[one of two] the eyes behind the mask

Oventik, Jan 3

I can’t sleep.  Most of the caracol is gone except for us, the few, the ones who stay up until the wee hours playing guitar and singing along to the music.  I tried to fall asleep before my companeros started playing, but I’ve been rolling around in my sleeping bag for the last two hours instead.  The music is really good.

I arrived in Oventik by myself, by way of Puebla, after being stranded by holiday traffic, Palenque, where I met up with two good friends from Arizona, and San Cristobal, where my meandering relationship with a woman from Mexico City deteriorated unto death.  I was upset and unhappy when I stepped off the combi, and I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Across the entrance to the caracol, a sign read “You are entering Zapatista territory, where the people command and the government obeys”.   And at the caracol’s gate were the people themselves:  two women in pasamontanas guarding the gate to rows of buildings, one the left and the right, along a street that pitched down the mountainside.

I had arrived to the International Encounter of the Zapatatistas with the People of the World (the Encuentro Internacional) days early, the scene looked relatively desolate, and for a moment I didn’t know what to say to the Zapatistas.  For a moment.  And then I saw the chango.

God, I was so happy to see him.  I had spent weeks at his side in Mexico City and later, in San Cristóbal.  He had warned me about the girl.  I should have known better.  But it didn’t matter as I handed my passport over to a masked man in Bruce Lee t-shirt.  The women opened the gate, (Comandante?) Brus Li took my name and number, and the chango and I walked from building to building, cooperative to cooperative, mural to mural, in an arms-flailing-above-the-head “wow”. 

Descending into the caracol was like entering into a womb, or re-entering, I suppose.  It’s an activist-revolutionary wonderland, and it’s easy to get caught up in.  I’ve been here for a week, I think.  Maybe more.  I’m not quite sure.  There has been a lot to take in.