Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

September 14, 2021

Austrian and Migrant Women Welcome Zapatistas 'Home' in Vienna

Photo above: Zapatistas arriving in Vienna, Austria. Photos by https://www.facebook.com/marisel.orellana.bongola


The EZLN airborne delegation lands in Europe and speaks in Vienna

Posted by: BERNARDO September 14, 2021 in Covergencia Free Media, International 
Vienna, September 14, 2021.
More photos at Pozol https://pozol.org/?p=19532

In the middle of Central Europe, a hundred Zapatista women, men and children left at noon from the airport of Vienna, Austria, the sixth most populous city on the continent, near the borders with Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, on the banks of the Danube river. Dozens of Viennese collectives and all of Slumil K'ajkemk'op eagerly await the arrival of the second part of La Extemporánea, an airborne delegation of the EZLN on its Journey through Life, which could not reach the connecting flight in Madrid.





Outside the Vienna airport, the Zapatista delegation was received with great emotion and warm words by Austrian and migrant women who welcomed them "home" in German and Spanish. Without removing his backpack, Insurgent Subcommander Moisés took the microphone to address his hosts in Europe talking about the defense of Mother Earth. “By name we already know who it is: it is capitalism. It is capitalism that is destroying the life of nature."

With a blue shirt, cap, visor for sanitary protection and only masked by a face mask, disregarding the red bandana and balaclava, Sup Moi was applauded, who declared: "We do not want to kill, we do not want to die. The problem is that they do not give us the opportunity to do what we think as women and men. And this is what we have been doing for 28 years, we are not shooting, we are not killing, nor do we want to die, we want life,"  said the EZLN spokesman. ("We want life"Audio of the SCI speech Moisés, EZLN spokesperson in Vienna (12 min.): "Don't believe it? They are going to see it! "






Under the sun, briefly due to its intense heat falling overhead on their faces, Mayan women covered themselves with folders full of documents that testify to their lateness and their complete inoculation against covid-19. They sided in the shadow of the wall adorned with blankets to rest for a while while the transfer groups to their lodgings were organized. Accompanied by the groups of Zapatistas by whom they received them, they traveled by public transport to where they will reside in the neighborhoods of Vienna. Some people from the reception waited at the airport for the second reception, even though it could not take place. It was decided to maintain the cultural act where there were son jarocho, poetry, a batucada and collective song, in addition to speaking in different languages ​​to express the discomfort for the delay but their hopes for the expected arrival. A fellow migrant woman even vehemently exclaimed: "If the Zapatistas are stuck in Madrid in the heart of colonialism, then we go for them there, even if we have to walk."





The Zapatista Air Force lands in a rebellious land whose history of pain and resistance goes beyond the waltz and the Rococo-style palaces on the banks of the Danube River, the largest in Europe. Comrade Ricardo Loewe from the Mexico-Salzburg Solidarity Committee entrusts to Medios Libres that, “together with Poland and Hungary, Austria is a country of the former Habsburg empire that today also carries the flag of racism and the closure of Europe; It is more than sad, outrageous, it is outrageous because there are here dramatic reminiscences of fascism that never disappeared, it is current. And yet we are about to receive the Zapatista delegation: it is not free for them to come to Vienna where there are many groups that have great sympathy towards Zapatismo ”.





In addition to the imperial crypt where tourists can visit Maximiliano's tomb, the Museum of Ethnology exhibits his Eurocentrism and colonialism, “with Moctezuma's Plume that looks like a dead hen, lying down, because it is falling apart”, in the words of comrade Loewe who It reminds us of the past of "Red Vienna", prior to the fascist dictatorship of Dolfus, as well as the Austrian Marxism that fascinated Cardenism, for example, with the Friedrich Engels Square and the Karl Marx Hof multifamily complex. However, the 80-year-old Austrian comrade emphasizes the struggles of women and gender dissidents ("loas admiro"), the squat movement, the culture of anarcho-Marxist struggle "small, but well structured, without a party."







It was raffled off by the Austrian internationalist, feminist, antifascist and anticapitalist collectives, organizing a cultural event a few meters from the international departures, before the incredulous eyes of travelers and airport policemen in front of an exciting and joyful political-artistic act that will mark history of a very different invasion.









Photos by Isabel Mateos Hinojosa and Amehd Coca Castillo, Vienna, Austria, 09-14-2021.

Video streaming in social networks and Vimeo of Zapalotta (in Spanish and German). More images at Guilhotina.info , YRetiemble Madrid and Pozol Noticias Chiapas . #Travesíaporlavida #LaGiraZapatistaVa #Command Popcorn

More photos at Pozol https://pozol.org/?p=19532

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