Zapatistas over de oorlog (of over de strijd?
Rafael - 06.04.2003 23:32
De woordvoerder van de Zapatistas, Marcos, heeft weer een mooi stukje afgeleverd. Erg leuk om te lezen. Het komt van chiapas.indymedia.com, vertaald door irlandesa, zij hebben het weer uit het blad rebeldia
Originally published in Spanish by Rebeldía magazine
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Translated by irlandesa
Rebeldía magazine [ http://www.revistarebeldia.org]
Issue #5
ANOTHER GEOGRAPHY
“May the culture of life flourish and
triumph over violence, arrogance,
contempt and ignorance.”
Heidi Giuliani.
Genoa, Rebel Italy
I. The Tower of Babel: Between Cosmetics and the Closet
The Twenty-first Century. Above, the new century is echoing its predecessor’s forte: political policies are based on dominating or excluding the other. What is there that is new? As before, it resorts to war, lies, fakery, death. The Powers are repeating history, and they are trying to convince us that this time they are indeed drawing up the plan carefully.
Neoliberalism’s project for the world is nothing more than a refashioning of the Tower of Babel. According to the book of Genesis, men, in their striving to reach the heights, agreed on a colossal project: building a tower that was so high it would reach the heavens. The Christian god punished their pride with diversity. Speaking different languages, the men could no longer continue with the building, and they disbanded.
Neoliberalism is attempting to erect the same edifice, not in order to reach an unlikely heaven, but in order to free itself once and for all from diversity, which it considers a curse, and in order to ensure that the Powers never stop being Powers. The yearning for eternity arose, at the beginning of written history, with those who were the Power.
But the neoliberal Tower of Babel is not only striving to achieve the homogeneity necessary for its construction. That equality which destroys heterogeneity is equality with a model. “We are equal to that,” the new religion of money tells us. Men do not look like themselves, nor like each other, but rather like a conception which is imposed by he who exercises dominion, he who orders, he who is on top of that tower which is the modern world. Those who are different are below. And the only equality which exists on the lower floors is that of renouncing being different, or of opting for being so in a shameful manner.
The new god of money repeats the original curse, but in reverse: the different, the other, is condemned. In the role of hell: jail and the cemetery. Prisons and graveyards proliferate along with the “boom” in profits of the large transnational companies.
The common task in the new Tower of Babel is respect for the one who rules. And the one who rules does so only because he makes up for his lack of moral authority with an excess of force. It is mandated that all colors must be covered up and the drab color of money must be displayed, or they must show their many-hued nature only in the obscurity of shame. Cosmetics or the closet. The same conveys for homosexuals, lesbians, migrants, Muslims, indigenous, people “of color”, men, women, young people, old ones, misfits, and all the names adopted by the others in any part of the world.
This is globalization’s project: making the world a new Tower of Babel. In all senses. Homogeneous in its way of thinking, in its culture, in its master. Dominated by he who has, not the moral authority, but the force.
While unanimity was possible in the prehistoric Tower of Babel because of common speech (the same language), consensus is obtained in neoliberal history through the arguments of force, threats, arbitrariness, war.
Given that living in the world involves doing so in propinquity with the different, our options are between being dominant or being dominated. For the former, the quota is full and membership is hereditary. On the other hand, there are always vacancies for being dominated, and the only requirement is that of renouncing one’s difference or concealing it.
But there are those who are different who refuse to stop being so. Those who live in the tower and who are not at the summit have other means of confronting those “misfits”: condemnation or indifference, cynicism or hypocrisy. In the laws of the neoliberal Tower, the option of recognizing difference is punishable. The only path which is permitted is the resignation of that difference.
In the modern age, the Nation State is a house of cards in the face of the neoliberal wind. Local political classes play at being sovereign in deciding the form and height of the building, but economic Power long ago stopped being interested in that game, and it allows local politicians and their followers to amuse themselves…with a deck of cards which does not belong to them. After all, the edifice which they are interested in is the new Tower of Babel, and, as long as there is no lack of raw materials for building it (that is, lands which are destroyed and repopulated with death), the foremen and superintendents of national policies can continue with the show (certainly the most expensive and least well attended one in the world).
The architecture in the new Tower is war against the different, the stones are our bones and the mortar is our blood. The great assassin conceals himself behind the great architect (who does not call himself “God” only because he does not want to commit the sin of false modesty).
In the biblical tale, the Christian god punished man’s pride with diversity. In the modern history of Power, god is nothing more than the public relations agent for war (which can only call itself modern in terms of the number of deaths and the per minute rate of destruction).
II. The Geography of Words
It does not seem to matter much whether prehistory ended three years or 20 centuries ago. Up above, those who are Power and Fate are striving to convince us that history is repeating itself, despite what the calendars say. The annihilation of the different is always in fashion. And, even though there is no essential difference between the Roman Empire’s catapults and Bush’s “intelligent bombs”, technological progress now acts as the new chaplain for the occupation troops (painting with kindness what is still a crime from a distance), and the spectacular stage set (the bombardments on television turn into a “fascinating” pyrotechnic show – CNN dixit).
Without caring whether or not we are aware of it, the Power is constructing and imposing a new geography of words. The names are the same, but what is being named has changed.
And so mistakes are political doctrine, and what is true is heresy. The different is now the opponent, the other is the enemy. Democracy is unanimity in obedience. Liberty is only the liberty to choose the manner in which we conceal our difference. Peace is passive submission. And war is now a pedagogical method for teaching geography.
Where there is a lack of reason, dogma flocks. Dogma first supports the cause, then it deforms it and turns it into fate. In the Power’s binoculars, the horizon is always the same, immutable and eternal. The lens of the Power is a mirror. The different is always unexpected, and the unexpected is always opposed by fear. And fear will always be made strong in dogma in order to crush the unexpected. In the Power’s binoculars, the world is flat, dull and dirty.
If a statesman cannot be remembered for his humanitarian work, then let him be remembered for his criminal work. And so the history of Power is repeated: today the “national heroes” of yesterday are flaunting all their vileness and malice. Today’s “visionaries of God” will be tomorrow’s heretics.
The words change, as do the images. Previously, in the geography of statues, dogma was made stone in order to honor its fanatics. Today, dogma safeguards its memory of itself on magazine covers, newspapers, television and radio news, ensuring that it will act as alibi for those who are continuing the fundamentalist nightmares.
In the modern theory of the state, human beings are born differently. Their incorporation into society consists of an educational process which would be the envy of the cruelest reformatory. The efforts of the entire state apparatus are directed towards “equalizing” each human being, that is, in homogenizing him under a dominion: the dominion of the one who rules. The level of social success is measured, then, according to how one approximates or distances oneself from that model. And the model is that one which is built by he who is Power. Hegemony involves not only the dominance of one, but it also means that all of us go to great lengths to obey him.
That is hegemony – not all of us have the same wealth (not to mention that just a few have it at the cost of the many others) nor the same opportunities – but we do have the same master and the same willingness to obey him (which is another way of saying “serving” him).
When they present us with the simile of society as family, and tell us that there should be rules for coexistence, it is “forgotten” that the problem is “those” particular rules. And there the words change their geography, they no longer say what they say, but rather what they, they who are Power, want them to say.
At some point in modern history, legality supplanted legitimacy, and, when legality is broken by those of above, then the laws must be adjusted. When it is broken by those of below, the laws must be enforced…in order to punish their noncompliance.
III. The Geography of Power
In the geography of Power, one is not born in a particular part of the world, but rather with or without the means of dominating any part of the planet. While superiority was previously argued based on membership in a race, now it is geography. Those who reside in the North do not do so in the geographical North, but in the social North, that is, they are above. Those who live in the South are below. Geography has been simplified: there is an above and a below. The space above is narrow and has room for just a few. The one below is so broad that it takes in every place on the planet and has room for all of humanity.
In the modern Tower of Babel, a society calls itself superior if it conquers others, not if it has more scientific, cultural or artistic advances, better living conditions, better coexistence.
In the modern age, Power carries out multiple wars of conquest. And I am not referring to “multiple” in the sense of “many,” but rather in the sense of “in many places and in many forms.” And so the world wars of today are more worldly than ever. If there is still one victor, then there are many vanquished, everywhere.
Areas are allocated based on the argument of bombs: those who are hurling them are in the North, in the “top” of the tower; the ones who are receiving them are below, in the South.
But it is not bombs which modify geography. The bombs change the distribution of geography, its control. And so, in that space restricted by points and lines, now one dominates, and tomorrow another will dominate. That is what is called “geopolitics.” Geographic maps do not, in reality, note natural wealth, peoples, cultures, histories, but who their owners are.
For the powerful, all of humanity is a child who can be docile or rebellious. The bombs remind the human infant of the advisability of being the one and the inadvisability of being the other.
Today, civilians in Iraq – men, children, women and old ones – suddenly have something in common with the prosperous North American businessman. The latter is manufacturing cruise missiles, the former are on their receiving end. The Armies of the US and Great Britain are merely the kind postmen who are joining two points which are so geographically distant. And so we should be grateful to people like Bush, Blair and Aznar for having taken the trouble to be born in our age. Without persons like them, modern geography would be impossible.
But that war is not against Iraq, or it is not only against Iraq. It is against all attempts, present or future, at disobedience. It is a war against rebellion, that is, against humanity. It is a world war in its effects and, above all, in the NO which it has provoked.
III. The Fate of Polyphemus
The war of the tragicomic Bush-Blair-Aznar axis, and their stagehands in the western “democracies,” has already met with its first failure. It tried to convince us that Iraq was in the Middle East, and no. As any self-respecting geography book states, Iraq is in Europe, in the American Union, in Oceana, in Latin America, in the mountains of the Mexican southeast, and in that worldwide and rebel “NO” which is drawing a new map, where dignity and self-respect are home and flag.
The mobilizations throughout the planet are confirmation, among other things, that this is a war against humanity.
If anyone has understood that today Iraq is in any part of the planet, it is the young people. While others are looking at a map and consoling themselves, measuring the thousands of kilometers which separate Baghdad from their own places, the young have understood that those bombs (the explosive ones and the disinformation ones) want to destroy not only Iraqi territory, but also the right to be different.
And when a young person draws a “NO” on a sign, in graffiti, in a notebook, in a voice, she is not only saying “No to the war in Iraq,” but she is also saying “No to the new Tower of Babel,” “No to homogeneity,” “No to hegemony.” Because the rebel young are using “No” as paintbrush, and, with that paintbrush in their hands, they are drawing, and divining, another geography.
Like the Cyclops of Greek literature, Polyphemus, Power makes its one eye into hatred for the different. It is, in truth, quite strong, and it appears invincible. But, also like Polyphemus, a ghost called “No One” hurls a challenge at it.
Because the powerful, when they refer to the others, contemptuously call them “no one.” And “no one” is the majority on this planet. While money wants to rebuild the world as a tower which will gratify its arrogance, “no one,” which makes the wheel of history turn, also wants another world, but one that is round, one which includes all differences with dignity, that is, with respect. Humanity does not aspire to the heavens, but to the earth.
And so “no one” is eroding the foundations of the new Tower of Babel.
Because the earth is round so that it can turn.
Unlike the current and previous worlds, in that world which is yet to be made, which will be crafted by various gods, when someone asks “Who made the world?”, the response will be “No one.”
And, in order to divine that world and to begin building it, one must see very far into the geography of time. The one who is above is shortsighted, and errs when he confuses a mirror with a pair of binoculars. The one who is below, “no one,” does not even have to stand on his tiptoes in order to divine what is to follow.
Because the rebel’s binoculars are not even useful for seeing a few steps ahead. They are nothing more than a kaleidoscope, where shapes and colors, both complicit with the light, are not tools for prophecy, but an intuiting: the world, history, life, shall have shapes and ways which are still unknown to us, but which we desire. With his kaleidoscope, the rebel sees further than Power with its digital binoculars: he sees the morning.
The rebels walk the night of history, yes, but in order to reach the morning. The shadows do not keep them from doing something in the here and now of their own geography.
The rebels are not trying to improve the plan or to rewrite history in order to change the words and the distribution of geography. They are simply seeking a new map, where there is space for all the words.
A map where the difference between the ways of saying “life” is not in the mouth of the ones who say them, but in the timbre with which they are pronounced.
Because music is not composed of one single note, but of many, and dance is not merely one step, repeated unto tedium.
And so, peace will be nothing but an open concert of words and many gazes in another geography…
From the Iraq of the mountains of the Mexican Southeast, and watching the sky grow dark with military planes and helicopters from “Operation Sentinel.”
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, March of 2003.
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