[mobglob-discuss] Subcomandante Marcos in Cancún: "Derail the Death Train of the WTO"

[Tom Childs]

Subscribers, This from Food First reporting on the strong statements from the EZLN at Cancún:
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http://www.foodfirst.org/wto/reports/2003-09-09PR.php 

Subcomandante Marcos in Cancún: "Derail the Death Train of the WTO"

First Protests Begin at Edge of Security Zone 

Food First Daily Reports from the WTO in Cancún No. 3 
Monday, September 9, 2003 
by Peter Rosset  <rosset at foodfirst.org>

Cancún: The messages from Subcomandante Marcos and Comandantes Esther and David of the
Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) this morning fell like verbal bombshells on the
assembled crowd in Cancún, scene of the WTO Ministerial. 

"The Global movement against the globalization of death has today, in Cancún, one of its most
brilliant expressions," said Marcos in a tape-recorded message read to the assembled thousands
at the International Farmers and Indigenous Peoples' Forum being co-sponsored by Via Campesina
(http://www.viacampesina.org), the Mexican umbrella peasant group UNORCA
(http://www.unorca.org.mx) and the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) of Mexico. "We salute the
very existence of the Via Campesina, your struggle and your resistance," he said in an
accompanying letter. The Via Campesina is the global alliance of family farm, peasant, indigenous,
farm worker and landless movements, which has affiliates in some 70 countries, both North and
South, representing about 100 million people. 

In reference to the trade ministers of the world who are meeting to carry out WTO negotiations in the
heavily guarded luxury hotel zone of Cancún, he said: "This is not the first time nor the last that those
who think they own the planet have to hide behind their high walls and pathetic security forces to
make their plans. Just as in any war, the high command of this army of the transnationals, which
seeks to conquer the world in the only way that it can be conquered -- by destroying it -- meets under
a security system which is matched in size only by their fear." 

Because, he added, "this is a war. A war on humanity. The globalization of those who are above is
nothing more than a global machine that feeds on blood and defecates dollars." But we do not have
to obey this machine, he said, because "we can build a new path, where life means life with dignity,
 where life means life with liberty.... The entire world is in dispute between two projects of
globalization. Globalization from above, which globalizes conformity, cynicism, stupidity, war,
destruction, death, and forgetting, and globalization from below, which globalizes rebellion, hope,
creativity, intelligence, imagination, life, memory, and the construction of a world with room for many
worlds." 

In the letter he sent with the tape, he issued a call to "derail the death train of the WTO in Cancún and
around the world." 

In an accompanying written speech that was read to the crowd, Comandante Esther of the EZLN
addressed "sisters, indigenous women, peasant women and city women." She called on women to
fight sexism and abuse wherever it is found, even among companions in struggle. "When we
demand respect as women we demand it not only from neoliberals but also from those who
struggle against neoliberal policies and say they are revolutionaries, but in the home act like Bush."
She also called for strength in the struggle against the WTO and neoliberalism, "because what we
produce never receives a fair price but what they sell us gets more expensive all the time... while
millions of poor men, women and children die of hunger and disease." 

In another written speech that was read out loud, Comandante David of the EZLN said that "before
the moneyed powerful who meet today to work out how best to eliminate us, to humiliate us, to
disappear us, we, the Zapatistas rise up in autonomy and resistance like arms and shields for all
humanity and against neoliberalism. Because we, the indigenous people of Mexico, of Latin
America, of whatever continent, have always suffered all kinds of injustice... in our own territory we
are exploited like slaves." 

But, he went on, "the land is ours, it belongs to the peasants and the indigenous peoples, and we
should take it back and make it produce for all, not just for a handful of the wealthy who wouldn't even
recognize the color of the soil if you placed it before them." 

"This is why, from this remote but dignified corner of our country, Mexico, we call on the people of all
Mexico, on the peoples of all of Latin America, and on all the peoples of the world, to unite with our
resistance, and support the resistance of all poor peoples of the world who are being beaten down
and destroyed by the globalization of death. Brothers and sisters of the world, we call upon you to
unite and get organized in global resistance." 

The hall was packed not just with indigenous, peasant and farmer delegates from Mexico and the
world, but also by student activists, environmentalists and others, together with a massive presence
demonstrated their ability to electrify and move people to mass action. 

Shortly after, a first contingent of some one thousand protestors -- mostly students on this first day of
action, but accompanied by a small solidarity contingent from the Via Campesina, sallied forth to
probe the defenses arrayed at the security perimeter of the luxury hotel zone. The march was filled
with music and street theater, and while completely non-violent, led to the complete closure of
vehicle access to the zone for several hours, and brought the massive presence of riot police. 





--
Tom Childs - Audio/Visual Resources
Douglas College Library
New Westminster, B.C. Canada
T: 604 527-5713 - Library
T: 604 524-9316 - Lulu Island
E: childst at douglas.bc.ca 
U: BCGEU Local 703
W: http://www.globaljustice.ca 
   
     "There's no way to delay, that trouble comin' everyday."
                                    --Frank Zappa