Salud y Solidaridad (Health and Solidarity)

The film features original footage from “16th February” Automomous Municipality in Chiapas. We see the successful construction of the health clinic, achieved by the voluntary work of hundreds of people from the forty different villages of the municipality. Other aspects of the local peoples’ self-organisation are explored too, such as the craft workers’ collectives.

The film portrays the twinning between “16th February” and the zapatista groups in Scotland . This is a direct relationship of solidarity whereby funds raised in Scotland have made it possible for the local zapatistas to take this major step forward in their struggle for autonomy from the “bad government”. The municipality are continuing this path, now focusing not only on further improvements to the clinic but also on developing their autonomous primary schools, and their craft workers collectives.

With film shot during the 1994 uprising, Health and Solidarity puts the local situation in the context of the whole zapatista struggle, which has been an inspiration to the global anti capitalist movement, and has now initiated the Other Campaign, seeking to unite different exploited groups “from below and the left”.

The screening is followed by a discussion led by the filmmakers Camcorder Guerillas and Mike Valance from Scottish Zapatistas Solidarity Group, who organised the making of the film.