Cancun Dispatch: 9/10

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CANCUN CITY, MEXICO -- Kyoung Hae Lee is dead. I don't yet know his story, only that he came with the Korean workers' contingent. I videoed them forming up in the march, carrying their proud banners, beating their drums and bells. They marched up at the front, with the campesinos and the other workers. When the march reached the police barricade, they split off, marched up to the fence, and Kyoung Hae Lee took his own life, stabbing himself in the heart in an act of ritual suicide.

But let me begin in the morning, as we wake and prepare for the campesino march. "I don't know what to wear," Andy says. "I don't know if I'm dressing for a nine-kilometer march in the hot sun, or a police battle."

"If the campesinos decide to play it low-key and nonconfrontational," I suggest, "they'll probably ask to send a delegation through and they may let them, in which case we'll be standing around in the sun for hours. If they decide to push through, we'll have the battle, but somehow in either case I doubt that we'll have the nine-kilometer march."

We head down to the Casa de la Cultura where the mood is festive. Thousands of campesinos are milling around the food tents, a giant drum circle is underway, and students are dancing ecstatically in the center while old grandmothers look on and smile. We meet up with the pagan cluster and Rodrigo appears, back from Mexico City just in time. Kukulcan, the amazing giant puppet feathered serpent God, with a head of carved styrofoam reproduction of a Mayan sculpture, covered in silver and copper foil, dances through the streets, snaking in giant meanders. Chac, the Mayan God of rain, a giant striding figure painted silver gray, rolls with a more dignified pace. Contingents of campesinos form behind their banners, many wearing their own identifying scarves, the women in their traditional dresses, white with beautiful embroidery on collars and hems. They are chanting their chants and songs and clapping along to the rhythms. The black bloc contingent forms up -- punks in their ritual black with patches and masks. I see the students I've trained, marching together in their contingent. Our affinity group joins together behind the Infernal Noise Brigade, under a blue spiral banner. We internationals are toward the back, as the campesinos have requested.

The march moves out, a beautiful sight. At last we have thousands of people marching together, filling the streets with a river of color.

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