On the subject: The Storm and the Day After.
Afterword.
Part Three: Other Options? When words are not necessary.
Let’s continue with the community assembly. The person next to you has already stated what they know, so it’s your turn. And then:
a). – You are moderately intelligent and understand that, in that situation, words are useless. So you start mumbling a musical tune, and stand on your toes, and open your arms like branches of a tree yet to be imagined, and start twirling and jumping, to… to… to… to dance? And the noise. And already a band of girls and boys follows, with puppies and kittens included, and they start jumping and juggling, and, almost without wanting to, they synchronize. And after there is a bonfire (because there is no electricity and night is already enveloping the village), and then the fire summons and does not destroy. And, without intending to, the involuntary choreography revolves around the bonfire. And the shadows replicate the dance in the people, the trees, the mountain.
And then, the next day, you discover that the children call you “the one who flies” or “the one who dances very other.” And someone, one of those party poopers that are never missing, corrects them with: “it’s called Bailarina.”
And at the next community assembly, when the roll is called to see if everyone is present, you hear “la bailarina” and you realize that all eyes converge on you and, not without blushing, but smiling, you say “present.”
Of course, the smile doesn’t last long because then they add: “it’s your turn in the vegetable garden with comadre Chepina.”
-*-
b). – You say nothing. Because, while the assembly has run its course, you have taken a piece of charcoal and, on a board, you have drawn something that could well be a portrait of the assembly. Something like a panorama, but with no state-of-the-art cell phone, no capable operating system, no AI.
So you say nothing, just lift the board, give it to the person next to you, and pass it among the attendees, who murmur in an incomprehensible language. Then you barely notice that next to you there is a little girl, about 3 or 4 years old, who stares at you with curiosity. You do what all adults do in an uncomfortable situation with a toddler, and ask her “what is your name?” The child doesn’t answer, she keeps looking at you, but not in fear. You shrug it off and try to locate where the board with the panoramic drawing is. You think about adding it to your “portfolio” or “curriculum,” because, you never know, you might run into a paradoxical Marx who doesn’t want to pay you for your designs and gives you a diploma instead. The girl next to you already has a little board and a little piece of charcoal and, handing them to you, says: “my kitty is lost.” You are puzzled, but you are moderately intelligent and assume that the girl wants you to draw her something like a wanted poster, so you ask “And what does your kitty look like?”. The little girl smiles because she realizes you’ve gotten the gist of it and elaborates, “My little dog has a yellow eye.”
What follows is a back-and-forth that leads nowhere: “but you said it was a kitten.” “It’s the same thing.” “No, it’s not the same thing, cats are one thing and dogs are another.” “It is.” “It’s not.” The little girl, without intending to, gives you a lesson in inclusiveness and clarifies, “It’s just that it’s a cat-dog. But not just any dog-cat. My cat-dog has a yellow eye. Like this,” and the girl squints her eyes so that you understand that she is turning her eyes yellow.
Since you’ve already lost sight of your panorama with “Sistema Operativo La Migaja. Version 7 to the N power,” you start to draw the little animal following the instructions of the girl, who also gesticulates colors, corrects the legs, the body, the tail and the face. When you finish, you realize that, in fact, your drawing could well be a dog… or a cat… or a cat-dog. The little girl looks approvingly at the drawing, but you know that what the wanted poster is missing is data, so you ask “and where did it get lost?” The little girl laughs as she tells you “As if they were lost. They already found me. It’s that you didn’t hurry up with the photo.” The girl leaves with a little animal in her arms that, yes, could well be a dog or a cat… or both.
The next day, there is a lineup of children asking for their animals to be drawn. A boy, wearing a T-shirt that reads “Comando Palomitas”, describes a little painted pig, a little knife, and he wants a “picture” now while he is still small, because later he will grow up and won’t want to play anymore. So you are drawing little animals, not few that have been imagined, and, amidst the whispering, you hear someone say “well, tell the one you are looking at.” Another party pooper will correct you in time: “they’re called a painter.”
-*-
c). – You are part of a musical group. Well, you were part of it. Of those modern synthesizers, mixers, electronic instruments, special effects and powerful octaphonic speakers, not even the wires are left. You’ve sat down with your buddies and nervously look at each other when you realize that it’s almost your turn to perform. They don’t know what to do. But, praise God, you’ve already seen that “the crew” (the technical support team, that is) has also been shipwrecked and ended up in that strange place. You don’t need a word. The support team has already foreseen the catastrophe and shows up with a broken guitar, with something resembling horsetail hairs as strings; an old drum that, in former times, perhaps served as a container for gasoline, oil or diesel; and a couple of empty and dented cans of a well-known soft drink.
You are moderately intelligent, so you understand that you have no choice but to improvise. When it is your turn, one picks up the guitar -although it is more out of tune than his grandmother, God rest her soul-, and solos; another one places the chair in front of the drum as a drum; another one takes out a comb (who would think of rescuing a comb in a catastrophe?), and with a candy wrapper, starts to “tune”? Someone has put pebbles in the cans. And they start up with “La del moño colorado” (an occasion that the captain takes advantage of to slip away, terrified, from the meeting). In a few moments, the assembly is dancing and asking for “one more, one more.” You smile at each other smugly, as if to say “we’ve got it made.” The spell is broken when you are told “it’s your turn to help drop the engine of the gray 3-ton.”
The next day you hear that they say “the musical comrades should come to the workshop to adapt the engine of the 3-ton red one to the mill.” You walk resignedly and one of you asks “but wasn’t it gray?” Instinctively, you start humming “Todo Cambia,” by Julio Numhauser Navarro and so they greet Mercedes Sosa, and arrive at the self-styled “mechanical workshop.” You are left speechless when you see the Monarch with a face of few friends and brandishing, impatiently, a monkey wrench the size of a human skull. On a tape recorder, driven from a bicycle with a dynamo, mounted on a wooden structure, Mario Benedetti replies that “we sing because the river sounds and when the river sounds, the river sounds”, and vice versa.
In the distance, a gigantic, watery brown snake can be seen, lashing at the horizon. And, just at that moment, on the tape recorder all the pantheons are looking for Oscar Chavez in Macondo. Two little girls rehearse their best steps because there will be a gathering and, therefore, there will be dancing and cumbias.
And in the cumbia, as the late SupGaleano once said, there is the whole and the parts.
To be continued…
From idem.
Original text and translation published by Enlace Zapatista on October 13th, 2024.
Translation here by Schools for Chiapas.