By Carolina The Via Campesina was a welcome presence in the Zapatista Encuentro this past week. Farmers and activists from Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia and Thailand, and Indonesia shared their experiences with the Zapatistas at the Caracol in Morelia. As Subcomandante Marcos had noted in the children’s story he had shared the night before, in “The Other Geography” that might be taught in an autonomous Zapatista school, the farmers in these far off lands are much closer to Zapatista communities than the capital of Mexico. An indigenous farmer from the mountains of Thailand told us that, despite the fact that the people of Northern Thailand practice their own traditional forest management, the Thai government has declared their land a national forest and is displacing them by constructing hydroelectric dams, threats and violent evictions. The Mexican government is doing the same in the Montes Azules reserve of Chiapas. Thai government schools “educate” children against their traditional way of life and of working the land in the same way that Mexican public schools have encouraged or forced assimilation in the name of “progress”. Also similar to the Zapatista movement, this Thai movement is independent of political parties, and collective leadership deters the possibility of leaders being bought off. A Campesino leader from Indonesia said he feels at home in the mountains of Morelia which remind him of his village where people get up before dawn to start the wood cooking fires before going to work in the fields. He spoke of the resistance of farmers and the land they have recuperated from African palm production. Indonesian farmers cannot compete with the low prices of imported rice and have to migrate from their villages to the city. A member of Via Campesina from India testified to massive evictions of farmers from the best irrigated traditional agricultural lands in the Punjab to create special economic zones. There is civil disobedience or direct action, inspired by Gandhi, by farmers somewhere in India everyday. In 2006, Monsanto's experimental GMO rice farm was burned by members of a farmers the 300,000,000-strong farmers’ movement. India now has two indigenous autonomous states. A woman from the Movimento Sem Terra (MST), the landless movement for agrarian reform in Brazil, told of their land occupations, reforestation efforts, creation of their own health and education systems and the struggle for equal participation of women. They have been sharing experiences with the Zapatistas for over ten years. In 1996, the MST representatives came to Chiapas and in 2006 they accompanied the other campaign. Indeed, the struggles and triumphs of campesinos across the world showed striking similarities to those of the Zapatistas. It was heartening to witness this sharing of experiences: hopes, dreams, resistance and the challenges of building autonomy as well as theatre, dancing, laughter, intense sun and evening downpours in the misty mountains of Chiapas.