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Originally
published in Spanish by the EZLN
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Translated by irlandesa, based on transcription of recording
[Comandante
Zebedeo's words in Oventik, August 9, 2003]
Brothers
and sisters:
Compañeros and compañeras:
After so many rumors that the EZLN was already finished, now you
can see, here we are again, in the same struggle, improving the
paths of resistance.
In the 20th century, they covered us up, by making us believe
that the times of misery, poverty, paternalism, slavery and the
Holy Inquisition had passed.
Today, great civil society still has the same sorrows. We saw
the new century arrive with the same brutal contents as in the
past.
These times of globalization are imposing a new Holy Inquisition
in another way.
Today, the sins of poor people are not being paid with whips.
We are paying with sophisticated weapons which have been specially
made for those who rebel against globalization's plans. All of
us are paying for this, including children and old persons.
World globalization, with its new world order, is the same as
saying: "World humiliation of the peoples of the world."
Globalization, with its free trade treaties, World Trade Organization
and NAFTA, are implements and means for destroying each country's
patrimony, sovereignty and culture.
We can no longer act as if we don't see that this war, and globalization's
worldwide threat, is seeking humiliation and submission. Even
someone who is illiterate could easily understand this situation.
The consequence of the evil - the parasite of world civil society
- is that every day the poor are becoming poorer, and the number
of unemployed is increasing by millions, leaving them torn of
all hope.
This globalization has been thanks to its greedy plan. Because
the peoples of the world are learning from it to fight, to resist
and to organize themselves in order to put a stop to domination
and invasion.
One can now read, and see, that the peoples of the world have
stopped being spectators. As time goes by, they are becoming important
actors in the building of a world where many worlds fit.
As is already known the world over, the globalization war of the
bad governments has taken death and destruction quite far from
here, to a place which was rich in the culture and history of
humanity.
There, the Iraqi people are now demonstrating that the issue is
not about changing local tyrants for foreign tyrants, but about
uniting democracy and justice with liberty, sovereignty and independence.
The Iraqi people, resisting every day, are knocking down the already
weak statue of the British-US military victory.
We would also like to repeat a greeting which we have already
given before.
The greeting to the political and cultural struggle of the Basque
people.
And I will clearly repeat: "To the political and cultural
struggle of the Basque people," because then some journalists
will come out with their lie that we support ETA, and even a nitwit
who sings rock will say it.
And so we send greetings to the political and cultural struggle
of the Basque people.
And especially now, whenever any person from that country is persecuted,
harassed and treated with contempt in any part of the world.
We know that these are difficult times for those people, but we
also know that they will know how to resist and be creative in
order to get through it. We cannot do much, but we also are shouting,
with hope, "Gora Euskal Herria," which will never be
extinguished, not even in the prisons and the Spanish government's
torture cells. And we are saying it very loudly, so that person
who is taking a vacation from his work of closing down newspapers
and banning political organizations can hear it.
And now our word goes to Europe, to France.
At this time, we would like to send a zapatista greeting to the
brothers and sisters in France, who are currently gathered together
in a place called "Les Place" in Larzac, France.
There are French campesino brothers there who are fighting against
the globalization of hunger and GM crops and against the power's
war.
We send greetings to the Southeastern Collectives in Solidarity
with Chiapas (Ariège, Aude, Bordeaux, Lot, Pau-Oloron,
Tarn and Toulouse): to the Mut-Vitz Network of the Southeast;
to Americasol; to the Support Committee to the Peoples of Chiapas
in Struggle, Paris, and to the "Building a World in Solidarity"
association; to the National Campesino Federation and to all those
organizations which are gathered there.
I do not know if they are listening to us right now, but I am
certain that, even though they are far away, they will feel the
embrace which the smallest of their brothers, the zapatistas,
are sending them.
And, a little closer, to the southeast of our southeast, winds
of support and hope are arriving from dignified Argentina.
We answer them with the humble wind which we are, and our embrace
crosses all of Latin America just to say do not feel alone, with
the words "brothers, sisters."
And there are a people in the Caribbean who are in the sights
of the war of world conquest, the people of Cuba.
Our admiration and our respect go out to those people, and we,
small as we are, cannot do more.
We are also well aware that the plans to attack the island of
Cuba are not lies.
But neither is the decision by that people a lie, the decision
to resist and decide, without foreign interference, their fate.
That, and nothing else, is sovereignty.
Brothers and sisters:
There is a country of noble and good people in the world.
Bad governs in that country also, but, beneath, rebel dignity
speaks in Italian and thinks of the future.
The new worlds which are being built there and here are learning
together to say "fratelli" and "hermano,"
which mean the same thing in Italian and in Spanish, "tomorrow."
And now we would like to send special greetings to the people
of North America, who rose up from the rubble of the twin towers
of New York in order to oppose a war which was driven by economic
interests and hidden behind the pain and courage provoked by the
attacks of September 11, 2001.
And we would like to send a very large embrace, as large as our
hope, to the Mexican brothers who are suffering and working in
foreign lands, not because they want to, but because the neoliberal
dispossession has thrown them off their own lands.
Greetings, then, to the Mexican blood which throbs above the Rio
Grande.
We would like to mention that in the coming days there will be
a very important meeting in Cancun, Mexico.
And we are not referring to the meeting of the World Trade Organization,
that body which commands the new world war against humanity.
No, we are talking about the meeting which will have people from
all over the planet, in order to repeat the "no" to
the exclusionary world of money and to affirm that another world
is possible.
It is our understanding that there will be a meeting from September
1 - 7 concerning alternative media and technology, and from September
8-9, a campesino forum.
And, on September 9, within a month, there will be mobilizations
in Cancun and throughout the world against those who think they
are the owners of the planet.
In September, the word of the zapatistas will go to Cancun and
to the planet, in the method and manner which shall be decided.
Brothers and sisters:
We would also like to send greetings and to embrace, with special
affection and admiration, all those worlds which there are in
the world.
We do not know the countries, but we do know some people who are
fighting in them, and we have learned, through their words and
their actions, that dignity and rebellion have nothing to do with
flags, languages, types of exchange and passports.
We are telling those different worlds that from here, from the
mountains of the Mexican southeast, they are not alone.
Brothers and sisters:
Let us leave racism and exclusion behind, let us see a common
path that will lead us towards the hope for a more human life.
In order to build this new world, it is necessary and important
that all men and women make ourselves children of rebellion and
resistance, and realize that our wages will be being the first
to try out the modern jails built by the so-called governments.
Which will mean then, not to lose sight of the world-wide global
monster.
And these have been our words, and what follows is dancing and
struggling.
Viva world resistance!
Viva world rebellion!
Vivan the poor peoples of the world!
From Oventik, "Resistance and Rebellion for Humanity"
Caracol.
By the Clandestine, Revolutionary Indigenous Committee -
General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Mexico, August 9, 2003.
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