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In direct response to the Zapatista request for help buying building materials, Schools for Chiapas established “The Reality Fund”. We have pledged that all funds donated to “The Reality Fund” will be given directly the Good Government Board in the Zapatista caracol of La Realidad – which translates as “Reality”. We also call liked the name “Reality” because organizing support for the school reconstruction allowed us to channel our outrage and sadness over the death of Galeano into something real.

Subcomandante Marcos, the spokesman for the Zapatistas (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, or EZLN), has announced that his rebel persona no longer exists. He had gone from being a “spokesman to a distraction,” he said last week. His persona, he said, fed an easy and cheap media narrative. It turned a social revolution into a cartoon for the mass media. It allowed the commercial press and the outside world to ignore traditional community leaders and indigenous commanders and wrap a movement around a fictitious personality. His persona, he said, trivialized a movement. And so this persona is no more.