Zapatistas
Posted by gulnara on January 28, 2007
Woohoo!!! We are going to the mountains! We will probably celebrate New Year there! It’s gonna be fun! The indigenous village is deep in the mountains. Our hosts are excited to take us there.
Wow…. Wow…Wow…
Something that started like an invitation to a nonprofit conference is getting more and more interesting … Zapatistas appeared to be a resistance movement against Mexican Government. ohoh … I hope my presence here does not mean that I will be expelled from the country or not given the visa next time…
We have been driving for an hour. The road is crazy going in circles in the mountains and the driver is chatting pleasantly with our host who is sitting next to me near the window. The driver is politely looking at her. Surprisingly he looks back at the road right in time to slow down for the next turn over the abyss. Ya perevozhu duh…. Ohhhhh…..
Oki, we are registered, now we are going into the conference. Why are people wearing these funny masks on their heads that cover everything but eyes? Pasa montanas… hmmm… They write down our names again. Knowing two words in Spanish yet (gracias and banos at that time… now my vocabulary grew up to 50 including numerals 
) I am trying to explain what workshops I am going to attend.
The rebels do not recognize Government. They do not receive anything from it, except for the electricity they steal. Government is said to be corrupted (more than the Russian one???:D)
There is a stage set up in the middle of the camp or has it been a big village before? This is pretty funny, it reminds me both of mayovkas and scary stories about rebel camps in the jungles. The other thing that these short guys are wearing is the red scarf just like the pioneers used to wear in the soviet times. This looks so funny and so familiar.
Now they are talking about the rights of women and it’s again as touching as in the old soviet movie. The women are as passionate and are talking in the same excited voices… They are pretty and they are vperedi planety vsei…:) and they get the same kind of admiring applause. They call each other companeras and companeros (tovarischi zhenschini and tovarischi muzhchini JJ) or brothers and sisters. They are talking about the same hard everyday routine that any woman in any time in any country. It’s amazing eternal…. I am learning to comprehend Spanish.
The food is amazing, cheap and good and I close my eyes in the vain attempt not to see HOW and with how long ago hands they made that food… And that TUNA was actually the fist cactus in my life. I mean the first cactus I actually ate… Kak v tom anekdote pro mishku kotoraya plakala, davilas I vse ravno gryzla kaktus. It’s just exactly the thing I was doing a few minutes ago, but there were no needles, only seeds. Well the cactus was ok. A bit sweet, very watery, but it probably won’t become my favorite fruit here.
Sitting in the cloud (!) how amazing is that! It’s passing by between us and the scene.
The New Year eve was the most unusual in my life so far… After the end of the conference session they announced that at 8 pm the camp will be taken over by the army. Nope, we were not frightened, but we definitely were expecting something. I would even say something big. Well, at 8 pm nothing really started. Mexico, we were thinking. Una minuta mexicana, etc…
At about 9 we hurried out of the cafeteria tent to the stage. Samodeyatelnost, that’s the right Russian word for what was going on. The right English one would be skits? At 10 they expelled everyone except zapatistas from the basketball field where I had been dying from not understanding Spanish, formed a circle and here we waited, waited and waited and waited…. Till some time after midnight. No alcohol. It is prohibited in Caracoles (indigenous communities). A little bit of Mexican music. We even danced a bit.
My friends stayed to listen to the voice of the legendary commander Marcos and I packed myself into the sleeping bag, preparing to sleep with 4 other people in the tent for 3 only. I slept well, exactly till the time of the morning horn. 6 am is when Zapatistas start the day. Happy New Year, tovarischi!!!!
More about Zapatistas
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico.html#Chiapas
Quynh said
Great article Gulya! You should sell it to AFP or BBC for some royalty to prepare for the next trips. Just wonder why the pixs are soo small, taken by cell phone? Anyway, I would prefer more English articles, since my Russian vocabulary is even less than 50 (numbers included too)