After incensing the altar the bishop turns to address the people saying that confessions are being heard in Tzotzil on one side of the church (my left) and in Spanish on the other side of the church (my right). I estimate a thousand people in attendance.
I'm a bit tired after an early morning walk with Christine and subsequent hours sitting in the morning sun on a bench with Miki. Oh yes! and then there was my excitement on spotting a newspaper Diario de Chiapas with the banner "Expresa EZLN su pesar por la muerte de Samuel Ruiz," [the EZLN express their grief at the death of Samuel Ruiz.] I've had time to read the Zapatista declaration before the mass.
When the bishop speaks I cannot make out what he is saying and his voice echos in the great space and I doze and I ponder the words of the Zapatista commanders, Moises and sub-comandante Marcos. I think that some people here in the cathedral might not appreciate what the Zapatista leaders have said about the Catholic Church but many would be delighted.
When it comes time for communion I am irritated to see that no-one is receiving the host in the hand. The nun pops the host in my mouth as I am slow in extending my tounge. Back in my seat I note that the last person to receive is a very short, old and visibly poor indigenous woman in bare feet.
After mass I wander up Guadalupe street to an Italian coffee house and order a cafe latte. Life is sweet in this tourist paradise -- place of disparities and unresolved tensions.
Let me give my translation of sections of this declaration the EZLN, the Zapatistas:
CONCERNING ZAPATISTA SUPPORT OF A PARTICULAR CURRENT OF CATHOLIC PRACTICE: "... today we wish to highlight a committment and a trajectory that is not only of one individual, but of a whole current within the Catholic Church. Don Samuel Ruiz not only excelled in Catholicism practised with and among the dispossessed, but also formed with his team a generation of Christians committed to this practice of the Catholic religion. Not only did he address the grave situation of misery and marginalization of the people of Chiapas, but also worked, along with his heroic pastoral team, to better these desperate conditions of life and death.
CONCERNING THE FOOLISHNESS OF THOSE WHO IN PAST ATTRIBUTED ZAPATISTA ACTION TO THE BISHOP AND THE DIOCESE: "The thesis then (and which today is repeated by idiots of the armchair left) was that the Diocese had formed the support groups and leadership cells of the EZLN. An instance of the broad sweep of these ridiculous arguments was seen when a General showed a book as proof of the linkage of the Diocese with the 'transgressors of the law'. The title of the incriminating book is 'The Gospel According to Mark [El Evangelio segun San Marcos].'
CONCERNING THOSE WHO SCORN THE WHOLE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND TERM ALL PRIESTS AS POTENTIAL OR ACTIVE PEDOPHILES Today when it is the fashion to condemn the whole Catholic Church for the crimes ... commissions and omissions of some of its prelates... Today when the self-identified 'progressive' sector amuses itself in condemning the whole Catholic Church... Today when this sector delights in seeing all priests as a potential or active pedophile... Today it would be good to look in another direction and encounter those who, as did Don Samuel, challenged and are challenging the Powers that be. For those Christians believe firmly that justice ought to reign also in this world. And so they live, and die, in thought, word and action. Don Samuel has gone, but many others remain, who in and for the Catholic Christian faith, fight for an earthly world, more just, more free, more democratic, that is to say, for a better world. Health to those women and men, for from their efforts will also be born tomorrow.
LIBERTY!
JUSTICE!
DEMOCRACY!"
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