Week 116: Show & Tell 2/Mexican Chronicles 1

In 1994, we chose to take the bus from Nuevo Laredo to Mexico City. Ten years earlier, we had taken the train and had mistakenly bought First Class tickets instead of Special First Class. Special First Class would’ve been like a greyhound bus; instead we rode for 24 hours in a train car packed like a metro bus during rush hour. So this time we chose the bus. Plus the busline promised movies on board.

Mexico has a rich cinematic history, from the classic Cantinflas comedies to golden age dramas with Pedro Infante or Sara Garcia to hundreds of campy El Santo movies, and all the way to great contemporary movies like Amores Perros and Y Tu Mama Tambien. We would’ve been glad to see any of those. But instead we got treated to a second-rate, all-Stalone festival. We had to sit through such Sly semi-masterpieces as Demolition Man, Cliffhanger, Tango and Cash, Lock Up, Cobra and more. We didn’t even get a single Rocky or Rambo flick.

If only we had bought the xanax or valium that was everywhere in Nuevo Laredo … instead we tried to distract ourselves as best as we could while a Stallone packed soundtrack blared through the bus for more than half of the 20 hour ride, no headphones here, just a TV monitor hooked up to the front of the bus with the volume cranked up.

Along the way the bus stopped many times for breakfast, lunch, dinner, bathroom breaks, snacks, chiklets salekids, tamale saleswomen, driver phone calls, or just because. This was an election year in Mexico and along the way we found out that Luis Donaldo Colosio, the presidential candidate for the PRI, the ruling party in Mexico since the 1920s, had been murdered. There was graffiti all over the place commenting on the situation, and rumors were flying as to who had murdered him. Everyone knew who had pulled the trigger since it was done from inches away, while the Colosio was being interviewed on camera in Tijuana. But everyone also knew that the man who pulled the trigger was just a hired hand. The rumors pointed to everyone, from opposition leaders to drug cartels, but the most persistent and convincing rumor was that the orders had been given by the incumbent president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, also a member of the PRI. Salinas couldn’t be re-elected since the Mexican constitution only allows for one six year term, and Colosio apparently had said some things against Salinas in a recent speech. This proved reasonable enough reason for most people to agree that Salinas must have been behind the murder. Salinas then chose Colosio’s campaign manager, Ernesto Zedillo to be the presidential candidate for the PRI. Zedillo would eventually win the election.

This is what I love about ground travel, as opposed to air travel. There is sense of place and transition as you approach your destination that just isn’t possible when traveling by air. When you cross a border by land, you know you are crossing a border and you sense the mixing and transitioning between the two neighboring cultures. When you cross a border by air, if the pilot doesn’t mention it, it’s hard to tell. As we approached el D.F. (which stands for Distrito Federal, as Mexico City is known in Mexico), the political unrest was palpable.

When we arrived in el D.F. we quickly found a cheap hotel, for about $10 a night, and only a few blocks from the zocalo (central plaza). We drank some beer and ate goat cheese and tomato sandwiches and got some well needed rest after the long and uncomfortable bus ride.

The next day we woke up and walked out into a massive demonstration. Thousands and thousands of people were making their way to the zocalo. A man walked up to us, handed us a rolled up poster of Emiliano Zapata and told us this was a Zapatista demonstration. He said the poster was free, but he would accept donations. Of course we gave him a donation.

Having grown in a Puerto Rican nationalist family which was well versed in revolutionary history, I was familiar with Zapata as one of the principal leaders of the Mexican Revolution. I was also familiar with the then current events that were being reported in the US about the Chiapas revolution following the passing of NAFTA.

Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari through NAFTA and other initiatives overturned the land reform act that Zapata had fought and died for during the Mexican revolution at the turn of the 20th century. The land reform gave to indigenous people the right to communal land that they could then use for agriculture. However the process of land reform was so slow moving that in the 1990s many Mexicans, including those in Chiapas, the poorest most southernmost state in Mexico, had not yet received the benefits of the reform. And now Salinas was overturning those constitutional articles to improve international trade and allow foreign investors to buy Mexican land. I don’t know about you, but if my family had been last in line, watching as everyone is getting their piece of land, patiently waiting for more than 70 years for our turn, and just as it is about to happen, they shut the ticket window… Well, I can understand why the people of Chiapas and all over Mexico were displeased.

So the people of Chiapas rebelled and took over several towns in their state. Predictably, the Mexican government sent the military and squashed the rebellion without much trouble, but that did not end the discontent. And we had just walked out right into a huge demonstration of that discontent. This was the first of what would be many Zapatista demonstrations against the Mexican government.

And this was not one of those demonstrations where cops in riot gear guide everyone down the road to their assigned spot and then make sure no one steps out of line or throws anything or stays past the allotted time for the demonstration. Here, there was no police to be seen anywhere, which would’ve probably done more harm than good. The demonstrators were walking towards the zocalo in large groups. Some groups were dressed in their traditional indigenous attire, others were dressed in black with their faces covered by handkershifs or masks. Many were grafitting ‘Abajo Salinas’, ‘Zapata Vive’ and other slogans on every building along Calle Francisco Madero on the way to the zocalo.

The whole thing made us a bit nervous, but how could we pass it up. So we fell in step with the crowd and headed for the zocalo.

The zocalo is the central plaza of Mexico City. It is one of the largest squares in the world, measuring 240 square meters. It’s big enough to hold four football fields in it, and has been in use as a gathering place since Aztec times, and sits right in front of the also gigantic cathedral.

This day the zocalo was packed with people, and more and more kept streaming in from every side street. Group after group, anarchists, socialists, farmers, indigenous tribes, all mixed in the giant plaza facing the cathedral, setting up camp here and there, planting representative banners. There was no stage or central podium, no speakers, no prepared speeches, just thousands of people gathering together in solidarity with the Chiapas revolutionaries and the Zapatista ideal of owning the land you work on.

And then we saw them, an old beat up van that could’ve been an ice cream truck 40 years earlier was making its way slowly through the crowd. On top of the van four guys were playing some kind of revolutionary rock and roll, a drummer, an electric guitar player, a bass player and a keyboardist. They wore giant Mexican sombreros and were playing some raucus rockanrollized corridos. Slowly they made their way to the center of the zocalo, while Diane, me and others followed them as best as we could. Once they got to a suitable location, they stopped the van and while the band continued to play, two other guys wearing black executioner hoods climbed to the top of the van carrying an effigy of incumbent president Salinas. The band stopped and they made a speech, then the two executioners pulled out long pointed lances and repeatedly stabbed the effigy. The crowd cheered wildly.

Even if everyone wanted to lynch Salinas, the demonstration remained peaceful.

We spent a few hours there talking to people and milling about, and then we headed back to our dingy hotel. Later during that trip we saw the pyramids at Teotihuacan, kissed on the Xochimilco canals and spent about ten days exploring el D.F.

Years later, in the 21st century, when Diane was taking a Latin American history class at the University, her teacher spoke of that Zapatista demonstration we had been in as a key historical event in the evolution of the Chiapas revolution and it’s development into a national non-violent Zapatista movement, that continues its struggle to this day.

*****

Here’s the poster we got from that day which somehow made it back home and is what I really wanted to show you.
On a related note, I recently watched Los Ultimos Zapatistas. A documentary about the last remaining revolutionaries who hung out and fought with Emiliano Zapata during the Mexican Revolution. Most of them were teenagers at the time of the revolution and over 100 years old when the documentary was made. All of them lucid and full of incredible stories about the time when they made revolutionary history.

If you want more information on the EZLN (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional) you can find it here.

All the above pictures in Mexico were taken with a Kodak Instamatic X15f using 126 cartridge film. Best camera ever made.