During the 12th year of the EZLN, many kilometers,
and at a great distance from Peking, 12 women meet March
8th with their faces erased...
I. Yesterday...
A face wreathed in black still leaves the
eyes free and a few hairs dangling from the head. In that gaze is the glitter
of one who searches. An M-1 carbine held in
front, in that position called "assault," and a pistol strapped to the
waist. Over the left side of the chest, that
place where hopes and convictions reside, she carries the rank of
Infantry Major of an insurgent army which
has called itself, this cold dawn of January 1, 1994, the Zapatista Army
of National Liberation. Under her command
is a rebel column which takes the former capital of that southeastern
Mexican state Chiapas, San Cristobal de Las
Casas. The central park of San Cristobal is deserted. Only the
indigenous men and women under her command,
are witness to the moment in which the Major, a rebel
indigenous tzotzil woman, takes the national
flag and gives it to the commanders of the rebellion, those called "The
Indigenous Clandestine Revolutionary Committee".
Over the radio, the Major says: "We have recovered the Flag.
10-23 over." At 0200 southeastern time, of
January 1 of 1994. It is 0100 hours of the new year for the rest of the
world, but she has waited 10 years to say
tohose words. She came to the mountains of the Lacandon Jungle in
December of 1984, not yet 20 years of age
and yet carrying the marks of a whole history of indigenous
humiliation on her body. In December of 1984,
this brown woman says "Enough is Enough!", but she says it so
softly that only she hears herself. In January
of 1994, this woman and several thousand indigenous people not only
say but yell "Enough is Enough!", so loudly
that all the world hears them...
Outside of San Cristobal another rebel column
commanded by a man, the only one with light skin and a large nose
who belongs to the indigenous who attack the
city, has just finished taking police headquarters. Freed from these
clandestine jails are the indigenous who were
spending the new year in jail for the most terrible crime in the
Chiapanecan southeast; that of being poor.
Eugenio Asparuk is the name of the insurgent Captain, indigenous
rebel tzeltal, who together with the enormous
nose is now overseeing the search and seizure at the headquarters.
When the Major's message arrives, Insurgent
Captain Pedro, indigenous rebel chol, has finished taking the
headquarters of the Federal Highway Police
and has secured the road which connects San Cristobal with Tuxtla
Gutierrez; Insurgent Captain Ubilio, indigenous
rebel tzeltal has taken the entryways to the north of the city and
with it the symbol of the government handouts
to the indigenous people, the National Indigenous Institute.
Insurgent Captain Guillermo, indigenous rebel
chol, has taken the highest point of the city. From there he
commands with his sight the surprised silence
which peers out the windows of the houses and the buildings.
Insurgent Captains Gilberto and Noe, Indigenous
tzotzil and tzeltal respectively, and equally rebellious, end their
take-over of the state judicial police headquarters
and set it on fire before marching on to secure the other side of
the city which leads to the barracks of the
31st Military Zone in Rancho Nuevo.
At 0200 hours, southeastern time of January
1 of 1994, 5 insurgent officials, indigenous rebel men, hear over the
radio the voice of their commander, an indigenous
rebel woman saying "We have recovered the flag. 10-23 over."
They repeat this to their troops, men and
woman, all indigenous rebels in their totality and translate the words
"We
have begun...".
At the municipal palace, the Major organizes
the defense of the positions which will protect the men and women
who now govern the city, a city now under
the rule of indigenous rebels. A woman who is armed protects them.
Among the indigenous commanders there is a
tiny woman, even tinier than those around her. A face wreathed in
black still leaves the eyes free and a few
hairs dangling from the head. In that gaze is the glitter of one who
searches. A 12 calibre sawed-off shotgun hangs
from her back. With the traditional dress of the women from San
Andres, Ramona walks down from the mountains,
together with a hundred more women, towards the city of San
Cristobal on that last night of 1993. Together
with Susana and other indigenous men she is part of that indian
command of the war which birthed 1994, the
Candestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee-General
Command of the EZLN. Comandante Ramona will,
with her size and her brilliance, surprise, the international
press when she appears during the first Dialogues
for Peace held in the Cathedral and pulls from her backpack the
national flag re- taken by the Major on January
1st. Ramona does not know then, nor do we, but she already
carries in her body an illness which eats
her life away in huge bites and dims her voice and her gaze. Ramona and
the Major, the only women in the Zapatista
delegation who show themselves to the world for the first time declare:
"For all intents and purposes we were already
dead, we meant absolutely nothing" and with this they almost count
the humiliation and abandonment. The Major
translates to Ramon the questions of the reporters. Ramona nods
and understands, as though the answers she
is asked for had always been there, in that tiny figure which laughs at
the Spanish language and at the ways of the
city women. Ramona laughs when she does not know she is dying.
And when she knows, she still laughs. Before
she did not exist for anyone, now she exists, as a woman, as an
indigenous woman, as a rebel woman. Now Ramona
lives, a woman belonging to that race which must die in
order to live...
The Major watches the light take the streets
of San Cristobal. Her soldiers organize the defense of the old city of
Jovel and the protection of the men and women
who in those moments sleep, indigenous and mestizos, all equally
surprised. The Major, this indigenous rebel
woman has taken their city. Hundreds of armed indigenous people
surround the old City. A woman who is armed
commands them...
Minutes later the rebels will take the city
of Las Margaritas, hours later the government forces which defend
Ocosingo, Altamirano, and Chanal will surrender.
Huixtan and Oxchuc are taken by a column which is heading
towards the principal jail of San Cristobal.
Seven cities are now in insurgent hands following the 7 words of the
Major.
The war for the word has begun...
In other places, other women, indigenous and
rebellious have re-made that piece of history which they have been
given and which until that day of January
1, had been carried in silence. They also have no name or face.
IRMA, Insurgent Infantry Captain.
The chol woman Irma leads one of the guerrilla
columns which takes the plaza at Ocosingo that January 1 of
1994. From one of the edges of the central
park, together with the soldiers under her command, she attacks the
guarnicion inside the municipal palace until
they surrender. Then Irma undoes her braid and her hair falls to her
waist as though to say "here I am, free and
new, Captain Irma's hair shines, and continues to shine even as the
night falls over an Ocosingo in rebel hands...
LAURA, Insurgent Infantry Captain.
Tzotzil woman, fierce in battle and fiercely
committed to learning and teaching, Laura becomes the Captain of a
unit composed completely of men. Not only
that, but they are all novices as well. With patience, in the way of the
mountain which has watched her grow, Laura
teaches and gives orders. When the men under her command have
doubts, she shows them by doing. No one carries
as much or walks as much as she does. After the attack on
Ocosingo she orders the retreat of her unit.
It is an orderly and complete one. This woman with light skin says little
or nothing, but she carries in her hands a
carbine which she took from a policeman who only saw someone to
humiliate or rape when he gazed upon an indigenous
woman. After surrendering, the policeman ran away in his
shorts, the same one who until that day believed
that women were only useful when pregnant or in the kitchen....
ELISA, Insurgent Infantry Captain.
As a trophy of war she still carries in her
body some mortar fragments which are planted forever on her body. She
takes command of her column when the rebel
line is broken and a circle of fire fills the Ocosingo market with
blood. Captain Benito has been injured and
has lost his eye. Before losing consciousness, he explains and orders:
"I've had it, Captain Elisa is in command".
Captain Elisa is alredy wounded when she manages to take a handful of
soldiers out of the market. When Captain Elisa,
indigenous tzeltal gives orders it is a soft murmur..but everyone
obeys...
SILVIA, Insurgent Infantry Captain.
She was trapped for 10 days in the rathole
which Ocosingo became after January 2nd. Dressed as a civilian she
scuttled along the streets of a city filled
with federal soldiers, tanks and cannons. At a military checkpoint she
was
stopped. They let her through almost immediately.
"It isn't possible that such a young and fragile woman could
possibly be a rebel" say the soldiers as they
watch her depart. When she re-joins her unit in the mountain the
indigenous chol rebel woman appears sad. Carefully,
I ask her the reason that her laughter is less. "Over there in
Ocosingo" she answers me, lowering her eyes
"In Ocosingo I left my backpack and with it all the cassettes of
music I had collected, now we have nothing."
Silence and her loss lies in her hands. I say nothing, I add my own
regrets to hers and I see that in war each
loses what he/she most loves...
MARIBEL, Insurgent Infantry Captain.
She takes the radio station in Las Margaritas
when her unit assaults the municipality on January 1, 1994. For nine
years she lived in the mountain in order to
be able to sit in front of that microphone and say:
"We are the product of 500 years of struggle;
first we fought against slavery..." The transmission does not go
through because of technical reasons and Maribel
takes another position in order to cover the backs of the unit
which advances towards Comitan. Days later
she will serve as guard for the prisoner of war, General Absalon
Castellanos Dominguez. Maribel is tzeltal
and was less than 15 years old when she came to the mountains of the
Mexican Southeast. "The toughest moment in
those 9 years was when I had to climb the first hill, called 'the hill
from hell', after that everything else was
easy" said the insurgent official. When General Castellanos Dominguez is
returned to the government, Captain Maribel
is the first rebel to have contact with the government. Commissioner
Manuel Camacho Solis extends his hand to her
and asks her age: "502" says Maribel who counts all the years
since the rebellion began...
ISIDORA, Infantry Insurgent.
Isidora goes into Ocosingo as a buck private
on the first day of January. And as a buck private Isidora leaves
Ocosingo in flames, after spending hours rescuing
her unit, made up entirely of men 40 of whom were wounded.
She also has mortar fragments on her arms
and legs. When Isidora arrives at the nursing unit and hands over the
wounded, she asks for a bit of water and gets
up again. "Where are you going?" they ask her as they try to treat
her wounds which bleed and paint her face
as well as redden her uniform. "To get the others" answers Isidora as
she re-loads. They try to stop her and cannot,
the buck private Isidora has said she must return to Ocosingo to
rescue other companeros from the music of
death which the mortars and the grenades play. They have to take her
prisoner in order to stop her. "The only good
thing is that when I'm punished at least I can't be demoted" says
Isidora as she waits in the room which, to
her, appears to be a jail. Months later, when they give her a star which
promotes her to an infantry official, Isidora,
tzeltal and Zapatista looks first at the star and then at her commander
and asks, as though she were being scolded
"Why?"..But she does not wait for the answer...
AMALIA, First lieutenant in the hospital
unit.
Amalia has the quickest laughter in the Mexican
Southeast and when she finds Captain Benito lying in a pool of
blood unconscious, she drags him to a more
secure place. She carries him on her back and takes him out of the
circle of death which surrounds the market.
When someone mentions surrender, Amalia, honoring the chol blood
which runs in her veins, gets angry and begins
to argue. Everyone listens, even above the ruthless explosions and
the flying bullets. No one surrenders...
ELENA, Lieutenant in the hospital unit.
When she joined the EZLN she was illiterate.
There she learned to read, write, and that which is called medicine.
From caring for diarrheas and giving vaccines,
she went on to care for the wounded in a small hospital which is
also house, warehouse and pharmacy. With difficulty
she extracts the pieces of mortar carried by the Zapatistas
on their bodies. "Some I can take out, some
I can't" says Elenita, insurgent chol, as though she were speaking of
memories and not of pieces of lead...
In San Cristobal, that morning of January 1,
1994, she communicates with the great white nose: "Someone just
came here asking questions but I don't understand
the language, I think it's English. I don't know if he's a
photographer but he has a camera".
"I'll be there soon", answers the nose as
it re-arranges the ski mask.
Into a vehicle go the weapons which have been
taken from the police station and he travels to the center of the
city. They take the weapons out and distribute
them among the indigenous who are guarding the municipal palace.
The foreigner was a tourist who asked if he
could leave the city. "No" answered the ski-mask with the over-sized
nose "it's better that you return to your
hotel. We don't know what will happen." The tourist leaves after asking
permission to film with his video camera.
Meanwhile the morning advances, the curous arrive, journalists and
questions. The nose responds and explains
to the locals, tourists and journalists. The Major is behind him. The
ski- mask talks and makes jokes. A woman who
is armed watches his back.
A journalist, from behind a television camera
asks: "And who are you?" "Who am I" says the ski-mask hesistantly
as it fights off the sleepiness after the
long night. "Yes" insists the journalist "Are you 'Commander Tiger' or
'Commander Lion'?" "No" responds the ski-mask
rubbing the eyes which are now filled with boredom. "So,
what's your name?" says the journalist as
he thrusts his camera and microphone forward. The big-nosed ski-mask
answers "Marcos. Subcomandante Marcos"...Overhead
the planes of Pontius Pilate begin to circle.
From that time on, the impeccable militar action
of the take-over of San Cristobal is blurred, and with it is erased
the fact that it was a woman, a rebel indigenous
woman, who commanded the entire operation. The participation
of other women rebels in other actions of
January 1 and during the long road of 10 years since the birth of the
EZLN, become secondary. The faces covered
with ski-masks become even more anonymous when the lights
center on Marcos. The Major says nothing,
she continues to watch the back of that enourmous nose which now
has a name for the rest of the world. No one
asks her for her name...
At dawn on January 2 of 1994 the same woman
directs the retreat from San Cristobal and the return to the
mountains. She returns to San Cristobal 50
days later as part of the escort which guards the security of the
delegates of the CCRI-CG of the EZLN to the
Dialogue at the Cathedral. Some women journalists interview her
and ask her her name. "Ana Maria, Mayor Insurgente
Ana Maria" she answers with her dark gaze. She leaves the
Cathedral and disappears for the rest of the
year of 1994. Like her other companeras, she must wait, she must be
silent...
Come December of 1994, 10 years after becoming
a soldier, Ana Maria receives the order to prepare to break
out of the military blockade established by
government forces around the Lacandon Jungle. At dawn on
December 19th, the EZLN takes positions in
38 municipalities. Ana Maria commanded the action in the
municipalities in the Altos of Chiapas. Twelve
women officers were with her in the action: Monica, Isabela, Yuri,
Patricia, Juana, Ofelia, Celina, Maria, Gabriela,
Alicia, Zenaida and Maria Luisa. Ana Maria herself takes the
municipality of Bochil.
After the Zapatista deployment, the high command
of the federal army orders silence around the rupture of the
blockade and it is represented by the mass
media as a purely "propagandistic" action of the EZLN. The pride of
the federales is deeply wounded: the Zapatistas
escaped the blockade and to add insult to injury, a woman
commands a unit which takes various municipalities.
It is of course impossible to accept and so a great deal of
money must be piled onto the event so that
it will remain unknown.
Due to the involuntary actions of her armed
companeros, and the deliberate actions of the government, Ana Maria
and the Zapatista women at her side are dismissed
and made invisible...
II. TODAY...
I have almost finished writing this when someone
else arrives...
Dona Juanita. After Old Man Antonio dies,
Dona Juanita allows her life to slow down in the same rhythm which
she uses to prepare coffee. Physically strong,
Dona Juanita has announced she will die. "Don't be silly,
grandmother", I say to her, refusing to meet
her eyes. "Look you.." she answers "If it is to live that we must die,
nothing will keep me from dying, much less
a young brat like yourself" says and scolds Dona Juanita, the woman
of Old Man Antonio, a rebel woman all her
life, and apparently, a rebel even in response to her death...
Meanwhile on the other side of the blockade,
appears. She. She has no military rank, uniform, nor weapon. She is
a Zapatista but only she knows. She has no
face or name, much like the Zapatistas. She struggles for democracy,
liberty and justice, the same as the Zapatistas.
She is part of what the EZLN calls "civil society", of a people
without a party, of a people who do not belong
to "political society" made up of rulers and leaders of political
parties. She is a part of that diffuse, but
real part of society which says, day after day, its own "Enough is Enough!"
At first she is surprised at her own words,
but later, based on the strength of repeating them, and above all, living
them, she stops being afraid of them, being
afraid of herself. She is now a Zapatista, she has united her destiny to
that of the Zapatistas in that new delirium
which so terrorizes political parties and the intellectuals of the Power,
the
Zapatista Front of National Liberation. She
has already fought against everyone, against her husband, her lover,
her boyfriend, her children, her friend, her
brother, her father, her grandfather. "You are insane" was the common
judgement. She leaves a great deal behind.
What she renounces is much larger than what is left behind by the
rebels who already had nothing to lose. Her
everything, her world, demands she forget "those crazy Zapatistas"
and conformity calls her to sit down in the
comfortable indifference which lives and worries only about itself. She
leaves everything behind. She says nothing.
Early one dawn she sharpens the tender point of hope and begins to
emulate the first of January of her sister
Zapatistas many times in one day, at least 364 times a year which have
nothing to do with a January 1.
She smiles because she once admired the Zapatistas
but no longer. She ended the admiration in the moment in
which she learned that they were only a mirror
of her rebellion, of her hope. >She discovers that she is born on
the first of January of 1994. From then on
she feels that her life and what was always said to be a dream and a
utopia, might actually be a truth.
She begins to knit in silence and without pay,
side by side with other men and women, that complex dream which
some call hope: Everything for everyone, nothing
for ourselves.
She meets March 8th with her face erased, and
her name hidden. With her come thousands of women. More and
more arrive. Dozens, hundreds, thousands,
millions of women who remember all over the world that there is much
to be done and remember that there is still
much to fight for. It appears that that thing called dignity is contagious
and it is women who are more likely to become
infected with this uncomfortable ill...
This March 8th is a good time to remember and
to give their rightful place to the insurgent Zapatistas, to the
Zapatistas, to the women who are armed and
unarmed.
To the rebels and uncomfortable Mexican women
who are now bent over underling that history which, without
them, is nothing more than a badly-made fable...
III. TOMORROW
If there is to be one, it will be made with
the women, and above all, by them...
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast,
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, March of 1996.