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XICAN@ NOTES ON LA TRAVESÍA POR LA VIDA: Rebel Thoughts on the Fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlan from Los Barrios de España [Part 6] From “We Arrived” The European sky cries, moved. Its tears can’t be distinguished from the ones that moisten the cheeks—weathered by sun, sea, anguish and adrenaline—of the intrepid 421st Squadron. In their step, their gaze, and their heartbeats, the Mayan people—the legend will say—crossed the Atlantic in 50 days and nights, in their long and turbulent journey for life. SupGaleano June, 2021 * * * I woke up a bit disoriented as my circadian rhythm was adjusting to the time/space I arrived to as I realized myself—a Xicano—on the lands of another Europe, another Spain that I only knew from a colonial history narrated to me in Chicanx Studies classes, a reality that lived in my genetic code and on the surface of my largest organ, my skin. I woke up to a Spain from below and to the left that was full of a history of communists, anarchists, feminists, and other radicals that held Zapatismo to the level of a political philosophy or a set of practices that opposed capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy—in Madrid, I woke to a city that spoke castellano but also spoke rebellion. Only having been here for a few days, the group I traveled with—the compas from our collective project Chicanx World-Making & Futurities—were encountering Madrid for the first time—alongside our compas from sexta networks or the Zapatista journalist world. We were here as neither tourists nor as researchers—we were here to witness and learn how Spain from below, España del abajo, resisted. We accompanied the mesas de trabajo, encounters, workshops, and mobilizations of organized resistance from below that was led by various groups and collectives. In encountering Spain from below, we listened to the people who resisted here and who were building another world in rebellion, surging to become a world of many worlds—we witnessed a new becoming that was initiated by the Esquadrón 421, a contingent of seven Zapatistas who traveled by boat to Europe. Here I share a few reflections, quotes, notes, and musings from tierra insumisa, another Europe from below re-named by the Zapatistas on their Journey for Life that means a land that does not submit to domination—unsubmissive land. I share this spirit of rebellious lands as I journeyed here to tierra insumisa to learn from these lands a rebellious spirit and activity that desired self-organization and autonomy, life and joy, land and liberation. * * * From “Part One: A DECLARATION…FOR LIFE” by the EZLN Only very few things unite us: That we make the pains of the earth our own: violence against women; persecution and contempt of those who are different in their affective, emotional, and sexual identity; annihilation of childhood; genocide against the native peoples; racism; militarism; exploitation; dispossession; the destruction of nature. The understanding that a system is responsible for these pains. The executioner is an exploitative, patriarchal, pyramidal, racist, thievish, and criminal system: capitalism. The knowledge that it is not possible to reform this system, to educate it, to attenuate it, to soften it, to domesticate it, to humanize it. The commitment to fight, everywhere and always—each and every one on their own terrain—against this system until we destroy it completely. The survival of humanity depends on the destruction of capitalism. We do not surrender, we do not sell out, and we do not give up. The certainty that the fight for humanity is global. Just as the ongoing destruction does not recognize borders, nationalities, flags, languages, cultures, races; so, the fight for humanity is everywhere, all the time. The conviction that there are many worlds that live and fight within the world. And that any pretense of homogeneity and hegemony threatens the essence of the human being: freedom. The equality of humanity lies in the respect for difference. In its diversity resides its likeness. The understanding that what allows us to move forward is not the intention to impose our gaze, our steps, companies, paths and destinations. What allows us to move forward is the listening to and the observation of the Other that, distinct and different, has the same vocation of freedom and justice. […] From the bridge of dignity that connects the Europe from Below and on the Left with the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. We. Planet Earth. January 1, 2021. Signed by hundreds of collectives, organizations, networks, and people from different territories around the earth. * * * Today, August 13, 2021, is five-hundred years since the fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the city-temple-state located in the central valley of what is today Ciudad de México, México. Making part of the Triple Alliance, the fall Mexico-Tenochtitlan symbolized a day of ceded power, an emergence of colonial domination by way of conquest. Yet, as the Zapatistas and many pueblos indígenas tell us all around the world, we/they were never conquered. On the geographies of Spain, on the Gregorian calendar of time, and in the mode of resistance by way of encounters and building relations, the groups who are accompanying and hosting Esquadrón 421 welcomed us, a small group from El Otro Estados Unidos, with open arms, curious questions, and mystical theories of how we resisted from below and to the left in a world-imperialist power that constituted the Global North. For many of us in Mexican, Mexican-American, Chicanx, Latinx communities, or American Indian territories from the US Southwest, we understand Spain to be a contemporary nation-state that historically colonized large geographies of Las Américas—or how the Kuna pueblos call it, Abya Yala. For us, the Judeo-Christian kingdom of Castile and Aragón that would conquer the Iberian Peninsula in January 1492 and become the Spanish Crown/Monarchy that would invade central Anahuac in 1521 lives on as a colonial consciousness of who we are as people historically constituted by colonial domination. I am here to say that Spain as a nation-state today is an oppressive entity, but the people themselves are not our enemies. Los pueblos aquí en España son en resistencia. They are not a homogenous, monolithic, or single group of people that seek violence on us as people of Las Américas. They too are in rebellion, in struggle, and are building another world from below and to the left. In the narrations and comunicados of las (comunidades) y los (pueblos) Zapatistas, this day we yell, ¡no nos conquistaron! Five-hundred years means more than a colonial history, it is a story of resistance, of struggle, and it is beyond only us—it is a struggle for the whole planet that seeks life, that desires another way to live outside and beyond capital’s hold on our lives. We resist the narrative that we are conquered by capitalism, that there is no other alternative. * * * From Maritza Geronimo The name Tierra Insumisa was given to the European geographies and people. A renaming of the land that uplifts the rebellions from below in these territories and is also a call to create a new geography, a new way of relating to the land and each other. Yesterday a man in a circulo de trabajo said “la tierra insumisa se tiene que crear” (we have to build this rebellious land). It was a given name but it must be continuously put into practice and built together. The compas from Europe say the tour has allowed them to meet each other (conocernos) and from across the sea we also came to concer. To learn about a place our bodies and minds are forever linked to but I never thought as a Xicana Indígena that I would be here. Two geographies and world views colliding once again. The compas from Spain don’t seem to sit with the legacies of colonialism in the same ways as we do. I have not heard them mention colonization of the Americas or the ways it has changed or impacted their lives. Yet I sit in these spaces with them and have moments of bodily remembrance, a temporal and spatial rift and I am transported back to 1492. I feel enraged, confused, lost. What am I doing in Spain? What am I doing sitting here in circle with les conquistadores? My body and mind return to the present. Colonization sits heaving in my heart and mind as it is everywhere in this city, on every street name and building. The legacies of colonialism never ended for us in the Americas, and it never ended here in Madrid either. So what now? What do we do in this new moment of convergence? ….Aug 13, 2021 12:14pm * * * For many of us, Chicanxs or Xican@s, La Chicanada or La Xicanada, we hold in our spirit a different kind of reality in the United States, one that narrates resistance and rebellion of another kind of space, a middle space, that articulates struggle for another kind of being, knowledge, feeling, and existence. We walk the path of Chicanismo or Xicanism@ or whatever we want to call it. We have named ourselves, who we belong to, who we walk with, and who we build with. We named ourselves to resist a naming by the Anglo State, by that apparatus that absorbs and assimilates La Raza, or in other words, people not part of the dreams and fantasies of the Anglo world. In our mistakes we still walk. In our errors we still struggle. In the face of death, violence, and destruction, we still live and breathe. In the face of rhetorical extinction, we live on unbothered. We are neither race nor nation. We are a movement of people, of a group of groups that don’t always agree with each other. We walk so that we may live. The introduction of Zapatismo into our orbit of thought, action, and doing has forever re-shaped us since the global mobilizations and organized resistance of 1968 to the migrant justice movements of the 1990s against fascist policies to deport undocumented communities. We are not rigid as many perceive us to be—we constitute a work-in-progress as we continuously re-build our path, nuestre caminos. We accompany the Zapatistas not out of isolated solidarity but because we share a common struggle: to liberate ourselves from capital’s death-drive, to build autonomous life. * * * From Gustavo García, "La gira por la vida" 1492 A moment fresh in our minds 500 years later La gira por la vida A moment of pain and beauty responds and speaks to those that are below and to the left we los pueblos originarios are still here, we never left, we moved around, fought back, navigated colonial conditions, capitalist structures, heteropatriarchal logics and practices 500 years later La gira por la vida Makes the call, Teleport, transport and organize They remind us of the importance of knowing Learning Connecting The Zapatistas say Go to Spain, Germany, France, Portugal And Meet, connect, and organize With people from From below and the left our struggle in the continent of las Americas started 500 years ago 1492 Shifted our lives Colonial governance and imposition on the islands, mainland, and continent continues to be fresh in our memory they are experiences that we remember that we are told to never forget La Gira Por la Vida An example of what must happen, The importance of collective building, Of seeing connections in struggle, our futures are at stake, thank you, gracias, shushchirluut Zapatistas For pushing us to meet with those from below and the left In Spain, France, and Germany * * * From “The Journey for Life: To What End?” Is Zapatismo one more grand answer to the problems of the world? No. Zapatismo is a bunch of questions. And the smallest can be the most disturbing: And you what? In the face of the capitalist catastrophe, does Zapatismo propose an old-new idyllic social system which would repeat the imposition of hegemonies and homogeneities now deemed “good”? No. Our thought is small like us: it is the efforts of each person, in their own geography and according to their own calendar and customs, which will perhaps allow the liquidation of the criminal and, simultaneously, the remaking of everything. And everything is everything. Each person, according to their calendar, their geography and their customs, will have to make their path, and just like us Zapatista peoples, they will stumble and get up, and what they build will have whatever name they want to give it. It will only be different and better than what we have suffered before and what we suffer now if each person recognizes the other and respects them; if they give up on imposing their thought on what is different, and if they finally realize that there are many worlds whose richness is born from and shines in their difference. Is it possible? We don’t know. But we know that to find out, you have to fight for Life. SupGaleano. June of 2021, Planet Earth. * * * I look toward new politics, or perhaps an anti-politics, that re-considers the modes of resistances that ground our work for a radical transformation of our societies that operate from a desire to dominate with a brutal reprise for power. How do we build together? How do we get free? The fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlan on August 13 five-hundred years ago is more than how we understand the narrations of Mexica-Tenochca stories after supposed conquest. It is a symbolic date that operates as way for us to re-locate ourselves, our struggles, and how we understand time. From the barrios de España, the fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlan is the resurgence of struggle for life. * * * From Natalia Toscano The journey to Madrid, has been riddled with emotions of uncertainty, curiosity, and determination. I never imagined visiting Europe, much less Spain, as my resentment towards the state has been embedded in my being. Despite these sentiments, I aimed to come with an open mind and open heart to listen and learn from the compas. Sharing memories and stories, the compas from La Otra Europa, have offered alternative windows to this world that for so long has occupied a place of privilege in my imaginary. Here, with Europa Insumisa, I’ve learned about the feminist, anti-racist, and immigrant struggles. We’ve had glimpses to the class struggles and anti-fascist struggles in Spain, France, and Germany. The Zapatistas in their Gira por La Vida have created an opportunity to weave ourselves together and build the world where our many worlds will fit. * * * What the Zapatistas teach me, and what the compas from Esquadrón 421 are teaching Europe by listening and encountering networks, collectives, and organizations in resistance, is patience with each other—knowing that struggle will not achieve liberation tomorrow, but that our cultivation of another world grows from the earth when attended to. The mountain has come to Europe, and soon it will reach other places and other territories for life. We no longer have a world to win—as we are already part of another world surging from below—but we have a planet, nuestre tierra madre, to care for. We have a planet to tend to, a fire to re-awaken. This pastiche is one of six. I start from six and will end at one, very much like the Zapatistas when they announced their travesía por la vida to travel the five continents. With these pieces, we walk while asking questions, we travel so we might listen, we encounter so might learn. We came to Spain not looking for answers, but to learn how Europe struggles from below against capitalism, patriarchy, colonial legacies, racism, borders, States, and other relations or forms of domination. From this reality and our own experiences, we came to understand ourselves as part of medios libres. In that spirit we share our palabra so others might listen, see, and witness too. From SLUMIL K’AJXEMK’OP, or Tierra Insumisa. Territorios en Resistencia. Madrid, España. Planeta Tierra. Kristian E. Vasquez, con los compas más chingones y queridos de mi mundo. Para fortalecer las fuerzas del Xicanacimiento y el Zapatismo del Norte (US//EEUU). August 13th, 2021
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