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Title: Mirrors and Mirages in Slumil K’Ajxemk’op
Author: taller ahuehuete, Lluvia Benjamin
Date: 2021
Language: en
Topics: Zapatistas, anti-colonialism, autonomous communities, anti-capitalism, critical theory, colonization, indigenous, mexico, people of color, Chiapas, Spain, Europe, art, aesthetic, communization, commodity
Source: https://ahuehuete.substack.com/p/mirrors-mirages
Notes:  *Mirrors and Mirages in Slumil K’Ajxemk’op*. By Lluvia Benjamin and taller ahuehuete. Translated from the original article in Mexican-Castilian as seen on CaminoAlAndar and Comunizar. November, 2021. Translated from the original article in Mexican-Castilian as seen on CaminoAlAndar and Comunizar. November, 2021. By Lluvia Benjamin and taller ahuehuete.

taller ahuehuete, Lluvia Benjamin

Mirrors and Mirages in Slumil K’Ajxemk’op

“It’s not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what

is, present its light on the past; rather, image is that wherein what

has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation.

”

– Walter Benjamin, “Awakening” (Arcades, 462)

The Mirror

An aura of mysticism envelops the appearance of the Zapatista insurgent

movement.

The exoticism towards the struggle of the autonomous indigenous people

becomes palpable – almost visible – before the characteristic images

that emerge from the caracoles generally disseminated and absorbed by

the public without the textual mediation of the articles that accompany

them.

They are then absorbed in the way the spectacle taught us to perceive

the TV: static and two-dimensional, and rarely as dialectical images.

Nevertheless, pictorial analysis must surrender to the peculiar

condition of the nature morte, for it is this way in which the average

viewer takes it in. From an aesthetic scope, the contrast between the

darkly-hued balaclavas juxtaposed with the vivid primary and secondary

tones on the clothing of the Tsotsil, Tseltal and other originary

peoples generates an almost morbid curiosity in the mind of the

spectator, assuming that she is a participant in societies whose attire

is dictated by the consumerism of the western capitalist system.

The crisp green (with shades of yellow-highlighter) of the Lacandon

Jungle against the sensual photographs of red bandanas and bellicose

artifacts captivate the observer, regardless of her political alignment.

Captivating an audience in an information-saturated society is thus

worth appraising. After all – and supposing our common experience is

that of a cybernaut in Western geographies – we might not be surprised

to face the fact that the median amount of exposure to images with

commercial content in the 1970s averaged between 500 and 1600, depending

on population density. It is estimated that in 2021 the number of images

we encounter ranges between 6,000 and 10,000 per day.

The precariat, whose presence is limited to the social margins, is

perceived as not worthy of consideration[1] in today’s cultural

landscape.

As writer and poet John Berger mentioned:

«The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as

poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of

priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich.

Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied
 but written off as trash.

The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture

for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.»

The presence of Zapatismo, with its visual contrasts and the exoticism

to which it is subjected as a public response, is a flagrant

contradiction because no revolutionary vernacular had foreseen an

insurgent struggle with these attributes: devoid of affiliation to a

declared political party, without explicit ideological affiliation as a

banner, anti-identitarian but multifaceted [2], and above all not the

product of a highly educated society (educated, according to the

criteria of the hegemonic academic apparatus, i.e., by Western

standards).

And as it occurs with events of a phantasmagoric character, the auratic

effect exhibited gives light to a mixed mythology, and its discourse

reflects how the human being filters the material world through

ideology. The German writer T. W. Adorno mentioned that:

«Without a doubt, the commodity is the archetype [Urform] of ideology;

however, the commodity itself is not simply a false consciousness, but

is the result of the structure of Political Economy.»

Chiapas is categorized, commodified, conceptualized, and soon a mirror

of the viewer’s tendentious position. But above all, Chiapas is

perceived in relation to the class and empirical understanding of the

subject, concerning one’s material experiential in the face of poverty,

scarcity, and our cartography in the history of expropriation. Or,

rather, the primitive mode of accumulation in Abya Yala.

[]

From Chiapas: Capital Is Seen With Lucidity

The perplexity that accompanies the territory that declares itself as

Mexico, since its synthesized debut as a nation-state in the face of the

failed agrarian revolution (1910 — 1920) should not astonish us, for we

can find in this “republic” some features not present in the

quasi-homogeneous European society to which Marx was exposed.

The latifundium and hacienda models, which governed what we now know as

the free and sovereign state of Chiapas, could not simply be distilled

to private property, encomiendas, tributes to the caciques and campesino

slave-labor. In this economic system, in this particular class struggle,

other factors not present in the critique of political economy must be

contemplated simultaneously. And these constellations are presently

being dissected outside the academic apparatus. This type of analysis is

predominant within the theoretical margins of the communiqués, and the

accumulated body of literature generated by Zapatismo straight from the

source.

Years worth of critical theory readily available online, and translated

into multiple languages, await anyone with a drop of curiosity. It might

impress a few – especially the many disconcerted-but-well-meaning, the

clueless fellow-travelers – unaware of their entitlement and

condescension, who frequently ask to interview a Zapatista for their

podcast or reading group. Their desire to access the strangely hermetic

ways of the insurgents reflects a reluctance to hear their collective

voices.

The communiqués do not shy away from eloquent allusions to the dominant

value-form and the preponderant bias from the mode of production towards

the commodity by disregarding hindrances (from the perspective of

capital) such as human life and nature.

This concurrent terminology in Zapatista communication would confuse the

European of our previous paradigm — if he were to learn about it — for

he would find the Zapatista voice contaminated by ‘Eurocentric’ Marxist

ideology. When will he realize that this “exotic revolutionary

experiment” is made up of conscious beings? Endowed with reason, they

have reiterated over and over, and insisted again in June 2021[3]:

«It turns out that, also through studying and analyzing, we have

discovered something that could be important, or not; it depends.

Taking it as a given that this planet will be annihilated, at least the

form in which we currently perceive it, we have been researching the

possible options.

Which is to say, we believe that we have established the identity of the

criminal, their modus operandi, and the crime itself. Those three

characteristics combine to form a system, or a way of relating with

humanity and with nature: capitalism»

Or as documented in 2018, during “300, Part I: A Plantation, a World, a

War, Slim Chances Subcomandante Insurgente MoisĂ©s, SupGaleano”:

«The system functions with this contradiction (among others): it wants

to rid itself of the labor force because its “use” brings with it

various problems (for example: it tends to organize, protest, strike,

sabotage production, and join forces with other workers); but at the

same time the system needs that “special” commodity to consume other

commodities.

It’s not the existence of work that defines capitalism, but the

characterization of the capacity to work as a commodity to be bought and

sold on the labor market. That means there are those who buy and those

who sell, and above all, those who have only the option of selling

themselves.

The possibility to purchase labor power is provided for by private

ownership of the means of production, circulation, and consumption.

Private ownership of the means of production forms the nucleus of the

system.

Built upon this class division: the owner of private property and the

dispossessed.

And hiding it as such, are a whole range of juridical and media

simulations, as well as other dominant evidentiary forms: citizenship

and juridical equality; the penal and police system; electoral democracy

and entertainment (increasingly difficult to differentiate);

neo-religions and the supposed neutrality of technology; social sciences

and the arts; free access to the market and to consumption; and a whole

spectrum of nonsense of things like “change begins within oneself”, “you

are the architect of your own destiny”, “when life gives you lemons,

make lemonade”, “don’t give fish to the hungry, teach them to fish”

(“and sell them fishing poles!”).

And, highly fashionable today, efforts to “humanize” capitalism by

making it good, rational, and objective, that is: capitalism light.»

And with his characteristic tendency to jest, Subcomandante Insurgente

Galeano adds, so that there is no doubt as to the referential source:

«The system advances in its reconquest of the world without concern for

what is destroyed, preserved, or made superfluous; anything is

disposable as long as the maximum profit is obtained at maximum speed.

The machine is returning to the methods of its origins—that’s why we

recommend you read The Primitive Accumulation of Capital—which is to

conquer new territory via violence and war.»

[]

The Heads of the Hydra Hold the Mirror

In Slumil K’Ajxemk’op, direct participation in Chiapas — that is, having

previously visited the area — was a detail that escaped from the mouths

of the interlocutors as if it were a job interview and one randomly

mentioned having graduated from a prestigious institution.

Chiapas, during conversations initiated by those seeking a new and

horizontal society, was often transformed into a sacrosanct symbol; a

social medal, a trophy to quickly distinguish the international militant

from the insurgent’s hierarchy. Chiapas was an emblem, a badge for the

ranks of the average activist: that is, distinct from the provincial,

regionalist, or awkwardly theoretical one whose presence lies at the

bottom of the ‘non-existent’ pyramid of tendency.

The EZLN, which in Mexico is criticized as passé by the demographic body

that claims to be conglomerated as “mestizo” (often an erroneous synonym

for “Mexican citizen”), in Europe possesses different characteristics.

«A picture is worth a thousand words» it is suggested.

The emphasis on appearances should not surprise the reader. But what is

known concretely about Zapatismo outside the political sphere? What is

mediated externally if one does not absorb the Mexican discursive

apparatus, which is the mouthpiece of the state and of capital, and

which claims the movement’s irrelevance despite the fact that the

Journey for Life has demonstrated the contrary in this odd land?

The EZLN, its orientation towards direct action, and its antagonistic

position to the bloodthirsty State confuses the standard European.

Atomization rules the societies at the core of capitalism. The mode of

production is so far ingrained that the reproduction of this economic

structure is not only limited to our labor force, to our null possession

of the means of production, but our perception of the holistic reality

as well, for this too is fetishized.

The unquenchable thirst for capital accumulation appears as the only

need regarded as genuine, the sole priority and only magnitude of our

societies. Aware of the valuable work done by bourgeois economics and

liberal ideology to sustain its reign, capital discovered that promoting

individuality would thus ensure its absolute triumph.

The subject, the free individual, the egalitarian citizen!

Or, rather, the best alibis used by the capitalist to hide our

irrefutable class struggle. As in Marx’s time, production today is

determined by the social conditions in which consumers find themselves,

and these same conditions are rooted in class antagonism.

We are dismembered to the marrow: that is, we are nothing more than

entities merely capable of selling our labor-power in a predefined

manner for the benefit of the capitalist, who in turn converts our share

into surplus-value.

This existential particularity, this shameful reality — or rather,

identity — is our communal standardization: we share this

characteristic, that is, we are sisters in deprivation. And in turn,

this same homogenization of the working class compels our

non-identification with the reason for our subjugation: wage labor, or a

double dependence to it.

The words of Karl Marx in his 1844 Economic and Philosophical

Manuscripts resonate like an echo still pertinent to our era:

«Political economy can therefore advance the proposition that the

proletarian, the same as any horse, must get as much as will enable him

to work.

It does not consider him when he is not working, as a human being.»

However, contrary to what was envisaged in orthodox Marxist theory and

the optimism of the various workers’ movements, the position of the

worker in relation to her exploitation has not been the emancipatory

route, nor the necessary equation for the social exodus from the prison

to which the value-form chained us. But as beardy reminds Kugelmann:

«The history of the world would indeed be very easy to make, if the

struggle were carried on only on condition that opportunities were

unfailingly favorable.»

The oppressed human being prefers to dispense of the characteristic that

links her to the rest, choosing instead to define herself – or, as the

spectacle would more aptly describe it, she prefers to express her

identity in other ways.

As a commodity, the worker has thus been categorized in the most

dehumanizing way. Multiple categories of atomization continue to emerge,

turning us into infinite suffixes and prefixes.

If in the past the human being was defined and transformed by how she

interacted with nature (that is, by the fruit of social activity: vital

activity, work and interaction with her milieu), today the categories

that emerge daily like mushrooms in the forest after the rain define us

by the stratification we suffer, which is tangible and real and which,

nevertheless, only reflects the multiple wounds from the hydra’s heads

and not the actual wound inflicted holistically by the core.

This very reduction of our reality has produced categories that seem

more real than the extant dominance of capital over our lives. Our

perception ignores the material, which in turn ignores that it is this

very structure that allows our daily, constant and suffocating

subjugation [4].

«Capital can only increase by exchanging itself for labor power,

engendering wage labor. And the labor power of the wage-laborer can only

be exchanged for capital by increasing it, by strengthening the power of

which it is the slave. The increase of capital is, therefore, increase

of the proletariat, i.e., of the working class.»

The self-identification process also exists in left-wing movements,

which see Chiapas from a distant perspective as a mirage. The continuous

retelling of this mythology prevents a materialistic – and not an

idealist – analysis of the situation that mobilizes Zapatismo.

The tyranny and despotism that subjected the originary nations for

centuries was precisely the “enough is enough!” of their struggle.

Subcomandante Moisés describes with an erudition difficult to find among

the ranks of academics the intricacies of this primitive mode of

accumulation. The Zapatistas suspected that it was true, that although

they had not witnessed this incessantly hindered status, their struggle

was rooted in the desire for a dignified life, a characteristic

perpetually denied (which continues to be denied) to them. Their

intuition told them that,

«to live is not only not to die, it is not to survive.

To live as human beings is to live with freedom. To live is art, is

science, is joy, is dance, is struggle.»

The Zapatista Maritime Squadron 421 expressed it more concretely during

their powerful speech on August 13^(th) in commemoration of the 500

years of indigenous resistance to colonialism coinciding with the siege

of TenochtitlĂĄn:

«Then there is someone or something that prevents us from living, that

snatches our freedom, that deceives us, that swindles us, that corners

us, that takes the world away from each one of us with bites, with

stabs, with wounds: capitalism.»

The “enough is enough!” of the originary people is transmitted through

theory and practice, contemplation and struggle.

“Marx never renounced praxis,” admitted Theodor Adorno, “much less did

he leave a manual with clear instructions.” He understood that the

conditions of the people and the individual in pursuit of emancipation

would be different in each terrain and nevertheless general, for

subjugation was materially inflicted. In the words of the author Jasper

Bernes[5]: You cannot unteach hunger. Adorno[6] put it this way:

«Praxis is a source of power for theory, but it cannot be prescribed by

it.

It appears in theory simply, and indeed necessarily, as a blind spot, as

an obsession with what is criticized.»

[]

​​Keeping Our Eyes on the Heart (of the Hydra)

The critique of their material conditions, the Zapatista ”¡ya basta!”

has taken a violent toll, as happens to revolutionary movements in

search of communal autonomy: they become, from the beginning, a time

bomb. Blood, corpses, casualties, sorrow, grief, tears, violence.

Capital and the State have declared themselves owners of everything and

everyone. Our labor force is the only thing we possess, and it exacts a

certain value. Our identity is this, what the mode of production has

reduced us to. As beardy reminded Kugelmann:

«Once the interconnectedness is understood, any theoretical belief in

the permanent necessity of the existing conditions collapses before its

failure in practice.

Therefore, it is absolutely in the interest of the ruling classes to

perpetuate a meaningless confusion.»

The identity movement, incorporated into the language of the hydra,

thrives on obfuscation in our logic. In the words of SupGaleano on June

2021:

«According to the big Hollywood blockbusters, the way out of a global

catastrophe (always something external: aliens, meteors, inexplicable

pandemics, zombies [
]) is for all the governments of the world to join

together (headed by gringos).

Or, worse, for the United States’ government to be synthesized in an

individual [un/a individuo/a] who has the politically-correct racial and

gender characteristics but still wears on their chest the mark of the

Hydra, because the machine has learned by now that the farce should be

inclusive.»

And since our existence is summed up – according to the present mode of

production – only to our labor force for sale in the labor market in

exchange for survival (“cost of living”), and this corresponds to a

numerical sum, everything can be bought in the eyes of the capitalist.

“Everything and everyone has a price,” scoffs the capitalist, without

comprehending that this is not a deontological defect, nor a tragedy

intrinsic to human nature, but the result of the total vulnerability and

dull compulsion to which the system subject us.

[]

As Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés states in his illustrative exposition

of the trajectory made from the period of primitive accumulation of

capital in the finca system to our present day, in “The capitalist world

is a walled plantation” (April 12, 2017):

«In capitalism there are no countries, that’s how we see it.

Capitalism is going to turn the whole world into a plantation [...]

because the one who rules is no longer the one who rules. The capitalist

boss is the one in charge. [...] The governors are the overseers.

The municipal presidents are the gaffers.

All of them act in the service of capitalism.

This means that the master, capitalism, is going to turn the whole world

into its hacienda, that is, if we allow it.

Our question there as Zapatistas is: why do they – the capitalists – get

to change their mode of exploitation? And why don’t we change our form

of fighting to save ourselves from that outcome?»

[]

The German dreamer and philosopher Walter Benjamin declared that «the

tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in

which we live is not the exception but the rule.»

The violence inflicted daily on Zapatista communities does not reach the

ears of those who glorify the movement until a communiqué explicitly

expresses the urgency of a larger manifestation of cross-cultural

solidarity (Chiapas al Borde de la Guerra Civil, Enlace Zapatista,

2021), as they consider Zapatismo a concluded, finished and victorious

concept. They perceive it, after all, in the same way as the multiple

identities contrary to the status quo they adjudicate to themselves: a

succinct narration of their fetishized existences, an appearance.

Zapatismo in Slumil K’Ajxemk’op is often reduced to this: an exception

to the rule, a hypnotic and victorious experiment. A mirage of

insurrection at a distance.

There is reticence in Slumil K’Ajxemk’op. The sensual images of the

insurgent movement (“anarchist! anti-state! anti-capitalist!

communist!”, as they try to define it under their familiar

categorizations) are soporific for the European nonconformist. The dream

of critical reason, which produces monsters unwilling to conduct a

proper assessment of our material conditions, takes hold of these

anti-systemic figures. Their revolutionary dichotomy allows only one

duality: barricade or trench, occupation or liberation, revolution or

reform, victory or defeat.

In the face of the multiple paramilitary interventions within the

Autonomous Municipality of Lucio Cabañas, and the harassment of the

paramilitary group “Los 40”, the ears of the defiant in Slumil

K’Ajxemk’op are muffled.

The murder of SimĂłn Pedro in broad daylight, that is, the deathly shot

in the head that the member of the pacifist civil organization “Las

Abejas de Acteal” received in front of his son did not reach the ears of

the insubordinate. It was one more statistic, another headline to

overlook.

Before the constant threats and disappearances reported by the FRAYBA,

or before those met without punishment that the networks of resistance

and rebellion describe in their summons for solidarity, the audience in

Slumil K’Ajxemk’op seems disturbed, incapable of processing this

information until it is emphasized in the most direct way; they appear

detached because Zapatismo represents a concluded project, a strange

one, but concluded. An odd, but a triumphant movement. A historical

exception.

«A historical exception that can only manifest itself in the jungle, far

away, and not here in civilization.

Zapatismo cannot be reproduced here, in normal society »

In normal society. This adjective – an ad verbum quote heard in Slumil

K’Ajxemk’op – describes the person expressing it more than the entity it

is intended to denote.

In light of this, in their epistolary exchange regarding aesthetics (and

politics, I would previously have said, but it would be redundant. All

aesthetics is political, even that which is self-described as

“apolitical,” meaning reactionary) the late Subcomandante Insurgente

Marcos remarked from the mountains of the Mexican southeast to John

Berger:

«”This does not happen here,” says the reader’s vision of the photo,

“that is Chiapas, Mexico, a remediable, surmountable historical

accident, and... far away”.

There are also other readings that confirm this: advertisements,

financial figures, stability, peace.

That is the purpose of the indigenous war at the end of the century, to

revalorize peace. Just as a stain highlights the target that suffers it.

“I am here and this photo takes place in another place, far away
” says

the “reading” that distances itself.»

The Journey for Life has as its purpose the dialogue and the weaving of

struggles on the margins of society between the multiple narratives and

afflictions that oppress us. The travelers from Chiapas understand the

multiplicity of pains on earth that we experience as our own. They

understand, as they clearly stated, that:

«We are differentiated and distanced by lands, skies, mountains,

valleys, steppes, jungles [
] lagoons, races, cultures, languages,

histories, ages, geographies, sexual and non-sexual identities, roots,

borders »

The Zapatista communities come to Slumil K’Ajxemk’op to listen, to

dialogue, but above all to listen. Not in an anthropological mode

reversed, with the object of study (the dehumanized noble savage that

delighted and continues to delight the field) now interviewing the

interviewee, for the project lacks that vindictive quality. But why? It

is not a question of mobilizing on the basis of what separates us:

executioner and victim, or exploited proletariat versus capitalist, as

the rhetoric of the workers’ movements of the last century tried and

failed to do.

This strategy remains embedded in the capitalist narrative, subjugated

to the value form, still functioning within it. Zapatismo proposes

something different, but not by contesting the axiom that history is

written by class struggle. No, it maintains that principle above all

else: the heart of the capitalist hydra is the target.

It reiterates the question in a different form. The strongest incentive

toward mobilizing, the Zapatistas argue, is not that of our palpable

subjugation, the class struggle we experience daily, or exploitation as

the norm. Through a model of constellations, they prompt us to ask

ourselves – understanding that the question is not addressed to a

homogeneous audience – “what would life be like if another world were

possible? And why isn’t it?”

Subcomandante MoisĂ©s’ words resonate like the constellation-form of

Benjamin (The art that is neither seen nor heard. July 29, 2016):

«Each person must struggle, and we must support each other, but that

support cannot substitute for each other’s struggle.

Whoever struggles has the right to decide the direction of his path and

with whom he travels it.

If others insert themselves, then they are no longer supporting that

struggle, but supplanting it.

To support is to respect, not to try to direct or command [...] No one

is going to liberate us but ourselves.»

Mobilize ourselves, then, by the potentiality of the many worlds we may

create. Can we even envision what a more tender and logical vision than

the lust for surplus-value extraction would look like? In the face of an

unquenchable thirst for capital, life. In the face of exploitation, the

search for paths to dignity for all. In the face of injustice, dignified

rage, that is, strategic mobilizing by sentipensar[7]: praxis based, as

Adorno just mentioned a few paragraphs ago, on the rage that is born

naturally, through critical observation, as a result or “as an obsession

of what is criticized.”

The Echo of Benjamin: The Tradition of the Oppressed

The past century has shown us that it is impossible to organize solely

on the basis of our position in the mode of production; that is, as

exploited members of the working class without volition. According to

the analysis of contemporary thinkers Aaron Benanav and John Clegg[8]:

«The domination of capital over labor was reinforced in the organization

and arrangement of factory production.

In fact, capitalists were able to take the divisions running through the

labor market and import them.

Workers remained divided in terms of gender, language, religion and

regional customs.

To these differences were added new ones: race and nationality, as well

as the emerging and constantly changing hierarchies of skills and

education.

In this sense, workers’ unity remained, for the most part, a unity in

separation: it was a unity mediated by capital; it was therefore

unavailable as a ready weapon in the struggle for emancipation from

capital.»

The indigenous nations affiliated with the EZLN admit that

spatial-territorial solidarity is possible, indeed necessary in spite of

our differences, because it is “the understanding that it is a system

that is responsible for these pains” by which we could be united.

«The executioner is an exploitative, patriarchal, pyramidal, racist,

thieving and criminal system: capitalism. It is the awareness that it is

not possible to reform this system, to educate it, to attenuate it, to

iron it out, to domesticate it, to humanize it.»

Benjamin’s words are present as an echo. He is not wrong[9], the

tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “state of exception” in

which we live is but the rule.

The Zapatistas recognize that, despite having expropriated the land from

the caciques, the hacienda owners and the State (“the land is of those

who work it”), this expropriation is conditioned and subjected to the

threat of continued violence.

Their existence and autonomous social functioning represents a challenge

to the mode of production and, therefore, must be exterminated. The

threat does not end with the success of emancipated territory from the

clutches of capital. Terror and violence are still prevalent even after

an autonomous triumph with respect to the state, and the various

participatory and more egalitarian economies in a communal setting.

The victory over the hydra is not freedom from the

worker-machine-factory triad, nor the cessation of the state of

exploitation. Communization over private property, solidarity over

individualism, dignity over exploitation, comradeship over indifference,

life over profit must be radically disseminated, that is to say, our

mission is to truly extirpate the poisonous weed from the root. Abolish

the value-form, understanding its elusive tendency to reemerge under

different names, by realizing that its appearance is but a continual

metamorphosis.

The land that refuses to give up must abolish its myopic boundaries in

theory and practice. Or all the spatial pockets – that anthropologists

and academics use as exceptions to the rule – will be reclaimed sooner

or later. As Marx reminds us, if money “comes into the world with a

congenital blood-stain on one cheek,” capital comes dripping from head

to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt[10].

The call issued in Slumil K’Ajxemk’op to choose life and dignity for all

(“in the face of big capital, a common cornfield”) must be heard on the

entire (and overheating) surface of the earth.

The weaving of global solidarity is the only rope that will bring us

closer to the lifeline. Otherwise, the gallows will be woven in its

place, tied around Mother Nature’s neck. And with this sentence, our

extinction at last.

We do not have much time left.

«The survival of humanity depends on the destruction of capitalism.»

(Enlace Zapatista)

[]

[1] from Latin considerare “to look at closely, observe,” probably

literally “to observe the stars.”

[2] GonzĂĄlez Casanova, Pablo. SociologĂ­a de la explotaciĂłn. CLACSO,

Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

2006.

[3] Enlace Zapatista.

[4] Marx, Karl. Wage Labor and Capital (1849)

[5] Marx, Karl. Wage Labor and Capital (1849)

[6] Bernes, Jasper, Revolutionary Motives , Endnotes 5: The Passions and

the Interests.

[7] Galeano, Eduardo (1993–2012) The Book of Embraces . Madrid: Siglo

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[8] Benanav, Aaron. “Crisis and Immiseration: Critical Theory Today”

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[9] Benjamin, Walter. * On the Concept of History*, (often referred to

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[10] Marx, Karl. Capital Volume One, Chapter Thirty-One: Genesis of the

Industrial Capitalist.