Ya Basta!

This is my favorite picture in the whole world:

I think it’s far better in this post NAFTA world than a poster of a kitten hanging on a branch and the words ‘Hang in their Kitty’ to inspire you to stick through a stressful day. I don’t know the story, the time nor the place of this particular photo. I can only assume it is to do with the disspossesed indeginous populations of the Chiapas, Mexico whose constitutional land entitlements were swept away with the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Entitlements won for the indigenous Mexicans by Emiliano Zapata a revolutionary hero (as revolution is the South American favourite past time). When rule of law declines to the point where infants possess the motivation to try and strangle a heavily armed enforcer something is wrong. I know a lot about what the EZLN deals with in Mexico, their triumphs and tribulations and I can’t say I know enough. I’ve only met two Mexicans in four years and they both said ‘Marcos is very smart but he demands too much’ who is Marcos? We are all Marcos. But more accurately Marcos is the charismatic leader of the EZLN (Zapatista Mexican Liberation Army) who some years ago on a starry night in the Lacandon jungles put on a mask to become a mirror. He wears a balaclava everywhere and unlike Che Guevara nobody knows who he is (except maybe him). In effect he is a mouth for the EZLN one that cannot have his character called into question, his sexual preferences exposed, his shady past published in the papers. He’s a four inch mouth-hole in a black balaclava that speaks words of beauty and poetry. He writes for children and academics (he has won a children’s book award) from the luxury of his guerrilla camps as he wanders around the mountains of the indigenous Mexican homelands in hiding from the Mexican military forces.
‘Our Word Is Our Weapon’ is without a doubt one of the most important books I ever read in my life, who Marcos is and isn’t has shaped who I am and am not. Marcos helped me realise that I am not Australian, that I do not live in Australia, I am not a Marketer or a Student or a Salesperson, I am all those things though but not intrinsically, not by God’s design just convenience. I happened to be born in Australia and given the education and job opportunities I’ve received, the parents I was born to. But most of it is really names and behaviours we as humans have imposed on the reality around us. I participate in society by choice and all of us should seek to be conscious, active members of society, in control and conscientious otherwise we become unconscious pawns that don’t even really own the good or ill we achieve which is worse than making a mistake and at least regretting it.
Since New Years day 1994 when Marcos revealed himself to the world very little and a lot has been achieved by the EZLN. I’m still waiting for the Bush Administration to come good and ‘Shock & Awe’ the more local terrorist organisations like the EZLN of Mexico and the home grown Ku Klux Klan of the USA not to mention the IRA in the other coalition nation of any significance, the war on terror I have said before hasn’t carpet bombed anywhere near far enough those half-arsed politicians. There’s been no particularly bloody confrontations between the EZLN and the Mexican police. At one stage the Zapata’s managed to create a self governed indigenous community that was productive and with drastically reduced instances of crime and domestic violence achieved by a simple acknowledgement of social issues the community no longer wanted to tolerate. I guess that’s what I like the most about Marcos and it was a revelation for me. Margaret Thatcher said ‘Society does not exist’ and it doesn’t, at least not as a physical law like gravity. Societies and communities are informal alliances that aren’t questioned anywhere near often enough. Social norms can be adopted that are detrimental and nonsensical yet become part of something so important we treat it as a physical law, they become our identity.
Drinking in Australia for one thing. I didn’t drink in high school, I didn’t start drinking till after my year 12 exams. Here’s a question for you and I’d be interested if you posted your honest response as a comment if your reading this, which question seems the natural one to you ‘Why didn’t you drink Tom?’ or ‘Why did you start drinking?’ what a social fucking disease. I was underage in year 12 for most of the year and yet I found myself having to defend my choice at party after party. Why is drinking so Australian I have to apologise for not drinking? My reasons where stupid really, as an artist I didn’t want any form of artificial inspiration; that meant no pot, no alcohol, no caffeine, no acid, no e, no sniffing aerosol deodorant through a tissue. I was trying to be truly original.
The point is and remains that there are very few people who would be better off drunk all the time than sober all the time. There are very few advantages to alcohol and a lot of disadvantages yet it’s part of the National Identity, part of masculinity. Why did I start drinking? I wanted to have a good time with my friends, and I did. But I learned from this and other experiments most heinously mundane in high school was that the addictive security of being a member of society can come at a sad expense. I have to admit I don’t really care about the plight of the EZLN yet I’ve read ‘Our Word is Our Weapon’ cover to cover twice over and a lot of it is tedious essays written with flair but tedious nonetheless. The sad fact is Mexico is not mine to be taken or given. At least I can’t get there from here where I’m at now.
What I could do now tomorrow is burn down my office, I don’t want to. I like my job and I like the people I work for and with. But I could. I don’t because I’m a particularly prive ledged member of an old established community. There’s rules you see, I could physically burn down my office but society would reinforce this negative behaviour. I’d go to jail and I’d never hold down a job again. I’d never be able to rent in good areas and so fourth. I would be put out of society because I hadn’t paid my membership dues.
I imagine the people at work would be upset if I burnt down the office. I imagine the Mexican government were upset when 12 women lead a coup and captured key towns in the Chiapas reclaiming land in an act that didn’t conform to the rules of that society. The same rules that had been spat on when the constitutionally protected lands of the indigenous peoples where given to North American companies to mine, cultivate and develop at bargain bin prices. So the rules of society break down and there was Marcos, a questioning mind that understands the rles well enough to successfully break them. Unlike other revolutionaries Marcos could be bitten by a snake on the lavatory and drop dead tomorrow. Would the cause fall apart? No anyone who can write can put on that mask and become Marcos. Even you or me from the comfort of our own living rooms. I suspect Marcos is the shrewdest person alive with a mind that is unpredictable and a mask that is a mirror, and an idea that can’t be beat in a game of chess because when you checkmate him he throws the board into your stomach causing you intestinal discomfort and you come off second best. But that isn’t a manoeuvre sanctioned by the international chess authority? There is you know no physical law preventing it.
I’d like to share one of my favourite pieces from Our Word is Our Weapon and particularly relevant to the War on Terror:

Once there was a parrot who knew one word: “Victory.” Yes, sir, the days came and went, and on one of those days when our poor parrot was sitting on his perch without a care in the world, a hawk set his eye on him and swept him away through God’s air. The poor green thing clutched in the hawks claw’s began to complain, but he couldn’t say a thing except the one word he knew by heart. Each peck the hawk gave drew forth a cry of “victory.” A peck, a “victory,” another peck, another “victory.” The whole while he was being pecked to pieces, he kept saying “victory.”
- The Parrot’s Victory by Jose Joaquin Fernandez De Lizardi, 1823.