WORDS OF THE GENERAL
COMMAND OF THE EZLN, IN THE VOICE OF SUBCOMANDANTE INSURGENTE MOISÉS, AT THE
HOMAGE FOR COMPAÑERO GALEANO. ON MAY 24TH, 2014 IN LA REALIDAD,
CHIAPAS, MEXICO
Comandante compañeras
and compañeros, support base, militant compañeras and compañeros, all
insurgents. Good morning or good afternoon or good evening to all in accordance
with where you are.
Compañeras and compañeros,
brothers and sisters:
Through my voice
speaks the voice of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Through my voice speak
the pain and the rage of hundreds of thousands of indigenous persons, men,
women, children, elderly of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
We are here with the
compañer@s of La Realidad, to support with all our dignified rage.
The compañeros and
compañeras of the Sixth Declaration have to understand something: the EZLN
cannot get involved just like that in the communities and autonomous governments
due to its wish. Because we as the EZLN it is not in word alone that we say, “respect,”
it is that our practice is so. The EZLN as a force of the people can only enter
into an affair of the Zapatista communities if it is that the autonomous
authorities ask for it. We do it like this because the military personnel,
whoever they may be, must always respect and serve the peoples, the civilians.
When we found out
about the cowardly and cruel murder of our compañero Galeano, it gave us much
pain and much rage. But we must not do as we wish but we have to respect and
obey our peoples which is the path that they must follow and what we have to do
as the EZLN that we are.
The respect that we
say, as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, we do it in this way with
the Zapatista towns and autonomous authorities, so we endure the rage and the
pain that we have.
It was until the Junta
de Buen Gobierno of La Realidad asked, and told us that “we have come up to
here and we want the command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation to
intervene for justice to be done against the attack and murder against us and
against our Zapatista organization.” So it is that we now may come.
With all the pain, we
come to accompany the compañeras and compañeros, to be with them, to
investigate this cowardly murder, because those contra people, anti-Zapatista
paramilitaries have what they have but it is due to us, and they are going
along as if they were Zapatista and like so they take their projects saying
that they are Zapatista representatives. We know who those ones are and with
who the evil government speaks, and the idiot evil government which believes
them, that we are those with whom they are speaking.
Here we say, once
again to those damn evil governments:
We are NOT beggars.
We do not receive
scraps from your tables.
We do not seek nor
receive hand-outs.
We seek to govern
ourselves with our peoples of Mexico, with Justice, Freedom, and Democracy.
We are NOT the
Zapatistas who speak with you.
We do NOT speak with
the evil governments today and forever.
We do NOT have even
the least bit of trust in those brainless people.
It does matter to us
if they act slimy and cheat a bag of goods with the evil government, in
themselves the evil governments are like that: ignorant and stupid people who
do not have good thought to govern and only have large hands to steal. This is
how the municipal presidents and councilmembers, Manuel Velasco and Peña Nieto
show it and have shown it. All of them, from whichever party it may be, are
ignorant people who only get up when it is necessary to steal and comb their
hair and dress up for the paid media’s photos. We lived like so during more
than 71 years of the PRI and 12 years of the PAN and now the PRI continues. In
addition to what we have seen in the local governments where there are the
other parties like the Green Party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution, the
Labor Party, the Citizens Movement, and others, whichever there is and will be
of professional politicians.
Compañeras and compañeros:
The rage that we have
is against capitalism.
Because, what they did
to compañero Galeano is the hand of capitalism and they would have done it to
anyone and murdered other compañeros from this town and like so the evil
government has things planned against us, as an EZLN organization.
When we saw compañero
Galeano, we saw the murderers, and we also saw who is behind those murders.
It is Velasco, and Peña
Nieto is the one who is behind that Velasco, and great capital, the true
inhuman criminal of neoliberal capitalism, is the one which is behind the
homeland-selling Peña Nieto.
They are washing their
hands clean. Or they are going to wash their hands clean, that which they
stopped now such and such is a disguise.
Because they do not
act so that there may be justice for the murderers to pay, but to try to calm
the great wave of pain and rage which rose up in all the world. In other words
they do it to calm people like you, compañeras and compañeros of the Sixth
Declaration, students of the escuelita throughout the world.
Because they are the
ones who organized everything so that what they did with us may be done. It is
so, like this. A certain Florinda Santis from here in La Realidad,
anti-Zapatista, is councilwoman for the PAN in las Margaritas, she and others,
are those who they called offering money that the evil governments give, and
that certain Florinda came to agreement with the certain peace commissioner and
met with the former-governors, municipal president, state government, and
representatives and senators, and the federal government, since early-on they
were planning together, and the certain evil-doer Luis H Alvares, met with that
certain Florinda and the certain Carmelino, for them to carry out that cowardly
and cruel paramilitary work with those sold-out people from La Realidad.
Like so one after
another these parasites planned it and in the end those people from La Realidad
who do not realize that they are being used remain as executors.
Because look: that
certain Florinda Santis, oriented them in this way, because she brought the
instructions: “if you make a problem with the Zapatistas, we will get you more
money, more projects, and we will get you your weapons and you make the
provocation and even take them to the ambushes and kill whoever falls in your
hands.”
And it happened in
this way. As she knows who is not Zapatista and calls them to organize and is
the councilwoman and comes to agreement with all the governments, takes them to
the authorities and the governments surround them with money and projects and
weapons, those authorities bring greater desire and see that they are supported
by the evil government.
Now the same Florinda,
again cheats them since now that they have already done the murder, the evil
governments need to clean the criminality for them not to appear as though they
planned, organized, and financed everything, they have to act so that the
murderers are detained and so it is known that it was not them.
But the truth, it is
them, it is like a thread or a chain, one after another: Florinda councilwoman,
CIOAC leaders, municipal president, governor, former governors who now
confessed that they passed money to the paramilitaries and were very quiet-like
and now talk, but to defend criminals, and surely the new supposed peace
commissioner is also involved in that, who has sent people to offer money and
support to EZLN leaders in exchange for them passing information on if
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos is very sick or if he already died, although
they already saw with your eyes if it is that supmarcos is very sick or if he
is dead. And representatives and senators and the federal government do this
too, all the force of the evil governments is in this criminal attack and
people who call themselves left-wing, progressive, and democratic also support
them in this criminal attack.
Compañeros and compañeras:
The evil government,
its plan is to murder the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
The evil government wants
and continues wanting, for us to become like them, stained with blood from a
fighter compañero, who did not sell out, who did not give up, and who did not
go astray.
Because those cheated,
manipulated men and women, are obeying the evil governments at the 3 levels,
well they themselves said it, when they carried out the murder, they said: “come
then women, let’s carry something, machetes, sticks, rocks, to support our men,
remember that the government has told us that this is why we are receiving the ‘Opportunities’
program,” they shouted this, they said this.
The evil governments
think and want, for us to kill ourselves among Indigenous people.
They want us to lose
our heads, they want us to be crazier than them, they want us to be more
murderous than them, in order to say it in the paid media, that it has us
bought, that it is an inter-communal problem.
The evil governments,
think and want and organize people and they tell them, kill the Zapatistas, for
whichever pretext and like so they’ll go astray in their struggle for national
liberation, the plan of those people is to murder us, bury us, thus killing us.
And they are going to
keep trying time and time again and they are going to continue this.
Because they say that
they are going to take the Caracol and they are going to do like so in any one
of the Caracoles.
They think that upon
murdering compañero Galeano, there the struggle of our organization is
finished, but NO.
That is why we are
here, to make it clear that the Zapatista struggle IS NOT OVER.
They want the example
of our struggle to be over, they think that their killing us makes us afraid.
We know that we are
prepared to die if it is necessary. Just like the fallen compañeros in the year
1994, they knew why they died and we continued our struggle and so Compañero
Galeano followed because he followed, he fulfilled, like the fallen compañeros,
because now we are going to continue the example of compañero Galeano, because
of them we are an example in Mexico and the world.
Compañeras and compañeros:
Our principal duty as
the EZLN is the Zapatista communities, our support base compañeros and compañeras.
If it is that they have a problem, it is the first thing we see to and we try
to support. We do not tell them that another day will come or that later we
will see to it or any pretext.
That is why we
cancelled the exchange with the compañeras and compañeros from the National
Indigenous Congress and the homage for compañero Luis Villoro.
We cannot be in two
places at the same time. We cannot be seeing to this serious problem and at the
same time be attending to the thousands from throughout the world who would
arrive to those encounters. So we had to choose and we chose our peoples.
We came out to La
Realidad, town of compañero Galeano and his family and of the compañeras and
compañeros, where the rage and the pain are, as the compañeros that we are and
as a true Zapatista it is being with the compañeras and compañeros and we
cancelled the work. We do not go about elsewhere, abroad for example, giving
talks.
Because the most
important thing for us: are the compañer@s from the towns.
They are our force,
our sustenance, our destiny.
We are them.
Compañeras and compañeros:
We come to un-bury
Compañero Galeano. In a while you are going to see how.
And those people who
murdered him are alone, they are stained with the clean and pure blood of a
fighter and that they are never going to be able to clean, they are doing the
work of the demon Peña Nieto and Velasco, of the demons of neoliberal
capitalism.
They are obeying the
order of the supreme paramilitary, which is Peña Nieto and Velasco, who pursues
the people, men and women who struggle.
They pursue the güeros1 who
struggle, because there are güera and güero compañeras and compañeros who are
below and to the left.
But what we want, what
we seek for this country, and perhaps for the world, is clear. That which we
say, “people commands, government obeys.”
We are going to bury
little by little this capitalist system, unjust, rotten, expired, unequal,
which now infests and contaminates the whole world with its plague.
We the Zapatistas are
thousands of thousands. Right now there are compañeras and compañeros in the
caracoles paying homage to compañero Galeano, because they could not come all
the way here.
There are also compañeros
and compañeras who are mobilizing and protesting in various parts of Mexico and
in various cities and in other countries. Because they see that what we are
constructing is an alternative, they see that it is a new type of system of a
new world. They realize that we are anticapitalists.
That is why the
cruelty is so great in the way how they murdered compañero Galeano, because
they were ordered, the evil government of Peña Nieto and Velasco told them this
and that they had to come through, that is why they are paid.
The disgrace is that
there are people who are screwed-up and rotten in the head, who to not think
about their sons and daughters, who leave it abandoned to do the work of other
criminals. Because justice will have to be done.
Compañeras and compañeros:
The evil governments
do not respect us as the indigenous people that we are, they see us as dogs and
think that we are dogs, because dogs bite each other and kill each other,
according to who wins.
We say clearly that we
are not dogs.
We are an
organization, which struggles for National Liberation, anticapitalist. We
struggle for Liberty, Justice, and Democracy. We struggle for a better world, a
world with room for all worlds.
We are not going to
allow that to put us astray, which is what those goddamn scumbag motherfucker
evil governments want.
What they did to our
compañero Galeano gives us pain and sadness, but we are NOT going to stain
ourselves from one bad to another.
Because we struggle
for Justice for millions of living beings in this country and we want and we
seek justice for centuries upon centuries and forever and not like those
misnamed capitalist governments, who do not know what justice is, because they
are those who commit the injustices.
We are going to
continue the work that compañero Galeano left us, and we are going to do it
with the just and dignified rage that he left us, people command and government
obeys.
As he did it, with the
example of the compañeros who fell in the year 1994 and like so we have to
follow him, for any fallen compañero or compañera we are going to follow their
example, be they leadership or not.
We see many paths for
what to do to achieve the freedom of our people of Mexico. Not as they say,
that there are only two paths. Elections or arms.
We have seen during
these 20 years, that when we dialogue with those homeland sellers well it is
good for nothing, none of the 3 parasitic powers fulfill their word of
dialogue.
The dialogue that has
worked for us is with the people from below and to the left, which now are the
compañer@s of the Sixth Declaration and the compañer@s of the free and
alternative media which some are here and others could not come.
That has worked for
us, the dialogue with the people of Mexico and of the world, listening and
learning. And now that dialogue of listening has come upon thousands of compañeras
and compañeros, through our escuelita, that is we are taking turns dialoging
between leadership and bases, with those from below and to the left, in the
first times it was the leaders responsibility and now our compañeras and compañeros
from the towns are responsible for dialoguing, that is the truth compañeras and
compañeros, that is we are all going to turn ourselves into good
representatives, as we say the people command and the government obeys.
That is why we as
Zapatistas are not here to struggle to take Power: neither through elections
nor through arms. But rather we are here because the people decides its path
and does it without political parties who cheat them and do not respect them,
and to defend our peoples.
Compañeras and compañeros:
The people from CIOAC,
what do they do? Nothing more than the work of being paramilitaries, and who
does that serve? The rich, defending those who exploit and they are responsible
for their leaders, both state and national who claim to be.
In truth, the state
and national leaders, were in the planning, and were in agreement with the
national crusade against hunger. Because there is where there is money to steal
what belongs to the people, it is left-overs from stealing what they give to
their peoples, the leaders live like this and live in this. It is not a plan
against hunger, it is a counterinsurgency plan.
All the great leaders
and small leaders it is where they learn to disorient the people, where they
learn to be mobsters, cheats, manipulators.
Listen to what the
CIOAC is: the CIOAC in 20 de Noviembre attacked the compañeros from the town 10
de Abril of the Morelia Caracol, a few months ago. The CIOAC entered into the
recovered land which borders with the compañeros of the La Realidad Caracol,
about one year ago. The CIOAC attacked people from Los Altos by the Euseba
river with gunshots, about one month ago. The CIOAC attacked people from San
José las Palmas close to Las Margaritas with gunshots, the same about one month
ago. The CIOAC about two weeks ago confronted the people from the Miguel
Hidalgo Ejido, Las Margaritas municipality.
The CIOAC confronted
its own people from the Rayón municipality, in the north of Chiapas, there were
deaths there.
The CIOAC, on May 2nd attacked
the compañeros from La Realidad with ambushed where they murder compañero
Galeano with cruelty.
That is the CIOAC:
paramilitaries, directed by paramilitary leaders, the Luises, with their
supreme leaders Peña Nieto and Velazco, because it is said so by their
neoliberal master which is handed-over to them.
So, we ask ourselves,
what future do those people from the CIOAC teach to their sons and daughters?
Of being a paramilitary? Or of being murderers? In exchange for money to kill
their own people.
This is what the evil
governments have prepared, they are going to continue with this in any Caracol,
it is prepared against us, because they are realizing that they are left with
little life as a system and as evil governments, that is why they are going to
do anything so brutal be it against us the Zapatistas.
Here in La Realidad
the evil government planned it and carried it out to try to murder the EZLN,
because we are constructing another SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT, against another evil
capitalist SYSTEM.
For them we are the
great principal enemy and the truth is we are their enemies, because, enough is
enough! And with our enough is enough! there is lead by obeying, where the
government does not govern, but the people govern, and those who are in the
government are the servants.
That is why, those
evil governments, plan, organize, spend millions on that, they buy people, so
that they will come to murder us.
That is why we must
not be mistaken, the enemy is the one from above, only until we lower it from
there is the enemy finished.
The cheated murderers,
yes justice will be done. On all that we’ll explain more later.
We do not avenge, we
are going to avenge but against capitalism.
Compañeras and compañeros:
The truth is we do not
know how to speak Spanish well, we do not know how to write well, we do not
know how to read books well, because there are books which are good and there
are ones which plainly are of no use, instead of orienting you they confuse
you.
But we do read very
well the bad, terrible situation in which us Mexicans in this country live, and
in other parts of the word.
We read it thinking,
listening to people from below and to the left and we give that reading
thought, how a better life should be, that is to say a better other system.
We speak Spanish with
great effort to awaken those from below and to the left, to share our idea on a
construction of how to govern ourselves from the country and from the city.
To show what we are
and learn from the example of others’ struggles.
Some do as though they
write a good deal, because they learn nothing in the Department of Education,
they only place pens in their shirt pocket, there they learn that.
But we write with the
example and the practice of our compañeras and compañeros, of course they
already know how to write now because they already built their autonomous
schools.
That is why we clearly
tell them that it is not a problem if we know or do not know how to write
Spanish, if we know or do not know how to read Spanish, if we know much or
little Spanish, because it is sought how and the thought and practice are put
in motion and like so it goes along improving and correcting.
This is how the
Zapatista support base compañer@s write in practice, with its creation of a new
system of government, against the other evil system, that is the truth, compañeras
and compañeros of the Sixth Declaration.
Without knowing where
commas, accents, symbols, and other things more go, but we do know what new
system this country needs, right compañeros, compañeras?
Compañeras and compañeros
of the Sixth Declaration, let us struggle, work, talk amongst ourselves those
from below, let us no longer look upward, there are not eyes nor ears, there is
not respect there.
Look, it is how the
paid media, if you look for information there on what the evil system of this
country is like, you won’t find anything there, because nothing comes out
there.
That is so, every day
notes on news from the evil governments comes out, because they are paid with
thousands of pesos. That Mexico is improving due to this government and when
you turn to look below, to see if it is true what the well-paid media says, it
is completely the reverse.
So it is necessary to
look below.
That is to say, if we
want to know how other brothers and sisters from other places struggle it is
necessary to read and listen to the alternative or free media, the “listens” we
say, because they listen to and take what they heard without changing anything
and send it elsewhere, so that others like us Zapatistas learn from other
struggles, listen to them, and support them.
So onward free media
compañeros from below and to the left.
It is like now, if we
want to know how or what the compañer@s of the Sixth Declaration are doing now,
it is only found in the alternative media. In the paid media there is nothing.
Why? Because there is not payment in that news and so although they are very
left-wing and revolutionary and then there are those who are one foot here and
another foot there, but good. Dignity is what is lacking.
In the alternative
media where we have found out about the mobilizations of the compañeras and
compañeros of the Sixth Declaration, where they embrace the family of compañero
Galeano, greet and embrace the compañeras and compañeros from La Realidad, with
dignity and rage, both from Mexico and other countries of the world. Like so we
now know of the mobilizations in all corners of the world for support and
embrace for the family and compañeros of compa Galeano.
In Mexico many other
protests in the cities, and many other forms of protest in the in the internet
pages and tweeting as they call it and which from throughout the world are
found together.
Compañeros, we are all
in La Realidad due to the reality of what the evil governments did, which want
to murder us, destroy what is being constructed here in La Realidad and we say
to the evil government, the Zapatista People of La Realidad will never allow
you to destroy it, what is being constructed in La Realidad will one day be in
the reality of this country. If they could not finish us the dawn of January 1st,
1994, now less so. Because it is our commitment to free this country, whatever
happens to us, whatever it takes us, and whatever is to come.
From the mountains of
the Mexican southeast
For the Comité
Clandestino Revolucionario Indígena-Comandancia General del Ejército Zapatista
de Liberación Nacional.
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.
May 2014, La Realidad for the reality of
this county and one day will be reality in all the world. Today in the 20th year
of the war against oblivion.
Translated
from Spanish by Henry Gales
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1 Person
with white skin, of any race or nationality.
