Journalistic Zapatismo at Work: COHA Responds to Critiques by Narco News & Others
The new COHA statement begins with an interesting prologue:
"As Federico Lozano, author of the July 6 press memorandum, “Zapatistas Issue a General Red Alert: Resurfacing Unwanted Memories in Mexico” has since left COHA, research associate Teddy Chestnut, COHA’s ombudsman has been designated to respond to the large volume of criticism the organization has received since publishing that report. His letter speaks on behalf of COHA and its staff of over thirty researchers and five senior research fellows."
Narco News congratulates COHA on its retractions and welcomes the dialogue.
And while I consider which of COHA's responses specific to my critique merit additional "outlandish accusations," "selective and mean-spirited interpretation," "shameless... slanderous... baseless distortion," and "skewers" from this "noisy and intemperate fellow" (aw shucks! but tell us how you really feel after having your Narco News moment, Señor!), here's a link to Revisiting Chiapas: An Open Letter to COHA's Readers.
We'll also consider it a kind of letter to the editor, and publish it in full here at the jump, where I'll later continue this educational process. Revisiting Chiapas: An Open Letter to COHA's Readers
By the Council On Hemispheric Affairs
COHA has received a good deal of feedback from our readership concerning the press memorandum entitled “Zapatistas Issue a General Red Alert: Resurfacing Unwanted Memories in Mexico.” Numerous questions, many highly legitimate, have been raised concerning the journalistic integrity of the article as well as the validity of certain claims made by its author, who has since resigned from the organization. At the same time, a small portion of the reaction, including a considerable segment of a rant published by the online journal Narconews (Copublisher note: No link provided), has been characterized by unwarranted and in the case of Narconews, outlandish accusations. After spending a considerable amount of time reviewing the criticisms that have arisen since the article’s release, COHA hopes through this open letter to clear the air with a thorough and balanced response. But keep in mind that because COHA is a high productivity organization that is almost all volunteer in its staff make-up, that it has had to work very hard to maintain a high level of accuracy. To achieve this, various mechanisms meant to catch errant facts or distorted interpretation, flawed analysis must be established and severely followed. Also, it would be fair to say that COHA is an unabashedly liberal research group that has a very long history of being an advocate of the Zapatista cause and a harsh critic of the Mexican central government. Our website will convincingly support this claim.
COHA acknowledges that the academic rigor of the piece under review was compromised by several sections in which the author confused facts and at times presented unsubstantiated hypotheses as reasoned arguments. This refers specifically to the statement that it was in March when the Mexican armed forces announced the destruction of marihuana plants within the EZLN-influenced area, as well as the related argument that the reversal of this statement “most likely came out of fear of the General Red Alert’s possible destabilizing consequences on Mexico’s present political and economic status quo.” As several readers have made clear, and as the facts indeed show, the Mexican government retracted the statement that was first made in June. It was revoked not in response to the Red Alert but because it was false; the Mexican government simply had its geography wrong. In addition, our former researcher’s speculation, “If the situation does not change in the near future, the tensions will mount until confrontations with the Zapatista fighters become inevitable, offsetting Fox’s persistent efforts to make Mexico a stable and safe environment for investors,” admittedly lacks the evidentiary support to justify its prima facie presence in the piece, but it still was, and is, a conceivable option.
Concerning the “suspicious origins” of the EZLN, COHA recognizes that the argument that Raúl Salinas and other self-defaming Mexican politicians may have had a hand in the origins of the EZLN is a convoluted one, based on a series of speculative relationships. In defense of the article and our former colleague, an attempt to illustrate the tenuousness of this line of reasoning was clearly made. As was widely acknowledged by our readership, the final line of the section – “All of these [associations] are allegations, not established facts” – serves well to cast a shadow of doubt over the argument. That said, COHA should not have placed so much faith in the Proceso article that appeared to substantiate its unlikely conclusions, nor should it have given credence to such a far fetched theory, especially one which has been previously discredited by reputable sources.
Nevertheless, some of the criticism directed at COHA’s Zapatista piece is unwarranted. For example, Narconews analyst Al Giordano’s insinuation that the release belies COHA’s malicious bigotry toward Mexico’s indigenous population relies on a highly selective and mean-spirited interpretation of the piece, which we have experienced before. We happen to enjoy reading Narconews, but we have found its editor to be a noisy and intemperate fellow who doesn’t quite realize that COHA is not the enemy, but a friend to most of the causes of that organization. For example, Giordano writes,
People have always pushed Zapatista conspiracy theories that ‘someone must be behind those damn Indians.’ It is, essentially, a form of racism, one that believes that ‘the indigenous obviously could not organize themselves into such a potent force’ and therefore, by extension, there must be some white shadowy figure behind them.
Giordano is asserting that COHA’s researcher was part of this camp. Admittedly, there are instances in the piece where Lozano’s word choice can be construed to convey a slightly dismissive attitude toward the Zapatista movement. As one reader responded, “That the [Zapatista] forces are indigenous is sufficient to make them ‘makeshift.’ That indigenous people dare comment on the politics of the nation to which they belong and of which they are highly critical is seen as their ‘playing politics.’ Calling Marcos an astute political figure as though it were an accusation – of course that is precisely what he is.” In each of these cases, however, the accusation of underhanded racism is based on an unfair assumption of Lozano’s motive. The Zapatista forces are referred to as ‘makeshift’ not because the piece aims to undermine their legitimacy, but because ‘makeshift’ seems a reasonable way to describe a guerrilla militia that is not a professional army. That the EZLN is described as ‘playing politics’ and Marcos is labeled a shrewd politico is less derogatory than in line with the working popular perception of the Zapatista movement.
Moreover, it is baseless indeed to argue, as Giordano does, that COHA is racist because it merely mentions the allegations that connect Raúl Salinas to the EZLN. It never said that they were true, only that they had been made. It would be fair to say that the admittedly implausible allegations have little justification to be in the article due to their intrinsic shortcomings and insufficient scholarly integrity, but to equate COHA’s intellectual hiccup with calculated bigotry necessitates a hugely wrongful assumption of motive and a gross invalidation of COHA’s 30 year history and the organization’s well earned bona fides as a major force against the White House’s hemispheric transgressions. To so accuse is to commit unwarranted offense to an organization that ill deserves it. In keeping with COHA’s tradition of collective responsibility, and because at one point he had read a draft of the article, COHA Director Larry Birns joins his colleagues in accepting responsibility for the piece and those places where it misfired.
Most disturbing, however, is the Narconews accusation that our Zapatista piece calls for “a violent permanent solution in the war of extinction against Mexico’s indigenous community.” Nonsense! This is a shameless and slanderous as well as a blatant distortion of the article’s thesis, made even clearer by Giordano’s truly unacceptable manipulation of the piece’s content. He quotes the article as follows:
“If the situation does not change in the near future, the tensions will mount until confrontations with the Zapatista fighters become inevitable, offsetting Fox’s persistent efforts to make Mexico a stable and safe environment for investors… Fox may even conclude that an armed encounter with the Zapatistas might be a good thing for his image as well as for his legacy, once he steps down. Fellow Mexicans might be prepared to say (according to Fox’s way of thinking), that the president was willing to preserve Mexico’s sovereignty and cohesiveness at any cost.” He then continues quoting, “…if Mexico wants to be perceived internationally as a country that is prepared to compete against economic heavyweights China and India in international trade, it will need to resolve the EZLN issue with dispatch.”
From this, he extrapolates that COHA’s Lozano is quietly advocating state violence against the Zapatistas. This is entirely disingenuous. Lozano does not propose such a plan of action, but to the contrary, speculates that “Fox may even conclude” that it is a viable option. He does not suggest that Mexicans would embrace such a policy, but says that this might be the case “according to Fox’s way of thinking.” Clearly, Lozano is not pushing an agenda here; he is simply postulating about what Mexico’s president might be thinking.
Still, what is most lamentable and revealing about Giordano’s argument is what he decided to leave out of it. While picking and choosing lines to construct his sclerotic analysis, Giordano conveniently omitted a key sentence. After hypothesizing that Fox may believe that the Mexican public would accept a confrontational policy, Lozano makes clear that there are better options at hand. He writes, “However, developments this week may point to a more open dialogue between the Zapatistas and the federal government, presenting the EZLN [with] the possibility of participating in Mexico’s political life as an official political party.” By excluding this sentence, Giordano basely skewers Lozano’s words to suggest malice, falsely equating Mexico’s need to “resolve the EZLN issue with dispatch,” with a transparent call for state-sponsored genocide. As a fair reading of the entire text would illustrate, Lozano clearly believes that a peaceful resolution to the recent conflict is possible and desirable; the outlandish accusation that COHA advocates genocide in Mexico is an outrageous tormenting of language.
With regard to the upholding of academic and journalistic integrity, COHA strives to hold itself to the highest of standards. As such, COHA recognizes that in the rare case when an article or a press release fails to live up to those expectations, it is the organization’s responsibility to own up to its shortcomings and derelictions. There is no doubt that aspects of the Zapatista press release were flawed, and COHA takes full responsibility for those mistakes of fact and interpretation. For many hours, COHA has reflected on how this lapse in academic rigor went unnoticed, and is taking vigorous steps to ensure that our future issuances maintain the high level of quality its readership has come to expect. COHA would like to thank all of those who took the time to engage in this productive exchange and means to ensure its readers that the truth and the enlargement of exercisable democratic options for the entire hemisphere remain at the forefront of our public discourse and institutional efforts.
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COHA Strike One: The Missing Link!
Submitted on July 29th, 2005 by Al Giordano- a complete retraction of all the major points of their July 6th press release;
- a disappeared simulator (What? Did some armed group kidnap Federico Lozano and are they holding him now with Sam Dillon and Peter McFarren in that place where people who "have left" publications without explanation as to how or why they left go? Let's cut to the quick: Was he fired or not?);
- some angry ad hominem attacks upon me, which I always adore, because, as we say down south, "él que se enoja, pierde," or, "he who gets mad, loses."
Like Jack the Ripper (I kind of like COHA's adjectives that paint me as such), let me take this in parts...The first substantive response I'd like to offer is about fair-play and clean fighting when the struggle is over ideas and facts.
It is very untoward, for example, to complain, as COHA does, about "what (Giordano) decided to leave out" of my critique when my critique linked to COHA's document in full: a courtesy (and honest journalistic practice) that allowed our readers to see the full context of COHA's statement and decide for him and her selves the merits of the arguments; a courtesy that COHA - so apparently deeply wounded in its thin skin that it lashes out claiming victimhood - did not provide as it mischaracterized entire swathes of my critique.
Thus, COHA complains about "selective" quotation by, um... selectively quoting! That's just bad form and makes COHA seem petty and hypocritical at the very moment when, as it recognizes with this statement, it is having a credibility crisis over the July 6th defamations vs. the Zapatistas.
Here's a clue lobbed inside the beltway from below and outside: If you don't like "selective" quotation, put a friggin' link, gramps, to what you are quoting!
Narco News (two words, not one, how "High School" is that? To mispell the name of your critic as COHA did here?) did that: We linked to COHA's entire text (and we even spelled their name right, as Authentic Journalists try to do), thus, by definition, nothing was left out.
COHA did not link to the critique that got its staff's panties all up in a bunch, though, even as it sobbed (falsely) that it has been victimized by those of us who did link to their whole press release.
But, anyway, as we shall shortly see, that's just a smokebomb on COHA's part to distract from the paucity of its claims to victimhood. Sheesh. It's Washington. Everybody wants to be a damn victim up there even as victimizing the rest of the world is inherent to the insider culture in which they live and work.
Next up... the Liberal's Cry: "Mommy! He called me a racist..."
"Racists" & "Non-Racists"
Submitted on July 29th, 2005 by Al GiordanoCOHA then goes on to, essentially, admit to the facts of the charges while claiming that the perp had different motives...
Ahem. Since when is suffering from "forms of racism" a question of motive? COHA seems very confused on this point. COHA seems to be saying that racist conceptions or attitudes are strictly defined by intent, rather than by (as in the case of such attitudes toward indigenous peoples) 500 years of social conditioning.
In COHA's world, there are apparently "racists" (others) and "non-racists" (them). This kind of self-centered discourse seems to always occur in liberal gringo circles whenever it is suggested that a preconception carries racism. The protagonist (in this case COHA) predictably takes it personally, and declares "how dare you call me a racist!" ("some of my best causes are black!") The implication is that they and they alone are immune to the internalized racism that surrounds them and their culture.
For example, they type from an office in Washington DC on Connecticut Avenue NW - where many liberal organizations are based - one of the few upscale white neighborhoods in a city that is 70 percent black. But they're immune to racist fears and and thoughts, right? Or so they seem to view themselves.
Related to this is the terribly thin-skinned notion, expressed above, that their critic "doesn’t quite realize that COHA is not the enemy, but a friend to most of the causes" that the critic (yours truly) and his newspaper supports.
Excuse me. Let me direct this to COHA director Larry Birns:
You don't have a clue as to what it would mean to be our "enemy." (Why don't you just search our pages for all the positive references to COHA reports we have made over the years? You think that's how an "enemy" gets treated around here?)
If you would like a clue, walk down K Street (it's not far - they're in the white neighborhood too) to the offices of narco-lawyers Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld - those losers who sued Narco News, Mario Menéndez and I on behalf of Banamex - and compare notes with those abogangsters about how we waged a fight to the death against them, with the rather mild (and as even you admit essentially true) critique that you earned from us. Akin Gump and its lawyers qualified as "enemies." You're just somebody with whom we disagreed and voiced that disagreement. Don't flatter yourself! We only take on enemies that are bigger than us, for starters...
It is an ever-predictable source of entertainment how thin-skinned writers and critics can be. We don't view the world that way. We enter "the public vortex" (that's a legal term I learned while at war with our enemies at Akin Gump) knowing and expecting that to be a critic means inviting criticism. Mr. Birns - we welcome, we really do, all your critiques of us today (and I personally welcome the ad hominem ones against me). I don't think that makes you my enemy. And you shouldn't be so paranoid as to think that when you receive a highly deserved critique, that it is about you.
But, then again, I think that is another form of racism (or at very least its cousin, ethnocentrism) that white folks in the United States feel free to take knowingly false whacks on the indigenous of Chiapas, and even after having to retract them as you did today, you think the debate is about you!
Now, take Jack the Ripper's crash course (it's free!) in confronting the racism within us all and go to the mirror and repeat after me: "It is not about me... It is not about me... It is not about me..." Say it enough times and you might start to chip away at this sense that you clearly have that you are more important than the Latin Americans your staff was writing about.
Racism is basic to all culture. We live in a racist society... wheeee! That's the fact. It is within you, Mr. Birns, and it is within me, and it is within Mr. Lozano from whom it spilled over. To suffer from racist preconceptions doesn't mean he sat down to write that screed and said to himself "and now I will do something racist." The most dangerous forms of racism are those that lurk in those who feel they are free of all racist thought and impulse. That's racism's petri dish, where it thrives and multiplies, in those recesses of the Western over-socialized mind and heart.
If you wake up each morning and say to yourself "what a good boy am I! I am not a racist!" you are inviting the devil in the door. And if you respond to an obviously honest critique that suggests your inner racist overflowed the borders of your keypad and spilled out in public by crying "but I am not a racist!" you clearly don't "get" the issue.
Here's a better idea. Take a longer walk, in the other direction, toward the majority black neighborhoods of your city of Washington, and do a little more soul-searching and consultation by asking the folks who live there, "hey, excuse me, but I have a question: Do you think it is possible that liberals suffer from racism too? Even if they strongly believe they are not racists?" I already know that the answer you will receive is the same as I am telling you here... because as a lad of 17, I would often venture out of the white university in Georgetown to visit at 14th and N (way back before it was gentrified) over at the Community for Creative Nonviolence's soup kitchen, and conduct this kind of "inner market research" by asking people with different pigmentation than me about how white folks behave around them. I got an earful that has served me well to this day. There is still time for you and your staff to do the same. Or, alternately, you and your staff could live for years in indigenous communities, as I and others have done, and get that healthy earful every day. But you don't need to go to that extreme: just walk up the street!
In sum: Only white people see the world as made up of "racists" and "non-racists." And see what a racist I am? I just made a statement characterizing an entire race (white folks!) Hey, at least I can admit it, and unlike you kids at COHA I don't think it's about me.
The response of "Mommy! He called me a racist!" is a sideshow, a way to deflect the real issues at hand, to avoid looking in the mirror and considering that what you justify as "a slightly dismissive attitude" toward the indigenous might, just maybe, reflect ethnocentrism, or, worse, the presence of the R-word deep inside your western socialized soul?
Strike Two!
When a presentation of options is a threat
Submitted on July 30th, 2005 by Benjamin MelançonThere is not yet a retraction posted or linked at the offending article itself either above or below it.
The anonymous author of COHA's open letter to its readers takes issue with Giordano leaving a particular sentence out of his critique. The omitted sentence, COHA asserts, shows clearly that ex-COHA Research Associate Federico Lozano, and so COHA, prefers an alternative to state violence:
The question becomes, then, when is a presentation of options a threat?
Yes, Lozano implies that he would rather the government resolve the "EZLN issue" with a method other than violence, but he states a rapid resolution is needed, and exactly what alternative does he provide? Participation in a political system proven corrupt again and again (and again under Fox admitted by Lozano to have brought no help to the poor). The "better options at hand" COHA continues to point to are a complete surrender of all effective methods the Zapatistas have used and created for fighting for justice.
Here is the complete conclusion of the article, which, more than the omitted sentence, softens Lozano's threat somewhat-- like holding a pillow over the muzzle of a gun.
Lazono was saying -- and now the self-described liberal COHA appears to be confirming -- that the Zapatistas have the options of becoming ineffective or being wiped out as military, social, and political force. And why? Because Mexico's steps toward development must continue. And these steps toward development are represented by NAFTA, despite the historical economic fact that no country has developed in the classic economic sense -- a goal that itself must be questioned -- without significant barriers to trade and governmental intervention in the economy, both increasingly disallowed by the so-called free trade agreements the U.S. is imposing on its poorer neighbors.
So NAFTA has nothing to do with development, and the Zapatistas and much of the poor of Latin America are proposing radically different ways to develop-- to instead build a world where all human needs come first, not the needs of an extremely wealthy few. To build a world, in fact, where agreements to protect the constant accumulation of capital have no place, where decisions are not made my infinitely corruptable national legislatures, and where we all meet and interact as equals and choose our best paths together.
So COHA: Identify as liberal, that's fine with me, but don't be blind that there are radical solutions out there– not, at the very least, when you're writing about the Zapatistas.
A complete repudiation of this threat -- err, limited presentation of potions -- to the Zapatistas is awaited. Also awaited: a notice of your thoughtful self-criticism so far, and any more on further reflection, amending the page of Lozano's lamentable article.
Correction: COHA response not anonymous
Submitted on July 30th, 2005 by Benjamin MelançonSo I apologize to Teddy Chestnut, and I still await a note on the original offending article and a retraction of the restricted choice proposed to the Zapitistas -- conform to official politics or face armed conflict -- that is really, like any such choice presented at gunpoint, a threat.
COHA and the War of Extinction
Submitted on July 30th, 2005 by Al GiordanoAgain, I'll address these words to COHA's director.
PRIMERO: If it is "slanderous" then by all means sue me. Slander is a crime. And, hey, if you have a case, you could win my Dobro guitar that was so coveted by narco-bankers but which eluded their grasp (then again, you might not really want such a noisy and intemperate guitar!). I told the truth. I stand behind my story. I will continue to tell it and it will continue to ring like a bell these lame protests and their hollow claims.
SEGUNDO: Your essay fails to prove its claim, that I somehow manipulated your press release's content, and not just because I linked to your entire text.
You claim that the following words (your organization's) do not constitute a call for the Mexican state to use violence against the indigenous:
What part of your own press release don't you understand?
Your press release states as fact that "confrontations with the zapatista fighters (will) become inevitable." The characterization of the Zapatistas, who have not fired a shot since 1994, as "fighters" in this context is a loaded gun. The statement's prediction - that open warfare in Chiapas is "inevitable" - has absolutely no basis in reality. It was written to frighten.
In the same paragraph where you defined the Zapatistas as "fighters," Mexican President Vicente Fox is defined by his supposedly "persistent efforts to make Mexico a stable and safe environment for investors… " Right. Vicente Fox. Man of stability, peace and prosperity juxtaposed with those scarey brown-skinned "fighters." The set up is duly noted.
Immediately following the set up of the reasonable Fox in contrast with the fighting Zapatistas (again, this fantasy comes from your word processors, not ours), your press release stated: "Fox may even conclude that an armed encounter with the Zapatistas might be a good thing for his image as well as for his legacy, once he steps down. Fellow Mexicans might be prepared to say (according to Fox’s way of thinking), that the president was willing to preserve Mexico’s sovereignty and cohesiveness at any cost."
So now, according to the picture painted by your press release, Fox is not only a reasonable man of stability and peace on an "inevitable" collission course with these fighters, but he might choose to do something "good... for his image as well as for his legacy." You don't mince words as to what that "good thing" is: It is, according to your press release, "an armed encounter."
Your press release states as a fact that Mexico has "sovereignty and cohesiveness" that Fox is "willing to preserve... at any cost."
TERCERO: You seem unaware of how bonechilling and cold your press release's words are received by, say, friends of the late Trinidad Cruz Pérez, a Tzeltal indigenous man from the jungle town of Roberto Barrios with whom I (and others) used to break bread. On a day in March 1998, five months after I last saw him, Trinidad walked alone into his cornfield to do his work. Two paramilitary leaders ambushed him there, raised their machetes, and chopped, whacked, and slashed Trinidad to a bleeding pulp, and he died soonafter in the hospital of his wounds. (Is that what you meant by "sovereignty and cohesiveness"?)
Now you hide behind academic qualifiers in your statement such as "Fox may even conclude" and "in Fox's way of thinking" to protest that you didn't mean what your statement clearly said. That's lame because, among other problems with the statement, there is absolutely no reality in the claim that Fox thinks the way your statement claims he thinks. Nor is there any reality in the statement that his "fellow Mexicans" would cheer him for chopping more Trinidads into pieces.
Still creepier is your press release's statement, in direct context to the "armed encounter" scenario that "if Mexico wants to be perceived internationally as a country that is prepared to compete against economic heavyweights China and India in international trade, it will need to resolve the EZLN issue with dispatch.”
So now Fox is given, by COHA, a laundry list of reasons to aid in "Fox's way of thinking": for the sake of his image, his legacy, his country's sovereignty, his country's cohesiveness, the love of his fellow Mexicans, and "to be perceived internationally" as a power in "international trade" (before those pesky Chinese and Indians from India beat him to it, is the implication), that he must do this "good thing" called "armed encounter" against the indigenous of the Mexican Southeast.
CUARTO: The final academic qualifier your press release uses to claim it never said what it clearly said is this little gem:
That is simply stupid. As anyone who has read a single Zapatista communiqué knows (and as those who proclaim themselves as "analysts" and experts on the theme ought to know), the Zapatistas have always stated emphatically and unequivocally that they will not ever form or join "an official political party."
Your statement protests: "As a fair reading of the entire text would illustrate, Lozano clearly believes that a peaceful resolution to the recent conflict is possible and desirable; the outlandish accusation that COHA advocates genocide in Mexico is an outrageous tormenting of language."
And what is his advocated peaceful solution? That the Zapatistas form "an official political party." Right. And the solution to the Middle East peace problem is, likewise, for the Israelis to eat pork and for the Arabs to drink booze. Not joining or forming "official political parties" is as strong a tenet in the Zapatista canon as exists. (You seem unaware of this fact even after 12 years of their repeating it constantly: Go back to the books and do some research.) To paint that as the one "peaceful" option they have, or else here comes the dreaded "armed encounter" that everyone else has been trying to avoid is the "disingenuous" act here, not my blowing the whistle on such violent fantasies.
No, you and I both know that your accusation of "slanderous" is knowingly false, and that you just threw it out there as another smokebomb to distract from the merits of the discussion, and that you will not be suing me (as anyone who truly believed they had been "slandered" would do - especially with such a coveted guitar to be won).
Come to think of it, there's another reason why you and the narco-bankers and others seem to desire that noisy and intemperate guitar so much: It was once strummed by the late Trinidad Cruz Pérez, when at the request of the autonomous village authorities, we composed, collectively, "El Corrido del 9 de Febrero" as the town song.
QUINTO: Yes, as you can see, fine temperate and quiet sirs and madams of Washington, there are some people who may freely strum that guitar whenever they like... While the rest of you just sit at your desks and fantasize about "Fox's way of thinking" and "armed encounter" and "slander" lawsuits and other scams to possess what eludes you: dignity, justice, freedom, truth, love, solidarity, perhaps a few beans and tortillas fresh from the comal, and a guitar passed from hand to hand, and a word passed from voice to voice, an authentic song, so far from the din and distractions and careerists of Connecticut Avenue NW and "the power from above."
We can tell that you feel wounded by our word, that you are still trying to sort out your feelings, which fluctuate between "do the right thing" and "kill the messenger." But the messenger is unkillable, because the message is the truth. "Le duele," as we say down here. "You're in pain." Yeah, here's a Kleenex. We're used to hearing these sobs from behind desks.
But what you experience as "pain" is not what my late friend Trinidad knew as pain. Get some perspective. As Gandhi said, "there is a way out of hell." The path comes from below. Someday, maybe, you might walk it with us. We get the sense you would like to, but it is very hard, perhaps impossible, to find the path from below when you are fixated upon the power from above and walking the lines it sets to restrict you, to keep you "temperate" and "quiet," to get your name quoted in the New York Times.... Maybe if you're lucky we'll compose a corrido about your inner struggle. Health and a hug,
Al Giordano
Letter About Covering Zapatistas
Submitted on August 1st, 2005 by Al GiordanoLike I noted above, I really don't mind bearing the brunt of COHA's misplaced anger - it comes with the work we do - but I agree with Mary Ann that COHA's analysts really don't seem to understand this very important theme that it writes about, or perhaps is simply applying an old matrix for Latin America to the new (and ancient) ideas "from below" that have been unleashed by zapatismo, therefore missing the big story.
The Zapatista movement is no better understood nor explained in the second COHA press release, the retraction. Even though COHA took back the most unjust statements, it has yet to fill the vacuum with an accurate report on this very important social movement that continues to rock Mexico, our América and our world. Zapatismo is taking hold in other lands throughout Latin America. It would be a very good idea if COHA analysts do as Mary Ann has done, as so many others have done, as many of us have done, and spend some serious time looking and listening more seriously at what the Zapatistas are saying and doing, before the next time they deem to issue expert testimony on the subject.