Street party celebrates 10th anniversary
of
Zapatista uprising
By Liz Allen
Asheville, North Craolina, Jan 1 (AGR) – Downtown
streets were closed due to festivities this New Years Eve, 2003. A street
party in solidarity with the 10th anniversary of the Zapatista National
Liberation Army (EZLN) uprising in Chiapas, Mexico blockaded traffic
in conjunction with the city’s annual planned fireworks celebration.
Parade attendees carried puppets and 25 foot banners through Patton
Avenue and down Biltmore Ave. and disrupted traffic at the intersection
for at least 20 minutes.
People began gathering at 10:30pm in Prichard Park where black-eyed
peas and cornbread were served. Fireworks were periodically shot off
from the park and the mood was overtly festive. Puppets of capitalists
grasping bags of money, a farmer and a Zapatista woman, danced around
and fought each other while drums made out of buckets and cans were
played. Banners reading “We are all Zapatistas,” a quote reportedly
taken from a recent statement by EZLN Subcomandante Marcos in Mexico
City, and “Autonomia” [Autonomy] were unfurled.
A march through the middle of the street began shortly thereafter. A
small amount of police were present while around 200 people were in
the Prichard Park area. The march through the streets was smaller but
traffic was stopped by the banners which crossed the width of the road,
and the puppets and people banging drums and dancing in the streets
and chanting “Who’s streets? Our streets!” Fire crackers
and smoke bombs continued to be shot off. Once the group gathered in
the Pack Square intersection they began to dance around in the middle
of the road, banging drums and chanting.
Over 2,000 people were already gathered at Vance Monument for First
Night, a city-sponsored New Years event. Barricades sectioning off the
Vance Monument area were eventually dragged into Biltmore Ave., preventing
the flow of traffic. Most members of the crowd already at Vance were
visibly supportive or entertained by the activities in the street. Meanwhile,
several people got out of their cars to remove barricades from the roads.
Three arrests were made on misdemeanor charges. One officer, who refused
to be identified, said of one of those arrested, “threw a firecracker
at my face.” Officer Mike Lamb reported that the individual was
only currently being charged with impeding the flow of traffic and resisting
arrest. While the intersection was blockaded, four officers made half-hearted
and futile attempts at directing traffic and ordering people out of
the road way.
In response to the question of plans for the Zapatista uprising solidarity
street party, one attendee replied prior to the event, “We’re
going to fuck some shit up, because it’s bullshit.” Another
continued: “People down there have been struggling so hard, having
to watch their children, their friends, their parents, being jailed,
even being killed. We’re sitting back here, it’s pretty comfortable
living in America…I don’t want to get arrested, I don’t
want to get beaten up, but if that’s the worst that could happen,
and you’re out of jail in a few hours and a couple days or something.
That’s nothing.
“It’s all about community. If we had real community in this
town, there would be no need for a police department, no need for any
of that shit. Everyone would have to do it, not just the fringe, direct
action types, everyone would have to get involved.”
Jan. 1, 2004 is also the 10th anniversary of the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a policy criticized for adversely effecting
the quality of life of people in Canada, the United States, and Mexico,
the three counties in the trade pact. The Zapatista’s invasion
of Asheville Sister City, San Cristobal, Chiapas, was held on the same
day, because they believed that neoliberal trade policies only worsen
the current problems indigenous people in Mexico face with poverty,
repression and exploitation.
In North Carolina, between June 1998 and June 2003, 190,00 jobs were
lost in the manufacturing sector alone, an effect linked to NAFTA policies.
“It’s terrible. There are no good jobs, just crappy jobs,
big business everywhere. There’s not enough jobs for everybody,”
said street party attendee Kevin Foster. “I think they could take
money away from the people who are getting paid for doing nothing. Everybody
should make the same amount of money. I think that people are upset,
a lot of people, because there’s no jobs and the jobs that we have
suck, we don’t get paid enough.”
People from different parts of the country also were at the street party.
Kate Ryan, visiting Asheville from Brooklyn, New York reported that
in New York similar types of actions happen, but on a much larger scale.
“I think that it’s effective in getting awareness, in that
it’s very visible because it’s very loud. I think it’s
good to show solidarity with other groups, in other cultures, in other
very different circumstances.”
For more on the 10th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising, see the
article Zapatistas
celebrate ten years of armed struggle in
the WORLD NEWS
section of this issue.
