Article written by Julia

Volunteer Julia writes about her zine-making workshop with indigenous children.

Sitting outside of Rosa's house on a bright Sunday morning in Nuevo Yibeljoj, Gilberto, the eldest son, patiently translated the Tzotzil of 4th-6th graders for me into Spanish. We were in a rush that morning because of the importance of the day; a priest was visiting from out of town to baptize a number of babies and to renew the vows of an 80 year-old couple...

A new hermita (church) was built just in time for the occasion and the procession of moving the Virgin from the old hermita had already taken place. The prayers, incense, and music had already begun. In preparation, women wove ribbons into their hair and washed the mud off their shoes. The children were given a good scrub and squeezed into their Sunday best, and here we were, sitting in the shade between the kitchen and the collective bedroom with our faces a flush, hands full of papers, and our brains full of words.

When we reached the last page to translate, I was excited to be finished. I wanted to run off to know whether the priest had arrived and whether the babies had been baptized. Rosa also dressed me up in traditional clothes that morning in honor of the celebration, and I was curious to see the reactions of women and children pointing, whispering, and laughing as the gringa rolled up to the church wearing a nawa. The whole time we were working on translation, Roberto's band have been playing their music praising the love of God, the strength of community, and the hope for peace and justice. With his keyboards and voice echoing and bouncing off the dirt walls lining the new road into town, I poised my pen to scribble down the words of Patricia, a 4th grade student at Escuela Primaria Bilingue 16 de noviembre, 1997, the only school in town. Looking at the illustration of four smiling bees bouncing between long stretched daisies, I was ready to hear a translation dusted with pollen and coated with sweet honey. Instead Gilberto read:

"Las Abejas have no rights because the bad government does not respect us. We have yet to find peace because the paramilitaries still exist and they continue to threaten us."

These were the words written by a 10 year old girl. The images said one thing but the Tzotzil told another. I took a pause to digest what her young eyes seen, what her delicate ears have heard, and what her body has lived through.

These are the stories that await to be told.

The community of Las Abejas formed in 1992 as indigenous communities marched peacefully from their highland homes to San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, seeking justice for five brothers who were wrongfully framed and put in jail by loyalists to the PRI party. By sharing the word of God in Tzotzil and empowering their community, these catechists providing an alternative to the paternalistic systems of power and dependence on the PRI-run government. So they got put in jail and the community responded. They marched demanding justice and the media came to get some answers.

"Who are you?" "Who are you representing?" "Are you an organization?"

The people looked around and realized they had no collective name. So in the middle of the road they sat down and decided what they should be called. Someone suggested Las Abejas, because like bees, they all work hard and are centered around their Queen, who for them was God. Everyone seemed to like the name, and Las Abejas were thus formed. Since 1992, Las Abejas, a Catholic pacifist civil society, have been fighting for autonomy from the Mexican government. Sympathizers of the Zapatistas, Las Abejas agree with the San Andres Accords of 1996, but do not take up arms in the struggle for tierra y libertad. Despite living in a heavily militarized zone with the federal army, paramilitaries, and local police security checkpoints surrounding their communities, Las Abejas do not react to violence with more violence, even though 45 members of the Abeja community of Acteal were violently murdered in their church by paramilitaries on Dec. 22, 1997. Whole communities were displaced and lived in a refugee camp, X'oyep, for three years with little access to water and firewood. (In fact, the name of the school is named after the day of their displacement, 17 de noviembre, 1997). Despite all of this, In their peaceful struggle they still have hope that one day there will be justice.

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Nuevo Yibeljoj is a new community, built on lands purchased with the help of outside financial support from Norwegian organizations just a few years ago. A road was just constructed four months ago, and some houses already have electricity. There is a river that runs through the community, so there is easy access to water when the water in the tube doesn't work (which is normally the case). Firewood is not so far away, but certain folks have to walk three hours to reach their milpa (corn). Life is better in Nuevo Yibeljoj than in X'oyep, but land is limited and life is dedicated primarily to survival alone.

With a friend, I spent nearly two weeks with the community of Nuevo Yibeljoj, speaking with families, learning a bit of Tzotzil, doing needlework, and playing with lots of children. I saw how the kids of Rosa's family improvised for their toys: firewood as blocks or a wheel nailed on a stick for a car, to even a plastic bottle cap was something worth fighting over. Memories of my childhood, of nights of laying on the floor drawing and writing stories drifted into my consciousness. I wondered if there were any alternative creative outlets available for these kids to activate their imagination.

The next day I ran into a community representative and proposed talking the director of the elementary school to give a zinemaking workshop. Zines are hand-made, self-published magazines which act as a venue for people to share their ideas, opinions, as well as their lives. I thought it would be a great idea to give a workshop to the 4^th-6^th graders, not only so they could have some art integrated into their class time, but also because I wanted to see what they saw. After meeting the director, a couple mornings later a student from the school ran down the road to inform my friend, Jen, that I was to give a workshop at 9 AM that very day. My friend met me in the kitchen of Roselia, where I was finishing up my breakfast of beans, tea, and homemade tortillas. With 10 minutes left, I wiped my mouth, grabbed my things and hightailed it up the road, eager to find out what awaited me.

Climbing up the big hill, I entered a cement court yard with all of the students lined up according to grade level. This was my first time teaching a zinemaking workshop to an indigenous community and doubts arose about communication and whether or not this would be a successful project. I questioned my reasons for a moment, wondering, “Do these kids really need a zine workshop from a gringa stranger? “ Two days later, as I collected all the work of the students as they rushed out for recess, and the pile of work grew bigger and bigger, full of their own images and words, illustrating and giving life to their thoughts on community and their land, I knew that it was worth it.

Zines are a great way to introduce a space of self-expression, creativity, and decision-making into a classroom. Having students make their own zines based on their experience is a powerful pedagogical tool that gives them a space to develop a voice. The students choose their topic and contribute at least one page, filled with illustrations and their thoughts, to the class zine. Each student gets a copy, allowing them to share their opinions and experiences amongst each other and with anyone who reads it.

I entered the classroom and noticed how sparse it was, with a few posters of Mexico and Chiapas on the wall. The cement floors were covered in dust from all the mud the students track in. I walked in with the teacher and watched as all the students took their seats looked up and wondered what this young gringa was doing in their classroom. The 5^th and 6^th grade class in Nuevo Yibeljoj has a broad age range, with the youngest at 11 and the eldest at 17. While they lived in the refugee camp X’oyep, they couldn’t keep attending school. So the older ones waited until they left the camp, formed a new community, and had a school built, so years later they could be students again.

After a quick introduction from the teacher, I gave a boisterous “Buenos Diaaas!” to the students sitting in rows facing me, and immediately launched into the zinemaking workshop. I started with a warm-up activity, “my coat of arms.” This exercise consists of the students drawing up a shield and illustrating community, family, myself, and my dreams in their own quadrants and then explain in writing why they were important to them. Students sat at their own desks and worked, occasionally speaking to one another in Tzotzil or Spanish, hardly giving this visiting teacher any slack. As easy going this class was for me, their manners did throw me for a loop when I started requiring student participation. For me part of teaching zinemaking is introducing more democracy and pro-action into the classroom. A timid student might be a dream for a teacher who wants a controlled classroom, but not for someone like me, who wants new ideas thrown out left and right and a current of electricity in the air.

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The general silence and complicity of the students at Nuevo Yibeljoj definitely challenged me and taught me that not all classes are the same. I was used to teaching students from the United States, where perhaps individualism is so ingrained and taught early on in our national psyche, that not sharing your opinion was thought of as a crime. Here, the students were timid to give ideas on what they wanted to write about. Using the “family arms” activity as spring board, I drew a web diagram with community in the middle and asked what the students considered to be a part of the community. After more moments of silence after asking for ideas, I wrote various items like “family, Nuevo Yibeljoj, land, friends, and the church.” After I finished, a student included “school” and “the mountains” in the list. I was so excited to finally hear some students‘ voices!

I noticed how reluctant they were to give out ideas, but they were very eager to agree with the general consensus of the class. When it came down to voting for the topic of the zine, students looked around to see who voted for what. For the first option, “the mountains,” their hands crept up slowly, and as more hands climbed into the air, others would quickly join, until almost the whole class voted for the same thing.

“You really want to write about the mountains?”

Everyone looks around and agrees.

“Okay, well, the mountains includes the land too. I don’t want 25 pages with a drawing of a mountain and something that says “Me gustan las montañas.” I want everyone to have their own ideas and thoughts!”

The results of the two day zinemaking workshop were astounding. The 4^th through 6^th graders delve right into making their contributions to the class zine, going far beyond my one page demand. Within each class we brainstormed various aspects of the topic, as to provide multiple perspectives on their topic. For the 4^th graders, it was community. This class was younger, so more guidance was provided on ideas for their zine. However, once they got down to it, their own imagination and thoughts on how to combine images with words came springing forth.

As I walked around giving each student individual attention, I would ask them what they were drawing and why. There was a big push for going beyond the topic itself, “community” and into their own personal relationship to it. Why are their friends important to them? What happens when you go to church? What are Las Abejas fighting for and why? Some of the images and words proved powerful. When it came to their relationship to the land, most spoke of survival. The idea of “if we don’t have food, we die” is these children’s reality, when they go out and help their parents farm the milpa, or go gather firewood to light the fire that cooks their food and makes their tortillas.

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Through the drawings and words of the children, I saw what was important to them. Friends saying hi to them on the road and splitting some food. Having a house to cook food in, and their family all together. Having a clean river to swim and drink from. Also, not having the paramilitary come down from their old community, Yibeljoj Viejo, and terrorize them. The words resonate on the page. Somehow, despite the poverty and the tension brought from being uprooted, the children preserve their smiles and their laughter. Sitting in the room, you wouldn’t have thought of what they have been through as they giggled and compared their drawings. Reading their words, however, their history and their lives jump off the page and demand to be read. The images become impossible to erase from your consciousness.

When students find their own voice (especially ones that are marginalized by society) they begin to share their own stories, combat the cycle of misrepresentation, and find agency to proactively change history. Paulo Freire, in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, argues that when one comes into critical consciousness, or self-awareness of their own experience, then one can step out of the silence and become an active member of society. We learn and grow and begin a dialogue that will continually expand our consciousness, intelligence, and awareness of society and its effects on the perpetuation of oppression. Ron Scrapp in bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, said it perfectly: "Focusing on experience allows students to claim a knowledge base from which they can speak." Zines can be used as that platform for students to jump off of and to foster a sense of critical awareness. Once we manifest a voice that can reverberate in rooms, we can create choirs of consciousness echoing a knowledge that eagerly awaits paradise.