The hundreds of people committed to the vision of the Zapatistas at San Andres Sacam'chen however, do not complain. They are proud and anxious to stand, happy to give up the subsistence routine of their lives in order to come to San Andres and wait, regardless of the hunger and exhaustion. This is their grain of sand after all, to stand through inclement weather, and use their bodies to protect the Zapatistas. And in the silent waiting of these indigenous communities lays the most powerful lesson of all, more powerful than all the weaponry assembled against the Zapatistas, more powerful than the hundreds of television hours now being used to discredit them. Resistance is the ability to fight with whatever one has, in whatever way possible.
Resistance is collective.
The campesinos together meld in a long chain of humanity, indistinguishable one from the other. It will require significant financial, moral and physical support in order for the national democracy movement that the Zapatistas have helped to birth, to succeed. This solidarity can not be based on a pedestal upon which we place a people struggling to find a new way of doing things, and which we abandon when we learn, that they are people just like us. It must combine the financial donations which allow a people to survive and struggle, with the political tenacity and vision to complement the fierce determination of the Mexican people. It must leave behind its self-righteous absorption with its own agenda, and be willing to learn, to wait, and to engage.