Un Blog Rojo

Ok so I´m not a socialist or Communist, yet. Certainly not a Marxist, though impressed by his grasp on economics. Still, this whole trip has got me to thinking.

A quick life plan update. I had planned on spending the early half of my twenties traveling around, learning about the different struggles and difficulties people have, volunteering and working with small local organizations in various regions (how Che of me!) and then taking this knowledge to some powerful wealthy important institution (like perhaps the government) and seeing if I couldn´t help make some institutional reforms based on what I had learned people needed.

Unfortunately my plans are going to hell based on what I am learning here. Questions like who am I to work with, to ¨help¨, people so different from me, and whom would I even choose to ¨help, (how that word stinks as it rolls of the tongue! or maybe that was the tuna pattie and garlic tomatoes I had for breakfast) abound in that scrambled confused brain of mine. Some ideas floating around my head thanks to my experiences and education here, banging up against my carefully laid plans and understanding of the world, permanently altering my mind´s structure to some new, as of yet unknown form: ¨To work for a cause you must join in solidarity with a movement become part of a community, never ¨help¨. Struggles should be political. Politics is screwed, at least in the States. The system is what is screwed. The system of capitalism that is. Infinately more important than government and NGO band-aides which perhaps perpetuate a system of oppression and exploitation is the struggle to change the ownership of the means of labor so that people can work for themselves not for a hierarchical leader. The power hierarchy of the world is immoral and representative Western ¨democracy¨only perpetuates this problem.¨ I´m probably not even sounding too coherent as I write this! Maybe this happens to all great revolutionary socialist leaders!

But wait, I´m no socialist! I could never win a senate seat if I was a socialist. Besides, revolution? Che? How cliché of me!

Anyway, as you can imagine, my whole system of thinking is going through the rollerpins here. Maybe its the lack of organic peanut butter. Or too many corn tortillas perhaps?

Either way, I am becoming great friends with the little Zapatista revolucionaritos that live here. I haven´t seen the Che or Marx dolls recently but have been pushing the kids around in a cart and telling them stories (in Spanish! oh yeah!) The kids don´t mind that I´m not as commie-pinko as some of the people here (or am I??) I´m learning to play a song that goes Que Triste se oye la lluvia en los Techos de Carton. (How sad to hear rain on roofs of cardboard)

Anyway. We visited a refugee camp of Zapatistas displaced by paramilitary violence (they steal their land and the government tells them to stuff it. Actually the government pays the paramilitaries and then claims it is an intercommunity conflict. Breaks down the moral of the Zapatista struggle. Low-intensity war. And so on) There were 5,000 people living in the community. They don´t have access to enough land to grow their own food, nor money to buy it. At least their roofs are made of tin.

I´m making an artisan craft. It takes like 5,000 stitches. I don´t think I´ll finish but then again, the rebellion is never over. Especially one which isn´t focused on taking state power.