Mexico: penthouse, ground floor and basement
Everywhere in the country, middle class Mexico is a carbon
THERE ARE 2 ways into Mexico. You arrive in lower class copy of the capital. Its image is accurate in one thing: it not
Mexico on foot, in tears, in the dirt. You arrive in upper class deny the contradiction of the extremes of rich and poor living
Mexico by plane. An airport in Mexico, Monterrey, Guadalajara side by side. Middle class Mexico stinks.
or Acapulco opens up to an escalator which goes neither up nor Something is rotting in its heart, with the gradual down but runs horizontally along the area consisting of the 24 disappearance of the collective spirit. The Mexico of the middle greatest fortunes of the country, the alleys of modern Mexico, classes has its sights set on higher things. Something tells it that the government headquarters where neo-liberalism the road to the top in Mexico goes through a country which is not this one. Something else warns national emblem is flaunted more and more, the them that, from here, you can fall to lower class tourist centres whose real function is to hold up a Mexico almost immediately.
mirror for a class who does not want to see what is Ground floor Mexico under its feet: a long staircase, a labyrinth, which
Lower class Mexico lives in perpetual conflict
Perched on the blood and dirt of the people with middle class Mexico. In the 17 Mexican who live in the basement of this country, the 24 states who register as "middle', 'low' and 'very all powerful are busy counting the 44 billion low' on the scale of marginalisation, half the dollars they have offered themselves in six inhabitants live on top of each other - more than two people per room. Fifty percent of Mexicans
Upper class Mexico does not have any foreign in the 'middle-ranking' states earn less than ambitions. To have foreign ambitions it is double the minimum wage, which shows that necessary to have a national identity, and the only they are living in poverty (in Tlaxcala state, three nation they talk about, in all sincerity, at this quarters of the population live in poverty). The superior and ever more exclusive level, is the nation lowest level of Mexican society have nothing.
of money. And this nation knows nothing but the indicators but are not aware of it. They are already aware of the problems of overpopulation. They are millionaires in misery
The course of history is forged through the stock exchanges. and dispair. They are there in the towns and the countryside, in
Successful dealers on a roll are our modern day heroes. By the mistakes and the falls, in the battles and the defeats. They some quirk of the 'other' (ie true) history, this upper storey, are right at the bottom, so low that it seems as if there could be rather than growing, is shrinking before our very eyes. Those nothing lower. You can hardly see the little door that leads who belong to it always seem less numerous. Sometimes down to basement level Mexico...
delicately and sometimes very brutally, the incompetents are Basement Level Mexico pushed towards... the stairs. The upper class Mexican escalator goes neither up nor down. To get off you have to make your You arrive on foot, barefoot or in sandals or rubber shoes.
own way down, until you reach ... middle class Mexico. To get there you have to go down the course of history and
Middle class Mexico is urban. You get there by car. follow the path of second class citizenship. (Continued)
International Viewpoint #263 February 1995
Falling back, or beating a retreat?
Is it suicide to break the cease fire or to engage in military action given the military balance of forces? I don't think so. The balance of forces on the battlefield is not a good guide: if it was, then the events of January 1994 would not have taken place, and we would not have been born. From the military point of view the EZLN is absurd. What makes it a tangible reality are the claims that it upholds. How is morale?
We feel trapped. We see that we might have been mistaken in looking for a peaceful solution. We recognise that we were tricked that we shouldn't have accepted the January ceasefire, that the country needed bullets and fatalities, that dialogue was probably premature, and so
By MARCOS is administered, the employers* leads to basement Mexico, on foot, in the dirt.
was the ceasefire. What we should now do is what we should have done before. But one day you will have to talk with the enemy. We need a sign from the enemy: is hewilling to hold talks, or will he carry on killing? When hs says that he wants to talk, is he preparing to wipe you out? In such a case, you tell your forces to prepare for battle. For the moment, authority rests with our military leadership. If we see that the enemy is willing to solve the conflict at the political level, then we will return the leadership to the Committee, as in February 1994. But the members of the Committee still see nothing, not the smallest sign that the enemy would like to follow another path than surrender or confrontation.
The situation at Chiapas in December 1994 was the same as in December 1994. So what was the use of the consultation and concessions inbetween- what good is all that if everything goes on as before? Chiapas governor Eduardo Robledo says he will resign if you lay down your arms
The government is not taking the situation seriously. This 'offer' is a joke in bad taste. It is playing with fire to propose to us that they will change a governor that they imposed against a movement is based on justice and dignity. We refuse. Zapatist arms are not negotiable! * Reprinted and shortened from La Jornada, Mexico, 7 December 1994
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When Mexico was not yet Mexico, basement level Mexico with blood. What sin? Why that of dissatisfaction with charity,
Basement Level Mexico (cont.) was already up and running
Basement level Mexico is "indigenous' because 502 years ago Colon believed that the land he had reached was India and ever since then the natives of these lands have been called Indians. It might be indiginous, but for the rest of the country, basement Mexico does not exist. After all, it does not buy, sell or produce anything. And this is tantamount to not existing
In January 1994 the whole country became aware of the existence of this basement level. Thousands of indiginous people, armed with truth and fire, honour and dignity, snapped the country out of its gentle thoughts of modernism. they shouted - enough dreams and enough nightmares! Ever since the army and the church took possession of these lands, this voice has resisted a war of extermination. The addressors are now equipped with space-age technology. Satellites and infra-red beams watch the movements of the rebels in the basement, surveying their centres of rebellion and pointing out on military maps where to plant bombs and cause death. Tens of thousands of olive green masks are preparing a new and even deadlier war. They would like to bathe their honour as servants of powerful masters, as accomplices in the unjust distribution of pain and poverty, in the blood of the indiginous peoples.
The indiginous followers of Zapata will pay for their sin and that of demanding democracy, freedom and justice for all Mexico; the sin of calling out 'everything for everyone, nothing for us!'
Those who deny the indiginous Mexican peasant the possibility to understand the concept of 'nation' force him to turn towards his past. In fact, this is what binds him to the Nation, and is also his unique and only possibility to survive as indiginous. In pushing him towards his path, 'they' reproduce the division into social classes or into categories of citizens (which is only a disguised form of the latter). The indigenous people belong to the most inferior category, that of 'citizens in the process of formation'.
Those above come down to the basement from time to time, searching for something which might be useful on the higher floors, or to repair a fault which endangers the stability of the building as a whole.
Basement Mexico is the greatest threat to the great promotional sale that the upper class of Mexico is organising Basement Mexico has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Basement Mexico is not surrendering or selling out, it is resisting.
In August 1994 a voice emerged from the basement. It was
Subcomandante Marcos' three
Interpretations of the Election Results
First interpretation
(based on the propaganda machine and the media)
Fifty percent of Mexicans are happy with the way modernisation is being managed (in other words, happy with the existence of the 24 key people in the world of money). They are proud of national history (in other words the
65 years of PRI history) and see the future optimistically (in other words, they are delighted with the prospect of moving into the next century under the wise leadership of the
PRI). They benefit from the backing of the irreproachable Government Secretariat, from groups of PRI observers, from private enterprise, from the U.S. Government and from the International Monetary Fund. In other words, these happy people have the backing of the true masters of this country.
Second interpretation
(based on the little honest media we have in this country
The basement level of Mexico is divided on the interpretation of the recent elections. The weakest (in morale and property) see it as a defeat and in searching for the guilty, catch sight of them, out of the corner of their eye, near themselves, among their fellow men. Those out of line
International Viewpoint #263 February 1995 with the debate (who aspire to advise the victors, and find themselves criticising the losers) distribute, without the least modesty, labels suitable for classifying the unclassable:
'reformers in arms', 'disarmed revolution). They interpret the failure in terms of strategies, tactics, arbitration, circumstances, conjecture, attitudes and deceptions. All things considered, defeat is for those who did not follow their advice. The most indecisive see disenchantment. Defeat is for those who had faith in the Mexican people. The most frustrated interpret defeat as demonstrating the uselessness of conflicts. They lose hope faced with a people who refuse to be bought by such brilliant redeemers.
Third interpretation
(still to be made)
In the basement, they do not know how to read. Illiterates look for an interpretation elsewhere, they interpret for themselves they speak using ancestral codes, with images of times gone by, with the sounds of the olden days, they communicate by underground channels. They say and repeat that change is built from the bottom up. Scepticism does not remain static with its arms folded. It patiently sharpens the tender point of hope. In basement Mexico you guess at the truth: even with hyperfraud, two tiers of the electorate voted against the PRI. The majority of the country wants a democratic change and to be rid of the Party-state system. *
----- photo credits and running heads -----
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not a warcry, it was not trying to turn the clock of history back electoral round more deceitfully that the one that has just taken
502 years and it was not claiming to be avant-garde. "Everything for everyone, nothing for us' the thousand year old voice calls out. The voice without a face, of the multitude that was brought together in the National Democratic Convention (CND). This voice knows precisely whom it is addressing. It speaks to lower class and middle class Mexico. 'Don't let blood be spilt in vain! Don't let death be in vain!', the mountains proclaim. The women's nightmare
Let this also be a revolt of women: a double dream, a double nightmare, a double awakening!
If the divisions between Mexicans are more or less clear to men, they have additional effects on women. This generates both submission and revolt. A woman in upper class Mexico seeks to confirm her status as a piece of lace, an office decoration and an 'effective' manager of family well being (in other words, assuring the maximum frequency of excursions to McDonald's). In middle class Mexico she remains confined to the ancestral cycles of daughter-fiancee-wife and/or lover-mother. in groundfloor and basement Mexico her nightmare is doubled in the private microcosm where the man dominates and commands.
For the women of the ground floor and basement, everything due to women is doubled (except the respect. Illiteracy rates, miserable living conditions, low salaries and marginalisation are growing into a nightmare that the system prefers to ignore, or to camouflage behind statistics that overlook the sexual exploitation which shapes exploitation in general.
But now something is rising up against this double submission. The double nightmare is creating a double
Some women from the bottom, and from even lower, have spoken up against their present lives, and against the past which threatens to be their future.
Th consciousness of humanity comes through the consciousness of feminity. Identifying herself as human demands identifying herself as female and fighting. They no longer need to be spoken for. Their voice borrows the double path of revolt under its own impetus, the double impetus of Cardenas and the PRI
A government of transition and change is necessary for democracy. We need the formation of a great bank of opposition, which gathers together all those millions of Mexicans opposed to the state party system. An uprising of hope. As soon as he was attacked and slandered by the state party methods of the numerous servants of power, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas became the indisputable representative of the Mexican forces of democracy. Today confined, including by the members of his own party, to an apparent position of intransigence and willfulness, the general's son has only acted in accordance with the fight he started in 1988. He has already been attacked and presented to public opinion as the instigator of violence, extreme opposition, chaos, disorder and anarchy. But it is the opposite which has come about. In the August 1994 elections Cardenas represented the hope of a passive change for millions of Mexicans who live on the ground floor and basement of Mexico. Not only for the disinherited but also for the middle and well off classes. Before August 1994, the way to a civil and passive transition to democracy, liberty and justice was personified in Cardenas who was a serious, honest and effective leader.
When he declares that no one can claim to have won an place, Cardenas is being true to himself. However, in his own party, certain leaders, at different levels, are singing in hushed voices the swansong of one of the most remarkable figures of the democratic fight in the last decades. The CND gives us hope
The day before the elections, a new national political force started to take shape. The National Democratic Convention benefits from the freshness of youth which forms its core, and from its popular front character. Established in every state, CND is called on to take charge of the void on the left in Mexico. Something broke in 1994: not only the false image of modernisation that the neoliberalists sold us; not just the lie of government projects; not only the iniquitous neglect in which the homeland confines its original inhabitants; but also the rigid schema of a left condemned to live from the past and in the past. In this long journey from pain towards hope, the political fight is divested of those oxidised characteristics that pain has dressed it in; it is hope which drives it to search for new ways of fighting, new ways of being political, of engaging in politics. A new politics, new political morals, new political ethic
This is not only a wish, it is the only way of making progress, of jumping to the other side. August 21st marked the end of a long cycle of fighting for democracy, liberty and justice, a cycle charged with heroism and sacrifice, of devotedness and perseverance. You can see the advances, and if the fog lifts, you can see clearly that they are no less numerous or significant. The Convention assembles on one hand a group of important intellectuals, scientists and popular leaders, and on the other hand the best of civil society in the provinces as well as the capital: housewives, the inhabitants of populous areas, peasants, indigenous people, communication workers, labourers, employees, teachers, artists, the religious, and women activists. Today the best of the Mexican people meets in the CND. The reality which appears in most difficult moments of our contemporary history: of men and women with or without a party: some of the names and faces which figure in any historical almanach of any political organisation, badly thought of and reduced to anonymity by the avant-gardists - so avant garde they find themselves totally alone.
CND could be the place to create this great force of opposition that the wind reclaims, and which exhales the homeland, that we, the most humble, hope for. While millions of exhausted Mexicans go on as before, taking up their arms, the National Democratic Convention has the say. The possibility of a passive transition to democracy, liberty and justice is in their hands.
CND can band together the honest forces which oppose the lie that governs our country. The current hope for a national revolutionary movement for turning the shameful page of history that is being written today in Mexico, is in the hands of the National Democratic Convention. *
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