Other than a guard with a red bandana tied around her face—covering both her nose and mouth—and us, the compound was deserted. Some would say that the rusted steel gate, painted red and black, had a nice, rustic charm to it, others would probably describe it as dilapidated. It didn’t take long for the guard to signal to someone inside one of the wooden shacks with beautiful, colorful murals of revolutionary heroes both past and present painted on it, to come over and ask us what we wanted. Two men approached—one wearing the same red bandana, bandit style, the other a black ski mask with only his eyes and a slight bit of his Mayan skin showing. Both men carried guns and demanding we hand over our passports.
While I chose to visit a militant revolutionary compound whose main ideologies center around a peasant uprising against United States Imperialism, I never really thought that visiting would be so serious and my only manner of identifying my nationality (and returning home) had the potential to be compromised. While I always knew that my presence was probably going to be unwelcomed, I never thought there would be such hostility in the guards’ eyes as my little blue booklet showed that I was from where their enemies were bred. I finally realized at this moment that I had zero control over myself on their land and the color of my skin and my nationality would make it so that I would never be accepted here, but for some reason, I still felt as if I had to be there. I had to see the face of the Zapatista Movement.
I first became interested in the Zapatista Movement in high school, but subsequent classes on Latin American history and politics at Madison allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of the movement. The movement sprang up on New Years Day in 1994 in direct opposition to NAFTA. Since Chiapas is the poorest state in Mexico, the indigenous farmers felt that the lowering of abolishing of subsidies on Mexican crops (without the equal ending of subsidies on US crops) would drive the divide between the rich and poor in Mexico to even greater lengths. I always thought the movement was pretty interesting due to the fact that it is happening in modern times, consists mainly of an indigenous population, and their symbolism also heavily focuses on the power and influence of women within the movement.
Essentially I went to San Cristóbal to see if I could get a better idea of this movement, but even though the city is considered the capitol of the movement, walking around San Cristóbal there is almost no EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional or Zapatista Army of National Liberation) presence anywhere—except the markets. Since the vendors in the markets throughout Guatemala and Mexico are mainly of Mayan descent, the San Cristóbal market had plenty of people selling little handcrafted dolls of the Zapatista leaders, Subcomandante Marcos and Comandante Ramona. Even little children on the street would come up to me while I ate food on the street and tried to sell me the little dolls. I asked a girl who didn’t look a day over 5 years of age if she knew the name of the dolls and she smiled and said, “Marcos and Ramona.”
Unable to find any Zapatistas to talk with in San Cristóbal proper, I jumped at the chance to travel outside the city to a compound when some friends from Argentina and France said they were going. The four of us hopped in a colectivo (microbus) and traveled for roughly an hour through the mountains of Chiapas until we reached our destination.
After the men returned our passports at the gate, we were allowed to enter. The compound was pretty small, and along the dirt path of the main road were little shops selling local Zapatista art or food. One of the guards led our way down the hill along the dirt path, brought us to a wooden shack and knocked on the door. Another man with the signature black Zapatista ski mask opened the door, whispered something to the guard that was leading us and promptly closed the door. The guard walked past us, left us and returned to his post up the hill. We waited outside of the door not knowing what to do for maybe two minutes when the man with the mask opened the door again and motioned for us to follow him.
Walking behind him, he instructed us not to take pictures of anything unless he told us we could. As we walked down the hill, women, men and children stopped whatever they where doing and watched us walk behind our “guide”. For over the course of about an hour, the guide took us to three different shops where local citizens had made Zapatista crafts. While we tried to ask our guide questions about the village and the movement, he refused to answer any of them and only stated, “the person who is allowed to talk to outsiders isn’t here.” It was certainly frustrating to say the least. We didn’t come to the compound to be herded into the shops but to gain a greater knowledge of what they were trying to accomplish there, and our inability to get more than three words out of anyone’s mouth was very disheartening.
When our guide decided that our tour was done, he led us into a little tienda where we were allowed to get something to eat. Looking around the tienda, I noticed that in addition to selling a variety of crafts, they were also selling Coca-Cola, Cheetos, and Marlboros. Now if I was trying to start a movement that claimed to be against the imperialism of the United States, I’m not sure if Coca-Cola and Marlboros would be the things that I would sell in the store. So just because I could, I bought some Flaming Hot Cheetos and a can of Coke from a Zapatista.
Another thing that was a little off about the tienda was a lot of the hand crafted goods with writing on them often had a lot of misspellings. There’s a lot of bad things that can be said about the Cuban revolution, but one of the good things that came out of that was a total revitalization of the education and medical systems in the country. While the Zapatistas did have what looked like a very nice medical clinic in the village, I always that since one giant aspect of oppression is the lack of education, and assuming that the Zapatistas would want their followers to be able to read the movement’s writings and perhaps even write their own, they would want to educate their own people. But from the look of things, that didn’t really seem to be happening.
Inside the tienda were two other gringos, and when I noticed they were speaking English with an American accent, I asked them where they were from. Both of them were from Minnesota, and were actually taking part of a study abroad program where they lived in the Zapatista community, studied different social movements and studied Spanish under and with the Zapatistas (since many indigenous in Central America speak primarily with their native tongue and Spanish as a second language).
Since we couldn’t get a lot of answers from the Zapatistas themselves, the Minnesotans’ knowledge would have to do. They claimed that the intimidation at the front gate and the lack of people speaking to us was mainly due to the movement having trouble with the Mexican government sending in spies to try to take note of what they were doing in the compound. They also told us that the movement didn’t really like to have tourists pass through, and since their main objective for the community at the moment was try to become autonomous, they didn’t really care to talk to us or even have us around. I struggled with this idea because if the community really wanted to become autonomous, why would they sell Coca-Cola. While I realize they need to sell goods in order to make money for the cause, couldn’t they sell Mexican-made soda and not a company that is one of the biggest symbols of consumerism in America?
Needless to say, I left the community disappointed. I went in with high expectations about what I was going to learn and the people I was going to talk to, but came away with not too much more knowledge than when I went in. While I still think a lot of the ideology of the movement makes sense and is positive for the people it intends to defend, I guess getting a movement that stands up for the poor and oppressed from ideology to action is probably harder than it seems. However, I figured with over 15 years of trying, they would have something more concrete to stand against other than a bunch of pretty murals. I guess it was just another learning experience.
Also, something in Cheetos makes them taste better in Mexico.
As I write this, I’m on a bus making my way to Palenque, where I plan to spend a day before heading back to Guatemala. I never had any idea that Mexico was as beautiful as it is, and I really can’t believe I get to live the life that I live. I’ve been feeling very appreciative of a lot of things throughout this journey, but just the fact that I’m able to travel for pleasure is probably one of the things I’ve been most appreciative of. Till next time...
