Noviembre del 2023.
P.S. – BE ADVISED – We were going to tell you what this whole thing is all about, but reading, seeing and listening to the string of nonsense said and written by the “specialists” in everything and experts in nothing (about supposed retreats, dismantling, advances of organized crime and “returns to the past” – most of them had to be Coletos1, we decided to let them keep belching.
With their profound analysis and well-founded investigations, the zapatologists state: “A sign of the Zapatista defeat is the loss of indigenous identity: young indigenous people now wear cowboy boots, instead of walking barefoot or in huaraches. And they dress up to wear new – or ironed! -instead of wearing blanket underwear and buying their wives according to indigenous customs and traditions. And they ride motorcycles, instead of carrying their coleta mistresses on their backs. All that is missing now is for young indigenous women to wear pants or, horror of horrors, to play soccer and drive vehicles, instead of serving the coleta ladies. They even dare to dance cumbias and ska instead of Bolonchon, and to sing rap and hiphop instead of psalms and odes to the finqueros. And that, as another sign of the loss of their indigenous identity, they should reach the absurdity of being subcomandantes, comandantes and comandantas! And that they govern themselves. And that they do not ask permission to be as they want to be. And that they travel and get to know other lands. And that they work and earn their pay without a tent. And that aren’t kept in concentration camps, like in Gaza, so that they don’t pick up “Sinaloan” or foreign ideas –because the Mayo-Yoreme in Sinaloa, pure narcocorridos, listen. Because of the Zapatista movement, we anthropologists will no longer have work to do. What a pity. And all for not following the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat or MORENA, it’s all the same. It was a grave error of Zapatismo not to obey us. Because now the indigenous no longer look down when you bump into them. They look at you with irreverence, with defiance, with rage, as if we were the intruders and not them, as if we were the criminals and not them. Before that only the Zapatistas did that, now any little girl from Chamula will stand up to you. And, as Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism-Maoism-Trotskyism-all-isms says, any indigenous person who is not like the anthropology manual, is a narco.”
We are sure that, later, when the full meaning of this stage is known, they will have the slightest bit of honesty to say and publish: “We don’t have the remotest idea of what they did, what they are doing or what they will do. The best thing would have been to ask the Zapatistas and not the anti-Zapatistas. “Or are they not honest?
Tell those “journalists” that it is always better, although more uncomfortable and unpaid, to interview the actors, not the spectators, the melons and the lazy paramilitaries. Investigative journalism is a professional job that requires, many times, risks and discomfort. But, not to worry, we understand that everyone makes a living as they can.
So, as a salute to the “zapatologists,” we continue with these P.S. made with much affection:
P.S. FROM THE MOUNTAIN PORT CAPTAINCY. – We had prepared a series of witty phrases to make fun of the political class as a whole (officialist and opposition), but now we think that there is no point, since each flock has its own shepherd or each shepherd has his flock. Or does anyone believe, naively, that the issue is between two shepherdesses?
Our silence during these years was not, nor is it, a sign of respect or an endorsement of anything, but rather that we are making an effort to see farther and look for what everyone is looking for: a way out of the nightmare. As you will come to know, through subsequent writings, what we have been doing, perhaps you will understand that our attention has been elsewhere.
But we understand that more than one suffers from what we Zapatistas call “theoretical torticollis” which is caused by so much looking upwards and affects good judgment, common sense, decency and honesty – besides the fact that it is addictive and creates chronic dependency. We understand the limitations in their horizons of analysis. One thing is the desk, the academy, the journalistic column, the report, the governmental post, the revolutionary coffee gossip or the social networks, and another thing is reality.
The latter not only does not pay, but charges dearly. Shakira already said it: “La realidad factura” (reality costs) and it doesn’t include VAT. Sorry.
We will not make firewood from the fallen trees up there. Reality, that implacable stubbornness, will do its thing and the last splinters will be the ones that organized crime will take from the “cobros de piso” in the proposals of one another.
Some masturbate to the morning press conference. Others to the destruction, the deaths, the murders, the rapes, the disappearances, the hunger, the war, the diseases, the pain and the sorrow. None of them have a viable and serious political proposal, they just entertain… until they don’t.
But since we are talking about autoeroticism: given the choice between Bertha and Claudia, well, Wendy.
-*-
Anyway, cheers, and now what am I going to do with my suit to dance corridos tumbados? “Compa, que le parece esa gorra?” … What? That’s not how it goes? Did I not tell you? It is the loss of indigenous identity. I hope the anthropologists come soon to save us.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
The Captain.
(very handsome in his cowboy hat. To each his own. Yeeehaw, my people!).
México, 40, 30, 20, 10 years later.
P.S. “CONTEXTUAL”. – Televisa being Televisa and anthropologists being anthropologists: https://www.nmas.com.mx/noticieros/programas/en-punto/videos/ezln-cierra-caracoles-avance-crimen-organizado/