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Zapatista Women Encounter Themselves
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Counterpunch - Jan 8, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross01082008.html
As the Rebel Year Turns
Zapatista Women Encounter Themselves
By JOHN ROSS
La Garrucha, Chiapas.
Dozens of Zapatista companeras, many of them Tzeltal Maya from the
Chiapas lowlands decked out in rainbow-hued ribbons and ruffles, their
dark eyes framed by "pasamontanas" and "paliacates" that masked their
personas, emerged from the rustic auditorium to the applause of
hundreds of international feminists gathered outside at the conclusion
of the opening session of an all-women's "Encuentro" hosted by the
Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) here at year's end.
The Tzeltaleras' line of march which resembled a colorful if bizarre
fashion parade, seemed an auspicious start to the rebels' third
"encounter" this year between "the peoples of the world" and the
Zapatista communities and comandantes - an anti-globalization conclave
last December and an "Encuentro" in defense of indigenous land this
summer preceded the womens' gathering.
Although the call for the event was issued under the pen of the EZLN's
quixotic spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos, the author of a recently
published erotic coffee table book in which his penis plays the role of
a masked guerrillero, the impetus for the women's "Encuentro" sprung
from the loins of the Zapatista companeras.
Last July, at the conclusion of a meeting with farmers from a dozen
counties in the hamlet with the haunting name of La Realidad ("The
Reality"), a young rebel from that community, "Evarilda", apparently
without clearing the invitation with the EZLN's General Command, called
for the all-womens' encounter, explaining that men were invited to help
with the logistics but would be asked to stay home and mind the
children and the farm animals while the women plotted against
capitalism.
True to Evarilda's word, at the December 29th-31st gathering which drew
300-500 non-Mexican mostly women activists to this village, officially
the autonomous municipality of Francisco Gomez, and which honored the
memory of the late Comandanta Ramona (d. January 2006), men took a
decidedly secondary role. Signs posted around the "Caracol" called
"Resistance Until the New Dawn", a sort of Zapatista cultural/political
center, advised the companeros that they could not act as
"spokespersons, translators, or representatives in the plenary
sessions." Instead, their activities should be confined "to preparing
and serving food, washing dishes, sweeping, cleaning out the latrines,
fetching firewood, and minding the children."
Indeed, some young Zapatista men donned aprons imprinted with legends
like "tomato" and "EZLN" to work in the kitchens. Meanwhile, older men
sat quietly on wooden benches outside of the auditorium, sometimes
signaling amongst themselves when a companera made a strong point or
smiling in pride after a daughter or wife or sister or mother spoke
their histories to the assembly.
The role of women within the Zapatista structure has been crucial since
the rebellion's gestation. When the founders of the EZLN, radicals from
northern Mexican cities, first arrived in the Tzeltal-Tojolabal
lowlands or "Canadas" of southeastern Chiapas, women were still being
sold by their families as chattel in marriage. Often, they were kept
monolingual by the husbands as a means of control, turned into baby
factories, and had little standing in the community. Those from the
outside offered independence and invited the young women to the
training camps in the mountain where they would learn to wield a weapon
and a smattering of Spanish and become a part of the EZLN's fighting
force. 14 years ago, on January 1st 1994, when the Zapatistas seized
the cities of San Cristobal and Ocosingo and five other county seats,
women comprised a third of the rebel army - women fighters were
martyred in the bloody battle for Ocosingo.
Key to bringing the companeras to the rebel cause was "The
Revolutionary Law of Women", officially promulgated that first January
1st from the balcony of the San Cristobal city hall which decreed that
women should have control over their own lives and their bodies. The
law, which had been carried into the Indian communities by Comandantas
Susana and Ramona, often meeting with hostility from the companeros,
was "our toughest battle" Sub Marcos would later note.
Integrating women into the military structure, which was not tied to
local community, proved easier than cultivating participation in the
civil structure, which was rooted in the life of the villages. Although
women occupied five seats on the 19-member Clandestine Revolutionary
Indigenous Committee (CCRI), the EZLN's General Command, their numbers
fell far shorter in 29 autonomous municipal councils and the five
"Juntas de Buen Gobierno" ("Good Government Committees") which
administrate Zapatista regional autonomy.
But as the Zapatista social infrastructure grew, women became health
and education promoters and leaders in the commissions that planned
these campaigns and their profile has improved in the JBGs and
autonomias.
Women's Lib a la Zapatista has been boosted by the rebels' prohibitions
against the consumption of alcohol in their communities. Whereas many
inland Maya towns like San Juan Chamula are saturated in alcohol with
soaring rates of spousal and child abuse, the Zapatista zone has the
lowest abuse indicators in the state, according to numbers offered by
the womens' commission of the Chiapas state congress. As a state,
Chiapas has one of the highest numbers of feminicides in the Mexican
union - 1456 women were murdered here between 1993 and 2004, more than
doubling Chihuahua (604) in which the notorious "Muertas" of Ciudad
Juarez are recorded. The low incidence of violence against women in the
zone of Zapatista influence is more remarkable because much of the
lowland rebel territory straddles the Guatemalan border, a country
where 500 women are murdered each year.
With the men tending the kids and cleaning latrines, the women told
their stories in the plenaries. Many of the younger companeras like
Evarilda had grown up in the rebellion - which is now in its 24th year
(14 on public display) - and spoke of learning to read and write in
rebel schools and their work as social promoters or as teachers or as
farmers and mothers. Zapatista grandmothers told of the first years of
the rebellion and veteran comandantas like Susana, who spoke movingly
of her longtime companera Ramona, "the smallest of the small", recalled
how in the war, the men and the women learned to share housekeeping
tasks like cooking and washing clothes.
"Many of the companeros still do not want to understand our demands,"
Comandanta Sandra admonished, "but we cannot struggle against the mal
gobierno without them."
The Zapatista companeras' struggle for inclusion and parity with their
male counterparts grates against separatist politics that some militant
first-world feminists who journeyed to the jungle espouse. Lesbian
couples and collectives seemed a substantial faction in the first-world
feminist delegations. Although no Zapatista women has publicly come
out, the EZLN has been zealous in its inclusion of Lesbians and Gays
and incorporate their struggles in the rainbow of marginated
constitutioncies with whose cause they align themselves.
Sadly, the Encuentro of the Women of the World with the Zapatista Women
did not provoke much formal interchange between the rebel companeras
and first-world feminists - who were limited to five-minute
presentations on the final day of the event. Nonetheless, a surprise
Zapatista womens' theater piece did imply a critique: in the skit, a
planeload of first-world feminists with funny hair (played by the
companeras) lands in the jungle to deliver the poor Indian women from
oppression.
Among international delegations in attendance were women
representatives from agrarian movements as far removed from Chiapas as
Brazil and Senegal, organized by Via Campesina, an alliance that
represents millions of poor farmers in the third world, and a group of
militant women from Venice, Italy who have been battling expansion of a
U.S. military base in that historic city. Political prisoners were
represented by Trinidad Ramirez, partner of imprisoned Ignacio del
Valle (67 year sentence), leader of the farmers of Atenco. A message
from "Colonel Aurora" (Gloria Arenas), a jailed leader of the Popular
Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI), who now supports the EZLN, was
read. Although he reputedly lives only a few villages away,
Subcomandante Marcos (or his penis) did not put in an appearance at the
womens' gathering.
Ladling out chicken soup at her makeshift food stand, Dona Laura told
La Jornada chronicler Hermann Bellinghausen that once the womens'
"Encuentro" had concluded, everything would return to normal - "only
normal would be different now."
Although the Encounter amply demonstrated the increasing empowerment of
the Zapatista companeras, how much of what was said actually rubbed off
on those who came from the outside is open to question. "I didn't
really get a lot of it," confided one young non-Spanish-speaking
activist on her way home to northern California to report back on the
womens' gathering to her Zapatista solidarity group.
Be that as it may, the EZLN is going to need all the women - and men -
it can muster in the months to come. 2008 looms as a difficult year for
the rebels with the "mal gobierno" threatening to distribute lands the
Zapatistas recovered in 1994 to rival Indian farmer organizations and
paramilitary activity on the uptick.
As has always been the case since this unique rebellion germinated, the
Zapatistas turn the corner into another year in struggle.
[EDITOR'S NOTE - After 11 years and 600 editions, MexBarb/BMB is now
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