Marcos

In an effort to escape for a few hours the media coverage of  Cuomosexualism, I turned to reading ON THE  PLAIN OF SNAKES by Paul Theroux, an account of Theroux's recent trip through Mexico. 

When I was young, we drove into Mexico without a thought. We did everything without a thought. I'd think twice now.

The border and many resort areas are controlled today  by warring cartels. You don't go out at night. Many ordinary people consider the police more dangerous than the cartels. Parts of Mexico have failed to provide safety, medical care, education and social welfare. Which brings me to the Zapatistas, a group Theroux encountered. 

About 40 years ago a socialist rebellion began among the Mayas in Chiapas, led, after a fashion, by a former philosophy professor in a mask. At the time he called himself Subcomandante  Marcos. He took the title of subcomandante to make it clear that he was subordinate. He and a small group of followers set out to find what the Indians in the countryside actually wanted. This is probably what set him apart from the missionaries, the  Chomskys, the UN missions, the Gueveras of the civilized world, who came to enlighten, not to listen. 

If you want to help, first find out what the people want. 

Mexico, I guess, had other fish to fry and did not really care all that much when the Indians in Chiapas set up a state within the state, one that has lasted since the 1980s. The army came and killed some people and left and so on. 

Marcos, still masked and hidden and free after all this time, wrote:  "Behind our face masks is the face of all women excluded. Of all the indigenous people forgotten. Of all the homosexuals persecuted. Of young people belittled. Of all migrants beaten. Of all people imprisoned for their thoughts or words. Of all workers humiliated. Of all who died in oblivion. Of all the simple and ordinary men and women who don't count, who are not seen, who are not named, who have no tomorrows." In 2002  he wrote of the Basque separatists that "neither this noble cause, nor any other, can justify the sacrifice of human lives. Not only does it (killing civilians) not lead to any political gain, even if it did, the human cost is unpayable. We condemn  military acts that hurt civilians. And we condemn them equally, whether they come from ETA or from the Spanish state, from Al Qaeda or George W. Bush, from the Israelis or Palestinians, or anyone who . . . makes victims of children, women, old people and men who have had nothing to do with the matter."