Zapatista communities with the people of the world in Oventik, Chiapas, México.

THE OTHER EDUCATION

31/12/2006

Today, the second day of the first meeting of the Zapatistas with the people of the world and with the grounds of Oventik still covered in mist, began the first work session on autonomous education - the ‘other education’. The table began with a discussion of the autonomous education system that has been established in Zapatista communities since government teachers were run out of the communities in 2000. Members of the Good Government Councils representing the 5 caracoles – La Realidad, Oventik, La Garrucha, Morelia and Roberto Barrios – along with representatives from the education commissions of many of the autonomous municipalities spoke of both the gains and obstacles of the past 6 years constructing autonomous education. Following this period, which allowed each Council 20 minutes to speak to education in their region, was a short question and answer period and the table was closed with the commentaries and participation of delegates from throughout Mexico and the world.

It made clear the differences in the pace with which the schools and educational promoters are advancing, but also clear was the shared desire for the creation of an educational system of liberation rather than domination. All members addressed the history of education in their communities and the reasons for the rejection of government teachers. In addition to the facts that the teachers often came from the cities and therefore had little real commitment to the communities, couldn’t communicate with the students in their native tongue and were often abusive towards the children, after the uprising in 1994 there were fears that teachers came to the communities as spies and the military was often involved in bringing supplies to the communities. Beyond these problems was the recognition that the material being taught, created by a government that is not only abusive but also ignorant of life in the communities, was not serving either the children or the community to address their own problems.

In 1999, after communities had been meeting to discuss this situation, it was decided in assembly that they would begin to name people from their own communities as educational promoters that would take the place of government teachers. The testimonies shed light on the difficulty of this process, which involves training educational promoters and constructing schools in a situation where resources are scarce, but nevertheless all Councilors demonstrated their commitment to the process as the only way to return dignity and respect to their schools. Although the process continues slowly, the hundreds of educational promoters that are currently providing thousands of Zapatista children with a bilingual education in the basic subjects of mathematics, history, language and natural sciences, as well as special focuses on the Zapatista demands, agroecology, and the integration of the theory of the classroom with the practice of community work and life.

Following this presentation and a brief question and answer period, Otra Campaña adherents from throughout Mexico and the world took the microphone to speak of their own struggles for autonomy in education. Representatives from the autonomous schools of Xinaxcalmecac in Los Angeles, La Platforma Mexicana in Madrid joined members of Ya Basta! from Italy, Acción Zapatista and RadioZapatista from California, U.S.-based Mexicanos Sin Fronteras, the Normal Mactumatzá in Chiapas and representatives of Section XXII of the Teachers Union in Oaxaca to speak to the various struggles that organized communities throughout the world are encountering in education.

Whether with the discourse of autonomy or popular power, there was general agreement that institutions of education only serve to educate within a certain, in this case capitalist, framework. As much in the city as in the countryside, there is a realization that it is only working against or outside of these systems that a truly liberatory and critical education can be achieved. Merely changing the content does not affect the relations of power exercised within the classroom and with that in mind, not only the Zapatistas in Chiapas, but people throughout the world are struggling to teach by learning, speak by listening, and govern by obeying.



Table 4 : The 'Other Communication, Art and Culture

summary of the fourth working table, the 'other' communication.

TABLE 4
THE ‘OTHER’ COMMUNICATION, ART AND CULTURE

Only a handful of hours after the Cumbia rhythms stopped dancing through the air from the New Year’s celebration, the 4th working table of the Zapatista meeting with the people of the world got underway, talking about alternative forms of communication and preservation of art and culture. As has been the case for all of the working tables, representatives from the 5 Caracoles – La Realidad, Oventik, La Garrucha, Morelia and Roberto Barrios – began the day speaking of the forms of communication that have been and continue to be established in the Caracoles. Members of the Good Government and Autonomous Municipal Councils explained that the massive and mainstream media are little more than mouthpieces for those who seek to dominate, and that in the capitalist system this domination is as much social, cultural and artistic as it is economic. Since the poor and dispossessed are excluded from these conventional media, it is necessary that alternatives be sought so that they too can have access to forms of communication within and between their communities.

Good Government and Autonomous Municipal Councilors addressed subjects as wide as transportation, radio, internet, murals, traditional music and dress, video editing and production, childbirth and many others. Most important among these has been the installation of internet in the Caracoles and community radios, Radio Insurgente, in communities in many regions. Radio Insurgente, although it transmits via internet as well, is most important in the internal communication, relaying news and cultural events to the communities in Spanish as well as the local dialect – Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Ch’ol, Zoque y Mam. Radios still need to be installed in many more communities, but they are currently in the process of training community members to set up, maintain and transmit via community radios in communities in all 5 regions. The process is slow and often difficult and one Councilor from Caracol V, Robert Barrios, told of the difficulties they had encountered as one of the transmitters failed and burst into flames, discouraging those who were being trained from continuing with the effort.

Training and formation in technical skills to run and maintain computers, navigate the internet and audio and video production have also been vital both internally and externally in the 13 years since the uprising. Within the communities, to augment radio transmissions, news can be taken from the internet in order to create newspaper murals to inform communities of local, national and international news. In the past year, since the launch of the Other Campaign, this has been a vital medium for informing community members of the Campaign’s progress, especially during its halt following the May 3 and 4th repression in San Salvador Atenco. Audio and video production have been just as important for this kind of internal communication as for informing the national and international communities of developing events in the Zapatista communities.

Groups such as Promedios, who have been working with the compañer@s since the uprising developing necessary technical skills produce video documentaries, were also credited for helping a great deal in this aspect of the struggle. Documentaries produced have been showed nationally and internationally, contributing a great deal to the widespread support for the Zapatista struggle on these levels.

Compañer@s from a number of collectives and organizations throughout the world then participated, sharing experiences and struggles from their own communities. A Los Angeles Radio Station, working with the ‘Otra del Otro Lado’, shared its struggle to increase progressive Spanish-language programming in the greater L.A. area, especiall given the ever increasing number of Spanish speakers in the country. Another man from TV Kurdistan, representing the Kurdish territories in Syria, Iraq and Turkey, even invited the compas for training in TV production in their studios. Various member from the Otra Cultura collective in Mexico City shared their experiences, one of the most powerful describing a theatrical event they recently realized in the jail Santiaguito, which ended in family members embracing for the first time in 8 months, and all of the prisoners shouting ‘ATENCO VIVE’, ‘LA LUCHA SIGUE’. Additionally, representatives from the APPO, CIPO-RFM, East Side Café, Soul Rebel Radio, Pintar Obedeciendo, Pulpo Mecanico, Subversion Sonora among others participated sharing their achievements and struggles.

The struggle for retaking communication media is a slow one, and filled with obstacles, but one that needs to continue, and as one comandante said on first day of the meeting, ‘even if we can’t ultimately change the world, we must at least make sure that it doesn’t change us.’


TABLE 6: Possession of land, agrarian destribution, recovered land, harassment. t

The land belong to who works it, the fight for land and territories.

"To sell the Land, it would be to sell our mother", that fullfill the thought of a representative of the Council of Good Government, in the table of Land and Territory, that took place the afternoon of first of January. And it is that to say, for the zapatistas the "mother earth" is the inheritance of their ancestros and practically the only way to survive. Therefore, during three hours l@s zapatistas explained the importance of the control and ownership of the Earth, as well as its efforts to defend the land recovered in the 1994 from paramilitary aggressions and neoliberal plans like the PROCEDE.

The circumstances are different in each Caracoles, because while in the Highland is scarce and is very little fertile, in the warmest Caracoles as Morelia or Roberto Districts there is more land and different cultures, but the pressure of the "bad government" is much greater. On the one hand, the companer@s has denounced the threats of eviction that have undergone in Aguazul and neighboring communities, and by another one they have explained the resistance to the PROCEDE, a governmental plan that it tries "to clear the land of the ejidatarios and the community goods", through land division and the imposition of monoculture.

Another one of the flags of fight in this question is the resistance to the pesticide and the transgénics seeds, that damage the Land and its fruits and force the dependency towards corporations. For that reason, in Robert Districts they have implemented a center of qualification in agroecology that allows to improve the Land yield by means of natural techniques.

After the intervention of the Council, the Consejo National Indigena invited all the original inigenous people to add to the autonomy and resistance to "Capitalism and its governors, guilty of the poverty, repression and extermination of our communities". Also they dedicated a words to the political prisoners of the Cucurah community () in danger of extinction after that for months they hasn't been allow to fish, its only source of sustanibility.

Next we could listen to the word of compañer@s worldwide that fights day to day by for the ownership of the Land which they work and they explained us their experiences of agrarian distribution and colectivización. "Land is not for sale, it has to be work and defended"