Those of us who resist 'modernization' live in houses with dirt floors, plank or mud walls, cardboard or thatch roofs. Our table is full of wants. Those of them who 'modernized' live in houses with dirt floors, walls of pieces of nylon, roofs of cardboard or plastic. We live equally badly, we indigenous who resist and those who 'modernize'. But some of us are who we are, and the others pretend not to be what they are.
Autonomy is integration.
What exists now is disintegration. Addressing Sunday's assembled multitude, Comandante Esther spoke of the poverty, marginalization and oppression that bred their rebellion. The women die in birth, they see their children die in their arms for lack of medical attention because in the indigenous villages there is no health center and if there is we don't receive genuine treatment as a person. We women suffer three times, one for being woman, two for being indigenous, three for being poor. To be able to survive we have to work from childhood.