We're in the mountains of Southeast Mexico in the Lacandon Jungle of
Chiapas and we want to use this medium, with the help of the National
commission for Democracy in Mexico, to send a greeting to the Free the
Media Conference that is taking place in New York, where there are brothers
and sisters of independent communication media from the US and Canada.
At the Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism
we said: A global decomposition is taking place, we call it the Fourth
World Warneoliberalism: the global economic process to eliminate
that multitude of people who are not useful to the powerfulthe groups
called 'minorities' in the mathematics of power, but who happen to be
the majority of the population in the world. We find ourselves in a world
system of globalisation willing to sacrifice millions of human beings.
The giant communication media: the great monsters of the television industry,
the communication satellites, magazines, and newspapers seem determined
to present a virtual world, created in the image of what the globalisation
process requires.
In this sense, the world of contemporary news is a world that exists
for the VIPsthe very important people. Their everyday lives are
what is important: if they get married, if they divorce, if they eat,
what clothes they wear and what clothes they take offthese major
movie stars and big politicians. But common people only appear for a momentwhen
they kill someone, or when they die. For the communication giants and
the neoliberal powers, the others, the excluded, only exist when they
are dead, or when they are in jail or court. This can't go on. Sooner
or later this virtual world clashes with the real world. And that is actually
happening: this clash produces results of rebellion and war throughout
the entire world, or what is left of the world to even have a war. We
have a choice: we can have a cynical attitude in the face of the media,
to say that nothing can be done about the dollar power that creates itself
in images, words, digital communication, and computer systems, that invades
not just with an invasion of power, but with a way of seeing that world,
of how they think the world should look. We could say, well, Ôthat's
the way it is' and do nothing. Or we can simply assume incredulity: we
can say that any communication by the media monopolies is a total lie.
We can ignore it and go about our lives.
But there is a third option that is neither conformity, nor scepticism,
nor distrust: that is to construct a different wayto show the world
what is really happeningto have a critical world view and to become
interested in the truth of what happens to people who inhabit every corner
of this earth.
The work of independent media is to tell the history of social struggle
in the world, and here in North Americathe US, Canada and Mexicothe
independent media has, on occasion, been able to open spaces even within
the mass media monopolies: to force them to acknowledge news of other
social movements.
The problem is not only to know what is occurring in the world, but to
understand it and to derive lessons from itjust as if we were studying
historynot a history of the past, but a history of what is happening
at any given moment in whatever part of the world. This is the way to
learn who we are, what it is we want, who we can be and what we can do
or not do.
By not having to answer to the monster media monopolies, the independent
media has a life work, a political project and purpose: to let the truth
be known. This is more and more important in the globalisation process.
The truth becomes a knot of resistance against the lie. It is our only
possibility to save the truth, to maintain it, to distribute it, little
by little, just as the books were saved in Fahrenheit 451 in which a group
of people dedicated themselves to memorise books, to save them from being
destroyed, so that the ideas would not be lost.
This same way, independent media tries to save history: the present historysaving
it and trying to share it, so it will not disappear, moreover to distribute
it to other places, so that this history is not limited to one country,
to one region, to one city or social group. It is necessary not only for
independent voices to exchange information and to broaden the channels,
but to resist the spreading lies of the monopolies. The truth that we
build in our groups, our cities, our regions, our countries, will reach
full potential if we join with other truths and realise that what is occurring
in other parts of the world also is part of human history.
In August 1996, we called for the creation of a network of independent
media, a network of information. We mean a network to resist the power
of the lie that sells us this war that we call the Fourth World War. We
need this network not only as a tool for our social movements, but for
our lives: this is a project of life, of humanity, humanity which has
a right to critical and truthful information.
Zapatista Address to the Freeing the
Media Teach-in organised by the Learning Alliance, Paper Tiger TV, and
Fair, in cooperation with the Media & Democracy Congress, January
31 & February 1 1997, NYC.
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