layover in Amsterdam!

took the train from the airport and walked around this beautiful and interesting city, saw bikes galore, woman selling themselves behind glass in little booths next to the street, and of course canals and boats...

Two weeks with the Zapatistas!

Oventic, Chiapas
*note- for an explanation of the Zapatistas see last entry

Was lucky enough to get to spend two weeks in the Zapatista "Caracol" of Oventic this summer. (caracol literally means "snail") The Zapatistas have 5 Caracoles, or autonomous political and cultural centers, which house their uber directly democratic Good Government Councils, as well as Zapatista clinics, schools, cooperatives, workshops, etc. The Zapatistas have their own radio station, their own magazine, their own documentary production system, and much more. They even have their own lingo- teachers are "promoters", foreigners are "internationals", and paying (as in us paying for the language school and room and board) is "contributing" (but in Spanish). What is amazing is that they have created everything with no government support, in fact in the face of much government and paramilitary hostility and harassment.
(for a good description their system of government and communities check out: http://www.stateofnature.org/theZapatistaCaracoles.html)

Oventic is in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, and is often shrouded in fog, giving it a mystical, magical feel.
When I was in Oventic there happened to be a huge conference for new primary school promoters going on, so the brightly-muralled rustic dorms and their thin wooden slabs called bunk beds were all filled with young new Zapatista teachers. (Many of the young female teachers were clothed in colorful hand-woven huipiles, and I found out that the design and color tells you which municipality they are from.) Since the school kids were on vacation for the summer, the conference gave the Caracol a jovial, bustling feel when it otherwise might felt a bit vacant.

In Oventik I spent two of the most inspirational, fun, and fascinating weeks of my life...hard to summarize adequately in what is going to have to be a somewhat brief blog entry. Just to give a little taste of my experience there here are a couple of vignettes- one discussion in the advanced Spanish class was about how the Mayan language Tsostil (spoken by pretty much everyone in Oventic and surrounding areas) doesn't have words for friend, enemy, religion, or art, and how this has shaped their culture and the Zapatista movement..., for one of our daily "open activities" we sang songs such as "Lindo Oventic" (Beautiful Oventic) and "El Frijol Existencial" (the existential bean) (both composed by our teachers) while some played guitar and some of the young new promotores stood in the dark and watched us from outside the classroom...we were also serenaded in Danish, Hebrew, Turkish and English (British and American) by our international group of students. Also, we took a couple of trips to the corn field, where the internationals "worked" until our relatively soft hands got blisters (about 45 minutes!), and a couple of us toured the clinic which has everything from an optometrist and eyeglass making machine (sorry don't know the correct terminology for that) to a gynaecologist's office and delivery room, to a pharmacy which had about half herbal/homeopathic medicines and half synthetic "western" medicines.

The language center and "2012"
In order to stay in Oventik you need to be a student of the language center (http://www.serazln-altos.org/eng/celm.html), and you can take either Tsotsil or Spanish. I took Tsotsil the first week and Spanish the second. I was the only one in my Tsotsil class and I took advantage of this by asking ridiculous questions about things like whether the Mayans really believe something major will happen in 2012. My promoter said that they know something will happen between now and 2012, they just don't know what. I was using the Spanish verb for believe ("creer") when I was discussing this, and suddenly my promoter exclaimed "no lo creen, lo ven!". (They don't believe it, they see it!"). Meaning that the prophecies are based on visions...
She also said that right now the Maya are focused on human rights struggles, but hopefully someday will once again be able to focus their energies on intellectual pursuits like they once did (the Mayans made extraordinary achievements in math and astronomy, and had an advanced system of writing.)

The "Internationals"
There were 4 other language students the first week, a woman from England who was writing her thesis on the Zapatistas and their relationship to the environment, a woman from the Flathead Reservation near Missoula who found out about Oventik from her adviser in Norway, (funny coincidence, we have had some of the same professors in Missoula) she got a fellowship to study Indigenous Education in Norway, a university student from Massachusetts who stayed in Oventik for a month and went through the Mexico solidarity network ( http://www.mexicosolidarity.org ), I was paired with him for our last activity-we had to develop a plan for after the of all of capitalism in the U.S.), a Turkish master's student who is currently studying school counseling in Missoula, and me. The next week the first two left and we were joined by two women from Norway who had just been volunteering with FRAYBA, the Zapatistas' official human rights organization, (http://www.frayba.org.mx/index.php?hl=en), they were human rights observers at a Zapatista-occupied hotel on the road from San Cristobal to Palenque, and an activist and teacher from Israel (another funny coincidence- she had just been hitch-hiking through Missoula!)

Sometimes there are large groups of students, especially from the Mexican Solidarity Network mentioned above. They are usually the ones that paint the bright murals that you see everywhere in Oventic.
We were often joined by a skinny mother of 5 kittens, and a dog with dreadlocks that had a penchant for coughing up hairballs.

The Main Point (?)

I could go on and on about Oventic...but I think the most important point that I want to make is that the Zapatistas have dramatically improved their quality of life in a dignified way, through organizing. They don't wait around for charity or let foreign governments or NGOs decide how hey should best "develop". They are an inspirational example of how communities can determine their own political systems, health systems, education systems, etc without help from the government. They are an alternative to monoculture, to sweatshops, to big box stores, to mindlessness in general...

Who are the Zapatistas?

(You might be asking- who are the Zapatistas? Basically the Zapatistas are indigenous Maya who have been screwed over for 500 years by a series of conquerors/governments/companies, and who decided to organize and fight for their rights. In the resource-rich state of Chiapas, the indigenous population there has suffered massive inequality and poverty- in one documentary we watched in Oventic called "Zapatistas: Cronica de una Rebellion" (or Zapatistas: Chronicle of a Rebellion)we learned that in recent years 1/2 of the indigenous of Chiapas didn't have access to clean drinking water, the majority of children didn't finish school and many didn't even have access to schools, and that there is widespread disease, hunger and mal-nutrition.

Why they rose up is best described in their own words:

"We have nothing to lose, absolutely nothing, no decent roof over our heads, no land, no work, poor health, no food, no education, no right to freely and democratically choose our leaders, no independence from foreign interests, and no justice for ourselves or our children. But we say enough is enough! We are the descendants of those who truly built this nation, we are the millions of dispossessed, and we call upon all of our brethren to join our crusade, the only option to avoid dying of starvation!"

- Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) Declaration of the Lácandon Jungle, 1993

Here is a short description of the movement from the website "Archaelog", the website also has an interesting explanation of the Mayan symbols (like the snail) that are incorporated into the Zapatista movement.
http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/2007/08/caracol_de_la_resistencia_zapa_1.html
"The Zapatista movement began officially in eastern Chiapas, Mexico in 1983. The movement derived its name from Emiliano Zapata, a hero of the Mexican Revolution. The Zapatistas are often characterized as the first post-modern revolution, perhaps unjustifiably so, and have abstained from violence since a cease fire was brokered in 1994 (Johnston 2000). The movement is most often associated with anti-globalization, anti-neo liberalism, and indigenous rights. Zapatistas gained much attention by vociferously opposing the NAFTA free trade agreement in the early 1994 (Rich 1997). The outside world recognizes Zaptista rebels by their black ski masks (pasamontanas) and red bandanas (pallacates). ")

Oventic mural...