The Story of Colors/La Historia de Los Colores: A Bilingual Folktale from the Jungles of Chiapas

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Summary: Cultural Diversity
Review: Subcommandante Marcos' La Historia de los Colores represents one of the most recent examples of a tradition of didactic story-telling that dates back at least to Aesop's Fables. The simplicity of the language, and of the book's moral, when coupled with its lavish pictures, naturally endears itself towards a child audience. The bilingual nature of the work (the narrative is told in Spanish and in English) means furthermore that the book is not entirely devoid of educational merit. Turning to the moral of the tale, whatever one may think of it's author - and I happen to believe that Marcos is fulfilling a necessasry role in that particular part of the world at this particular time - the book's message is unimpeachable, for it is cultural rather than political. Another of Amazon's reviewers has dubbed it 'Mein Kampf for children', however, it is in actuality the very antithesis of this. Mein Kampf, it will be remembered, preached the racial and cultural supremacy of a single Master Race: La Historia de Los Colores, on the other hand, preaches the intrinsic merit of a plurality of cultures and beliefs: diversity for diversity's sake one might almost say.

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Summary: review of The Story of Colors
Review: We want to share our experience as parents upon purchasing this book for our daughter so that others are not deceived into thinking that this is a children's book, when, in fact, it is not. A book supposedly geared towards 4-8 year-olds should not have as subject material "making love" between the characters (three times in the story) or smoking cigarettes and pipes as the story unfolds. It is not that it is not a good book, but that it is not good for children. Fortunately we read the book before presenting it to our daughter and saw what was written. It is disappointing that Amazon.com would qualify this as a children's book. We will be returning the book.

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Summary: Make Rainbows, not War
Review: Who was that masked man?

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos has crafted a different kind of revolution and with it, a different revolutionary story. This isn't another boring tome, that competes with the author's Kalishnakov repair manual for dreary tedium. In this book, targetted at children (and those who were once children), we read of colorful birds and quarrelling gods. More powerful fare than class warfare or guerrilla strategies.

The book begins with a walk up a hill in Chiapas. Well, actually, we read "I light my pipe, and after three ceremonial puffs, I begin to tell you--just the way old Antonio used to tell it--"

Already we are invited to a different world, a world where stories don't appear in living color between commercials, as a means of inducing consumption. If we accept this invitation, succeeding pages take us up a hill where "el viejo Antonio" takes time out from a journey to share a more colorful universe with the "Insurgente."

The masked revolutionary turns back and sits down with the old one, who ignores his concern about reaching the village before the rain falls. Rain only endangers evil witches in Oz. Here in Chiapas, something more important bursts into our constructed reality, and we are transported to a world of black and white. No real colors. Only grey, to keep the black of night and the white of day from bumping into each other too hard. This is a world where the seven gods who created all things have disappeared. In this bleak landscape, only blind people and quarelsome, sleeply gods remain.

In the course of the story we learn many things. We hear the story of an unfamiliar culture. It's a fun story, playful, suitable for children. And it's a fable, a morality play about many practical things--looking where you're walking, not climbing too high, just about everything except running with a machete in your hands.

But, beneath these relatively harmless layers, lies more substantial material. The story evokes archetypes largely ignored by our plastic Ken & Barbie culture. We seek comfort and security over nearly every other goal. La Historia de los Colores insinuates that breakthroughs come only when comfort is disrupted. The theme of the story, moving from a perspective of Black and White (with a little gray buffer zone) to Full Spectrum Color, well, many a doctoral dissertation could be written about the philosophical, psychological, sociological and political implications. But let's not engage in that level of intellectual masturbation. Read the book. Hear the story. Allow the brilliant illustrations to color your day.

Why are you still reading this review? El viejo Antonio isn't going to sit on that hilltop forever, catching his breath. The rainbow will fade and Insurgente Marcos will reach the village. Then the only colors you'll have will plaster the screen of your TV, encouraging you to buy something to make you forget that you just missed out on an epic spiritual experience masquerading as a children's book.