we watched a movie called ‘who’s afraid of a little yellow school bus?’, about the pastors for peace and that caravan I mentioned earlier – with 350 people and 98 vehicles to cuba. this was in 1993, and they were trying to put the
pressure on the US to end the blockade on cuba. so when they had trouble at the border, they carried the boxes across one by one, and they had gotten almost all the aid
across when a yellow school bus that was going to be donated to a school in cuba was detained at the border. while the rest of the people carried on, 14 people stayed with the bus and staged a hunger strike for 23 days until
the bus was released and allowed to go to cuba. the people hunger striking said that being on a hunger strike while sitting in a school bus in an impound lot at the border helped them understand how cubans must feel under the blockade – hungry all the time, closed off from the rest of the world, unable to get what you need. cuba has what is arguably among the best health care systems in the world
– cuban doctors are famous for their training of other health care professionals throughout the world – and yet, they can’t get some basic medicines and equipment that they need, because the US has a trade embargo on the country,
where they prevent aid from entering cuba. what kind of people keep medicine and food away from sick children? only the USA. just look at what the US has done to Iraq in the last ten years! By pushing sanctions on the country that are SO restrictive that basic food and medicine are unable to be imported, over a million children have died from hunger or preventable diseases. And when madeleine albright, former secretary of state of the US, was asked
about this, she said, ‘it’s a heavy price to pay. but we think the price is worth it.’ worth it for what??? what can POSSIBLY be worth the deaths of a million children???
Securing US oil interests in the region, so mr. american citizen can go smogging around in his SUV? THAT’s what’s WORTH IT?? Sheesh. what a sick, sick society is the USA.

we talked about tourist culture a bit when someone asked in one of the orientation sessions, ‘how do we respond when kids beg from us?’, which is a common occurrence in mexico, and a large part of the tourist culture. it creates
a dynamic of difference, where the giver is higher up in the power structure than the receiver, and the kids begin to look at foreigners as prizes to be won. if you gain the favor of a foreigner, then you’re all set. but john told a
story about a cuban friend who told him ‘these people who beg from tourists have lost their sense of human dignity’ – the idea being that they have stooped as low as humans can go. and a distinction was made between people who beg
because there is no social welfare system for a person with a disability and people who beg, and send their kids to beg, from tourists. leeching off the tourist market is
a common practice in the cities of chiapas – cities being the places where people end up who are completely lost and no longer have a sense of themselves or their center. I think that’s probably true in the US too – and the interactions in american cities are actually somewhat like those interactions with the children begging off of tourists, but on a different scale – there are pressures,
expectations – a heartstring is pulled, then the pocketbooks open and money comes trickling down to further feed more expectations, and keep the cycle of a poverty economy alive. the zapatistas try very hard to fight that
cycle, by setting up cooperatives and autonomous lands where people can farm – long term solutions that deal with people’s real needs to be fed, clothed and housed. and
they do it in a way that challenges and questions the structures of economy and politics that keep some people poor while others feed off the poor for their wealth.

there was a statement yesterday from subcomandante marcos (of the zapatistas) that was a response to a judge in Spain who has been saying things about marcos and the zapatistas, challenging the judge to a duel of wits – a debate, and
challenging the people of spain to take up the question of
self-determination for the basque region of spain. this is the latest in a series of communiques and events – the first being a couple of weeks ago, when zapatista
supporters in europe gathered in madrid for a conference, and one of the things that was established during that conference was an aguascalientes autonomous community in spain. a zapatista communique was sent out supporting
this, and also supporting the basque people’s right to self-determination. the communique was vague about ETA (the armed wing of the Basque independence movement), and did not condemn ETA in that statement. The Spanish press then took up the issue and blasted the zapatistas for not
condemning ETA, and so the latest statement from the zapatistas kind of puts ETA in check, saying ‘we were trying to stir up controversy in spain, because the spanish people need to talk about this issue amongst yourselves,
but at the same time, brother guerillas, we do not support the killing of civilians. the zapatistas have never killed civilians. but ETA has quite a lot of civilian blood on your hands, and you’re going to have to deal with that.’ of course those aren’t the exact words, but something like that, anyway.

dec. 12 – PM
tampico, mexico

we drove across the border today, WITHOUT our two trucks full of donations. just the bus came across, with the people in it. three people stayed behind to facilitate the trucks getting through – they’re hoping it will happen
tomorrow......the main thing is that we have asked an organization that is on the government’s ‘approved’ list to be the recipient organization of the aid, but still allow it to be distributed to the communities who have requested it. if that organization agrees to be the recipient organization of the aid, then the trucks can cross. but it’s really screwed up that there is this list of ‘approved
organizations’ and none of the ones we work with are on it, so we are having to scramble around looking for an organization to work with that IS on the list. where did this list come from? what are the requirements for being on it? is there an application procedure and if so, WHY weren’t we told about it?? these are the questions the mexican government ought to answer, but hasn’t.

I was thinking about staying behind with the aid.....I’m worried about it.....I really hope they make it across the border tomorrow. last night I was trying to decide whether to come with the group or stay with the aid, and it was a really tough decision to decide to go with the group....today as we were driving I was reconsidering that choice. well, we’ll see. if they don’t make it across the
border tomorrow, I’ll start thinking about going back to the border to help with that process. borders are so destructive to human relationships and friendships!!! and we actually have it easy, coming from the american side.
mexicans who try to come into the US find that it is impossible to enter the country legally. and those who enter the country illegally have a high risk of getting killed for it – over 350 have been killed THIS YEAR trying to cross the border!! and some are still willing to take that risk!! simply to bring some money back to their family, they are willing to risk getting killed. there are close to 10,000 american troops stationed along the mexican border, shooting mexicans who try to enter – hundreds a year! – and then the US government turns around and says we are a peaceful country? how ridiculous is that! it really says something about what NAFTA has done to the mexican economy – george bush sr. and his friends would like to say it has given jobs to mexicans, but look at the jobs it has given them! they are pushed off the land they had been farming, and forced into factories where they make less than $4 a day – which is NOT ENOUGH TO LIVE ON. they are willing to DIE to stand up to demand higher wages, and many labor organizers HAVE died for trying to organize unions. but what have they got to lose? if they stick with the wages they have, they will slowly die of starvation, sickness or overwork. some are even willing to take the risk of getting shot by crossing the border into the US
and getting some work that will actually pay a living wage, so they can send it back home to support their families.

the first thing I noticed about mexico is that there has been a growth of the number of chain stores and american fast food franchises since the last time I was here two years ago. either side of the border, you can buy the same big mac. the virus-like spread of generica. but it isn’t everywhere, like it is here in the US. there are still lots of local markets and street merchants – for the
moment! today was the celebration of the virgin of guadalupe, and the church in reynosa (the town just across the border from mcallen) was FULL of people bringing flowers, cards, pictures of the virgin, saying the
rosary.....some people were supplicants, walking on their knees down the aisle of the church to make their offering to the virgin. little kids were all dressed up in colorful traditional clothes, and the little boys had mustaches and sideburns painted on their faces. all of this worship of the virgin of guadalupe made me wonder a bit......perhaps
this is what happens when you force a religion of patriarchy onto a matriarchal or earth-based spiritual society – this kind of hodge-podge of traditions and ways of worship that overlap and intertwine, but definitely DON’T have their spiritual center in the Vatican of the Catholic church. they have their spiritual center here in mexico, in guadalupe, and the spiritual leadership there
is a woman, the goddess, the virgin of guadalupe.

I also wanted to note that we were stopped a couple of times by the police – they wanted to let us know that they knew we were coming, they were expecting us, asked a few questions........our ‘welcoming’ committee, I guess........

dec. 13, 2002
veracruz, mexico

the police have been following us practically the whole way. at one point we were stopped at a military checkpoint where they tried to get all our names. one of the leaders of our group explained to them that it is not within their
jurisdiction to collect our names, that Immigration has all our names if they want them. n The military tried to use an implicit threat by saying that they had orders to get a list of our names, and if we did not give them freely, they
were authorized to use ‘other means’ to obtain the names – they didn’t specify what those ‘other means’ were, but the threat of disruption of the caravan was implied. Finally they let us go.....just another use of intimidation tactics to keep groups from bringing humanitarian aid to the people of Chiapas.

why?, you ask, would the Mexican government want to keep bandages and computers from the poorest of its people? and the answer lies in the fact that these people, the poorest people in Mexico, have resisted the government, calling it a continuation of colonialism and a puppet for US corporate
interests, and have created autonomous communities that are not dependent on the government for support. this aid will help in a tiny way, help those communities to remain autonomous and in resistance. THAT is what the government
does not want. THAT is why they have established 252 military bases in Chiapas, a state the size of South Carolina, and have continuously terrorized the people who live in Chiapas since the resistance movement was made public in 1994. and it’s not merely the Mexican government, either. the guns, bullets, bombs, helicopters, uniforms, equipment, and possibly even the orders themselves, come from US government and corporate interests who wish to squelch the zapatista resistance movement in order to displace the peasants who live there and exploit
the resources of the land.

In 1997, for example, an internal memo was leaked to te public, a memo from Chase Manhattan Bank to the Mexican government. This memo stated that in order for Chase to invest in Mexico, the Zapatista rebellion would have to be crushed using any means necessary, because the rebellion was destabilizing the peso (mexican unit of money) in
international markets.

as we travel through mexico, I remember the development of my interest and knowledge about the region. the first time I left the US (other than to Canada) was to visit the Caribbean on a high school trip. I remember being drawn in by the thatched huts, the handmade signs, the goats wandering the streets and the constant movement of the marketplace. I had a definitely very romanticized notion of the culture there – I loved the music, the food, the
landscape and the families I saw living off the land. although I do remember visiting a former coffee plantation and thinking about the legacy of slavery and colonialism, and seeing caribbean kids in school uniforms in a tight line with nuns leading them, and thinking how out of place that was with the rest of the culture, my critique of capitalism and understanding of colonialism was not well-articulated at that point in my life. as I grew, I learned more, and began to gain some understanding of the international economic factors that kept some people
impoverished while others grew fat and wealthy at their expense. I began to see that the poverty of people in central america is not an accident – it is directly related to the robbing of their resources by colonial forces to take to Europe and the United States. Just as Antonio said, the apparent wealth of the United States today is not due to some ‘work ethic’, it is the direct result of having 500 years of free land that was stolen from the Indians, 300 years of free labor and expertise that was stolen from africa, and 300 years of practically free resources that were stolen from central and south america! US and European wealth is directly correlated to African, Caribbean and central and south american poverty.

14 december 2002
tabasco, mexico

there was another military checkpoint where they pulled us over today, but it didn’t take long before they let us go. yesterday we were waiting about 45 minutes while one of the organizers of our group negotiated our way through. today it only took 10 minutes. the police have not been following as closely, either. I keep thinking about the two trucks, and hoping they make it through the border and are able to catch up with us while we are in chiapas.
the group that was asked to be the recipient organization of our aid, Caritas, is still considering it. so we are waiting for them to make a decision, and when they do, the trucks SHOULD be able to come across the border. Caritas is a catholic organization, and one of the branches, in San Cristobal, is apparently pretty liberal and has been the recipient of Pastors for Peace caravans in the past. But
THAT branch is not on the ‘approved’ list. only the branch inTuxtla Gutierrez, a much more conservative area with large landowners and wealthy people, is on the ‘approved’ list. so we are waiting for them to make a decision about
whether to be the recipient organization for the aid, and they won’t decide that til monday (today is saturday). GRRR!!!!!!!! it’s frustrating and hard to have patience, when you know the people are waiting for this aid, and their own government is delaying the process and intimidating the caravan on its way to try to help them. tomorrow we are going to stop at a clinic where we were
going to bring a lot of aid, and I feel bad showing up there empty-handed. but hopefully, if it goes ok, the aid will get there in just a few more days.

the reason I’m coming on a caravan with the Pastors for Peace, even though I am not a Pastor, or even a christian (although neither of these are requirements of the caravan), is partly because I wanted to do something to honor the memory of my friend and mentor, Father McSorley, who died in october. he was 88 years old, and a Jesuit priest. I got a lot of inspiration from him and his
life, the way he would take stands and not back down, because he knew what he was doing was right. He would take principled, moral stands, often getting himself in trouble with his own superiors in the church – but he didn’t mind
trouble. He survived being a prisoner of war of the japanese in World War 2, and when he came back to the US immediately found himself embroiled in the beginnings of the civil rights struggle. he was the pastor of a
segregated parish, and would do things like having a roller-skating rink in the parish hall and keeping it open for ALL the kids, black and white, to skate together. the white
parishioners would challenge him, and report him to his superiors, but he managed to get the church desegregated – and in the process, get himself kicked out of the diocese by his superiors, who were not at all against segregation.
later he got involved in the freedom summers and the march from selma to montgomery – one story he told about Rev. Martin Luther King on that march was the story of the arrival of the march at the place where three freedom riders
had been killed the summer before, and King marched the group right into the center of town. The chief of police and his posse had set themselves up right in front of the town hall so the march couldn’t enter, and King stood up
right in front of them and began speaking to the crowd – he spoke about the three freedom riders being killed, and said ‘some of those who killed them may even be present here today.’ a voice behind him mumbled, so only King could hear: ‘damn right we’re here, and we’ll get you too nigger’. Father McSorley testified that King’s voice never faltered as he continued with his speech, and it was only
later that night that Rev. King told Father McSorley and some others about what had happened as he was speaking. There were other stories Father McSorley told about Martin Luther King, and the many, many other people he worked
with side by side for the cause of justice and peace. He worked really hard in the anti-nuclear movement, and wrote several books about how insane it is to even consider warfare in a nuclear age. He wrote about the just-war
theory as a theory that had actually been written to make war impossible, for no war could truly reach all six criteria of a just war. He wrote about christianity being a
peace church, and the message taught by jesus a peace message, and that for a christian to fight in or aid and abet warfare was hypocritical and un-christian. for challenging the funding of ROTC (army training corps) on the campus of Georgetown, where he was a staff member, he was kicked off the faculty and out of the community of priests. he didn’t give in and give up his stance in order
to maintain his position at the college – he maintained his stance against having ROTC on campus, and was forced to leave the school. so he went to a newly-forming homeless shelter called the ‘community for creative non-violence’, and lived there for ten years with mitch snyder, one of the greatest homeless-rights advocates DC has ever seen. the ‘community for creative non-violence’ grew to be the biggest homeless shelter on the east coast, and it is still
serving many, many people today. I remember seeing Mitch Snyder on TV when I was a kid, I was maybe 9 or 10 years old, and I saw him on the news in a courtroom, yelling at the judge that homeless people had rights, too!, and getting dragged away by the police. And I remember asking my mom who that guy was, with the wild hair and the sincere voice, and she said he was Mitch Snyder. And I never forgot that name.........I was in awe of it at the time, I had never seen someone so sincere, so willing to act, to get arrested – I remember feeling the injustice of it, even as a kid, feeling like ‘yeah, he’s right! homeless people
have rights, too! why are they dragging him away?’. as I’ve grown older, I’ve met many, many people with that deep sense of commitment and justice, like Father McSorley, who was Mitch Snyder’s roommate for ten years. but I never forgot that moment when I saw Mitch on TV, and felt that pang of injustice that has become a call to ACTION as I’ve continued to feel it through the years. And that’s why I’m here on this caravan. To answer that feeling of injustice, to fight the injustice with love, to carry out the work of Father McSorley. He carried so much love in his heart, and tried so hard to maintain his consistency and integrity, and his commitment to peace, his whole life. It’s the LEAST I can do to go to mexico, and try to answer that call of suffering and injustice there with the simple response ‘I’m here. You’re not alone. I’m here and I do
care.’

12/15/02
palenque, chiapas, mexico

what a day of contrasts! we arrived in chiapas, and our first stop was to see the mayan pyramids at palenque – because we had some extra time before meeting with our hosts. so we got to glimpse this intricate, ancient culture that had the technology to build pyramids many stories high, to measure time in a calendar encompassing millions of years, to graph astronomical charts surpassing
even the most modern of western science – and they did it all over a thousand years ago! then virtually disappeared.......leaving modern scholars to guess about
what happened there, and what all of it meant. now the mayan descendants are facing struggles to even preserve their own people’s legacy – we heard the story of how, in el tajin, the site of one of the sets of pyramids, there was a false ‘traditional mayan spring festival’ earlier this year that was promoted by MTV, and attended by lots of gringos (foreigners), but was actually entirely disrespectful of the people who lived and cared for the ruins, and DO still use them for traditional ceremonies. the MTV crew actually put speakers on top of sacred pyramids, and MOVED stones around that did not fit with the
aesthetic they were trying to create. the local people, the descendants of the ancient mayan creators of the pyramids, had no say in the process, and have had quite a
battle trying to fight such cooptations and destructive uses of their ancient, sacred sites. even today, at the pyramids of palenque, it seemed out of place to see all these tourists climbing all over what were essentially the tomb stones of their day. the hieroglyphics were amazing and intricate, but it seems to me that the natural choice for a caretaker of the ruins should be the descendants of the pyramids’ makers: the traditional mayans who live there – NOT the government and commercial interests who want to make money off tourists who visit the pyramids. and it’s not only these isolated sites where pyramids are
discovered – practically every square inch from here to el salvador has an archaeological site underneath it – I mean, if you think of the significance of that, it is that this
whole area, which is now jungle, was once cities, roadways and canals – the ancient equivalent of our ‘eastern seaboard’ from boston to atlanta perhaps.

so then we came to this convent, where six catholic nuns and two priests live – indigenous ch’ol and tzetal mayan women and men who are catholics, and provide a free clinic for the poor people of palenque and 140 surrounding villages. we were supposed to be bringing them 3 tons of medical supplies, but of course that aid is still stuck at the border. anyway, we got to hear from one of the nuns about some of the problems faced by people in this area –
two hours north of here a mass grave was discovered recently with bodies of the victims of paramilitary groups over the last ten years.......the paramilitaries are militias of a sort, that get their guns, funding and training from the actual military, but do things that the military itself could not do without coming under intense
international scrutiny and being criticized for human rights violations – ie. they assassinate, torture and intimidate people. then the military can wash their hands
of whatever happens, saying they had nothing to do with it, and they just couldn’t find the perpetrators. the nun we spoke with said the paramilitaries often get their recruits by paying the families of recruits – she said you could tell
‘who was who’ by noticing the biggest house in a village, which would almost invariably be the home of a paramilitary supporter or participant.

she also told us about the spread of AIDS, which she correlates with the arrival of the military in Chiapas – 70,000 soldiers are now in Chiapas. she said that before the military came, they didn’t see this problem much. now,
wherever there are military bases, young women and girls are raped – far more than are reported, and many contract AIDS from the soldiers, then have babies born with AIDS. the military is not very popular in the communities for this and other reasons. there is one area near here where the military ran a community off their land under pain of death so that the military could establish a base of
operations on the people’s land. the people fled, fearing for their lives. then, a couple of years later, the government established a hospital on the site of the
military base -- supposedly for the people who lived nearby. but the people refused to go to that hospital – both out of fear, and as an act of resistance to a
government that would run people off their land, then use a hospital to try to entice them to support the military base established on what used to be their farmland. the message from the people was clear: despite our dire poverty, we would rather have no health care at all than agree to those terms of terror.

there are many stories like that – of people resisting the military occupation of their land, standing up non-violently or doing something like the boycott of the
hospital in order to maintain their unified opposition to the military occupation. it seems that only those who get paid by the government tend to support it – and that’s a fairly small number of folks.

when asked what we could do back in the US to help, the sister said that many of the weapons used against the people here come from the US, and the Mexican military is receiving training from the U.S. Army School of the
Americas in Ft. Benning, GA, a camp where central and south american military personnel can receive ‘counter-insurgency’ training from the US Army. So she encouraged us to stand up to those gun-makers and policymakers who make it possible for the atrocities and human rights violations to continue.

I was at the protest at the School of the Americas in November this year in Georgia, along with 10,000 other people, and heard the statistic that close to half of the military personnel now receiving military training at that
school are from the Mexican military. Prior to 1994, there were very few people there from Mexico. It is here in Mexico and in Colombia that the most egregious violations of human rights are going on right now, and the number of
human rights violations is directly correlated to the number of graduates of the School of the Americas that these countries have in their military forces. It’s absolutely unbelievable that the US manages to keep open this terrorist training camp in Georgia. There’s really no other name for it. The textbooks speak for themselves (a 1996 textbook of the school was leaked to the public
recently, and it shows techniques of torture and assassination – literally a ‘how-to’ guidebook of torture and intimidation), as do the former staff people who have
decided to risk their career and reputation in the military in order to follow their conscience and tell the truth about what’s being taught at that school. The school recently decided to change its name (to the ‘western hemispheric institute for security cooperation’) because of the pressure put on it by the growing protests. It was
done as a public relations campaign, to try to convince people that the school has closed. But hey! a PERSON cannot legally change their name to avoid facing charges for crimes they have committed – why should a school of
torture be allowed to do so? there’s going to be another protest there next november (2003) – there should be a HUNDRED thousand people, not asking, but DEMANDING, that this school and others like it be shut down and that
the US government STOP TRAINING CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICAN
MILITARY PERSONNEL IN TERROR TECHNIQUES!! it’s ridiculous that more united states citizens aren’t STANDING UP to the bullying and terrorizing of whole populations being done IN OUR NAME and with guns and bombs paid for WITH OUR MONEY!!! come on people! what are we DOING???? we should be standing up for THIS!! no more sitting down. it’s time
to get out there and act.

12/17/02
san cristobal, chiapas, mexico

no development on getting the trucks across the border – rev. walker didn’t get to meet with the group in Tuxtla Gutierrez today, but he will meet with them tomorrow and hopefully that will influence their decision on whether to
be the recipient organization for the aid of Pastors for Peace. if they agree, it could be tomorrow or the next day that the aid gets across. if not, well.......we have to
explore another possibility. three strong caravanistas are waiting at that horrible border town, mcallen texas, with the trucks.

meanwhile, we arrived in san cristobal, the major city of chiapas, and found out upon our arrival of a very frightening situation happening in a place called montes azules (blue mountains) about eight hours away from here, in the jungle near the border with guatemala. what is happening is that this past weekend there has been mexican army troop movement into that area, and local people have been told that they are going to be displaced – ie. forcibly removed from their homes. ‘wait!’ you cry, ‘the government can’t just send in the military to an area and make people leave their homes and farms like that! what
about those people’s rights??’ well, too bad. these are indigenous people, poor people, people who have no political, economic or social power in the society, and therefore the government can (as it has in the past) do whatever it wants to these people. many of the people living in montes azules are living there after having fled from other regions under threat from the paramilitaries or
the mexican military – many have been pushed there from other areas.

the day we were crossing the border, dec. 12, heads of some departments in the government of chiapas – the forest development department, the economic development department, and others, were meeting with heads of an
institute for forest studies, AND with the under-secretary of the US embassy to discuss development of the region in question. the US undersecretary offered support for such development, and for the Mexican government’s efforts in
justice and democracy........well, two days later, troops began moving into the montes azules region and there is talk of a massive displacement of the population.
coincidence?? I think not.

the Mexican military claims it will move in to the region by land, air and water in order to push the population off the land. the ‘development’ of the region will include eco-tourism hotels by companies who already have their eye on
the land and have been in on the discussion about the ‘problem’ of the fact that there are people living on this land, prospecting for minerals and bio-prospecting – where companies go through the jungle to find medicinal plants to patent, and ‘economic development’ of the region – we know what THAT means! mcdonalds and burger king! yeah!! sweatshop factories! woohoooo!!

seriously though.......these people are facing imminent forced removal from their homes – this could mean deaths, human rights violations, and all the nastiness that goes along with a military invasion of an area. a mexican friend said to us that ‘all the people of central america know that when representatives of the US government begin talking about democracy (like in this case), that means
something big is about to happen – something big and disastrous for some group of people in central america.’ today it is montes azules. but this is just the latest
community to be attacked, just the latest example in 500 years of this kind of treatment of indigenous people. that is why some have risen up here in this area of southern mexico to say ‘ya basta!’ (enough already!), and decide that they won’t take it any more.

we visited one of the places where this resistance has shown itself, today on our way to san cristobal – a cooperative store that was established by the zapatistas
in one of their aguascalientes (literally ‘hot water’ – referring to municipal centers, after a term established during the 1910-17 mexican revolution), a community called Moises y Gandhi (Moses and Gandhi). in that community,
there was a store established to help the people cooperatively sell their goods – farm produce, shoes and clothes made in a cooperative workshop, etc. well, what happened is that last year the store was attacked by a group from the area who wanted to accept the government’s plan to ‘divide and conquer’ the people by offering land title to some over others. they were egged on by members of
the PRI political party, and were allowed to destroy the store while members of the Mexican national security forces looked on. the main thing that they did, besides removing all the goods, was to paint over the murals that covered the
outside of the cooperative. but it wasn’t just like painting over any old mural – it was a mural that depicted the history of the people’s struggle for dignity and equality – in essence, it was like rubbing out that history – making it disappear (like white people have made indigenous people disappear). but the response from the surrounding communities was tremendous. 5,000 people came
down from the hills to take back the cooperative, and hundreds of zapatistas sat outside for weeks to guard the store from further attacks. they call the cooperative ‘the new dawning of the rainbow’, and have been successful in
keeping this symbol of their autonomy and cooperative methods open for the past year. but the mural is still painted over, and it was so sad to see the edges of the mural’s blue sky and clouds under the white paint that now
covers it. there are pictures posted of how the cooperative USED to look – showing farmers plowing their fields in peace, showing zapata and the defense of the
lands in the mexican revolution, showing the current zapatista struggle that was made public in 1994 – all of this WIPED OUT under a cover of white paint. what a symbol. but the people remain strong, and vow that they will repaint their history on those walls, and add another chapter to the history of their struggle their in the community of Moises y Gandhi.