The Zapatistas Challenge the Sanctity of the Vote

“We are putting everything we have into the Sixth [Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle] and the Other [Campaign],” Subcomandante Marcos told the crowd of 20,000. “Our lives are the least of what we have—our moral authority, our prestige, everything we built is in this effort.”

Now, after four months on the road, four hundred Other Campaign meetings held across twenty states, and two hundred and twenty political prisoners taken during the brutal police raid on San Salvador Atenco on the morning of May 4, the Zapatistas have cast their “everything” against the most sacrosanct day of the Mexican political calendar: election day.

At a national Other Campaign gathering in Mexico City on May 29, Subcomandante Marcos called on members of the Other Campaign across the country to gather in Mexico City on June 30 for two days of debate and, on election day, Sunday July 2, to “interrupt into the calendar of the elite [los de arriba] with civil and peaceful organizing and mobilizations.”

A thousand people exhaled simultaneously, filling the old Venustiano Carranza Cinema with the “sssss” sound of worry.

“If the elite now want to pretend as if nothing is going on and have their party without freeing our comrades,” Marcos continued, “then we must step into their calendar and place the demand for liberty there.”

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