Zapatista Stories for Dreaming An-Other World Quotes

“To look and to struggle, it is not enough to know where to direct your gaze, patience, and effort," old Antonio said to me as he got up. "One must also get started, reach out, and meet other gazes, which, in turn, will get started, reach out, and met yet other gazes. In this way, looking at the other looking, many gazes are born, and the world sees that it can be better, and that there is room for all gazes and for those who, though different and other, look at others looking and see themselves walking a history yet to be made.”
― Subcomandante Marcos, Zapatista Stories for Dreaming An-Other World

“So the greatest gods explained to the first men and women what 'looking' was and taught them to look. That's how men and women learned that you can look at others, know that they exist, they are there, they are other, and, in that way, not bump into them, hurt, step over, or trip them.

They also learned that they could look inside another and see what their hearts are feeling, since the heart doesn't always speak with words that come from the lips. Many times, the heart speaks with the sink, with a look, or by walking.

They also learned to look at those who see only themselves, who see only themselves in others' look.

And they learned to look at those others who look at them looking.

The first men and women learned every type of gaze there was, and the most important one they learned is the gaze that looks at itself and is aware of itself and knows itself, that sees itself both looking and looking inward, that sees paths and futures yet to be born, paths not yet walked, and dawns yet to break.”
― Subcomandante Marcos, Zapatista Stories for Dreaming An-Other World

“...as Marcos reminds us, "When Mexican government officials say land, they precede the word with an 'I buy' or 'I sell,' since for the powerful land is just a commodity. When the Indigenous say land, no word recedes it, but with it they also mean nation, mother, home, school, history, wisdom.”
― Subcomandante Marcos, Zapatista Stories for Dreaming An-Other World

“The brutality of "The Story of the Lion and the Mirror" refracts the violence of this historical moment. The lion, intoxicated by the taste of blood, mistakes his own blood fort hat of the calf he wants to devour and ends up bleeding to death. We wonder if this story is perhaps a parable about how counterinsurgency fails: thinking it is consuming the blood of its enemy, the state bleeds itself out.”
― Subcomandante Marcos, Zapatista Stories for Dreaming An-Other World

“The discussion continued after that first agreement, because it is one thing to recognize that there are others who are different and something else entirely to respect them. So they spent a long while talking and discussing how each of them was different from the others. They didn't care that they were spending so much time talking, because, as it happens, time didn't exist yet. Then they all fell silent as each one spoke of their own difference. Each of the other gods realized that the more they listened and recognized the differences of the others, the more they discovered what it was within themselves that made them different. That made them very happy, and they started to dance.”
― Subcomandante Marcos, Zapatista Stories for Dreaming An-Other World

“Old Antonio says that the eldest of teh elders told him that the assembly of the first gods, those who gave birth tot he world, happened very long ago, so long ago, in fact, that time didn't exist yet. And the elders said that in that assembly each of the gods spoke their word, and each said, "The thoughts I have are different from those of the others." At that point, the gods fell silent, because they realized that when each of them said "the others" they meant different "others."

After they had been silent fora while, the first gods realized that they now had their first agreement: there were "others", and those "others" were different from themselves. In this way, the first agreement reached by the very first gods was to recognize difference and accept the existence of the other. But, then, what choice did they have since they were, after all, dogs, first gods, and so they had to accept one another, not as greater or lesser but as different.”
― Subcomandante Marcos, Zapatista Stories for Dreaming An-Other World

“I remind you that divisions between countries serve only to define the crime of contraband and to justify wars.

Indeed, there exist at least two things that transcend borders: one is the crime disguised as modernity that distributes misery on a global scale; the other is the hope that shame will exist only when someone misses a dance step, and not every time we look at ourselves in the mirror. To bring an end tot he crime and make hope bloom, we need only to struggle and to become better. The rest falls into place on its own and is what fills libraries and museums.”
― Subcomandante Marcos, Zapatista Stories For Dreaming An-Other World