Part
V of The Mexican Transition
By Subcomandante
Marcos
The Narco News Bulletin
"The
Name of Our Country is América"
--
Simón Bolívar
An Open
Letter to Zedillo
Marcos to the outgoing president:
"It doesn't
matter where you hide: in that place there will also be Zapatistas"
ZAPATISTA ARMY OF NATIONAL LIBERATION,
MEXICO. NOVEMBER 2000.
To Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León.
On your way to nowhere.
Planet Earth.
Mr. Zedillo,
Six
years ago I wrote you in the name of
all the Zapatistas welcoming you to the nightmare. Many think
now that we were right. For most of your six year term, your
leadership has been a long nightmare for millions of Mexicans
men and women: political assassinations, economic crises, massive
poverty, illicit enrichment, tightening of links between the
government and organized crime, corruption, irresponsibilitiy,
war… and bad jokes badly told.
For most of your six year term, you tried
to destroy the indigenous people that launched a challenge to
everything you represent. You tried to destroy us.
When you came to power, you had the liberty
to choose how to face the Zapatista uprising. What you chose
is already done and is history. In your role as Supreme Commander
of the Federal Army and with all the power that being the chief
executive holds, you could have chosen the path of dialogue and
negotiation. You could have offered signs of peace. You could
have complied with what you signed in San Andrés. You
could have brought peace.
You didn't do it.
You chose instead a double strategy of
claiming a disposition for dialogue and continuing the path of
violence. That is how you tried to repeat the history of the
treason of Chinameca (February 9, 1995). You spent billions of
pesos trying to buy the consciences of the rebels. You militarized
the indigenous communities (and not only in Chiapas). You deported
international observers. You trained, armed and equipped paramilitaries.
You prosecuted, jailed and summarily executed Zapatistas ("remember"
Union Progreso, June 10, 1998) and you did it to non-Zapatistas:
You destroyed the social fabric of rural Chiapas, and you followed
the slogan of your putative son, the paramilitary group "Red
Mask" ("We will kill the Zapatista seed"). You
sent them to massacre children and pregnant women in Acteal on
December 22, 1997.
We could have understood why, although
you could have followed the path of dialogue, you opted instead
to make war upon us. It could have been because they sold you
the idea that you could take us prisoner, that you could have
defeated us militarily, that you could have achieved our surrender,
that you could have bought us, that you could have tricked us,
that you could have caused the Mexican people to forget about
us and our fight, that you could have caused the people of other
countries to renounce their solidarity with the indigenous cause.
In sum, that you could have won the war against us. This we could
have understood. But, Mr. Zedillo, Why Acteal? Why did you send
them to kill children? Why did you send your hitmen to kill pregnant
women with machetes, who, wounded or terrorized, did not escape
from the massacre.
In the end, what didn't you do to destroy
the Zapatistas?
Is it possible that they are not finished?
That they slipped out your ambush of February 9, 1995? That they
rebelled anew after your breaking of the San Andrés Accords?
That they escaped your military occupation as many times as they
wanted? That they resisted your ferocious offensive, conducted
by "doggy bones" Albores against the autonomous municipalities?
That time and again they demonstrated with mobilizations that
their demands count with the support of millions of Mexicans?
No, the Zapatistas were not finished.
And not only were they not finished. What's
more, is they proliferated through the entire world. Remember
the times you had to escape through emergency exits, surreptitiously,
from the events in other countries that you participated in while
the Zapatista committees of solidarity protested your Chiapas
policy? Is there any ambassador or consul that has not reported
with despair the actions that International Zapatistas conducted
at the events and buildings of the Mexican government in foreign
countries? How many protests from international organizations
were received by your foreign relations ministry for the incompliance
with the San Andres Acords, the militarization of Chiapas and
the lack of dialogue with the Zapatistas? And when you ordered
the expulsion of hundreds of international observers, did that
diminish the solidarity actions throughout the world?
And what can you tell me about Mexico?
Instead of saying "limited to four Chiapas towns",
that Zapatista thinking extended to the 32 states of the federation.
And it was made worker, farmer, indigenous, teacher, student
employee, choffer, fisherman, rocker, painter, actor, writer,
nun, priest, athlete, housewife, neighbor, independent unionist,
homosexual, lesbian, transsexual, soldier, marine, small and
medium business owner, street vendor, handicapped person, retired
and pensioned… people.
That was how the six years went, Mr. Zedillo.
You could have chosen between peace and war and you opted for
war. The results of this election are clear: You lost the war.
You did everything you could to destroy
us.
We only resisted.
You are going into exile.
We continue here.
Mr. Zedillo,
You came to power through a crime that,
right up to today, stays unrectified. And crimes of impunity
filled your six year term. In addition to continuing the policies
of privitization of your predecessor (and now open enemy), Salinas
de Gortari, you dressed the crime named FOBAPROA-IPAB in legality
and that consisted not only in the result that poor Mexicans
"rescued" the rich and made them richer, but also that
this heavy load compromises future generations.
For more than 70 million mexicans, the
supposed economic solidity of the country means misery and unemployment.
While you protected carefully the invasion by foreign capital,
in the national market the small and medium sized businesses
were disappeared. During your term, the borders that divide government
and organized crime were erased and the continuous scandals provoked
serious problems in the press: it was impossible to separate
the news of the political section and that of the scandal pages:
"suicides," ex-governors as fugitives, generals as
prisoners, prosperous businessmen that "only" were
tortured, police "specialized" in the combat against
organized crime seizing universities.
Today, just like your predecessor, you
are marching off to the same place as those who gave you your
job, they served you and were served by you, and then converted
into your worst enemies disposed to pursue you. There, beginning
tomorrow, you will know, Mr. Zedillo, what it is to be pursued
night and day. And it will not only last six years. Because beginning
right now there will be a very long line of those who want to
settle accounts and injuries.
It's clear that we were right when, six
years ago, the Zapatistas welcomed you to the nightmare. But
now you are going? Is it over?
Yes and no.
Because for us the nightmare with you
ends today. It could be followed by another or, finally, an awakening,
we don't know. We will do everything possible so that tomorrow
will flourish. But for you, Mr. Zedillo, the nightmare will only
continue…
Vale. Good health and it doesn't matter
where you hide: in that place there will also be Zapatistas.
From the Mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
México, November 2000.
P.S. Of course, before I forget. A year
ago, in September 1999, you sent us an open letter through your
Interior Minister (today, a candidate for the presidency of the
PRI). I believe it was called "Another step into the Abyss,"
"A darker step," "A more cynical step" or
something like that. In that letter, that came only three years
late, your government supposedly responded, with lies, to the
conditions that (in September of 1996!) we had made for the dialogue
to begin anew. The open letter tried, more than tricking us,
to fool the national and international public opinion. Something
that it certainly did not succeed at doing. As you would want
it to be, the lying letter told us that we would be satisfied
with what would be said, and invited us to return to the dialogue.
It would be discourteous on our part to leave you without a response,
above all because today you are (finally!) going. Excuse our
tardiness, but permit me to answer you in these lines: our response
is: NO!
You're welcome.
The
Mexican Transition: Immediate History
There's No Hidin'
Place 'round Here