German Edition of Clandestines Published by Unrast

Clandestinos
Unterwegs im Widerstand (Adventures in Resistance)
Unrast 2007

New Introduction to German Edition

On a warm summers night in 1989 I stood outside the infoladen on Mainzerstrasse as Clash's Spanish Civil War played over the speakers. The decrepit old tenement street was bedecked with bounteous flags and banners hanging from the colorful balconies of the numerous squatted buildings. As a young man exposed to this kind of autonomous squatting community for the first time, it was as if being dropped into some kind of delirious pirate wonderland, and I was enchanted.

Piles of cobblestones adorned the roadside, ready to resist attack, and sure enough, at this moment a bunch of football hooligans from the local east Berlin football club made a drunken foray up the dark, mostly deserted street. Fuck, I thought, the last thing I want to have to do is throw this lovely and full bottle of Berliner Pils in my hand at the thugs. What a terrible waste. The hooligans advanced noisily and slowly, waving sticks and chanting Nazi slogans. Somebody ran out of the infoladen, revved up their motorbike and went off to alert the other houses on other nearby streets.

The Berlin wall had only just come down, and the presence of cops in the old East was desultory. They had, anyhow, no idea how to deal with the sudden influx of a couple of thousand anarchist squatters. We were happy to have no cops around, and so it was up to us to defend the streets from marauding Nazis and football hooligans - of which there were plenty. They had already killed Silvio around the corner at Samariterstraße U-bahn, and firebombed several Mainzer houses.

A young woman emerged from the infoladen. It wasn't so much that she was six foot tall, dressed like a seventeenth century pirate queen, or that she sported lurid purple hair to shock and heavy black boots to kick; no, the most impressive feature was the large heavy wooden cane she carried, like an ancient ornate staff. She wielded the heavy old stick like a lethal nunchuck. "Fucking nazis!" she shouted and stormed off down the street towards the hooligans, facing them alone, one black woman armed with a big stick against twelve white blond- haired boys armed with drunken bravado.

They stopped, starred at her with surprise and horror, then turned on their heels and ran. She pursued them, swinging her big old club, while the rest of us laughed with jubilation at her audacious and bold endeavor. Mainz bleibt meins!

Such was my experience of the Berlin squatting scene. A place that was larger than life and overflowing with extraordinary people and times. Plots were hatched, connections made. Stories wrote themselves. And in that sense, Berlin was the cradle for these stories, Clandestinos : Unterwegs im Widerstand. (Adventures in Resistance).

Berlin formed me, and I carry it with me still. From those days I want to thank my comrades Robert and Oisin, not only for minding my boots that night I left Niederbarnim at dawn and walked to SEK in my bare feet (there was sekt involved), but for years of watching my back and unfettered bacchanalia. Later in NY both friends helped edit this text, and offered welcome criticism and ideas. Thanks to Day, my Mayday and partner in crime; to Paul Hirst, who taught me the nebulous ways of Friedrichsein ; to Simon who walked me through a mountain of bureaucracy to get a pot of gold ; and indeed to the larger Irish crew there involved in the scene who made me feel at home, ha-ha.

Berlin is a place of memories. Running across Alexanderplatz – fleeing the bullen – I met my homey Jorge, with whom I now live, One bloodied dawn, Ike missed the BMW and instead hit my head with a flying bottle, thanks mate. Katja Kunkel picked me off a sofa before the sun rose. Gabriel from Chile painted swirling figures as Brazilian music accompanied his marvelous strokes. Prince Sjorre walked me through a magical labyrinth of garbage, and Lisa Daub opened her door, offering a warm cup of Zapatista coffee.

Thanks to Matze, Stephanie and Lucy, Hubert and Andrea, Boris, Dario, Desi, Albatross, Barbara, Kevin - good German comrades who I admire and cherish.

And thanks to the other companeros who at one stage or another shared the Berlin times – Damian, Jim, Mick Mohawk, Stephen, Theresa, Jean, Tauno, Erik Petersen. To Siabhra Durcan, on the midnight train to Strahov. And to bolt of lightning Blanca GG, who amongst a thousand other things, kicked the early manuscript in to shape.

Cheers to my sisters Linda and Lauren, and my brother Bobby - generous and patient people who may not agree with all of this but have given me so much support, and everything.

Special thanks go to Katja Rameil who translated this difficult book written in Irish vernacular - while pregnant to boot! Katja has been there all along, from the Garden of Delight to Diez de Abril to the birth of Ixim to a pirate boat in Leipzig. Long live Katja, Muz and new life!

And to Niels Barmeyer who understands the English language better than I and hence made a brilliant contribution in reading the early draft of the book. Long life to my compas Niels, Anja and gorgeous Jannes.

Berlin is full of stories of love and despair. Deirdre of the Sorrows broke my young heart in West Germany, and Ana Laura Hernandez set it aflame at the Autonomen Congress of ‘95. And from that tempestuous ten year engagement came our beautiful son Ixim. Everything for Ixim, nothing for ourselves. All of this book is for you Ixim.



*

Indigenous Resurgence in Abya Yala

"The only good Indian is a bad one."
Continental Summit of Indigenous nations and pueblos, Iximché, Guatemala, March 2007
from TowardFreedom.com

by Ramor Ryan

As the historic march flooded into the old colonial central plaza, there was a moment of great jubilation. From the side streets flowed legions of people from the feeder marchers, swelling the ranks of the main body. As the rivers of indigenous marchers merged, a tremendous roar filled the air as hundreds of smiling faces greeted each other like long lost brothers and sisters re-uniting—which of course in many respects, they were.

Guatemala City had never seen anything like it: thousands of Indigenous people from almost every country of the Americas coming together, celebrating their culture, and organizing resistance. This is the grand finale march on Guatemala City to top off the successful weeklong summit at nearby Iximché. The grey, suffocating streets are filled for once not with smog and gridlock, but with a blaze of color from the forest of rainbow colored flags and banners, and the sound of drums and pipes and maracas and the multitude of voices each with their own distinct language uniting to chant and sing together. Like the march of an army of the dispossessed—the lowest of the low, the invisibles—reclaiming the city of fear where once, not so long ago, they were hunted down, disappeared, and murdered with impunity by the state security forces.
"After more than 500 years of oppression and domination," proclaimed the Bolivian speaker from the stage before the cheering crowd, "they have not been able to eliminate us. Here we are alive and united with nature. Today we recuperate together our sovereignty…Our task is to begin to govern ourselves."

The Intriguing Annals of Iximché

This Third Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities of Abya Yala (referring to the North and South American continents in the Kuna language) is being convened amidst the ebullient upsurge in the fortunes of indigenous peoples across the Americas. The flagship on the rising tide is Evo Morales presidential victory in Bolivia. He is not the first indigenous president elected in Latin America, but he is the first indigenous and staunchly left representative in office—as much part of the indigenous revival as the Latin American left turn captained by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. And this is the starting point of this summit—indigenous, left, and premised on the theme "from resistance to power."
"The indigenous people have decided to recuperate our identity, citizenship, natural resources, and culture," explained one representative from Ecuador, "and now we are setting our sights on taking political power."

This latest indigenous’ summit (the first was held in Mexico 2000, followed by Ecuador, 2004) is being convened in a suitably prestigious location. The sacred Mayan site of Iximché, 60 miles outside of Guatemala City is a place with a both lauded and turbulent past. The great city was once the capital seat of the Kaqchikel people. Typical of the rambunctious nature of indigenous history in general, Iximché —founded in 1470—has a complicated past. The Kaqchikel first collaborated with the invading Spanish conquistadores led by Pedro De Alvarado in 1524, against their old rivals, the neighboring K’iche states. Such a duplicitous collaboration soon came undone as they learned the true nature of the avaricious Spaniards. The Kaqchikel rebelled, overrunning the Spanish garrison in 1527. The Spaniards in turn came back in greater numbers and with new local allies, eventually vanquishing the Kachikel.

This week Iximché is transformed from a museum of the past and a case study for academics to being a vibrant theater for political discourse and cultural dynamism. Foremost on the minds of the organizers is to cleanse the space of the bad vibes left by President Bush, who visited here two weeks earlier while on his monumentally doomed Latin American tour. In an elaborate cleansing ceremony—signifying ignominy for the US President—the Mayan priests purified the space to replace "the politics of war with a politics of life, dignity, equality, transparency, inclusive democracy, and indigenous people’s unity founded on a sustainable co-existence with Mother Nature."

In the shadow of the old ruins, huge tents have been set up and a flurry of activities is going on as workshops and plenums take place in multiple locations. It is an autonomous space, controlled for the duration of the summit by the people themselves, without the presence of cops or authorities from the state.

Among the hordes of colorfully dressed delegates, the most prominent are the enthusiastic 70-strong Bolivian delegation, wearing distinctively beautiful textiles and the women in their signature bowler hats. The press is all over them, snapping away photos, knowing that this exotic indigenous eye-candy sells.

But as Ecuadorian Blanca Chancosa points out in her opening address – "We are not just for folklore or adornment, we want to be authors and constructors (of our own destiny)."
So each day, after the pre-dawn spiritual ceremony, such cosmological immaterialism is overshadowed by hardcore anti-neoliberal political discourse. The themes highlighted by the summit and its numerous workshops and panels include: land and territory, the depletion of natural resources, the environment, climate change, autonomy, migration, and privatization. Concrete campaigns and struggle against neo-liberalism, militarization, the US war and the US border wall were consolidated, as well as specific campaigns such as promoting economic alternatives, legalization of coca leaves and opening up Bolivia’s access to the sea.
Bolivia’s foreign relations minister David Choquehuanca sets the tone of the discussions, quoting a Chotewanka by saying , "Our minds are colonized, but not our hearts. It is time to listen to our hearts, because this is what builds resistance." Indigenous people, he said, should look how to "live well," to seek a "culture of life" rather than the one-dimensional development.
"Our world is not for sale," continued Blanca Chancosa. "Bush is not welcome here. We want instead people who support life. Yes to life! Imperialism and capitalism has left us with a historical debt and they owe us for this debt."

Bush is not welcome, but the US contingents are warmly received. Making the link between struggles north and south—across the despised Rio Brava wall—a representative from the Western Shoshone people said, "The indigenous here are facing the same kind of issues we are facing in the North, and face the same threats by the multi-national corporations such as mining and environmental contamination. These affect the traditional foundation of our nations which is the land, the air, the water, and spirituality."

Linking the environmental and the political is a constant underlying theme here in this construction of a "culture of life." Capitalist neo-liberalism is fueling environmental destruction, as Miguel Palacin from Peruvian peasant organization CONACAMI emphasizes: "They are trying to create economic blocs to impose treaties based on the exploitation of nature. But now we are becoming visible, because they are messing with Mother Earth, and we are organizing in order to respond. "

From the panels discussing Territory, Natural Resources, and the Indigenous People, Magali Rey Rosa, of the Guatemalan Madre Tierra organization has the final word: "Mother Earth is not bearing up any more with the kind of use that the dominant civilization is imposing on its ecosystem. Development is smothering life. If we continue with this boss," she said wittily, "our Earth will not survive."

The Zapatista No-Show

The set up of the indigenous summit is modeled on the World Social Forum, both in method and style. There is the usual elaborate registration process, accompanied by the ubiquitous paraphernalia—t-shirts, shoulder bags, glossy brochures, and posters. Oxfam and other NGOs are footing the bill. Considering that the political formation of many groups and organizations is old-school Left, the methodology of the summit is centralized and hierarchical.

There is little of the new methodology of the more anti-authoritarian elements of the movement—no horizontalidad or Zapatista-style assemblies. Indeed the absence of a Zapatista delegation is telling, being so close to Chiapas. Chavez and Fidel are the non-indigenous inspirations here, not Marcos or Flores Magon. Said one Guatemalan delegate hailing from a group linked to the ex-guerrilla URNG, "We think the Zapatistas have ceased to have any significance."

So the dominant political overture is about constituting a new democratic Left. The new Continental-wide radical indigenous resurgence is marked by a division between the Zapatista model—anti-Capitalist, anti-electoral, and focused on building grassroots autonomy—and the Bolivian model—anti-neo-liberal, constitutional, and seeking power by uniting social movements in a common electoral platform. While many people in the attending the summit would probably position them in varying degrees between the two poles, the final documents and declarations clearly assume the latter line.

And going down the constitutional road in an effort to take political power necessitates a strong central leadership. As Bladimir Painecura, Mapuche, points out, "The maturity of the leaders participating today and the solidity they bring to the discussions [is the strong point of this movement]. As a result of this maturity, the movements have been consolidated and bring social transformation to the nation-state, as witnessed in Bolivia. Indigenous peoples have advanced and have continued resisting, so much so that they have arrived at power, and are administering well."

Tecpan: Building a Culture of Life from the Ruins of War

In a vast old rustic town hall, thousands of delegates join with the local townspeople to celebrate the finale. Although Tecpan is a racially evenly mixed town, it’s noticeable that very few of the Mestizo population have come out to celebrate with the indigenous. The wounds of Guatemala’s 30-year long brutal civil war linger in rural towns like these despite the peace accords signed over ten years ago. The rebels were supported predominantly by the indigenous poor and the state by the Mestizo middle class. Tecpan was witness to guerrilla combat, army massacres, disappearances, and all the horrors of counter-insurgency repression.

Like all encuentros of this kind, much of the important work is done beyond the official panels and workshops. At social events like this, personal and political networking takes precedent, and the unofficial stories emerge. For example, why did Nobel Peace Prize winner and prominent indigenous rights spokeswoman Rigoberta Menchu not appear at the summit? She is currently running as a presidential candidate in the upcoming Guatemalan election. Although she has little chance of winning, one would expect support from this very summit considering she is indigenous, of the Left, and running for political power.
"She is a thought to be a pawn of the Right Wing and the ruling class," a community leader from the Coban region tells me. "She doesn’t represent the indigenous; she is interested in power and has cut a deal with the Mestizos and the rich. They tolerate her so as to show the world that Guatemala has changed and has stopped oppressing the indigenous. But it’s a lie…"

The time for speeches and presentations has arrived. I discover to my horror that they are awarding all the different delegations with plaques to commemorate their participation in the event. When the moment arrives to call the Irish delegates to receive theirs, it seems I am the only Irish person present to accept the award. The other two Irish are nowhere to be seen. The truth is that I am here somewhat accidentally—a gatecrasher of sorts—and certainly don’t merit any sort of accolade. I had been traveling across Guatemala on my way to cover a story in Nicaragua when my Irish magazine, Island, sent an email to say they had folded, and there was no more Island to write for. Fortunately the photographer I was traveling with noticed in the morning newspaper that there was an indigenous summit taking place nearby. So we came here on a whim. Now I am approaching the organizing committee who are all smiling broadly to collect the plaque, and I’m wondering what I can possibly say. What have the Irish ever done to help the indigenous of the Americas throughout the ages? Should I quote the infamous US General of Irish descent, Philip Sheridan—the racist mass murderer who led the "Indian Wars" in the 1860s—accredited with the charming ditty "The only good Indian is a dead one"?

I am spared the ordeal as someone snatches away the microphone to make an important announcement. I scurry away with the impressive ornament feeling like a bit of a shyster. Later that night, over strong local hooch given out for free for those delegates still going strong by midnight, a garrulous Canadian delegate is telling me about the militant Six Nations struggle in Ontario where the indigenous resurgence is gaining ground, and he re-quotes Sheridan. "You see, buddy, the only good Indian is a bad Indian!" Yo, high five—slap!

The Declaration of Iximché: From Resistance to Power

Back on the central streets of Guatemala City, the thousands of marching delegates are joined by thousands of local indigenous peasant farmers from the CNOC, CUC, and CONIC organizations. These are groups formed by war victims, refugees and support base of the 80s resistance, and the remnants of the near genocidal state onslaught that claimed more than 100,000 lives, mostly rural indigenous. I remember being here in this same city in the early 90s staying at a human rights house, feeling petrified as police agents tailed us and death threats were left on the phone. To be a "bad Indian" in those days meant death. Now, here they are—the rebel indigenous, re-emerging from the shadows and re-claiming public space one more.
Amidst spiritual ceremony and music and dance spectaculars, the celebrated "Declaration of Iximché" is read out, to "announce the continental resurgence of the Pachacutic (the return) along with the closure of Oxlajuj Baq’tun (long count of 5,200 years), and as we approach the door of the new Baq’tun, we journey together to make Abya Yala a "land full of life." Then the declaration gets down to the hard political specifics: against the FTAA (Free Trade Agreement for the Americas), against transgenics, against multinational mining and resource extraction, against Bush’s war and the US border wall and condemning the practices of the Inter American Development Bank, the World Bank, and similar global institutions which manipulate the indigenous. The document stands firmly for indigenous peoples’ sovereignty, autonomy, and self-determination, ratifying historical rights to stolen territories, and consolidating unity between the different indigenous groups.

To the somewhat mysterious and haunting epitaph, We Have Dreamt Our Past and We Remember Our Future, the demonstration and the summit concludes, and the multitude disperses into the ominous dusk of the dangerous and insecure city. The departing mood is not triumphant but resilient and quietly optimistic. Despite everything—500 years of colonization, dispossession, poverty and migration—the resurgent indigenous of the continent have survived and are looking to the future.

Interview : On the Road with an Irish Pirate - Northern Express

by Holly Wren Spaulding

Ramor Ryan, author of Clandestines

In anticipation of his appearance in Traverse City next week, Irish author Ramor Ryan took time out to talk about his new book, Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile, life in a conflict zone, and his political coming of age during the embattled Ireland of the 1980s.

NE: I understand you’ve read in Ireland, England, Germany, Mexico, New York, San Francisco — we’re lucky to make it onto your tour.

Ramor Ryan: I have to say that I have wanted to visit Traverse City for many years, as I have very special connections with the community there!

NE: You’ve been living outside Ireland for much of your life—do you feel at home somewhere else, or are you essentially foreign wherever you find yourself?

RR: I’m never certain whether the journey is towards home, or the journey is home, but at this point, the notion of home is not represented by a physical space. The worrying precariousness of that is measured by the incandescent weightlessness of the transient, semi-nomadic life. Despite having lived the last few years predominantly in Chiapas (Mexico), the place itself feels no more home than a ship’s port. Where is home? I suppose my physical home is where my hat is. My heart’s home is where my beloved four-year-old boy is, but the guiding trajectory of the last 20 years is that home is amongst the radical community: home is amongst those who struggle.

NE: So there is a tension, right? Is that the condition of being an exile?

RR: Especially when one chooses conflict zones as I seem to have a propensity to do, yeah.

NE: Your book made me think I should catch a ride on the high seas. Do you find that your readers are especially responsive to certain stories or ideas?

RR: One reader wrote that she found throughout the book a re-surfacing of her own history, like a map of where she had been. I liked that because it fed into the initial impulse I had to write – to articulate collective experiences, and to communicate. Eduardo Galeano has written that “Our writing is informed by a desire to make contact, so that readers become involved with words that come to us from them, and return to them as hope and prophecy.” Mostly people write that the stories awaken the desire to go forth and engage life, to take a chance with things.

NE: What is your affinity with pirates?

RR: Well, it’s the sea, of course, roaming the great oceans populated by romantic and rakish raconteurs; outlaws, the seductive sense of wild, tumultuous freedom. One pirate described it as “Life on a pirate ship was mostly drunken idleness, with brief periods of violent action”, which always appealed more to me than say, working in insurance. The first pirate I learned of was the famous Irish pirate queen Granuaile, whose island refuge was visible off the coast from my mother’s home in County Mayo. Tales of Granuaile’s exploits filled my youthful fancies in the intimate sense that she was born amongst us, a local folk heroine. Now she’s on Broadway, of course, a big star like Peter Pan or someone. Our Granuaile was a rebel, a Robin Hood of sorts; she wasn’t an unsavory character at all – actually I’d say she was quite a role model!

NE: There has been a conflict between the Mexican government and the indigenous people of the region for the whole time you have lived in Chiapas. What is it like to be in the midst of that?

RR: Of course the point of the State’s “low intensity conflict” is that it keeps the population on edge and creates a climate of fear, like in New York City where everyone remains edgy with the constant terror alerts. Here in Chiapas, the impact is visible via the saturation of government troops throughout the conflict zone and the more insidious tactic of creating divisions amongst the indigenous communities and zones under rebel Zapatista control. So on top of the usual stress of trying to scrape a living, bring up families and dealing with the high level of insecurity and crime typical of any impoverished area, the people here have to deal with the counter-insurgency conditions too. It’s very tough, psychologically, and these repressive conditions have remained constant since 1994, the year of the initial Zapatista uprising, which is what interested me in the place to begin with.

NE: What is a rebel zone, practically speaking?

RR: These are the autonomous regions of Chiapas, covering an area about the size of the state of Connecticut—mainly rural backlands and jungle, encompassing several hundred thousand people. The population governs itself through a regional network of autonomous municipal councils, made up of a rotating assembly of community members. The council assemblies deal with all aspects of daily life in the communities - land issues, justice issues, education and health, as well as distribution of resources. There is no presence of the federal Mexican state, whom the people decided were not operating in their interests. “We don’t want the racist, repressive Mexican state here,” they said in the armed uprising of 1994. “We can govern ourselves better, according to our own traditions and customs.” And they have proved it with thriving autonomous municipalities 13 years later.

NE: Who are your literary influences?

RR: Despite 800 years of colonization—or perhaps because of it—there is one great privilege in being born Irish: the wealth of our literary heritage. I have grown up reading Joyce, Yeats, Brendan Behan, Oscar Wilde and the whole pantheon. Camus provided a continental perspective—existential and satisfyingly bleak. As I spread my wings, I found Latin American magical realism—the likes of Isabel Allende and Gioconda Belli. Eduardo Galeano and Arundhati Roy, both of them politically engaged writers, accompany my every written word, as well as the Zapatista Communiqués of Sub-Comandante Marcos, which take engaged literature to another level of praxis. Does Uncle Noam (Chomsky) count as literature?! I’m reading John Ross’s Murdered By Capitalism at the moment, and love it – Oh to be as erudite as that inspired man!

NE: Were there stories when you were growing up that especially shaped you?

RR: One of my earliest memories is of being brought to Dublin city centre for the day by my big sister. A huge car bomb set by pro-British terrorists went off, killing a dozen shoppers a couple of blocks from where we strolled. I remember dreaming of that explosion a lot afterwards and it haunted my boyhood imagination. Later, the great hunger strike of 1981– when 10 young republican political prisoners starved themselves to death to protest British criminalization of their struggle – loomed large on my horizon. As an adolescent this had a profound effect on me. Why were they doing this? Why were they political prisoners? What was the great narrative absorbing the nation and of which these 10 young men were central stage? Why was everyone out in the streets, marching and protesting and rioting? It was impossible not to get caught up in it all.

NE: The political landscape has shifted dramatically in the last few years, whereto with people’s struggles now?

RR: The political trajectory in Clandestines maps the shift of focus in the progressive movement during the ‘90s from anti-imperialism to anti-globalization, representing the change of focus from the state to transnational corporations. The Bush regime has of course reignited the state’s imperial drive with his military expeditions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Anti-war struggle remains the most poignant space of contestation in the U.S.

NE: This book is a sort of odyssey, a record of a vibrant era, but it is also an invitation, no?

RR: An invitation, I think, using a popular phrase, to be a Zapatista wherever you are!

NE: There must be an extra incentive to live a vital, inquisitive life, thereby generating material for your writing.

RR: Well in that sense, I think my book Clandestines was a bit accidental and unconscious! Having finally ground to a halt after years on the road (nest building while awaiting the arrival of my son Ixim), I found I had some time and space to write. To reflect upon lived experience. “The overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recalled in tranquility,” as Wordsworth described his writing process. The Institute of Anarchist Studies kindly gave me a bit of money, and so the book tumbled out. I was hoping to share my experiences of various radical and revolutionary movements and moments with others. It’s not really meant to be about my life, but about the lives I’ve had the fortune of encountering.

Ramor Ryan reads at Horizon Books in Traverse City, Monday, May 21 at 7 p.m. He’ll appear at the Inside Out Gallery on May 26, 7 p.m.

Nowhere

Reflections on a Zapatista Utopia (from Island Magazine)
by Ramor Ryan

Midnight Ignored
There are no fireworks, no bells, no dancing, no embracing, and certainly no booze. Midnight passes and the New Year is ushered in without even a word of acknowledgement from the stage. The 6000 people gathered in the great muddy open-aired amphitheatre of the Zapatista headquarters at Oventic, Chiapas shuffle about in the thick mountain fog, a few diehards shaking hands. The majority indigenous Zapatista’s, masked in ski masks or bandanas, barely move - as is their custom, their tradition. It is an unusually solemn and surreal way to herald in 2007 and mark the 13th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising on the 1st January 1994.

Wouldn’t any right-thinking Dubliner be stumbling around Christchurch Cathedral at this time, wasted amongst old friends, family and that particular species – the late-night garrulous Irish horde? Why spend it here in the eerie fog flanked by the craggy peaks and deep hollows of the towering mountains of south-east Mexico, literally off the map, the whereabouts of this rural hamlet only revealed by asking the right (generally masked, surreptitious) people along the mountain paths?

Because nowhere is always somewhere, whether it be the ragged edge of the universe, or this Zapatista nowhere, which despite the demure proceedings, the remoteness of the location and the absence of alcohol (prohibited under Zapatista Revolutionary Law) is host to an extraordinary celebration.

Not just because it’s the 13th anniversary of the armed uprising that resonated across the globe, re-igniting a dormant revolutionary current, and not because it’s the first ‘intergalactic’ gathering of the anti-capitalist movement in the 21st century. ‘A meeting of resistances and rebels against capitalism and global neo-liberalism,’ in the words of Comandante Moises from the stage, ‘and how to prepare ourselves and continue organizing resistance to combat the common enemy of all humanity.’

No, it’s something else: there is a touch of magic in the air. It is hinted at when a young indigenous Tseltal woman called Josefina from the Good Governance council speaks: ‘We the Zapatistas are free to organize ourselves, to govern ourselves, and to make our own decisions without being exploited by capitalist ideas. Because of that we had the idea to build a new society and a new struggle.’

So that’s what it is. This Zapatista nowhere -- where the inhabitants have rebelled and now govern in their own autonomous fashion -- carries within it the echoes of a beautiful old idea: utopia.

Autonomy as a Utopian Space
Sir Thomas More, a principled catholic executed by an unprincipled king and later beatified and canonized, coined the term Utopia (derived from the Greek words οὐ ou ("not") and τόπος tópos ("place").) in his seminal 1512 work. In the book, More portrays an imaginary perfect society, where private property does not exist, premised on radical democracy and religious tolerance. Thereafter, history resonated with notions of utopia. An early romantic manifestation came in the form of pirate utopias, autonomous enclaves - often fiercely democratic - existing in the shadows of 17th century capitalist expansionism. Karl Marx’ vision of an ideal communist state is informed by the idea, and thus gave rise, amongst other currents, to the utopian socialist movement

But let’s not get carried away. While the romantic element is potent in the Zapatista arsenal this new years eve – the full moon, the craggy peaks, the masked multitudes and the stirring revolutionary words – the gathering is concerned mostly with exigencies of the everyday struggle in the here and now.

This whole 4-day event – somewhat grandiosely called the First Encounter between the Zapatista’s and the People of the World - is not a political rally, radical academic conference or activist forum. It is ‘a space for a collective analysis and vision to emerge.’ The 2000 people from 47 countries (mostly Mexico) and the 4000 indigenous Zapatistas coming from all the regions of Chiapas are here to take stock of the situation after a particularly tumultuous year in Mexico and an eventful year globally. The large numbers present are a boost for a national anti-capitalist movement facing considerable challenges from a newly formed government of President Calderon – conservative and militaristic – which promises radical social movements the “iron fist”.

But mostly it’s a showcase of the Zapatista political culture, the nuts and bolts of constructing everyday participatory autonomy. Or how this little corner of the world - the Zapatista rebel zone, about the size of Munster - is governed in the absence of state authority. How they self-organize education, health, justice and land issues, through the 5 Good Government councils, across 29 regional autonomous municipalities, covering a reputed 1,110 rural villages.

The Zapatistas eschew party politics, instead focusing on organizing from below, amongst the grass roots. They are not interested in assuming state office. Everything for everyone, nothing for us, is a principle applied in their initiatives, including questions of power. ‘Autonomy,’ says radical academic and Zapatista theorist John Holloway, ‘is simply the other side of saying that we want to change the world without taking power.’

Zapatismo is not a cult, or a doomsday sect. It positions itself firmly within the national and global political discourse, albeit at the cutting edge. ‘Zapatismo is nowadays the most radical, and perhaps the most important, political initiative in the world’, says Mexican writer Gustavo Esteva. Yet it also embraces the utopian notions of a nowhere that is a refuge and a place of solace – both physical and metaphysical - for the world weary, the rebels, the excluded and the misfits.

Despite numerous attempts, I never really enjoyed ringing in the New Year at Dublin’s Christchurch cathedral. There was always something pathetic about the vacuous attempt to have a really marvelous time. Instead it invariably ended up in a Burdocks chipper fight or a vomit strewn pavement.

“Our territory is also your home’ says Comandante Moises, ‘You are welcome.’ Like a world turned upside down, here we have peasant farmers from a wretched corner of the global south offering solace to political ‘refugees’ from the urban metropolises and the rich north.

I am glad that the Zapatistas offer an alternative, allowing us to dream that another world is possible, and reminding us that at the ragged edge of the universe, a place called utopia can still exist.

Selling the Water Commons from Right Under Our Noses.

From LASC magazine, March 2007.
by Ramor Ryan

10 years ago the barrio where I live was a swamp on the outskirts of San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, populated by a herd of scrawny cows. Migrants and refugees from the countryside arrived on mass – like any rapidly urbanizing centre in the 3rd World - and now it’s a teeming barrio of cement, home to thousands of mostly indigenous families. Prosperity has come to some: a few cars in the street, some fancy houses, and progress to all in the form of electricity, TV cable and internet. But nevertheless, despite this small prosperity there is one vital element consistently lacking in the peoples’ lives: water. Sometimes it comes for an hour a day; sometimes it doesn’t come all week.

Why is there no water? The tropical state of Chiapas is known as Mexico’s water bank, with the greatest mean average rain fall annually. Its huge dammed rivers exports hydroelectric power to other states.

“The water crisis is a result of the way it is consumed,” explains local water activist Cacho, part of the strong barrio anti-privatisation movement. “The problem is the excessive consumption of water and the unequal access among the different sectors of the population. There is no water rationing or shortage for the business and tourist centre of town.”

Currently, the local municipal government controls the water supply.

“And the local water authorities are running down the service in the barrios in order to open the way for privatisation,” explains Cacho. “Meanwhile they are selling off concessions to private interests to exploit the water”

In the ultimate irony, Coca Cola ‘won’ a concession to build a factory on top of San Cristobal’s aquifer. Exploiting the water resources at a monthly rate of 3.5 million litres, Coca Cola pays the municipality a measly $500 annually. (Incidentally, the director of the National Water Commission, Senor Jactes, was ex-director of Coca Cola.)

And its becomes clear from the abundant litter strewn around this poor barrio – predominantly plastic soda and water bottles – that the water is directly being taken from the aquifer, bottled, and sold to the people at a profit for Coca Cola.

At base, the struggle over the water is a clash of two visions: those who see it as an economic good to be sold on the market to the highest bidder, and those who view it as part of the common good, to be distributed equally amongst the people who use it.

The campaign against privatisation in Chiapas is gaining ground, led by the example of the Zapatista and other indigenous communities to hold the water resources as part of the community patrimony. “In the most democratic way the people have said the water is public property”, says writer Eduardo Galeano. “And this is a way of saying to the owners of the world, the gentlemen of the market- we are not for sale!”

Leaving this Stage of History

For Island Journal
by Ramor Ryan
Nairobi, Kenya, November 2006.

1. The Quiet Apocalypse of Rising Tides


Climate change is everywhere.

A momentous report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirms that climate change is 'man-made and unstoppable'. The 21-page report, described as conservative by the IPCC itself, says human-made emissions of greenhouse gases are to blame for heat waves, floods and heavy rains, droughts and stronger storms, melting ice-caps and rising sea-levels.

The IPCC is comprised of over 2000 climate experts and scientists. It was set up in 1988 by the UN and the World Meteorological organisation to guide policy makers on the impact of climate change. Despite strenuous attempts by oil companies and big business to undermine the final report, it remains quietly apocalyptic in its assessment.

Its mind-boggling conclusion predicts serious water shortage for between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people, food shortages for 200 to 600 million people. Coastal flooding will hit seven million people within 70 years. The list of potential catastrophe goes on and on.

Yet critics say the report underplays the size of the calamity. James McCarthy, a climate expert at Harvard and former IPCC panel member says the report underestimated the true level of rising sea levels, possibly making the findings of the panel 'foolishly cautious and maybe even irrelevant' on the issue.


Climate change is everywhere, even penetrating the fears of the righteously paranoid psyche of the scientists and nuclear physicists of the pre-eminent Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Their 'Doomsday Clock' has been ticking away to midnight - the figurative end of civilisation - for 61 years of nuclear holocaust watching. In an unprecedented move they have moved the clock two minutes closer to midnight - now standing at a perilous five minutes to midnight - not only because of the increase in likelihood of nuclear war with the recent events around North Korea and Iran. They also cite 'the potential for catastrophic damage from human-made technologies'. In what represents a decisive paradigm shift for the Atomic Scientists, Kennette Benedict, director of the bulletin said, 'The dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons.'

Climate change was a top priority at the conference of world business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, as well as the conference of NGO operatives at the World Social Forum in Nairobi. Meanwhile, the European Commission urged its members to adopt an unprecedented common energy policy, aimed at cutting greenhouse gases by 20% by 2020. It calls for a 'post-industrial revolution' based on a dramatic shift to an internally produced low-carbon energy economy.

Climate Change has finally arrived at the White House. President George W. Bush's State of the Union address, January 27, marked a milestone for his administration by actually recognising that we may indeed have a human-made problem after all. He acknowledged climate change as 'a serious challenge' and the need for reduction in fossil fuel consumption. Rather than announcing a mandatory cap on emissions along the lines of the globally accepted Kyoto Protocol, Bush instead meekly recommended an added emphasis on renewable or non-carbon energy sources - ethanol, wind, solar and nuclear power. As the world's leading producer of greenhouse gases, these are hardly the momentous steps needed by the USA to put a break on runaway global warming.

What is to be done in the face of the looming catastrophe? The predominant global platform to deal with fundamental issues that affect all of humanity is the United Nations. The new UN boss Ban Ki-moon has been asked to convene an emergency international summit. 'Climate change,' responded Ban, 'is one of the most important and urgent agendas that the international community has to address before 2012.' An emergency global conference organised by the UN seems imminently urgent and Nairobi has been suggested as a host.

But wasn't there an emergency climate change in Nairobi just last year? Wasn't the much heralded 12th UN Conference on Climate Change and 2nd Meeting of the Parties of the Kyoto Protocol held there November 6-17, 2006? Of course it was, and its abysmal failure to produce agreements between nations and to begin to build capacity for dealing with climate-induced problems has been brushed under the carpet.

To understand how limited the UN structure is in dealing with the urgency of the matter and how these grand global meetings are manipulated and side-tracked by powerful business and economic interests, it's worth returning to Nairobi in November to have a closer look at the workings of the UN.


2. Journey into the Heart of UN Darkness

Nairobi, Kenya, November 2006.


Climate Change is everywhere.

Especially in Third World metropolises like Nairobi. Stuck in a massive traffic jam from the airport to the city centre, I ask the taxi driver if people here know much about climate change and global warming. He nearly ploughs into a passing family of four on a bicycle he was laughing so mirthfully.

'Droughts, floods, famines, the rains comes heavy or don't come at all,' he says. 'Yes, of course we know all about global warning!'

He goes on to explain how the British colonisers had chosen the site of Nairobi as the Capital because it was cool and mosquito free.

'This is no longer the fact,' explains the taxi man. 'Now Nairobi is warm and we are plagued by mosquitoes.'

This bustling city is like a blueprint for all major population centres in the not too distant future - a place overburdened by massive migration from the countryside, chronic insecurity and an infrastructure woefully inadequate to deal with basic matters of water, drainage, transport, and communication. Nairobi hosts one of the worlds largest slums - Kuresoi; population over one million living in dire poverty. This very week in the nearby Mathare slum rival gangs battled each other, causing ten deaths, dozens of burnt shacks and thousands of slum-dwellers fleeing the violence. The near post apocalyptic landscape of the enormous Mathare slum and its almost unbearable living conditions contrasts obscenely with the lush, enclosed UN enclosure occupying most of the posh district of Gigiri. The wealthy enclave host numerous embassies, government minister residencies, NGO headquarters and a massive shopping mall, all heavily patrolled by armed guards and state of the art security features. The walled oasis of the privileged elites exists uneasily amidst a desert of the multitudes depravity, like a global Baghdad Green zone.

It's here at the extensive UN compound that over 70 ministers of state, and 6000 of their bureaucratic UN and NGO lackeys gather under the auspices of the UN's Climate Change Conference to hammer out a strategy to tackle the calamitous situation.

'The world is keenly awaiting the outcome of the deliberations going on there,' says Mr. Gilbert M. Kari somewhat anxiously, a local pest controller who has witnessed first hand the chaos climate change is wreaking on national coffee production. His is an almost universally heard concern. He and the rest of the world are in for a big disappointment.

This 12th session of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference of parties also serves as the second meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The 1997 Protocol is a legally binding set of targets for cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for developed nations to an average of 95% of individual countries' 1990 levels. Baby steps perhaps, but still too great a leap for the USA. 186 countries have signed the Kyoto Protocol but still the US balks. The US produces a quarter of global greenhouse gases but has only 4% of the world's population. The whole of Africa, in contrast, emits just 3.5%.

The keystone document for this particular Conference is the Stern Report. Where once global warming was seen as an ecological and environmental issue, the report focuses on the economics of climate change. The study led by World Bank Economist Sir Nicholas Stern, with its dizzying array of figures and calculations, leads inexorably to the conclusion that the battle against climate change makes good economic sense. The financial cost of action, it warns sternly, will be much less than the cost of inaction.

Mingling somewhat uncomfortably amongst the throng of expensively coiffured UN delegates sporting the ubiquitous top range lap-tops and talking incessantly on cell-phones, I stumble down corridors flanked by a trade-fair collection of stands hawking a variety of alternative energy plans or carbon-free initiatives. Technical companies advertising their genetically modified bio-fuel producing crops compete for the carbon free market alongside representatives of the nuclear industry: climate change for some is becoming big business.

With all the verve of Michael Moore, I door-step one of the official US delegates rushing along the corridor. He is an immaculately presented young man with the appearance of a Navy Seal and the arrogant attitude of a cantankerous frat boy.

As the largest single contributor to the greenhouse effect and global warming, I ask him, is there any sign of change in the US position on restricting carbon emissions or signing up to the Kyoto Protocol, with the other 186 nations?

'There are no signs of change in that policy soon,' the delegate answers somewhat mechanically; definitely disinterested. 'The US won't sign the Kyoto Protocol.'

'Even in light of the Stern Report, which suggests the world economy will shrink by 20%, isn't there a clear economic imperative to tackle the problem,' I insist somewhat earnestly, 'and ...'

He stops me in my tracks, looking me up and down for my credentials to ascertain who I was or what organisation I belonged. Unaccredited, a gatecrasher of sorts, I lack my badge.

'Who the heck are you?' he quips somewhat amusingly, 'some kind of Irish Borat?'

Over at Plenary Room 2, the conference is in full swing before a great assembly of dignitaries and functionaries fanned out in a great swathe of seated rows. The speaker's voice booms over the PA and their image is projected on two huge video screens on the flanking walls like a U2 concert. The delegates glance at their lap-tops, whisper on their cell-phones, sip bottled water and occasionally listen in on the simultaneous translation earphones. Sure enough, the gripping words of His Eminence Nurlan A. Iskakov, Minister of Environment Protection of Kazakhstan go unappreciated. When the senior US representative, Paula Dobriansky, Under-secretary of Democracy and Global Affairs takes the stage, a hush finally descends, cell-phones are downed and the whole auditorium pays rapt attention.

'The most effective strategies on climate change,' says Under-secretary Dobriansky, a hard-core Bush-ite and neo-con, 'are those that are integrated with economic growth, with energy security, and reducing air pollution.' In her oblique obfuscation, she is spelling out US refusal to agree on mandatory emissions limits, thereby wrecking any concerted global attempt to move forward at this conference. Dubriansky's supercilious presentation talks up US Aid to Africa and, by omission, reiterates the Bush administration's mantra that unfettered US-led capitalist globalization hand-in-hand with war in the Middle East to secure oil supplies are the priorities. Global warming, or 'air pollution' as the unctuous Under-secretary refers to it, is a side-show to the main event - capitalist expansion. Business as usual then on the United Nations world stage: US economic interests come first and the UN is held hostage to the world's sole superpower.

Taking lead from US intransigence, other heavyweight capitalist globalizers (and emerging major contributors to the greenhouse effect) China and India steadfastly refuse to cap their emissions citing their own economic interests. Joining the refusnik fest, Russia also begins to drag its feet.

'There is a scandalous lack of urgency!' says Mr. Tearfund Andy Atkins, summing up the conference mood and, it could be said, the NGO position in general.

The rest of the conference seemed to fade after the US Under-secretary's pronouncements, as if the participants knew little could be achieved without the nod or blessing from the US. The much lauded UN conference retreats into incoherent and incessantly procedural issues that revolve mostly about recording itself, and its own bureaucratic inanity. I attend one torturous two-hour meeting, seating myself in the vacant Irish delegate's place and availing of their bottled water and ear-phones. Casting a glance around at the disinterested attendees who seemed as bored as I, it is clear that they are more preoccupied with their personal email than the plodding, inchoate official proceedings. The minutes released the following day are delivered with the usual fastidious fanfare. Methodological issues: protocol: HCFC-23: SBSTA adopted short conclusions. (FCSTA/2006/L.23). Noting that the issue had not been resolved. I would imagine little gets resolved at conferences like this ever, with their inordinate bureaucracy and general obsequiousness - like a secular Tridentine mass for 21st Century globalization zealots. There is no place for dissent.

'The Nairobi Conference may not be remembered as one of the critical milestones when a major breakthrough occurred,' records the official UN summary benignly. Although perhaps, the report continues, it prepares the way for what some hope will be another 'momentous meeting' within the next four years.

'The conference has let Africa and the rest of the developing world down,' say Oxfam,

Maybe the conference has let down Oxfam and the other NGOs speaking on behalf of Africans, but some with a more critical understanding of what the conference can actually achieve are getting on with some practical direct action.

'We should not wait until Mombassa is under water,' says Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, at a conference side event. 'We know the problems. The problem that we have is what to do. What will make the difference is not the negotiations, but what we do when we go home.'

Known locally as 'the tree lady' due to her propensity to encourage Africans to plant trees, she is part of a movement whose aim is to plant our way out of the crisis. Trees perform as carbon sinks, inhaling CO2 and hence offsetting CO2 emissions: to re-forest Africa with a billion trees appropriate to regional diversity is the target of the Green Belt Movement.


3. Towards a Globalised New Orleans, or the End of Capitalism.


Many in the global north speculate upon the wisdom of having (more) children considering the nefarious world they may well inherit. People in the south - in places like drought-ridden northern Kenya - have the more pressing issue of wondering how they will feed their living children.

It seems a hopeless situation. Two thousand of the world's eminent scientists confirm that climate variability is a product of human activity, that we might have a short window of opportunity - say 15 years - to do something about it, but there isn't the political will to act amongst the powers that be. Not just the USA, China and Russia, but even European 'champions' of the cause refuse to set an example. While his government will say in the strongest terms it is 'an imperative' to take action to prevent further climate damage, British Prime Minister Tony Blair will still balk at personal sacrifices. 'I think these things are a bit impractical actually to expect people to do that,' said Blair in response to the suggestion that cutting back on flights might be a positive step. For him, science will save the planet. 'All the evidence is that if you use the science and the technology constructively, your economy can grow, people can have a good time but do so more responsibly.'

A conclusion shared by President Bush. 'Leaving behind the debate whether global warming is caused by natural or man-made causes,' said Bush chillingly to the New York Times (25/05/2006), 'we are going to focus solely in the technologies which can resolve the problem.' So Bush is saying that we don't so much as have a problem (that doesn't matter) but we don't have a solution. So what's on offer in terms of technological or scientific solutions to wean us off fossil fuels (and Muslim oil)?

The front runner is ethanol. But replacing fossil fuels - an intensely compact source of fuel - with crop derived bio-ethanol requires felling vast tracks of forest to make way for plantations, thereby creating even more ecological damage.

Meanwhile, entering into the twilight zone of capitalist solutions to capitalist problems, we find the resurrection of the old technological bogeyman: nuclear energy, or the new bio-technical Frankenstein: genetically modified bio-fuel crops. Both these solutions are low-carbon, but the potential ecological cost of the energy succeeds in merely pushing the climate change problem upriver a while.

Another solution involves juggling carbon around. With capitalism's love of the market we now have complicated emissions trading schemes for 'cost-effective' reductions in carbon emissions (selling them on) and more bizarrely, carbon drops - including the notions of storing emissions under the sea bed or down disused mine shafts.

Capitalism's last technological card and one that is proving a current growth business is geo-engineering - the intentional manipulation of the climate. Taking inspiration from the CIA's (unsuccessful) attempts to provoke intense rains over Vietnam to wash out the rebel crops, to the Chinese Olympic committee's promise to secure sunny days for the 2008 Olympics via technical measures, the geo-engineering industry is having a field day in the era of climate variability. From attempts to fertilise the ocean to lower the water temperature to filling the sky with sulphate nano-particles to intercept sun-rays, geo-engineering scientists are busy interfering with and intervening upon the climate, undeterred by potential disequilibrium disasters or mass contamination.

Beyond technological meddling, dealing with the problem of climate change - ecologically, politically, economically and socially - needs a lot more than the Kyoto Protocol, developing alternative energies or holding another emergency Climate Change Conference.

It is necessary to consider the root of the problem. A global economy based on the colossal demand for highly concentrated and rapidly depleting fossil fuel deposits is ecologically unsustainable. Do we need to change fuel or change the structure of consumption? But under the present model - global capitalism - is change possible, or even desirable?

'Capitalism has always relied on infinite expansionism in a finite planet,' explains Alex Troochi of the Green Apple Collective, 'something has to give and at the moment, it's the planet that's giving as Capitalism plunders ahead.'

Capitalism relies on ever-expanding markets and inputs to continue to make profits based on the extraction of natural resources and transforming them into dead capital. This ceaseless addiction to growth-for-growth sake leads inexorably to ecotastrophe. Capitalism is now being forced to consider other strategies. But the magic technological or scientific bullet to save the day remains illusive.

Hope lies beyond the pale; it requires a fundamental shift in thinking, a revolutionary paradigm shift away from the cloistered confines of the imagination of the United States government, the European Union or the United Nations assembly. In the long term, the human world will have to evolve some kind of post-capitalist society to survive.

The doomsday clock ticks away at a perilous five minutes to twelve. Meanwhile its still early morning on the revolutionary clock. Despite the alarm ringing, the revolutionary protagonist, although stirring, has yet to awake. The writing is on the wall once more - be realistic, demand the impossible.