Toledo and the Zapatistas: In Praise of Silence

28 June 28 2002By Yvon Le BotIt has been more than a year now since the zapatista comandantes returned to Chiapas, since Marcos and his compañeros retired to the Selva Lacandona and maintained silence. It has been several months now since, after having fought for years and having successfully made Oaxaca a center of cultural splendor, Francisco Toledo, the most indigenous and most universal of Mexican painters, retired to the asphalt jungle, to the concrete selva of Los Angeles.Apparently opposite travels, they are, in fact, symmetrical. The parallel is not unwarranted, and it is telling that Toledo was one of the persons who was invited to accompany the zapatistas to the Congress of the Union during its historic session of March 28, 2001.Since then, history has once again gone mad. In these times of digression, of loss of references and of babble, when the old "guides" have disappeared or are no longer playing that role, Marcos and Toledo present the image of "ancient young ones" (thanks to Elena Poniatowska for having suggested the expression to me). Not because of their age, but because they are dissidents who refuse to be paraded through main street and who impose periods of silence, a requisite for all new words, for all creation and for all wisdom. So that the words do not lose their power, in order to lend weight to those words which will be spoken tomorrow.There is a time for words and another for silence. A time for listening and meditating, another for producing.During periods of great confusion, the Christian hermits would retire to the desert in order to rediscover meaning and, in that way, produce rebirths. The Selva Lacandona used to be called, in days gone by, the Desert of Solitude, and the mountains of Chiapas are strewn with solitary, colorful, and touchingly simple chapels.Marcos - the interested party himself has stated - does not exist. He is nothing more than an image, a figure who was born on the first of January of 1994 and who, once the circumstances of his rebellion have disappeared, hopes to disappear along with them (last year, during the march for indigenous dignity, he seemed to catch a glimpse that this moment was close). It is nothing more, he says, than a window frame. Today, this window seems to be closed once again, but could it be that we do not wish to see anything more than the frame, or could it be that the light is failing?Marcos is a mediator, a bridge, a spokesperson, like the "talking saints" of the old Mayan religions.During a visit to Chiapas in 1938, a time of disturbances as well, Graham Greene heard of one of those talking saints. A campesino from a village deep in the mountain had an image of San Miguelito put away in a little box. When, after four years, he opened the box, the saint began speaking "in a voice that was strong and clear." He spoke as easily in German, French and English as in Spanish and the indigenous languages (in reference to the latter, we are not certain that Marcos has San Miguelito's linguistic talents, but who knows? Perhaps in four years?). The author of The Power and the Glory wanted to see and hear this "miracle." After an exhausting trip by horseback and laborious conversations, they presented him with a box of tea that contained, in a wooden frame, an image of the Archangel Michael slaying the dragon and a strange little head of a woman with curly hair, who was supposed to have spoken. She remained silent, however, in front of the writer. Not surprising, considering the writer's vision of Mexicans, and especially of Indians and their "superstitions," in addition to his sense of white, Christian and British superiority (Graham Greene was not, however, the worst...).Like Greene, the zapatistas, in the beginning, felt that they were holders of the truth. They spread a discourse that was revolutionary, rigid and anachronistic. But they set about listening to the voices that people the mountains and the selva. "Little boxes that speak recounted to us another history which comes from yesterday and which points to tomorrow. They recounted ancient histories to us that recall our sadness and our rebellion." Little by little, their voices were joined in unison with these voices which allow themselves to be heard only by those who are willing to do so by suppressing the confusing noise of the world and by abandoning moth-eaten certainties.Between April and May of 2002, the Mexican Deputies and Senators, after having listened to them, turned their backs on the zapatista words. On September 11, the attacks in New York and Washington plunged the world into a new era of sound and fury. Over the last months, the hysteria over security which has permeated the entire world has accentuated, in Europe, the rise of demagogues and of the extreme national-populist right.In the face of this war logic, some people have sought confrontation and have enlisted in a mimetic and suicidal rivalry. The return to an imperial logic, with the State coup d'état that was Bush's election, is provoking a new period of anti-imperialism. But Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda make the other anti-imperialist words pale by comparison, and they are undoubtedly much more effective if it has to do with striking out at the monster.Others, refusing to give in to blackmail and insanity, are seeking to rid themselves of fatal confrontations, to immerse themselves in the lasting, and to develop a culture of resistance and of dissidence. In a fashion similar to those "ancient young ones," who, by maintaining distance, are discovering anew the paths of creation and are contributing once again to giving meaning to words and perspective to action.[Based on a translation from French to Spanish by Nathalie Seguin]