How can I not feel inspired?

As a follow-up to that last blog about the neo-Zapatistas being over-romanticized, I realize that I am a hypocrite. Why? Because I find myself admiring and idealizing the people of Atenco, themselves supporters of the neo-Zapatistas. Maybe it was just because I met them. I already wrote about Atenco, but I didn't explain it well, perhaps.

How they stood up, at the signal of fireworks, against the people who wanted to buy parcels of land for the price of a Coke. How the government was willing to stop at nothing to get this land, including the cemetery, before finally changing its mind.

How they went on to help flower vendors in Texcoco defend their space from a coming Wal-Mart. Sure it turned brutal, they had gasoline bombs with them then, I won't lie. Yet these were people defending their space that they used. I can admire their conviction, even if I have doubts about their claims to "non-violence."

How the police (or possibly army dressed as police) took its vengance on the town. All the accusation (not explained in detail at the time, but easy to find on the web) of rape and sexual torture. All to defend a Wal-Mart. How the government placed a toxic waste dump there, out in the Atenco fields, literally.

I saw the land they were fighting for, from up on a hill. It's too bad my camera wasn't working well. Sure it looked like desert, where once it had been the swamps surrounding the lake. Yet that was it for them, the Mexico City people were trying to expand here to take their water. That was the real purpose of the airport in some peoples' view.

Okay, Okay, I need to chill out. I already wrote about Atenco, didn't I? Well, that was a bit too long, and too dry in terms of only presenting information. What struck me in Atenco was the sense of a community rising.

It's a far cry from the U.S. world of web petitions, or of Che Guevarra's "vanguards" coming in and waiting for the people to support them. Or of people back at Warren Wilson College being "in solidarity" with people that they may not have even met.
Anyways, in short, I am a hypocrite who can't help admiring rebels in other countries, even if their cause, I know, is not truely mine. I'll write about something more calm next entry, I promise!

Atenco

This Thursday and Friday we went to Atenco, a place of resistance in the face of brutal government actions, of love for the land and compadres. It happens to be located near Mexico City, but it remains semi-rural ejido land.

Basically the government wanted to build an airport right over their fields, houses, even their cemetary, while negociations about water and schools were already underway. They were accused of kidnapping public officials, a charge that many in the town say was false. Protesters took to the street with machetes shouting Tierra Si, Aviones No! The protesters avoided violence except in self defence, and even then their weaponry was limited to machetes. The government decided to put their airport elsewhere.

In addition to attracting visitors from other resistance movements (including Subcomandante Marcos and other neo-Zapatistas) Atenco began to help other nearby towns. In a particular case they were trying to help flower vendors in another town who stood in resistance to a Wal Mart being built over their flower market. To make a long story short the state police came in, possibly with some national military dressed as State Police, and led a campaign of arrests, rape, and in one case literally beating people to death. Some of the people in prison from that time still have yet to be released.

Touring Atenco, I was amazed by how the people could still remain smiling, and determined (right now freeing prisoners is the main concern) after all that happened. They no longer vote in elections, but to me they seemed more engaged than anyone I had met in the U.S.

Barack Obama was in Mexico City at the same time, and we saw his heiliocopter passing. What struck me here was that, unlike elsewhere in Mexico, here I actually found cynicism about Obama, rather than indifference, or (rarely) hope, as I've found elsewhere. They considered him to be the same as Bush, which to them made him at least something of an enemy. Like me, they were concerned about the troops in Juarez, although theirs was in some ways the opposite of my concern. While I worried that the army would encounter hatred, violence, and endless war (another Columbia, or another Iraq) they were worried that it would be another Puerto Rico! It's not too surprising to hear that kind of sentiment in what history has taught me is the Polland of the Americas. Yet no one else seems to have any problem with the foreign troops. It could be their own experience has made them distrust armies, while in Cuernavaca, one still finds tanks patrolling Holy Week processions.

I worry about writing entries like this. I worry that I will be blacklisted here in Mexico, or that dissidents will get unwanted exposure. For that reason I did not give names.