Our Word is Our Weapon: Selected Writings

by Subcomandante Marcos, Juana Ponce De Leon (Editor), José Saramago (Foreword by), Ana Carrigan (Afterword)

Overview

In this landmark book, Seven Stories Press presents a powerful collection of literary, philosophical, and political writings of the masked Zapatista spokesperson, Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos. Introduced by Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, and illustrated with beautiful black and white photographs, Our Word Is Our Weapon crystallizes "the passion of a rebel, the poetry of a movement, and the literary genius of indigenous Mexico."
Marcos first captured world attention on January 1, 1994, when he and an indigenous guerrilla group calling themselves "Zapatistas" revolted against the Mexican government and seized key towns in Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas. In the six years that have passed since their uprising, Marcos has altered the course of Mexican politics and emerged an international symbol of grassroots movement-building, rebellion, and democracy. The prolific stream of poetic political writings, tales, and traditional myths that Marcos has penned since January 1, 1994 fill more than four volumes. Our Word Is Our Weapon presents the best of these writings, many of which have never been published before in English.
Throughout this remarkable book we hear the uncompromising voice of indigenous communities living in resistance, expressing through manifestos and myths the universal human urge for dignity, democracy, and liberation. It is the voice of a people refusing to be forgotten the voice of Mexico in transition, the voice of a people struggling for democracy by using their word as their only weapon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781583224724
Publisher:	Seven Stories Press
Publication date:	05/07/2002
Pages:	496
Sales rank:	447,889
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.32(d)

About the Author

SUBCOMANDANTE MARCOS is a spokesperson and strategist for the Zapatistas, an indigenous insurgency movement based in Mexico. He first joined the indigenous guerrilla group that would become the Zapatistas in the early 1980s. Marcos is author of several books translated into English, including Shadows of Tender Fury (Monthly Review Press) which featured early letters and communiques, and a children's book Story of the Colors (Cinco Puntos), which won a Firecracker Alternative Book Award.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xi
	Prologue: Chiapas, a Name of Pain and Hope	xix
	Editor's Note: Traveling Back for Tomorrow	xxiii
Section I	Unveiling Mexico
Part 1	Names the Unnamed
1.	Twelve Women in the Twelfth Year: The Moment of War	5
2.	War! First Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle	13
3.	Dying in Order to Live	17
4.	In Our Dreams We Have Seen Another World	18
5.	Votan-Zapata or Five Hundred Years of History	19
6.	A Storm and a Prophecy--Chiapas: The Southeast in Two Winds	22
7.	Who Should Ask for Pardon and Who Can Grant It?	38
8.	Five Hundred Years of Indigenous Resistance	40
9.	Second Declaration of the Lacondon Jungle	43
10.	The Long Journey from Despair to Hope	52
11.	Mr. Zedillo, Welcome to the Nightmare	62
12.	Come, Brothers and Sisters	72
13.	The Word and the Silence	75
14.	Fourth Declaration of the Lacondon Jungle (excerpt)	78
15.	Closing Words to the National Indigenous Forum (excerpt)	82
16.	Today, Eighty-Five Years Later, History Repeats Itself	88
17.	The Unjust Sentencing of Elorriaga and Entzin	98
18.	Opening Remarks at the First Intercontinental Encuentro for Humanity and against Neoliberalism	101
19.	Tomorrow Begins Today: Closing Remarks at the First Intercontinental Encuentro for Humanity and against Neoliberalism	107
20.	Second Declaration of La Realidad for Humanity and against Neoliberalism	116
21.	Civil Society That So Perturbs	120
22.	The Spiral from the End and the Beginning	125
23.	An Urgent Telegram	130
24.	Do the Pictures Lie?	131
25.	For Those Who Protest with Us after Acteal	132
26.	The Sea of My Insomnia: The Table at San Andres	137
27.	Tlatelolco: Thirty Years Later the Struggle Continues	143
28.	Under Siege: The Zapatista Community of Amador Hernandez	147
29.	A Play (ha!) That Says What It Says	151
30.	Mexico City: We Have Arrived. We Are Here: The EZLN	155
31.	The Other Player	163
32.	Why We Use the Weapon of Resistance	166
Part 2	One World
33.	Flowers, Like Hope, Are Harvested	173
34.	From Vietnam to Chiapas, Twenty Years Before	175
35.	A Call to Latin America	178
36.	On Independent Media	180
37.	From Here to There and Back Again	183
38.	On May Day and Tupac Amaru	188
39.	This Ocean No Longer Separates Us	189
40.	Letter to Mumia Abu-Jamal	192
41.	"No!" to the War in the Balkans	196
42.	For Maurice Najman, Who Keeps Feigning Death	198
43.	Letter to Leonard Peltier	207
Section II	Beneath the Mask
44.	To Open a Crack in History	213
45.	We Know What We're Doing; It is Worth It	217
46.	The Library of Aguascalientes	226
47.	The Retreat Is Making Us Almost Scratch the Sky	230
48.	Death Has Paid a Visit	240
49.	A Year of the Zapatista Government	245
50.	Zapatistas, Guadalupanos, and the Virgin of Guadalupe	250
51.	A Land to Harvest a Future	256
52.	Letter to Eduardo Galeano	258
53.	Letter to John Berger	263
54.	Dignity Cannot Be Studied; You Live It or It Dies	268
55.	It Continues Raining Here	271
56.	Democratic Teachers and the Zapatista Dream	274
57.	Closing Words at the National Encuentro in Defense of the Cultural Heritage	278
Section III	Creating Memory
Part 1	Tales for a Sleepless Solitude--The Stories of Don Durito
58.	Ten Years Later: Durito Found Us Again	289
59.	To Mariana Moguel (age ten)	291
60.	The Glass to See to the Other Side	294
61.	Deep Inside the Cave of Desire	297
62.	Durito and Pegasus	302
63.	The Story of the Tiny Mouse and the Tiny Cat	308
64.	The Story of the Cold Foot and the Hot Foot	310
65.	The Story of the Bean-brown Horse	314
66.	Love and the Calendar	316
67.	Another Cloud, Another Bottle, and Another Letter from Durito	318
68.	P.S...that Fulfills Its Editorial Duty	321
69.	Durito the Pirate	322
70.	The Hour of the Little Ones	331
71.	The True Story of Mary Read and Anne Bonny	335
Part 2	Tales of Many Others
72.	The Tale of the Ever Never	341
73.	The Parrot's Victory	342
74.	Tales of the Seahorse	343
75.	The Tale of the Little Seamstress	345
76.	The Tale of the Little Newsboy	346
77.	The Tale of the Little Wisp of a Cloud	347
78.	The Story of the Schizophrenic Pig	349
79.	The Tale of the Lime with an Identity Crisis	351
80.	The Tale of the Nonconformist Little Toad	352
81.	The Tale of the Pink Shoelaces	355
82.	The Tale of Always and Never	356
83.	The Little Tree and the Others	357
84.	A Light, a Flower, and a Dawn	359
85.	The Words That Walk Truths	364
Part 3	Old Don Antonio
86.	The Story of the Colors	373
87.	The Story of the Mirrors	376
88.	The Story of Dreams	380
89.	The Story of the Seven Rainbows	383
90.	The Story of Noise and Silence	386
91.	Making the Bread Called Tomorrow	389
92.	The Story of the Others	390
93.	The Tale of the Lion and the Mirror	392
94.	The Story of the Measure of Memory	395
95.	The Story of One and All	397
96.	The Dawn Is Heralding Heat and Flashes	399
97.	The Story of the Milky Way	402
98.	The Story of the False Light, the Stone, and the Corn	405
99.	The Night Is Ours	407
100.	The Story of the Questions	413
	Afterword: Chiapas, the First Postmodern Revolution	417
	Zapatista Timeline	445
	Bibliography	453
	Contributors	455

Editorial Reviews

This is an extraordinary collection of writings, documenting one of the most important grassroots rebellions of our time. It conveys the mind and spirit of the Zapatista movement with eloquence and astonishing immediacy.” –Howard Zinn

“This eccentric collection of writings, which includes everything from the Zapatista's declaration of war to magic-realist stories about a beetle named Durito, proves Marcos to be a passionate and surprisingly self-deprecating writer.” –The New Yorker

“The Zapatistas are an extraordinary example of resistance by the supposedly powerless against the powerful and they have endured for 25 years—and brought us what this book offers, a poetic, sometimes lyrical, sometimes comic, often utterly fresh and insightful, political language, grounded in the natural world, in weather, seasons, plants, animals, growing, harvesting . . .” –Rebecca Solnit

“… Language as strong as dignity and as subtle as love. To read this collection is to discover that rare animal: an original voice.” –Publishers Weekly

“A literary masterpiece that provides an invaluable lens into the Zapatista cosmos and one of the most remarkable minds of our time.” –San Francisco Bay Guardian

“Set against other radical manifestoes of the past … Our Word Is Our Weapon exudes a political timelessness … The tempered words of Subcomandante Marcos read like an instruction manual for future rebellions.” –The Guardian (UK)

“Marcos is the voice for many voices. His words, fashioned from humor and poetry, reveal the deep roots and abundant branches of the Zapatista insurrection in Chiapas. It is an original language for an original movement that is transforming Mexico and is helping to change the world.” –Eduardo Galeano

“Revolt is the mirror in which greed is forced to see itself. Our Word Is Our Weapon reflects the deep soul beauty and determined hearts of deliberately impoverished people as they stand up to the most insatiable giant the world has ever seen. Theirs is a stance of dignity, courage and self-respect. And that is what they inspire in us, even as they suffer.” –Alice Walker

From the Publisher