SPECIAL EDITION III

1. Xateros. 2004.

Anthropologists Axel Köhler and Tim Trench, German and British respectively, spent time with “xateros” (xate palm cutters) in the Lacandon Forest in order to learn more about this small group of people, who have been working in the rainforest for decades in some cases but have received little attention. These “xateros” find themselves on the lowest rung in a long commercial ladder going from the Lacandon Forest to the USA and Europe. As can be appreciated in this video, “xateros” are both indigenous people and first-generation mestizos from various states in south-eastern Mexico who have Lacandon “bosses” and depend on intermediaries from Tabasco. It shows the life of “xateros” in their forest camps, illustrating their knowledge of the environment, their family ties and their personal histories. Xateros also touches on the polemical debate regarding sustainable development in tropical rainforests.

2. K’evujel ta jteklum. Song of Our Land. 2004.

This is the third production of the young Tsotsil video-maker Pedro Daniel López López. Pedro belongs to a first generation of indigenous video-makers from Chiapas who have begun to take the visual representation of their own peoples, their communities and organisations into their own hands. Through this video, Pedro symbolically and literally returns to his native village that he left 16 years ago. In this work, Pedro steeps us in the musical traditions of his grandfather and great-grandfather, reminding us that they are not only the musicians for the festivities, but also the ritual guides or “conductors” who know all the different steps and stages in the ceremony. Their music is part and parcel, and the vehicle – along with pox and the saints – for a communion with God … the Gods.

3. The Knowledge of Indigenous Midwives in Chiapas. 2004.

This is the second work by young Tsotsil video-maker Pedro Agripino Icó Bautista, who is in charge of the communications area of the Indigenous Doctors’ Organisation of Chiapas (OMIECH) and studies anthropology at the UNACH. Agripino made this video on the request of midwives who are members of the organisation and are interested not only in “rescuing” their traditional knowledge, but also in teaching new generations. For these reasons the video is both educational and promotional, and reveals the social politics of the OMIECH, whose interest lies in revitalizing the medical practices of a “millenarian tradition”. These practices coexist alongside western-style allopathic medicine, with which, curiously, they are both in dialogue and competition, as well as offering possibilities for complementing one another.

4. The Land Belongs To Those Who Work It. ‘Keremetik’ seeks autonomy. 2002.

This video was directed by Pedro Daniel López López. It appears to be a simple account of the founding of an NGO by indigenous urban youths interested in paper recycling and amber jewellery. However, this video can be very suggestive if we ponder the title, a Zapatista motto with a strong pro-autonomy message: “The land belongs to those who work it”. This motto gains explicit significance when we learn that Keremetik was an NGO that split from another one directed by foreigners and mestizos. The adults running the former NGO had taught the children the importance of exercising their rights. As the children grew up, they were strongly influenced by the rhetoric and discourse of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). It is worthwhile noting that although Keremetik was a short lived experience, these youngsters’ search for artistic and expressive outlets did not end with the disintegration of their own association