EZLN Communique' March 21, 2000.
To: German Dehesa Mexico, DF

Don German:

I have been wanting to write to you for some time. I have been reading you for quite a while (always, of course, assuming the Reforma reaches the Selva Lacandona), attentively and with amused seriousness (there is such a thing, no?). Now, reading your column of Thursday, March 16, I see that you have generously turned an attentive ear to our words. I shall try to not go on too long. Sale y vale.

You ask first: "What has the Zapatista Army of National Liberation done to preserve the Selva Lacandona?"
I answer: pass laws and see that they are carried out. As you could not know (because the government has presented the autonomous municipalities as secessionist), the autonomous authorities of the zapatista indigenous communities in the Selva Lacandona have passed a law prohibiting "the grazing, cutting down and burning of the high mountain (the companeros use the word "high mountain" to refer to the wooded areas, differentiating them from fields ñ planted lands ñ and from "acahuales," lands with low growth, invariably thorns, thistles, lianas and other parasitic plants). The communities have not been content with establishing and promulgating this law. They have, in addition, taken charge of seeing to its compliance and to punishing its lack of observance. The penalties for these crimes are extra community work and fines. And, it's carried out. In this manner they have not only halted the destruction of the wooded areas of the Selva Lacandona, but they have also managed to partly modify the patterns of planting in the communities. In order to confront the fires which proliferate at this time of the year, the villages have a system of communication and signals so that they can come to each other's aid if a fire spreads. The result? There are tens of thousands of expert "firefighters" in the zapatista areas. This, and more, is what the indigenous are doing, Senor Dehesa, in order to protect the land that is, for them, not just a means of survival, but also the place of memory, of culture, of history. This is what those indigenous are doing, who are rebels against a government that refuses to honor its word and which in response to their demands for justice has sent tens of thousands of soldiers who believe me, Senor Dehesa ñ do not come to Chiapas to plant the little trees you saw in San Miguel de los Jagu:eyes, but rather to plant the terror that you will only see in the faces of the men, women, children and old ones who have the misfortune of having, on their lands, a soldiers' barracks, several bars, at least one brothel and no respect for civil authority.

I am telling you this, Se~or Dehesa, not because I want to "convert" you into a zapatista or to recruit you. I am doing so because you are as intelligent as your words reflect (and, more, there is brilliance that cannot even be revealed by words). It is obvious that their inviting you to San Miguel de Los Jagu:eyes (and not to Acteal, or Amador Hernandez, or Amparo Aguatinta, or TaniPerla, or Roberto Barrios, or to other sites of military "reforesting") was not done innocently, and that you understand that.

Since, I am sure, you are broadminded and eager to learn of the different images of the same reality, I am inviting you to come to Chiapas incognito. Go to Comitan and take an air taxi there to the community of Amador Hernandez. From the air, just as you arrive, you will be able to appreciate the brutal felling of trees by the soldiers stationed there for their heliports, as well as the amount of woods deforested in order to clear the "firing fields" for their machine guns. If you land and manage to penetrate the military fortification, you will be able to se the drums of defoliants in their warehouses and the flame-throwers which, along with mortars and light machine guns, form part of their arsenal.

Go to Amador Hernandez, you will not be received by any Secretary of State or by any "high command" of the zapatista guerrilla, nor will you be attended to by any public relations director. Indigenous Tzeltal men and women will receive you, they will show you their destroyed fields of crops, their contaminated water sources, the pitfall traps with sharpened stakes inside, the walls of branches and cut trees, behind which the soldiers hide so that they do not have to see the words the indigenous men and women show them every day demanding their withdrawal. Come, Senor Dehesa, you have nothing to lose and, perhaps, much to understand. You could (it is a suggestion) bring Madame Loaeza (who also wants to make the trip) along with you. I am certain that she could come up with a good disguise that would allow both of you to pass unrecognized, and you could, in that way, confirm the "other" reality of the federal soldiers in the Selva Lacandona.

Because those soldiers whom Senor Aguilar Zinser sees (and applauds), "caring for" the forests of the Selva Lacandona, are the accomplices of the talamontes (the large trucks with clandestine wood have free passage at the military checkpoints in the Canadas). They are the same ones who raped indigenous women in the community of Morelia. The same ones who summarily executed indigenous in Ocosingo. The same ones who are training paramilitaries (whose greatest "forest" task is the massacre of children, women, men and old ones at Acteal), who convert schools and churches into barracks (visit the north of Chiapas), who prostitute the indigenous women (talk with the PRI women of San Quintin), who steal newborns in the "brand new" hospital of old Guadalupe Tepeyac in order to sell them (completely or in parts) on the black market in the United States. Who plant, traffic in and consume drugs (let them show you the areas around the barracks at Guadalupe Tepeyac, San Quintin, TaniPerla, Ibarra or La Soledad, to mention a few). Who protect drug traffickers on their routes to the American Union (after 1995, the year of the "recovery of national sovereignty," the South American cartels recovered the springboard they had lost with the EZLN uprising). Who have introduced alcohol into the communities (you can observe the military convoys escorting trucks with alcoholic beverages). The same ones who are persecuting, threatening, beating, jailing, raping and killing Mexican indigenous (in any community which has the misfortune to have a barracks close by) who, as far as I understand, are worth the same (or less) than any little tree.

Come, Senor Dehesa, come and see and talk and ask that they show you what they have inside the army barracks in the community of San Quintin (at the door of the Montes Azules biosphere). There you will be able to see the efficient modern dungeons designed to torture indigenous, the tunnels for "disappearing" persons without leaving any traces for human rights observers. Come, look and listen.

Come, and you will see that there are two programs for the future: the government's and the indigenous'. Ours seeks "to create the conditions for our good people of the countryside to recover their strength: their history, their ways of thinking, their dignity, their respectability, their initiative" (Dehesa, G. Reforma, Friday, March 17, 2000), and that which is not present in the election campaign.

Do not believe me, Senor Dehesa, believe what your eyes see and your ears hear. If your trip is not possible, pay no attention to what that I am writing here. Look, instead, at the hundreds of reports from non-governmental organizations, from scientists and researchers, from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. All of them recommend the army's withdrawal from Chiapas. And it is not because they want to see the forests destroyed. It is because they do not see the soldiers planting little trees, but, rather, violating human rights.

Good, Senor Dehesa, I hope I have limited myself to the number of pages that I imagine your column takes up. As to the rest, do not believe that about email. The only effective means of communicating with the EZLN General Command is still provided by a pair of boots, somewhat worn-out, for sure, but still serviceable. I do not know if you will publish this, or what the tone of your response will be. Whatever it may be, know that you have, at the least, two readers (including La Mar) in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast who, despite their not sharing many of your opinions and values, laugh quite happily at your wit, your incisiveness and your joy.

Vale. Salud, and the tree that matters is the one of the morning.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
Mexico, March of 2000.

Cheeky PS. I forgot, you also asked: "How many trees has Marcos planted?" I answer you: Without counting the little orange tree that graces the doors of the EZLN General Command, one could say that I have only planted one other tree. It is a very odd tree. Not just because its planting has required the support of thousands of men and women for several generations. Not just because its nurture involves much pain and, it is only fair to say, many smiles. No, Senor Dehesa, the tree we are planting here is odd because it is a tree for everyone, for those who have not yet been born, for those whom we do not know, for those who will be when we have been lost behind the corner of any calendar. When our tree grows, under its shade will sit the great and small, whites and darks and red and the red and the blue, indigenous and mestizo, men and women, the tall and the short, without those differences mattering, and, above all, without any of them feeling less or worse or ashamed for being as they are. Under that tree there will be respect for the other, dignity (which does not mean arrogance), justice and liberty. If I were pushed to define that tree briefly, I would tell you that it is a tree of hope. If, some morning on the map of Chiapas, instead of an immense green area broken up by the blue lines of rivers and streams, signs of oil wells are seen, and uranium mines, casinos, exclusive residential areas and military bases, then that will mean that those soldiers, who you say are caring for the Selva Lacandona, will have won. It will not mean that we have lost, just that we are taking longer to win than we had thought.