Subcomandante Marcos: “Them and Us: The (lack of) Reason among those from Above.”

Chiapas: release of new communique by the EZLN hours before the arrival or Enrique Peña Nieto to lands under its influence
20 January, 2013 – SIPAZ

On 20 January, there was published the first part of a new message signed by Subcomandante Marcos entitled “Them and Us: The (lack of) Reason among those from Above.” The communique is written as a parody, from the perspective of those who speak “from above.” It asserts among other things that “We are those who command. We are the most powerful, although we be few in number. It does not matter to us what you do-think-hear-or say, just as long as you are deaf, mute, and stationary. We can impose a government onto somewhat intelligent people (although these are difficult to find in the political class), but we select one who cannot even pretend to know what is going on. Why? Because we can […]. We can use the police and the military apparatus to persecute and incarcerate various criminals, but these criminals are a vital part of our operations. In exchange we can choose to persecute you, beat you, arrest you, torture you, imprison you, and kill you.”

The powerful are said to affirm that “what truly is a danger, a veritable chaos, is when whoever makes herself into a collective, ground, band, race, or organization, and then come to learn how to say ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ and that these come to agreement among themselves. Because this ‘no’ has to do with those like us who command. And this ‘yes’… Well, this is a calamity; imagine that each person construct her own destiny, deciding what she will be and do. This would be like claiming that we are superfluous–that we are the ones who are left over, the ones who are not necessary, the ones who should be incarcerated, the ones who should disappear.”

It should be mentioned that the communique was released a few hours before the arrival of President Enrique Peña Nieto to Chiapas to present the National Crusade against Hunger in the Las Margaritas municipality. This crusade has as its budget close to 4 billion pesos, and it seeks to be deployed in some 400 municipalities with the highest indexes of social marginalization. Notably, Las Margaritas is one of the poorest municipalities in the country; it is considered to be a Zapatista bastion, being one of the cities that were taken peacefully by the EZLN on 21 December 2012. …more