A Semester in Oaxaca: Let's try this Zapatista thing again...

On Monday morning, we left Palenque early and headed to Zapatista caracol 4, Morelia. We knew we had arrived by the signs along the road: "You are in Zapatista territory... here the people demand and the government obeys." Our experience in Morelia was 180 degrees that of Roberto Barrios: from the minute our van drove into the fenced caracol, community members greeted us with open hearts. After waiting for just a few minutes, the Junta del Buen Gobierno (JBG), poetically named “the heart of the rainbow of hope,” ushered us into their office. No one wore pasamontañas (masks), they never asked to see our passports, and the door was kept wide open. “All who come are welcomed here,” they explained to us. We waited outside for ½ hour while they discussed our questions, which we had prepared ahead of time, in their native languages. The JBGs make all decisions by consensus, and this JBG represented three municipalities which are home to three indigenous languages. As you can imagine, working through 4 languages (Spanish is their second language) to come to a consensus is no easy task, but they gave noble and concise answers. We learned about the role of women, the education and healthcare systems, and their current struggles with the government and military. While their answers were too complicated and long to repeat here, suffice it to say that all of the paradigms you read about the Zapatistas resisting and creating were reaffirmed. Until 1994 and the Zapatista uprising, for example, indigenous people weren’t allowed to walk on the sidewalks in San Cristobal. They still face violence (both physical and mental) from the government and from government-supported paramilitaries. After they finished speaking, we shared a bit about ourselves and were granted permission to take pictures of the caracol, although we had to be careful not to include any unmasked compañeras or compadres in them.

On March 31, we left San Cristobal with Julio, his wife, and their four-year-old son Roger Alejandro to drive to the coast of Oaxaca. We were stopped at a military checkpoint, and got to witness first-hand the corruption of the Mexican military. Julio told the soldier that he wasn’t allowed to demand of them their identification—in Mexican law, the military has the right to ask to see identification, but the citizen does not have to show it. Akin to our own racial profiling laws, the police and military do not have the same rights as immigration officials, and Mexican citizens have the right to travel within their own country. Julio told the soldier that if he wanted to search the vehicle he could, but that a group of 6 Americans, a 4-year-old, and two parents were not drug dealers. The soldier demanded that Julio get out of the car, so that he could “teach him” about the law. A group of other soldiers gathered behind him, and you could tell that he wasn’t about to back down in front of his peers. Julio refused to get out of the car, and told the man with the AK-47 that he needed to “learn his limits” and that his job was to “protect the people of Mexico,” not to blindly obey the government. Julio then asked to speak with the man’s superior. The man was obviously taken aback by Julio’s boldness, and offered to let us go if Julio’s wife showed him her ID. She did, and we drove on, all terrified by the thought of what might’ve happened if Julio had gotten out of the car. Julio explained that these military checkpoints are a way of intimidating the Mexican people, and that the soldiers need to actually understand what the law says, and not just what their superiors command. It was a scary experience, but it was very powerful to see a small, real-life example of the issues we read and hear about. After eleven hours of driving down twisty, mountainous roads, we arrived at an Iguana sanctuary about an hour west of Puerto Escondido. We spent the night in their eco-cabanas, and in the morning we toured the sanctuary, held some Iguanas, and visited E-Costa, an environmental organization near the sanctuary. We then drove to Puerto Escondido and spent three wonderful days laying on the beach doing absolutely nothing before heading back to Oaxaca Sunday night. A note on night buses: they are possibly one of the cruelest things in the world. No matter how much Dramamine I take, I am guaranteed to get sick. So my Sunday night was spent throwing up in the back of the bumpy bus as the movie “Santa Clause 3” played on the televisions. Quality movie choices are also a guarantee on night buses in Mexico. Now we’re back in Oaxaca for a week of prep for our Independent Study Projects!