Revolutionary Wheels en El Lancondon
by Rob Block

On July 10, 2003, I joined the little yellow school bus for peace, a project of Schools for Chiapas in San Diego, in a caravan that left Houston, Texas. On July 25th we had arrived in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. I set out on this trip with the goal of assisting in a bicycle workshop and helping to start a project which would supply bicycles for health and education promoters, more affectionately known as Bikes for Chiapas. 

I was unclear as to what role I would play in this process and what exactly we would be doing. Of all the caravan participants from North America, I knew the most about bikes. Luckily for me, on the way to Chiapas we stopped in Oaxaca to pick up bike mechanic Eliseo and his apprentice, Alejandro, both of whom work with a Mexican non-profit called COVORPA. Eliseo knew a great deal about bikes and the workshop could not have gone off as well as it did without him.

With the bus we brought 17 bikes, a random sampling of components and tools, as well as three complete sets of the necessary tools to run a bike shop. We planned on giving this workshop to members of three different Zapatista communities. When the proposal for the Bikes for Chiapas program was taken to the communities, people from Roberto Barrios, Fransisco Gomez and Oventic communities all responded as interested, and promised to send delegates to participate in our workshop.

When we arrived in Oventic on Saturday, the Marcos communiqué about the changes from aguascailentes to Caracoles had just been released and there was no one there from any of the other communities to participate in the workshop that was set to start on Monday. Although we were quite anxious, we eventually had 11 participants in the workshop.

On Monday, the day we were supposed to start the workshop, I had to return to San Cristobal, to get a briefing from ENLACE Civil on the general situation in Chiapas surrounding the Zapatistas.

When we returned, Eliseo and Alejandro had started to work with seven kids from Oventic--the oldest could not have been older than 15. That evening we meet folks from the other two communities ready to learn how to set up a bike shop. Later in the week, two more people from Fransisco Gomez arrived.

During the workshop, we went through all the parts of a bike, as well as how to use all the tools they were receiving. We went over the most common repairs a number of times (fixing flats, adjusting brakes and derailers), we talked a little bit about the theory behind running a bike shop, but they--particularly the kids-were mostly interested in doing the hands-on work.

On Thursday, Eliseo and Alejandro had to return to Oaxaca, leaving me and Sergio, the bus driver/mechanic, who had no experience with bikes but knew how machines work, running the bike workshop. We basically reviewed the stuff we had already gone over, and finished repairing the 17 bikes we had brought down. We decided that Saturday would be the last day of the workshop.

The participants asked to take Sunday off and on Monday we began sorting the tools and components into 3 equal  groups, one per community. The folks in charge at Schools for Chiapas thought this was extremely important and we did this in what I saw as something of an obsessive manner: we counted the number of spokes and made sure that they were divided equally.

We settled on doing a raffle as a fair way to divide the 17 bikes and the extra tools we had accumulated. This took some time to engineer but once we finally got everyone together this went very smoothly. Getting an empowered representative from each of these communities to come together at the same time to sign off on the donation we had brought was an aggravating process that took three days, during the festival of the caracoles, August 8-10. We finally got delegates from all three communities together, divided the materials we had brought and ended the first phase of the Bikes for Chiapas project.

Ithaca has become a starting ground for grassroots programs such as Bikes for Chiapas. The participation levels from community members and students alike, is growing everyday. Bikes for Chiapas has taken flight in Ithaca with no signs of slowing down. Currently, RIBS (Recycle Ithaca’s Bikes) along with CUSLAR, and many generous volunteers have been working hard to prepare a shipment of 350 bikes for the December/January delegation. Community members and students are making the trip to Chiapas to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista Uprising in the Autonomous Zone. Participants will be working hand in hand with members of Schools for Chiapas and Chiapas community members to disperse bikes and build the second bike shop. 

WAIT!!!! The campaign doesn’t stop in December! This is an ongoing project. If you are interested in donating either time or money, (or both!) to help this incredible project, volunteers are always needed at the RIBS repair shop- skills are not a prerequisite! 

Please contact RIBS (607)256-5355 or CUSLAR (607)255-7293 to learn more about this project.