not the motorcycle diaries

I received the email below today which is funny for all sorts of reasons, not least that I had intended to go here today to protest the Mexican Government’s recent attacks on Zapatista territory; this also being the day that these protests were held.

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:49:52 -0600
From: Australian_Embassy_Mexico_City@dfat.gov.au
To: Undisclosed Recipients
Reply-to: embaustmex@yahoo.com.mx
Subject: AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION - 24 NOVEMBER 2007 [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] (more…)

A journal entry I wrote from the Canadian Embassy in Quito, 19/12/2007:

I lost my bankcard (the second of two that I bought with me), and the Australian Embassy in Santiago is lending me 100 USD to see me straight until I get back to Mexico City. I am waiting for them to fax through the authorization to the Canadians. I find it quite amazing that the government is providing for me in this situation. I felt lucky to have whatever it is that seems to go along with being an Australian Citizen. I have thought a bit about the arrivant these past twenty four hours. Also about how my reliance on the state has something to do with wanting its indifference, its professionalism, the clear boundary between me and the system which means our relationship is instrumental. Refusal to rely on the state in this instance would mean investing myself in a web of relations that won’t end at the reception desk or my identity papers. I want that distance, the language of rights and citizenship - not the affective entwinements of community and mutual aid. Something in me prefers the uniforms and the paper shuffling to the indebtedness of the family or community bond, the requirement to talk about yourself, to feel grateful and reciprocal. I’ve never been sure if this is a personality problem of mine or if it is a recoded longing for another form of nonstate, nonsovereign community - one that retains certain disinvested features of certain relationships.

The state as unconditional gift? Surely not! But for me, today, with all the global privileges that have enabled me to escape physical crisis again, it has felt somewhat like that.

Don’t tell anybody.

(Of course, the state can be more like an unconditional gift (and less like one of towels and soap, in Az’s formulation) for people like me because I meet its condition in being an Anglo Australian of settler descent. I repaid the 100 USD by electronic transfer a few weeks ago. And that was it).

My three weeks in Bolivia ended up being a formative exercise in deconstructing the official news media, or what realpolitik might mean, or how to write (and not write) killing in a way that mourns every death; knowing how some murders are valued, contested, registered more than others, that mourning is intertwined with justice. 

When I arrived in La Paz, The News told me that there was fighting in the streets of Sucre where the constitutional assembly was meeting.  The government moved the assembly to the military base out of town, and then three people were killed, apparently by the police at the direction of the government.  Being, as I am bound, to consider the authoritarian aspects of a socialist government represented by first world activists as an egalitarian utopia, I resignedly assumed that MAS was taking that familiar road of reform through violence.  When I got to Cochabamba I was provided with some alternative news sources and I realized - apart from the silliness of thinking I could know a situation from a few days and a few dailies - just how much I had failed to consider the complicated picture that I was being presented with as though it was simple, and the reality that is bred by the fact that MAS, and any state goverment wanting to run itself against the neoliberal capitalist model, against a 500+ year legacy of colonization, against crippling oligarchies and stupendous social inequalities, faces a campaign begun from well below the underdog’s position.  And when that position not only gains credence but real administrative power, those who have benefited from this previous set-up will use all of their ample means to prevent it from being taken away.  So they can rightly say that ‘Evo Assesino’ killed three innocent members of el pueblo who were just fighting against authoritarianism.  These terrible deaths (not the result of bullets fired by state police, but of crossfires much more confusing and insidious) became the collateral for those being threatened with the loss of their power to say there is no democracy in Bolivia, to say that pro-democracy protesters are being murdered by the state, that democratically elected local governments are being destroyed and that is why the international referees of democracy should step in before a socialist dictatorship is established in Bolivia.  I got the shivers watching the news the night before I left Santa Cruz, seeing the prefects roll into Washington seeking US support.  More than one activist in Cochabamba noted a few similarities between this moment in Bolivia and that before the 1973 coup in Chile. 

Power will do what it can to maintain itself, including making itself appear vulnerable and threatened.  And all the while knuckles are cracking in Santa Cruz mansions (pictured) as strategy is discussed, the shiny 4 wheel drives line up outside the plaza where their ‘oppressed’ drivers are ‘on strike’, and kids crowd around me with feisty, famished eyes and ask me to buy them lunch.

I’m marking time this hot afternoon in a Piura internet booth, recalling the drive here from Loja, Ecuador and hoping for some of the same en route to Lima tonight.  Some - not all -  of the same; onto the elimination pile goes the speed at which the drivers take the narrow streets at high, high altitude.  In the first few hours out of Loja I was having trouble prising my hand out of the Jesus grip on the armrest.  I thought the nice old man next to me might have been having similar concerns due to the number of times he had crossed himself since we had left town, so I smiled weakly at him and said “ah …. pretty fast hey!”.  He replied “Yes … very.” Heartened that at least there did not appear to be a difference in cultural definition here, I added breathily, “ah … isn’t it a bit dangerous?”, to which the man laughed and said “no, only the best choffers drive fast!” and gestured to our very own choffer’s hawklike vigilance over the wheel.  Of course, said vigilance took place while exchanging obscenities with the other driver, listening to rapid beat salsa at top volume - all night - and occasionally glancing up at a plastic statue of La Virgen del Cisne (above) who sat above the dashboard and seemed to light up according to certain speeds (take note, s.c.a.m-mers - the catholic merch here is beyond our wildest dreams).  I eventually realised that the instances of the man crossing himself corresponded to our encountering of Virgen shrines (bigger plastic statues of said Virgen encased in elevated plastic boxes filled with flowers and ornate crucifixes) along the road.  Before he got off the bus he turned to me and said “very fast!!!” to me about every twenty minutes and looked at my white knuckles with an avuncular chuckle.  Something tells me that scaredy-cat-anglo-restraint gringos are the butt of more than a few jokes in these parts.

What I would repeat is the beautiful, mountainous Andean landscape - dwarfing hills, verdant valleys, orange and brown scrub with startingly green-trunked trees in flower, small plantations of maize and sugarcane, ambling donkeys, pigs, and chickens.  I swear, if country towns and I didn’t suspect each other of so much, I’d live in one tomorrow. 

“Vamos a pedirles a los compañeros hombres zapatistas que nos ayuden en cuestiones de logística. Podrán estar también los compañeros de México y del mundo para oírnos, pero calladitos, al igual de nuestros compañeros hombres zapatistas.

Este Tercer Encuentro, como será especialmente de las mujeres zapatistas, estará dedicado a la comandanta Ramona, que llevará su nombre.

Entonces queda así: Tercer Encuentro de los Pueblos Zapatistas con los Pueblos del Mundo. La comandanta Ramona y las Zapatistas. Así que lleven este mensaje para las demás compañeras. Que se vayan preparando. Al mismo tiempo, que vayan diciéndoles a sus esposos que se tienen que quedar unos días para cuidar la casa, los hijos y los animalitos mientras salen y se encuentran con las zapatistas para organizarse de cómo luchar contra el capitalismo y el neoliberalismo.”

—–

“We are going to speak, us women Zapatistas, with compañeras from Mexico and the world and you will be able to ask questions of how we organize ourselves, the women Zapatistas, more directly with women. We are going to ask the compañeros men Zapatistas that they help us with logistical questions. Compañeros from Mexico and the world may also come to hear us, but remain silent [calladitos], same as our compañeros men Zapatistas.

This Third Encuentro, as it will be especially of the women Zapatistas, will be dedicated to Comandanta Ramona, and will take her name. Thus it is like this: Third Encuentro of the Zapatista Peoples with the Peoples of the World: Comandanta Ramona and the women Zapatistas.

Bring this message to the rest of the compañeras. That they are prepared. At the same time, that they go to tell their spouses that they will have to take care of the house, the kids, and pets for a few days, while they leave and gather with the women Zapatistas to organize ourselves on how to fight against capitalism and neoliberalism.”

- Comandanta Everilda, 28 July 2007, La Realidad, Chiapas.

(Photograph taken at Museo Casa de Leon Trotsky)

¡Trotsky liked chickens!

I dare The Whitlams to write a mushy song about my current neighbourhood.

PS. I think I know where Howard got his latest grasping-at-straws idea from.

¡NO A LOS PRODUCTOS GRINGOS!

Sal de ahí gringuito gringuito
Sal de ahí de ese lugar…

Finjo que no puedo escuchar oír, porque soy gringuita, gringa … y no este tipo de gringa. (Pero, claro, no importa, tengo piel blanca, y dinero, sin embargo)

Yo recuerdo quando el hombre brasileiro dicho: Não deve dizer que você é ‘primeiro mundo’, você é uma persona legal!