Marcos Zapatista Quotes

We are sorry for the inconvenience, but this is a revolution.

Yes, Marcos is gay. Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains. Marcos is all the exploited, marginalised, oppressed minorities resisting and saying `Enough'. He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every untolerated group searching for a way to speak. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable -- this is Marcos.

But I'll tell you more about that later... or maybe I won't, because some wounds just don't heal even if you talk them out. On the contrary, the more you dress them up in words, the more they bleed.

As to whether Marcos is gay: Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal,… a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains.

To look and to struggle, it is not enough to know where to direct your gaze, patience, and effort," old Antonio said to me as he got up. "One must also get started, reach out, and meet other gazes, which, in turn, will get started, reach out, and met yet other gazes. In this way, looking at the other looking, many gazes are born, and the world sees that it can be better, and that there is room for all gazes and for those who, though different and other, look at others looking and see themselves walking a history yet to be made.

So the greatest gods explained to the first men and women what 'looking' was and taught them to look. That's how men and women learned that you can look at others, know that they exist, they are there, they are other, and, in that way, not bump into them, hurt, step over, or trip them. They also learned that they could look inside another and see what their hearts are feeling, since the heart doesn't always speak with words that come from the lips. Many times, the heart speaks with the sink, with a look, or by walking. They also learned to look at those who see only themselves, who see only themselves in others' look. And they learned to look at those others who look at them looking. The first men and women learned every type of gaze there was, and the most important one they learned is the gaze that looks at itself and is aware of itself and knows itself, that sees itself both looking and looking inward, that sees paths and futures yet to be born, paths not yet walked, and dawns yet to break.

Then the lion stares at it. It stares at its prey. Like this.' (Old Antonio frowns and fastens his black eyes on me.) 'The poor little animal that is going to die just looks. It looks at the lion, who is staring at him. The little animal no longer sees itself, it sees what the lion sees, it looks at the little animal image in the lion's stare, it sees that the lion sees it as small and weak. The little animal never thought before about whether it was small and weak. It was just an animal, neither big nor small, neither strong nor weak. But now it looks at what the lion is seeing, it looks at fear. And by looking at what the lion is seeing, the little animal convinces itself that it is small and weak. And, by looking at the fear that the lion sees, it feels afraid. And now the little animal does not look at anything. Its bones go numb, just like when water gets hold of us at night in the cold. And then the little animal just surrenders, it lets itself go and the lion gets it. That is how the lion kills. It kills by staring.

P.D. MAYORITARIA QUE SE DISFRAZA DE MINORÍA INTOLERADA. A todo esto de que si Marcos es homosexual: Marcos es gay en San Francisco, negro en Sudáfrica, asiático en Europa, chicano en San Isidro, anarquista en España, palestino en Israel, indígena en las calles de San Cristóbal, chavo banda en Neza, rockero en cu, judío en Alemania, ombusdman en la Sedena, feminista en los partidos políticos, comunista en la post guerra fría, preso en Cintalapa, pacifista en Bosnia, mapuche en los Andes, maestro en la CNTE, artista sin galería ni portafolios, ama de casa un sábado por la noche en cualquier colonia de cualquier ciudad de cualquier México, guerrillero en el México de fin del siglo XX, huelguista en la CTM, reportero de nota de relleno en interiores, machista en el movimiento feminista, mujer sola en el metro a las 10 p.m., jubilado en plantón en el Zócalo, campesino sin tierra, editor marginal, obrero desempleado, médico sin plaza, estudiante inconforme, disidente en el neoliberalismo, escritor sin libros ni lectores, y, es seguro, zapatista en el sureste mexicano. En fin, Marcos es un ser humano, cualquiera, en este mundo. Marcos es todas las minorías intoleradas, oprimidas, resistiendo, explotando, diciendo "¡Ya basta!". Todas las minorías a la hora de hablar y mayorías a la hora de callar y aguantar. Todos los intolerados buscando una palabra, su palabra, lo que devuelva la mayoría a los eternos fragmentados, nosotros. Todo lo que incomoda al poder y a las buenas conciencias, eso es Marcos.

We are woken gently at three in the morning and told that we need to leave. Guided by the light of the stars rather than the moon, we walk for half an hour before we reach a hut. We can just about make out the presence of three men inside, but it's almost as dark as the balaclavas that hide their faces. In the identikit released by the Mexican government, Marcos was de-scribed as a professor with a degree in philosophy who wrote a thesis on Althusser and did a Master's at Paris-Sorbonne Univer-sity. A voice initially speaking French breaks the silence: “We’ve got twenty minutes. I prefer to speak Spanish if that’s OK. I’m Subcomandante Marcos.

I remind you that divisions between countries serve only to define the crime of contraband and to justify wars. Indeed, there exist at least two things that transcend borders: one is the crime disguised as modernity that distributes misery on a global scale; the other is the hope that shame will exist only when someone misses a dance step, and not every time we look at ourselves in the mirror. To bring an end tot he crime and make hope bloom, we need only to struggle and to become better. The rest falls into place on its own and is what fills libraries and museums.

en los expedientes de la PGR, donde levantan los cargos contra los presuntos zapatistas, pusieron “La Candona”.

Once again, the civil society chanting "Todos somos Marcos" ("We are all Marcos") filled the capital's ZOcalo plaza, and support for the Mayan rebels ran so high that the Mexican congress was forced to pass legislation ordering Zedillo to open a dialogue with the Zapatistas.

The discussion continued after that first agreement, because it is one thing to recognize that there are others who are different and something else entirely to respect them. So they spent a long while talking and discussing how each of them was different from the others. They didn't care that they were spending so much time talking, because, as it happens, time didn't exist yet. Then they all fell silent as each one spoke of their own difference. Each of the other gods realized that the more they listened and recognized the differences of the others, the more they discovered what it was within themselves that made them different. That made them very happy, and they started to dance.

The brutality of "The Story of the Lion and the Mirror" refracts the violence of this historical moment. The lion, intoxicated by the taste of blood, mistakes his own blood fort hat of the calf he wants to devour and ends up bleeding to death. We wonder if this story is perhaps a parable about how counterinsurgency fails: thinking it is consuming the blood of its enemy, the state bleeds itself out.

...as Marcos reminds us, "When Mexican government officials say land, they precede the word with an 'I buy' or 'I sell,' since for the powerful land is just a commodity. When the Indigenous say land, no word recedes it, but with it they also mean nation, mother, home, school, history, wisdom.

Old Antonio says that the eldest of teh elders told him that the assembly of the first gods, those who gave birth tot he world, happened very long ago, so long ago, in fact, that time didn't exist yet. And the elders said that in that assembly each of the gods spoke their word, and each said, "The thoughts I have are different from those of the others." At that point, the gods fell silent, because they realized that when each of them said "the others" they meant different "others." After they had been silent fora while, the first gods realized that they now had their first agreement: there were "others", and those "others" were different from themselves. In this way, the first agreement reached by the very first gods was to recognize difference and accept the existence of the other. But, then, what choice did they have since they were, after all, dogs, first gods, and so they had to accept one another, not as greater or lesser but as different.

His “real” identity became an obsession of journalists after the uprising, and when one journalist took him at face value that he had been a gay waiter in San Francisco, he wrote, “Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian on the streets of San Cristóbal, a Jew in Germany... a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the metro at 10:00 p.m., a celebrant on the zócalo, a campesino without land, an unemployed worker... and of course a Zapatista in the mountains of southeastern Mexico.” This gave rise to the carnivalesque slogan “Todos somos Marcos” (“We are all Marcos”), just as Super Barrio claims to be no one and everyone.