Nor will we refer to the historical explanation of this phenomenon, since the current Indian towns are the permanent result of the cultural and economic impositions of the modern state; because they are not a heap of memories, but reflect current social relationships. These are always different, permanently sustained by interests which impede or at least limit the full development of indigenous society which also has its own development proposals, and its innovative proposals for social coexistence.

      Our experience is sharply limited to a region of the State of Oaxaca; however we have shared these reflections with communities and organizations of several regions of the state, likewise with organizations and indigenous thinkers of all the regions of the country, so if I emphasize the direct experiences of my region of origin, these experiences are upheld by what is reflected in several states of the country. The concept of communality underlies this whole approach, behavior that explains our indigenous being, a concept we certainly have developed in other works, but which bathes the present reflection.

      The reorganization of the revolutionary state had to somehow yield to the pressures of the peasants whom Emiliano Zapata headed. Clearly he benefited in great measure the small properties represented by the followers of Carranza; nevertheless, in this process the indigenous communities could slip through the defense of their communal territories. Although it is certain that at the present time the territory of the Zapatista struggle is for the most part mestizo, in those years our brother Nahuas were a great support for their politics. Although the communal territories had existed for many years before, the Zapatista struggle allowed their survival, so that in the constitution it was specified in a very precise way the three states of property: the small property, the ejidal, and the communal one.

      It was always thought that the communal territories were unproductive, but they were defended recently by a population that in those years could not be heeded by the modern state. It is perhaps for that reason that the immense majority of communal territories were maintained, and those that were not were distributed in small properties, and many others were converted into common land. The communal property is located and found in adapted areas, areas of low agricultural productivity, rural regions far from communication. All the territories susceptible to being capitalized stayed in the hands of some few owners; the communal territories remained for a population fully discriminated against in the general progress of the nation.

      The discrimination against communal territory is shown in the apparent ambiguity in the law of agrarian reform. That process ended in the nineties with the modifications to Article 27, in which it is indicated that the native communal territories will be under the protection of the state, but without a guarantee. On the contrary, they end up susceptible to selling, always with agreement by their assembly which stops being the highest authority by converting itself into a simple government organ. That is to say, if in the seventies survival was ambiguously guaranteed, in the nineties it is put on sale; and we say that it is put on sale because the national economic process called neoliberalism facilitates that resources up to now not discovered and located in areas of communal territory, easily can be of interest to the big capitalists. Apart from the extreme poverty that we suffer, of which we will speak later, the possibilities of gradual loss increases, and for the same effect, the extermination of the populations that live in them.

      From another perspective, the communal territory has not only been for the indigenous towns a patrimony for their survival, but the very source of daily life. The earth for the community doesn't mean a merchandise but a relationship, and a deep expression of its vision of the world. The earth is not a thing, but the very mother of the community. The territory is sacred and also the space for the reproduction of this difference. For the mestizo society, the earth is merchandise and one element more of uniformity, of individuality, of economic security. For the towns no, the earth is for all or for future generations.

      The difference in respect for the land is shown precisely in the treatment that is given it. The liberal effort tends toward homogenization, not to respect for plurality. It continues seeing communal territory as an obstacle for development, not as a possible contributor of new relationships with nature, less individualized and yes, more respectful of the protection and conservation of the environment and biodiversity.

      The possibilities for democracy in Mexico find in a concrete way a challenge in the treatment of the communal lands. A democratic state should be founded in plurality, in the free cultural expression of its social groups and in deep respect for differences. Communal territory is one of them, because democracy is and should be understood as respect for a free relationship of men with the earth, with their environment. It’s not enough to remember that the fight of the Chiapas Zapatistas in 1994 finds in the defense of their land one of the essential motivations for their war. The rest of the indigenous towns feel the same way. For that reason, we seek democracy. The first thing is the respect for plurality, a reality of the current Mexico.

      Being poor in whatever corner of the world is equal to being Indian. As much in the cities, in the bonds of misery, as in the county cities, as in the deepest mestizo rural areas. To be poor is to be Indian. I really believe that we live inside a truly cynical national society. The factors that have promoted poverty in the indigenous communities arrived from the exterior. In the first place, the usurpation of our best lands, the insolent exploitation of our manpower, the commercialization factors that raise the costs of our products and increase the consumption of industrial products, the education that promotes individualism ahead of community cooperation, the media that emphasizes individual victory and discriminates against collective success, the laws, etc. Everything arrives from outside.

      Definitely, we don't have the managerial spirit. But this is not bad as some affirm. Let’s look at this question in segments:

      In the first place, our economy is directed toward two aspects: self-consumption, and the amounts of accumulation toward sharing with the community. We consider that the earth gives us what we need and that if she gives us more, we should share the production mainly in fiestas or in neighborhood or family celebrations. Thus accumulation doesn't mean capitalization; on the contrary, it’s an opportunity to make community. Anyone could say: Ah how silly! then,When will they stop being poor? Sure! and in that lies the difference. We don't feel poor, they have made us feel so, and they have turned us more and more poor in fact.

      The idea of development is yet another thing, western, with everything and its heterodoxy, that has thought we should have the comforts of an urban world, of a world that promotes comfort rather than the relationship or harmonic coexistence among men. Comfort, accumulation, values that we don't feel necessary, nevertheless little by little have been introduced through all the pores of daily life.

      The discrimination against our economy is the worst discrimination of which we are victims. It is to blame for our extreme poverty. This discrimination, again as a reference, pushed the Chiapas Zapatistas to rise up in arms. They are right; we are not all in the same condition to follow them immediately.

      While this is not understood and it is left to us to try assistance programs such as Procampo and some of solidarity, we won't be able to channel our true economic personality. If instead of aiding us with corn from Conasupo, they raised our guaranteed prices in such a way that we could sell it at respectable prices, or if instead of being guaranteed the revolving credit on our property, they allowed us to design our own production programs, things would change. However, the pattern is already established. The Indian is more important as cheap manpower in the center, the north and in the neighboring country, than in the community. This won't solve the problems for reaching democracy, less still if the economic measures continue using criteria of profitability, of productivity, of capitalization, and if our own intellectuals, here among us, “impartial”, go on calling us anti-economic agents.

      Again, it appears to us as the contradiction between plurality and uniformity. The current economy represents the intent to globalize, to make uniform, to align; and our desires, strongly bound to the protection of our natural resources, continue claiming a social harmonic horizontal relationship of sharing, and coexistence. In spite of everything we continue considering that this is the proposal that the Indian towns have and we should proclaim it, although for the state it might be easier to give us tons of cement that only covers and suffocates the ground and doesn’t solve the basic problems.

      Maybe for many of you, this may be an ordinary utopian proposal outside of time and based in a remote past. No, that’s not true. To begin with, we affirm that our reasons obey conditions of this century and in a concrete way those of the present year. If it is thought that our community proposal is based on an ideal, on perfection, that’s mistaken. Our communities are not pure, precisely because we are a permanent result of external pressures and internal energy that shows us a new situation every day. In many of our communities the economy is controlled by commerce, by the political power of elites or groups, by teachers who inherit most bad western habits and become disastrous leaders or finally caciques. We also share space with the drug dealers, and mainly with the political party representatives, in some cases even with landlords, big owners, or buyers and sellers of lands. Each community faces its own reality, but in general we can affirm that behavior patterns exist, of a reality that we all share. Some have their guaranteed communal territories, others are in process, others have been usurped, in short our social reality is very varied. In spite of that, we consider our proposal viable, if we understand it in its fair context. Let’s give some examples:

      Referring to forests: in a good number of communities, we have integrated our communal companies. Would somebody say then –are they not businesses? No, it’s not that, we have had to create them in the face of pressure from the lumbermen, from the S.A.R.H., from the federal concessions. It is true, the wood is worth a lot and as our companies are true collective companies, we direct them to use the earnings to buy machinery and transport trucks, and to build our institutional buildings. Only in some cases do we end up sharing out some of the profits. Everything is directed toward works of social benefit. Another thing is that the problem of the recession has caused our current profits to diminish considerably.

      If we’re talking about coffee, many of you already know the history. The price goes down, the one that is fixed outside of our frontiers, and our economy trembles again. The coffee was imposed on us, abandoning properties and the production of corn to guarantee ourselves cash for the purchase of products that we don't produce. Technical people, the use of fertilizers, etc., were imposed on us. The situation is that we’re screwed if the production model and price of coffee at the international level don't change.

      The case of the mines tends to resemble that of the forests, however, only a few communities have undertaken this route. In the case of corn we have already commented; it’s the same thing for beans and wheat. It only remains to affirm that with these economic policies, what we have lost is older possibilities for being self-sufficient.

      In summary we would say that the discrimination toward our economic rationality doesn't seem to open healthy routes for our development, on the contrary, it drives us toward globalization and more so at this time, with the free trade treaty that is presented to us as the place for burial of our possible utopias. We only know that there won't be real democracy if there is no respect for our economic interests, our desires for sharing, and if we are not allowed to develop our own and free economic creativity.

      One of the tactics to guarantee the political control of our towns has been the disintegration of regional organization, that is, the establishment of a system for social atomization. In discussion, they pretend to eliminate this disintegration and atomization. In practice, the politicies of all the orders, consolidate it. For that reason we find in 1944 a completely disjointed, disintegrated, disorganized Indian population. The official paternalism has invented national arches for us, that co-opt some leaders and invent others. This history I have discussed a lot with our companions, we won't stop at that.

      The atomization has meant political contraction for us. We have the political control of our community, in general, but we are not allowed to have the regional one. Wanting to achieve it has shed a lot of blood. The red note of all the newspapers of faith says so.

      The contraction has allowed development of a strong and solid organization. The maximum authority of our communities is the general assembly. Independently, by the customs of each indigenous town, the assembly integrates the family heads, youths over 18 years of age, and widows. It is this assembly which names their organs of government. Starting with these organs, the collective decisions are executed and they try to solve each one of the problems each community faces.

      The significance of power in an indigenous community, different to what occurs in a rural or urban mestizo world, is very great. In our communities power is a service, that is to say, it is the execution of guidelines set by an assembly, a collective. In the other world, it means the exercise of the decisions of the same authority that was chosen through electoral mechanisms little controlled by the society. The power of an Indian town is the result of a civic act; in the other it is the result of a group relationship that holds or aspires to power. To ascend to indigenous power, one has to demonstrate work, an individual attitude in the face of community commitments, a personal attitude inside the extensive family, in front of the neighborhood, brotherhood, etc. A power that when one has it, is only to obey, to fulfill, and to work. An authority in a community is practically an employee in the service of all, an employee who is not paid, who is not allowed to initiate, and when permission is given, the initiative can only be carried out if consultation occurs. On the contrary, the political power in the mestizo or urban societies is the opposite. It entails the possibility to execute one’s own ideas, to satisfy one’s personal interests; consultation doesn't exist. It is aspired to because of limitless remuneration, a fact that explains the growth of corruption as the expression of the public power.

      What is said allows seeing that what gives the community, if well expressed, a marked affiliation for consensus, sharing, and collective decisions, is also limited by the desires of individual characters, however healthy they might be.

      Anyone might wonder: What would be best? The power that comes and responds to those from below, or the power that they supposedly choose from below, but which represents those of above. We allow ourselves to reflect on our distance from democracy as global model of political behavior and we seek to understand it as the formula that respects the diversity of political attitudes. That is to say, democracy has been up to now of interest because the whole society already participates very well in the national decisions by means of mechanisms designed, although little respected, by the party in power. We maintain that democracy is respect for the political plurality, and as such, the sharing of diversity inside the nation-state, allowing the development of all the models of political coexistence that can exist in the country. At the distance of two centuries of republican life little has been done in this respect. The biggest advance has been a small modification to the Constitution's Article Four, which although indicating a certain cultural freedom to the indigenous towns, doesn't guarantee respect in the economic aspect, the political aspect and the juridical aspect.

      Facing the solidity of our community organization, regional organization represents our Achilles heel, or our weakest part. The Mexican state has taken much care so that we are not together, so that we don't have political strength. It has made its strongest efforts to separate, to keep us unintegrated. All the efforts to build the regional aspect carried out during the last six decades were labeled as subversive movements, socialist, comunist; they were never understood from another perspective. Always, for the party in power, we have been victims of opposition parties, we have never had own ideas, less still honest leaders. They insist on pointing out that we go on being deceived, or even that international forces mobilize us. For example, analyze what was said in the beginning of the uprising of our compañeros in Chiapas. If this is claimed in 1994, imagine what was said in the sixties.

      In spite of it, our efforts to build regional organization have not ceased. In most cases our organizations have won short term battles, in most we have been defeated, a few times we have come out victorious. But our war continues. It is for the struggle that now self-determination, free determination or autonomy as it is understood, appears before our minds like a new form of guaranteeing us survival and as a guarantee for the defense of plurality and diversity. In these efforts, our immediate obstacles are the political parties. We are not against the republican life and its partisan mechanisms. What we demand is respect for our own forms of election for regional representation. Given the disintegration to which we have been subjected, we know that it's not easy to integrate our regional organizations and even more difficult to restructure our ethnicities.

      We should make clear that we don't seek to return to the past. We don't seek to reconstruct the prehispanic nations. For exactly that reason we put more emphasis on our regional organizations that represent multiethnic realities which also include mestizos and criollos. Nor do we propose separacíon fom the nation, nor the creation of states inside the Mexican state.

      Discrimination should be supplanted by acceptance, by the recognition of our diverse political existence. If discrimination has meant political uniformity, we could say, although it sounds paradoxical, that we want to discriminate against the national society so that we are treated equally, and in that way the differences are kept clear, and the liberal apothem stays vigorous in these difficult times: "The respect for other people's rights is peace."

      The discrimination that impacts beyond the collectives and collapses them into individualism showing their most grotesque forms, arises from education and from the mass communication Indian towns receive.

      Independently of what has happened in the past, at the beginning of this century we had a very strong and positive educational experience. The teachers were chosen by the community. Their wages were paid from each family's purse. In this experience one saw that when a teacher emerged from nature and the community culture, this could be more useful, more reinforcing of communality. This was a time when education was the responsibility of the community. The pleasure lasted a very brief time. The Mexican state could not loose the source of instilling its way of thinking; and a new disaster arrived.

      The beginnings of integration, national assimilation of those diverse societies, and their integration to a single economic model, only accelerated the homegenizing process and placed on us a dynamic which we still cannot shake off. The content of the education for our towns integrated the national values, the qualities of the conquest, of the criollo victories, of the mestizo successes, but never the contributions of our indigenous towns. Still, at the present time, the contents continue being terribly ethnocidal, discriminanting against the Indian existence. Western values and its knowledge are favored, the individual is insisted on, and community is lost. The only important people are the national heroes. The efforts of the towns are treated at the cartoon level: futhermore, regional heroes and deeds are nonexistent. Competition it is the best thing and not community sharing.

      With all this, what answer can one expect from the mestizo society. Our brother represent the immediate victims who left, like Juárez, for the nearest cities or to the city of Mexico to study. It is not strange that before 1968, the National Polytechnic Institute was indicated as the school for rural youth and for Indians, and the university was for the urban sectors and middle classes. How many of us don't study in a vocational school because of assimilating these expressions of rude discrimination: the naco, the little Indian, Oaxaco, these are some of the names that those who came from the rural and indigenous sector had to face. But let us speak of the discrimination against the collective community. With official education, the first effect observed was the devaluation of rural work. The school parcels were abandoned; the workshops created in the thirties were discarded. Modern techniques arrived to strengthen the knowledge acquired in the classroom, the prohibition of the use of our languages, state and federal salaries for the teacher's work, in short, all that made the community. This was a slow but firm process, parallel to the development of new ideas of how our progress, educational and cultural integration to the nation,should be. The commercial radio arrived and later television and everything got more complicated.

      In the present time, in spite of indigenist efforts, however much good faith that these represent, with bilingual and bicultural education, with indigenous radios, the community disintegration continues its march because of education.

      From our side, what we have achieved is that through daily work and the maintenance of our internal institutions, community education somehow has been reproduced, halting somehow the noxious effects of formal education. We have not been able to stop everything, but we do save some aspects that we are conscious of not losing. The problem is enlarged in middle and superior education. In these levels, the individualizing values sharpen their effects; they cause discouragement and multiple discriminatory expressions. From the beginning, agricultural specialties were reproduced in the classroom and on the chalkboard, still leaving aside nature. The technical specialties don't respond to the regional necessities and the youths become half-prepared manpower leaving for the neighboring country in the north. Obviously, and with the values absorbed in the schoolroom, the emigrated youths although they fail in their individualized dreams, no longer return with the accompanying loss to the community of their capacity and energy.

      If we speak of the technological and university levels, the problem gets complicated. The professional doesn't find a source of work to contract his or her services. The only ones are the government institutions that transform him into a machine for taking messages, in the best in the cases, and in the worst, to a simple bureaucrat. Worse if he or she goes as a lawyer, doctor or architect, they definitively stay in the city. With all this, what we can expect from current education? And this without speaking of the teaching training , which is another kettle of fish.

      The federalization of education meant for us the de-comunalization of the teachers. Work privileges, initially, and the necessity of better work opportunities at the present time, has caused the communities to lose their best men and women. The immense majority are now residing near the city, and so it is normal now to see that a zapoteco teacher was in a non zapoteco school, etc. . The type of labor movements , the community feels the effect of them but truly would not know what to say in this respect, if it is better that the teachers leave more time free for the children or that they continue permanently building knowledge that will only individualize community beings and eventually make competitors out of sharing people. Anyhow, we can state that what children learn in the classroom, they unlearn in the street and the home. This obviously doesn't happen in the middle and upper levels. This educational dialectic somehow has allowed the teaching of sharing, however every day the busines is more complex with the arrival of means of mass communication.

      The principles and values that radio introduces us to, the television and the printed matter, are difficult and almost impossible to stop. Again the lack of respect for the regional cultures becomes the clear expression of discrimination. We cannot say that the Indigenist National Institute has not made efforts in this area, on the contrary we applaud those carried out, but they are still very small and disintegrated. The nation has decided to sell the freedom to transmit signals. This reaffirms its homogenizing and globalizing position, and ratifies its minimal interest in a pluralistic nation rich in its own cultural expressions and creator of diverse models of living that guarantee a more shared future.

      At the present time, some regions have radio stations, even with centers of video production. Still with few resources, resistance in these fields will continue giving way. However, we insist, it won't be possible to have democracy if rejecting our societies continues in the exercise of their own freedom of speech. Nor will we be able to defeat our eternal enemies who strengthen themselves with the use of these methods.

      Ultimately there are the means, more from outside for inside, than from inside for the outside. In any case, our culture doesn't believe that we should treat others as we have been treated. We agree that this country has a race and we are it. Nevertheless, the fact of painting it, counting it, dancing it or dramatizing it while not dealing with it or facing it, makes of this culture a cartoon and a true shame for whoever might obstruct or comment on it. Our culture is neither the best form of writing in Spanish, nor the perfect way to write in zapoteco. It is simply our culture. We are not in the market for the best speech, or the best writing. We are in our reality and that is the one that counts. And what we want is that our reality counts for the whole Mexican society. Our doctors learn daily. Not in a school season, they learn by being screwed, because that is the school that we have always had for eternal expressions. The knowledge that is obtained, as always, is put to one side, it is rejected, it is discriminated against, it goes, the same thing happens in all the fields of intelligence. The result is that "we don't contribute." Although indeed we are doing it and our voice is drowned out with the sound of motors, the programs of television and the songs in fashion.

      The savagery of the national society seemed to be concentrated in the exercise of the law. The state dialogues with us through a cryptic language, indescribable and unintelligible. For that reason we always lose. Not even dignity saves us. The crimes in the community are resolved discussing, commenting, analyzing. The law makes us see that things are not discussed, they are executed, they are exercised, they are ruled. The reasons don't matter, what matters is the state of law. That's to say, the base that rules. This situation has taken us to endless fights that unfortunately have not led us to anything. Only to understand that we begin a dialogue of the deaf. There is no worse discrimination than the one that is exercised in the application of the laws.

      In this area there is a lot to say. At the outset, we should affirm that we also have our own laws. A logic of thinking built through the centuries, ways of understanding life that have brought us to resolving innumerable internal problems. Nevertheless, that law and that knowledge is discarded to impose reasoning dug out and developed in environments different to ours, from experiences that don't share our reality. The centers of social readaptation don't serve us, they affect us in a contrary way. However there they are, as an example of the best thing that society has developed. Its existence shames us, because it is the same mutilation of our capacities.

      In our communities we face the innumerable crimes that can happen, but at the same time we find the quantity of solutions that exist. Our laws are exercised by whomever is touched in their exercise. They are not specialized people, they are people who are affected at the moment of application. We are convinced that to send to jail the murderer of a fellow father is to transform both wives into widows, for that reason the punishments are dictated thinking of that, and not just in an established law without discussion.

      The confrontation of the "positive" laws and ours are not only given in the field of the ridiculous, like it is when we don't have a translator, but also in the very basis of qualified principles. One always reasons in terms of the individual right, one never thinks of the communal right; that is to say, one always reasons in term of the interests of an individual and it is understood that all positions derive from an individual interest. One never incorporates the possibility of understanding that the attitude is the result of a social fact, and better say communal fact, that thus merits a different treatment.

      To that is owed jails full of brothers, for whom being inside doesn't end up in their understanding their crimes as theirs, nor as the outcome of a communal attitude. The jail individualizes them and as such again it separates them from the community. That is it what jail does. A new insult to the culture of the indigenous towns.

      To be more exact, we don't want to discuss if this is valid in a mestizo or urban society, nevertheless, we believe that for ours, it is not. For that reason we affirm our right to imagine that inside the state of law of which so much is spoken, exists the possibility of the exercise of diverse modalities of justice, and that these may be carried out by the different societies that belong to the Mexican society.

      Autonomy, free self-determination or self-determination, would be in this case the most appropriate juridical mark to sum up this type of freedoms. The Mexican state need not fear their results, rather it should be attentive to their fruits, because they could be an example of how to conduct a complex society without so much paper work, since it would seem that our national society is carried out exclusively on paper.

      Recently an intellectual wondered if the natives were claiming a subsidized autonomy, that is to say a characature of autonomy. To identify autonomy with self-sufficiency is a speech trap. It is the classic signal that a father gives the son who wants his free determination. We don't have a father, the homeland has been created to our grief. Where did the resources come from so that this intellectual was formed? Simple, from the blood of many generations, not only of his family. He doesn't have a dad, but he has a society that protects him and that society is all of us. Then why can it not subsidize an autonomy? If in the end we are all subsidizing each other.

      These fallacies are those that make one reaffirm that the mestizo society insists on making us believe that the natives should disappear.

      We suffer a permanent systematic discrimination and furthermore it is argued for by its remarkable intelligensia. We don't forget the treaty that gave a Nobel prize for the struggle of our chiapaneco brothers.

      Autonomy for us is a possibility to grow more healthy, yes, although they don't believe it, free of endless contamination, even if in that way we discriminate against the remaining society, not like they have against us, but rather in the most constructive sense, treating ourselves as equal societies, with the same rights and the same obligations. Why are we understood to be like children? If this is not a family, this is the history of societies that relate and face each other and obtain as a result a new social and economic state. Our claim should not be understood like a whimper, because we are not writing to an adult so that he resolves things for us. We are speaking adult to adult so that our relationships are more constructive.

      To not understand the deep feeling of our autonomous claim is to not understand our democratic desires. It is to adhere obstinately to the necessary exterminación of our peoples, it is to believe that humanity's future is the future of our neighbors to the north, it is to believe that we don't have origin and homeland, in throwing in the garbage the blood of so many generations that have forged us, it is to not sow for the future, although this future may be ours and we may be committing suicide.

      Discrimination begins with the incomprehension of the worth of our lands, of the invalidation of our economic rationality, as nonconformity of our social organization, and a lack of respect for our right to exercise justice. Everything is discrimination and we reaffirm our conviction that there won't be democracy if the national society doesn't understand the difference, the plurality and the right that we, the Indian peoples, have to design our own future.