TABLE 4
THE ‘OTHER’ COMMUNICATION, ART AND CULTURE

Only a handful of hours after the Cumbia rhythms stopped dancing through the air from the New Year’s celebration, the 4th working table of the Zapatista meeting with the people of the world got underway, talking about alternative forms of communication and preservation of art and culture. As has been the case for all of the working tables, representatives from the 5 Caracoles – La Realidad, Oventik, La Garrucha, Morelia and Roberto Barrios – began the day speaking of the forms of communication that have been and continue to be established in the Caracoles. Members of the Good Government and Autonomous Municipal Councils explained that the massive and mainstream media are little more than mouthpieces for those who seek to dominate, and that in the capitalist system this domination is as much social, cultural and artistic as it is economic. Since the poor and dispossessed are excluded from these conventional media, it is necessary that alternatives be sought so that they too can have access to forms of communication within and between their communities.

Good Government and Autonomous Municipal Councilors addressed subjects as wide as transportation, radio, internet, murals, traditional music and dress, video editing and production, childbirth and many others. Most important among these has been the installation of internet in the Caracoles and community radios, Radio Insurgente, in communities in many regions. Radio Insurgente, although it transmits via internet as well, is most important in the internal communication, relaying news and cultural events to the communities in Spanish as well as the local dialect – Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Ch’ol, Zoque y Mam. Radios still need to be installed in many more communities, but they are currently in the process of training community members to set up, maintain and transmit via community radios in communities in all 5 regions. The process is slow and often difficult and one Councilor from Caracol V, Robert Barrios, told of the difficulties they had encountered as one of the transmitters failed and burst into flames, discouraging those who were being trained from continuing with the effort.

Training and formation in technical skills to run and maintain computers, navigate the internet and audio and video production have also been vital both internally and externally in the 13 years since the uprising. Within the communities, to augment radio transmissions, news can be taken from the internet in order to create newspaper murals to inform communities of local, national and international news. In the past year, since the launch of the Other Campaign, this has been a vital medium for informing community members of the Campaign’s progress, especially during its halt following the May 3 and 4th repression in San Salvador Atenco. Audio and video production have been just as important for this kind of internal communication as for informing the national and international communities of developing events in the Zapatista communities.

Groups such as Promedios, who have been working with the compañer@s since the uprising developing necessary technical skills produce video documentaries, were also credited for helping a great deal in this aspect of the struggle. Documentaries produced have been showed nationally and internationally, contributing a great deal to the widespread support for the Zapatista struggle on these levels.

Compañer@s from a number of collectives and organizations throughout the world then participated, sharing experiences and struggles from their own communities. A Los Angeles Radio Station, working with the ‘Otra del Otro Lado’, shared its struggle to increase progressive Spanish-language programming in the greater L.A. area, especiall given the ever increasing number of Spanish speakers in the country. Another man from TV Kurdistan, representing the Kurdish territories in Syria, Iraq and Turkey, even invited the compas for training in TV production in their studios. Various member from the Otra Cultura collective in Mexico City shared their experiences, one of the most powerful describing a theatrical event they recently realized in the jail Santiaguito, which ended in family members embracing for the first time in 8 months, and all of the prisoners shouting ‘ATENCO VIVE’, ‘LA LUCHA SIGUE’. Additionally, representatives from the APPO, CIPO-RFM, East Side Café, Soul Rebel Radio, Pintar Obedeciendo, Pulpo Mecanico, Subversion Sonora among others participated sharing their achievements and struggles.

The struggle for retaking communication media is a slow one, and filled with obstacles, but one that needs to continue, and as one comandante said on first day of the meeting, ‘even if we can’t ultimately change the world, we must at least make sure that it doesn’t change us.’