The Internationale
Arise, the damned of the earth,
Arise, prisoners of hunger,
For reason thunders in its crater,
It is the last eruption!
Let us discard the past,
Army of slaves, arise, arise!
The world is changing at the base,
We who have been nothing, let’s be everything!
” It is the final struggle
Let us gather, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be mankind!”
There are no supreme saviours,
Neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune.
Producers, let’s save ourselves!
Together let’s enact a common decree
To force the thief to return his loot,
So that the mind is set free from the prison cell!
Let us blow upon our furnace ourselves,
Strike the iron while it is hot!
“It is the final struggle
Let us gather, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be mankind!”
The state strangles and the law cheats,
The taxes bleed the disadvantaged in society.
The rich do not shoulder any responsibility;
The rights of the poor is an empty word.
It is enough to decay in servitude,
Equality needs other laws!
No rights without duty, she says,
Conversely, no duty without rights.
“It is the final struggle
Let us gather, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be mankind!”
Hideous, in their glory,
The kings of the mines and rail.
They have done nothing else,
But to steal others’ work.
In the strongboxes of this band,
What we created are all in there!
In working for their restitution,
They only want their rightful due.
“It is the final struggle
Let us gather, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be mankind!”
The kings deceive us with their fumes,
Peace among ourselves, war to the tyrants!
Let us encourage strikes in the armies,
To wave their guns and disband their ranks!
If they insist, those cannibals,
To make heroes of us,
They will soon know our bullets,
Are for our own generals.
“It is the final struggle
Let us gather, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be mankind!”
Labourers, peasants, we are
The big party of workers
The earth belongs only to humans
The idle are going to live elsewhere
How much they feast on our flesh
But if the ravens and vultures
Would one morning all disappear
The sun would shine forever
“It is the final struggle
Let us gather, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be mankind!”
dedicated to Subcomandante Marcos[EZLN]