Querid@s,
These are some reflections on my learnings and
travels of the past few months--to go with the photos of
amorcito,
Charlotte
True Word and Language for Understanding:
from Fahm in
Language took me on journeys to different places. These days I am trying to
figure out how language is showing itself to me again. I see that most of all
there is definitely something very profound, very spiritual about word.
--Sue-san Ghahremani-Ghajar
Language for me is alive and evolving, full of everyday miracles and new
understandings. In all the communities I have been a part of, language
manifests as a creative practice—in playful and useful ways, adapting itself
continuously to the needs and imagination of the people who sculpt it. I am
learning how to pay deeper attention to word, to really understand its power,
to strive to really say what I mean and mean what I say. These past few months
I have traveled to
Fahm was described to me as that language which
contributes to our fundamental individual and social perceptions,
understandings, and worldviews. The language-context in which people are
submerged creates their fahm of what life means and
thus shapes their life practices. Fahm is similar to
what has been referred to as “perceptions,” “social cognitions,” “ideologies,”
but fahm refers specifically to those shaped through
real life involvements in communities, not through institutional involvements
or mass media, which would be instead described in Farsi (or Arabic) as vahm. As I sit down to write, I realize the impossibility
of writing or speaking in true fahm for all the
people I want to tell these stories to. There are the usual linguistic,
cultural, political and epistemological barriers to understanding when crossing
between different worlds and ways of knowing. But there are also here
experiences that I cannot relate fully, for various reasons, including what is
untranslatable, what must be kept in confidence, and what I am still coming to
understand. So I am left with selecting stories, deciding which to tell whom,
and also considering the question of what kind of language can best lead to
better understanding. It is clear to me that spoken and written languages have
limitations, for some of the ways in which I would want to best express some of
these stories would be through languages older and other than words. Creating
true fahm is a very difficult task. What I can do is
relate what spoke to me, those events, actions, and ideas that touched me, and
which I think are important to pass on. They are my
and others’ stories, filtered through my insufficient memory and still evolving
comprehension.
Fahm, as I experienced it in
Bats i k’op,
in Tzotsil (one of the main Mayan languages spoken in
It seems to me that the spiritual component of palabra
verdadera is felt in the body in a very deep way,
perhaps at what Ana, a community artist we met in Juchitan
on our way from
Within the relationship between word and spirit seems to also be contained the
relationship of word with the body and the earth. In an article about the
relationship between Hebrew and Arabic , Tony Naufal writes about the Language of the Body contained in
the notion of Blessing. There is humility in asking for blessing, an
acknowledgement of the sacred and of the power of the word. Blessing stems from
the root of the word for knee (brkh in Hebrew and the
inverted rkb in Arabic), invoking the act of bending
the knees in submission and honoring the earth and the divine, such as in namaz, the Islamic way of praying, yogic sun salutations,
or many other spiritual moving meditations. Naufal
also points out how inherent in the language and concept of blessing is also
that of a two-way relation: “man is blessed by his Creator and he blesses his
Creator.” He gives the example of how this occurs linguistically in Arabic (and
therefore in other language traditions as well), where children call their
mothers “ mama” who also call their children by the same word “mama,” pointing
out that how the word refers to the relation between them and not just the
personal status. “Thus, all close family links are reflexive, and bring out the
interplay between the two poles of the state of being a father, mother, an
uncle or an aunt.” In thinking about the notions contained in fahm and palabra verdadera I wonder if it is also this ability of word to
contain two-way relationships, together with its relation to truth and
appropriate community relevance and action that adds to the power of True Word.
A close relationship between word, the spiritual, and the body suggests a
balance that connotes health for the individual, community, society, and
nature. Understanding their interrelation makes fahm
possible. It doesn’t work for one part to be healthy and another not; if one
part suffers, the others suffer. The way the body works, when something happens
in one part, the healthy whole sends nutrients to the ailing part to try and
heal it. Communities work similarly, and so should all of human society. The
root of the Arabic word for health is saha
“wholesomeness,” which is also used for concepts of “right eating,” “right
doing,” “right working.” When thinking about fahm we
need to think of it in an interrelated way, as an aspect of health that affects
every part of our lives. However, the components of this understanding do not
always translate cross-culturally. In one of our meetings in Jarjrood, Sue-san spoke about the hijab
as health. She was lamenting not having the language with which to talk about
her deep connection to health through the wearing of the hijab.
This led to a very moving session where many people spoke from the heart about
their connection to their spiritual and cultural traditions through language
and word. One of the Pakistani conference participants disagreed with Sue-san
that they had no language with which to talk about these relationships. To
demonstrate, he struck his chest three times and repeated a prayer in Arabic,
ending with “Hossein, Hossein,
Hossein.” “This is a language no amount of colonialization has been able to take from us,” he said. I
would like to ask Sue-san to elaborate on this notion of hijab
as health, as my own experience of wearing the hijab
for three weeks in Iran had given me new insights and understanding that aren’t
easy to articulate. Knowing the subject of hijab to
be such a loaded and contentious issue that brings up so many issues for
people, even amongst my own family and friends, I felt how difficult and
delicate it was to find my own fahm for explaining my
experience—without making a case for or against it. What I experienced wearing
the hijab was both an opportunity for invisibility
and new visibility. On the street or in the mosque, I enjoyed the protection
and anonymity of the veil, while at the conference, I enjoyed a new kind of
visibility in my relations and conversations with men. At lunch one day, I was
sitting between two men, one Hindu and one Muslim, and brought up some of my
thoughts and feelings around the hijab. The man from
India spoke about how his experience with the hijab
in Iran had changed how he related to women. “I see women differently,” he
said. “There aren’t so many distractions,” a woman added. The man on my left,
an Iranian who lived in Australia, found the hijab to
be a relic from the past, and thought that the Islamic Republic of Iran was
isolating both men and women by requiring its use. I, myself, didn’t mind
wearing it most of the time, as it resulted in a practical way of dealing with
your hair (think, no more bad hair days). Of course, the hijab,
is technically much more than just a headscarf, it involves loosely covering
the rest of the body as well. There were times when I found all this to get in
the way, such as when I wanted to climb the walnut tree, feel the breeze on my
skin, or swim in the crystal-clear river that ran behind the compound in Jarjrood. But I also found the hijab
to allow for a different way of being seen by the opposite sex—one that seems
more difficult for men than women, as they aren’t required to cover as much. It
was a rest from the over-sexualization of the Western
mass-media and the resulting culture around it. For me, the hijab
remains a deeply personal political issue, although the globalizing “Clash of
Civilizations” crowd will insist on either exoticizing
or demonizing it as representative of an “Axis of Evil” mentality. I feel I now
better understand both the complex nuances and straightforward simplicity of
wearing the hijab, its ability to simultaneously
cover and reveal. However, I have yet to better understand what Sue-san and Wasif were referring to in linking such traditions, in this
case Islamic traditions, to language. So much is lost in translation, with rich
metaphorical and symbolic meanings conferring degrees of visibility and
invisibility, depending on where you are standing, who and where you come from.
“Hijab as Health” and “Hossein,
Hossein, Hossein” remain
true words, palabras verdaderas,
to their speakers, but have not yet translated into true fahm
for me.
“Although her face is wreathed in black, still one can see a few strands of
hair upon her forehead, and the eyes with the spark of one who searches.” This
could be a description of many amazing women I met in Iran, but it is in fact
Marcos writing in reference to a Tzotzil Zapatista
Commander who invisibly took over San Cristobal on January 1st, 1994. For the
Zapatistas, wearing the black mask is a way of being seen, of making the
invisible visible. Only it applies evenly to men and women, and thus is
different than the hijab. The black mask is also a
way to draw commonality between all struggles against injustice. One of the
first declarations to come out of the Lacandon jungle
addressed the role of women in the Zapatista struggle, followed by solidarity
with other oppressed groups including gay, lesbian, transgender and other
communities around the world. Like the mask, palabra verdadera becomes a mirror of many truths and of the truth
of many. Todos Somos
Marcos. We are all Marcos, who is Palestinian in Israel, black at a KKK rally,
gay in a conservative town bar, a woman alone on the metro at 10 PM, and so on.
It is a tool in identifying with the other, and thus a step towards losing
one’s fear of the other. Resisting this fear of difference is key to coalition
building in the anti-systemic struggle. Thus, a Zapatista is anyone who resists
oppression and injustice. The black mask is a mirror of our own rebellion, of
our hope. Todo para Todos y Nada para Nosotros, (Everything for Everyone and Nothing for
Ourselves). Marcos recognizes that the Zapatistas still face many challenges in
regards to fully achieving women’s equality. Yet Zapatista women, like many
women from below in other parts of the world, are building their own kind of
feminism, transgressing the rules without discarding their culture. They are
interested in feminisms that acknowledge, value, and respect difference. They
remain open to other experiences and perspectives, and so have invited women
from all over to the “Encuentro of Zapatista Women
with Women of Mexico and the World” happening during the last days of 2007 at
the Caracol of La Garrucha.
Zapatista women wish to share experiences and learning, but not for women from
the cities to come and tell them how to be or teach them a feminism that is of
little relevance. Their palabra verdadera
is inclusive of others who are different and open to other ways of being and
doing, but rooted in a local understanding and experience.
How I wish the Palestinian women from Nahr al-Bared
could come to this Zapatista Encuentro at La Garrucha. We worked together in a self-portraiture workshop
I facilitated this past November, in the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon.
Their refugee camp was laid siege by an extremist militant Islamic group called
Fatah al-Islam, causing some 30,000 Palestinians to be relocated to nearby Bedawi refugee camp. When some of them could return, they
found widespread looting, burning, and vandalism of their in addition to
devastation caused during the fighting—much at the hands of the Lebanese army.
They found walls with anti-Palestinian graffiti and human feces deposited on
beds and in one case a water well. The story of this war is still being
uncovered, as there are many questions around what agendas may have been in
play. For example, how did Fatah al-Islam infiltrate a camp whose access, like
all the refugee camps in Lebanon, was under control of the Lebanese army? Such
incongruent details betray the deep racism towards Palestinians in Lebanon, and
also how they are used as poker chips by those who hold interest in destabilizing
the country. As with much of recent Lebanese history (indeed, as with most
histories), accounts vary according to the teller and the sectarian interests
at hand. In Lebanon, there is no official version of national history after
1974 and I wonder if the War of Nahr al-Bared would
even make into an official History textbook. Where then, is fahm
and true word? A year ago, after the 33 day US/Israeli war on Lebanon, it
seemed that only Hezbollah was widely credited with keeping their word, evident
in actions over time that a wide range of political sympathies came to respect.
For me, palabra verdadera
is contained in the stories of ordinary people, from which fahm
can be built. In our self-portraiture workshop, true word also manifested in
non-verbal ways: it was in Sana’s use of color, as she explained green stood
both for peace and Palestine; in Rula’s scream of
frustration during our movement exercise; in Bushra’s
tightly-held silence of sadness and her wordless emails to me; in Rima’s shining face of love. We explored non-verbal
manifestations of fahm through movement, breath, and
our bodies—as well as in our growing relation to each other. In our all
too-short three weeks together, we gained insights into each other, which we
shared in our closing session. The women acknowledged each other’s strengths
and paid tribute to the learnings we had shared both
voluntarily and unconsciously with each other. Our bodies tell our true story,
either reinforcing or betraying our word. More and more, I locate fahm in the body, and palabra verdadera in its action, understanding how a healthy
enactment of word and spirit is intimately intertwined with the health of the
earth and of each other. When our body, our words, and our actions are at odds
with each other, it creates a disharmony that leads to destruction.
This rupture between body, word, and action has severe consequences at both the
micro and marcro levels, which become evident in the
absence of True Word and Fahm. Among the grave
implications of the current “War on Terror” and the lines it has drawn in the
sand, creating an imagined “axis of evil,” is a distortion of reality that has
affected our daily perceptions and interactions with each other. After the
33-day US/Israeli war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006, I wrote a piece called
“At War with Ourselves ,” where I tried to understand the rupture between word
and action evidenced in our personal and political lives. That summer was a
reminder of how empty and meaningless talk of “caring,” “love,” and “peace” can
be--not to mention other inverted notions such as “democracy,” “freedom,” or
“human rights.” Noting that such perversion of language denounced the hypocrisy
of “good intentions” that attempt to justify violence, I saw how easily similar
destruction is wrought by individuals thinking and acting in this way--ways of
being, saying, and doing that have become completely acceptable, indeed even
condoned by our individualistic modernity at the service of a capitalist
world-system. This upside-down reality has permeated deep into our society and
our psyches--the latest manifestation of a patriarchal inheritance that
trickles down to our personal relationships. Such internalized ways of seeing,
being, saying, and doing enact high and low-intensity warfare evident not only
on a large scale in global conflicts, but also in our everyday interactions
with each other in our own families and communities. The hurt we inflict on
each other out of fear, extreme selfishness, and an unwillingness to confront
ourselves, perpetuates patriarchal ways of thinking and doing that impact our
intimate spheres just as much as on a global level. How do we resist and can we
hope to reverse this? Where does one begin to find a thread of logic to follow,
much less find faith in some sort of shared ethics? Without it, how can we work
towards re-building a basic trust, if we can’t envision even a shared reality?
How can you move towards true peace, when those who claim it, do you harm?
Connecting word back to action is for me both an act of resistance and healing,
of reuniting spoken language with the language of the body and the spirit in a
natural relation. Palabra de Consecuencia
word of consequence is the kind of word that connotes respect, not for what is
said, but because of the relation between what is said and done.
During the Berkana Instiute
“Learning Journey” to Oaxaca and Chiapas I introduced myself as someone who
works with communities of resistance and new creation. These were the kinds of
communities that we met on this journey, who I learned so much from, and hope
to work with in the future. This trip was also a chance for me to observe how
conscious and unconscious structures of thought inform the process of learning
and the resulting experience. It became clear to me on this trip how an
inherited and internalized dominant lens limits the parameters of what one is
able to access. Finding myself amidst a group of participants on this journey
primarily from the U.S., the trip felt like “radical tourism” for a
comfortable, albeit progressive, lot. Although our hosts set out to “disrupt”
our comfort at several levels, I question what kinds of disruptions really
happened for whom and at what level. For me the discomfort presented itself
differently than perhaps it did for others as I am familiar with local food,
culture, history, politics, toilets and sense of time in Mexico—having lived
there most of my life. My main discomfort was with the very premise of being on
such a trip, and yet it was also intriguing to me: I wanted to know what kind
of “Learning Journey” this was, to try and understand its vantage point. After
the trip, I was left wondering how such a dominant lens and way of being/doing
can really be disrupted with such a protected and meticulously constructed
context--where there are hosts to make sure you are ultimately okay and
comfortable. In my travel experience, the deepest disruptions and
transformations have occurred when there is no safety net, when I’ve had no
control on the situation, when I’ve had to completely let go, often relying on
the hospitality and generosity of strangers. I wondered what kind of knowledge
and understanding could hope to be reached when the very intention of the
journey is to disrupt and dismantle that lens? Is it even possible given the
dominance of the center eye? Is it possible to arrive at new ways of
understanding what we are experiencing through this sort of “Radical Tourism?”
Doesn’t Ivan Illich’s “To Hell With Good Intentions”
apply here as well? Our Berkana hosts provided a
specific methodology that corresponds to their organization’s Theory of Change,
namely that of connecting emerging community leaders to each other through such
journeys and exchanges between their partner Learning Centers in Mexico, India,
Zimbabwe, Brasil and Greece. Our particular Learning
Journey group did not share an intention upon departure and probably never did
at any moment during our travels. It was explicitly not one of its goals to
create any sense of shared community amongst us. And yet many seemed to be seeking
new understanding and found that new language played an important part of this
process. I am reminded of Kay’s particular delight with the way of describing
in Spanish a pregnant woman going into labor as va dar a luz, as going to “give
light.” She also expressed wanting to get “Hacer Mas con Menos” tattooed on her
body, to constantly remind her to “do more with less.” Both of her examples
struck me by pointing to a relationship between language and the body, of a
place where they intersect, that perhaps renders more powerful understanding,
in that it is felt, rather then intellectualized. For Zapatismo,
speaking is also linked to the body, specifically to the heart, and fahm is impossible if word is not felt. Marcos explains:
Cuando las zapatistas, los zapatistas hablamos, ponemos por delante el rojo corazón que
en colectivo latimos. Entender lo que decimos, hacemos y haremos, es imposible
si no se siente nuestra palabra.
When Zapatistas speak, we put forward our collectively beating red heart. Understanding
what we say, what we do, and what we will do, is impossible if our word is not
felt.
As a facilitator of learning I wonder, how does creating fahm
happen? Does it occur in accidental or intentional ways? Can speaking from the
heart really be translated into mind, across cultures, and from periphery to
center? Can the kind of internal travel that is necessary to create fahm and palabra verdadera occur without the constant and consistent
addressing of relationship and owning of one’s privilege? In the Berkana Learning Journey there was certainly a value to the
intention and tremendous work that went into conceiving and realizing this
journey in the very particular way that it happened. But it seems to me that
there was missing an overt confrontation of our privilege, vis-à-vis the people
and places we visited, each other, and our selves. Granted, this kind of work
cannot occur in a 10 day trip. However, the questions of relationship of power
and privilege can be posited from the very start to be mulled on throughout the
trip and returned to later, in each individual’s processing. Alongside my many
questions and misgivings about this kind of approach, the fact remains that it
was an extraordinary group of people and places we met in a relatively short
amount of time, which might not have been possible without this particular
intention and organization. For that, I am grateful for the opportunity to have
come along.
The notion of palabra verdadera
followed us along this learning journey, as we encountered it in the stories of
many people we met. It was in the fervent desire to tell their truth that led
of grandmothers, mothers, and children to take over a state-run radio and
television station during last year’s resistance in Oaxaca. The women created Radio
Cacerola (Radio Pots and Pans) in order to tell the
world what was not being reported by mainstream media. The film Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad “A Little
Bit of So Much Truth” tells the story of this takeover during the struggle in
Oaxaca as an attempt by ordinary people to get at some of the obscured truths
of what actually happened. We invited some of these women to have dinner with
our group. Estela brought her pre-teen daughter Cecilia and Evelinda
brought her eight-year old son Daniel, who had accompanied his mother on all
the marches. Daniel had never been in a restaurant before and expressed worry
as to whether there were oficiales (police) amongst
the waiters. I sat between him and his mother over a delicious dinner of pollo con mole and chiles rellenos, hearing them tell stories with both their bodies
and their words. Daniel got up on the chair every so often to call out one of
the chants from the marches (¡Zapata Vive! ¡La Lucha Sigue!). Evelinda’s eyes spoke of
her simultaneous pride in her son, but also of her worry for his future
well-being now that the local police knew who his was. Their stories were also
of and about their bodies and words. Estela’s daughter told me about her
mother’s difficult battle with cancer while simultaneously resisting the
state’s violent oppression. As Estela says in “Un Poquito
de Tanta Verdad,” theirs was a resistance of word and
body in many ways: defying the lies told by the mainstream media by telling a
little bit of their truth on the airwaves; walking the 600 kilometers to Mexico
City and going on a hunger strike once they got there--on the way being fed by
complete strangers who barely had enough to eat themselves. This generosity and
hospitality of ordinary people lining the roads also manifested during the Zapatista
marches to Mexico City, as with La Marcha de la Dignidad, del Color de la Tierra, the March of Dignity, of
the Color of the Earth in 2001, when the Zapatistas made another attempt to get
the Mexican government to honor their word. But bad government does not hold Palabra verdadera, nor does it
know such generosity and hospitality as that of its people. If one does not
honor word, it seems, then bodies and earth are also dishonored, depreciated,
rendered disposable… forgettable.
In a mass-media culture of disposability and amnesia, how we deal with our food
and waste reflects our relationship to the earth and our bodies. My
consciousness around food production has evolved through many stages of
awareness, beginning with the pleasure of preparing and sharing food with
others, then a growing concern for the quality natural food--its taste and
nutrition, and its diminishing accessibility for most people. I’ve come to
better understand the political economy of food production--particularly around
industrial farming and globalization, together with learning about the
disastrous effects this kind of agricultural practices have had on communities
all over the world. All this, plus my own experiences in growing food, have
helped me see how food is intricately linked to a relationship, (or lack of )
to the E/earth, Tierra, understood in all its manifestations as planet, people,
land, dirt…everything that used to be revered and connected in a cycle of life.
The energy we consume and the waste we produce is part of this cycle, and how
we deal with our own shit, literally, has profound implications for all of us
and the planet, ecologically, practically, and even spiritually. It is of note
that Don Durito, who functions as Subcomandante
Marcos’ alter-ego, is a philosopher dung beetle; in rolling shit, he assumedly
gets a good look at it. It was in Iran that I was most visually confronted with
my own shit, in using the squat floor toilets that are prevalent in many places
of the East, being sometimes called according to the country one is in, Turkish
toilet, Indian toilet, Iranian toilet…and so on. The positioning of the body
vis-à-vis this squat toilet means you have a much closer proximity to your
waste, as opposed to the greater distance of the throne toilet bowl’s deeper
waters. Using a water hose to push your waste forward into the hole, not only
saves toilet paper and its strain on sewage pipes, but also renders you
cleaner. This kind of toilet permits a more direct confrontation with your
waste, which I think is important in raising our awareness about our waste
issues in addition to giving you a good handle on your health, as our bowel
movements carry good information on it. My waste awareness was increased in
learning about dry compost toilets at CACITA, the first I’d ever seen and used.
There were other fascinating projects the CACITA upcycling
center, which takes discarded materials and technologies to create new, useful,
and more beautiful objects. Dracula and Atenco
(a.k.a. Rolando and Victor) demonstrated their upcycled
solar powered roaster and stove, several bici-maquinas
fabricated out of up-cycled bicycle parts to create human-powered blenders,
grinders, and washing machines that can be used with no electricity. They also
showed us how to make wallets and coin purses from discarded Tetrapak juice containers, as well as flower sculptures (I
made earrings) from aluminum Tecate beer cans. But I
found the dry compost toilets to be one of the most important and inspiring
technologies in dealing with issues of waste, new to me, but probably ancient
in its origin.
There were some beautifully constructed compost toilets at the organic farm of
Tierra del Sol, where we admired straw bale and adobe walls, constructions made
from bamboo bent with burning sand to form a cathedral-like arched roof, floors
started with recycled tires filled with sand over which would go a hard earth
floor, bamboo fences and a huge water estuary complete with water lilies and
fish. The whole place is breathtakingly beautiful throughout, made entirely of
natural materials. After touring the grounds, our hosts Adriana and Pablo
served us delicious local coffee in jicaras together
with homemade biscuits and honey from their bees. We then gathered on woven
wool carpets on the floor of the building made entirely out of straw bales
covered with mud. Here they spoke to us about their journey in building Tierra
del Sol and of their many challenges, chief amongst them, an ambivalent
relationship with the local indigenous community. It seemed that Adriana and
Pablo had not been able to create fahm with the local
communities. Pablo spoke of how he considered himself in this relationship to
be a “steward of the land”, but it was not clear to me how in the fiscal and
legal designation of that land as private property deeded to him, there was
room for a shared sense of ownership with the indigenous community. It seemed
to me, there was a need to examine this notion of land stewardship, translating
word into action in order for it to become Palabra verdadera, one honored by all living and working on that
land.
On our way from Oaxaca City to San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, we stopped at Jalapa de Marqués for lunch and then to meet with a woman named Evieser, who has organized a movement resisting the
construction of a larger dam that would most likely flood their town. She
started a community radio station to help disseminate the information she was
gathering from the Internet to her neighbors and surrounding villages. The
radio equipment was in a small dark room decorated with a large Zapatista flag
and snapshots of Evieser with el Sup when he passed
through town on La Otra Campaña.
We stopped for two days in Juchitan, in the Istmo region of Oaxaca where Ana of Güie
tiqui, part of Universidad de la Tierra in the Istmo region, drew a tree in order to describe a structural
understanding of culture. The branches of the tree are what’s visible in the
culture: its ways of being and doing that manifest in different forms of
expression, celebration, food, dwelling, and dress. The trunk of the tree
refers to the organizational structure of the culture, like the Zapatista
Caracoles, which consist of a form of governance that obeys the people (mandar obedeciendo). The roots of
the tree correlate to the mythic level of understanding, one which I correlate
in a way to the spiritual notion of Fahm, as a deeply
rooted (some called it a “cellular memory”) way of understanding that leads to
one’s cosmology and way of understanding self and the world.
This is similar to the Zapatista way of understanding, their resistance and
struggle. Their fahm speaks of a right to the land,
recognizing that indigenous peoples have cared for the earth in ways that are
fundamental to their culture and cosmovision. Their fahm also speaks about their right to a pluricultural
education that considers indigenous language, history and culture as part of
what is taught in schools, and not just as a second language. Their notion of palabra verdadera is closely tied
to their autonomy, to their own systems of governance and economy, as
autonomous communities within a larger nation/state. For the Zapatistas,
autonomy is the work. It is a way of fighting, fairly and sensibly. “Working on
health care and other issues is a weapon of struggle that does not shoot
bullets, but words, which are calling on humanity.” On our way to Oventic we came across several signs, which read: “You are
in Zapatista Territory in rebellion. Here the people rule and the government
obeys.” The Zapatista Caracoles make visible the construction of the autonomy
that the Zapatista support bases carried out even before 1994. Even further,
they represent the “ways of living and working” that the indigenous peoples
have practiced for centuries in order to culturally resist colonization and
marginalization. “Our autonomy is something that has been in progress for many
years and has been maintained with its own customs, forms of decision-making
and its own language. The communities are building their own educational
programs, health systems and forms of trade. They are seeking out a way to have
greater self-sufficiency in regards to food, at a time in which the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has limited the existence of fair markets
for agricultural goods, such as coffee, corn or beans. The process of autonomy
is slow going, because, as they shared with us, ‘What has the most weight is
the practical part. Talking is very easy, but doing is something else. Theory
has a value, but it is not the most important thing.’
The Zapatista notion of palabra verdadera
and its relation to autonomy once again made clear to me the interrelation
between word, action, spirit, body, earth, and health. As a result of these
meetings and this learning, I am left with a strong desire to return to Chiapas
to continue working with such powerful concepts and actions. I felt a similar
pull five years ago when I first came to San Cristobal and saw that red earth,
a red earth that called me, and that I would also see in Lebanon. People often
ask how and why I went to Lebanon in 2002 when I worked as an
Artist-in-Residence for two years at a school in the mountains above Beirut.
Five years later, people asked how and why I was going to Iran and my mother
was puzzled as to why I was going to Oaxaca and Chiapas when there was so much
unrest and dangerous mudslides on the roads. The answer in all cases is the
same, obvious to me, and puzzling to many. I went simply because the
opportunity to go presented itself at a time when it was important to me,
personally and politically. When a people and land are being isolated and
maligned by our modernist and middle-class preconceptions, condemned by the
mass-media and governments, considered with fear and disgust by those around
you… that is probably the most pressing time to go and see and hear for
yourself what is happening. Trusting in our shared humanity is the best
passport to unknown places and people. I didn’t know anybody in Iran before
going, but I had faith in the goodness and hospitality of the Iranians, trusting
that I would find people with whom I could share in deep learning with openness
and humility.
Hospitality and humility are endangered qualities in a global society that is
predicated on a hegemonic pan-capitalist economy. They are not prized values in
a profit-driven modernist society. It seems few have time and space for
hospitality. Perhaps what is lacking is true awareness of what hospitality is,
or at least of connecting the word with the action. One small example is that
of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahbedinejad’s
reception at Columbia University this past fall where his hosts welcomed him
with insults. By contrast, my friend Daniel tells the story of how he came to
Iran. He had been nervous about coming to the first planning meeting for the
conference a year ago. Given his Jewish ancestry and name, his friends and
relatives cautioned him against going, saying that Iran was not friendly
towards Jews. So he wrote to our Iranian host, explaining his misgivings given
his Jewish identity. Dr. Doostdar wrote back that
“not only are there Jews in Iran, but they are represented in Parliament; Jews
are welcome, and we really want to meet you, so please come.” So Daniel came
and made close friends—with whom he was able to share similarities and
differences, and even confront difficult subjects with the kind of creative
conflict that leads to better understanding of each others points of view. So
Daniel returned to Oaxaca and a year went by. Then the Western fear machine
showed its influence, so much so, that a year later, Daniel once again had
misgivings about attending the conference given recent global developments and
so he again wrote Dr. Doostdar saying he had heard
about the Holocaust denial conference and was having doubts about whether it
was a good time to come. Once again, Dr. Doostdar
wrote back that there were still Jews in Iran, still represented in Parliament,
still welcome--Holocaust denial conference or not--and that more than ever they
wanted Daniel to come, so please…do come. Word was true, and Daniel came both
times, and both times word was honored, and he was embraced, taken care of and
engaged with in meaningful conversations.
Fahm and palabra verdadera contain particular qualities of honor,
hospitality, and humility that are enacted in rituals, traditions, ways of
being, seeing, and doing that differentiate people and cultures in my
experience. Honoring word, hospitality, and humility make a huge difference in
the way people relate to each other, which allow for the learning and development
of true compassion, which result in a strong sense of shared trust and
strengthening hope. Where they are absent I see things like apathy,
homelessness, isolation, and entitlement in their place. In a capitalist
society, talk is cheap and hospitality relegated to the category of a nicety.
There seems to be no interest and little room for palabra
verdadera or creating fahm.
As the Dalai Lama wrote recently, “something is fundamentally lacking in our
modern education when it comes to educating the human heart.” Our capitalistic
modernity does not foster values of compassion and humility, but rather
promotes competition and hierarchy. There is not the value and honor placed on
word, and so there can be no language for true understanding. Instead of honest
Fahm establishing trust for resulting interactions, vahm, language derived from institutional interests and the
mass media turn our interactions to those of suspicion and mistrust. Values and
Vices become inverted, so that vices are what the society supports and
encourages, while core values of love and caring for the earth and one another
are each time more devalued by vahm. The Zapatistas
offer us palabra verdadera
as a powerful weapon against this perverted inversion, and in protection from
the damaging effects of vahm. I am particularly
inspired by this connection of true word to the notion and enactment of
autonomy from the realm of vahm. This is something I
wish to learn from and apply directly to my own life.
“We need to keep searching inside ourselves and inside the relationships
created with language [so as to not] lose the bridge we have with the society
we succeed in constructing. According to the future of its word, will be the
future of Zapatismo.”--Subcomandante
Marcos
If we can dare to look into the mirrors offered by the Zapatista mask, by the
Islamic hijab, by those “others” who cover themselves
in order to be seen—to see our own reflection in those mirrors, then perhaps we
can begin to learn other ways of seeing, of imagining, and of understanding.
It’s not easy, as there is a lot of unlearning to do. And it is a long process.
But there is tremendous learning and hope involved in doing this work. I want
to nurture a sustainable world that values the earth, and its creatures—among
them people, who are so important to me. I am learning from the struggles of
Oaxaca and Chiapas (Zapatismo continues to be a
principal source of inspiration and learning) that we can defy notions of
development and progress in order to affirm ourselves in our own plural
definitions of the good life by creating our own paths. I have yet a lot to
learn, but I have started to listen more deeply, to recognize my self, and to
grow another kind of power. My work is to build my own caracol
of resistance and new creation, where I nurture the hospitality, humility, and
hope already present in myself and commit more fully to creating fahm and palabra verdadera that lead to a more autonomous and liberating,
ways of living, loving, and learning.
If I had to choose one word to which hope can be tied, it is hospitality.
--Ivan Illich
Look beyond the words: what you see and feel is always more important than what
you name it. --John Berger