial at this key moment to keep this show on the road.

But we’re accustomed to working under adverse circumstances, and we’ll keep going until we drop. Still, this prototype of how to provide coverage of an Other Campaign, of how to assure that the words of the simple and humble people who fight are heard throughout Mexico and throughout the world in six languages, would go just a little bit more smoothly – and thus be even better and more coherent - with a little extra push from you, the readers (and viewers and listeners) of this authentic coverage. That little extra push can be made from this link:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org/

Today, you can see the first results, and judge for yourself if the effort is worth it.

Okay. Very well. It’s nine a.m. somewhere in a country called América and our team and I are off to hunt down a half-tank of gas and four papadzules (tortillas rolled around egg with salsa) to split seven ways in order to be able to report the next story. In other words, everything is normal… sort of. And you can be here with us via Narco News and through all the other ways in which we – the journalists and readers together – have long collaborated to build this international newspaper that breaks the information blockades.

Meanwhile, as you can see from Bill Conroy’s report on Monday bringing to light internal U.S. government memo that reveals how DEA agents in Colombia protect narcos, paramilitaries and money launderers, the other work of Narco News doesn’t stop either. These are all parts of one story, the story of a simple and humble continent that struggles and fights for liberty, justice and democracy, and to have its story told and heard as these immediate histories keep marching on.

Meanwhile, enjoy the video newsreel, the Internet radio reports, and the written coverage, which have only just begun to fight.

To be continued…

Al Giordano
Correspondent
The Other Journalism With the Other Campaign
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com/

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