Part V of A Tractor in Common and the Case of the Crazy Parakeet
“These are my tractors,” says the original Chompiras—the father or grandfather, I can’t remember—of the Chompiras we already know from other stories. They also call him “Chompirón” or “Chompas” to distinguish him from his son or grandson. To save on bandwidth, we’ll just call him “Chompas” here.
Chompas is a Cholero, Tzeltalero, Tsotsilero, Zoque, and Tojolabalero (and a reluctant speaker of Spanish—“you have to learn the enemy’s language so you can curse them out and have them understand you”—which is how he explains why he learned Spanish). Of Mayan descent, through his travels, he learned and can understand and speak all those languages.
“My tractors”—as he says this, Chompas has raised his arms and hands first, and then, alternately, one leg and then the other.
Chompas is a member of the (Clandestine) Committee, though he might go by a different name, depending on his mood. Once, when he ran into the Captain and they greeted each other, the Captain said to him, “But wasn’t your name Ruperto?” The compañero looked at him with a smile and said, “You die every so often, so I change my name just the same. To each his own.” They both laughed.
Well, it turns out that Chompas—or whatever his name is now—arrived in El Puy for a day of collective work. He had already seen the video of the tractor posted on the Enlace Zapatista website, and he went straight to where the Monarca was checking the vehicle’s tires. Chompas looked at the tractor, parked under the shed, checked it all over, and after several “hmm,” asked, “So it doesn’t run without gas?” “Diesel, it runs on diesel,” the Monarca clarified, already under the chassis. And he adds, “And oil, and coolant, and you have to maintain it every so often, and check it before and after every time you use it.”
“Uh,” protests the guy, “I don’t even pay that much attention to my girlfriend.” Chompas must be around 70 years old, and his partner is about the same age. They already have grandchildren and, I think, great-grandchildren, but they still call each other “boyfriend” and “girlfriend.” She often says “my boyfriend,” and he smiles when he calls her “my girlfriend.” And yes, if you watch them together, laughing, joking, and holding hands, you can say, “They look like a boyfriend and girlfriend.”
But the guy is now at the worksite of the “committees’.” There, you can hear laughter, curses, and taunts in five different languages—six, if you count Castilian. The worksite brings together not only different languages, but also, and above all, different ways of doing things.
The attitude toward the land, for example, varies: those who come from areas where they work by the hectare pay no attention to the twigs; but those who come from areas where space is limited (“tarea (chores)” they call it, and it usually measures about 25 m²), gather “chibirico” (that’s what we called it back in the guerrilla days)—“Wuacht” in Tzeltal, “Vach’il” in Tzotzil, “Yajlem Kab tié” in Cho’ol, “Wach” in Tojolabal—a fair amount, and manage to stack piles of “firewood.” Piles of “trincheras,” as they call them, made of twigs from scrubland branches. This “way” of doing things among those from the Chiapas Highlands catches the attention and arouses the curiosity of those from the jungle. What for some is trash that must be cleared away to settle an area (clearing a site to build a hut), for others is something valuable that will provide warmth in the cold and serve to cook corn, tortillas, and coffee, and to warm up conversations before going to rest… or to do other things.
On the other hand, when it comes time to harvest the corn, people in some areas carry a sack and toss the ears into it. This is because the plots are small, just a few square meters. But in other areas, like here, they cut the corn and toss it aside, forming small piles. This baffles the bag-carriers because they feel like they’re not making progress. Because working the corn in “tareas” isn’t the same as working it in hectares. And here we are on recuperated land. Where farmers once raised livestock for the tables of the powerful, now corn is planted for the little people… in Common.
But now the discussion continues in the shed. El Monarca defends motor vehicles. They’re used to transport people and goods back and forth. There are meetings of various towns, regions, and areas that travel in these vehicles. There are cooperative stores that get supplied. And, in medical emergencies, the Común’s ambulance sounds its siren so everyone knows it’s carrying a sick or injured person, regardless of whether they’re a Zapatista or a brother belonging to a political party.
El Monarca is a “chauffeurologist,” so he has that “team spirit” and “loyalty to the cause” that soccer players on national teams from other countries lack. He was a master instructor for the female chauffeurologists, and while giving them political lessons over pozoles, he enjoyed putting them on the spot. “Okay, what are you going to do if there are no Zapatistas left? The enemy has killed everyone; you’re the only one left. Are you going to surrender?” “No,” says the compañera, “I’m going to keep fighting.” He: “But you don’t have a weapon anymore.” She: “I’ll fight with a machete.” He: “You don’t have a machete.” She: “Then with a stick and stones.” He: “There are no sticks or stones; you’re in the desert.” She: “With my teeth and nails.” He: “You don’t have teeth, and your hands are broken.” She thinks for a moment and, after a few seconds, replies: “I’ll grab the car and run over the enemy. Otherwise, it’s a waste that I’m studying to be a driver.” The Monarch appreciated the answer and said: “Very good, now let’s see how to change the spark plugs.”
For his part, Chompas has already traveled many miles and doesn’t speak just for the sake of speaking. Among the founders of Zapatismo, he has gone through every stage. From the underground and the uprising to autonomy and the Common, a path that has not been without its falls… and rises. So Chompas remembers well when, in the underground, he had to walk all night (an 8-hour journey) to bring the message to other comrades. “Evil,” he explained, “can take on all colors and all languages; sometimes it has our own color and speaks our language, but its words lead to evil and the evil one—the one who exploits, beats, rapes, imprisons, mocks, and kills us. And it deceives us, making us believe that our resistance and our rebellion are a lost cause.” The night cools first, and by dawn, the cold rises like a stinging shadow. There is no fire or light of any kind, only a few fireflies and the nervous flickering of a comrade’s flashlight, who grows excited with every word from the young Chompas. “One day,” whispers Chompa, “our word will go far, it will cross seas, climb mountains, and flow through rivers and valleys. That’s why our word is small now, as if it doesn’t count, as if it’s worth little. And we have to take care of that word. Our struggle is like the cornfield. It takes work to cultivate, but one day there are tortillas, and at the feast there are tamales. Why? Because we took care of it and worked at it. Just like the land, we have to take care of and work at the struggle.” The mountain’s deafening silence nods in agreement.
In the security reports, the shadows summoned by Chompas’s word provide details of movements detected. One says he saw a group of people walking at night. A mestizo among them. “You could tell the man from the city was about to die right then and there—he looked so exhausted. I asked him where he was going. He could barely breathe, but he told me he didn’t know. I told him, ‘I think you’re going to die right now.’ ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘then I’m going to hell.’ ‘That brother is something else.’ Chompas knows who the city fellow is, but says nothing. The reports continue. They finish and withdraw. The woyo, with his bulging eyes and stubborn song, bids them farewell.
Months later, visiting a guerrilla camp in the Lacandon Jungle, Chompas looks at the guy from the city, but now in uniform and with his rifle slung across his back, sitting around the campfire. They exchange no greeting. The compañero says to him, “So you died, but here you are.” The city boy replies, “Yes, it’s my way—every so often I take it upon myself to die to confuse the enemy.” Chompas smiles and decides then to change his name every so often “to throw the enemy off the scent,” though the only ones confused are the other comrades.
-*-
The argument continues in the shed. El Chompas: “If none of that stuff you’re talking about exists, what are you going to do? Forget about the storm and the day after—right now: if you don’t have money for gas or whatever you’re saying, if there aren’t any parts, if it breaks down, if there’s no oil, or if the damn tractor just won’t work and it doesn’t tell you why, like the mules do. No offense, compa.”
“My tractors run on pozol alone, and if I break down, at the clinic they give me medicine and send me on my way. The land gives you what you give it. If you respect it and treat it well, it gives you your food. If you treat it badly, well, you’ll see, because you’ll have to buy the corn and everything you need to make your tamale come out raw. And if I can’t work, well, I say so right away and let them know, not like the mules. No offense, buddy.”
“But the medicine was brought here by a vehicle,” the Monarch defends himself.
“No, because it’s a medicinal plant. My girlfriend knows about it because her grandmother taught her, and her grandmother was taught by her grandmother, and you can do the math from there, because it goes back centuries. And my girlfriend is teaching her granddaughter, and so on forever and ever.”
They continue, and it’s almost lunchtime. SubMoy arrives, listens in silence for a while, and chimes in: “You make do with what you have, but always use your head, coming up with new ideas. If there’s a tractor, use a tractor. If there isn’t, well, tough luck, no tractor. And if we don’t have a brain anymore, well…” SubMoy hesitates and then finishes: “well, then we’ll have to figure out what to do if we don’t have a brain.”
During lunch, while they’re washing the dishes, Chompas says, “The thing is, the Captain has bad luck with tamales. My girlfriend and I make tamales that—if you eat just one, your stomach will be upset for a week. That’s why we only make tamales for parties, because if you eat them every day, forget about being able to move—you’ll end up looking like you’re seven months pregnant.” His girlfriend gives him a playful slap and adds: “I think a raw tamale is a sign of indifference; it’s like saying, ‘That’s it, and I hope you get diarrhea, you bastard.’” That’s what I told my daughter, who’s now a single mom: “You don’t need a long speech to get rid of that ingrate—just give him a raw tamale, and you’ll see he won’t come back even if they drag him here.”
“But I think in the case of the Captain, it isn’t out of spite, but out of nerves. Because the coordinator told the women who were assigned to make the tamales: ‘They have to turn out well, because if they turn out badly, the Captain is going to write a story about you, and they’ll post your photo and video on the Zapatista website, and everyone will know that you make bad tamales.’ Imagine the pressure. You tell me—they didn’t burn them before.”
Chompas is going to tell SubMoy that if he doesn’t set a schedule, the job won’t get done. “If there’s no schedule, then the slacker will just make up his own—he’ll just sit there like a duck, or a girl duck, whichever it is, and that’s where he’ll stay, staring at the sky and the birds. The other day, I found my compadre like that, just lying there, staring at the clouds. I thought he was out of it and ran over quickly, but no, he’s just lying there, like an old drunk in the heat. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, “Just here, watching those little birds fly.” I got mad and told him, “What little birds? They’re vultures that are going to eat you for lunch, buddy.” He got up quickly and ran off to the meeting. When he got there, he said that since there’s no schedule, he didn’t know what time it was. I just stared at SubMoy with a “I told you so” look on my face. But now there’s a schedule, so I’m at ease. Anyway, I gave them all a good scolding because, honestly, you just can’t believe it.”
-*-
Subcomandante Moisés sums up that day’s discussion: “To understand the Common, you have to practice it. Our workplace is also our place of struggle. Each person, according to their own way, their own schedule, and their own circumstances, comes to know Evil and its tricks through their daily practice. Then the day comes when they understand… and, instead of resigning themselves or giving up, they organize.”
Verónica is by his side and asks him to explain that thing about the past, present, and future. “It’s like the struggle,” says SubMoy, “in the past, your parents fought to defeat Evil; in the present, you’re in the autonomous school—it’s today, for example—and they teach you to read and write because maybe one day you’ll need it to work, that is, to fight. That’s the future.”
The next day, Verónica tells the education trainer to remove the teacher and put SubMoy in her place. The trainer looks at her, puzzled. Verónica adds, “It’s like with the Common: if you don’t set an example, they won’t understand you.”
(To be continued…)
From the mountains of southeastern Mexico.
The Captain.
Still May 2026.
Music: “Coincidir” by Raúl Rodríguez, with lyrics by Alberto Escobar, performed by Mexicanto; “Venideros” by Fernando Delgadillo, performed by Fernando Delgadillo and Mexicanto; “Por algo estamos” by Alejandro Filio, performed by the composer.
Original text published at Enlace Zapatista on May 30, 2026.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.