Cancun
Journal #20: Sunday, 9/14/03 and Monday,
9/15/03
Siempre Victoria!
Sunday:
It is the last day of negotiations at the
WTO. Things are not going well, and they
have until 11:00 p.m. to come up with agreements.
Some of us want to make one final push into
the conference center area, make one last
show of opposition.
The group of exhausted people who met the
night before could only come up with a time
and a meeting place: a beach just south
of the security zone. While I'm on my way
there with a carload of us, we get a call
that the military have blocked off the beach.
We try to spread the word that the location
has changed to a beach farther south.
On the ride we have a discussion about the
actions the day before. Tristan was frustrated--somehow
on his section of the fence the women stopped
cutting and then just stood and defended
the fence from men. That wasn't the plan...we
were supposed to move back after a short
while and let anyone who wanted to have
at it, but no one had apparently communicated
that to the women. I had been so busy fending
off media and aggressive "helpers" at the
center that I never made it out to the edges.
There was no clear system of communications
nor any pre-march planning sessions, as
the march only got organized late the night
before and early that morning, and all and
all there was a lot of confusion. And while
the power of pulling down the fence with
the ropes was transformative for all who
took part in it, there were many people
on the sides and the back who only vaguely
saw what was going on. And then having the
whole group sit down and listen to speeches
broke the energy that might have carried
us all through the fence and given everyone
a sense of triumph. The hasty planners had
decided not to go through, not to risk a
police confrontation in order to gain a
few more feet of ground when the Conference
Center was still nine kilometers and two
more barricades away, but no one had asked
the crowd or even clearly communicated the
thinking. All the speeches were on the order
of "down, down, WTO!" and not "Here's the
strategy we were thinking of at 8:00 a.m.
this morning." But that is just a reflection
of the challenges of working with so many
different groups who have such different
organizing styles, ideas about time, and
senses of what is to be done.
When we get to our fallback beach, the military
have blocked that off too. But I get a call
from Brush that they are up at the first
beach, have gone through the military blockade,
and that there's lots of press there. We
get there quickly, park, and walk past a
line of soldiers standing by orange, metal
barricades that open and let us walk through.
A group of 20 or 30 of our friends are standing
in the sand, and more are in the water.
We quickly strip down to our bathing suits
and run into the waves. For most of us,
it's the first time in this action that
we've made it to the beach. I see lots of
pale activist flesh around me, a contrast
to the deep tans of the tourists. The water
is clear and cool and the waves roll in
gently and everyone is tumbling around like
a pack of baby seals. I don't actually care
whether we do an action, or just play in
the water together. It could be a powerful
action and a great contribution to the movement
for this group of hardworking and overly
responsible people to just relax, to demonstrate
that self-care and pleasure are as vital
a part of a sustainable movement as self-sacrifice.
And the action is organized as fluidly as
children organize their games. "What shall
we play now?" "You be the cops, I'll be
the robber." The media are there, and we
can't resist playing with them. We get out
of the water, and one laughing group bares
their butts to the press while Valerie writes
on them with lipstick to say "Ya ganamos!
We are winning!" The media crowd in to snap
photos: the message will prove prophetic.
The soldiers up at the road are blocking
people from getting in. When we walk up
to them, they open the barricades but when
we go back to the water, they close them.
"Let's open the barricade," Lisa suggests.
We all run up to the top--well, they run,
I slog more slowly through the sand behind.
We take the orange metal fences out of the
hands of the surprised soldiers, and carry
them down to the beach. They just stand
there, a bit stunned, as we run off with
their barricade.
We are arranging the sections of it on the
sand to spell "No WTO!" when they rouse
themselves to come down and get it back.
They are clearly under orders not to attack
us or get violent, and in fact several of
them are laughing as they pull on the barricades
one way and we pull another. Finally we
get the idea of lying on top of them. Valerie
fends off the soldiers while we arrange
a metal/human living message, "No WTO!"
Then we take pity on them and let them take
them back, but the beach stays open.
We run back into the water, trying to have
a meeting as the waves bob us up and down,
crashing over our heads and tumbling us
into one another. Offshore are two big battleships,
and some want to swim out to them, or at
least to tell the media that's what we're
going to do. Others object to giving the
media false stories, or to putting ourselves
in a position where we need rescue by some
agent of the state, be it only a lifeguard,
and we eventually decide to just march up
the beach toward the security zone.
We reorganize, and a few stay behind with
our stuff while the rest of us embark on
what I am soon calling the Cancun Death
March. The sun is blazing hot and is searing
new parts of our flesh that have previously
been decently covered under cargo pants
and bandanas soaked in lime to give that
special Mexican flavor to tear gas protection.
We don't really have enough water for this
and the sand is deep and hard to move through.
All the youth are nonetheless striding ahead
at a great pace while I am falling farther
and farther behind, wondering why I keep
doing this, keep trying to keep up with
twenty-three year olds, why I can't just
admit my age and settle into some more sedate
form of activism. Finally I yell at them
to stop for a moment, and suggest we drum
and chant as we pass tourists at the big
hotels that front the beach, but that I
can't drum and walk that fast in the sand.
They put me up front, and we process up
the sand, chanting, "No OMC!" or "On the
beaches, in the streets, we'll shut them
down, anywhere they meet!"
One of the hotels has a bar fronting on
the beach and we stop there for a moment
in the shade. They offer us water, and we
line up and fill our bottles from their
garrafons. As we are relaxing, Lisa gets
a call on her cell phone from Antonia, who
is inside. The Kenyan delegation has just
walked out. She asks us to hold back on
spreading the news until it is made official.
We sit there, looking at each other, too
tired and sunbaked and stunned to quite
take in what it means. If it is true, the
meetings are over. They have failed to reach
their agreements.
Then Leslie gets a call. It's true. The
Kenyans have walked out, and the ministerial
has collapsed. We've won!
The march becomes a jubilant procession.
We continue on, drumming and chanting and
cheering, announcing the news to surprised
tourists courting skin cancer in lounge
chairs. All my fatigue has fled, and even
the sand seems firmer underfoot. We meet
a small police barricade and sweep through
it, simply taking their barricades away
and running on down the beach. Then we get
another call--some of our friends are trapped
up near the Conference Center where they
were marching in the streets, and are asking
for us to come support them. We are still
several kilometers away but a few of the
young men are eager to charge ahead. We
have a kind of moving meeting, trying to
decide whether to keep to the beach and
try and go around the point or to head up
into the street where we will probably be
corralled ourselves.
A line of rocks juts out into the water
up ahead, and we see that the military have
made a stand there, with a serious line
of men and the metal barricades planted
on the rocks. It looks like a difficult
situation to try to push through, so we
head up, climbing a rock outcropping, scaling
a low wall, and pushing through the line
of the hotel's security guards in more or
less nonviolent fashion. They aren't too
serious about hurting us and we don't want
to hurt them, we just want to get to the
street. But we end up on a green lawn that
leads nowhere, trapped between walls and
a high fence with barbed wire. Now masses
of security guards and hotel workers have
come down to see what's happening. We try
to negotiate a safe passage to the street,
but before we can one of the government
officials shows up and offers us a free
bus ride back to Cancun or wherever we want
to go, if we will only go voluntarily and
quietly.
We sit down and have a consensus meeting
about what to do. A few want to try to stay
and make some kind of stand. "Why?" I ask.
"We don't need to block anything or disrupt
anything any more. It's over--we've won!"
There seems to be general enthusiasm for
that point of view, although one voice cautions
us that just because we've won is no reason
to abandon the struggle. Clearly there's
still some momentum to do something more,
but we also have a debrief meeting planned,
and we're hungry. While we're talking, the
hotel workers bring out a whole case of
water for us. Finally we agree to go, file
onto an extremely comfortable air-conditioned
bus, and head back. The exuberant students
once again pop the skylights and ride on
the top. Lisa joins them, but I remain firmly
middle-aged and safety-conscious inside.
Because of the threat we posed, marching
on the beach, and because of our friends
who got deeper into the security area, the
authorities have apparently shut down the
entire security zone, and no traffic has
been moving. The roads are lined with workers,
waiting for their rides home. Their travel
time has been extended, they've been waiting
in the sun instead of relaxing on their
off time, and yet they cheer and wave and
flash peace signs and raised fists as we
pass, sharing in the victory.
Back at the Parque de Palapas, it seems
that everyone from the action has gathered.
We are all greeting and hugging each other
in a moment of pure, radiant joy. I am looking
at each of them and thinking how each one
contributed to this victory. All the students
are getting ready to leave: Everardo and
Carmen, Abram and Praim and Mary Carmen
and Anna and Otto and Daniel. I'm thinking
about all the organizing and strategizing
they've done and their grueling bus ride
here and back. I'm hugging Tristan who has
stalwartly organized security for the Convergence
Center, and Luke who pushed so hard for
our action inside the zone, and Rodrigo
who came down from Mexico City to help build
the eco-village, and Eileen who took on
so much of the media work, and Gloria who
cleaned the kitchen and fed us breakfast
every day, and so many more, the whole self-organized
volunteer army who have come to fight with
puppets and drums and our bodies and ideas
as our weapons. And the choices each one
of us has made, the tasks we've taken on,
the work we've done, have all been part
of this moment. Finally Lisa and I throw
our arms around each other. We've been working
on this together for so long. I can't even
begin to count the tasks she's done and
the things she's pulled together and grueling
work we've both been doing for this and
the times we've sworn we'd never do it again.
But we smile at each other, knowing damn
well that we will, that there is nothing
we'd rather do than help twine together
the strands of the rope that we can grip
to move the world.
And so we go on, to a debrief meeting in
the Convergence Center. The mood is high
as we recount the highlights of the actions.
So many things have come out of this mobilization--solidarity
between campesinos and anarchists, students
from the south and students from the north,
street activists and NGOs, new connections
and new networks that will strengthen our
form of globalization: the globalization
of resistance and vision. We recount the
frustrations, as well, the lack of communication,
the difficulties of ever getting a meeting
of the whole body of the action at the same
time, of establishing even the simplest
systems or regularity or consistancy, of
constant changes in plan and lack of systems
for spreading information. There are a lot
of lessons to be learned.
At the end, Antonia gives a report on what
happened inside. The Kenyans were part of
a "Green Room"--one of the small "informal"
meetings where the real decisions of the
ministerial are laid out, where the big,
powerful countries represent themselves
and the developing countries might have
one representative for dozens. Kenya was
representing not just themselves but the
whole group of African, Caribbean, and Pacific
nations and the African Union. The developing
countries wanted agricultural agreements
to limit the subsidies for US and European
crops that keep prices artificially low
and allow the dumping of grain in their
countries that destroys the livelihood of
their farmers. The US and EU wanted to put
investments on the table, to craft a new
version of the old Multilateral Agreement
on Investments that civil society defeated
back in the '90s. When it became clear to
the Kenyans that the US and EU were saying
they would have to accept the investment
agreement if they wanted to talk about agriculture,
they walked out. When they announced their
decision, they were joined by South Korea
and India. At least two of the delegates
were now referring to the WTO in the past
tense.
"And the delegates from Brazil and Swaziland
both said that if it weren't for the actions
inside and outside, they wouldn't have been
able to stand strong," Antonia finishes.
An electric shock of joy pulses through
the room, and we all burst into cheers.
That was our strategy--the hope we held
throughout all the work and planning, that
if there was clear, strong public opposition
to the WTO in the streets and in the forums
and in the conferences themselves, the disaffected
delegates of the developing world would
be empowered and supported to rebel. And
they did.
"I don't know when I've ever felt so purely
happy," Brush says to me after.
"Seattle," I say to him.
Monday:
This is the last update. A day of cleaning
up and carrying out the debris of a mobilization:
the cardboard, the used paints, the leftover
flyers, of scraping paint off floors. And
of goodbyes.
In the midmorning, we sit down and have
a meeting about Miami, the next mobilization,
just two months away, against the FTAA,
the Free Trade Area of the Americas. It's
a deep and thoughtful and creative meeting,
and we come away filled with enthusiasm
for the work, of communicating and mobilizing
and learning from our mistakes, of building
on what we've done here. And the meeting
crystallizes for us all the many layers
of our success. We've pulled a mobilization
together out of virtually nothing. We've
organized successfully with a wide diversity
of groups, all of whom have come out of
this with more respect for each other. We've
created our own village here on Retorno
Margaritas, where food and medical care
and media access and organizing space and
endless entertainment have all been provided
for free. We've had such solidarity that
the government decided not to risk the political
cost of police repression, and treated us
with respect. We've used the energy of the
summit to further our own practice of organizing
on a different model. We've learned from
the Mexicans about the practice of Zapatismo,
about the importance of not just contesting
power but of articulating our vision and
claiming space for it. We've mounted actions
that have demonstrated a different kind
of power, nonviolent but confrontational
and immensely strong. And more.
We're sad, saying goodbye to so many people
we've grown to know and respect and love.
We're happy, with a deep, sweet sense of
satisfaction at having derailed the most
ambitious institution of corporate greed.
We're eager to bring more people in and
empower them more fully and communicate
more clearly. In spite of the work, the
exhaustion, the frustration, we're ready
for the next joyful exercise in dismantling
the institutions of injustice, and building
a better world.
And now the sun is setting, and the streets are full of wandering activists with backpacks, moving out of the Parque de Palapas, out of the streets of Cuncun, out of Ground Zero. The delegates have gone home, the roads are open, the barricades are down. The sacred place of Lee's sacrifice becomes a traffic circle again. A cool breeze is beginning to blow, and Chac hints of a blessing of rain. The self-organizing wandering army releases its troops for some well-deserved R & R, and this organism that has sprung into being dissolves. The kaleidoscope turns, the pattern changes. No formal structures holds us together, no hierarchy, no contracts or pledges. But we know that we will come together again, and again, drawn by that sweet, insistent call, and by the threads of love that twine together stronger with each fight, each sacrifice, each space reclaimed, each life given, each vision made real.
-- Starhawk
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Copyright (c) 2003 by Starhawk. All rights reserved. This copyright protects Starhawk's right to future publication of her work. Nonprofit, activist, and educational groups may circulate this essay (forward it, reprint it, translate it, post it, or reproduce it) for nonprofit uses. Please do not change any part of it.
