December 31st, 2006

With the participation of around 2 thousand compañeras and compañeros of 44 countries the second day of the Encounter between the Zapatista Peoples and the Peoples of the World began, in which there were several workgroups: the Other Education, the Other Health, and the women’s struggle.

In the Other Education round table, like the rest of the workgroups, there was the participation of autonomous authorities of the five Good Government Committees and Zapatista Rebel Autonomous Municipalities (MAREZ), who explained how the communities organize education in autonomy and in resistance.

The autonomous representatives spoke about the number of schools built in their territory, some with solidarity resources and many more with the donations from the communities themselves. They spoke of the importance of the formation of the education promoters who are elected in community assemblies to be trained and to teach classes in the communities.

They also explained that Zapatista education relates the 13 demands of the struggle with 4 areas of knowledge: life and the environment, mathematics, history, and language. True education, they said, is that which comes from the people and not what is imposed by the bad governments.

Following the participation of the Zapatista authorities were the compañeras and compañeros of many countries of the world. Mixper, a chicana with huichol ancestors, of the APC and of the education project Semillas del Pueblo (Seeds of the People), spoke of the people of color in the United States, the children of immigrants and indigenous people who are marginalized and ridiculed, treated like inferiors and whose dreams are robbed in the government schools.

The school “Academia Semillas del Pueblo” was made with the many dreams of the people of the community to recover their identity and indigenous traditions and to create students that have a strong indigenous identity.

Juan Chávez, of the technology students in resistance in Oaxaca, spoke of the alternative education project called “Brigada Communitaria”, which consists in giving free assessment in mathematics, physics, and the history that the government hides from us.

From Argentina a compañera from the Migrating Network (Red Trashumante) explained that this project came about in 1998 in a difficult context of much despair and fatalism. A group of people had the idea of going around the country to ask how people were feeling. On the yellow bus called “Quiquincho” they gave workshops on reflection about their reality with voice and art. It’s called migrating because they go in search of better lands.

From the University of Berkeley, California and Radio Zapatista, a compañero explained that in the University there is a collective forming of Zapatista students and teachers that make change through, for instance, Spanish classes for latino students, children of immigrants which is a way to recover their identity.

There was also participation on the part of brothers and sisters of Mexicans Without Borders, as well as compañerxs from Ya Basta of Italy; of Schools for Chiapas, also from the US; and from an popular adult school in Prosperidad in Madrid.

Simultaneously there was a round table discussion about the Other Health in which autonomous representatives of the five Good Government Committees highlighted the importance of recovering traditional medicine in the indigenous communities. They spoke of how they organize health in resistance through the training of health promoters and the construction of small health houses, micro-clinics, and Zapatista hospitals.

The representatives of the communities in resistance spoke of their position on abortions. They spoke of how many times women have miscarriages without trying to and how life is in the communities. “Many women suffer this problem, without practicing or looking for it, these are the conditions in the indigenous lifestyle”, they said.

In the question and answer session the importance of strengthening sexual education and reproductive health was underlined. Mental health problems we also discussed, as well as the importance of the vaccination campaigns without the participation of the government, the use of ecologic stoves that help prevent the damages provoked by the inhalation of smoke from the firewood which women suffer from, and the importance of family planning education.

The Zapatistas explained that their precarious health system attends without charge to all the people of the Zapatista communities and also offers health services to indigenous people who are not Zapatistas as “health is a right that should distinguish like the bad government does”.

20 compañeras and compañeros from many parts of the world put forth their different experiences with alternative health. The Street Brigade Collective (Colective Brigada Callejera), of Mexico City talked about their work with sex workers in Mexico City while another collective of Michoacán talked about the importance of physiotherapy in health. “Capitalism sickens and only gives partial solutions as cures”, the collective said.

From Chile, Ximena Castillo spoke about mental health and her work in the community center of rehabilitation for schizophrenic people; while Gisela Morales from Monterrey spoke about working in a marginalized zone where communities hunt snakes to eat. “It necessary that we don’t reproduce the system inside of us, to create a paradigm. We have to remember that the earth and nature are the most ancient doctors and hospitals”, said Gisela.

Edgar Ibarra of the South Central Los Angeles Farm, in California talked about their self-run community based project that started in 1992 and worked with 14 hectares where people could cultivate their own food, as well as have workshops on traditional medicine and agriculture. They were evicted from the land but have maintained a space where they can continue offering health services based on medicinal plants.

One of the people who spoke was an independent missionary, another was a doctor from Mexico City who worked with barefoot doctors in China, another was a compañero from the Sierra Totonaca that started a community health project. Another person spoke from a collective in Yucatán, as well as someone about an experience with music therapy in Buenos Aires, and a moving story of an indigenous person from Canada. There were also brothers and sisters from Guatemala, Amatlán (Morelos), Costa Rica, and Mexico City.

THE WOMENS´ STRUGGLE

A symphony of 20 Zapatista women presented themselves today to very clearly and bluntly discuss the challenges of the indigenous woman, what she has to face in the struggle, the participation of the women Zapatistas in autonomy, their small victories, their enormous problems, their horizon and the long path of the struggle for equality in the communities.

One by one the Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolabal, Chol, Zoque, and Mame Zapatista women spoke about their lives in the villages in which they live and suffer machismo; communities in which their very compañeros deny them political participation or laugh at them or their spouses for being involved in work that is not traditionally done by women.

They spoke again and again of the importance of organizing themselves as women, participating in whatever resistance work, and consider their own limitations for not speaking Spanish and many times not being able to read and write. “But we are learning little by little and becoming more and more conscious”, they said.

Facing the crowd and without fear, the Zapatista women responded to each question from the crowd eager for answers about their way of organizing and about the difficulties they face. They said that they now have the right to decide their partners and the number of children they want to have, although many times “there are husbands who don’t obey”.

All of them agreed that “it is necessary to organize an Encounter among women to exchange ideas and organize the struggle together”.

In the list of the small and big advances, the EZLN women highlighted that there are men who now do house work (take care of children, cook food, take care of the animals, etc.); and that there is more and more female participation in the work of autonomy (health, trade, education, municipal authorities, members of the Good Government Committees, etc.); and underlined that there are insurgent women with different military ranks, as well as militia and members of the Revolutionary Indigenous Clandestine Committee.

As well as the participation from Mexico and from other parts of the world, there was a message from women of Kurdistan who are part of a brigade named after the Comandanta Ramona. There was also the participation of the collective Infant Care Regeneration, from New Cork; compañeras from the Other (Campaign) on the Other Side; from Zapatista Support Network in Madrid; the Independent Women´s Movement of Chiapas, the Front of IMSS Women Workers; the Woman´s Rights Center; the Breaking the Night collective from Nuevo León; and the Lucio Blanco Collective of Tamaulipas.

When culminating the round table discussion, the Zapatista women proposed a question to the participants: “What do you plan to do about the mistreatment, rape, and beatings of women around the world?”. From among the crowd an answer appeared: “Lift our voices, educate, speak out and condemn…”

The round table discussion was facilitated by the Comandanta Sandra and the Comandante Moisés, both of the Morelia region, who reminded us that on the 31st of December “it will be 13 years since we began our struggle, since we said Ya Basta (Enough) to the discrimination and the disrespect towards indigenous women”.

A programme of culture, dance, and songs continued to close the year and welcome the 14th year of the Zapatista struggle.