Subcommandante Marcos > Quotes

“Power also uses calendars to neutralize movements that attack or have attacked its essence, its existence, or its normality. That's what commemorative dates are for. With them it narrows, limits, defines, and stops. With each day of the calendar that Above admits into its timeline, a takeover of history occurs. With these days, movements are stopped, they are terminated in all senses. There will be nothing above, in that calendarization of history, to account for the processes and movements that are reduced to one day. And so those dates are turned into statues. In Mexico, September 16 and November 20 have been mummified since the beginning of the long PRI era. Each year, the clique of criminals on duty - that is, the government - goes to monuments and parades only to ensure that Miguel Hidalgo, José María Morelos, Vincente Guerrero, Francisco Villa, and Emiliano Zapata remain dead.”
― Subcommandante Marcos

“In a nutshell, men and women who have wealth and power are human beings, as are women and men who have nothing more than their dignified rage. And up above they demand and insist: "We must say not to violence, wherever it comes from"... making sure to emphasize it if the violence comes from below. According to them, everyone must bring themselves into harmony for their differences and contradictions to be resolved and must chant, "armed people are also exploited," making reference to soldiers and police officers. Our position as Zapatistas is clear. We do not support pacifist flags that are raised fro someone else to turn the other cheek, nor violence that is encouraged when others provide the dead. We are who we are, with all the good and all the bad that we carry and is our responsibility. But it would be naive to think that all the good things we have accomplished - including the privilege of listing to and learning from you - would have been possible without preparing a full decade for the sun to rise as it rose on January 1, fifteen years ago.”
― Subcommandante Marcos

“We are not interested in government jobs and appointments, or statues and monuments, or museums, or going down in history, or prizes, or honors, or ceremonies. What we want is to be able to get up each morning without fear being part of the day's agenda. Fear of being indigenous, women, workers, homosexuals, lesbians, young, elderly, children, others. But we think this is not possible with the current system, within capitalism.”
― Subcommandante Marcos

“You have not died" may be nothing more than a chant if nobody keeps walking. Because from our modest and nonacademic point of view, the path is what matters, not the walker... When someone lives and dies fighting, in their absence do they tell us "remember me," "honor me," "carry me"? Or do they impose upon us a "continue," "don't give up," "don't surrender," "don't sell out"?... So in our final breath, will we Zapatistas ask: "Will I be remembered?" Or will we ask: "Was a step taken on the path? Is there someone to keep walking it?”
― Subcommandante Marcos

“Because justice, friends and enemies, also is preventing injustice from repeating itself or changing its name, face, flag, or ideological, political, racial, or gender pretext.”
― Subcommandante Marcos

“You have not died" may be nothing more than a chant if nobody keeps walking. Because from our modest and nonacademic point of view, the path is what matters, not the walker... When someone lives and dies fighting, in their absence do they tell us "remember me," "honor me," "carry me"? Or do they impose upon us a "continue," "don't give up," "don't surrender," "don't sell out"?”
― Subcommandante Marcos