Copyright © 2001 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

CHIAPAS, MEXICO - Armed civilian groups. Leftist political parties. The Army. Center-right political parties. Municipal government. State police forces. County government. Zapatistas. State government. Federal government.

This list, created by indigenous Mexicans, includes many of the groups that affect the social and political situation of daily life in Chiapas. The list was created in a July 14 reflection on active nonviolence by members of the Civil Society of the Bees (Abejas) and the CPT Mexico team.

After the workshop, as rain pounded down on the tin roof of the meeting room, Kryss Chupp and I sat and looked at the list again. I thought of Richmond, Indiana, where I come from. Paramilitaries? State police running daily armed patrols? What a stark contrast to my life in the midwestern U.S.! So what is my "social and political situation?"

Then it hit: this is what privilege is. Folks with privilege (like me), don't have a "social and political situation." Do we? Actually we do but our social standing, even if we make average wages, means that we don't have to think about it.

Our social and political situation is the inexpensive coffee we buy for the office or for church fellowship hour. It is the garden hose we buy at Wal-Mart. It is the cheap gas we burn in our cars. We don't have to think about the farmers who got paid fifteen cents a pound for that coffee. Or the worker who made ten cents an hour to make our hose. Or the accumulation of toxic gases in the ozone layer.

That's what having an empire, or at least living by the waters of Babylon, does for us: We don't have to think about it. The corporations provide, and we blithely consume.

A nun from the Catholic pastoral team in Chenalhó county took my arm during an animated conversation. "We have to resist the transnational corporations even though it seems difficult! Just like the mustard seed our resistance starts small, but it grows large. It depends on us, clear-minded people with privilege, to say 'No, we won't buy.'"

Let's say that again, all together now.