Durito (who once was a railroad worker) says the politics of Power under neoliberalism (“Write it completely,” he tells and orders me, “because it is not a truth for all times, but something for now”) are like a train.

Durito says that, in the train of neoliberal politics, the forward coaches are foolishly fought over by those who think they can conduct better, forgetting the fact that it is the locomotive which drives the coaches, and not the other way around.

Durito says that the politicians also don’t realize that the locomotive is being driven by someone else (the one who speaks the language of money) and that, in the derailment which is to come, the luxury cars, the ones in front, will indeed be first, but they will be first when it runs off the road.

Durito says that everyday people travel on foot.

Durito says that walking is free, it’s more fun and that way one can decide where to go and what will happen.

Durito says that the majority of people on foot look with indifference on the passage of that machine, which prides itself on determining its path and which doesn’t realize that it cannot leave the rails imposed by political rules.

Durito says that not only do everyday people not want to drive the train, but that sometimes they question the destination of the journey (which is, in addition, made in their name, “representing” them).

Durito says that, among the people on foot, there are some who are rebels.  These not only criticize the destination of the journey and the ridiculous, arbitrary distribution of the tickets.  They even question the train’s very existence and they ask themselves if trains really are necessary.  Because yes, certainly they arrive more quickly and more comfortably, but one arrives where one does not wish to arrive.

Durito says we zapatistas are some of those rebel pedestrians (“za-pedestrians”), and we are the object of mockery by those who criticize the fact that we do not want to buy a ticket and travel at top speed…to catastrophe.

Durito says that we zapatistas are some very otherly pedestrians.  Because, instead of watching the train’s arrogant passage with indifference, a zapatista just approaches the track, smiling, and puts his foot on it.  Certainly, he thinks, ingenuously, that in this way he will make the powerful train stumble and have no choice but to go off the tracks.

Durito says that, in those coaches, which were once the place of fierce (and petty) fight for a Power which was not there, they are uniting, peering through the windows, mocking the zapatista who, with his dark-skinned foot, is trying to halt the train of Power.

Durito says that in the dawn of the first of January of 1994 (it was rainy, it was cold and a dense fog covered the city), a zapatista indigenous put down his foot in order to derail the all-powerful PRI train.

Durito says that, 6 years later, the PRI was left lying in the bottom of the gully, and its remains are being fought over by those who yesterday mocked that indigenous who is, right now, carefully bandaging his foot, not because it hurts, but because he sees another train coming there, and another and another…

Durito says that, if the zapatistas have a lot of anything, it is feet, because they are made large from walking the long night of sorrow to hope.

Durito says that the zapatistas will not be done walking the night until all those on foot can decide, not just the train’s existence and path, but also, and above all, until there shall be, in the walk of the pedestrians of history, many chairs under an apple tree full of fruit…for everyone.

“Because that’s what this is all about…apples, chairs and trains,” Durito says while he sees, with satisfaction, that the seed he sowed some time ago is already raising up a piece of earth, which, complicit and in solidarity, he saved.


Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos

January of 2003,
On foot and already entered into the tenth year of the war against the oblivion

[translated by irlandesa]

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