Manuèl, su familia y la tierra

Fourth part. At night, Manuèl and his wife told us the history of their life, that is the history of many campesinos, indigenous people and Latin Americans, before and after them. An adventure begun in ’67, when ejido Emiliano Zapata was still an idea on paper and the Lacandon jungle was many times greater than now. They told us about a year of sacrifices in order to save money for the flight and their first inspection in the territory of the future ejido: even if the forest scared them, Manuèl had no choice and in ’68 abandoned his pueblo and took possession of its portion of land, together with his wife. Then followed years of hard fight against the jungle, hunger and diseases: of the 65 founders of the community, only twenty resisted the first year. For some months they ate caracoles (shells), then succeeded to carry the first animals, corn and the fruit plants. After many years, Manuèl shows us proudly his nephews and the school they have been able to build. We have the feeling that the community works very well and the people help themselves to each other, but there are still well-known and usual problems. The school does not supply a continuous service (teachers come from Ocosingo and change too often), the doctor passes once a week and never succeed to visit everyone (the roads in the region are unpaved and hard). Drugs are used with parsimony, but often they are something unapproachable…

While we eat our “sopa de verduras”, we think to the last words of Manuèl: “Young people go away because they do not find any job here and we are getting old, someone has already died. But we will resist until the last day on our piece of land, conquered with sweat, blood and tears”. In order to greet us, Manuèl sings the hymn of the ejido, he and his wife start crying: we learn that in the difficult things you can find the most serene way of living…