…I am called Marcos, and among the numerous personal flaws I bear, sometimes cynically and cockily, is that of being man, macho, male.

As such I must bear, and often flaunt, a series of archetypes, clich?s, proofs.

Not only in regard to me and my sex, but also and above all in reference to woman, the female gender.

To those flaws which define me personally, someone might add the one we have as zapatistas, to wit, that of still not having lost the capacity for being astonished, for being amazed.
As zapatistas, sometimes we approach other voices which we know to be different, strange, and yet similar and appropriate.

Voices which astonish and amaze our ear with your light…and with your shadow.

Voices, for example, of women.

>From the collective which gives us face and name, journey and path, we go to great effort in choosing where to direct ear and heart.

And so now we are choosing to hear the voice of women who have no fear.

Can one listen to a light? And, if so, can one listen to a shadow?

And who else chooses, as we are today, to lend ear – and with it, thought and heart – in order to listen to those voices?

We choose. We choose to be here, to listen to and make echo for an injustice committed against women.

We choose to be fearless in order to listen to those who were not afraid to speak.

The brutality wielded by the bad Mexican governments in San Salvador Atenco on the 3rd and 4th of May, and which is still going on, to this very night, against the prisoners, especially the violence against women, is what summons us.

And not only that. Those bad governments are trying to sow fear through their actions, and, no, what is happening now is that they are sowing indignation and anger.

In a newspaper this morning, one of the individuals who, along with Vicente Fox and his cabinet, are priding themselves on “imposing the Rule of Law,” SeŠor PeŠa Nieto (alleged Governor of the State of Mexico), stated that what happened at Atenco had been planned.

If this were so, then those who were beaten, illegally detained, sexually attacked, raped, humiliated, then they planned, among other things, to be women.

We know, from the statements of those without fear who were detained, who are our compaŠeras, that they were attacked as women, their women’s bodies violated.

And we also know from their words that the violence visited upon their bodies brought pleasure to the policemen.

The woman’s body taken violently, usurped, attacked in order to obtain pleasure.

And the promise of that pleasure taken on those women’s bodies was the lagniappe which the police received along with the mandate to “impose peace and order” in Atenco.

Certainly according to the government they planned on having the body of a woman, and, they planned, with extreme depravity, that their bodies would be plunder for the “forces of law.”

SeŠor Fox, the federal leader of “change” and of the “Rule of Law,” clarified for us a few months ago that women are “two-legged washing machines” (partial disclaimer, revolving payment plans and go to the customer service department).

And it so happens that up above those machines of pleasure and of work, which are the bodies of women, include assembly instructions which the dominant system assigns them.

If a human being is born woman, she must travel throughout her life a path which has been built especially for her.

Being a girl. Being an adolescent. Being a young woman. Being an adult. Being mature. Being old.

And not just from menarche to menopause. Capitalism has discovered they can obtain objects of work and pleasure in infancy and in old age, and we have “Gobers Preciosos” and pedophile businessmen everywhere for the appropriation and administration of those objects.

Women, they say above, should travel through life begging pardon and asking permission for being, and in order to be, women.

And traveling a path full of barbed wire.

A path which must be traveled by crawling, with head and heart against the ground.

And, even so, despite following the assembly instructions, gathering scrapes, wounds, scars, blows, amputations, death.

And seeking the one responsible for those sorrows in oneself, because condemnation is also included in the crime of being women.
zmag.org

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