You carry a thousand burdens, and you give birth to a thousand rebellions Words of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) March 22, 2001 Originally published in Spanish by the EZLN Translated by irlandesa In front of San L\'e1zaro Legislative Palace - Mexico City, DF Brothers and sisters of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Puebla, Veracruz, Tlaxcala, Hidalgo, Quer\'e9taro, Guanajuato, Michoac\'e1n, State of Mexico, Morelos, Guerrero, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Tabasco, Tamaulipas, Jalisco, Nayarit, Colima, Sinaloa, Sonora, Northern Baja California, Southern Baja California, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Durango, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, San Luis Potos\'ed and the Federal District. Indigenous brothers and sisters: Brothers and sisters of Mexico City: Through our voice, seven times seven speaks the voice of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. We have come from very far away. Very far away in time.. Very far away in space. We have come from very deep. Very deep in the earth. Very deep in history. We have flown from very high. Very high in dream. Very high in the morning. We are the color we are of the earth. We were named in the language of our most first, and the language which governs and orders us today has nothing for us other than the name of contempt and shame. Brother, sister: We have brought seven voices in order to bring you seven words. Seven times seven faces shine from behind our being without face. You, indigenous woman. They lied to us. Oblivion and death are the only future being offered by the one above. You carry three burdens and you give birth to three rebellions. When you are a girl, your horizons are limited to the poor hut, the empty table, the firewood, the stream for clothes and sadness, the mill wringing something of life from the maize in order to eat poorly with the little brothers and sisters for whom you are mother without having ever been allowed to be child. When you are an adolescent, once again your horizons are the hut, the table, the firewood the stream, the mill, and your little brothers and sisters are replaced by your own children. When you are old, age should have you just beginning life, and forever your horizons are the hut, the table, the firewood, the stream, the mill. Illness will take you to the only place which breaks the poor horizons which seize you: the grave. You, indigenous woman, listen to what my voice of indigenous woman is saying to you when it says rebellion... Comandanta Yolanda: Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee - General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Indigenous Brothers of the entire Mexican Country. Indigenous Women from the different Municipalities and States. We are calling on you to unite, to organize yourselves so that you may all struggle together in order to defend our rights, our culture, our mother tongues, because it is our wealth as indigenous. We indigenous woman must increase our participation in the struggle, so that our rights as women will be written in Mexican law. Only in that way will we be able to assure that our living conditions will improve. The organization and participation of indigenous women is the only path left to us, the poor. If we do not do it ourselves, no one shall do it for us. Indigenous compa\'f1eras, let us make an effort to organize ourselves and to fight alongside our compa\'f1eros. Without our participation, as women, the struggle cannot be won, and we, as women, shall always remain marginalized and humiliated. That is why, sister women, we will be participating in the struggle, so that women shall have the rights we deserve. Democracy! Liberty! Justice! From the San L\'e1zaro Legislative Palace, Congress of the Union. By the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee - General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Comandanta Yolanda. March 22, 2001. Mexico, D.F. ======================== You, woman of the city. They lied to us. Harassment and contempt are still the only future which the one from above offers. You carry a thousand burdens, and you give birth to a thousand rebellions. They harass you and despise you when you are a girl, when you are an adolescent, when you are a young woman, when you are an adult, when you are mature, when you are an old woman. Between harassment and contempt, they want to assign you the role of ornament, and they build the corner for you which they try to make you inhabit. They harass and despise you at home, in school, in the metro or on the bus, in the street, at work, at play, during your free time, in the shop. They want you to be valued for what you look like, and not for what you are. Power then takes the face of father, brother, sweetheart, friend, lover, husband, son, work companion, superior or subordinate, compa\'f1ero in the struggle, the other, mother, sister, girlfriend, compa\'f1era, daughter, the other. Man is then made the hunter, and woman the rival. The struggle then multiples and its fronts multiply: the hunter must understand that the prisoner is not a prisoner, but a person. The rival must understand that the rival is not a rival, but a person. You are in the majority, and they classify you as a minority. You are a person, and they classify you as a thing. For you, the power which takes the face of the men between and in front of those who fight is offering you everything necessary for you to take the face which the power desires and despises. It assigns you the place it wants for you: the horizon of the kitchen, maternity, ornament, object of pleasure, ridicule and contempt, deception for your equality. You, woman of the city, listen to what my voice of woman of the city is saying to you when it says rebellion... Comandanta Esther: Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee - General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Brothers and sisters: We would like to thank everyone who accompanied us in the march through the 12 States. Thank you, brothers, for having received us and for having listened to us in the towns and cities through which we passed. Thank you, also, for having provided us with security. We are calling on all the sister workers, teachers, housewives, seamstresses, doctors, employees, street cleaners, lesbian women, artists, street vendors and honest media workers. We are calling on you to organize yourselves wherever you are, at work or in your homes in the cities, in order to demand our rights which we deserve, and in order to put an end to injustice, and so that you can be recognized at work and have a fair salary. Because we shall only be able to achieve justice if we are united and organized. Our march is not the last one, but it is the beginning, in order to continue fighting for our rights. The long path is still to be followed, and it shall never end, because what we win one day we cannot go back on, we must continue until we reach the end. The seed has been sown, but it also needs someone to water it so that it does not die and so that it bears good fruit. It also needs someone to harvest it. We cannot allow it to wither, because it needs to continue to be fed. It needs to continue being watered and weeded, so that that the best and most abundant fruits may be harvested. It is not just the task of the zapatistas. It is everyone's obligation to care for it, to make it grow, because that is where hope lies. Remaining frozen is to allow injustice and inequality to continue. We are inviting ourselves to stay focused, and not look back, because, once our demand is met, we must be on guard so that it is not someday trampled again.. Democracy! Liberty! Justice! From the San L\'e1zaro Legislative Palace, Congress of the Union. By the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee - General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Comandanta Esther. March 22, 2001. Mexico, D.F ================ You, rural worker. They lied to us. Poverty and desperation are still the only future being offered by the one from above. They betrayed what was law, and made betrayal law. The land is no longer his who works it. It is now the one's who exploits and destroys it. The land which belongs to you is becoming more meager, and its slenderness is fattening the land of the one who has much land. For your demands, there are long lines of files. Millions of excuses for your hunger. And one single lie for your demands: not today, come back tomorrow. And tomorrow is nothing more than a repetition of the impotence of yesterday and of today. If you worked and have something, it will not be for you or for your descendants. The banker will come to show papers, and behind the papers everything you have will disappear. Behind the papers, the credit will go, the machinery, the technology and the market. But they will go into the pocket of the one who does not even know the color of the earth. You, rural worker. Listen to what my voice of campesino and small owner is saying to you when it says rebellion... Comandante Bulmaro: Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee - General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Brothers and sisters: Ejiditarios, comuneros, small owners, day laborers and migrants in general: We, the rural workers, who make mother earth produce, have experienced what the life of misery and exploitation is. They have denied us, the poor campesinos, any possibility if the just and dignified development which we deserve as human beings. It is not fair that we are constantly forced to become landless peons on our own lands, without any hope of overcoming our living conditions. It is not fair that the government continues to control us, buying the consciences of campesinos through temporary programs like Procampo, Progresa and the much heralded micro-credits. The purpose of all these crumbs is so that the campesino will remain silent and satisfied, shattering the collective unity of the working people. It is not fair that many millions of campesinos without lands are forced to work and to sell our workforce to the great agricultural businesses of a few. It is not fair that many millions of us, campesinos, have to leave our families and migrate to other countries in search of better living conditions, while a handful of landowners have amassed large amounts of land. The EZLN is calling on you to organize yourselves more and better, from your ejidos, communities, ranches, barrios and locations. In order to fight together without rest against the forgetting and abandonment, and to banish all the different kinds of injustices which many million of us Mexican men and women are suffering. We campesinos are an important piece in the building of a new Mexico, where all Mexican men and women fit, without regard to race, color or language. A Mexico where campesinos have the right to decide their own forms of economic, political, social and cultural organization. That is why we are saying: never again a Mexico without the campesinos. Democracy! Liberty! Justice! From the San L\'e1zaro Legislative Palace, Congress of the Union. By the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee - General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Comandante Bulmaro. March 22, 2001. Mexico, D.F. |