Cancun Dispatch: 9/13

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CANCUN CITY, MEXICO -- The march begins from the Casa de la Cultura, remarkable early. It is called for 9:30 a.m. and gets off before 11. I am almost late, writing and sending yesterday's update while the house has breakfast, and when we get the call that it is starting, I run off without breakfast.

Again we head down the now-familiar route to Ground Zero, chanting, drumming, with banners and puppets and song. This time we pass Ground Zero and go on to the newly erected barrier. It's a strong, orange steel fence, built in sections linked to each other and braced to make multiple cages. The chain link sections are hooked to metal supports and the sections are held together with thick steel chain and anchored in big concrete blocks. Behind it are a line of Federal Police in riot gear, but they cannot reach us through the fence, nor can we reach them.

Our plan is to destroy it. To cut the fence, take it down, and move it away, as a powerful symbol of our opposition to the barriers that keep us away from the places of decision making, to the borders that confine people while allowing corporations free run all over the globe.

The plan is for women to move forward and begin taking down the fence. When they have cut it apart, the Koreans will tie on a big rope and we will all pull it down together.

But there is some disorganization to begin with. The women's contingent is not at the front, and eager young men are already all over the fence, shaking and worrying it like a pack of young dogs. Juniper and I run in front and begin drumming with some of the men to hold some of the space and energy while we wait for the women and some of our friends begin to form a line to hold the crowd. Finally a women's contingent arrives. I run forward, link arms, and march the final yards with them, arm in arm, feeling how strong and wonderful it is to be together as companeras, as sisters.

We file in and form a line in front of the fence. As soon as we do, Chac the Rain God registers his approval with a sudden, soaking downpour, that ends a few moments later, leaving us cooler but dripping wet. Elisabeth, in a mask, jumps up onto the fence and waves our spiral flag. Photographers crowd forward like sharks in a feeding frenzy and we are practically crushed against the fence while we wait for the tools to arrive. A blond young woman tries to move us all to the side to let the Koreans into the center. "We have to take orders from the Koreans," she says. I rebel. "The agreement is that women are going to begin taking down the fence, and that's what I want to do, not stand here symbolically and then let the men do it. And I want to do it here, in the center, where the media is, not off to the side as women have always been pushed to the side. At least let the women decide themselves -- and don't tell them what to do."

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