From: tc0mjl1@corn.cso.niu.edu (lemaitre monique j) Sender: majordomo@mep-d.org
Reply-to: mexico2000@mep-d.org
Date: 96-02-10 01:17:22 EST
"Marcos in Internet" ("La Jornada," February 8, 1996)
Zapatista Army of National Liberation
Mexico
For the Photography Event in Internet
February 8, 1996
Ladies and gentlemen:
Through this medium I point out that on the date of the first anniversary of the treason brought about against the EZLN and the will for a new peace of the Mexican people and world public opinion by the government of Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, there appeared in the Lacandon Jungle (better known as rebel territories against the bad government) 2 people: 2 named Francisco Mata and Eniac Martinez, males to be more specific, who claim to be Mexican, and with the aggravating circumstances of being photographers (better known as cynical thieves), and they threatened the honorable public with their weapons (better known as photographic cameras),for which reason they were detained and handed over to the proper authorities.
They did not remain in anybody's custody aside from that of their own conscience (in a somewhat sorry state from what we can see), and they declared the following: that they come with the intention of taking pictures of Zapatista life in order to submit them to an Internet World event, and that they have no other aim than the telephoto photographers usually carry, that their intention is testimonial and artistic, that they did not receive any pay from the Zapatistas (as if we had any means to do so!) and that they did not pay the Zapatistas anything (which means that, aside from being photographers, they are stingy;) that once their work in these dignified lands is over they plan to rush, rapid and swift, to their respective computers and to delight (that's what they think) the clients of Internet with their marvels (ha!).
Once the previous declaration had been taken down, the Sub (who surprisingly assumed the role of Local Private Ministry) declared guilty of the crime of image theft, with the aggravating circumstance of cynicism, since, says the Sub, the photographer is a thief who choses what he steals (which, at this stage of the crisis, is a luxury) and does not "democratize" the image, that is to say, the photographer selects the pictures, a privilege which ought to be granted to the person being photographed. Once that said, the Sub condemned them to what is explained in detail below, but before that the Sub wants to talk about the images (better known as photographs) that these photographers (better known as the guilty parties) came to take and then . . .
Now through these photographs we go back a little and we can foresee a little of the future. Through them, the photographs, we go to the old Guadalupe Tepeyac. Through them we return to the new Guadalupe Tepeyac and, between the former and the latter we see images of a rebellious dignity, that of the Indigenous people of the Mexican Southeast.
Behind the ski mask, the Sub takes the camera and his revenge. During two years he has been on the other side of the lens, he has been the object and the target, the medium and the message. But today the Sub has decided to take his revenge and he has taken the lens from the other side, from the side of the history press photographers take and, through them, the world who sees those pictures.
Now the Sub invites us to follow his pictures, to look from this side of the ski mask at what photographs don't say, at the trip they avoid, at the distance they mark.
The Sub's photographs try to build a bridge. A bridge that does not go from the "reader" of the photographs or from the photographer to the place in which the Zapatistas sometimes live, sometimes die, and always struggle. The Sub proposes you another bridge, another trip, another "reading" of the image. That is why the Sub has now picked up the camera from the angle which was forbidden to him, from the photographer's angle, from the spectator's angle.
The Sub takes a picture of the photographer taking pictures. The photographer discovers himself/herself being photographed and we can guess he is uncomfortable. Unsuccessfully he/she tries to recompose his posture and to look like a photographer taking photos. But no, he is and continues to be a spectator. The momentaneous fact of being photographed leads him to becoming an actor. And, as always, actors must assume a role, which is only an elegant way of avoiding to say that they must chose sides, chose a faction, take an option. In the mountains of the Mexican Southeast there aren't many, and if we clear a bit the avalanche of fantastic declarations made by public officials of various kinds, we will see that there are only two options: war or peace.
There already are actors on both sides: On the side of war are the government and its army, the army which, with its war tanks and cannons, occupies the old Guadalupe Tepeyac and "protects" that hospital nobody goes to except prostitutes who "service" the garrison and the government soldiers who go there to cure themselves of the venereal deseases which are included in the "service." The government's war comes disguised as "peacemaking." For over 500 years, for the Mexican Indigenous populations "peacemaking" means death, jail, tortures, persecution, humiliation, oblivion.
On the side of peace are the Indigenous people and a national and international civil society whose existence and effectiveness is denied by the great "intellectuals" and politicians. These Mexican Indigenous people rose up in arms, declared war to oblivion and to the system which turns the lack of memory in their main capital for a new, just and dignified peace.
A new peace is peeking out of the barrels of Zapatista rifles, out of the eyes of the children, the women, the elderly and the men who have built another Guadalupe Tepeyac deep into the mountain. These men and women smile, they carry the suffering and the pain the government imposed upon them as payment for daring to rebel, for their anachronical insistence in being dignified. Nonetheless they laugh. Why? What makes these eyes who now defy the complicated equation of openings, light, speed, sensitivity and oportunity, also defy the oblivion that history promises them as their sole future? Why do these Indigenous people face the camera with the same happiness and daring with which they face the life they desire and the death they offer them? Try to ask that question. Question the images. Take them by the hand and don't let the sweet distancing they offer you vanquish you; do away with the distance's comfort or the soft indifference you derive from concentrating on the quality of the framing, the use of light and shadows, the successful composition. Force these images to bring you to the Mexican Southeast, to history, to the struggle, to this taking sides, to chose a faction.
Two sides: on one side oblivion, war, death; on the other memory, peace, life. The images of the two Guadalupe Tepeyacs, the one occupied by the government's forces and the one which, in exile, digs in its banner of dignity in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast, struggles, fights for a piece of space, demand a place in the cameras of these photographers, look for a place in the eyes who, in front of the computer screens, are witnesses to an event, and they request a piece of the world memory of a century which did the impossible to despise its own history and who is paying, day by day, the high price of not having any memory.
The Indigenous people of the Mexican Southeast, Tzotziles, Tzeltales, Choles, Tojolabales, Zoques, Mames, only used to appear in museum images, in tourist guidebooks, and in Indigenous art promotions. The camera's eye searches for them as an anthropological curiosity or a colorful detail from a very distant past.
The rifle's eye forced the camera's eye to look at them in a different way. They are today the example of dignity and resistance that humanity had forgotten, had lost, and has found again.
The photographed photographers haven't stopped feeling uncomfortable during the brief session of takes the Sub submitted them to. The great inquisitor that the camera's lens is was turned against its operators. Every time the diaphragm winks, the camera repeats the question that now travels through cyberspace and invades, as a modern virus, the memories of machines, men and women. The question that history always sets forth. The question which forces us to define ourselves and whose answer makes us human: On which side are you? The Sub leaves the camera in peace and takes back his rifle. He lights his pipe and bids farewell. The smoke which he leaves behind is already travelling through cyberspace proposing, asking, questioning . . .
Vale. Good health and adjust well the frame: the present is past and future.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
Subcommander Insurgent Marcos.
Mexico, February, 1996
P.D. which adjusts the focus. If the pictures come out well it will have been a mere accident. Since the time the Sub used to work as a photographer of soft porno, many years ago, he hasn't touched a camera.
If they are bad, then it will be obvious that the models were awkward. It is well known that it isn't the same to shoot than to be shot at.
P.D. that foresees credit problems. The pictures' copyrights belong to whomever you want to. For me it is clear that photography prizes should be for those being photographed and not for the photographers.
(Translation: Monique J. Lemaitre)
