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Hello, today I am making a thread in the hopes to inspire all my comrades. The person you see in this picture is Comandanta Ramona. A Tzotzil Mayan woman from Chiapas who was one of the main public figures of the Zapatista National Liberation Army until her death in 2006.
Born in 1959 in the San Andrés Sacamch’en de Los Pobres community in Chiapas and through most of her early life she worked as a weaver, this eventually got her the endearing nickname of "Tejedora de Sueños" which translates to Weaver of Dreams in english.
in the Zapatistas she became a staunch fighter for indigenous women's rights in rural Mexico, taking a big part in the creation of the Zapatista Women's Revolutionary Laws which were approved by their communities in 1993.
https://schoolsforchiapas.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Zapatista-Womens-Revolutionary-Laws.pdf
https://schoolsforchiapas.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Zapatista-Womens-Revolutionary-Laws.pdf
She took a big part in the planning of their insurgency in the January of 1994 as well as the peace negotiations with mexican president Ernesto Zedillo and in 1995 when the peace treaty was broken by said president, encircling the zapatistas in Chiapas with the military...
...Ramona was the first of their members to ever leave the encirclement and Chiapas to go to Mexico City to participate in the National Indigenous Convention. As she reached Mexico City, she said "I am but the first step of many steps for the Zapatistas in all of Mexico"...
and she was right, during peace negotiations with the mexican government over 1000 Zapatista members would go to to Mexico city and over 5000 to places all around the country over the next few years. But throughout all this, Ramona suffered renal failure thanks to cancer in 1996.
After a kidney transplant she continued to participate in the negotiations with the Mexican government and even beyond that organizing with indigenous people all over the country until 2006 when she passed away at the age of 47 thanks to the cancer that affected her for 10 years
Today her image is widespread all over mexico as a symbol to her feminist and indigenous liberation struggle. As she continues to inspire young men and women to aspire to the same ideals she held for everyone. And so to end this thread and in her memory I will leave you with...
...a tribute song by LA Chicano group Quetzales and the zapatista slogan "A better world is possible". As we all move forward in nebulous times, I hope her story reminds you all that indeed, a better world is possible for all of us if we work together.
