UMA VIAGEM COM MAIS NÁUFRAGOS DO QUE NAVEGANTES (por Edu Carli @ A Casa de Vidro)

“O desenvolvimento é uma viagem
com mais náufragos do que navegantes.”

Eduardo Galeano,
Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina

No mesmo ano de 1492 em que os conquistadores espanhóis aportaram nas praias do chamado Novo Mundo, a Espanha expulsou 150 mil judeus de seu território e re-conquistou Granada, arrancando-a das garras dos muçulmanos. As Monarquias Absolutas da península ibérica, calcadas na dogmática católica – em especial aquela falaciosa ideologia hoje quase completamente enterrada em descrédito do “monarca por decreto divino” – estavam envolvidas nas turbulências de guerras religiosas sanguinolentas. Quem chegou às Américas em 1492 não foram alguns cristãos pacifistas e benevolentes, como logo descobririam as populações nativas. Os índios não tardaram a fazer uma péssima descoberta: os invasores provinham de civilizações européias cujas elites dirigentes sabiam ser extremamente violentas, intolerantes, dogmáticas e embevecidas por delírios de etno-superioridade. Relembrando aqueles tempos, Galeano escreve:

“A Espanha adquiria realidade como nação erguendo espadas cujas empunhaduras traziam o signo da cruz. A rainha Isabel fez-se madrinha da Santa Inquisição. A façanha do descobrimento da América não poderia se explicar sem a tradição militar da guerra das cruzadas que imperava na Castela medieval, e a Igreja não se fez de rogada para atribuir caráter sagrado à conquista de terras incógnitas do outro lado do mar…” [Nota #1]

Em 1492, os milhões de habitantes deste continente que o invasor estrangeiro depois batizaria de América tiveram um encontro traumático: “descobriram que eram índios, que viviam na América, que estavam nus, que existia o pecado, que deviam obediência a um rei e a uma rainha de outro mundo e a um deus de outro céu, e que este deus havia inventado a culpa e a vestimenta, e havia ordenado que fosse queimado quem quer que adorasse o sol, a lua, a terra e a chuva que a molha…” (Galeano)

Corte para maio de 2007. O Papa visita o Brasil e discursa na basílica de Aparecida (custo desta construção: 37 milhões de reais). Joseph Ratzinger, o Bento XVI, autoridade-mor da Cristandade no princípio do 21º século depois do nascimento do Nazareno, pontifica:

“A fé cristã encorajou a vida e a cultura desses povos indígenas durante mais de 5 séculos. O anúncio de Jesus e de seu Evangelho nunca supôs, em nenhum momento, uma alienação das culturas pré-colombianas, nem uma imposição de uma cultura estrangeira. O que significou a aceitação da fé cristã pelos povos da América Latina e do Caribe? Para eles, isso significou conhecer e aceitar o Cristo, esse Deus desconhecido que seus antepassados, sem perceber, buscavam em suas ricas tradições religiosas. O Cristo era o Salvador que eles desejavam silenciosamente.” [Nota #2]

Comparados, os discursos de Galeano e de Ratzinger são explicitamente contraditórios, antagônicos, irreconciliáveis. Não há como ambos possam estar certos simultaneamente – o que equivale a dizer que, destes dois, um deles mente. A história da Conquista que nos narra o autor d’As Veias Abertas Da América Latina é repleta de chacinas, pilhagens e horrores; nela houve sim, indubitavelmente, uma cultura forçada goela abaixo dos nativos através da violência das armas-de-fogo e das espadas afiadas. Já a história, higienizada pelo Papa (que demitiu-se, dando lugar ao Papa Chico), fabrica um conto-de-fadas: nele, a fé cristã foi “aceita” na América por aqueles que “desejavam silenciosamente” abraçar o Cristo, e segundo Bento XVI os europeus que aportaram no Novo Mundo agiram de modo humanitário e generoso ao presentear os pagãos com a imensa benesse de seu catolicismo.

Diante da lorota papal, Jean Ziegler comenta, em Ódio ao Ocidente: “Raramente uma mentira histórica foi proferida com tanto sangue-frio. […] A população total de astecas, incas e maias era de 70 a 90 milhões de pessoas quando os conquistadores chegaram. Entretanto, um século e meio depois, restavam apenas 3,5 milhões.” [Nota #3]

A cidade de Potosí, na Bolívia, serve como um exemplo das ações dos predadores ibéricos e seu apetite voraz pelas riquezas alheias. Potosí, que fica a quase 4.000 metros de altitude, já foi uma das cidades mais populosas e ricas do mundo. No século XV e XVI, torna-se tamanho paradigma de um território abençoado com vastas riquezas naturais a ponto de no romance clássico de Cervantes, Dom Quixote de La Mancha, o Cavaleiro da Triste Figura utilizar-se, em seus papos com Sancho Pança, a expressão “vale um Potosí”. Os invasores estrangeiros extraíram, durante 3 séculos, cerca de 40.000 toneladas de prata de suas montanhas [nota #4].

As comunidades quíchua e aimará do Altiplano andino foram escravizadas, empurradas para as minas e coagidas por guardas armados ao labor pesado em circunstâncias adversas. Os desabamentos eram frequentes e muitos mitayos (os escravos mineiros) acabavam enterrados vivos nas profundezas da montanha de prata. Estima-se que 8 milhões de pessoas morreram em Potosí no processo de butim que os invasores europeus promoveram. Para justificar o genocídio, o teólogo espanhol Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1489-1573) explica: “Os indígenas merecem ser tratados dessa maneira porque seus pecados e idolatrias ofendem a Deus.” Em outras palavras: na teologia imperial, Deus é espanhol, ama o capitalismo e aplaude a escravização e a chacina.

Potosí é apenas um caso dentre muitos outros e poderíamos contar uma estória semelhante sobre as Minas Gerais, em especial Vila Rica, hoje Ouro Preto, que foi pilhada de todo o seu ouro, assim como Potosí foi assaltada de toda a sua prata. Ao invés de multiplicar exemplos de horrores que sucederam à Conquista da América, ouçamos esta reflexão mais geral de Karl Marx sobre as conexões entre o desenvolvimento do capitalismo industrial europeu e o empreendimento colonial, escravocrata e genocida:

“O capital veio ao mundo suando sangue e lama por todos os poros. […] Em geral, a escravidão velada dos operários assalariados na Europa precisava, como pedestal, da escravatura notória no Novo Mundo. […] O tesouro capturado fora da Europa, diretamente por pilhagem, escravização, assassinato seguido de roubo, refluiu para a mãe pátria e transformou-se aí em capital.” [nota #5]

Em sua aurora, portanto, o capitalismo europeu nutriu-se de holocaustos coloniais, praticou a escravização em massa, sugou suas gordas mais-valias da exploração brutal do trabalho forçado, com as bênçãos de papas e reis. O que se seguiu à Conquista da América, aquilo de que ainda somos infelizmente contemporâneos, é uma história-ainda-presente de genocídio e etnocídio, entrelaçados e amalgamados. Não foi Hitler quem inventou a limpeza étnica. Os índios conheceram-na a partir de 1492 e talvez não haja absurdo algum em chamar a coisa por seu devido nome: holocausto. Em Arqueologia da Violência, Pierre Clastres explana o que entende pela palavra “etnocídio” e no que esta se distingue de “genocídio”: “O etnocídio é a supressão das diferenças culturais julgadas inferiores e más; é a aplicação de um projeto de redução do outro ao mesmo…”  Ouçamos mais longamente à argumentação de Clastres:

“Quem são os praticantes do etnocídio? Em primeiro lugar, aparecem na América do Sul, mas também em muitas outras regiões, os missionários. Propagadores militantes da fé cristã, eles se esforçam por substituir as crenças bárbaras dos pagãos pela religião do Ocidente. A atitude evangelizadora implica duas certezas: primeiro, que a diferença – o paganismo – é inaceitável e deve ser recusada; a seguir, que o mal dessa má diferença pode ser atenuado ou mesmo abolido. É nisto que a atitude etnocida é sobretudo otimista: o Outro, mau no ponto de partida, é suposto perfectível, reconhecem-lhe os meios de se alçar, por identificação, à perfeição que o cristianismo representa.

O etnocídio é praticado para o bem do selvagem. O discurso leigo não diz outra coisa quando enuncia, por exemplo, a doutrina oficial do governo brasileiro quanto à política indigenista: “Nossos índios, proclamam os responsáveis, são seres humanos como os outros. Mas a vida selvagem que levam nas florestas os condena à miséria e à infelicidade. É nosso dever ajudá-los a libertar-se da servidão. Eles têm o direito de se elevar à dignidade de cidadãos brasileiros, a fim de participar plenamente do desenvolvimento da sociedade nacional e de usufruir de seus benefícios”. A espiritualidade do etnocídio é a ética do humanismo.

Denomina-se etnocentrismo a vocação para avaliar as diferenças pelo padrão da sua própria cultura. O Ocidente seria etnocida porque é etnocentrista, porque se pensa e quer ser a civilização. […] O etnocídio é a supressão das diferenças culturais julgadas inferiores e más; é a aplicação de um projeto de redução do outro ao mesmo. O índio amazônico suprimido como outro e reduzido ao mesmo como cidadão brasileiro. Em outras palavras, o etnocídio resulta na dissolução do múltiplo em Um.” [nota #6]

Ora, a Conquista da América foi um projeto genocida e etnocida, posto em prática por potências imperiais européias que chegaram aqui embevecidas com sua intolerância, embrutecidas por sua presunção de superioridade.

No filme espanhol Também A Chuva (También La Lluvia), da Iciar Bollain, temos a oportunidade de refletir sobre imperialismo e colonização em um contexto visceralmente contemporâneo: estamos na Bolívia do começo do século, às vésperas da eclosão da Guerra da Água de Cochabamba.

Gael Garcia Bernal encarna um dos espanhóis da equipe de produção do filme-dentro-do-filme, um desses blockbusters que pretendem fornecer um retrato épico e heróico da História. Pagam uma merreca para que os bolivianos participem como figurantes das filmagens e pretendem ordenar os rumos da película como se fossem ainda os poderosos chefões de outrora.

Só que as ebulições do presente suplantam o retrato sereno do passado: a equipe cinematográfica que queria apenas realizar um filme sobre os tempos de Colombo acaba envolvida pelo turbilhão da imensa revolta popular que seguiu-se à decisão, tomada pelo conluio governamental-corporativo, de privatizar a água na Bolívia.

O título do filme – Também a Chuva – refere-se a algo que até parece mentira, invenção satírica, paranóia de Bolivarista: a privatização de todas as formas de água, inclusive a da chuva. Ocorreu de fato: os bolivianos não só tiveram que engolir um aumento de 300% nas tarifas da água, após o cerceamento corporativo do commons; os bolivianos tiveram roubado até mesmo seu direito à chuva.

Em nossa era dita “neoliberal” (mas que talvez merecesse o nome “neocolonial”), a América Latina ainda batalha contra os gigantes do capitalismo global que aqui desejam faturar seus imensos lucros ao preço de nossa imensa miséria: na Bolívia, o acordo entre as mega-corporações transnacionais e o Estado elitista que as servia de joelhos, na era pré-Evo Morales, fez com que este direito humano básico à água, esta necessidade elementar para a sobrevivência física de qualquer ser humano, fosse transformado em mercadoria e pretexto para o lucro.

Fotos extraídas do artigo de Franck Poupeau, “La guerre de l’ eau – Cochabamba, Bolivie, 1999-2001” (Pg. 133 do seguinte livro, disponível em PDF: http://agone.org/lyber_pdf/lyber_401.pdf)

 Assim que a privatização da água foi imposta pelo governo e efetivada pelas corporações, o que ocorreu foi que as empresas capitalistas

“aumentaram massivamente o preço da água potável e centenas de milhares de famílias viram-se na impossibilidade de pagar a conta. Elas tiveram que se abastecer nos riachos poluídos, nos poços envenenados pelo arsênico. As mortes infantis pela ‘diarreia sangrenta’ aumentaram potencialmente. Manifestações públicas começaram a explodir. Durante os confrontos com a polícia, dezenas de pessoas foram mortas e centenas ficaram feridas, entre elas muitas mulheres e crianças. Mas os bolivianos não se dobraram. O movimento se espalhou por todo o país. No dia 17 de outubro de 2003, cercados no palácio Quemado por uma multidão enfurecida de mais de 200 mil manifestantes, o presidente Lozada e seus comparsas mais próximos decidiram fugir do país. Destino: Miami.” [nota #7]

Também a Chuva tem entre seus méritos maiores o retrato destes eventos cruciais na história latino-americana recente. A excelência do filme está no modo como ele procura compreender o presente sempre vinculado ao passado histórico, estabelecendo paralelos eloquentes entre as atitudes de Cristóvão Colombo e seus asseclas, outrora, e dos novos conquistadores do capitalismo globalizado: ambos decretam-se os donos e os possuidores de recursos naturais, aos quais pretendem ter direito por terem sido escolhidos por Deus-Pai ou pelo Deus-Progresso (este último, diga-se de passagem, como nos lembrou a epígrafe Galeaneana deste texto, “é uma viagem com mais náufragos que navegantes…”).

Contando com mais uma atuação brilhante de Gael Garcia Bernal (que iluminou-nos e cativou-nos sobre a história latino americana também em filmes como No de Pablo Larraín e Diários de Motocicleta de Walter Salles), Também a Chuva é um dos melhores filmes a explorar a complexidade de nossa história recente, sendo dotado de uma vibe próxima à dos clássicos de cineastas como Gillo Pontecorvo (A Batalha de Argel, Quemada!) e Roland Joffé (A Missão, Os Gritos do Silêncio). É um filme que ajuda-nos a compreender as novas revoluções bolivaristas do continente sob a perspectiva daqueles que conquistaram, em especial na Bolívia e na Venezuela, algumas das mais significativas vitórias do movimento dito “altermundialista” nas últimas décadas.

Evo Morales, presidente da Bolívia (de 2006 até 2019)

O filme permite-nos entender o processo que conduziu a Bolívia a livrar-se do jugo de corporações (como a Bechtel e a Suez) e presidentes (como Lozada ou Banzer) que eram fanáticos praticantes da política “Privatização de Tudo” . Contestados e destronados, estes representantes do neo-imperialismo sofreram um revés com a eleição de Evo Morales em 2006, o primeiro presidente de raízes indígenas a ser eleito democraticamente na América Latina. Pachamama renasceu das cinzas. E com ela as centelhas de esperança.

Se as ocorrências em Cochabamba são tão relevantes para nosso presente e nosso futuro, acredito que é porque não escaparemos a um porvir onde os antagonismos e conflitos relacionados com a água vão se exacerbar e intensificar. A pior seca da história de São Paulo, por exemplo, já inspira alguns dos melhores analistas políticos brasileiros, como Guilherme Boulos (militante do MTST), a perguntar/provocar: “há quinze anos, na Bolívia, atitudes semelhantes às adotadas agora por Geraldo Alckmin provocaram levante popular. É isso que governador deseja produzir?” [nota #8] 

Escrevendo no calor da hora, em novembro de 2000, Arundhati Roy reflete sobre a Batalha de Cochabamba como um símbolo de como opera atualmente o capitalismo oniprivatizante e como este é contestado por insurreições grassroots; em seu artigo Power Politics: The Reincarnation of Rumpelstiltskin, a escritora e ativista indiana escreve:

Arundhati Roy, escritora e ativista indiana, autora do romance “O Deus das Pequenas Coisas”

“What happens when you ‘privatise’ something as essential to human survival as water? What happens when you commodify water and say that only those who can come up with the cash to pay the ‘market price’ can have it? In 1999, the government of Bolivia privatised the public water supply system in the city of Cochacomba, and signed a 40-year lease with Bechtel, a giant US engineering firm.The first thing Bechtel did was to triple the price of water. Hundreds of thousands of people simply couldn’t afford it any more. Citizens came out on the streets to protest. A transport strike brought the entire city to a standstill. Hugo Banzer, the former Bolivian dictator (now the President) ordered the police to fire at the crowds. Six people were killed, 175 injured and two children blinded. The protest continued because people had no options—what’s the option to thirst? In April 2000, Banzer declared Martial Law. The protest continued. Eventually Bechtel was forced to flee its offices. Now it’s trying to extort a $12-million exit payment from the Bolivian government…” [nota #9]

Vale relembrar que a Bolívia do começo dos anos 1990 já havia dado sinais claros de que, naquelas terras de onde surrupiaram-se toneladas de prata de Potosí, naquelas terra onde o médico-gerrilheiro Che Guevara foi assassinado, a rebelião não dormia nem estava morta. Em 1992, por ocasião dos 500 anos do início da Conquista da América, iria acontecer em La Paz uma “suntuosa festa de aniversário” organizada pelas autoridades branquelas, com desfile militar, cerimônias diplomáticas, convidados vindos da Europa, coms Te Deums e améns destinados a celebrar a ideologia de uma colonizadores europeus, humanitários e filantrópicos, que fizeram o favor de nos trazer a verdadeira civilização – lorota que o imperialismo deseja inscrever como dogma em nossos livros, monumentos, consciências.

O espírito de resistência e insurgência, esse ímpeto revoltado à la Tupac Amaru, renasceu para mostrar que “nunca, durante esses últimos cinco séculos, a brasa se apagou debaixo das cinzas”, como escreve Jean Ziegler. Emergindo dos indígenas, que constituem mais de metade da população do país, nasceu um protesto colossal: “Várias centenas de milhares de aimarás, quíchuas, moxos e guaranís (…) vaiaram Cristóvão Colombo, derrubaram as tribunas de honra e ocuparam a capital durante quatro dias. Na manhã do quinto dia, pacificamente, voltaram para suas comunidades no Altiplano…” [nota #10]

Eis aí, pois, na Bolívia, algumas inspiradoras estórias de desobediência civil contestatória e mobilização transformadora. Thoreau e Gandhi aplaudiriam Cochabamba? Relembrar isto tudo, aprofundar os estudos sobre estes episódios, serve para a tarefa essencial de pôr em questão a história oficial e escrever em seu lugar uma história mais múltipla, que abrigue a voz e as lutas daqueles que podem até ser considerados por alguns como sendo parte de nosso passado. Em Até a Chuva, o político pontifica que, “se deixarmos, esses índios vão nos levar de volta à Idade da Pedra”. Ora, aqueles que alguns julgam como sobreviventes do passado talvez sejam, na verdade, os guias essenciais para nosso futuro.  Se um outro mundo é possível e necessário, é preciso lembrar que uma outra história também é possível e necessária, como Walter Benjamin sugeria em 1940, nas Teses Sobre o Conceito de História, em que ele aponta: “em cada época é preciso arrancar a tradição ao conformismo que quer apoderar-se dela” e “despertar no passado as centelhas da esperança” [nota #11].

Na Bolívia, imensos protestos contra a privatização da água tomaram conta das ruas de Cochabamba em 2000.

E.C.M. 
Goiânia, Dez 2014

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REFERÊNCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS

1. GALEANO, Eduardo. As Veias Abertas da América Latina. Capítulo: Febro do Ouro, Febre da Prata. Sub-capítulo: O signo da cruz nas empunhaduras das espadas. Trad. Sergico Faraco. Ed. L&PM. 2010. Pg. 30.

2. Le Monde, 15 de maio de 2007

3. ZIEGLER, Jean. Ódio ao Ocidente. Ed. Cortez, 2008, p. 188.

4. HAMILTON, Earl J.  American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501-1650. Massachusetts, 1934.

5. MARX, Karl. Oeuvres Complètes, editadas por M. Rubel. Vol. II: Le Capital, tomo I, seção VIII. Paris: Gallimard. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.

6. CLASTRES, Pierre. Arqueologia da Violência – Pesquisas de Antropologia Política. Ed. Cosac & Naify, 2004.

7. ZIEGLER. Op cit [nota#3], 2011, p. 208.

8. BOULOS, Guilherme. São Paulo Rumo A Uma Guerra da Água?. Leia o artigo completo no Outras Palavras.

9. ROY, Arundhati. Power Politics: The Reincarnation of Rumpelstiltskin. Leia o artigo completo na Outlook India, 27 de Novembro de 2000.

10. ZIEGLER. Op cit. P. 206-207.

11. BENJAMIN, Walter. Sexta Tese Sobre o Conceito de História. In: Obras Escolhidas I – Magia e Técnica, Arte e Política. Ed. Brasiliense, pg. 225.

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Veja também:

Abuella Grillo (2009)

“Raízes e Frutos da Rebelião” – Comentários sobre a luta dos Zapatistas mexicanos contra o Capitalismo Neoliberal

“To kill oblivion with a little memory,
we cover our chests with lead and hope.”

SUBCOMANDANTE MARCOS,
Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN).
In: ‘Our Word is Our Weapon: Selected Writings’,
Foreword: José Saramago (Nobel Prize In Literature)
Published by Seven Stories Press (New York, 2003, Pg. 100.)

PART I – THE BIG-BELLIED BEAST
AGAINST THE GRASS-ROOTS RESISTANCE

 

CHAPTER I – CHIAPAS LOSES BLOOD THROUGH MANY VEINS

“We are a product of 500 years of struggle: first, led by insurgents against slavery during the War of Independence with Spain; then to avoid being absorbed by North American imperialism; then to proclaim our constitution and expel the French empire from our soil; later when the people rebelled against Porfirio Diaz’s dictatorship, which denied us the just application of the reform laws, and leaders like Villa and Zapata emerged…” – First Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, January 2, 1994

In the mountains and jungles of the Mexican southeast, an insurrection explodes in January 1^st, 1994. Several municipalities in the province of Chiapas are taken over by the armed rebels that call themselves Zapatistas, followers of the legacy of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919).

Led by the campesinos and the indigenous populations of Chiapas, this neo-zapatist movement blossoms into the spotlight of the world’s arena in exactly the same day of the implementation of NAFTA, the Free Trade Agreement of the North American countries.

From day one, it was made quite clear by the rebels that one of the objectives of EZLN’s uprising was to be an obstacle to the implementation of Free Trade policies in Mexico. The economical set-up of Neoliberalism (based on privatization, free competition, consumerism etc.), argues the Zapatistas, is nothing but an authoritarian imposition of rules made-up by “the world of money”:

“The world of money, their world, governs from the stock exchanges. Today, speculation is the principal source of enrichment, and at the same time the best demonstration of the atrophy of our capacity to work. Work is no longer necessary in order to produce wealth; now all that is needed is speculation. Crimes and wars are carried out so that the global stock exchanges may be pillaged by one or the other. Meanwhile, millions of women, millions of youths, millions of indegenous, millions of homosexuals, millions of human beings of all races and colors, participate in the financial markets only as a devalued currency, always worth less and less, the currency of their blood turning a profit. The globalization of markets erases borders for speculation and crime and multiplies borders for human beings. Countries are obliged to erase their national border for money too circulate, but to multiply their internal borders.” – (Marcos, Unveiling Mexico, p. 117)

Wall Street and Washington join hands and try to persuade Mexicans that “Free Trade” will be a marvel for Mexico, but Mexicans have every reason to be suspicious of their neighbor who stole from it a big slice of territory in bygone years. Today, at the frontier that separates the countries, the yankees have built up a huge Wall of Segregation, and soldiers with license to kill can deal with illegal immigrants in very unbrotherly ways.  The same country responsible for La Migra (and Guantánamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib detention facility…) preaches the Free Trade gospel as if it was salvation.

The men and women who have arisen to speak out their discontent in Chiapas are yet to be fully heard by the world-at-large. Artists and writers have helped spread their voices, from Manu Chao and Rage Against the Machine, to José Saramago and Eduardo Galeano. 20 years later, the Zapatistas are still struggling against the powers that want to crush human dignity in the bloody altars of profit. And if the Zapatistas’ scream has the potentiality to be heard and comprehended all around the world, it’s because they accuse the established capitalist system of committing crimes that are visible worldwide, in many different countries: ecological devastation; ethnical genocide of indigenous populations and destruction of their cultures; concentration of capital in the hands of a few multinational corporations etc.

Zapatismo has been called the first revolutionary movement of the Internet-era, the avant-garde guerrilla that’s pioneering the ways to be followed by the guerrillas of tomorrow. But reactionary political powers have been violently trying to silence their voices – and the “money world”, also referred to by Marcos as “The Beast”, doesn’t refrain from methods such as military agression, police repression,  institutionalized murder, and para-military militias. All in order to maintain the Order imposed by The World of Money and to bury the voices of these “indians”, covered in masks and carrying guns, that insist in demanding social justice, autonomy and real democracy.

Marcos describes Chiapas’s tragedies very vividly in his poetry-filled words: “This land continues to pay tribute to the imperialists”, writes the insurgent Zapatista, “and there’s a thousand teeth sunk into the throat of the Mexican Southeast” (Unveiling Mexico, 1992, pg. 22-23). Would the indigenous populations of southeast Mexico have risen in rebellion if the suffering they endured hadn’t become unbearable?

“In times past, wood, fruits, animals, and men went to the metropolis through the veins of exploitation, just as they do today. Like the banana republics, but at the peak of neoliberalism and ‘libertarian revolutions’, the Southeast of Mexico continues to export raw materials, just as it did 500 years ago. It continues to import capitalism’s principal product: death and misery.

The health conditions of the people of Chiapas are a clear example of the capitalist imprint: 1.5 million people have no medical services at their disposal. There are 0,2 clinics for every 1.000 inhabitants, 1/5 of the national average. There are 0,3 hospital beds for every 1.000 Chiapanecos, 1/3 the amount in the rest of Mexico… Health and nutrition go hand in hand with poverty. 54% of the population of Chiapas suffers from malnutrition, and in the highlands and forest this percentage increases to 80%…. This is what capitalism leaves as payment for everything that it takes away. (…) Chiapa’s experience of exploitation goes back for centuries. ” – Sub Marcos, Unveiling Mexico

In Subcomandante Marcos’ political tought, which seems to be deeply rooted in an understanding of Latin America’s reality similar to Eduardo Galeano’s, Imperialism is the name of the beast which has it’s thousands of teeths sunk into Chiapas neck – and so many numberless others places on this Earth where 85 flesh-and-blood earthlings retain the same amount of wealth as half of the world’s population (according to Oxfam). Welcome to the established economical and political orden in 3^rd planet from the Sun, a place of extreme inequality in which the criminal status quo is defended by armies and warmongers, for the profit of speculators, gangsters and banksters.

“A handful of businesses – one of which is the Mexican state – take all the wealth out of Chiapas and in exchange leave behind their mortal and pestilent mark..(…) Pemex has 86 teeth sunk into the townships of Estación Juárez, Reforma, Ostuacán, Pichucalco, and Ocosingo. Every day they suck out 92.000 barrels of oil and 517.000.000.000 cubic feet of gas. They take away the petroleum”, states Marcos, “and in exchange leave behind the mark of capitalism: ecological destruction, agricultural plunder, hyperinflation, alcoholism, prostitution, and poverty.”

It’s easy to delineate the image of the Enemy in the Zapatistas’ hearts: the face of the big-bellied beast of Greed. Imperialism is dirty business, greediness in action, devastating egotism that turns nations into vampires that suck the life-blood of others. Besides the petroleum that gets sucked out of Chiapas by greedy oil companies, another similar process affects the production of coffee: 35% of Mexico’s coffee is produced in Chiapas, but more than 50% of Chiapas’ coffee production is exported. The campesinos that work in the fields to produce it have terribly inadequate life-conditions of nourishment, health, education etc. The true producers are dying of hunger and disease while foreign powers ride on golden streets of robbed privilege.

The list can be enriched with many other “commodities” that are sucked-out of Chiapas to feed, elsewhere, the belly of the beast. There are 3.000.000 animals waiting to be slaughtered for beef in Chiapas: “the cattle are sold for 400 pesos per kilo by the poor farmers and resold by the middlemen and businessmen for up to 10 times the price they paid for them.” (Unveiling Mexico, p. 23) Chiapas’ forests are also among the culinary preferences of the greedy hungry beast: whole woods are cut down by capitalism’s chainsaws, and this precious wood is then shipped out of Chiapas to be sold elsewhere for huge profits. Similar histories could be told about honey, corn or hydrelectric energy – goods that Chiapas produces in large quantities, but get eaten away by this beastly creature which Marcos denounces and summons to answer: “what does the beast leave behind in exchange for all it takes away?” (pg. 24)

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CHAPTER II – THE TIME TO HARVEST REBELLION INSTEAD OF DEATH

John Lennon asked us in his era-defining song to “imagine a brotherhood of man”, but Chiapas isn’t the place to look for it. It ain’t brotherly treatment to exploit, repress and steal fellow humans – and that’s what businessmen and fancy capitalists have been doing against the Chiapanecos. “1.000.000 indigenous people live in these lands and share a disorienting nightmare with mestizos and ladinos: their only option, 500 years after the “Meeting of Two Worlds”, is to die of poverty or repression.” (Marcos: p. 26)

There are 300.000 Tzotziles, 120.000 Choles, 90.000 Zoques, and 70.000 Tojoales, among other indigenous populations, that inhabit the land of the poorest state in Mexico. Chiapas could be rich, but it’s wealth is sucked away and taken abroad, to bank accounts of greedy capitalists, and if you join the Zapatista up-rising against this reality you might end up killed by the repression. How many people has the Mexican Army killed in order to silence the voices that question the undoubtable goodness of the so-called “Free Market”? I leave the question unanswered, for now, and move on, from exploitation to rebellion.

At the dawn of the New Year, in January 1^st 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army descended from the Lacandon Jungle to take over the power in several cities of Chiapas, including San Cristobal de Las Casas and Ocosingo. They believed to be “professionals of hope”, “transgressors of injustice”, “History’s dispossessed”, finally raising their voices to demand liberty, justice, democracy, dignity. This is the moment when they became visible, when they stepped out of the shadows, when they shouted for the whole World to hear.

January 1st, 1994: EZLN takes power over San Cristobal de las Casas. Photo by Antonio Turok.

“Death does not hurt; what hurts is to be forgotten. We discovered then that we longer existed, that those who govern had forgotten about us in their euphoria of statistics and growth rates. A country that forgets itself is a sad country. A country that forgets its past cannot have a future. And so we took up arms and went into the cities, where we were considered animals. We went and told the powerful: “We are here!” And to the whole country we shouted: “We are here!” And to all the world we yelled, “We are here!”…”

This movement is deeply rooted in History: far from being immediatist and pragmatic, the Zapatista movement demands respect for the rights of human populations who descend from the occupants of this land prior to the European’s invasion. This scream of rebellion raises from an ocean of blood: the genocide of the Indians and the destruction of their civilizations is still an open wound in the Zapatistas hearts, and they won’t allow the world to forget these past misdeeds. In January 1994, Subcomandante Insurgent Marcos reminded us than in Mexico

“during these past ten years (1984-1994), more than 150.000 indigenous have died of curable diseases. The federal, state, and municipal governments and their economic and social programs do not take into account any real solution to our problems; they limit themselves to giving us charity every time elections roll around. Charity resolves nothing but for the moment, and again death visits our homes. That is why we think no, no more; enough dying this useless death; it is better to fight for change. If we die now, it will not be with shame but with dignity, like our ancestors. We are ready to die, 150.000 more if necessary, so that our people awaken from this dream of deceit that holds us hostage.” (pg. 17)

Seen from the capitalists’ perspective, there’s a dispensable strata of the population labeled as “Indians” (so called because Columbus thought, more than 500 years ago, that the land where he had arrived was India…). “Check out the text of the Free Trade Agreement, and you will find that, for this government, the indigenous do not exist.” (p. 66) Social inequality and marginalized people go hand in hand in Mexico: “on a national level there are 2,403 municipalities. Of these, 1.153 have a level of marginalization considered high or very high. States with high indigenous population have the majority of their municipalities with high and very high levels of marginalization: 94 out of 111 in Chiapas; 59 out of 75 in Guerrero; 431 of 570 in Oaxaca…” (p. 67)

 For 10 years the Zapatista uprising had been fermenting in the woods, since 1984, and at the beginning of 1994 time had arrived for their voice to be heard, not only in Mexico, but throughout the world, amplified by the Internet, sending its shout throughout the Global Village.  One of the easiest ways to understand the emergence of Neo-Zapatism is to look at the consequences of the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) agreement becoming active: free market had kicked out the barriers and products from abroad were about to flood into Mexico, like a tsunami, drowning out Mexican campesinos with the devastating power of a Dust Bowl Storm. The Zapatistas knew very well that NAFTA would certainly enrich some big corporations, mainly american and canadian, but would wreck the equilibrium of the local economies – especially in southeast Mexico. NAFTA was inforced with “dictatorial” fashion: it’s a fact that neither civil society nor the indigenous populations of Mexico were consulted on the matter, even tough they would be tremendously affected by the transformations in the National Constitution.

 “The preparations for NAFTA included cancellation of Article 27 of Mexico’s constitution, the cornerstone of Emiliano Zapata‘s revolution of 1910–1919. Under the historic Article 27, Indian communal landholdings were protected from sale or privatization. However, this barrier to investment was incompatible with NAFTA. With the removal of Article 27, Indian farmers feared the loss of their remaining lands, and also feared cheap imports (substitutes) from the US. Thus, the Zapatistas labeled NAFTA as a “death sentence” to Indian communities all over Mexico. Then EZLNdeclared war on the Mexican state on January 1, 1994, the day NAFTA came into force.” – Wikipédia

According to Marcos, NAFTA “only means freedom for the powerful to rob, and freedom for the dispossessed to live in misery.” (p. 73) We’ve heard this real-life story many times: everytime a Wal-Mart opens in a city, lots of smaller stores go bankrupt because they can’t compete with Wal-Mart’s prices. That’s why it’s possible to considerer EZLN as a movement demanding national sovereignty; from the Zapatistas perspective – which arises from the experience of thousands of Mexicans – what is called “neoliberalism” is just a fancy name for imperialist capitalism, for foreign domination, for the sad reality known for centuries in Latin America of wealth being robbed from a country and getting transformed in capital that enriches some big-shot abroad.

In Ana Carrigan’s excellent article “Chiapas: The First Postmodern Revolution”, she reminds us that years before NAFTA forced itself into North America there was already a lot of rebellion by campesinos in Mexico: in April 10, 1992, for example, 4.000 indigenous campesinos marched to the country’s capital and read a letter adressed to President Carlos Salinas, in which “they accuse him of having brought all gains of the agrarian reform made under Zapata to an end, of selling the country with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and of bringing Mexico back to the times of Porfirio Díaz.” (pg. 36)

“You are in Zapatista territory: here the People rules and the Government obeys.”

“The Zapatistas made their first, spectacular public appearance in San Cristobal de Las Casas. On October 12, 1992, amid demonstrations marking ‘The Year of The Indian, 500 Years of Resistance’, 4.000 young men and women armed with bows and arrows suddenly appeared out of the crowd. Marching in military formation, they advanced to the central plaza where they attacked the monument to the founder of San Cristobal, the 16^th century Spanish encomendador, Diego de Mazariegos. As the symbol of 500 years of opression crashed from its pedestal, the Indians hacked it to pieces and pocketed the fragments before disappearing. In the annals of indigenous resistance, the toppling of Mazariego’s statue had a symbolic resonance equivalent to the destruction of the Berlin Walls.” (ANA CARRIGAN)

The communities in Chiapas who have embraced the EZLN program were bound to clash with Mexican establishment. The powers that be, unbrotherly as usual, sent Army soldiers in great numbers in a bloody attempt to silence the rebels. As Juana Ponce de León states,

“for the government, the issue is simple. There are vast oil reserves, exotic wood, and uranium on the autonomous indigenous lands of Chiapas; the Mexican government wants them, but the indigenous communities, who have no currency in the world’s markets, are in the way. While projecting through the national and international press an image of concern for the human rights issues and the intention to resolve them, the government orchestrates the privatization of the Mayan lands and a low-intensity war to weaken and divide the communities.” (Traveling Back for Tomorrow, XXV).

Eduardo Carli de Moraes

A graffiti at City Lights Books, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s bookstore in San Francisco

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Galeano and Jean Ziegler discussing “The World’s Criminal Order”
(In Spanish, Portuguese subs)

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To be continued…

“Esta pirâmide absurda e invertida que é a América Latina…” – Uma jornada com o Subcomandante Marcos (EZLN)

CHAPTER III – THE CLASH BETWEEN OBLIVION AND MEMORY

“…there once was a man named Zapata who rose up with his people and sang out: ‘Land and Freedom!’ The campesinos say that Zapata didn’t die, that he must return… They say that hope is also planted and harvested. They also say that the wind and the rain and the sun are now saying something different: that with so much poverty, the time has come to harvest rebellion instead of death.” – Sub Marcos, Our Word is Our Weapon: Selected Writings, pg. 33, Seven Stories Press. All following quotes are from this source.

The Zapatistas know their task is Herculean: the Mexican federal Army, certainly backed-up by Washington and Wall Street, greatly outnumbers the army of the Zapatista rebels. The power of destruction of the Establish Capitalist Powers is crushing: they own the police and the prisons, and they pay the soldiers and militias to persecute the Mexicans who join EZLN. The defeat of this insurrectional movement is something that has been aimed at by established powers for the last 20 years – according to Marcos, the enemy would like to see “democracy washed with the detergent of imports and water from antidemonstration cannons.” (pg. 54)

In 1994 Mexico’s president Carlos Salinas de Gortari is considered by EZLN as “the sales manager of a gigantic business: Mexico, Inc.” (pg. 63) Free Trade, for the Zapatistas, is nothing but capitalism’s “law of the jungle”, and it generates a couple of millionaires while throwing millions into hunger, sickness and death. To use Occuppy Movement’s imagery, the top of the social pyramid, the richest 1% of the country, don’t give a fig about defending the rights of the Mexican people as a whole (the 99%): “the only country mentioned with sincerity on that increasingly narrow top floor is the country called money.” (pg. 63)  “On every street corner misery knocks on the windows of the car.” (pg. 64)

Even tough they see peace and social justice as an ideal to accomplish, the Zapatistas feel they would remain powerless if they were Gandhian pacifists. Thus they take arms, just like the guerrillas led by Fidel and Che in Sierra Maestra in late 1950’s Cuba. EZLN, as the name itself sufficiently states, is an armed rebellion and doesn’t comply with what Marcos called, in Aguascalientes, august 1994, “pacifist complicity with injustice” (p. 56) and “fraudulent unconditional pacifism” (p. 58)

EZLN is quite aware that military victory is rather unlikely against such a powerful army as that of Mexico’s established powers, backed-up by Washington and Wall Street. So Marcos tends to underline the symbolical importance of the Zapatista’s up-rising, its capacity to inspire similar movements throughout Latin America. The 4th Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, January 1996, states: “Brothers and sisters of other races and languages, of other colors, but with the same heart, now protect our light, and in it they drink of the same fire.” (p. 87)

Buy at Amazon the book  “Our Word Is Our Weapon” (15 dollars)

“To confront an army superior to ours in weapons and personnel, although not in morality, nullifies the possibilities of sucess. But to surrender has been expressly forbidden; any Zapatista leaders who opt to surrender will be decommissioned. No matter the outcome of this war, sooner or later this sacrifice – which today appears useless and sterile to many – will be compensated by the lightning that will illuminate other lands. For sure, the light will reach deep into the South, shimmer in the Mar de Plata, in the Andes, in Paraguay, and the entirety of this inverted and absurd pyramid that is Latin America…” (74)

The future of Latin America lies not only in its ability to build international solidarity, planting the seeds of a future of social justice and true democracy, but also in its struggle against oblivion. The Zapatistas claim that memory has been progressively wipe-out by the forces of a capitalist production, distribution and consumption system that runs on shallow foresight and narrow hindsight. In other worlds: the system wants us to buy like crazy, and think only of immediate enjoyment of products sold in the markets, thus imposing to our minds oblivion of future and past generations. This is one of the most important ideas to understand if we want to grasp what these more than 20 years of the Neo Zapatista movement in Mexico means:

“On the side of oblivion are the multiple forces of the market. On the side of memory is history.” This thesis of the markets’ attempted murder against memory is illustrated by the treatment conferred upon indigenous populations by capitalists and their accomplices among politicians. The Zapatistas are saying: the past is not to be forgotten, consumed down to ash, thrown in the garbage can, in order for us to “enjoy” the here-and-now of mass society, mass production, mass consumption, and mass ecological catastrophes. The Zapatistas see the past as “a guide to be learned from and upon which to grow”. The problem is:

“the past doesn’t exist for technocrats, under whose rule our nation suffers. The future can be nothing more than a lengthening of the present for these professional amnesiacs. (…) What better example of this phobia of history is there than the attitude of the Mexican government toward the indigenous peoples? Are not the indigenous demands a worrisome stain on history, dimming the splendor of globalization? Is not the very existence of indigenous people an affront to the global dictatorship of the market?” (MARCOS, pg. 147)

The sad thing is: instead of learning from the past in order to build a better future, the authorities in charge of markets and governments complicit to them are basically waging war against those who are labeled by the repression forces and portrayed by the plutocratic media as “The Terrorists”. The inner enemy. The war against the Zapatistas waged by the Mexican Federal Army, with the aid of the Yankees, is simply an attempt to silence by massmurder those who are demanding freedom, dignity, and social justice. In March, 1995, EZLN writes “to the people of Mexico and to the peoples of the world”:

“Our voice was silenced all at once by the noise of the machines of war. Terror was unleashed again in the Mexican lands by the one who, from arrogance and power, looks at us with contempt, denies our name, and gives us death in answer to our thought. (…) With the complicity of big money and a foreign vacation, he wanted to force us with bayonets to deny our history. (…) For that reason, our past went to the mountains. We went into the caves of those who came before us. Death cornered us… Death came to wield its knife-edged oblivion. It came to kill memory. Again, our hand filled with the fire to avenge our own pain, again being animals eating dirt, dying persecuted and forgotten.” (pg. 81)

The name Zapatistas then gains the meaning of a very powerful symbolical weapon: a “collective name”, that any individual can claim for himself, and by adhering to it he goes away from the forgetfullness that his individual self lies buried in.  A campesino who haves always felt as nobody, as one of the many who History will forget, now can call himself a Zapatista and thus believe he’s part of a collective entity that won’t be so easily brushed away to oblivion. Every zapatista will die, but zapatismo will live, beyond the duration of individual lives. When an individual leaps from being an unrelated isolated atom and joins his forces with the supra-individual movement, it’s as if his heart has been connected to a vaster entity and now pulsates with a collective heart.

 “No longer are we the unmentionables. We the forgotten have a name. (…) Having now a collective name, we discovered that death shrinks and becomes small before us. The worst death, that of oblivion, flees so that the memory of our dead will never be buried together with their bones.(…) “They, our ancestors, taught us to be proud of the color of our skin, of our language, of our culture. More than 500 years of exploitation and persecution have not been able to exterminate us. (…) If they destroy us, the entire country will plummet and begin to wander without direction or roots… Mexico would negate its tomorrow by denying its yesterday.” (October 12, 1995, pg. 82-83)

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Read chapters 1 and 2

TO BE CONTINUED…

Copyleft material. Re-share and re-blog as much as you wish,
but please acknowledge Eduardo Carli de Moraes @ Awestruck Wanderer.