Excerpts from
La Sexta Declaración de la Selva Lacandona
"Ésta es nuestra palabra sencilla que busca tocar el corazón de la gente humilde y simple como nosotros, pero, también como nosotros, digna y rebelde. Ésta es nuestra palabra sencilla para contar de lo que ha sido nuestro paso y en donde estamos ahora, para explicar cómo vemos el mundo y nuestro país, para decir lo que pensamos hacer y cómo pensamos hacerlo, y para invitar a otras personas a que se caminan con nosotros en algo muy grande que se llama México y algo más grande que se llama mundo. ésta es nuestra palabra sensilla para dar cuenta a todos los corazones que son honestos y nobles, de lo que queremos en México y el mundo. Ésta es nuestra palabra sencilla, porque es nuestra idea el llamar a quienes como nosotros y unirnos a ellos, en todas partes donde viven y luchan..."
"This is our simple word which seeks to touch the hearts of humble and simple people like ourselves, but who are also, like ourselves, dignified and rebel. This is our simple words for recounting what our path has been and where we are now, in order to explain how we see the world and our country, in order to say what we are thinking of doing and how we are thinking of doing it, and in order to invite other persons to walk with us in something very great which is called Mexico and something greater which is called the world. This is our simple word in order to inform all honest and noble hearts what it is we want in Mexico and the world. This is our simple word, because it is our idea to call on those who are like us and to join together with them, everywhere they are living and struggling..."
Sometimes you just have to go back to those trusty old basics to make sense of it all. Como dicen por ahí 'mas sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo.' And so I've decided to take a step back from the plethora of debates making the rounds out in the great bloggasphere. I'm taking a breather from the two or three posts I've been working on pero no mas no salen. Breathing deeply before diving into the dozen or so applications hanging on my head like esferitas on a Christmas tree.
Coming back to la Sexta feels like landing on a deserted beach after a storm. You feel the sand underneath your feet, the sun caressing your skin, and when you look out you can see clearly for miles and miles. Every time I read through it I feel like I've been standing in a dark room when suddenly a lightbulb turns on...
No theoretical trabalenguas, no massive dictionary needed, no big road maps, just words sent out to the world in 2005 from deep down in the Lacandon Jungle.
It wasn't always this way. I remember shunning most of the Zapatista declarations for a while,
cuando se puso muy de moda, and all I could see were international activists wearing
pantalones de manta y guaraches and those dreaded blond dreads snaking down or bee-hiving-up-high on their heads. The sudden catapulting of the Zapatista's into celebrity status by activist groups made me cringe, cover my ears up with my hands, close my eyes, and start humming 'blah blah blah' the same way Dorothy repeated "t
here's no place like home" in the Wizard of Oz.
Then there was grad-school... Talk about overkill. My graduate department was basically divided between the all hail the Zapatistas can do no wrong and the 'blah, blah blah'-humming contingency. As usual, I was stuck somewhere in the middle, but mostly tried to stay out of it as I tried to do with every other gone-awry battle in my department. No, this was not out of some sort of complacency, it was mostly out of the profound disconnection I felt between the graduate school battles, my life and the world at large. That disconnect became so heavy that at some point I lost my voice, but that's a story for another day.
Re-reading through the Sexta and visiting a
Zapatista Caracol while living in Oaxaca profoundly changed my relationship to words that had at one point become a burden. Reading la Sexta in the dry asphyxiating heat of a Spring in Oaxaca was like walking out into the drenching cooling rain of a Oaxacan summer evening. And so I turn to it again and again, on the eve of the 'rapture', when people around the world rise up and demand to be heard and our news channels run 20 minutes on the Billboard awards and debate who will replace Charlie Sheen on Two and a half men. I turn to it at a time when our digital
acercamientos leave us more and more disconnected from one another tripping over words when how-do-you-do scripts are not followed. I turn to it feeling like I've experienced a small miracle, as if I had just found a message in a bottle set out to sea. I turn to it with the hope that maybe just maybe others might also stop their "blah blah blahing" and find the message in the bottle stuck somewhere in the sand...
"Bueno, pues ahora les vamos a decir lo que queremos hacer en el mundo y en México, porque no podemos ver todo lo que pasa en nuestro planeta y quedarnos nomás callados, como si sólo nosotros estamos donde estamos..."
"We are now going to tell you what we want to do in the world and in Mexico, because we cannot watch everything that is happening on our planet and jut remain quiet, as if it were only we were where we are..."
