Distrito Federal: ‘Global City, Ha, Ha, Ha!’

Abstract

On 11 March 2001 Subcomandante Marcos of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (‘Zapatista Army of National Liberation’, or EZLN) addressed the people of Mexico from a stage erected in the Zócalo, the main square of Mexico City (Figure 9.1). With his back to the presidential palace, he spoke to a vast gathering on behalf of Mexico’s indigenous populations: 2 Mexico City: We have arrived. We are here. We are the National Indigenous Congress and Zapatistas who are, together, greeting you. If the grandstand where we are is where it is, it is not by accident. It is because, from the very beginning, the government has been at our backs …. Our word says one single thing. Our looking looks at one single thing: the constitutional recognition of indigenous rights and culture. A dignified place for the color of the earth. It is the hour in which this country ceases to be a disgrace, clothed only in the color of money. It is the hour of the Indian peoples, of the color of the earth, of all the colors we are below, and all of the colors we are in spite of the color of money. KeywordsIndigenous PeopleMexico CityIndigenous CommunityGlobal CityMexican StateThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.