From FIRST WORLD HA, HA, HA! The Zapatista Challenge
1995
O V E R H E A R D    I N   T H E   M A R K E T P L A C E
by Munda Tostón

...it is not only by shooting bullets in the battlefields that tyranny is overthrown, but also by hurling ideas of redemption, words of freedom and terrible anathemas against the hangmen that people bring down dictators and empires..."

—Emiliano Zapata

   IT ALL STARTED ONE TUESDAY IN MAY.

   As usual, I was in my little spot in the marketplace when a young Chamula girl came up to me, asking for ski masks.
   "How many do you want?" I asked her.
   "How many do you have?"
   "Well, I don't know how many you need; I have thirty here."
   She paid for all thirty and ordered three hundred more. I ordered ten gross of ski masks from Puebla, and she bought all of them from me. This was in May.

   In June, some others came to buy green pants. The arrived with their lists: fifty pairs of 28" waist, sixty 29", seventy 30", like that. Green pants were in fashion. Lots of business in green pants.

   In July they wanted brown shirts. Two hundred size 14, three hundred 14 1/2, four hundred size 15. In August, its bandanas. The same.

   Then, in October, November, when it starts to get cold, they come for the heavy shirts. I'd start out in the morning with sixty, and by the afternoon they'd all be gone. It was like that every day. I was selling to them for thirty-five a piece, but then I started to raise the price. "I'm sorry, they'll cost you forty-five now." They bought them all from me anyway. I raised them to fifty, sixty, up to seventy-five. And it went well for me. I finished out the year well, thank God.

   The first of January, I'm on my way to open up for business, to see if I can sell a little. But there's no one in the marketplace. "Everyone's at the park," the man who sweeps up tells me.

   In order to sell, you have to go where the people are. So I make up my bundle with everything I have to sell, and get myself over to the park.

   And there they all are, my clientele, in the City Hall, wearing my green pants, my brown shirts, with the bandana and ski mask.

   Since then, I haven't sold a thing.

   Although she doesn't deserve it, the ungrateful little Indian, I always give my girl her Christmas bonus. Like everyone who works on the ranches, she spends it on clothes to take back to her town to sell. I try to help her, so she'll learn how to buy.

   "Oh dear," I tell her when she leaves the shop with a dozen shirts, "get a better selection. Look, they're all green. They're not going to buy them from you like that."

   "Doña Zola," the ungrateful one answers me, "in January, I won't be working anymore."

   What is it, are you getting married, girl? And you just started working—," but she cuts me off quickly, saying she doesn't have a boyfriend.

   "Then what is it you're planning on doing?"

   "It's going to be a surprise. You'll see, ma'am."

—EK

...the Zapatistas—and the indigenismo they incarnate—represent the revitalization of revolutionary potential...in ways which finally and truly do lead toward self-determination for all peoples, no matter how small or 'primitive'..."

—Ward Churchill