IN THE JUNGLE WITH MARCOS
Landau, Saul
IN THE IUNGIE WITH BY SAUL LANDAU Do you know where Reality is and how to get there? Fly to Tuxtla Gutierrez, capital of Chiapas, take a bus to San Cristobal de las Casas, an old colonial city...
...the American people: Your future problems are in Mexico, and to solve these problems, you must help the Mexican people...
...So poverty remains, and grows and grows and grows...
...The sun has dipped behind the Blue Mountain, the wildest part of the jungle, el sup informs us...
...Noon comes and goes...
...I dip the dry cornmeal cake into the bean juice, hoping not to pick up any cling-ons...
...On the scale of values in modern Mexico, indigenous people rate zero, lower even than an animal...
...At 4:05 two men wearing ski masks and carrying semiautomatic weapons walk into sight...
...I've turned into three people...
...The hell with him, I say, let's eat...
...I mention that Castro once said there is no life that requires greater sacrifice than guerrilla life...
...And according to what the landowners say, not even like an animal because an animal is worth more...
...Armed soldiers amble along the muddy lanes between abandoned houses, and a few hookers sit on a rickety bench, waiting for the soldiers to finish their patrol...
...Within seconds a large red spot appears with a black dot in the center...
...Women begin to descend from the mountain with their woodpiles...
...She is seventeen, unmarried, one of Jorge and Gloria's eight children...
...We watch from a crude bench outside the two-room school...
...He asks me if I'm the periodtshi...
...At 4:30 a.m...
...Remember us...
...In this sense, without explicitly proposing it...
...The racism used against the indigenous Chiapans is very similar to apartheid in South Africa...
...They were treated like animals...
...I slug my bottled water both to quench my thirst and temper my hunger pangs...
...By 4:00 we begin to think the sup has forgotten us, or the message didn't arrive, or he's at an all-day prayer meeting...
...the only way to survive here in the Lacondon jungle is to laugh...
...In October, elected delegates of Mexico's Congress, along with Bishop Samuel Ruiz and other dignitaries, met here with Zapatista leaders...
...I ask whether the indigenous can maintain their identity without having land...
...And the American people's effort to try to solve this should be directed to help the Mexican people, not to help the Mexican gov-ernment...
...all night, 'We are good...
...Carlos, the jungle veteran, braces his hammock with mosquito netting inside the classroom...
...The forty-three red welts and bumps, some with stingers left in them, will remain for only about three weeks, but the other memories will stick...
...Rather, the indigenous Mexican was even lower still...
...This is the history of the indigenous in Mexico...
...When the government of the United States makes a foreign, policy mistake, the government doesn't pay the debt...
...I write down that I have a date with el sup...
...At about 3:00 p.m., village men return from the milpa, the cornpatch...
...The women have already begun to do their chores...
...No, the concept of land for indigenous people goes beyond what the land produces, or even gives life itself...
...And at 6:00 more than 100 men appear, with machetes, and begin a collective lawn-mowing on all the village greenery...
...Marcos, his bodyguard, and our camera crew move under the eaves of a nearby building...
...He nods, and tells us to park the vehicle in the smidgen of shade offered by a tree near the village classroom, next to the stream that runs through the village...
...I wonder whether the Zapatistas represent a threat to the United States...
...He turns out to be the elected village chief...
...Moreover, the mountain was rejecting you...
...Here we are.' Our unique way to make this country and this world remember us, paradoxically, is by hiding ourselves...
...this is La Realidad...
...Out of nowhere a buzzing black insect, an image from a Gameboy set, circles my head...
...Thev don't know if thev want to portrav me as a good guv or bad guy...
...In Spanish...
...Early Sunday evening, the contact informs me that my filming date was two hours ago, but not to worn,' because if I arrive there tomorrow morning they will understand...
...Then I ask him about his view of President Clinton and U.S...
...This was what we had to do.' But there was nothing outside of that to confirm that what you were doing made sense...
...After dinner, about 4:30,1 wander over to the village basketball court—every village has one—and the guys invite me to play with them...
...At 3:30 in the afternoon, I force myself into conversation with an eleven-year-old kid who wants to know how much a VW Combi costs and what renting a car means...
...It is the reference to his historic past that is not limited to something that has already passed, but it is something that is still happening...
...They've never been taken into account...
...It starts to burn...
...What's time mean when there's no phone to ring, no fax to send...
...1 resist scratching...
...a horn blows, and I incorporate Yom Kippur into my dream, but when I sit up I hear the sound again...
...Of those, the most important one is the Marcos who is the product of all the others up to now...
...We had only an hour of daylight, so we got right into the interview...
...Maybe he's in the middle of a hot poker game, or hunting an animal, or making love to his wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, or whomever...
...I drink the lukewarm, overly sweet coffee, tell the sefiora how wonderful everything is, and listen to the others talk about Reality...
...Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos...
...It pushed rain and cold on you...
...We turn the camera off...
...Before the uprising, they only had the possibility of not living—of dying and dying needlessly...
...When the American government gives money to the Mexican government, that money doesn't go to the Mexican people...
...He poses for photos with my wife and me...
...They and their ancestors have survived this way for over a millennium...
...Head east twenty more miles to Las Margaritas and then continue on a rocky, unpaved road that begins to resemble a mountain trail...
...Reality is La Realidad...
...Then comes night, the young men still shooting hoops by the full moon, as a chill fills the air, chasing all but the most determined of people-chewing insects...
...which I assume to be short for maximum jefe...
...The mask identifies the Mayan as a member of the EZLN...
...Like the women who awoke before them and began their labors two hours earlier, the village men have followed a work-life pattern for centuries...
...I ask him what size boots he wears, noticing that his are shredded...
...I slap...
...The United States can deal with Mexico about immigration, drugs, and crime better by supporting the effort of Mexican people for democracy...
...Smile," Marcos says, and reminds us that the plane has a camera...
...We think that when the uprising took place on the first of January, the globalization process, which coincided with Mexico's formal incorporation into NAFTA, meant the sacrifice of a part of humanity...
...Villagers call him Maxi...
...He carries a pipe in one hand and a submachine gun in the other...
...taxpayers pay more to solve this problem...
...I'm not referring to only the land he works but also the land where he lives, his community and his mountains, his rivers...
...I wander with the crew over to Jorge's kitchen where the fire is well-stoked, the beans are bubbling, and I pray the coffee water was boiled...
...In the case of the indigenous, they don't even have the possibility of beginning to climb the educational staircase, which was the social ladder...
...We call them look-at-the-sky peppers," says the teenager...
...Am I feeling a bit frustrated...
...Even cellulars don't function out here...
...When Clinton supports the Mexican government, Zedillo's government, the U.S...
...Time in Reality is carried by wind and depends on the speed of the wind on any given day...
...I feel mixed emotions...
...Indian girls just like her have been carrying loads of wood for centuries...
...I name her Giganta, the Saint Bernard of the La-condon jungle...
...The mountain made you hungry, sick...
...Maybe he's in the middle of writing one of his communiques for the internet, or meeting with the other co-mandantes about political strategy, or reading yesterday's La Jornada or this week's Proceso, Mexico's best and most progressive newspaper and magazine, respectively...
...presumably Zapatistas, then another dump truck, then an army vehicle with a platoon of soldiers...
...I ask Maxi...
...They understand that former President Salinas's revision of Article 27 of the Constitution removed protection from their land—their life,the« identity, their future...
...there will be no land for their children and their grandchildren...
...says the head man, the horn blowing calls the assembly...
...wearing blue overalls, strides purposetullv toward us...
...Enjoy magnificent scenery, occasional Indian villages, and periodic threats to your life as the vehicle skids down slippery mud slopes with nothing but 200 feet of space between you and the bottom of the canyon...
...Another cool night, but not cool enough to inhibit the ticks that crawl under my socks and sweat pants to gnaw at my flesh...
...It's not the same relationship as it is with a peasant, although his relationship with the land is very similar, in that it gives him a livelihood, roots, a goal in life...
...Got it...
...One of them smokes a pipe...
...You had a mule and now you don't...
...At 4:00 Monday morning, we depart, south to Comitan, about an hour-and-a-half drive on a pothole-filled, but nevertheless paved,road...
...I wait...
...I have a sentimental attachment to these...
...The aggression of animals, insects, all this was saying, 'Go, go...
...He or she takes off the bandana or ski mask to hide—just another villager who fetches wood, washes corn, and hacks the weeds from the milpa...
...When hunger pangs develop, I suck on a grapefruit and feel that recurring sensation of worry vibrations tugging at my liver...
...government is supporting its own future problems, because the lack of democracy in Mexico means lack of justice and liberty...
...Here we are...
...They don't know which hat I'm going to wear...
...In this sense the death of an indigenous person didn't even count...
...Marcos of the past who has a past, the Marcos of the mountains before the first of January, and post January 1 Marcos...
...Oui guns are only a way of saying, 'Hey, here we are...
...a wooden sign assures you...
...In La Realidad, some, mostly women, still speak in Tojolabal...
...We are looking to save our country and tell our story...
...government knows it...
...The only thing that allowed you to survive was the hope that something would come from everything we were doing...
...We depart from Reality in late afternoon...
...The Mexican government doesn't do anything to resolve these problems, only increases repression, the military, and police force...
...Marcos's advance man shows up and we complete the interview...
...At this point, a military spotter plane dives toward us, possibly drawn by the sun reflector we're using...
...They know what they have learned, however, from their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents: a culture of order, discipline, respect for nature and each other—and a democratic, albeit hierarchical, system of government, where the village meets in assembly to discuss each important decision...
...The socialist camp was collapsing, the armed struggle route was completely abandoned, and \ o u were like some nut clinging to a dream, dreaming because that was the truth...
...The army, after all...
...They can't even climb the ladder of life...
...When the plane flies out of sight, we resume...
...Each year immigration grows, and each year U.S...
...Maybe if the indigenous people only lacked expectations for educational achievement, or recognized that their social conditions wouldn't allow them to improve their lives, probably the indigenous movement would have opted for other means, but they didn't have another possibility...
...Just as Marcos said, each family seems to have lost its share of kids, mostly between birth and five years old: fever, cough, diarrhea...
...And that's the truth...
...On these steep roads, local people tote what look like 100-pound loads of firewood on their backs...
...I repeat, not the Mexican government but the Mexican people...
...He savs...
...For the Indian, it's also his link with history...
...Carlos arranges with the village head to allow us to buy our meals at the house of Jorge's family for ten pesos a meal, about $1.50...
...Don't think that we were fantasizing about seizing power and then becoming a great president or emulating a Castro or a Lenin or whatever...
...It is the Marcos of after the first of January...
...He says we must ask permission...
...The project of the future, no matter how modern, has to incorporate its past, has to incorporate its history, and that he who forgets his history has to pay for it like the neoliberal regimes in Mexico are paying now...
...In order to show who we are, we hide, by wearing ski masks, inside a clandestine organization, using this ambiguous method to tell the country...
...At 11:30 p.m...
...Park your vehicle on the side of the road...
...We wait throughout the morning as colorfully clad, barefooted women and teenage girls return from the mountains carrying formidable loads of wood on their backs, with a sling-like affair that reaches around the wood and across their foreheads to absorb and balance the weight...
...don't reflect too much, don't predict things, and that is what I think has given coherence to what we can do...
...says a short, dark-skinned man who approaches and asks you in unsyntactical Spanish to write down what you want and give him some I.D...
...1 have never before, at five-seven and 155 pounds, been the tallest and heaviest player on the court...
...This is the social-ideological basis that makes possible, on the first of January, 1994, this absurd war by an army of thousands of indigenous people, poorly armed, badly trained, ill-disciplined, malnourished, poorly equipped, which decides to challenge a powerful army, a government at the height of its world renown, the government of Salinas de Gortari, and to challenge the entire world in the same way...
...Same people, same logs, same pathetic dog, same meal—except this time there's a burned egg thrown on top of the beans, and the chiles are green, not red, and burn the roof of my mouth only 85 percent as much as the scarlet killers did...
...Until 1993 a chicken, a hen, was worth more than the life of an indigenous person...
...At about 11:00 a.m., a dozen lower-grade-school boys run out of the classrooms, doing somersaults...
...After breakfast I send another note to el sup, short of begging, just a polite reminder that we're waiting...
...Iask Marcos about his thinking at the time of the rebellion...
...I stare at the sky for a couple of hours, then at 5:30 put mv boots over the throbbing, itching welts on my ankles and legs and limp toward the communal water tap to throw something cold and wet on my face, The men begin to file toward the milpa, machetes well-filed, faces stoic...
...They challenged neoliberalism, in this case the Free Trade Treaty, with a wooden stick disguised as a gun...
...but is actually an abbreviation for his name...
...The air hangs around us like a cartoon bubble that says "heat and humidity," as the foggy cool of early morning turns furnace-like and the sun burns away the mist...
...He asks me if I have brought the newspapers or anything else...
...Today, the air hangs in place, waiting alongside me in a war of attrition...
...It lands on my hand...
...A village ref whistles the violations, and we change sides arte we score twenty points...
...His bodyguard brings two benches for us to sit on and we begin our conversation, which would last until it got dark and then continue the next day...
...It was an irrational expectation, totally loony, because there was nothing, absolutely nothing that would validate what you were doing—not world news, nor national news, nor anything...
...We return to our vehicle, store the camera and tapes, and make our way to Jorge's hut for our second meal of the day...
...Zapatista leader, poet, communicator extraordinaire, from the jungles of Chiapas...
...You have to have a well-developed sense of humor or be completely nuts...
...We only have the truth of our words, and we are making one prophecy to you...
...I ask him whether it's difficult to have a personal life as a guerrilla, or whether he's turned into a different person...
...government has forgotten the story of Mexico, and this is a mistake that all the American people will pay for...
...He tells us where to be—a ten-minute walk—at 4:00...
...Antonio, another visitor in waiting, shows us where we can dip our itching, throbbing, sweating bodies into the cool stream...
...Then a young man...
...What neoliberalism has done—the process of world globalization in NAFTA—is to eliminate a part of this population, annihilating them, forgetting them, wiping them from the face of the Earth...
...But this problem doesn't get solved, because the problem is not in the United States, or on the U.S.-Mexican border...
...Don't forset about us...
...The soldiers and Zapatistas avert their eyes when the patrol walks by...
...I nod...
...He now blocks the entire, narrow road...
...They finish within an hour...
...January 1, 1994...
...But someone is behind the ski mask," he laughs, "and that's the truth, and that Marcos is the one who spent twelve years in the mountains before the first of JanSubcomandante...
...or whether the Mexican army's going to kill me...
...I contemplate a variety of scenarios that range from armed confrontation between the soldiers and Zapatistas behind us, to slow death by starvation...
...I mean, when Mr...
...That's why people say it doesn't matter who Marcos is: Marcos is a symbol, he means something we have constructed...
...the debt is paid by the American people...
...The problem is in Mexico...
...In the village, doctors and nurses sit outside a modern hospital bereft of patients...
...As my body temperature reestablishes its equilibrium, a small puppy approaches, an animal slightly larger than a mouse, with the pathetic look of a beagle mixed with a tortured rabbit "She has no name," responds Gloria...
...Hew" he urties...
...Dead in the period from birth to age five...
...We don't have nuclear bombs...
...He responds in Spanish...
...Really very difficult, I don't know how to measure deprivation because seeing the indigenous conditions I would say that if anyone lives worse than guerrillas it is the indigenous people here...
...By noon...
...This village is 100 percent Zapatista...
...In reality, the Marcos everyone knows, the Marcos of the ski mask, is someone in turn constructed from this ski mask, and who reflects a mountain of aspirations, and who has nothing to do with the person that is behind the ski mask...
...We get on the same wavelength as peasant movements from other parts of the world, and with ethnic minorities from other parts of the world...
...the Zapatista Army's message is converted to a world message in that the oblivion suffered by the indigenous Chiapans is the same suffered by indigenous or ethnic groups in other parts of the world...
...it stays in the Mexican government...
...What we want in Mexico is democracy, liberty, and justice...
...His wife Gloria and his kids laugh as we arrive, place hunks of log or kiddie chairs outside the kitchen, plus a small bench, on which a teenage girl, dressed in what looks like her party clothes but which turns out to be a traditional women's costume, places a metal bowl of water—for us to wash our hands...
...It itches...
...I note how much alike are their young, indigenous faces...
...I cannot see by the light of the candles inside the kitchen what else but beans is floating in the beans...
...The hair on my ears liq-uefies, a dentist drills into a nerve on the roof of my mouth...
...On the road, we film an Indian girl, who appears to be no more than twelve, carrying a load of wood that a lumberjack would find difficult to hoist...
...He answers now in broken and accented English...
...Roosters crow, frogs and insects chatter away, an occasional whinny comes from a horse, a snort from a pig-Reality's night-time band...
...Many residents of La Realidad prepared for the meetings by slipping bandanas over their mouths and noses and hoisting sticks on their shoulders, simulating rifles—the Zapatista symbol...
...Yeah, I got it all right...
...Wearing sweat pants, sweat shirt, and a pair of cotton socks midway up my legs, drenching myself with insect repellent, I curl up in the rear bench of the VW Combi, Rebecca on the middle bench, leaving only a crack of window open—a mistake, as I discover the next morning...
...Dogs yap and roosters crow amidst a continual croaking and humming of frogs and bugs, with pigs snorting like bass players in this tropical orchestra of fauna...
...The military and police are corrupted by the drug traffic, and the U.S...
...Maximiliano...
...We trudge a quarter of a mile on a mud path and immerse hot flesh in cool mountain water...
...But it was a very difficult situation especially for someone from the city...
...It's just less acknowledged here...
...It is hardly a secret that this village is Zapatista territory...
...IN THE IUNGIE WITH BY SAUL LANDAU Do you know where Reality is and how to get there...
...I stuff some beans in my tortilla, jam two tiny peppers in...
...we put our heads on pillows...
...Fly to Tuxtla Gutierrez, capital of Chiapas, take a bus to San Cristobal de las Casas, an old colonial city an hour and a half and two mountains away...
...Gloria has cooked us a veritable feast: tepid, flaky corn tortillas, and watery, over-salted beans with pieces of protein—insects and worms-floating in them...
...and takes bite...
...Then, just after we drive through the ghost village of Guadalupe Tepeyac...
...Don't forget us' "We are not terrorists...
...They were despised simply because they looked Indian...
...With limited vocabulary and poor syntax in Spanish, the villagers nevertheless talk politics...
...A burned scrambled egg soaked in lemon juice, salt, and a hot pepper wrapped in a flaky tortilla placate my hunger...
...Another plane dives down...
...He and his bodyguard turn and begin their trek from Reality to their camp...
...A dump truck in front of us tries to turn around and backs its rear wheels into a ditch...
...My bloated feet, clad in hiking boots, throb explosively, my clothes cling like freshly glued wallpaper...
...It is 11:00 a.m...
...Marcos GALE Insurgent in La Realided uary, who was born out of the corpse of the civilian Marcos...
...Surrounding us, rising precipitously from the valley, green mountains stand like still-life paintings, tropical Vermeers, studded with fir trees, precious wood, banana stalks, and, hiding under them, the frail coffee trees—key to the village economy...
...There isn't a family that hasn't lost a quarter or more of its children...
...Behind us is a truckload of village men...
...the name of this village in the Lacondon jungle, in southeast Chiapas, Mexico, maybe fifteen miles north of the Guatemalan border, midway between Las Margaritas on the west and San Quintin on o«tt the east...
...He goes back to Spanish...
...In our case, it meant the sacrifice of the indigenous, of all the indigenous Mexicans but particularly the indigenous Chiapans...
...Buenas tardes," he says, shaking my hand, smiling through his mud-colored ski mask...
...Then a pseudo-military command structure car ries out the decisions...
...This increases the Mexican people's sense of instability, anxiety, and then they must go to another land to find the things they cannot find in their own land...
...Only a life-or-death perspective could take the indigenous groups to such a radical step—armed insurrection...
...Go see the person who communicates with the Zapatistas and find out when and where your appointment is...
...We were thinking that at least we were going to help the indigenous people transform their lives in a radical and irreversible way so that the past would not return...
...Under the revised law...
...Two others died shortly after birth...
...Could the Zapatista poker game last for more than two days...
...The army sends regular motorized convoys through La Reah-dad several times a week...
...like the Pony Express, has to get through...
...Then, the bulldozer operator goes into motion, miraculously turns the dump truck and points it downhill, and pushes it into a shoulder just wide enough for us to pass...
...Soon after, the ram's horn, called el cache, sounds again, and I ask the horn-blower if he could repeat the blow so we can film him...
...you have no business here.' "And the entire world was telling you the same thing...
...The village is a pattern of thatched huts, divided by a rapidly running mountain stream, with women and girls washing corn, beans, clothes, and bodies, and little kids splashing and frolicking...
...Because of all the weight in the back, he breaks the axle...
...Now they face extinction, by what the sup calls neoliberalism...
...they had to walk in the street, and they were scorned...
...Banal hunger pangs are intruding on any lofty thoughts I might have...
...The problem is that the U.S...
...The netless hoops, one ol which hangs at a forty-five-degree angle, present a challenge...
...We watch the thin, white cover of mist burn away and the jungle sun hurling its daily challenge to the human body...
...It was a very tough time...
...he tells me...
...What we tried to do was to be spontaneous, that is to say...
...we are many, we are millions, and this country is forgetting about us.' "This cry begets not so much sympathy, as empathy...
...You were dreaming that what \ou were doing was going to be good for something, and we didn't have ambitious dreams...
...far broader and more complex world view...
...Forget it...
...I ask el sup about the social conditions of the Chiapans prior to the rebellion...
...They have moved locations when the conquistadors and their descendants drove them into the jungle and obliged them to incorporate Catholicism into their own...
...Firewood is piled neatly in sheds outside the huts, and wisps of smoke curl from the kitchens...
...We wander across the so-called road to Jorge's house...
...The road has suffered more rain, thus more dangerous, slippery mud...
...We spring into action, camera, tapes, still camera, film, notebook, notes for questions, adrenalin flowing...
...She brings a dish with salt, limes, and tiny chile peppers...
...in one way or another, it's a warning to this globalization process and to the entire world: You cannot forget a part of yourself in each project you make...
...policy toward Mexico...
...Anybody not able to speak proper Spanish—meaning able to get proper schooling, besides being dark-skinned, short-statured, and dressed in a particular way—couldn't go into certain places...
...We are talking about a group of four, five, six people in the mid-1980s, and we kept repeating to ourselves all day...
...The Indians died and no one noticed...
...Or maybe in our case, both of those things...
...The Indian wasn't just the citizen relegated to the lowest level...
...We continue east for another half an hour, sliding, literally, down the slippery slopes into Reality...
...We watch grass, insects, and kids running out of school...
...The driver then tries to jump out by putting the vehicle in low and revving the accelerator...
...At about 3:30 Tuesday morning,I awake and notice that some women have begun their trek up the mountainside, othgale— ers are washing baskets of grain in the nearby stream...
...Low-riving military planes and helicopters remind the villagers: "We're watching you...
...Carlos navigates the Combi, whose steering grows increasingly unresponsive, through perilous pits and caverns...
...A better border wall between Mexico and the United States is one constructed by democracy, liberty, and justice...
...Marcos joked to Landau that Hollywood producers won't know » hat to do with scripts written about him: "They don't know whether I'm going to sell out...
...Our side wins, but I decline my right as member of the winning team to play in a second game and slosh my way off the court...
...Miraculously, my wife Rebecca and I find Carlos Martinez, a cameraman with camera, charged batteries, and tape, and I locate an open rental agency that has a front-wheel-drive VW Combi...
...He was sub-human, not even enjoying the possibility of the cellar...
...it's not for filming...
...The majority speak "Castilla," but halt- . ingly, without evidence of developed vocabularies or syntax...
...Clinton supports the facade of democracy in Mexico, he is supporting the growth of immigration to the United States from Mexico, because a lot of people will go to cross the border because there is no democracy here, no liberty, no justice...
...Noontime comes and goes, and still no word from el sup...
...before the morning papers arrived, so I give him a book and some cigars for Coman-dante Moises, a gift from a friend of his in the city...
...Believe me...
...Driven to the inhospitable terrain by progress, cattle ranchers, timber barons, and coffee-estate owners, by hydroelectric projects and oil drilling, by corrupt and venal political bosses who fostered division inside the Indian communities, by the laws of capital as they have operated for five centuries, these people now face the ultimate threat of annihilation thanks to NAFTA, a subject I was eager to discuss with the sup, if he ever showed up...
...Even in spite of our guns, we are not a threat to the United States, not even a threat to the Mexican government...
...We'll finish tomorrow," he says, shaking hands, "between 9:00 and 10:00...
...There are three Marcoses...
...Her jet black hair is perfectly combed, adorned with a bow...
...modern security procedures...
...I finally have my meeting with el sup...
...She smiles as we fumble with the bowl and try to figure out where to wipe our wet hands...
...we meet a road-fixing project—dump trucks loaded with dirt, and a giant bulldozer...
...So, this is what we're looking at when we say, "Enough already' Our revolution is a revolution of words, to say...
...Thanks to ,/dhan Barnes tor helping with the translation ot the Marcos interview...
...The dense humidity begins to hang from everything, especially my clothes and hair...
...Iask him about his reputation as a "post-modern" revolutionary, one who uses drama and a sense of humor— something notably absent in other revolutionary movements...
...We are not looking to threaten or embarrass the United States...
...Until not long ago, the indigenous in San Cristobal de las Casas couldn't walk on the sidewalk...
...We had departed GALE Saul Landau, a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, is completing a film on Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatistas, sponsored by the Independent Television Service, a project of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting...
...On the way out of the village, we pass a military camp, whose entrance consists of a makeshift bamboo gate, in the opening of which stands a soldier snapping a photo of the side of the vehicle as it drives by...
...After about three hours of robust kidney exercise, you arrive at the village of Guadalupe Tepevac, a ghost town, the residents driven out by the Federales, the Mexican army, an occupation force...
...If your mule died, you'd acknowledge it...
Vol. 60 • March 1996 • No. 3
