Come to Chiapas

Part 5 - Waiting for a miracle

by Al Giordano

Teresa Heinz: Before I left the States, I visited with a very special friend of the past 20 years, a man greatly admired by the late US Senator John Heinz, folksinger Pete Seeger. Pete is getting on in years. There was the sad realization, on both our parts, that this might have been our final reunion. Pete is hard of hearing now; he has a device in his ear. So I mainly listened to what could be his parting advice.

Pete spoke mainly of the miracles he witnessed in the darkest hours of the labor movement of the '30s, the war of the '40s, the witch hunts of the '50s . . . down through the present.

He told a story of a youngster swept away by a flooding river, certain to drown. And how, downstream, there just happened to be a couple of people standing in the right place, at the right time, who reached into the raging waters and saved that youngster's life.

"Wait for the miracle," Pete urged me, perhaps sensing my despair. "It will come. it will come."

Teresa and John, you are standing on that riverbank right now. You are the most right people to come to Chiapas -- in the right place at this, the right hour. A visit here by the two of you, now, at a time when the global media have abandoned Chiapas as "old news," would electrify these Americas, North and South.

John, perhaps I have strayed too far off the plantation for you to be associated with me in any way. They tell me you'll run for president in 2000. That's serious. It may preclude you from even communicating with one, like me, who bandies about the word revolution and holds other unpopular ideas. I recognize that.

As well, I know you -- your strengths and weaknesses. If you fail to respond, to act, with sufficient and necessary swiftness, your inaction will run counter to your entire political profile -- your history, your legacy.

If you fail to act in a forceful and meaningful way, the Mexican army may close in on Marcos and the Zapatistas, and slam the door on hope itself for the indigenous who fight for life, for the land, for autonomy, democracy.

Please take care of these orphaned sentences -- they are my all. I am ready to risk my all, just as thousands of poor people have risked theirs in these mountains.

That may be of no consequence. I have no votes to offer, no money to contribute, no spectacular terrain left to expend. Perhaps this letter shall be forgotten too.

But if on January 20, 2001, you find yourself on the Capitol steps, raising your right hand, taking an oath -- well, then you will learn just how powerless even presidents and kings have become in the shadow of the global empire of money and media.

As for my other friends who may have read this far, I obviously can't disclose my address here. But you may contact Ann Harrison, in Boston, at (617) 859-8751.

That is all -- a hug and a kiss to everyone, and a closing chuckle: enjoy the irony that I made it to Mexico while our aspiring ambassador, Bill Weld, twists slowly in the winds of his own making. "Things of this land."

From somewhere in the mountains of Chiapas, Mexico, I am,

Very truly yours,
Al Giordano

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Al Giordano, former political reporter for the Boston Phoenix, is author of The Medium Is the Middleman: For a Revolution Against Media (1997, an Immedia Project pamphlet).