San Cristobal to San Andres Larrainzar
June 7th 1995
The dialogue started on Wednesday, the 7th of June and i went to Larrainzar that afternoon. The others weren't going to go till later on, but i didn't want to hang around in San Cristobal, as i didn't have anything to do there and i was feeling a little bit bored with the place. I was still sick and not really in the mood to go and spend a few days in the uncomfortable surroundings that we would be living in in Larrainzar, but i wanted to be there anyway, even if i wasn't going to be much good for anything.
I met Mariana at Conpaz, also waiting to get transport out to Larrainzar. I'd met her briefly just after the last dialogue, but hadn't seen her since then. She came from Mexico City, but she'd been living in London for the past few years, mostly in the same part of London as i'd always lived before i went to Australia. We probably even knew some of the same people.
We ended up catching a bus that left from the Zócalo a couple of hours later. On the way out of San Cristobal, the bus was held up for a while as one of the convoys, taking EZLN delegates to Larrainzar sped past. It seemed weird that we were going to get there after the Zapatistas this time.
So it was back to Larrainzar and back to the noisy, dirty, dusty market building. Back to the disgusting toilets and the shortage of water. It had been alright last time, but this time i was hardly in a fit state to appreciate it!
I haven't really got much to say about those five days of the dialogue. I wasn't really capable of doing very much - not that there was very much to do, anyway, as the other people who'd been there last time weren't interested in doing a round the clock watch like we'd done before, which i thought was really slack, and the people who hadn't been there before didn't really have much idea what to do either. But i was too sick and exhausted to even try and do anything about it.
I spent a lot of the time lying down, mainly asleep, in the market. I couldn't really eat anything except fruit and nuts, without feeling sick and i generally felt weak and depressed. One night in the market i felt so ill i seriously didn't expect to wake up the next morning. But i was too tired and weak to really care much. I just shrugged and thought "well, if i'm going to die, i'm going to die - there's not much i can do about it!" and i went to sleep.
The whole thing had lost it's novelty for me as well - now it just seemed like a really pointless circus, which we'd somehow been drawn into by the indisputable necessity to help protect it's main players. But which seemed a complete farce and a waste of time and energy. Part of my feeling about the event was due to my physical state, but part of it was something that i'd begun to feel towards the end of the last one. I was fully in support of the EZLN's aims and intentions, but i just had this overwhelming depressing feeling that they've been forced into a situation where they couldn't possibly win and were in serious danger of somehow becoming "institutionalized" into the overall mexican system. I use the expression "institutionalized" deliberately, because the ruling party in the mexican one-party system was called the Institutional Revolutionary Party. The revolution had become institutionalized completely in Mexico and avoiding going the same way was going to be one of the harder parts of the struggle for the EZLN.
That's not to say that i thought any of the delagates at those dialogues, or anyone else involved with the Zapatista Army was in any way intentionally heading in that direction, or would even be willingly drawn there, but somehow the Mexican system seemed to have some subtle, but incredibly strong mechanisms for absorbing dissent. As, of course, do all systems that don't slaughter the population by the thousands at the first sign of it. But one revoltion had already been succesfully institutionalized that century, and reduced almost to a string of meaningless phrases. Maybe another one wouldn't be quite so hard. I hoped i was wrong. But i'd have to wait and see.
As it happened, the one party system that had been in power in Mexico for most of the twentieth century didn't survive very long after that. I haven't kept up to date with events there, but the Zapatista uprising seems to have played a part in its downfall.
Anyway, i was quite glad when the whole thing was over.
We got back to San Cristobal at dawn on the Monday morning. It was cold and i was looking forward to getting to the beach, where i intended to go in a day or so. I really wanted to get down out of the mountains. The altitude wasn't doing me any good. I liked it, but i wasn't used to living quite so high up. I'd spent quite a lot of time at close to a thousand metres in north Queensland, but there's a lot of difference between that and over two thousand. Anyway, i was totally sick of the cold. It would be hot and humid on the coast - the sort of climate that suits me perfectly. I decided i'd go to the coast of Chiapas the next day.
That night there was a party in the house, as Ana was off back to Canada in a day or two. Needless to say i wasn't in the mood! However, i spent a couple of hours in the party before going back to bed.