Our Word is Our Weapon Selected Writings

by Subcomandante Marcos; Ponce De Leon, Juana; Saramago, Jose; Carrigan, Ana

• ISBN13: 9781583224724
• ISBN10: 1583224726
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-05-07
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press

Summary

This is a powerful collection of literary, philosophical, and political writings of the masked Zapatista spokesperson, Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.

Author Biography

SUBCOMANDANTE MARCOS is a spokesperson and strategist for the Zapatistas, an indigenous insurgency movement based in Mexico. He first joined the indigenous guerrilla group that would become the Zapatistas in the early 1980s. Marcos is author of several books translated into English, including Shadows of Tender Fury (Monthly Review Press) which featured early letters and communiques, and a children's book Story of the Colors (Cinco Puntos), which won a Firecracker Alternative Book Award.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Prologue: Chiapas, a Name of Pain and Hope	xix
Jose Saramago
Editor's Note: Traveling Back for Tomorrow	xxiii
SECTION I Unveiling Mexico
PART ONE Names the Unnamed
Twelve Women in the Twelfth Year: The Moment of War	5	(8)
War! First Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle	13	(4)
Dying in Order to Live	17	(1)
In Our Dreams We Have Seen Another World	18	(1)
Votan-Zapata or Five Hundred Years of History	19	(3)
A Storm and a Prophecy---Chiapas: The Southeast in Two Winds	22	(16)
Who Should Ask for Pardon and Who Can Grant It?	38	(2)
Five Hundred Years of Indigenous Resistance	40	(3)
Second Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle	43	(9)
The Long Journey from Despair to Hope	52	(10)
Mr. Zedillo, Welcome to the Nightmare	62	(10)
Come, Brothers and Sisters	72	(3)
The Word and the Silence	75	(3)
Fourth Declaration of the Lacondon Jungle (excerpt)	78	(4)
Closing Words to the National Indigenous Forum (excerpt)	82	(6)
Today, Eighty-Five Years Later, History Repeats Itself	88	(10)
The Unjust Sentencing of Elorriaga and Entzin	98	(3)
Opening Remarks at the First Intercontinental Encuentro for Humanity and against Neoliberalism	101	(6)
Tomorrow Begins Today: Closing Remarks at the First Intercontinental Encuentro for Humanity and against Neoliberalism	107	(9)
Second Declaration of La Realidad for Humanity and against Neoliberalism	116	(4)
Civil Society That So Perturbs	120	(5)
The Spiral from the End and the Beginning	125	(5)
An Urgent Telegram	130	(1)
Do the Pictures Lie?	131	(1)
For Those Who Protest with Us after Acteal	132	(5)
The Sea of My Insomnia: The Table at San Andres	137	(6)
Tlatelolco: Thirty Years Later the Struggle Continues	143	(4)
Under Siege: The Zapatista Community of Amador Hernandez	147	(4)
A Play (ha!) That Says What It Says	151	(4)
Mexico City: We Have Arrived. We Are Here: The EZLN	155	(8)
The Other Player	163	(3)
Why We Use the Weapon of Resistance	166	(7)
PART TWO One World
Flowers, Like Hope, Are Harvested	173	(2)
From Vietnam to Chiapas, Twenty Years Before	175	(3)
A Call to Latin America	178	(2)
On Independent Media	180	(3)
From Here to There and Back Again	183	(5)
On May Day and Tupac Amaru	188	(1)
This Ocean No Longer Separates Us	189	(3)
Letter to Mumia Abu-Jamal	192	(4)
``No!'' to the War in the Balkans	196	(2)
For Maurice Najman, Who Keeps Feigning Death	198	(9)
Letter to Leonard Peltier	207	(6)
SECTION II Beneath the Mask
To Open a Crack in History	213	(4)
We Know What We're Doing; It Is Worth It	217	(9)
The Library of Aguascalientes	226	(4)
The Retreat Is Making Us Almost Scratch the Sky	230	(10)
Death Has Paid a Visit	240	(5)
A Year of the Zapatista Government	245	(5)
Zapatistas, Guadalupanos, and the Virgin of Guadalupe	250	(6)
A Land to Harvest a Future	256	(2)
Letter to Eduardo Galeano	258	(5)
Letter to John Berger	263	(5)
Dignity Cannot Be Studied; You Live It or It Dies	268	(3)
It Continues Raining Here	271	(3)
Democratic Teachers and the Zapatista Dream	274	(4)
Closing Words at the National Encuentro in Defense of the Cultural Heritage	278	(11)
SECTION III Creating Memory
PART ONE Tales for a Sleepless Solitude---The Stories of Don Durito
Ten Years Later: Durito Found Us Again	289	(2)
To Mariana Moguel (age ten)	291	(3)
The Glass to See to the Other Side	294	(3)
Deep Inside the Cave of Desire	297	(5)
Durito and Pegasus	302	(6)
The Story of the Tiny Mouse and the Tiny Cat	308	(2)
The Story of the Cold Foot and the Hot Foot	310	(4)
The Story of the Bean-brown Horse	314	(2)
Love and the Calendar	316	(2)
Another Cloud, Another Bottle, and Another Letter from Durito	318	(3)
P.S....that Fulfills Its Editorial Duty	321	(1)
Durito the Pirate	322	(9)
The Hour of the Little Ones	331	(4)
The True Story of Mary Read and Anne Bonny	335	(6)
PART TWO Tales of Many Others
The Tale of the Ever Never	341	(1)
The Parrot's Victory	342	(1)
Tales of the Seahorse	343	(2)
The Tale of the Little Seamstress	345	(1)
The Tale of the Little Newsboy	346	(1)
The Tale of the Little Wisp of a Cloud	347	(2)
The Story of the Schizophrenic Pig	349	(2)
The Tale of the Lime with ann Identity Crisis	351	(1)
The Tale of the Nonconformist Little Toad	352	(3)
The Tale of the Pink Shoelaces	355	(1)
The Tale of Always and Never	356	(1)
The Little Tree and the Others	357	(2)
A Light, a Flower, and a Dawn	359	(5)
The Words That Walk Truths	364	(9)
PART THREE Old Don Antonio
The Story of the Colors	373	(3)
The Story of the Mirrors	376	(4)
The Story of Dreams	380	(3)
The Story of the Seven Rainbows	383	(3)
The Story of Noise and Silence	386	(3)
Making the Bread Called Tommorrow	389	(1)
The Story of the Others	390	(2)
The Tale of the Lion and the Mirror	392	(3)
The Story of the Measure of Memory	395	(2)
The Story of One and All	397	(2)
The Dawn Is Heralding Heat and Flashes	399	(3)
The Story of the Milky Way	402	(3)
The Story of the False Light, the Stone, and the Corn	405	(2)
The Night Is Ours	407	(6)
The Story of the Questions	413	(4)
Afterword: Chiapas, the First Postmodern Revolution	417	(28)
Ana Carrigan
Zapatista Timeline	445	(8)
Tom Hansen
Enlace Civil
Bibliography	453	(2)
Contributors	455