San Andres Larrainzar
May 12th 1995
The Zapatistas arrived at sunset on the first day of the peace talks. They were travelling in three separate convoys, accompanied by red cross and civilians to make sure the Mexican army didn't kill them all before they got there.
The first three were dressed entirely in black, with only their eyes showing through the black balaclavas that covered their faces. In a bizarre contrast, they were wearing a local style of brightly coloured hats which had multicoloured streamers hanging from the brim. They were greeted like superstars, with the crowd clapping and cheering as they drove through the cordons and stepped out of their car.
The second group arrived in the same manner. They were dressed similarly, except they weren't wearing the coloured hats. The last convoy arrived after dark and included the only woman in the group, Comandanta Trinidad, known as "Trini". She was the only one dressed in normal clothes, although she had a scarf over her nose and the lower part of her face, to disguise her features.
It was a strange, but moving spectacle, watching the arrival of these freedom fighters who have risked their lives - and even right there and then were putting themselves at risk - to fight for land rights and equality and against colonialism and genocide. At this point in history, these people and the rest of their communities were involved in what was probably the most important strugle for land rights in terms of global politics. In fact it was possibly one of the most politically important things happening in the world at that time - although the story had been conspicuously absent from the international media.
- - -
I'd arrived in San Andres Larrainzar, the village where the peace talks - the "dialogue" - was being held, earlier that afternoon. The bus ride through the mountains from San Cristobal de las Casas where i'd arranged my accreditation as an international observer at this event, took less than an hour.
The countryside on the way was pleasant - although quite seriously degraded by hundreds of years of colonization and deforestation. It was mainly small-scale agricultural land, with a variety of crops to be seen, although maize was the main one by a long way - as it would have been for thousands of years in those parts. The land there seemed to be more or less exclusively farmed by indigenous campesinos (peasant farmers). I saw a lot of soil erosion, particularly near the road, of course, and signs that the land was beginning to get a bit tired of supporting the hundred thousand inhabitants of San Cristobal.
The road passed through San Juan Chamula, an indian village, about halfway to Larrainzar. A lot of the indians who i'd seen around the streets of San Cristobal, selling things to the tourists, came from there. They were selling hand made souvenirs including little zapatista dolls made out of sticks and cloth, complete with black balaclavas and wooden rifles. I found this a little odd, as they were one of the few groups of indians in the area who didn't support the EZLN - the Zapatista National Liberation Army.
When we arrived at Larrainzar, nobody seemed to have much of a clue what was going on, but a woman who'd been at the previous round of peace talks showed us where the market was - this had been set aside for our use as a dormitory and base. It was a new building, down the hill from the main part of the village, surrounded by a newly bulldozed area of flat, bare soil. The market was quite big, built like a warehouse and divided up inside into small stall areas, partitioned off by chest-high concrete walls, with a lower wall at the front, topped by a six foot long, two foot wide concrete counter. There were stalls around the outside walls and a row in the middle, back to back, with an aisle between the outside ones and the middle ones running all the way around. The roof was high and made of corrugated asbestos or something similar and the place had the acoustics of a barn, with every little noise echoing off the roof and bare concrete walls and filling the place with a constant cacophony of disjointed sound.
When i arrived, some of these compartments were occupied and some empty. I grabbed an empty one, not far from a door, and put down a mat of woven rubber strips to sleep on - a small and obviously insufficient pile of them was available for us to use. Soon afterwards, Ana arrived and put her stuff in the same compartment. We found out later that the next door compartment, between us and the door, was occupied by Jabi, Joserra and Blanca (a woman from Madrid who i'd first spoken to at Conpaz) and a couple of Mexican men, Alvaro and Raúl. The seven of us turned out to be quite a long-lasting group, considering the transience of the situation.
I went up to the Zócalo, or central square of the town, which was where everything was more or less happening. There was quite a crowd of people standing or wandering around in a fairly aimless manner.
The square itself had a dozen or so permanent kiosks in it, which sold drinks, fruit, veggies etc. In the middle there was an awning with chairs and tables under it, with people sitting around not doing much.
Around the outside of the square there was a road. Across the road, on the opposite side of the square from the direction of the market, stood a large church. In the road on this side, there were a few people selling things like hot corn on the cob, fruit, cassettes of music and other things that people in such a gathering might want to buy.
Near the corner was Oscar's peace fire, which consisted of a small fire place, which he'd built in the road and which he kept a fire burning in for the entire duration of the dialogue. He'd been at the last one there, doing the same thing. He also had a peace pipe, which was a major part of the process.
To describe Oscar's fire, and do it justice is impossible. It was in a constant process of transformation and desarollo, which is the spanish word for development. Somehow, though, it has quite a different feeling from its english equivalent - it literally means "unrolling" or "uncoiling".
The fire itself, the fireplace and the almost altar-like arrangement of things around it were in a constant state of change. Somehow - to me at least - Oscar and the fire where the physical embodiment of the spirit of the talks, at least from the indigenous point of view. I don't think the government side had any spirit or spirituality about it in even the most basic form. In a way, the fire was an external indication of what was going on behind the closed doors of the buildings where the dialogue was taking place. It was a powerful focal point for us outside - and one that usually had a small crowd of people gathered around it.
Round the corner, on the other side of the road, there was a stall selling EZLN souvenirs - lighters, keyrings, t-shirts, photos of masked-up Zapatistas, tapes of zapatista songs etc. Next to that, was a crowd of people gathered around a man with a guitar singing songs about Chiapas. The thing began to have the atmosphere of a Zapatista festival, which in a way was partly what it was.
Further on, parked next to the square, was a telephone company truck with a gigantic satellite dish on the back and a generator running. This was the conduit for all the extra phone channels which had to be in place in this little village for these talks to function - for the media mainly, i assume.
On the third side of the square nothing much was happening. Across the road, there was a small restaurant and a shop with another restaurant out the back. But not much else really.
The fourth side was where all the main action of this circus was taking place. There was a line of soldiers, facing alternately inward and outward, armed only with batons. They made up one side of the cordon that stretched the whole way round the block next to the Zócalo. Behind the soldiers, was a line of civilians, wearing white vests with "PAZ" (peace) and below it "Sociedad Civil" (civil society) in red letters. This was the Cinturón de Paz, or peace cordon. Inside this there was line of local indigenous people, making up their own peace cordon. And then a line of Red Cross workers making a fourth cordon around the buildings where the talks were to take place and where the EZLN delegates would be living for their duration.
In the road, between the square and the main building of the talks, there was a large, raised podium, more like a stage really, with a blue tarpaulin roof. This was for the press to film and record the reports that the various parties to the talks would make regularly on the steps of that building.
From the square, the lines of the cordons stretched off for fifty metres or so along the side of that block, taking up the complete width of the roadway. The whole thing had a very weird feel to it!
Fairly soon, i met up with some of the other foreign observers, including Jabi, Joserra, Ana and Blanca. We began to try and organize ourselves into shifts, so that a group of us would be keeping an eye on things twenty four hours. Obviously this is how the cordons were operating too. We organized three groups and took four hour shifts each, twice a day. This gave us four hours on, eight hours off every twelve hours. I was in the twelve to four shift with Ana and Jabi. Four hours from midnight and midday every day.
There were twenty or so foreigners there as observers and most of them ended up being involved in this shift system in some way or other, although there was only a couple of times when there was any more than three in our shift.
- - -
At about half past nine that morning i'd gone to the Conpaz office and left my stuff there. Then i headed for the nearby market to buy some food for the next few days in Larrainzar.
San Cristobal market is one of my favourites anywhere. In fact, i can't off hand think of another fruit and veggie market that i prefer. It's much more pleasant to wander around than the Victoria Market in Melbourne, Rusty's Bazaar in Cairns, or Ridley Road Market in Dalston. Although i'll always have a soft spot for Ridley Road, with it's strong West Indian influence and reggae music.
San Cristobal market was all local produce, which made it cheaper than anywhere else i found in Mexico. There were a lot of indian campesinos who came into town to sell fruit and veggies they've grown themselves. It's hard to say what proportion of the vendors fitted into that category, but it was probably a fair few.
There were plenty of good, cheap avocadoes - in fact, i was paying about a fifth of the price that i paid in Tonalá, on the coastal plain of Chiapas, a few weeks later. There were bananas, papayas, mangoes, potatoes, carrots, lettuces, tomatoes, pineapples, onions, garlic, herbs, oranges, limes, maize, radishes, mameys, peanuts, a few things i don't know the names of, and plenty more. All good quality, in good condition and cheap. There were stalls selling slices of pineapple and water melon, people selling hot corn on the cob - with chilli and mayonaise if you wanted it, drinks stalls selling fresh fruit drinks and open-air restaurants selling good, very cheap food.
As well as fresh fruit and veggies, you could buy dried beans and seeds, dead animals of the walking, flying swimming and probably also the crawling kind (although i didn't check this section out at all!), clay pots and handmade baskets and string bags made from maguey (the same agave they use for making tequila), cassettes, blankets, incense, candles and handmade animal soap. There was a tortillería, where you could buy freshly made corn tortillas. All in all, there was very little need to shop anywhere else in San Cristobal.
Anyway, that day i bought some avocadoes, carrots, oranges, peanuts in their shells and bananas - enough, i figured, to keep me going for four days if necessary, as advised by the piece of paper they'd given me when i registered.
When i got back to Conpaz, there were a lot more people there, all just hanging around waiting for something to happen. Lots of people were coming in to get accredited too. I picked up my accreditation, which was a square of green card, with my photocopied passport photo, my name and a few more words on it. This was laminated and had a hole punched in the top for hanging it round your neck or pinning it on your clothes.
Eventually, i don't know what time, a couple of small buses had parked outside, blocking the road, and started to load us on.