The World Turned Upside Down

Day 1,859, 19:56 Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom by Johnobrow
"These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also."
- Acts 17:6

Background Music

In 1649 there came a ragged band they called the Diggers to St Goerge's Hill in Surrey. They came to sow the land and create a common treasury for all. They had a vision of the world "Turned upside down," where no man would rule over any other and all things would be shared in common. Cromwell's men cut them down, burned their cottages, destroyed their corn. Where there had once been a common treasury there was now enclosures, walls, and privilege. The Diggers were dispersed but still their vision lingers on.



On New Years Day, 1994, the Mayan Indians of Chiapas, Mexico, rose up against domination and a world system that treated them like dirt. These Zapatistas have since set about creating their own zones of autonomy from capitalist exploitation; a new world that gives a voice to the voiceless.


Guerrillas silently appear from the mist.

These two projects set hundreds of years and thousands of miles apart are a continuation of the same greater project to overthrow the cruelty of capital and domination; to turn the world upside down.

December 21st 2012 marked the beginning of a new calendar and a new era for the indigenous Mayan peoples of South East Mexico. Far from fearing apocalypse - the end of the world - the date marked a day of hope and a new year. For those with nothing to lose, any change comes as a relief. 40,000 Zapatistas assembled in the same towns they had almost 19 years ago to the day; only this time rather than being armed with rifles and machetes, they came armed with the deafening silence of a resurgence, with a declaration of revolution coming to an order in chaos:

Did You Hear?
That is the sound of your world falling apart.
It is the sound of our resurgence.
The day that was the day, was night.
And night will be the day that will be the day.
Democracy!
Liberty!
Justice!



A faint sound of a baby's cry would occasionally emerge from a bundle beneath a plastic tarp on the back of a masked Zapatista in the endless lines of Mayan rebels who quietly held formation in the rain. They marched four file booted and bare-footed into the same cities they surprised on a cold new year's eve night 19 years ago, shouting their first YA BASTA!


The Zapatistas and the EZLN need not say a word this day, their actions and silence said enough. ¡Aqui estamos! We do not beg for the right to live - we take it.

The time has come to complete the great communist project of the Diggers and Zapatistas, to finally turn the whole world upside down.

¡YA BASTA!

You noble Diggers all, stand up now,
The wast land to maintain, seeing Cavaliers by name
Your digging does maintain, and persons all defame
Stand up now, stand up now.

- Diggers' Song, Gerrard Winstanley