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XICAN@ NOTES ON LA TRAVESÍA POR LA VIDA: Only Six Months Later: Planetary Voyagers to the Lands of England [Part 4] On August 19th, 2021, we went from Madrid’s international airport to Los Angeles, California. It was an eleven-hour journey. The trip 35,000 feet in the air going “back” in time as we traveled to a territory whose time zone was nine hours turning back on Pacific Standard Time. As we shared conversation about this trip back to our own geographies we called home with our new compas from Madrid, lxs madrileñxs, one compa shared that we should alert those around us in our journey “back in time” that capitalism will still exist in the future…a future of struggle—where the burning star we call the Sun casts light on a rotating planet we call Earth, making another kind of horizon in our geographic consciousness of temporalities, spatial existence, and the daylight/nightlight we use to conspire against capital, states, and power. Our travels “back” meant a time lapse into the “past.” As the compa Natalia would gesture, we enter portals and this portal was to remind our home geographies that the struggle lived on, that capitalism exists tomorrow. Though a joke, we pondered about time and space, about the way our planetary consciousness works as we converged together on Tierra Insumisa to dream, practice, and share Zapatismo. How do we destroy the capitalism of tomorrow? As I write this echo of another time, a European geography in struggle from below and to the left, I am thinking of our time months after the encounters, march, and documentation. Yet as I write this, I am on a train in Europe, in Great Britain, specifically making my way from London to Hull. I am to present new academic work with Natalia on the work of Xicanx writer Luis J. Rodríguez. Our essay is a work-in-progress. We are train-bound to present something with the name of “Red Road Traveler: On the Xicanx Humanism of Luis J. Rodríguez.” Funny enough, I am traveling with Maritza and Gustavo again too, as the four of us decided to travel together—the two of us with an objective in mind (academic discourse), and the other two to experience the world of the United Kingdom with us limited to London and Hull. As we traveled forward in time, we came to see the very same Europe, but from a different geography—yet somehow, we managed to see and witness it from the above, not from the below. There’s a joke in here somewhere, but perhaps that is for another time. As of this writing it is April 21st, 2022. As usual, the compas and I are curious about the below here in London, in Great Britain. It is the same Tierra Insumisa here, though the Zapatistas and the concejales of the Congreso Nacional Indígena have long traveled back to México. We are encountering Europe as academics this time, as curious Xicanxs, and as scholars attending the British Association for American Studies conference. In our unexpected encounters again in Europe, I am feeling particularly exhausted but propelled by the urge to see another side of Europe, perhaps its colonial underside—of Indian migrants, Black people, global Latinidades (borrowed from Ben V. Olguín), and the barrios/geographies marked by dispossession: ones that might simultaneously entangle Irish and Palestinians, Black people and Indians, Mexicans and eastern Europeans. Though, our time is short, and we have no other arrangements here aside from the academic and the professional. Our encounter is from above, and that provides us a different kind of story. Our banda britanica, nuestra banda englatierra, are Xicanx travelers of the world desiring to know where struggles for life emerge and peak out their heads of resistance. I for one am reflecting on how much British post-punk, or UK anarcho-punk music shaped my youth, and now I am here on these lands, where many attempt to understand it as the heart of empire, the governing metropole of so many historical colonies across the world, the United States being one of them at a point in time. Estamos aquí, hablando Spanglish or English in our Californian accents. I tuned in to some of my favorite UK bands that were pivotal for me as a youthful punk: Crass, Conflict, Subhumans, Poison Girls, Doom, Oi Polloi, Flux of Pink Indians, Icons of Filth, and Rudimentary Peni. As I write this on our two hour train ride, I am listening to Conflict’s The Ungovernable Force (1986): “Direct action is what achieves change, not miming to words, how much longer must we sing the same old song?” So, what of Great Britain? What of the Zapatistas, la travesía por la vida, traveling here? As I recall España and our encounters, almost six months ago, I remember a contingent of UK travelers attending many of the gatherings—some Mexicans too who have been living in the UK. I have no real insight when thinking of these questions, though I do know that there was and still are efforts to translate into English the Spanish-speaking translations of the Zapatista compas—and the work here, the UK from below and to the left is still in motion. As I return to those memories and the spirit of rebellion from a tiny geography in Chiapas, México—as a witness to Tierra Insumisa in the barrios of Madrid, I am left now to feel again what Europe from below might mean to me, to us, and the future we. Here are biting words from the screams of UK anarcho-punks from a time ago: Crass: “ATTENTION. Fuck American power. Fuck Russian power. Fuck British power. Fuck all power. ATTENTION. These ignorant shits arm themselves for annihilation and call it world peace. Bollocks!” Flux of Pink Indians: “don't think by turning your face the other way / all pain and suffering will just go away.” Doom: “Let’s all be friends / A means to an end.” * * * It’s April 22nd, 2022, and the nights are rough. Jet lag, this time around, has made me more exhausted with less energy than our journey to Madrid. My eyes widen from a sleepless night as I faced the fact that my body could no longer muster the idea of sleep and was put to the test: How will I perform an alertness, so I am not seen as tired, as “checked-out?” I feel as if I should refuse comportment, refuse the idea I need to be awake. It was 2 a.m. in the morning so I tuned into a graduate student caucus meeting for the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies conference happening on Pacific Standard Time via Zoom. I tried to make myself present. I found myself attending to my teaching assistant work over 5,000 miles away from my university—emails, emails, emails, and some more emails. This work never ends, not even when at an academic conference across the world. I exit the Zoom call and close my laptop. I try to sleep but am uncomfortably agitated for the next few hours. By the end of the day, I will have been awake for twenty-one hours. My restless body struggles with being present. * * * We wanted to visit the grave site of Karl Marx on the weekend. The great German communist, thinker, and philosopher makes me anxious, always on the edge of not knowing how to speak his name around others. That moment in seeing his monument brought me into quiet tears, leading to my memories in reading parts of Capital: Vol. 1, always short on reading the whole text as a book, itching to be devoured. To be submerged in the lands of London as an exile from Germany is a curious history, one riddled with pain. As we accompany the spirit of Marx, I make the effort to remind myself that we owe a pronounced debt to him, regardless of our opinions toward his inquiry. I have too many feelings in thinking with Marx, in thinking with the legacies and movements of Marxism, and knowing the immense impact Marx has had not only for Third World struggles, the Zapatistas, and others; but for Chicanxs in the United States. Many Chicanxs resist the work and life of Marx. They reject his name or his analysis, avoiding the seizure or usefulness of Marx’s lexicon or his reading of nineteenth century political economy in Europe as it was tied to the colonization of the Americas. They refuse his meaning in Chicanx theories of emancipation—as they contend with a vague “decolonization” rhetoric. I am aware of my generalizations, and I know this to be an exaggeration, yet the common hyperbole in rejecting Marx always feels ineffective and futile too. How might we think Marx anew? This isn’t a call to become Marxist, nor anti-Marxist. It is not a call to read literature in Marxism (though, reading literature in Marxism, from French theorists ((i.e., Louis Althusser)) to the philosophy of Mao ((and Maoists I expect)), is doubtless a way to know the range of Marx’s legacy). This is, rather, an open call to read Marx himself—to engage his work in a way to develop a reading of him that is honest and visceral. We might not agree with Marx, but we must know the specificity of our disagreements, with our refusal cognizant of his terms and without dogmatic reverence. As we think of and with the spirit of Marx, I want to pose it as a supplement to and of our study and practice of Zapatismo, in the spirit of conSciencias. At my university, UC Santa Barbara, I inherit the thought of Cedric J. Robinson—his spirit and legacy is felt throughout the routes of South Hall in the Department of Black Studies. Before reading Marx seriously, I read Black Marxism: The Makings of the Black Radical Tradition by Robinson. I came to this text when I was an undergraduate student at UC Los Angeles and attended an event to celebrate the publication of Futures of Black Radicalism edited by Alex Lubin and Theresa Gaye Johnson. Listening to graduate students, professors, artists, and the words of Elizabeth Robinson, what struck me was how Robinson was central to the discussion on Black radicalism and its futures, a tremendous debt to his life and work. Robinson tells a story of Marx, Britain, and the British working-class—a history of racial capitalism. Robinson tells this story from its underside; how primitive accumulation and the colonization of Ireland and Irish people was a precondition for capital accumulation. It was from Robinson’s critique of the limits of Marxism, and the Eurocentricity of Marx and Engels, that I was called to read Marx himself. It was an encouraging intellectual engagement stimulated when I finally read his book in a seminar with Howard Winant and re-reading specific chapters for a seminar with Charmaine Chua. I gesture to Robinson here to think with those who take Marx and Marxism seriously to suggest otherwise expressions, emergences, and struggles that are not of Marxist theory: the black radical tradition being one. To sit with Marx means to sit with a nexus of radical struggles that have no stakes in Marxism. To write from London with this in mind, I think of the Zapatistas who are neither Marxist nor anarchist—who are appreciative of Western/European theory but are not of it. The Zapatista struggle for life is a politics that exceeds Marx and Marxism. Yet, it does not refuse nor reject it. Zapatismo is another way, another theory, another practice with Indigenous roots in the struggles of México. As we leave the Highgate Cemetery, I found myself reading graves and notice Claudia Jones and Yusuf Dadoo, among others buried near Marx, Jenny, and Eleanor. Their spirits lie here, in the peace of the land enclosed by generations of violence. Their freedom dreams live on. * * * In May of 2022, only weeks after our travels to London and Hull in Great Britain, many people of the UK from below and to the left will be organizing (or have organized) an event to remember the summertime when the Zapatistas and la travesía por la vida encountered Europe, the first of many future encounters to the five continents on the planet. This event and its convergence will mark six months since those encounters, the deep listening, and the embracing of the rebellions and resistances in México and beyond. We learned of this event from our social media, following the many pages, profiles, and hashtags that documented and coordinated the Journey for Life in Europe. One of the questions, these many months later and after the fact, was and is: where will the Journey for Life go to next? Where will the Zapatistas visit next to fan the flames of life? Will it be Asia? Africa? Oceana? South America? We don’t know, but we patiently wait as the compas from the Zapatista caracoles, asambleas, and redes continue to debrief and respond to the ongoing narco-paramilitary attacks on their autonomy—an ongoing violence. We wait with an eagerness to see Zapatismo travel as its spirit doesn’t die in the face of this violence. We wait, building the world we want to see, connecting lives and movements, and multiplying our cries for life. But we also don’t wait, for we are in motion toward our own liberatory horizons, in our proper calendars and geographies. Tierra Insumisa, these rebellious lands, are still in their struggle and are not giving up. We know this from the spirit of Zapatismo across these European lands. There hasn’t for a moment been silence, stasis, nor calmness. Our excursions to Great Britain to present an essay on the work and life of Luis J. Rodríguez was a moment for this reflection—a movement of the word that returns to Europe from above in the British geography, another colonial empire that we have a direct relationship to in terms of the language we speak, write, think, and discourse in. We are made through United States settler colonial life, through the histories of British colonialism and the settler resistance to it—but also the Indigenous, American Indian, Red Power movements against them, refusing to disappear in the face of colonial violence. We resist the legacies of white settler occupation that antagonizes Mexicans, Chicanxs, and brown life. Here we are, Xicanxs in London, Great Britain, the United Kingdom. We traverse the memory of European colonialism to find ourselves in the thick of time. Returning to the Xicana feminist thought of Natalia, we entered a portal. To think with the Zapotec world-making of Gustavo, 1492 never ended and is still such a fresh memory. To dream with Indigenous geographer Maritza, what kinds of convergences might be possible? How may they ignite the fire of new rebellions to sow in other rebellious lands? * * * “We Zapatistas have only this to say: “Don’t be afraid to be abandoned by those who have never really been by your side. They are the ones who do not deserve you. They are the ones who are attracted to your pain as they would be to a spectacle, either because it pleases them or disgusts them, but which they will never be a real part of. “Don’t be afraid of being abandoned by those who don’t want to accompany and support you, but instead to administrate you, tame you, subordinate you, use you, and finally, discard you. “Be afraid yes, but only of forgetting your cause, of allowing your struggle to fall by the wayside. “But while you keep with it, while you resist, you will have the respect and admiration of many people in Mexico and the world.” SupGaleano. Mexico, May 3, 2015.
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