De Por Si

Just came back from Los Altos, sent the students on their way, and am marinating in all that happened. I found myself in the middle of a security breach that I was really naive to and that was a shocker. I guess I learned the hard way that its important to know your context if you are not on your well-known turf. There was another icky thing that happened too- on the Dia de la Virgen Guadalupe there was big, big celebration here. Groups from different villages get together, put on athletic gear with images of the Virgen on them and run on highways and hills relay racing with torches to get to a church for her birthday. Some people run as far as Mexico City and vice versa. It's nuts- so the church in Oventic was happening, lots of people from around the community were there and there were lots and ylots of fireworks. It was odd because children were coming up to us and begging inside the caracol area (unheard of for zapatista communities) and there were lots of straggly kids running around in general. I saw some six ear olds 'playing' with a smaller kid. They were shoving him up against a fence and pretending to sodomize him. I yelled at them to stop what they were doing and they all started swearing at me. There were no adults around and I had this overwhelming feeling that I was out of my context. I think if I had been in the US the teacher/adult in me would have marched over, seperated them physically and told them I was going to get their parents, but the questioning cultural context in me just told them to stop and then I kept going. I later asked one of the promotores what he would have done and he said he was stumped. He told me he was sure that they were not zapatista children, but children from the general community. It was too disturbing thinking about why six year olds know how to play that game and then swear at people who look at them... it really burst my bubble. And I'd much rather talk about the bubble...

Once again I learned so very very much this week. I learned:

• that 1/3 of the Mexican military is stationed in Chiapas and 'monitors' most of the indigenous villages. (click here for maps of military, etc. coverage)
• the history of the Lancondon Caribes and how the Mexican government used this group of indigenous against other groups of indigenous in the area to reserve land holdings and create 'biosphere' preserves (supported by places like the World Wildlife Fund) so that the govt. could have control to build Plan Puebla Panama through that same land...
• about the contradictions of a community trying to be autonomous when some of the members receive govt. support
• and about about the changing place of religion within zapatismo.

We also climbed a beautiful muddy,muddy mountain and I heard a funny story from an Austin activist who worked with the International Solidarity Movement in Palestine and was in immigration jail with some schmo trying to get from Israel to Tehran to meet women like Christine Amanpour. We also listened to The Sub(commondante Marcos) tell a story of Chompiras and spit on a photo of the dead dead dead Pinochet as our final farewell excercize.

I am overwhelmed with thinking about all that my brain holds right now. De por si the world is a deep and odd place...