Meeting the Zapatistas

I was really interested to see the social organization of the community as I travelled up the snaking mountain roads to Oventik, a Zapatista autonomous stronghold. The bus driver dropped me off and puttered off while I was in the middle of the street thinking, well this is it. It looks like a typical Mexican community by most standards; pretty deserted, the random donkey walking by alongside the road but the difference was there was a big gate to my right and a masked indigenous woman guarding access. She asked me, "primera vez?" I answered si, and she took my passport and I waited to be authorized. She opened the gate for me and I was asked personal details from other community members. There were no other foreigners there either; I felt quite intimidated because I was in the centre of such an important social movement. So they took me to the Casa del Buen Gobierno and I interviewed the junta leaders asking them questions such as what their idea of democracy was, the role of women and foreigners in the movement, how the movement has changed since the beginning etc. They answer simply and honestly, admitting when they weren't sure of some of the answers. They look you straight in the eye and treat you with utmost respect and hospitality. I left feeling very inspired and they asked me to take their message home with me and to diffuse it. They have a school and a hospital in the community and all of the buildings have political slogans and colourful murals asserting their rights as indigenous and as Mexicans. Also something strange happened to me, before coming to Mexico I was reading Our Word is Our Weapon by Subcomandante Marcos and in one of the vignettes he describes a hypothetical visit to Chiapas, what one would see, whom they would encounter, the landscape etc. And when I walked behind the house to the school I saw exactly what I envisioned in my mind when reading Marcos' description. It was all very surreal.