March 11, 2001
In the Zócalo of Mexico City
Originally published in Spanish by the EZLN
Translated by Irlandesa

Brother, Sister Mexico City:

When we say "we are," we are also saying "we are not" and "we shall not be."

That is why it is good for those who, up above, are money and the ones who peddle it, to take note of the word, to listen to it carefully, and to look with care at what they do not want to see.

We are not those who aspire to make themselves power and then impose the way and the word. We will not be.

We are not those who put a price on their own, or another's, dignity, and convert the struggle into a market, where politics is the business of sellers who are fighting, not about programs, but for clients. We will not be.

We are not those who are expecting pardon and handouts from the one who feigns to help, when he is, in reality, buying, and who does not pardon, but humiliates the one who, by merely existing, is a defiance and challenge and claim and demand. We will not be.

We are not those who wait, naively, for justice to come from above, when it only comes from below. The liberty which can only be achieved with everyone. The democracy which is all the floors and is fought for all the time. We will not be.

We are not the passing fashion which, made ballad, is filed in the calendar of defeats which this country flaunts with such nostalgia. We will not be.

We are not the cunning calculation which falsifies the word and conceals a new fakery within it. We are not the simulated peace longing for eternal war. We are not those who say "three," and then "two" or "four" or "all" or "nothing." We will not be.

We are, and we shall be, one more in the March.

Of Indigenous Dignity.

Of the Color of the Earth.

That which unveils and reveals the many Mexicos which are hidden and suffer under Mexico.

We are not their spokesperson.

We are one voice among all those voices.

An echo which dignity repeats among all the voices.

We join with them, we are made multiple with them.

We will continue to be echo. We are, and we shall be, voice.

We are reflection and shout.

We shall always be.

We can be with or without face, armed with fire or without, but we are zapatistas, we are and we shall always be.

Ninety years ago the powerful asked those from below which Zapata was called:

"With whose permission, Señores?"

And those from below responded, and we respond:

"With ours."

And with our permission, for exactly 90 years, we have been shouting, and they call us "rebels."

And today we are repeating: we are rebels.

Rebels we shall be.

But we want to be so with everyone we are.

Without war as house and path.

Because so speaks the color of the earth: The struggle has many paths, and it has but one destiny: to be color with all the colors which clothe the earth.

Brother, Sister:

Up there they say that this is the end of a tremor. That everything will pass except their being above us.

Up there they say that you are here to watch in morbid fascination, to hear, without listening to anything. They say we are few, that we are weak. That we are nothing more than a photograph, an anecdote, a spectacle, a perishable product whose expiration date is close at hand.

Up there they say that you will leave us alone. That we shall return alone and empty to the land in which we are.

Up there they say that forgetting is defeat, and they want to wait for you to forget and to fail and to be defeated.

They know up there, but they do not want to say it: there will be no more forgetting, and defeat shall not be the crown for the color of the earth.

But they do not want to say so, because saying it is recognizing it, and recognizing it is seeing that everything has changed, and nothing will change now without everyone changed, changing.

This movement, the one of the color of the earth, is yours, and because it is yours, it is ours.

Now, and it is what they fear, there is no longer the "you" and the "we," because now we are all the color we are of the earth.

It is the hour for the fox and the one he serves to listen and to listen to us.

It is the hour for the fox and the one who commands him to see us.

Our word speaks one single thing.

Our looking looks at one single thing.

The constitutional recognition of indigenous rights and culture.

A dignified place for the color of the earth.

It is the hour in which this country ceases to be a disgrace, clothed only in the color of money.

It is the hour of the Indian peoples, of the color of the earth, of all the colors which we are below, and which colors we are in spite of the color of money.

We are rebels because the land is rebel if someone is selling and buying it, as if the land did not exist, as if the color we are of the earth did not exist.

Mexico City:

We are here. We are here as rebellious color of the earth which shouts:

Democracy!

Liberty!

Justice!

Mexico:

We did not come to tell you what to do, or to guide you along any path. We came in order to humbly, respectfully, ask you to help us. For you to not allow another day to dawn without this flag having an honorable place for us who are the color of the earth.

From the Zócalo in Mexico City.

Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee - General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

Mexico, March of 2001.