Almost home

And enjoying my first taste of beer with discernable hop notes...

Remembering Acteal

This week in San Cristobal there was a gathering in the main plaza to remember the victims of the massacre at Acteal which was carried out December 22, 1997. The gathering was held both to remember the victims and to censure the government and the Supreme Court for their actions and involvement in the massacre. At this time last year the Supreme Court vacated the conviction of twenty of the men who were imprisoned in connection with the massacre.

The gathering was a reminder that the government opposition to the Zapatistas, the prejudice and racism that is perpetuated against indigenous people and violent paramilitary and other counterinsurgency activity are not relics of the past, but are very much a part of the present story of the Zapatistas.

Winding down

Well, the Zapatistas have entered a period of silence and reflection (read: they're not talking). Which, in my case is not timed terribly poorly, as tomorrow is my final full day in Chiapas. That said, it throws into sharp relief the complications of doing a Zapatista focused dissertation project. This is not a sudden revelation, I realized some weeks ago that the study I had planned is impossible (notwithstanding the fact that Mut Vitz doesn't exit anymore). That said, I have pursued some alternate avenues and I think that I will still be able to do a study on food and fair trade. One of the most important things that I have picked up on since I've been here is the importance of food sovereignty and autonomy in indigenous communities.

After the meeting

Land is important.
Corn is important.
and coffee too, is important.

Coffee (among other things) provides a cash base for the purchase of things that the communities themselves cannot produce (salt, soap, medicines, for example). It is also important in curbing high rates of out-migration to procure cash. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Beyond coffee, I have found that many autonomous communities have additional cooperatives (women's weaving, for example). The weaving that is done by women (and some by men) is sold in shops in San Cristobal and provides much needed cash. I had opportunity to meet with representatives from a weaving co-op and also with two men that make bags out of plant fiber.

Welcome to San Juan Chamula - a sign on the road to Oventik

Oh yeah, and Coca-cola is important too. When the Zapatistas started mobilizing (long before the uprising in 1994), the women argued for the restriction of alcohol in communities. As with many peoples and places, the indigenous population in Chiapas deals with alcohol abuse. The women made a strong case against it and alcohol is forbidden in autonomous communities. It however, has been replaced by Coca-cola.

In the cafetal

Although I'm here to look at the experience of fair trade coffee growers, I've spent more time in the milpa than in the cafetal (coffee plot). I did have a chance to visit the experimental shade plot in one of the communities this past week though, and the berries are just starting to show.

This plot had a number of fruit trees providing shade, so we munched on green peaches while wandering around. The leaf litter cover in the cafetal is incredible and the soil was quite rich in this particular plot. Adjacent to a milpa, the divide between the two plots is almost non-existent.

I've been popping in and out of the communities, there's a big party tonight in honor of Zapata (this is the anniversary of his assassination)...no invite for me, so I'm back in town for the night and I'm heading out to another community for the next few days that has a bee/honey operation and while I'm there I will be trying to track down the coffee co-op leaders/promoters.

"we gave up our faces to be seen"

So I've just returned from traveling around two of the Zapatista zones that are around San Cristobal. The coffee cooperative that brought me here was made up of farmers in the Caracol of Oventik (about an hour outside San Cristobal).

“You are in Zapatista rebel territory, here, the people command and the government obeys.”

...that's right...it was made up of farmers from the area, the farmers still exist, but the cooperative does not. In the past 10 days I have heard differing accounts as to why, but it seems that, at least, people agree that the federal government shut them down for not paying taxes. Academics in the area have also added that there was some internal strife related to information sharing. I must say, it seems rather my lot to set out to study businesses that (suddenly) no longer exist.

So, like many before me I went through the process of being cleared by the junta at Oventik to enter the zone, have an audience with the junta and to make appointments to speak with their agro-ecology promoters.

Zapata's watching you.

There are many pictures of my time in Oventik, I spent 4 days and 3 nights within the government center (the center for good government) and also traveled and stayed a few nights in two additional communities one within a municipality within the caracol of Oventik and one within the caracol of Morelia. Without going into too much detail, I will explain that the structure of the good government is multi-scalar and to complicate an already difficult (for me) to understand system, there are multiple names for things. For example, I went to visit the municipality of Magdalena, which is also called Aldama. The name Aldama is the name used by non-affiliated people living there, while Magdalena is used by those aligned with the movement.

Corn People

I took many photos, but as things go, there are far fewer than I would liked to have taken. It is inappropriate and potentially dangerous to take a photo that has people (without masks), homes or other identifying features in it. All Zapatistas have given up their names and faces to be named and seen. That said, there is not one surface that is not in some way telling the story of their struggle. So, like many of the curious parties who show up at the gates of Oventik, hand over their passports and eventually gain entry to marvel at the wonder of autonomous government...I took pictures of the murals. I also finally got the guts to take the photo-op with the junta, if you've ever looked up Oventik you'll see something similar...

Caracol health clinic

The office of the Junta - I spent a lot of time on that bench...

Magdalena Municipal Office

The Auditorium

Las Mujeres

Greens garden at the secondary school

Kittens in Resistance (the tiniest ones I've ever seen)

The monster of capitalism

This is where I stayed

After the second meeting with the Junta I asked for a photo

I like the story that goes with these photos...in the caracol of Morelia there is a municipality that is on a former hacienda. The rancher who used to hold this land had exploited the indigenous population for the duration of his residence. On the day of the uprising, the ejido workers knocked on the door of his ranch house and told him to leave and never come back.

Ejido San Gregorio

The road they were forced to build out of rock, by hand is overgrown with grass, the airfield that they had leveled the ground to accommodate the ranchers plane is now a thriving community-worked cornfield (the dismantled airplane is a chicken coop), the ranch house, over the years has fallen into disrepair, an unsightly memory of their subjugation...but it is now under repair to house the growing secondary school population.

It is an amazing community and a gorgeous study site.

Plane turned chicken coop

The staple of autonomy

Beans climbing the corn (in the milpa)

Beans hanging out to dry

The abandoned church

The revitalized ranch house

corn plots in the valley

the water supply

They can cut our branches and trunks but they cannot pull out our roots (I think)

thorny branches (previously used for limiting the movement of cows)

abandoned tractor

looking up from the floor of the milpa

Me in the milpa

For the moment I'm back in the city trying to get my bearings, there is another coffee cooperative that is Zapatista aligned that I learned about while I was in Morelia. I've had an additional meeting with the junta and with the promoters of agroecology in Oventik to get their thoughts on fair trade, coffee growing and food consumption. It's a lot to take in and It's no surprise to find that I have more information than I know what to do with and a lot of things to think through.

I've had a couple meetings in town since I've been back, which have been extraordinarily productive and I'm heading back out for another round of meetings in Oventik over the weekend.

Research is a fucking roller-coaster, but for now I've still got my hands in the air.