Tag: our word is our weapon

The “Beneath the Mask” section of Our Word is Our Weapon raised more questions about the identity of Subcommandante Marcos. It’s interesting- not necessarily bad or good, just interesting- to add a section to this book that shows him interacting with the children in the camp, then later adding a section of confessions, it all seems very personal, even if the confessions are largely political. Compared to the more elusive image of Marcos that we saw in the first half of our discussion, this is vulnerable, intimate. I particularly enjoyed the section where he responds to the list of accusations- there’s a lot of personality here but there is also a deep awareness of how he is perceived, criticized, received… and he accepts it all. It’s hard not to feel at least a little bit endeared to this person/character/”hologram.” Is that strategic? Is it genuine? Both? I can’t say for sure.

The next section, wherein Marcos interacts with Durito, is much more metaphorical than the previous parts we have read. Durito, who claims to be 10 years old and a beetle, becomes part of the Zapatista movement of his own accord. Throughout Marcos’ stories, ages are sometimes exaggerated or tied to specific dates. This makes me wonder about Durito’s actual age- though, in some of his interactions with Marcos, it does seem like he is a child, while in others he is wise and politically aware beyond his years. This section also has an incident where Marcos, along with Durito, are almost caught by the military. When Marcos fears for Durito’s safety, Durito says that Marcos is actually the most at risk, which Marcos realizes is true. This takes me back to the previous section. Is Marcos including this to make a point about the dangers that children are facing under this government? Durito comes to the camp willingly, seeks it out even, yet I wonder what sort of childhood you have to have to do such a thing. (As an aside, I tried looking Durito up and all I can find is a specific type of snack, so if this is a nom de guerre, it is not one that is widely remembered.)

Of course, there is also a large part of this dedicated to discussing the Popol Vuh. Since we have already spoken about this so much (and no doubt will speak about it more tomorrow), I will try to keep my thoughts here concise. I think that, much like in IRM, including the Popol Vuh speaks largely to a shared identity. It makes sense that Marcos identifies with it, connects with it, and shares it here. Even though his own identity is called into question (or problematized), using the Popol Vuh is undoubtedly a way for him to connect with the people he is speaking, fighting, dying, for. It seems that there are also a lot of parallels (intentional or unintentional) between the story he is telling about the Zapatistas and the story of the Popol Vuh.

“Our Word is Our Weapon” reads like a treatise rather than a novel. As the pages detail the injustices the Mexican state imposes upon the Mayan population, I am reminded of all of the political theory I had to absorb early on in my studies- though, Subcomandante Marcos’ writing is certainly more digestible than Enlightenment-era philosophers. I understand why he was chosen to represent “the people”- his tone is clear and collected/ive. However, this representation is also complex in its own way. Marcos, the chosen speaker for the disenfranchised Indigenous people of Mexico, especially the Maya in Chiapas, is not himself Maya. How do we reconcile this? How does he? How can a collective identity speak in one voice?

Subcomandante Marcos seems to recognize that his position here is delicate, and the people that chose him as their speaker seem to see this as well. I suppose (?) that Marcos’ is a more direct representation compared to Guaman Poma’s First New Chronicle and Good Government, wherein Guaman Poma self-assigns as the spokesperson for the Indigenous population of the Spanish-occupied Andes. At least there is somewhat of a consensus and acceptance of Marcos as the voice of the movement. Something else that was similar to the Guaman Poma text was the inclusion of roles/lives of others. Guaman Poma spends a considerable amount of time detailing the experiences of individuals, which Marcos does as well. Particularly, Marcos goes into detail about the lives of some of the Zapatista women in the first section of this book. While this follows a long tradition of women participating in revolutionary activity in Mexico, women’s roles in times of conflict have largely been ignored or represented as negative. (Take many of the cultural depictions of the Soldaderas of the Mexican Revolution, which portray these women as either mothers or whores, a binary which erases a plethora of complex lived experience). Marcos describes these women as important, instrumental, even integral to the work of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). This, to me, was reminiscent of how Menchú described the women who took up arms in Guatemala. Given Marcos’ own relationship to identity (the ever-present mask, for example), the whole of this text seems imbued with questions of how we relate to and identify with each other. The EZLN itself uses Marcos’ (ironically secret) identity as their own to form a larger movement and mobilize, yet Marcos is also co-opting a sort of identity by being the voice and masked face of the movement.