From Fire to Autonomy: Zapatistas, 20 Years of Walking Slowly

Andalusia Knoll

Striving to break with patriarchal norms, the Zapatistas learn as they walk. Andalusia Knoll writes of the celebrations around the 20th anniversary of the Zapatista Uprising.

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What Does it Mean to Live?
Notes from the Zapatistas’ First International Gathering of Politics, Art, Sport, and Culture for Women in Struggle
Published on June 7, 2018 by the Kilombo Women’s Delegation

As dusk set in on the first day’s events, we noticed Zapatista women moving in organized lines through various parts of the caracol, though in the falling darkness it was hard to make out their ultimate formation. At the end of the evening, they called for a moment of silence for Eloísa Vega Castro, a member of the Baja California support team for the Indigenous Governing Council who was killed in a car accident while accompanying the Council and its spokeswoman, María de Jesús Patricio Martínez, on a tour of that state on February 14, 2018. Across the chilly, starlit mountain valley, the lights went out and two thousand candles went up, held by all of the Zapatista women who had formed, as of almost two hours before, a great ring around the central plaza of the caracol. What clearer expression could there be of solidarity in struggle than thousands of organized Zapatista women encircling with all of their discipline, tenderness, and tenacity the thousands more women they had invited to their territory and raising all those tiny flames in memory of another. At the close of the gathering, they offered another message for that moment, in the voice of Zapatista compañera Alejandra, worth citing at length:

“On March 8, at the end of our contribution, each of us lit a small flame. […] That small light is for you. Take it, sister, compañera.

When you feel alone.

When you are afraid.

When you feel that the struggle is very hard; when life itself is very hard.

Light it anew in your heart, in your thoughts, in your gut.

And don’t just keep it to yourself, compañera, sister.

Take it to disappeared women.

Take it to murdered women.

Take it to incarcerated women.

Take it to women who have been raped.

Take it to women who have been beaten.

Take it to women who have been assaulted.

Take it to women who have been subjected to all kinds of violence.

Take it to migrant women.

Take it to exploited women.

Take it to deceased women.

Take it and tell each and every one of them that she is not alone and that you are going to struggle for her; that you are going to struggle for the truth and justice that her pain deserves; that you are going to struggle so that the pain she carries will not be repeated in another woman from any world.

Take it and turn it into rage, courage, and determination.

Take it and unite it with other lights.

Take it and, perhaps, you will come to think that there can be neither justice, truth, nor freedom in the patriarchal capitalist system.

Then, perhaps, we can meet again to set fire to the system.

And perhaps you will be beside us ensuring that no one puts out that fire until only ashes are left.

And then, sister and compañera, on that day that will be night, perhaps we will be able to say together with you:

‘All right, yes, now we are really going to begin building the world we need and deserve.’”

Click here to read the entire text from the Kilombo Women's Collective: intercommunalworkshop.org/what-does-it-mean-to-live…/ ... See MoreSee Less

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From Fire to Autonomy: Zapatistas, 20 Years of Walking Slowly

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