Zapatistas 'Rebellion and Resistance' Celebrates Autonomy and Rights of Women

Marcos describes the system collapse, and inspires with his poetic words the Zapatistas vision of solidarity and global organizing

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, December 31, 2024

CHIAPAS -- "Our word survives in Palestine, although it is small, because it comes from the heart," Marcos said, speaking on the genocide in Palestine, the rubble of hospitals, deaths of infants and media, and the blood that runs through social media.

Marcos said the system has made a victim of humanity.

"In the war against the earth, the destruction of nature spreads, the atrocious crime is against humanity and the planet. The increase in domination has led to a civilization crisis."

Marcos' words opened the meeting of Rebellion and Resistance in Chiapas on Saturday. The sessions, and arts and culture festival, continue through Jan. 2, 2025.

Zapatista women said their grandmothers taught them to fight.

"Our grandmothers understood that we must fight for our freedom and for our rights as women. They were the ones, first companions, who made changes in their way of living and work."

Those brave grandmothers faced the Mexican military without weapons.

"Without weapons, only with their hands, with their voice, with their words."

The grandmothers also faced the Mexican military and guided the families, the pregnant women and the sick children to a shelter in a large cave.

Zapatista women spoke of their roles as women and the new autonomy that being Zapatistas has brought them. They spoke of the balance in their lives, of loading firewood, planting and gathering beans and sharing their stories with their partners, during the Roundtable of Zapatista Women at the meeting of Rebellion and Resistance on Sunday.

Marcos described the dead zones of the oceans created by plastics, the threats to biodiversity, massive death of forests, the mining and mega projects looting the communities and displacing the people and the destruction of ecosystems for the profits of a few.

"The capitalism of its origins has been dripping with blood and rot, but in its last stages this has led to excess."

Marcos shared history from the past 31 years, during his talk, "The Long View Toward Yesterday."

"With this abbreviated history, do you really believe that the Zapatista communities are going to be intimidated by the silence and the slander of social networks, disorganized crime, the National Guard, Federal Army, the Navy, the paramilitaries, the criminals, the pandemics, natural disasters, Trump, Putin, the 4T (Fourth Transformation), the oblivion, the awakening, the lie?"

Marcos said Zapatistas have moved beyond fame and fashion, popularity, and those who come and go.

"Distrust those who approach when everything is going well, they only come to steal the cause and turn it into a commodity."

Zapatistas from the communities described their new collective form of self-governance, and Zapatista youth celebrated their vision of the future.

Read more at Censored News:

Zapatista Women Feel the Freedom, Autonomy and Balance, Rebellion and Resistance

https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/12/live-now-zapatista-women-at-resistance.html

Marcos opens Rebellion and Resistance in Chiapas

https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/12/live-zapatistas-resistance-and.html