Edward F Fischer
On Being Maya in a Globalized World: Strategic Identities and Subversive Narratives

The American Indian College Fund Ads:
                                           

Maya maps:
                              

beauty pagaents:
                      

Neologisms in Kaqchikel Mayan:

                kematz'ib–"computer," literally "weaver-[of]-writing"
                q’inotz’ib’–"computer program," literally "the warp of writing"
                kemomtz’ib’–"computer file," literally "woven writing"

Hieroglyphs:
                            

Who is Subcomandante Marcos?

His refusal to be categorized:
Marcos is gay in San Francisco, a black in South Africa, Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Isidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, an indigenous person in the streets of San Cristóbal, a gang member in Neza, a rocker on campus, a Jew in Germany, an ombudsman in the Department of Defense, a feminist in a political party, a communist in the post-Cold War period, a prisoner in Cintalapa, a pacifist in Bosnia, a Mapuche in the Andes, a teacher in the National Confederation of Educational Workers, an artist without a gallery or a portfolio, a housewife in any neighborhood in any city in any part of Mexico on a Saturday night, a guerrilla in Mexico at the end of the twentieth century, a striker in the CTM, a sexist in the feminist movement, a woman alone in a Metro station at 10 p.m., a retired person standing around in the Zocalo, a peasant without land, an underground editor, an unemployed worker, a doctor with no office, a non-conformist student, a dissident against neoliberalism, a writer without books or readers, and a Zapatista in the Mexican southeast. In other words, Marcos is a human being in this world. Marcos is every untolerated, oppressed, exploited minority that is resisting and saying 'Enough!'

some Zapatistas web sites:
http://www.fzln.org.mx/latuff/Zapatista_Ascii1.txt
http://www.fzln.org.mx/ 
http://www.ezlnaldf.org/index.php 
http://www.fzln.org.mx/latuff/index.htm  

From communiqués by Subcomandante Marcos:

PROBLEMS
This thing that is one's country is somewhat difficult to explain
But it is more difficult to understand what it is to love one's country
For example
They taught us that to love one's country is,
for example,
To salute the flag
To rise upon hearing the National Anthem
To get drunk as we please when the national soccer team loses
To get drunk as we please when the national soccer team wins
And a few etceteras that change little from one presidency to the next . . .

And, for example,
they didn't teach us that to love one's country can be,
for example,
to whistle like one who is becoming ever more distant, but
behind that mountain there is also part of our country where nobody sees us
And where we open our hearts
(because one always opens one's heart when no one is watching)
And we tell this country,
for example,
everything we hate about it
and everything we love about it
and how it is always better to say it,
for example,
with gunshots and smiling.

And, for example,
they taught us that to love one's country is,
for example,
to wear a big sombrero
to know the names of the child-heroes of Chapultepec
to shout "Viva-arriba Mexico!"
even though Mexico is down and dead.
and other etceteras which change little from one presidency to the next . . .

And, for example,
they did not teach us that
to love one's country
could be,
for example,
to be quiet as one who dies,
but no,
for beneath this earth there is also a country
where no one hears us
and where we open our hearts
(because one always opens one's heart when no one is listening)
and, we tell our country
the short and hard history
of those who went on dying to love her
and who are no longer here to give their reasons why,
but who give them all the same without being here,
those who taught us
that one can love one's country,
for example,
with gunshots and smiling.


I.
It is ninety years from our Zapata
But Chiapas still cries and Chiapas still dies!
Ninety years we heard promises he said, ‘Where is our cattle? Our honey and corn?'
A thousand and one fangs sunk in our necks
A thousand and one veins flooding our fields
So where is our oil and our bananas? Our cargo of sweat loaded in their trucks?

We asked them for schools they gave us police
We asked for freedom they gave us torture
We asked for water they gave us brown streams
We asked for our lands they gave us fenced camps
We asked for our rights they called us rebels
We asked for justice they painted us red
And when we went mad from hunger and plagues
They sold us the beer they made from our crops!

For 500 years we paid our tribute
To the great empires which developed us
By building pipelines and roads to their ships
And importing death for our extinction!
For 500 years they owned our bodies
Yet left us nameless and glued our eyelids
For 500 years they used our bodies
And disposed of us like bulldozer parts!

O those bulldozers! Evil bulldozers!
Which leveled our graves and scattered our bones
And amputated all our rain forests
And left them moaning with permanent scars!
O the dynamite! Evil dynamite!
Which turned our jungles to toxic wastelands
While their machetes cleared the plunder trails
To our green embryos which sustained our lives!

O the greed of man! O the greed of man!
Now to be measured not by gold or oil
Not by stock markets or the shopping malls
But by the species he kills every day!
O the greed of man which grinds our coffee
And brews bank accounts beyond our borders!
O the greed of man which steals our power
While most of our homes vanish in the dark!

We have no tombstones but our epitaphs
Are carved into all our mountains and rocks
To be read by those high above the earth
As crimes recorded by our abusers!
‘Here Lies Our Knowledge!'
‘Here Lies Our Culture!'
‘There Lies Our Language And Our Dignity!'
And among them rest all of the reforms
Which pushed us deeper into misery!

II.
Deeper yet deeper into misery
Waiting for our days to drown in sunsets!
Building plastic saints who give us blessings
But cannot carry themselves to our church!
Deeper yet deeper into misery
Waiting for red lights to wash the windshields
Performing like clowns in front of four lanes
And walking barefoot in the raw sewage!

How the free markets have rewarded us!
Tortillas and beans! Tortillas and beans!
More tanks than tractors! More guns than guitars!
More votes than mangoes for sale in the streets!
More jails than clinics! More brothels than schools!
More children outside than inside first grade
Being consumed like tortillas and beans
In the stomachs of global dinosaurs!

The consumed children! The consumed children!
With futures welded to the rusted clocks
Of the feudal lords and their blackboard boys
From Harvard and Yale and Princeton and Brown!

Now, the Northern Hordes raid with computers
Which make their own clones of the perfect slaves!
Now, the Northern Hordes raid with their checkbooks
And corporations mortgage our harvests!

The consumed children and their small footprints
In melting asphalt six hundred miles long
Bearing petitions to the capital
Where the Mafia Boss gave them red balloons!
Our blood for balloons! Our tears for their lies!
Our howls and our screams for their polished words!
Our sticks and our teeth against their paid gangs
Trained by the Northern Advisers of Death!

Trained to use terror with official seals
Terror with white gloves and smiling faces!
Terror to suck out our precious fuel
From the nipples which never touched our lips!
Terror to foreclose on our farms and homes
Where our ancestors lived for millenniums!
Terror tumbling us like our conifers
And the dice they rolled to bet on our fate!

We tumbled to their overgrown cities
And covered our heads with tin and cardboard
Among warehouses of steel and cement
Bursting with exports they looted from us!
And now every night we are terrified
To see our faces in our hollow plates
So we seek mercy under our pillows
And dream of jasmines dancing on our hills!

III.
O how sweet they smell in their white glory
Like the sun-baked juice of our coconuts!
Perhaps even we knew the purest joy
Which tingled our skin and made us worship!
Perhaps even we climbed to the summits
To receive the plans to build pyramids
We the small people with the funny hats
Wearing bright colors and even laughing!

We the small people with the curved shoulders
Sagging like our roofs and our weary cheeks
Hiding hopelessly from the gravity
Which our fellow men quadrupled for us!
We the small people who honored the earth
And preserved this land since the last ice age
This wealthiest land where today we earn
A penny to pick a pound of cotton!

From Pichucalco to Ocosingo
And from Reforma to Ostuacan
We are raped by day we are raped by night
And left on dirt roads in the mud of shame!
Yet once we had slept by the volcanoes
And their black lava prepared our gardens!
The sun itself bowed to our calendars
The wind itself was born in our highlands!

"Hey Mister, Mister, you want my sister?
For twenty dollars have her for the night!"
We were skywatchers before Egyptians
And governed by laws even before Greeks!
Our nobles were priests and scribes and artists
Who dwelled in our sky as gods when they died!
We used zero first and grew our Maize
When the Northerners were only hunters!

"Hey Mister, Mister, a step at a time,
A step at a time to approach our grief!
A drop at a time to drink our suffering!
An inch at a time to dig in our chests!"
A penny to pick a pound of cotton!
A dollar to sell a box of Chiclets!
A million gestures of squandered kindness!
A dawn held hostage to endless nightmares!

He said it is time to force the new dawn
Into the dungeons where our lives are trapped!
He said it is time to build our temples
On the foundations of their crushed barracks!
He said it is time now to resurrect
Our dignity and wash it with perfume!
He said it is time for justice to roar
Like the volcanoes which had slept with us!