The Zapatista Subcomandante Is Not Coming to Speak, but to Listen, "to the Simple and Humble People who Struggle"
"...it is our duty to explore the terrain where we will bring our compañeros and compañeras of our people, as well as our soldiers. There is always someone who goes as a vanguard. We call whoever goes forward and views the terrain that we still don’t know the vanguard. And the task of he who goes forward as the vanguard is to detect what is there: if the terrain is swampy, stony, or spiny, and of other situations the vanguard observes, and this informs us so we can know what to do and how to do it.
"We know that you understand a vanguard to be someone who leads, or those who know how the fight should be waged, or who give orders, and who are the only ones who are right, those who know more and better… But we don’t understand it that way. The vanguard for us... is he who goes to understand the terrain, for us unknown terrain, and it is necessary to go to that terrain to advance the struggle. This is soldier's work, the exploration of the terrain...
"The vanguard's work of exploration of the terrain for the Other Campaign has been given to compañero Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos. He will be the first to go out and we will come behind him in turn to do the work..."
- Lieutenant Colonel Moisés
Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN)
September 16, 2005
