Alpinist for Freedom - climb report n.

1 - Volcan Tacan-

22/04/2012

Hechos Y Palabras
Some years ago on the mountains of Chiapas something happened. All over the world passed the news about what was going on over there. It was about the EZLN (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional) and the uprising of indigenous communities against a criminal republican State that didnt recognize them the most basic human rights, that didnt permit them to live a dignitary life, while was stealing their land and their lands richness. They, the poor indigenous, the poorest of the poor in a society where everything is hierarchy, condemned to a life of misery, hunger and sickness, preferred to fight with dignity rather than die with shame. The first of January 1994, d-day of the uprising, has been pointed by some pseudo-sociologists as the day that signs the beginning of the globalization era, or better the moment in which the world started taking consciousness that what happens in a rural area of the tropical jungle has, thanks to the globalization of media information, the power to influence people all around the world. What it is sure is that the zapatist uprising, and deeply the zapatist movement, coincided with the arrival of a global and anti-global struggle era. A struggle against what zapatists called neoliberism, or what Guy Debord before called and well described as the society of spectacle; to sum it: a struggle against the economic produce-consume society of bankers and politicians, against its crimes, its illnesses, its injustices. That era, which includes the following facts of Seattle, Genova and hundreds other similar localglobal uprisings and battles, is not ended yet. The giant subversion announced by the zapatists is now going on all over the planet, from Chiapas to the noble struggle of Greek people, to the multitude of small big struggles sprinkled all over the world; a world where more and more often communities of individuals join together in order to oppose their will to global economic powers violence and arrogance, that now wants to build an highway, now a railway, now a mine, now a mega-building and always wants to gain money in destroying life on this planet. Starting from now we - Alpinist(s) for Freedom - will fight too; beside thousands of collectives and free organizations, that -physically or ideally side by side- are fighting for a tomorrow ruled by harmony and freedom instead of authority and abuse. Who we are? What do we do? What do we wanna get? All of this simply does not matter. We will speak with what we do, and we will do what we speak about. Looking at our first mission, reach the top of Volcan Tacan, there can be discovered a lot of things concerning us, even if this things has not been really planned. First of all, the fact that our walking started from Chiapas, from the town Union Juarez situated at Tacanas feet , it is for stating our unconditioned support and our total solidarity with the zapatist movement, that in this part of the planet has born and is living. Second, our climb of the Volcan Tacan started from Mexico and ended in Guatemala, so that even if we didnt care about too much, we did what we more like: laugh about their borders; political, intellectual and moral borders. Up there on the mountain, there was no more than a row of stones put there by the States servants to mark the border between Mexico and Guatemala; but the flowers were equally beautiful on both sides of this made-up line, and the trees took their roots on one side and their fruits on the other. We stay on the side of the Earth, we are his/her sons, like the flowers, like the birds, like the jaguar. And, until well die, well pass their borders shining, singing and jumping. Furthermore our first Alpinist for Freedom climb did not follow the steps of famous alpinists looking for personal glory, of athletes that climb just to tell they first reached the top of a mountain so that they can enter in the miserable history of humanity. An history that, without any shame, include the first climb of Everest between the conquest of the Moon , the A-bomb invention, the

gulag, and thousands of other miseries. The path we followed is signed by the sweat of the campesinos living on the volcano slopes, those who daily ascent and descent by this path. Nobody better than them know and love this mountain, this volcano that to them it is life itself. We want to believe that in their faces signed by the effort and the serenity of this kind of life, in the holes of their smiles offered to stranger walkers, in the black grains of the maiz that they grow and harvest, we believe that in all this lay the seed of a new humankind. The beginning of a new era, were the sons of the Earth will happily multiply to infinity and respectfully harvest its fruits, blessed and heated by the giant love of the Sun, eternally in love with the Moon, with all the stars and all their charming mysteries. A new era where all these things will not leave to humans other spaces that those needed for their joyful adventures, for the invention of new myths, that the children will tell to the elderly around a fire. Even the stars will look down and listen. The zapatistas did not just say their NO to neoliberism, to capitalism, to the world of money and exploitment, but they even built their YES through the autonomous communities, through las juntas del buen gobierno. Walking on their same path, we do not want just to reach the top of a mountain and up there say NO to an injustice, to a madness, to a society that we do not want. So our YES start in the how, in the way we climb, going up side by side, all equals, always ready to help us one other, to share our fears and our streghts. Our ascents will always be a critic of official alpinism, reflection of the same society we fight, of the world of wars and money. If competition, hierarchy, authority and ambition are the characterizing elements of their expeditions, our elements are and always will be just the pleasure of climbing to the high, the effort of fighting against our limits, the friendship that grows behind our steps, the brotherhood that give us the strength to fight until we will reach the top. Not less important: the happiness of our defeat and our laughter, and the joy equally shared in reaching the top, or in ending the way back, when in front of a filled cup we read our dreams in one other eyes. Without caring too much about it, the first mountain we climbed is a volcano, and in the year 2012, in Maya territory. When up there on the top, we saw the night disappearing and the Sun on fire showing his face behind the forest, at dawn of the day some people decided to be dedicated to our Mother Earth, we have discovered what we already knew. This planet does not wish to die yet: a new Sun is rising and with him a new humankind, wiser, more harmonious and more aware, that blessed by the land will bless all its creatures, and will dance and laugh upon the ashes of the old barbarian world, the world of bombs, tribunals, churches, banks, the world of the State. A quite funny story of this our mission is meaningful too. To avoid problems in case of police control (that actually took place, even if we smartly skipped it) we brought with us the white banner and a spray color, and then we would have write our message in loco. What happened is that on top we discovered that the spray was a spray glue and in no way we could have written on the banner with that! Imitating the creative spirit that has always permitted at rebels to defeat the constituted order even if in disadvantage of means and resources, we had the idea of writing with the coal taken from the fire that heated us in the night. So we transformed the problem into the solution. The most important thing of this mission obviously is the message that we have sent from up there to the Earth, to the Sun, to the Moon, to the stars, to the trees, to the animals, to the humans. What really matters perhaps it is not the message in itself, but the action of climbing a mountain in order to send a message, to scream silently and lovely our rebellion, not resigning to not be listened by a world ruled by media powers lies and by the planned passivity that envelopes every human being and hinders the natural development of our own emotions, our own dreams. About the message in itself, exposed above the 4092 mt of Volcan Tacan - The Earth is our mother, no to exploitation nor in Wirikuta nor in the world - we think it speaks well by itself ; we just add Wirikuta is a site in North Mexico, a sacred area to Huichol tribes that worship this site since before the arrival of the State; now the State wants to take possession of that area, destroy it and gain some richness from it [they are still looking for gold, they will never evolve]; a richness that will be enjoyed just by them, by the terrorists [bankers, politicians, business men] who own the State.

This is their democracy, this is the world their madness made up. We ought send this message for Wirikuta, since we were in Mexico, but as the banner said we are well conscious that -unfortunately - Wirikuta is just one of the thousands similar cases of exploitation of Mother Earth by the global politic-financial elite. All these cases have equal dignity and importance, equal right of victory. Their evil lies, their repressive arrogance, their request of delegate our lives to them, their belief that they are the only ones who know how to manage and improve our world; we will always send back to them all this lies, with attached a pack of laughter and bad words. Even when this means suffer their violence, their repression, their arrogance At least, even if we will die for this, we could say we die with dignity, the clear dignity of a living being, of an angel, of a god. They instead, if they will want to be honest once in life, they just could say they die with no more than dirty pieces of papers in their dirty pockets. If in the photos our faces are covered, it is not only because we feel like criminals in a reversed world were justice means war, jail and privilege defense; We do it even because in our covered face can be recognized all the faces of our friends and supporters that would have liked to be there with us. Furthermore because we, those who declare doing nothing more than sweat and fight in order to reach the top of a mountain, will always be on the side of those that risk their life facing with face covered security cameras, banks, multinationals, power palaces, cops; on the side of those who, in a not very different way, fight for what we fight for when we climb. But they - the power men - will say, even in this occasion, what they always say when activists cover their faces: they mask their face because they are not enough brave to show it. We will answer with facts. So finally, looking at all the little and careless elements characterizing the simple ascent of a volcano, other elements has been revealed; maybe not a lot bigger nor more important, but we [useless protagonists of this derisive and derisory adventure] are happy and proud of having set up all this. And we think that even from trifles like this, that still are full of our energy and our joy, can bloom soon or later something much bigger. Some powerful and some servants of the powerful maybe could say there is nothing epic in climbing almost three thousands meters in one day, and that yes, its not for babies to overpass the 4000 mt, but close to the equator in a tropical climate its easier, and stuff like that. In any case we will never chat with them, we just want to promise to our supporters and friends that this our first mission, it is exactly the first, and walking through this path we wished to show at first our humbleness; climbing in one day a path that it is however hard , we override our physics limits, climbing faster than we could, guided and lifted up by the consciousness of carrying inside us a noble will. It happened that Chiapas, land of zapatism, land of the rebel dignity, has been the starting point of our long path and we are simply happy of this. The federal state of Chiapas, in the last years saw a conspicuous increase of public fundings, widely distributed between the population, so that Chiapas reduced its gap with the rest of Mexican republic, in terms of poverty. It is well known that power is afraid of uprisings more than any other thing, so it try to buy with money the consciousnesses of the poor people that could have sympathized with (and even joined) the dangerous zapatist movement. The Orwellian slogan that presents to population the oportunidades offered by the government, states: Son hechos, no palabras [These are facts, not words]. So to say that in offering a machete to a farmer, or in funding the opening of a food store, they hope to make people forget that the building of politic power is built upon the continued false promises of candidates and the continued false hopes of electors. We on the contrary took as strategy what could be called Hechos Y Palabras facts AND words. As proved by the zapatists and thousands other examples of daily uprisings and struggles, just the facts give to words the dignity and the strength to be heard by the whole word; and just the words, true words full of our joy and our suffer, permit us to feel alive, to act; and from these words seeded forever inside the world - will born other facts of rebel dignity, facts of unconditioned love, fruit of the joys and the pains of all us sisters and brothers. If the zapatists had read their denunciations of an unjust world refugees in the jungle mountains, the world would not have listened; and if they had left the mountains and had taken military control of the main cities of los

altos de Chiapas without saying any single word, the world would not have looked at them as an example. So we, not resigning to a world where humans cannot live if not in a undignified way, and willing to fight with all our strengths to favor and speed up an evolution of humankind, well keep doing what we like to do. Well conquer all the mountains of the world if it will be necessary, and from up there - where the State with all its laws, its financial plans, its electoral campaigns, its police forces, is less important than a blow of wind - we will drop like bombs our words, our energy, our joy; because from the ashes of this sick and fearful humankind may born another humankind, strong and flooding love over the Earth. We believe that our actions, exactly as the actions of any other human being or group of human beings, are not so important to permit a so big change; but it will not be said about us what can be said about too much our contemporaries: in face of so much injustice and pain inside of human society, they do not do nothing but watching this sad spectacle, chat about it and shut up their consciousness, in order to carry on their safe and submitted, boring and conformist life. We firmly believe that from this our first mission will born many other missions, and it will always be a crescendo of difficulties, auto-organization, determination, courage, heroism. We believe the climb of Volcan Tacan it is just the prologue of our masterpiece: the hymn to the muse of our Iliad, of our Odyssey. The Mountains are yet free, well climb them until the top, we'll carry that freedom in our hearts, we'll bring it down with us, and spread it to every corner of this damned world. Nothing can stop us. We are alpinists. We want freedom. We are Alpinist for Freedom. Join us or expect us.

Alpinist for Freedom

Volcan Tacan 4092 mt.