7 The Subaltern War Machine. Women, War and Rights Jean Franco
Writing on the tenth anniversary of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Carlos Monsiváis stated that the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) and subcomandante Marcos: Comandante Marcos y el EZLN contribuyen enormemente a que se capte la realidad indígena como lo invisibilizado que revela lo falso por parcial de las representaciones autorizadas de lo visible, y a ver en la nación (la Patria, en la retórica del EZLN) a la entidad monopolizada por una minoría que a lo largo de la historia sólo se abre a golpes de protesta, de sobrevivencia y de lucidez.” (Monsiváis, “La sociedad civil y el EZLN”) (contribute enormously to perceiving indigenous reality as the invisible that reveals the false because partial authorized representations of the visible and the nation (the Fatherland in the rhetoric of the EZLN) as the entity that has been monopolized by a minority that throughout history has responded only to protests for survival and understanding.) While acknowledging that he could not agree with every decision of the EZLN, Monsiváis praised their impact on civil society as was evident from numerous interventions, and “entre ellas el alegato excepcional de la comandante Esther en el Congreso, y el llamado a la ampliación generosa de la idea de México, formulado por Marcos en el Zocalo” (Monsivais, “La sociedad civil y el EZLN”) (among them the exceptional accusation of comandante Esther before Congress and the generous broadening of the idea of Mexico formulated by Marcos in the Zocalo). What strikes one about this affirmation is that, after so many funeral orations over the body of the nation state, Monsiváis restores a vision of Mexico as a pluricultural nation that cannot be contained within the old imagined mestizo nation or within the miserable confines of a neoliberal state as facilitator for business interests.
Human Rights and Latin American Cultural Studies Hispanic Issues On Line 4.1 (2009)