In the jungle with Marcos.

• Author: Landau, Saul
• Position: Chiapas, Mexico; Zapatista revolt leader Subcommandante Marces - Interview

Do you know where Reality is and how to get there? Fly to Tuxtla Gutierrez, capital of Chiapas, take a bus to San Cristobal de las Casas, an old colonial city an hour and a half and two mountains away. Go see the person who communicates with the Zapatistas and find out when and where your appointment is.

Early Sunday evening, the contact informs me that my filming date was two hours ago, but not to worry because if I arrive there tomorrow morning they will understand. Miraculously, my wife Rebecca and I find Carlos Martinez, a cameraman with camera, charged batteries, and tape, and I locate an open rental agency that has a front-wheel-drive VW Combi.

At 11:30 P.M. we put our heads on pillows. At 4:00 Monday morning, we depart, south to Comitan, about an hour-and-a-half drive on a pothole-filled, but nevertheless paved, road.

Head east twenty more miles to Las Margaritas and then continue on a rocky, unpaved road that begins to resemble a mountain trail. Enjoy magnificent scenery, occasional Indian villages, and periodic threats to your life as the vehicle skids down slippery mud slopes with nothing but 200 feet of space between you and the bottom of the canyon. On these steep roads, local people tote what look like 100-pound loads of firewood on their backs.

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After about three hours of robust kidney exercise, you arrive at the village of Guadalupe Tepeyac, a ghost town, the residents driven out by the Federales, the Mexican army, an occupation force. In the village, doctors and nurses sit outside a modern hospital bereft of patients. Armed soldiers amble along the muddy lanes between abandoned houses, and a few hookers sit on a rickety bench, waiting for the soldiers to finish their patrol.

On the way out of the village, we pass a military camp, whose entrance consists of a makeshift bamboo gate, in the opening of which stands a soldier snapping a photo of the side of the vehicle as it drives by. Ah, modern security procedures!

We continue east for another half an hour, sliding, literally, down the slippery slopes into Reality. In Spanish, Reality is La Realidad, the name of this village in the Lacondon jungle, in southeast Chiapas, Mexico, maybe fifteen miles north of the Guatemalan border, midway between Las Margaritas on the west and San Quintin on the east.

Yes, a wooden sign assures you, this is La Realidad. "Park your vehicle on the side of the road," says a short, dark-skinned man who approaches and asks you in unsyntactical Spanish to write down what you want and give him some I.D.

He turns out to be the elected village chief. Villagers call him Maxi, which I assume to be short for maximum jefe, but is actually an abbreviation for his name, Maximiliano.

I write down that I have a date with el sup.

He asks me if I have brought the newspapers or anything else. We had departed before the morning papers arrived, so I give him a book and some cigars for Comandante Moises, a gift from a friend of his in the city.

He nods, and tells us to park the vehicle in the smidgen of shade offered by a tree near the village classroom, next to the stream that runs through the village.

We wait throughout the morning as colorfully clad, barefooted women and teenage girls return from the mountains carrying formidable loads of wood on their backs, with a sling-like affair that reaches around the wood and across their foreheads to absorb and balance the weight. We watch from a crude bench outside the two-room school. The air hangs around us like a cartoon bubble that says "heat and humidity," as the foggy cool of early morning turns furnace-like and the sun burns away the mist. At about 11:00 A.M., a dozen lower-grade-school boys run out of the classrooms, doing somersaults.

Surrounding us, rising precipitously from the valley, green mountains stand like still-life paintings, tropical Vermeers, studded with fir trees, precious wood, banana stalks, and, hiding under them, the frail coffee trees--key to the village economy. The village is a pattern of thatched huts, divided by a rapidly running mountain stream, with women and girls washing corn, beans, clothes, and bodies, and little kids splashing and frolicking. Firewood is piled neatly in sheds outside the huts, and wisps of smoke curl from the kitchens. Dogs yap and roosters crow amidst a continual croaking and humming of frogs and bugs, with pigs snorting like bass players in this tropical orchestra of fauna.

Noontime comes and goes, and still no word from el sup. Maybe he's in the middle of writing one of his communiques for the internet, or meeting with the other comandantes about political strategy, or reading yesterday's La Jornada or this week's Proceso, Mexico's best and most progressive newspaper and magazine, respectively. Maybe he's in the middle of a hot poker game, or hunting an animal, or making love to his wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, or whomever. Am I feeling a bit frustrated?

The dense humidity begins to hang from everything, especially my clothes and hair. I slug my bottled water both to quench my thirst and temper my hunger pangs. Out of nowhere a buzzing black insect, an image from a Gameboy set, circles my head. I wait. It lands on my hand. I slap. Got it! Within seconds a large red spot appears with a black dot in the center. It itches. I resist scratching. It starts to burn. Yeah, I got it all right.

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At about 3:00 P.M., village men return from the milpa, the cornpatch. Banal hunger pangs are intruding on any lofty thoughts I might have. Carlos arranges with the village head to allow us to buy our meals at the house of Jorge's family for ten pesos a meal, about $1.50. By 4:00 we begin to think the sup has forgotten us, or the message didn't arrive, or he's at an all-day prayer meeting.

The hell with him, I say, let's eat. We wander across the so-called road to Jorge's house. His wife Gloria and his kids laugh as we arrive, place hunks of log or kiddie chairs outside the kitchen, plus a small bench, on which a teenage girl, dressed in what looks like her party clothes but which turns out to be a traditional women's costume, places a metal bowl of water--for us to wash our hands. She smiles as we fumble with the bowl and try to figure out where to wipe our wet hands. Her jet black hair is perfectly combed...