Our Word Is Our Weapon By Subcomandante Marcos's Our Word Is Our Weapon

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“Our Word Is Our Weapon,” by Subcomandante Marcos discusses how Mexican Capitalism and neoliberalism is destroying the values and traditions of the indigenous people of Chiapas. Throughout this text, Marcos cites many examples about how the government and business owners take many useful resources from Chiapas in order to export them to other countries to benefit the elitists. Marcos elaborates that this Capitalist approach severely damages the community of Chiapas by taking these resources away from the people living there, or making them too expensive for them to afford with their very low wages (EXAMPLE). With a background as a militant, Marcos has a passion for inspiring indigenous people to fight back against the repressive ways of the …show more content…

(CITE WIKI SOURCE). Marcos uses a combination of sheer passion, factual evidence, and practical experience as a leftist rebel to show the reader that this Capitalist approach of the Mexican government severely damages many rural Mexicans traditions, quality of life, and labour conditions(POSSIBLE CONCLUSION). Chiapas is a community very rich in resources such as coffee, raw materials, corn, beef, petroleum, and gas, however, those living in the community has very little access to these resources. Chiapas produces three million head of cattle, and one hundred thousand kilograms of coffee, yet fifty four percent of Chiapas citizens, and eighty percent of those living in the …show more content…

In Chiapas, there are 0.3 hospital beds per 1000 Chiapas residents, however, there are 7 hotel beds for every 1000 tourists(CITE, 26). With the government not trusting the people with loans, many of the people have made their own small businesses in order to make a few pesos off of these tourists, an example of this are children in Guadalajara charging tourists 5-25 pesos to have their picture taken with an “authentic Mexican,” to give the tourist a more authentic Mexican feeling (CITE SECONDARY). It is disheartening to see these people who live in a land so full of resources and opportunity, having to live in such impoverished conditions, and having to cater to wealthy tourists in order to make their stay more comfortable and happier for just a few pesos to bring back to their broken down shed where they live. This capitalist approach that prioritizes wealthy tourists over the indigenous people who inhabit the land also has a large effect on the education and healthcare of these rural people. While there are lavish hotels for the tourists, the towns people have a broken down shack that serves as a multi-purpose community center for them as a church, meeting room, school, and adding to that, the education system only goes up to grade 3, and teachers are

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