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way of communicating, because after our second score all the Zapatistas moved back to defend their goal. They left the whole field to our huge Danes, who were happily rushing back and forth. But with all those people on the Zapatista side, the field became a mudhole. The ball would stick, like in cement, and you needed several internationalist kicks to even make it roll.
    They’re going to stall, I thought, so they don’t get stomped, and I sat back to watch the game, which was on the far side the whole time. A few minutes went by and then what happened, happened. Our team, which was doing all the running around, began to show signs of fatigue. In the second half it was evident that we were getting bogged down. Our Danish stars were gasping for air, stopping to breathe every two or three steps. And then—again without any overt signal— wham, the whole Zapatista team hit me. They scored seven goals in twenty minutes and the spectators went wild, cause you know they were all rooting for the local team. The game ended seven to two, and half of our team took an hour to recover and three weeks before they could walk right.
    So I been a goalkeeper but I’m not the doorkeeper and I’m not the murderer. As you probably guessed, I’m a campamentista, and I’m from another country. I’ve been in peace camps in five autonomous municipalities, even before they were called caracoles, and in a few other communities that suffered militarization or paramilitarization. You might be asking me what exactly a foreign campamentista is doing in this mystery novel. Actually, that’s what I keep asking myself, I can’t really help you out with that. While we check out what’s going on, I can tell you a bit about myself. Maybe that way we can, together, figure out what the hell I’m doing in this book.
    The Broken Calendar Club
    I’m a Filipino and my name is Juli@ and my last name is Isileko. Somebody once told me that Isileko means secret in Euskera. I’m a mechanic and I work in an auto repair shop in Barcelona. I write my name with an @: Juli@. I write it that way because …. Do I really have to say I’m gay? Okay, yes, I’m gay, homosexual, queer, fruit, queen, faggot, or however it is you call us in your own world. But actually, I don’t think I should mention it because then they associate homosexual with criminal. So. Maybe we should leave out sexual preference altogether and stick with the fact that I’m from the Philippines, that I have a Basque name, that I’m a mechanic in Barcelona, Spain, and amateur goalkeeper in Chiapas, Mexico … And in my home town they call me Julio.
    For more information, I got a skinhead haircut and a few tattoos. On my back, between my shoulder blades, I have a notice tattooed in gothic letters that says, THIS SIDE BACK, and one on my chest that says, THIS SIDE FORWARD. That’s just in case they cut me up in pieces. I have another one somewhat below my belly button that says, HANDLE WITH CARE, with an arrow pointing to my dick. I have another on my butt saying, NO RETURNS. I’m also a ringer, which means I have piercings and I wear earrings, but not too many: one on my left eyebrow, two in my right ear, three in my left ear, one in my nose, one each on my nipples, and … that’s it.
    I came to Zapatista country because I got tired of reading communiqués. Yes, I began to get interested in the Zapatista movement because I read about it in a book by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. It’s not as if I was personally acquainted with the author, it’s just that once I was working on a car and I found this book in the backseat. After reading it, I asked one of my buddies in the shop if he knew anything about the Zapatistas in Chiapas. He said he didn’t, but that there was this café near his house where some young guys used to get together, some of the ringers like me, to try to raise support for those Zapatistas. So I went; I got some books and some website addresses where I could find the