The Uncomfortable Dead by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Subcomandante Marcos Page A
Authors: Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Subcomandante Marcos
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another message from El Sup on the 8th and deliver my report on the 15th at that same drop, meaning the latrine in the tamale place. Then there was the time with the communiqué about the speed of dreams, when I had to go to the Oceania metro station and find a shoe shop with a number 69 on the door and they gave me a pair of shoes that didn’t really fit too good on my left foot, but I looked inside and saw that there was a piece of paper with a message and that’s why I couldn’t get my foot in, so I read the message. With the Miguel Enríquez communiqué, I wound up right in the middle of the Monster, on a street called República de Chile, looking for a sign that said For Sale, and I stuck my report behind it for somebody else to pick up, so this was one of those good dead drops.
All in all I had a real hard time in the beginning, but then later I began to understand city ways and I kinda liked it. El Sup had told me that if you want to know the Monster, you have to walk it. Walk through it, he told me, and you’ll see that the city is built on the people who can save it. So that’s what I did, I walked all around that city. And I went everywhere, and everywhere I went I ran into people like us Zapatistas, which means people who are screwed, which means people willing to fight, which means people who don’t give up.
Okay, like I was saying, the youngster with the blue hair left a bread bag by the gate where the giraffes are, at the circus called Circo Unión. Then I moved in close and grabbed the bread bag that didn’t have no bread, but instead a message from El Sup addressed to me and saying only, Find Mamá Piedra.
The Barcelona—La Realidad—Monster Axis
Stay alert, keep moving, trust no one.
That was the general recommendation I gave Elías before he left. With that, I was repeating what Che Guevara said in his book Revolutionary War Passages; it was also what each one of us was told when we had to move alone. I spoke to him about Mexico City too, or rather, what I remembered about the capital. And I’m not talking about the generous and caring city that welcomed us for the Indigenous Pride Demonstration. No, I spoke to him about the city I left more than twenty years ago, when I came to the mountains. Though according to what I heard later, that city has nothing to do with the one there now.
Elías’s visit had been in the works since Pepe Carvalho brought me some papers written personally by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. The papers came with a brief note from his son:
Subcomandante,
When looking through my father’s papers shortly after his death, I found these notes which I imagine might make some sense to you.
My regards,
Daniel
One of the papers contained a sort of diagram, all interconnected with arrows, lines, circles, and squares, that read as follows:
•B ARCELONA . Hotel Princesa Sofía. Plaza Pio XII, No. 4, Financial Center, Diagonal Avenue; María Cristina metro station. Morales.
•D IPLOMATIC POUCH M EXICO -M ADRID -M EXICO . Check flights 1994-2000. Morales.
•D ISAPPEARED —D IRTY W AR . Morales. The White Brigade.
•A CTEAL . General Renán Castillo. Morales.
•M ONTES A ZULES . Morales.
• Z EDILLO -C ARABIAS -T ELLO . Morales.
•B IODIVERSITY —T RANSNATIONALS . Morales. Checks. Accessories?
• E L Y UNQUE . Morales. Reactivation of the paramilitary.
•MURO. Re-edited?
Another piece of paper contained a series of questions:
1. What was Morales doing in the suite at the Princesa Sofía? Was he staying there alone? What was he doing in the Financial Center? He went in at 21:00 and left at 22:00. What about the María Cristina metro station? He entered at 22:30 and left at 23:00. The hotel.
2. What was Morales up to with those continuous trips between Mexico and Madrid? Never twice in a row on the same airline. No apparent pattern.
3. What was Morales’s role in the Dirty War in Mexico? White Brigade? What about Acteal?
4. What was Morales doing with
All in all I had a real hard time in the beginning, but then later I began to understand city ways and I kinda liked it. El Sup had told me that if you want to know the Monster, you have to walk it. Walk through it, he told me, and you’ll see that the city is built on the people who can save it. So that’s what I did, I walked all around that city. And I went everywhere, and everywhere I went I ran into people like us Zapatistas, which means people who are screwed, which means people willing to fight, which means people who don’t give up.
Okay, like I was saying, the youngster with the blue hair left a bread bag by the gate where the giraffes are, at the circus called Circo Unión. Then I moved in close and grabbed the bread bag that didn’t have no bread, but instead a message from El Sup addressed to me and saying only, Find Mamá Piedra.
The Barcelona—La Realidad—Monster Axis
Stay alert, keep moving, trust no one.
That was the general recommendation I gave Elías before he left. With that, I was repeating what Che Guevara said in his book Revolutionary War Passages; it was also what each one of us was told when we had to move alone. I spoke to him about Mexico City too, or rather, what I remembered about the capital. And I’m not talking about the generous and caring city that welcomed us for the Indigenous Pride Demonstration. No, I spoke to him about the city I left more than twenty years ago, when I came to the mountains. Though according to what I heard later, that city has nothing to do with the one there now.
Elías’s visit had been in the works since Pepe Carvalho brought me some papers written personally by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. The papers came with a brief note from his son:
Subcomandante,
When looking through my father’s papers shortly after his death, I found these notes which I imagine might make some sense to you.
My regards,
Daniel
One of the papers contained a sort of diagram, all interconnected with arrows, lines, circles, and squares, that read as follows:
•B ARCELONA . Hotel Princesa Sofía. Plaza Pio XII, No. 4, Financial Center, Diagonal Avenue; María Cristina metro station. Morales.
•D IPLOMATIC POUCH M EXICO -M ADRID -M EXICO . Check flights 1994-2000. Morales.
•D ISAPPEARED —D IRTY W AR . Morales. The White Brigade.
•A CTEAL . General Renán Castillo. Morales.
•M ONTES A ZULES . Morales.
• Z EDILLO -C ARABIAS -T ELLO . Morales.
•B IODIVERSITY —T RANSNATIONALS . Morales. Checks. Accessories?
• E L Y UNQUE . Morales. Reactivation of the paramilitary.
•MURO. Re-edited?
Another piece of paper contained a series of questions:
1. What was Morales doing in the suite at the Princesa Sofía? Was he staying there alone? What was he doing in the Financial Center? He went in at 21:00 and left at 22:00. What about the María Cristina metro station? He entered at 22:30 and left at 23:00. The hotel.
2. What was Morales up to with those continuous trips between Mexico and Madrid? Never twice in a row on the same airline. No apparent pattern.
3. What was Morales’s role in the Dirty War in Mexico? White Brigade? What about Acteal?
4. What was Morales doing with
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