Ruminating on this most disastrous case of mistaken-identity as I gazed out across the sapphire waters to this Mediterranean Quetzalcoatl, I wondered at what is visible and submerged in contemporary Turkey and its history.  Was the half-sunken serpent a fitting metaphor for the seen and unseen of “The Deep State,” a concept introduced to me by Zeynep in our discussions on Turkish Nationalism?  Or was Mustafa Kemal “Atatürk”, the omnipresent Father of Modern Turkey, in some way the local Quetzalcoatl equivalent of his time, as a heralder of a Modernity which would later serve to harbor the influxes and proliferation of Neoliberalism and Globalization?  I am deeply suspicious of such paternalistic nation-building figures, especially as according to the mythic nationalist psyche of Modern Mexico, Cortez is portrayed as the nation’s “father” who raped our indigenous “mother” (Malintzin, the Mayan princess who had little choice but to translate for the invader, but who is portrayed by the nationalist and indigenist narratives as a traitor).  If this is how Modern Mexico was born, then it might explain the tangle of soap opera horror-show politics that now characterizes Mexico’s elite governance, not to mention the self-hatred that such a violent union implies.

Back in Istanbul, I continued to think about the “Deep State” and its manifestations, both here and back in the places where I’ve lived. Istanbul is a city that may still hold nostalgia for its former imperial glory, but which seems to have embraced a Western Modernity heralded and championed by Atatürk with unquestioning stride and pride.  Political theorists and historians will tell you that the cult of Atatürk was intentionally revived after the 1980 Military coup, first by the state, but strangely enough, now enthusiastically enforced by citizens themselves.  Thus, it is not that a mandatory law decrees Atatürk’s likeness be exhibited in every public and private place of business, but rather a sense of obligation and political posture that is set forth mainly by middle and upper-class champions of Modernity.  Posters (or puzzles–as in the room we held yoga in of Istanbul University, or carpets—as in the likeness at my local coiffeur’s, or bronze statues–as in the streets and parks) of the modern nation’s father, adorn every school, business and office, including that of my sister’s mother-in-law at the women’s health clinic, and even the stage of my nephew’s pre-school performance that I attended upon landing from Beirut.

In our day and age of Post-Everything, the very concept of the nation/state seems obsolete, and so it seems foolish to keep perpetuating identities such as “Turkish” or “Mexican”, or even more absurdly the incredibly misleading “American.”  Zeynep and I took care in calling each other on these slips when we spoke about my cooking up some “Mexican” food, or drinking some “Turkish” rakı.  In the Zapatismo of Chiapas, where I live, such Identity Politics seem to have actually evolved some, arriving at an understanding that encompasses our diverse mythological histories (as much of the Mesoamerican and Colonial, as those of Modern Nationalism), yet remains acutely aware of the construction process itself and the importance of constant self-reflection (Caminando Preguntado). The larger social identity of Zapatismo includes all of us (Todos Somos… and Detras de Nosotros Estamos Ustedes).  Theirs/Ours is a reclaimed modernity on local terms that is comfortable with past and present contradictions, always championing the diversity of the collective.  Caminando Preguntando, is the methodology for remaining ever in-process of forging this contemporary collective “re-existence,” a concept introduced at the end of my friend Jeff Conant’s latest book, A Poetics of Resistance.

Such sights, memories, and metaphorical imaginings have brought me to reflect on some ways in which national and cultural myths have constructed collective histories and identities in both Mexico’s and Turkey’s present-day modernities.  In both dominant national narratives, what is seen and unseen, but felt… and by whom, reflects a critical thinking and imagination (or lack of) that is badly needed to deal with our current era of globalization and its discontents.  Examining what explicit and hidden assumptions guide our past and future endeavors is crucial if we are to have any chance of effecting some change in our places…or at least to keep from repeating a case of mistaken identity.

En 1992, mientras se celebraban los cinco siglos de algo así como la salvación de las Américas, un sacerdote católico llegó a una comunidad metida’en las hondonadas del sureste mexicano. Antes de la misa, fue la confesión. En lengua tojolobal, los indios contaron sus pecados. Carlos Lenkersdorf hizo lo que pudo traduciendo las confesiones, una tras otra, aunque él bien sabía que es imposible traducir esos misterios: –Dice que ha abandonado al maíz –tradujo Carlos–. Dice que muy triste está la milpa. Muchos días sin ir. –Dice que ha maltratado al fuego. Ha aporreado la lumbre, porque no ardía bien. –Dice que ha profanado el sendero, que lo anduvo macheteando sin razón. –Dice que ha lastimado al buey. –Dice que ha volteado un árbol y no le ha dicho por qué. El sacerdote no supo qué hacer con esos pecados, que no figuran en el catálogo de Moisés.

Eduardo Galeano, Bocas del Tiempo

fotografía de Georgina Valverde

“It’s like Dante’s Inferno; they are bombing people in a cage.”

(Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor currently working in Gaza).

These past two weeks I have felt much like Edvard Munch’s, silent Scream, which this poster from the Primer Festival Mundial de la Digna Rabia (First World Festival of Dignified Rage, organized by the Zapatistas), bears likeness to.  The Gaza situation is horrific.  We are organizing events here in Chiapas to raise consciousness and solidarity, as well as join in concrete actions (like the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions approach applied to apartheid South Africa) towards Israel.  I attended much of La Digna Rabia, both in Mexico D.F. and here in Chiapas where Marcos gave a powerful condemnation speech among various other events in support (John Berger read a very moving letter by Ghassan Kanafani).  The Municipal Palace was also fabulously graffiti bombed in the middle of the night with pro-Palestinian images and words saying ¡NO ESTAN SOLOS! and ¡TODOS SOMOS GAZA! amongst support for the repressions in Oaxaca, Atenco, and Oakland.  In Oaxaca, there were 200 people arrested at a demonstration for Palestine at the U.S. consulate.  So, in the midst of all this darkness, we are not staying silent, and I am actually feeling the ground shift, things are changing, but it is darkest before the dawn of course, and I think there is still much darkness to come.

Yet this land and people here in the red earth of Chiapas give me much hope and strength.  Otro Mundo, Otro Camino.  Y mucho corazón, abajo y a la izquierda.

I fell in love with the generous family who hosted us, and in particular with a little girl, five years old, Juanita, who made me think I might want to adopt such a girl some day in Chiapas.  We ate beef broth three times a day, danced to  Duranguillo music late into the night.  Among my dance partners was B, a campesino fighter about my age who took me inside during a pounding rainstorm, where he shared with me several stories, poems, and dreams.  Among them, the story of how he had been raised on a finca in slavery conditions, then brought by his father to this place, and how he dreamed of a resistance movement such as Zapatismo, and slowly, clandestinely, how he became part of it.  He promised to write down and send me the poem he has written about these experiences…

My friend A took me to visit the Elisa Irina Sáenz Garza Murcia clinic, named after a woman guerrilla fighter (of the FLN-the Armed Forces of national Liberation, a precursor to the EZLN), with my same last name, also from the north, who was assassinated by the army in the 70′s.  A victim of “la guerra sucia” she disappeared in 1974 from the surrounding mountains and it is said that her decapitated head was taken to a nearby military museum.  The clinic includes a section for herbal medicine and has a beautiful mural outside that shows the different local plants that can be used for healing.

Pues, me he visto lenta con ponerle cosas de muertos a mi altar, pero tan siquiera aquí está la de los vecinos y un poema de mi amigo, que ofrezco a mis muertos: mi nena chiquitita, Cassandra, Efrén, Rebecca, Knud, Linda, Alejandro, Leonardo… así cómo los nuevos muertos de este año: Studs Terkel, y todos los que murieron en guerras, de enfermedad, de tristeza, y pues de vida también…que todavía nos acompañan en espiritu. Están presentes.

Que la Tierra los tenga en descanso.
Si monumento hiciéramos
digno de sus muertes
en honor y memoria de ellos
comprometámonos
a la libertad,
a la justicia verdadera,
a la paz mundial.

Que si la muerte no es justa,
justas sean nuestras vidas.

© Rafael Jesús González 2008

Los últimos dias me la pasé con los Corredores de Paz y Dignidad (http://peaceanddignityjourneys.com/).  A group of approximately 25 people have been running for five months from Alaska, through the U.S. and Mexico, on their way to meet their counterparts who departed from La Patagonia, Argentina.  Runners from the north (eagle) and south (condor) will meet in Panama in mid-November.  This is in fulfillment of the prophecy of the eagle and the condor and is a prayer for peace and unification of indigenous peoples of the Americas.  Los recibimos en el CIDECI el 1ero de octubre y después los llevamos a los varios caracoles Zapatistas: Oventic y Morelia.  They also went to the community of Las Abejas, Acteal, site of the 1998 massacre of 21 women, 9 men, and 15 children.

As the local organizers were called away to the Americas Social Forum and the Forum on Militarization in Guatemala and Honduras respectively, I was entrusted by them to take over and support  the runners during their stay in Chiapas, accompanying them in ceremony and travel.  Also, I had the honor of running my bit, holding a staff on a dirt road that wound its way through the lush green hills outside Altamirano en route to the Zapatista Caracol de Morelia.  It was a very moving and profound experience to be a part of their prayer runs, their daily ceremonies of song, dance, and ritual—watching how at the dawn of a day’s run, each runner listens carefully to the call of one amongst hundreds of staffs they are collectively carrying (each staff represents a different community), warmly wrapped in colorful blankets.  After a day of running, upon arriving at a new place, they again form circle and close the obligations of the day with new ceremony, lovingly laying the staffs down to rest for the night.   During these days, we also held two Temazcalli (sweat lodge ceremonies) to which other people from the area were invited.  In gratitude, we made an offering which they now carry with them: wrapped in a Palestinian keffiyeh, a long glass bottle half-full of red earth I’d brought from Lebanon after the war in 2006, the remaining space to be filled up with red earth of Chiapas. The video below shows the runners arriving at the Zapatista Caracol of Oventic.

Los Corredores: a todas mis relaciones.

Cada bastón, un rezo
para nosotros y el mundo
cada comunidad, una pluma
vuelan águila y cóndor.

Craneos de búfalo con salvia
abren puerta al circulo,
humo de copal nos limpia
salpica pluma de águila.

Tres caracoles, cuatro direcciones
cielo y tierra envueltos en espíritu;
los ancestros mandan sabiduría
que yace en cada corazón.

Circulan cantos más alto
que los vuelos de aves,
sana la tierra el cantar

venadito azul, tu eres medicina.

Bastones de esperanza:
uno pa’ las mujeres de Juarez,
dos purepechas y cruz de Acteal,
frasco con tierra roja del Libano.

Toman vuelo los pies de mayores
de regreso al creador, mientras
corazones jóvenes y fuertes,
bailan y giran, pisando tierra.

Tonantzin, cuida la familia
aquí, allá donde quiera que estén.

Acuesta a l@s niñ@s esta noche
en el ombligo de Madre Tierra
para alzarlos en la mañana,
despertando las aguas.

Toda mi vida te he buscado
y en este fuego yo te encontrado.

****

The Runners: to all my relations.

Each staff, a prayer
for us and the world;
each community, a feather
fly eagle and condor.

Buffalo skulls filled with sage
open doorway into circle,
copal smoke cleanses
eagle feather sprinkles water.

three conch shells, four directions
sky and earth wrapped in spirit
the ancestors send wisdom
to reside in each heart.

songs circle higher
than flight of birds

singing heals the earth
little blue deer, you are medicine.

Staffs of hope, hundreds
one for the women of Juarez
two Purepechas, a cross from Acteal,
bottle of red earth from Lebanon.

Elder’s feet take flight
back to the creator, while
hearts young and strong
dance and pound the earth.

Tonantzin, care for the family
here, there, wherever they are

Lay down our children for the night
in the bellybutton of Mother Earth
to take up again in the morning,
awakening the water.

All my life I’ve been seeking
and in this fire, I’ve found you.

José finishing up breakfast in Morelia.