Cancun, Mexico
September 12

The Gods seem very close by here at this clash of wills in Cancun, Mexico. Just minutes after Mr. Hyung Lee committed his final act of symbolic resistance by immolating himself with a dagger at the barricades a Kilometer Zero on Wednesday, a large cloud blocked the sun and cooled our bodies with a welcome shower, reviving our spirits. In retrospect, in my poetic way of thinking, I prefer to view this shower as a blessing sent from the powers of Creation, to mark an act of profound protest with a pure, self-less meaning. Mr. Lee who left behind him a wife and children, and a community he represents and a farmers' association he had led. Mr. Lee who had attempted this same act unsuccessfully in 1995, hunger striked for 30 days in Geneva at the WTO and then came to Cancun ready to climb upon the barricade and then use a dagger on himself in a symbolic show that even in death there is power. (He had not told a soul what he planned to do, but some of his closest friends had noticed he was acting a bit different than usual, I am told.)

And then yesterday evening such signs were repeated and amplified. A memorial ceremony among the many that have been undertaken since the terrible event was scheduled to take place at Kilometer Zero yesterday evening... but I will get to that event after describing the build up.

The Via Campesina ceremony the night before was the day after still visible up at the House of Culture in the Gymnasium where many votive candles still burned under a photo of the fallen Korean farmer, and copal was being burned continually by the indigenous peoples gathered there, some of them chanting in a trance like state. The Via Campesina had then marched yesterday afternoon down to the now sacred spot, sharing the shade from canopies under which dozens of Korean trade unionists and farmers were resting, in the grassy roundabout near the fountain at KM Zero. I got there in the late afternoon and met friends made the day before, Kim Chooey an environmentalist activist who speaks some English and had helped me with an interview with a South Korean newspaper called Reunification. Other friends from Via Campesina and the Hemispheric Social Alliance (trade unionists from Brazil) were there as well. Juan Martinez, alias, Juan Manchu of the Beehive Collective was there with his troupe after a practice performance at the barricades, and he generously gave one of their exquisite political posters on Plan Colombia to Kim Chooey, and she promised to bring him some kimchii she had frozen in a hotel room.

Paul Nicholsen, a Basque farmer and Via Campesina leader joined us with wonderful news of a Via Campesina action in the heart of the WTO Convention Center. Credentials to enter the Convention Center had been scrounged up somehow for a number of Via Campesina and NGO people. They entered the WTO Convention Center and the large press conference room, and proceeded to lay down votive candles and signs and handing out communiques about the life of Mr. Hyung Lee. A sign read: WTO KILLS FARMERS, OMC Mata Campesinos. Paul spoke of the two world contending, the world of lies and the world of truth. The WTO, he said, was a world of lies insulated by brute force, and the reality of suffering for the impoverished farmers of Korea and the world was the true reality. A life had been laid down to convey this reality. A Korean trade activist also spoke. After the brief but powerful elogies and declarations, and with some of the press in tears, reporters were invited to ask questions but the first questions were not to the point, so the event leaders said there would be no more questions. They requested that the some 300 journalists present respect the space of this procession as they left the Convention Center. They walked out in solemnity and strength, leaving the candles and signs in the center of the room. Prior t the event and on the fringes some 1,000 communiques went into the hands of press and others present. A powerful political statement and a powerful tribute to a fallen brother in the struggle.

So when the memorial service began at KM 0 last night, it was dusk and large pink clouds hovered over us like colored cotton candy. To the west away from the barricades there was crimson. One after another, Korean protesters got up to elogize Mr. Lee. A poem was read in English and then in Spanish, but there were no Spanish translators to do simultaneous translations. A request went out for a volunteer to do so, to which I responded. (Someone saw me on Mexican television translating in the rain in the circle of candles.) Korean was spoken, and then a Korean woman translated into English and then I translated into Spanish. It started raining, big fat drops. Nobody moved. The Korean MC said: Please do not leave. More elogies followed. Then the Brazilian Rafael of the Hemispheric Social Alliance was asked to speak. In Portuguese, he said among other things: have you ever seen anyone not permitted into any of our discussions in the Peoples' Forums? Is anyone not welcome among us? Are doors shut on anyone? No, because we are the people who respect each other as human beings. But the WTO with its message of death, its dictatorship of the market, must meet behind walls of steel and shields and barbed wire. Can the people enter and speak there?

The rain began to pour down harder and harder. No one moved, some candles flickered but peopled sheltered the flames as best they could. After the heat the cool rain felt wonderful. I transferred my wallet to a front pocket... already soggy.

The rain came down even harder and now thunder ripped the sky wide open, sssskrrrrritttt! Walden Bello was invited to speak. This Philipino activist spoke eloquently about the two worlds, the one of power, the other of humanity, opposed and divided the bubbles used to surround the powerful. He said Mr. Lee had taken his supreme action to tell the world that there is killing going on, that tens of thousands of Korean, Indian, and even US farmers have killed themselves as they lose their lands. Mr. Lee's death was yet another, very public, example of this chain of death, but done in order to wake the world up to this intolerable reality. Lightning bolts ripped to the ground to one side and then to the other. My heart raced, and air was full of electric feeling. Some wildly whooped their welcome of these powers of nature. I tried not to be distracted from the translation by the torrential rain beating on my straw hat and the bolts that seemed like they might strike right on the spot with Lee used his knife. At that precise moment Johnbo, an indigenous leader of the American Indian Movement I have the honor of meeting in Chiapas once approached the altar with his drum and I translated his words into Spanish: I am going to make a march now, friends. Follow with me if you would like. I want to make a march! And began beating his drum and singing high and hard in the way of Turtle Island Native Peoples. He headed off into the road leading to the barricades and, 11 kilometers further on, into the Convention Center and the WTO. At that moment, it seemed like nothing could stop such spirit from reaching whatever goal it sought. We walked in water up above our ankles, and we walked fast, almost wildly. The rain poured down even harder, but we were all wailing now, ourmouths wide open, chanting, almost running in the dark, and now the Koreans struck up a protest song and shoved their clenched fists up into the deluge, with joy and determination. The native drum and wailing mixed with the chants of the unionists, the ones who had battered the barricades with their funeral bower on that fateful march for Mr. Lee.

The newly constructed fall-back barricades were unmanned in the downpour. But they were built to withstand much of the abuse wreaked upon the first barricade, with heavy concrete blocks weighing them down and built in a rectangle with heavy bars reinforcing their squared off form. Where there had been a fence before, was now a steel cage 10 feet tall with barbed wire on top. Candles went up to the top of the fence, shielded by someone's styrofoam plate stuck on barbed wire. The Koreans started to organize spirited shouts, instructing us in Korean. We followed the actions of the Koreans at the appointed moment. It seemed we were being asked to make a primal scream, on cue. And so we did, a terrifying sound that comes not from the throat but from the bowels, even from inside the legs, from the ground. We staggered our breathing so that the wail would be seamless and it made our skin pop goosebumps. At that moment a big water cannon truck with powerful headlights mounted on top reached the second fence, about 30 feet behind the front barricade box structure, and tried to see what we were up to. Trucks of troops began to rumble out of the blackness and riot police streamed out in the slick wet darkness. Now we engaged in another activity, we backed up about 100 feet and, on signal, all sprinted to the fence and lunged at it, kicked it, all the while shrieking like wild people. More primal screams, and the lights of the security vehicles lit, trying to probe the mystery of this sound.

Some students were attracted to our noise and came to break up concrete and throw rubble across the fence. The Koreans organized a last lunge at the fence and then turned the march around, back to the encampment.

The rain started to let up some. We relit our candles and formed a circle, hearing beautiful songs sung by the Koreans, then some Spanish songs were sung. We backed up until our circle was about 250 strong and sang more, then we snaked the circle around the traffic circle, around the fountains, until the students, coming from another memorial service at the Plaza de la Reforma, came into earshot with their drum corps and flaming torches. Their front lines had young women dressed in ghoulish white death shrouds and holding long torches aloft in the air. The drummers and majorettes with their orange wooden guns and black chinese peasant hats, and the rhythm tight, joyful and slightly martial despite the polyrhythm beat. We all laid our candles down before the altar, where large banners elogized Lee and people were leaving messages. I met Anuradha Mittal and we walked to the barricades to show her. Now the riot police were lined up two or three deep up against the front barricade steel rectangles, short and dark, their indigenous skin color blending in with the night under their black uniforms.

A young Mexican woman drenched like myself to the skin was reprimanding them: We are doing this for you and for your children, idiots. Why do such a job when it will help condemn your children to poverty and dependency. She was really letting them have it, while a lone youth broke up concrete to one side and tried to hurl it over the barricade. The woman asked him to hold up on that: aguante, aguante, joven. The youth held up, but paced angrily like a tiger in a zoo. Anuradha wondered aloud how much these soldiers might be earning for this special repression duty. I translated her question into Spanish and yelled it to their ears, but no response. The woman picked it up: they make a lousy 3 pesos to sell their souls, conyo. Wake up, brothers, Wake up before it is too late!

Back at the encampment the youth march turned unexpectedly and headed away from the barricades... to WALMART, I heard, flames twirling and spirits high. Now exhausted and drenched, from my clothing to my passport buried deep in my leather briefcase, I heard one could catch a public bus for the long ride to the other entrance to the peninsula and the long ride to within 5.5 kilometers of this cursed barricade. For 6 pesos I got on a bus, and road for an hour with Cancun workers headed to their janitorial jobs in the megahotels along the Cemetery Hotel Strip that is Cancun.

I cannot predict the signs that will accompany today's or tomorrow's actions, but momentarily I will be attempting to enter the WTO Convention Center for the first time to take part in a protest at a briefing about the US Trade position. A simultaneous action will be taking place when this same pirate heads to the Hyatt to meet with none other than the CEOs of WALMART, the GAP, etc..., etc... where they will be met by another group of protesters. I just heard that all busses have stopped going toward the Convention Center because it is believed that students occupying some towers near there might be armed... no doubt with little wooden sticks for holding their signs. It appears that new tactics are being developed for the last days of this bizarre surreal zoo known as a WTO Ministerial.

I feel like one of the ants depicted on the political posters of the Beehive Collective (check them out at www.beehivecollective.org), monkey wrenching the infernal military-industrial-lifescience complex of death. Globalize the struggle, Globalize Hope.

A collective fist of determination in the air from Cancun and the sign of peace on the other hand,

May the spirits of wind, rain and lightning protect us all, and make the land fertile, and bless our crops and the blood in our veins.

Stephen Bartlett