Tlahui-Politic. No. 14, II/2002
México - Mexico - Mexique
Mx: 07/01/02
De: Lista del FZLN
Para: Mario Rojas, Director de Tlahui
Título: Yvon Le Bot on the zapatista silence
Originally
published in Spanish by La Jornada
Translated by Irlandesa
La Jornada
Friday, June 28, 2002.
Toledo and the Zapatistas: In Praise of Silence
By Yvon Le Bot
It has been more than a year now since the zapatista comandantes returned to
Chiapas, since Marcos and his compañeros retired to the Selva Lacandona and
maintained silence. It has been several months now since, after having
fought for years and having successfully made Oaxaca a center of cultural
splendor, Francisco Toledo, the most indigenous and most universal of Mexican
painters, retired to the asphalt jungle, to the concrete selva of Los Angeles.
Apparently opposite travels, they are, in fact, symmetrical. The parallel
is not unwarranted, and it is telling that Toledo was one of the persons who was
invited to accompany the zapatistas to the Congress of the Union during its
historic session of March 28, 2001.
Since then, history has once again gone mad. In these times of digression,
of loss of references and of babble, when the old "guides" have
disappeared or are no longer playing that role, Marcos and Toledo present the
image of "ancient young ones" (thanks to Elena Poniatowska for having
suggested the expression to me). Not because of their age, but because
they are dissidents who refuse to be paraded through main street and who impose
periods of silence, a requisite for all new words, for all creation and for all
wisdom. So that the words do not lose their power, in order to lend weight
to those words which will be spoken tomorrow.
There is a time for words and another for silence. A time for listening
and meditating, another for producing.
During periods of great confusion, the Christian hermits would retire to the
desert in order to rediscover meaning and, in that way, produce rebirths.
The Selva Lacandona used to be called, in days gone by, the Desert of Solitude,
and the mountains of Chiapas are strewn with solitary, colorful, and touchingly
simple chapels.
Marcos - the interested party himself has stated - does not exist. He is
nothing more than an image, a figure who was born on the first of January of
1994 and who, once the circumstances of his rebellion have disappeared, hopes to
disappear along with them (last year, during the march for indigenous dignity,
he seemed to catch a glimpse that this moment was close). It is nothing
more, he says, than a window frame. Today, this window seems to be closed
once again, but could it be that we do not wish to see anything more than the
frame, or could it be that the light is failing?
Marcos is a mediator, a bridge, a spokesperson, like the "talking
saints" of the old Mayan religions.
During a visit to Chiapas in 1938, a time of disturbances as well, Graham Greene
heard of one of those talking saints. A campesino from a village deep in
the mountain had an image of San Miguelito put away in a little box. When,
after four years, he opened the box, the saint began speaking "in a voice
that was strong and clear." He spoke as easily in German, French and
English as in Spanish and the indigenous languages (in reference to the latter,
we are not certain that Marcos has San Miguelito's linguistic talents, but who
knows? Perhaps in four years?). The author of The Power and the
Glory wanted to see and hear this "miracle." After an exhausting
trip by horseback and laborious conversations, they presented him with a box of
tea that contained, in a wooden frame, an image of the Archangel Michael slaying
the dragon and a strange little head of a woman with curly hair, who was
supposed to have spoken. She remained silent, however, in front of the
writer. Not surprising, considering the writer's vision of Mexicans, and
especially of Indians and their "superstitions," in addition to his
sense of white, Christian and British superiority (Graham Greene was not,
however, the worst...).
Like Greene, the zapatistas, in the beginning, felt that they were holders of
the truth. They spread a discourse that was revolutionary, rigid and
anachronistic. But they set about listening to the voices that people the
mountains and the selva. "Little boxes that speak recounted to us
another history which comes from yesterday and which points to tomorrow.
They recounted ancient histories to us that recall our sadness and our
rebellion." Little by little, their voices were joined in unison with
these voices which allow themselves to be heard only by those who are willing to
do so by suppressing the confusing noise of the world and by abandoning
moth-eaten certainties.
Between April and May of 2002, the Mexican Deputies and Senators, after having
listened to them, turned their backs on the zapatista words. On September
11, the attacks in New York and Washington plunged the world into a new era of
sound and fury. Over the last months, the hysteria over security which has
permeated the entire world has accentuated, in Europe, the rise of demagogues
and of the extreme national-populist right.
In the face of this war logic, some people have sought confrontation and have
enlisted in a mimetic and suicidal rivalry. The return to an imperial
logic, with the State coup d'état that was Bush's election, is provoking a new
period of anti-imperialism. But Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda make the other
anti-imperialist words pale by comparison, and they are undoubtedly much more
effective if it has to do with striking out at the monster.
Others, refusing to give in to blackmail and insanity, are seeking to rid
themselves of fatal confrontations, to immerse themselves in the lasting, and to
develop a culture of resistance and of dissidence. In a fashion similar to
those "ancient young ones," who, by maintaining distance, are
discovering anew the paths of creation and are contributing once again to giving
meaning to words and perspective to action.
[Based on a translation from French to Spanish by Nathalie Seguin]
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