Galeano Lives! Painting a Zapatista Teacher from Schools for Chiapas on Vimeo.
In solidarity with the Zapatistas and Schools for Chiapas, I dedicate this Mexican Independence Day to the recognition that independence, if it is an honest idea, is not monolithic, that it contains pluralities. The Zapatistas want a world in which many worlds fit, but for the greater part of the last 500 years, the narrative of the indigenous peoples of southeast Mexico and the South American continent has been one of obliteration, ignominy, and marginalization. On New Year’s Day 1994, the Zapatistas responded to their oppression and to the implementation of NAFTA – as the culmination of neoliberal globalization policies – and emerged from the jungle to declare ¡Ya basta! The revolution in its guerrilla sense was successful, populist, and brutally suppressed. Yet, in the face of neoliberalism that has no place or use for them, and the calls of the banking system and politicians for their destruction, these indigenous peoples continue to insist on the preservation of their bodies, their intellectual systems, their languages, their lands, their rights to autonomous self-determination outside of neoliberalism and the globalization of capital, and their human rights. Today, I wish to celebrate that spirit, Zapatismo, that is the spirit of marginalized people in all their existential difference, all places. In doing so, I want to share with the Zapatistas and Schools for Chiapas in the worldwide screening, physical and virtual, of the short film Galeano Vive! documenting the response of the Zapatistas to the murder of the teacher Galeano, and the murals of resistance painted to sustain his memory.
Download the short film Galeano Vive! (click…)
Learn more about Schools for Chiapas (click again…)
