lotu5, for sd imc, with help from Adriana | 25.09.2005 12:24

I arrived in San Cristobal the night of Monday the 19th, after flying in from San Diego and walked to the Junax, a hostel for people working in collectives and volunteers that houses Chiapas Indymedia. I had missed the last combi, which was at 5.

At Junax, I met many awesome people who were in town for the Plenary of the EZLN over the weekend. I met some people from Puebla and D.F. but also some people from Greece who work with A School for Chiapas and Athens Indymedia. There was a lot of excitement about La Otra Campana and La Sexta and all of the new developments there.

In the morning, I took the combi from San Cris to Oventik, the caracol where I was supposed to meet Adriana from Schools for Chiapas with the rest of the delegation from the US. A combi is a van that takes lots of people to different places cheaply, for example the one hour ride to Oventic was about 15 pesos, or $1.50.

A caracol is like a center for a Zapatista community. Now that I have been here a bit I have been learning from Adriana a bit more of the structure of the Autonomous communities. There is a long history behind the name caracol, but it means mostly that the caracols are centers for information to come in and out of, and the offices of the various community councils are located there.

Driving into Oventic and passing the sign 'usted esta entrando territorio Zapatista, aqui el pueblo manda y el gobierno obedece', I realized the gravity and reality of the Zapatista struggle for the first time. Its one thing to read about the rebellion and the EZLN rising up and taking over San Cristobal and kicking out the government, but its another, far more real thing, to see a large scale autonomous zone with my own eyes.

Arriving at the gate of Oventik, you are met by the masked Guardia, or Guard, men and women who you must ask to enter. A banner in 5 languages in the auditorium where we slept describes the EZLN as 'el guardia y corazon del pueblo', the guardian and heart of the community. Once you ask to come in, the Guardia takes you to the Comite de Vigilancia, who keep track of who is coming an going from the caracol. As a Zapatista center in a war, there is a strong feeling of a culture of security here.

The first night in Oventic it rained hard. Oventic is at a very high elevation and is cold all the time. You can see the clouds hugging the surrounding mountains, and at times they envelope the caracol as well.

The next day we travelled to San Juan de La Libertad. The Junta Del Buen Gobierno emphasizes that people should go to other communities as well as Oventik, since Oventik is the closest to the city and gets the most traffic. Zapatista territory is made up of 5 regions, and each region has a caracol as its center of information. Within each region there are many municipalities and each municipality has its own Consejo, or community council. The Junta Del Buen Gobierno is a council for the entire region which makes decisions about equally distributing resources, allowing visitors in and resolving community conflicts. It is made up of volunteers from the community who are rotated every 10 days or so. At least this is my simple understanding from being here for a few days and asking questions. It seems to be like a clear, beautiful example of horizontalism and direct democracy.

On our way to San Juan de La Libertad we passed a Government military base. When we spoke to the Consejos, someone asked about the base. They told us of numerous times when the military has tried to enter the community and the men, women and children gathered and told the military to leave. Each time the military left. The consejos also told us of the community's many needs and call for continued support. They said they were very pleased and honored to have visitors from as far as the United States.

For more info see:

 http://www.ezln.org
 http://chiapas.indymedia.org
 http://schoolsforchiapas.org

This is the first of a number of reports I plan to write about my experience here...

Homepage:: http://sandiego.indymedia.org