EZLN

“ With the veil behind which they were hiding now torn away, the tepid and faint-hearted appeared, those who play with death for profit, those who see in the blood of others a stepping-stone, those who kill because the matador is applauded and encouraged. And he who governs was stripped of his last hypocritical robe. "The war is not against the indigenous peoples," he said while persecuting, imprisoning, and assassinating indigenous people. ”

“ We will die in her. But the light will be tomorrow for others, for all those who today weep at the night, for those who have been denied the day, for those for whom death is a gift, for those who are denied life. The light will be for all of them. For everyone everything. For us pain and anguish, for us the joy of rebellion, for us a future denied, for us the dignity of insurrection. For us nothing.
Our fight is caused by hunger, and the gifts of the bad government are lead and paper for the stomachs of our children. ”

“ One year after the Zapatista uprising, today we say:
"The motherland lives! And she is ours! We have been disgraced, it is true; our luck has been bad many times, but the cause of Mexico, which is the cause of the people's rights and justice, has not succumbed; it has not died and it will not die because there still exist committed Mexicans, in whose hearts burns the sacred fire of patriotism. Wherever in the Republic weapons are clenched and the national banner flies, there, as well as here, will exist, with vitality and energy, the protest of Right against Force. ”

“ We understand that the struggle for the place which we deserve and need in the great Mexican Nation, is only one part of everyone's great struggle for democracy, liberty and justice, but it is a fundamental and necessary part. Time and again, since the beginning of our uprising on January 1, 1994, we have called on all the peoples of Mexico to struggle together, and by all means possible, for the rights which the powerful deny us. Time and again, ever since we first saw and spoke with all of you, we have insisted on dialogue and encounter as the path upon which we should walk. ”

“ This globalization means that they no longer control the workers in one or several countries, but the capitalists are trying to dominate everything all over the world. And the world, or Planet Earth, is also called the “globe”, and that is why they say “globalization,” or the entire world.
And neoliberalism is the idea that capitalism is free to dominate the entire world, and so tough, you have to resign yourself and conform and not make a fuss, in other words, not rebel. So neoliberalism is like the theory, the plan, of capitalist globalization. ”

“ Just as we discovered a weapon in words after the combat in January of 1994, now we did it with silence. While the government offered everyone threats, death, and destruction, we were able to learn from ourselves, teach ourselves, and teach another form of struggle, and teach that with reason, truth and history, one could fight and win...through silence.
While the government handed out bribes and lied with economic supports to buy loyalties and break convictions, the Zapatistas made out of our dignified rejection of the powerful's charity, a wall which protected us and made us stronger. ”

“ And to the indigenous brothers and sisters of Ecuador and Bolivia, we say you are giving a good lesson in history to all of Latin America, because now you are indeed putting a halt to neoliberal globalization. And to the piqueteros and to the young people of Argentina, we want to tell you that, that we love you. And to those in Uruguay who want a better country, we admire you. And to those who are sin tierra in Brazil, that we respect you. And to all the young people of Latin America, that what you are doing is good, and you give us great hope. ”

“ We saw that our silence was shield and sword which wounded and exhausted those who want and impose the war. We saw our silence make the power which simulates peace and good government slip time and again, and make their powerful death machine crash time and again against the silent wall of our resistance. ”

“ Then neoliberal globalization wants to destroy the nations of the world so that only one Nation or country remains, the country of money, of capital. And capitalism wants everything to be as it wants, in its own way, and it doesn’t like what is different, and it persecutes it and attacks it, or puts it off in a corner and acts as if it doesn’t exist.
Then, in short, the capitalism of global neoliberalism is based on exploitation, plunder, contempt and repression of those who refuse. ”

“ So that we may live fighting, we may live singing. Long live the word. Long live Enough is Enough! Long live the night which becomes a soldier in order not to die in oblivion. In order to live the word dies, its seed germinating forever in the womb of the earth. By being born and living we die. We will always live. Only those who give up their history are consigned to oblivion.
We are here. We do not surrender. Zapata is alive, and in spite of everything, the struggle continues.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. ”

“ That is why we Zapatistas say that neoliberal globalization is a war of conquest of the entire world, a world war, a war being waged by capitalism for global domination. Sometimes that conquest is by armies who invade a country and conquer it by force. But sometimes it is with the economy, in other words, the big capitalists put their money into another country or they lend it money, but on the condition that they obey what they tell them to do. And they also insert their ideas, with the capitalist culture which is the culture of merchandise, of profits, of the market. ”

“ From the dead spoke our dead, the dead accused, the dead shouted, and in death they lived again. Our dead will die no more. These dead of ours, always ours, and of all those who struggle.
We saw dozens of our people confront thousands of modern weapons with hand and nail, we saw them taken prisoner, we saw them rise up with dignity and resist with dignity. ”

“ Understanding well the gullible man who has accepted the sad mission of being the instrument for enslaving a free people: his vacillating throne does not rest on the free will of the nation, but rather on the blood and cadavers of thousands of Mexicans who have been sacrificed without reason and only because they defend their freedom and their rights. ”

“ The indigenous question will not have a solution if there is not a RADICAL transformation of the national pact. The only means of incorporating, with justice and dignity, the indigenous of the Nation, is to recognize the characteristics of their own social, political and cultural organization. Autonomy is not separation; it is integration of the most humble and forgotten minorities of contemporary Mexico. ”

“ The time has now passed in which the war of the powerful has spoken, may it speak no more. It is now the time for peace to speak, the peace which we all deserve and need, the peace with justice and dignity. ”

“ The Zapatista war is only a part of that great war which is the struggle between a history which aspires for a future and an amnesia which has foreign vocation.
A plural, tolerant, inclusive, democratic, just, free and new society is only possible today, in a new nation. The Powerful will not be the ones to construct it. The Powerful are only the salesmen of the remains of a destroyed country, one devastated by the true subversives and destabilizers: those who govern.
Those projects which belong to the new opposition lack something which today has become decisive. ”

“ We speak of unity even when we are silent. Softly and gently we speak the words which find the unity which will embrace us in history and which will discard the abandonment which confronts and destroys one another. Our word, our song and our cry, is so that the most dead will no longer die. ”

“ And then what happens is that, with the people’s economy being totally screwed in the countryside as well as in the city, then many Mexican men and women have to leave their Patria, Mexican lands, and go to seek work in another country, the United States. And they do not treat them well there, instead they exploit them, persecute them and treat them with contempt and even kill them. Under neoliberalism which is being imposed by the bad governments, the economy has not improved. Quite the opposite, the countryside is in great need, and there is no work in the cities. ”

“ Silence, dignity and resistance were our strengths and our best weapons. With them, we fought and defeated an enemy who is powerful, but whose cause lacks reason and justice. From our experience and from the long and shining history of indigenous struggle which we inherited from our ancestors, the first inhabitants of these lands, we picked up these weapons again and converted our silences into soldiers, our dignity into light, and our walls into resistance. ”

“ The economic, political, social and repressive program of neo-liberalism has demonstrated its inefficiency, its deceptions, and the cruel injustice that is its essence. Neoliberalism as a doctrine and as a reality should be flung into the trash heap of national history. ”

“ Now then, what we want to do in Mexico is to make an agreement with persons and organizations just of the left, because we believe that it is in the political left where the idea of resisting neoliberal globalization is, and of making a country where there will be justice, democracy and liberty for everyone. Not as it is right now, where there is justice only for the rich, there is liberty only for their big businesses, and there is democracy only for painting walls with election propaganda. ”

“ The powerful want our silence. When we were silent, we died, without the word we did not exist. We fight against this loss of memory, against death and for life. We fight the fear of a death because we have ceased to exist in memory.
When the homeland speaks its indian heart, it will have dignity and memory. ”

“ No legislation which tries to shrink the Indian peoples by limiting their rights to the community level, thus promoting their fragmentation and their dispersal which will make their annihilation possible, can ensure peace and the inclusion in the Nation of the very first Mexicans. Any reform which tries to break the bonds of historical and cultural solidarity which exist among the indigenous peoples, is condemned to failure and is, simply, an injustice and an historical denial. ”

“ This is our simple word which seeks to touch the hearts of humble and simple people like ourselves, but people who are also, like ourselves, dignified and rebel. This is our simple word for recounting what our path has been and where we are now, in order to explain how we see the world and our country, in order to say what we are thinking of doing and how we are thinking of doing it, and in order to invite other persons to walk with us in something very great which is called Mexico and something greater which is called the world. ”

“ Waiting for signs of the government's willingness to accept a political, just and dignified solution to the conflict, the EZLN watched, powerlessly, as the best sons and daughters of the dignity of Chiapas were assassinated, jailed and threatened. The EZLN watched as their indigenous brothers in Guerrero, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Chihuahua and Veracruz were repressed and received mockery as an answer to their demands for a solution to their living conditions. ”

“ Instead they give him a salary that barely allows him to eat a little and to rest for a bit, and the next day he goes back to work in exploitation, whether in the countryside or in the city.
And capitalism also makes its wealth from plunder, or theft, because they take what they want from others, land, for example, and natural resources. So capitalism is a system where the robbers are free and they are admired and used as examples.
And, in addition to exploiting and plundering, capitalism represses because it imprisons and kills those who rebel against injustice. ”

“ We call on the deputies and senators of the Republic from all the registered political parties, and on the independent congressional members, to legislate for the benefit of all Mexicans. That they govern by obeying. That they carry out their duty supporting peace and not war. Making the separation of powers effective, that they oblige the federal Executive to stop the war of extermination which it is carrying out against the indigenous populations of Mexico. ”