The Zapatista National Liberation Army makes its own statement: “It is a terrible and marvelous thing that the poor aspiring to be masters have become the best teachers, with the power of their pain converted to dignified anger, so that Mexico and the world wake up and question and challenge.”
By: Raúl Zibechi The large and profound crises, those that happen from time to time but are a parting of waters, can create long-term anti-systemic movements, in other words, movements that are not exhausted in mobilizations that, as numerous as they may be, are necessarily ephemeral. Movements, to the contrary, endure, they don’t vanish with the passage of time, are capable of transcending junctures and they adopt their own push, which takes them much farther than what the inertias of the moment can. Profound crises break barriers and the partitions constructed by those above to separate the different belows into …
This festival will be a worldwide gathering of people to share rebellions and resistances with the indigenous peoples of Mexico organized by the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) of Mexico, the Sixth Campaign, and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). Schools for Chiapas has canceled all delegations during this period and urges our supporters to participate fully in the exciting program of events! Join us!
“It is terrible and marvelous that the poor and humble families and students who aspire to be school teachers have become the best teachers this country has seen in recent years.” In thousands of tiny, rural Zapatista communities throughout Chiapas, Mexico; emotions run deep in support of the now famous 43 – murdered and disappeared student-teachers from Ayotzinapa. The powerful speech reprinted below was delivered in the name of the Zapatista leadership by Subcommander Insurgent Moises in Caracol II, Oventic on Nov. 15, 2014 during a visit by the families of the 43.
In forgotten places like the communities of the Alta Montaña [High Mountain] region of Guerrero, the teacher is much more than a transmitter of knowledge. The teacher is a moral authority, a justice of the peace, a midwife practitioner, a steward, a confessor, a marriage counselor and the mailman of the hearts of lovers and, in many cases, the father and mother of the child with bulging belly [malnutrition] that looks at him like a savior: the solution to all his problems.
