La Guerra De Los Olvidados
Interview with Zapata
by Mata
Excerpted from a play written for radio
Interview
QUESTIONER: Your presence here now has made the legend of your deathless
spirit come true, as told in all the songs.
ZAPATA: Si. I am part of the story of a longing as ancient as our history,
a simple longing of a simple people wanting to keep their lands and lead
a settled life in a familiar place . . .
Q: How has this longing changed?
ZAPATA: It has not. It has only deepened. Borders have been made to contain
the longing, but we are dealing with the border between life and death.
What is written in the margins of two realities at war is now being inscribed
in the fleshly tables of the heart. "El Camino de la verdad."
The path of truth. We should not value life over truth. The border that
is truly being crossed over is the line between two languages of time. It
is as if one had a watch in each pocket. One is war time. The other is non-military
time. Only when the two watches show the same time will there be peace.
Five hundred years after "the meeting of two worlds," here we
are, the dead of all times dying once again, but now, with the objective
of living. I live in the collective force of hope-the hope of our people
in their movement through time and across man-made boundaries. Our world
was entered into. That world which has withstood death blows is being reborn
with her descendants. Our refusal to assimilate into the dominant regime
is our defiant hope.
Q: Are you speaking about the 2,000 mile border?
ZAPATA: (slowly, softly) No. I am talking about the shoes of little children.
I am talking about small shoes floating upside down in plastic bags filled
with water. Each little shoe is a different size and color. Each plastic
bag tied neatly with a string and hung from the ceiling like a watery pinata,
a sad embryo.
Q: Is this from a dream?
ZAPATA: A nightmare I saw. I saw this, a work of art in one of your museums.
It is a picture of what a man-made border can do to the little lives it
cuts across.
Q: You are speaking of Art.
ZAPATA: I am speaking of a way to see the way things are. In another museum
I saw a picture. It was a photograph of a field. In the field, beneath a
huge billboard with a picture of a Roman Gladiator in front of a luxury
limousine offering free lavish service to all, were the stooped backs of
farmworkers. They were on their knees, hands in the earth, holding up the
American way of excess. As if beneath this sign for Caesar's Palace, a new
contingent of agricultural slaves was being overseen. As if "the road
to Excess leads to the palace of wisdom."
Q: Now you are quoting poetry. English poetry. William Blake, if I am not
mistaken in his poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
ZAPATA: Why do you seem so surprised that I would know of the poetry of
the world?
Q: But what I mean to say it is American poetry. English, you know.
ZAPATA: American. I communicated with the Americans. Did you not know that
on more than one occasion I wrote to your President Wilson?
Q: President Woodrow Wilson?
ZAPATA: Yes. He acknowledged the struggle of the "proletarian"
workers of Russia but refused to see the parallels between that struggle
and our own. He could not afford to because under Manifest Destiny his eyes
were on our land.
Q: Let's go back to your description of the photograph of the farmworkers
. . .
ZAPATA: Ah. Si. Yes. Do you not see the parallel? The image of the face
of the Conquest towering above, yet held up by, the backs of the campesino.
Go to a political rally; all the grand speakers are high on platforms while
beneath them, near the earth, la tierra madre, the Mexican janitor is bending
to clean up their celebration.
The image is everywhere. Yet we are invisible. How is the plight of the
farmworker different from the plight of the campesino in Chiapas, stooped
over in the service of the "hacienda"? I come to remind the world
that we are here until we are the remembered people of the remembered land.
Q: So you are really saying that there is no border in the workers' struggle.
That is not a new message. ZAPATA: I am saying we are awakening. We are
an invisible nation within a state. We are shaking off that invisibility
and coming to light. I am saying we are in times of prophecy.
Only last September the fulfillment of a long awaited sign in Indian country
came to pass-the birth of the White Buffalo, here in the center of the United
States. And it is good because it is a sign for all Indian peoples of the
promise of unity and the healing of the sacred hoop. The White Buffalo is
a messenger of creation telling us we are on the verge of an awakening.
Two languages of time are struggling for air. One, to profit and the other
one, to preserve. Which voices will breathe their last breath will be determined
in these next days and weeks and months.
Q: What are "times of prophecy?"
ZAPATA: When the earth speaks to each of us with signs of herself. When
snakes burrow deeper into the bruised soil to soothe the mother's wounds.
When the hawk is seen many times in one day as you walk your walk, when
a nation desecrates its symbols . . .
Q: What do you mean when you say, "When a nation desecrates its symbols"?
ZAPATA: You Americans have a great fascination with celebrations and anniversaries.
500 years caught the imagination of your Smithsonian Institute which proclaimed
that there were "FIVE SEEDS OF CHANGE" contributing most to the
modern world. I will speak only of two: the Horse and the Corn.
Q: You mean these were named as two of the five main forces shaping our
lives?
ZAPATA: Exactly. Let us first look at what has been done to the wild horse.
The wild mustang. Supposedly protected as a Living National Treasure. Where
are they? They have been herded with helicopters out of their protected
lands, mostly in Nevada, to make room for "ganaderos" cattle ranchers,
who receive special prices to graze public land.
Like the Indian these horses have been placed on undesirable pieces of land
and when, so crowded, they damage the land looking for grass and water,
reports are written and they are herded into smaller pens where they stand
awaiting a fate undeserved by the so-called Symbol of the Wild and Free.
I am a man of the Horse and I never took the spirit from any I rode, much
less their life. When a nation does that to its horses at the same time
it proclaims their value, something is dying in the soul of that nation,
if ever there was a soul.
Q: And the Corn?
ZAPATA: For us, the history of corn is the history of the people. Corn husk
in ancient Mayan creation mythology is the source of life and humanity.
The Mexican identification with corn is so complete that it is said mankind
was the child of corn, not the reverse.
But now. Look at Chiapas. Corn is the main lifeline and with NAFTA the price
of corn will make it impossible to compete. How can the campesino compete
with the American ability to mass produce?
I remember for many months we watched as our stand of corn slowly drowned
in a sea of sugar cane brought in by the plantations. I remember my father
in his grief watching as the haciendas enclosed first one of his orchards
and then another.
And when we exhausted all protests by peaceful means we were punished for
our efforts by having our land flooded. I remember these things and it is
not any different today.
Q: How did you come to be the leader?
ZAPATA: It became necessary to defend the assault on the ejido communales.
The displacement of communeros intensified. Two of my uncles fought against
the French and I grew up listening to their stories. I became a student
of the history of my pueblo. One day a popular assembly-our decision-making
unit you may call it-came together and I was chosen as the Chief.
Q: How long did you fight?
ZAPATA: Diaz, Madero, Huerta, Carranza, a string of faces-each year brought
another, nine in all. Carranza was the one who decided to end my days with
a bullet.
Q: Did they kill Pancho Villa too?
ZAPATA: He is as dead as I. (He laughs.) The Sierra Madres hid him long
as she could and the people did the rest.
Q: Why did they protect him? ZAPATA: He was beloved. He was doing in Chihuahua
what I was doing in Morelos. When there was a break in the conflict we distributed
land, built schools and- Q: But I heard stories of his murderous . . . I
mean he killed priests!
ZAPATA: While laughing. While smiling.
Q: But . . .
ZAPATA: But what? The church took much of the finest land. And in order
to preserve its position influenced the campesinos not to resist. Ah, Dios,
when Villa came he was a force of nature. He had arms all over his body.
And he gave the priests a chance to run.
Neither of us were interested in power. We wanted the people to have the
land. Then out of that would emerge the conditions under which democratic
elections and sovereignty could take hold. Or so we hope to leave such a
legacy. Villa was a warrior, not a soldier. While we both knew physical
defense and strategies were called for, I had the responsibility to protect
our written land titles through time. I knew that the resistance to land
seizure needed to be based on principles to honor the ancestral letters
of the land.
Historical events have shown us that ideas, together with the sword, can
overthrow tyranny. Because there was a need to protect our written title,
I and my compadres composed the Plan de Ayala. We based our resistance on
reverence for the land which will be under assault. This we knew. And so
it is today.
I knew the sacred papers must not remain with me and I entrusted their safekeeping
to one of my compadres. These contained the accumulated trust of all past
generations, the collected testimony honoring all chiefs before me. POR
ESTO PELEO
"I am bound to die someday," I thought, "but my pueblos'
papers stand to be guaranteed." But the land has continued to be assaulted.
Aztlan is in pain. Somewhere in Tejas, Sierra Blanca, I think it is called,
is a huge burial ground for the floating garbage that had no resting place.
Now miles away people are getting ill. Miles away. I have to hang my head
when I think of the uses to which mother earth is subjected. I am feeling
that I do not wish to say much more at this time.
Q: If you could speak directly to the people of the United States, how would
you address them? ZAPATA: I would tell them that the Mexican government
is using the economic aid that it receives from the people of the United
States to massacre the indigenous people of Chiapas. Arms, helicopters,
radar, airplanes, communications equipment-all are being used to repress
the just struggles of the indigenous.
What is at stake here is the very future of this tierra the mother, this
globe of water, like a plastic bag of liquid in a dry universe.
As our relation to the earth and our struggle to liberate her grows, the
force begins to press against the mind of the existing colonial government.
We tell you our dream and desire is that of true liberty and democracy for
the ways of the earth.
Do not stain your hands with our blood by allowing yourselves to be the
accomplices of the Mexican government
Q: And the outlook for the revolution?
ZAPATA: The rise of new types of civic organizations, including the people
with no jobs or homes, is the key to the future of the revolution.
Those who want power do not understand that they will fail if they do not
base themselves on the power of the voiceless and faceless. Whoever gains
this power will be invincible.
Native American
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