"The Promised Flower" translation by K.Benlloch / Agosto'97

The Promised Flower a text by Subcomandante Marcos, military leader of the insurgent forces of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional.

• To all men and women who, in different languages and ways, believe in a more human future and fight to achieve it today.
  
  Brothers:
  
  There exists in this planet called Earth, and in the continent that they call American, a country whose figure seems to have received a great bite from the East and that, on the West, sticks a long arm in the Pacific Ocean so that hurricanes won't push it away from its History. This country is known by natives and foreigners by the name of Mexico. Its History is a long battle between its will of being itself and the alien intentions of stealing it for another flag. This is our country.
  
  We, our blood in those days within the voice of our greatest grand fathers, already walked on it when its name wasn't this one yet. But then, in this constant fight, between being and not being, between staying and leaving, between yesterday and today, our people, now with blood from two races, came to the thought that it would be called Mexico this piece of land and water and sky and dream that we had because it was a gift from our ancestors. Then we became more numerous and then History behaved wisely because it made us the way we are and every one of us who were born had a name of our own. And Mexicans we call ourselves and Mexicans they call us. Later, History continued with its bumps and pains. We were born amongst blood and powder, and amongst blood and powder we were raised. Every then and now came the powerful from alien lands to rob us of our tomorrow. So it was written in the warrior song that unites us, But if a foreign enemy dared to profane with his feet your soil, think, oh dear Mother Land, that Heaven gave you a soldier in every son . That is why we fought yesterday. With different flags and languages came the stranger to conquer us. He came and left.
  
  We are still Mexicans because we have never felt at ease with any other name, as much as we would not walk under a flag different to that which pictures an eagle devouring a snake on white background, with green and red on the two sides. We, the first inhabitans of these lands, became gradually forgotten and left in a corner while the rest grew bigger and stronger, and we only had our History to defend ourselves with and we held ourselves to it in order to survive. So arrived this part of History that even seems a joke because only a country, the country of money, raised itself above all the flags. And they said globalization and then we knew that so they called this absurd order by which money is the only home land that you serve and by which frontiers fade not because of brotherhood but because of the blood spill that feeds the nationless powerful. Lie became the universal currency and our country weaved, on the nightmare of the majority, a dream of wealth and prosperity for a minority. Corruption and falseness were the main products that our home land exported abroad. Being poor, we dressed up our miseries as if we were rich, and that lie was so big that we ended up believing it. We prepared ourselves for the international forums and poverty was declared, by governmental decision, an invention that disappeared in front of the development that economical figures shouted. Us? We were forgotten, that's all, and History barely paid us attention enough so that we would die like this, forgotten and humiliated. Because dying isn't painful, forgetfulness is. That way we found out that we did not exist any more, we found out that they who rule had forgotten us in their euphoria of figures and growth rates. A country that forgets itself is a sad country, a country that forgets its past does not have a future.
  
  Then we took our weapons and went into the cities where we were considered animals. And we went and told the powerful Here we are! and we shouted out loud to everyone Here we are! . And notice how funny things are sometimes, because in order to be seen we covered our faces; in order to be mentioned, we hid our names; we bet our present to gain the future; and, in order to live... we died. And then came planes and helicopters and tanks and bombs and bullets and death and we went back to our mountains and even up there death followed us. Many people said Talk and the powerful said Let's talk and we answered OK, so let's talk . We talked and said what we wanted and they did not understand us at all. We repeated that we wanted democracy, liberty and justice, and their faces showed confusion and they revised their macroeconomical budgets and all their neoliberalism notes and those words in there they did not find. They told us We don't understand and offered us a nice corner in the museum of History and a long term death and a golden chain to tie our dignity.