Our Word is Our Weapon: Selected Writings Book

Our Word Is Our Weapon is the first authoritative compendium of the writings of Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, the masked voice of the indigenous human rights fighters in the South-East Mexican state of Chiapas who has become an icon of the worldwide anti-globalisation movement. The evolution of the work of the Zapatistas and Marcos from its first revolt against the government in 1994, as detailed in this remarkable collection is, as its editor, Juana Ponce de León writes, "a testimony to the power of the word". These writings have secretly been passed from hand to hand, out from the mountainous Lacandon jungle, across miles, until via the Internet, they have been disseminated to the global village. In depicting the conflict in Chiapas fuelled by the indigenous struggle for human rights, which is portrayed in words and paradoxically through the masked anonymity of its spokesperson as the fight against invisibility, Marcos creates a mirror in which we can recognise "the features of our own concerns" with "neoliberalism". The three parts of Our Word is Our Weapon respectively cover Marcos' commentary upon the social, economic, and political situation in Mexico and its implications in "Unveiling Mexico"; "Beneath the Mask" contains the "Sup's" philosophical reflections on the world as he fashions himself in his isolated jungle hideouts as a servant of the revolution, partly through references and letters to other writers and thinkers such as Fernando Pessoa , Jorge Luis Borges, and John Berger; and, in the final part, "Creating Memory", Marcos' playful inventiveness comes to the fore in the folk tales he fashions from the forces that shape the Zapatistas' revolutionary project. As well as showcasing Marcos' extraordinary literary and political gifts, Our Word Is Our Weapon opens out another forum for a deeply personal and distinct voice that manages at the same time to be a collective one, in the face of which the Mexican government seems powerless. Our Word Is Our Weapon is an inspirational case in point for those who enjoyed Naomi Klein's No Logo, and belongs in your cultural revolutionary backpack somewhere between Che Guevara's manual of Guerilla Warfare and the poetry of Pablo Neruda. --Fiona BucklandRead More