I Am As I Am And You Are As You Are

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If we had surrendered, if we had sold ourselves, we would no longer have been poor, but others would have continued to be so. So with singular joy we dedicated ourselves to resisting, to saying no, to transforming our poverty into a weapon—the weapon of resistance.

Through almost six years of war we have spoken about the power of this weapon; with it we have resisted more than 60,000 soldiers, war tanks, bomber aircraft, artillery, helicopters, cannons, machine guns, bullets, and grenades. With it we have resisted the lie.

If you would like me to sum it up, I would tell you that in the same way that we made ourselves soldiers so that one day soldiers would no longer be necessary, we also remain poor so that one day there will be no poverty. It is for this that we use the weapon of resistance.

Obviously, it is not the only weapon we have. We also have the weapon of our culture, of our being what we are. We have the weapon of music, the weapon of dance. We have the weapon of the mountain, that old friend and compañera who fights along with us, with her roads, hiding places, and hillsides, with her trees, her rains, her suns, her dawns, her moons.

It is not just the Zapatistas who are fighters of resistance. There are many groups who have also made a weapon of resistance: indigenous peoples, workers, women, homosexuals, lesbians, students, young people. Above all there are young people, men and women who name their own identities: punk, ska, goth, metal, thrasher, rapper, hip-hopper. If we look at what they all have in common, we will see that they have nothing in common, that they are all different. They are others. And that is exactly what we have in common, that we are other and different. Not only that, we also have in common that we are fighting to continue being other and different, and that is why we are resisting.

But we are not looking for everyone to be like we are. And it is here where this entire resistance movement—called underground or subterranean, because it takes place among those below and underneath institutional movements––meets Zapatismo.

We Zapatistas say, 'I am as I am and you are as you are. Let’s build a world where I can be, and not have to cease being me, where you can be, without having to cease being you, a world where many worlds fit.'

First Published in English in Our Word is Our Weapon: Selected Writings of Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, edited by Juana Ponce de Leon, (Seven Stories Press, 2001, 140 Watts St., New York, NY 10013; 800/596-7437). A version of this essay appeared in Food

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