It takes more than two hours to get everyone through the narrow doors of Tierradentro Cafe, and so we stand outside waiting, crushed together with other Spaniards, Italians, Mexicans, Norweigans, Canadians and Americans. Together, we are the multi-coloured, multi-shaded faces of international zapatismo.

On this particular sunny southern Mexican day we've assembled for the announcement of the beginning of the Other Campaign's second phase. Once we are all seated and arranged within the cafe, with our respective cameras and notepads prepped and patiently pointed
toward the empty "round table" (which happens to be quite square, rectangular even, as Marcos will quip
during one of his speeches), the comandancia (leadership) of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation files into the crowded room and take their places beneath the twin Mexican and Zapatista flagsthat are suspended from the wall.

Strike the Zapatista hymn. Strike it about 6 times on repeat, crackling fuzzily through the speaker system. Some of the crowd mouths the words or sings along as the zapatista leaders stand in salute with varying degrees of poise. (Somewhere toward the end of the
line of comandantes (commanders) the zeal to raise an arm in salute has tapered off and been replaced with a patient slumped shoulder standing.)

The meeting begins with a speaker recounting what was the first step of the Other Campaign. We are reminded of the national tour that the zapatistas undertook to meet with and to listen to all of those in Mexico who are "from below and to the left," and that in this tour the zapatistas found, with each new meeting, that they were not alone in the oppression they live and in the desire to seek deep, structural change. Equally, the presenter notes, each new encounter was a lesson in new and diverse organizing tactics, a point of
exchange between the zapatistas and the diverse people of Mexico who are in resistance; a site upon which to reflect about the profound crisis that neoliberal capitalism is enacting upon the world.

Once the collective memory of the Other Campaign has been established, comandante Tacho takes the microphone. He speaks of the corrupt power of the elites and of money. He also announces the beginning of this second phase of the Other Campaign: the Campaña Mundial por la Defense de las Tierras y los Territorios Indígenas y Campesinos, Autónomos, de Chiapas, México y el Mundo (World Campaign in Defense of Land and Autonomous Indigenous and Campesino Territories of Mexico and the World) which as of 6pm this evening, the 25th of March, has begun.

As the next 8 speakers will remind us in their varying forms and from varying anlaytical viewpoints - two of whom are only vicariously present across internet connections, calling in from land movements in Honduras and Brazil (MST) - the struggle for land is at the base of the oppression that people the world over are faced with. Land is not only land, not only trees and fields, as commandante Kelly orates, but is also the source of all culture, all history, all dreams, and all identity. When it is taken away, or denied to a people, these people are also denied food, water and shelter, as well as home, community, identity, self-determination and autonomy. Life, as it is.

The launching of the World Campaign in Defense of Land comes at a time in Chiapas when paramilitary groups have been increasing their presence and their violence in indigenous communities throughout the state. Struggles to maintain lands that were recuperated for
community use in the 1994 zapatista uprising, as well as lands recuperated at other moments throughout the history of resistance to land privatization, have been tense, and growing tenser, over the last year. The zapatista community of Choles de Tumbala, which in August was violently evicted from its land by state representatives and three men who claim private ownership of the fields, is one example of this
increasing violence. The community's houses were burned, their animals stolen, their crops destroyed, and three of the men beaten and taken into custody. The land has now been reclaimed by the zapatistas, but threats of another eviction and more violence persist, and community members have not returned. There are still no houses, very little water and food, and no stability to life in Choles de Tumbala.

Another example of the volatile land conflict playing out in Chiapas is the situation in the community of Huitepec. In fall of 2006 two men from the community were arrested for cultivating land that the state claims doesn't belong to them. As far as the men knew they were in their own fields, planting their own seeds, and entirely within their rights. Regardless, they were taken into custody and bail was posted at a
prohibitively high amount. Then men, now released from prison (the Other Campaign of San Cristobal was able to raise funds to post the bail) are still in hiding and being legally harassed. And the land is still under conflict. Huitepec is also, supposedly, an ecological reserve and the owner of a deep well of clean water. The Mexican government has been selling access rights to the water of this well to large corporations. And so we have come to one of the core conflicts of interest over the land.

There is a lot of money to be made from natural resources. The government can, at great profit, sell water - or plant species (the source of medical knowledge and pharmaceutical miracles), or trees harvested as lumber, or wind itself (in the form of energy) - to corporations. Regardless of whether this natural abundance is found within ecological/biological reserves and supposedly protected, or whether the harvesting and selling of the resources will deprive and impoverish the people who live under the trees which are cut and beside the water which is bottled (which is almost always what happens), the government keeps sinking its fingers into this land and these resources, appropriating land away from communities and violently displacing them from their homes, all for the sake of signing corporate contracts and reaping financial gain.

As the zapatistas say, "In all of the world it's the same story. Our struggle is your struggle." The situation of government and corporate manipulation, robbery of resources and land, and violence to that end, is by no means unique to Mexico.

Under this second phase of the Other Campaign, the zapatistas call for worldwide resistance to land based exploitations. In their own words, "We are calling this world-wide campaign of mutual support between rural peoples and others who support our rights and our struggles for life and dignity, and we are calling to unite our forces with others. ...The struggle in defense of the land is a struggle for life and dignity. Behind us, we are you."

~Lila~