It has been a very sad August when we allow the media to affect us. Thousands of people dying unnecessarily, in war and conflict, in protests and on the streets, from Missouri to Gaza, from Kurdistan to Damascus, from Donetsk to Santiago, armies, states, police, brutally slaughter their perceived enemies. In Syria the latest count of deaths since the uprising begun has reached 170,000 people and with the ISIS the numbers are climbing. In Gaza 2,100 is the last count in a few weeks. In Ukraine it is questionable what the numbers are but lately different sides refer to 2,000. In Africa the numbers are never so important to the western media to report, until the Ebola epidemic came and the media took an interest as far as this epidemic may cause a threat elsewhere. Yet there is one constant statistic that not many are reporting in the mass media. Over 60,000 people a day, nearly half being children, are dying from the simple cause of the lack of nutrients and clean water. Meanwhile if one is to divide the annual world production of corn (alone) by the population one will find the corn produced alone can prevent death from hunger. An enormous amount of food is produced worldwide, maybe "too much" according to economists who are waged by corporations that benefit from the rise of the price of commodities.
Comandante Hortensia went on to explain how over the past two decades, they have constructed their own autonomous government, complete with their own health and education system, based in the indigenous traditions of their ancestors. Despite the continual efforts of the "neoliberal bad government" to displace them from their land, the Zapatistas have successfully recuperated thousands of acres of land on which they have constructed communities that are governed "from the bottom up." Community members participate in rotating government positions that operate under the democratic principle of "mandar obedeciendo" (commanding by obeying).