May 2014

And that appears to be the real reason why Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos chose to cease to exist. Because now, in Chiapas, there are people who have learned how to govern themselves in an autonomous, horizontal way. There are children who have studied in autonomous schools, patients who have been treated in autonomous clinics, women who are no longer considered inferior to men. And all this should be known to the world without the distraction of the persona of Marcos.

We think that it is necessary for one of us to die so that Galeano lives.
To satisfy the impertinence that is death, in place of Galeano we put another name, so that Galeano lives and death takes not a life but just a name – a few letters empty of any meaning, without their own history or life.
That is why we have decided that Marcos today ceases to exist.
He will go hand in hand with Shadow the Warrior and the Little Light so that he doesn’t get lost on the way. Don Durito will go with him, Old Antonio also.

I hear all kinds of arguments about what’s wrong with schools and the sentiments tend to avoid the keys to what’s essential in the creation of a learning environment: an understanding of “who” the person is who’s being educated. And nothing gets at “who” a child, a student, is more than an educator who respects and appreciates that person’s culture and gives him or her an education that’s rich in the arts.

This past May 2nd José Luis Solís López (known as Galeano) was assassinated by members of the paramilitary group CIOAC-Histórica while defending the autonomous school and health car clinic near the Zapatista caracol of La Realidad. This Spanish language video by the independent media collective Masde131 shows footage of the teacher Galeano reading the parting message of the Escuelita, “Freedom according to the Zapatistas”, during the closing of its first round in August 2013.

Is it really possible that anyone would consciously plan the murder of a teacher and the destruction of a Zapatista school, health clinic, and water system? How can it be that politicians, governments, or special interests are still attacking tiny Mayan communities after these communities have spent twenty years peacefully focused on education, health, ecological agriculture, and women’s empowerment? And finally, why isn’t the “official story” – a tale of simple inter-community conflicts – credible in the case of the assination of the teacher Galeano and the distruction of La Realidad’s school, health clinic, and water system. During this week of demanding Justice for …

Peter Rosset on the war against the Zapatistas READ MORE »