Zapatismo beyond Chiapas

By Manuel Callahan

photo too, Mariana Mora

Manuel Callahan currently teaches in the Ethnic Studies program atHumboldt State University_ He is also a member of Accion Zapatista, anetwork of activists in Texas and California that support the EZLN whilepursuing zapatismo locally.

This essay is a meditation on the political uses of Zapatismo in contextsoutside o f Chiapas, Mexico, especially the challenges involved in theattempt to put it into action in sites of privilege. The goal is to focus on keyelements that constitute a political practice that is ethical, creative, anddisciplined, as well as relevant in local and global contexts. Zapatismo maybe an "intuition," as Subcomandante Marcos has suggested, but i t alsooffers u s a theoretical framework f o r pol i t ical analysis, especiallyregarding encounter, dialogue, and difference, while establishing theseconcepts as explicit political practices and objectives.

The key elements of Zapatismo as a political and cultural practice that willbe examined here include a politics o f refusal, space, and listening,articulated in the statements Ya Basta! (enough); dignidad y esperanza

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(dignity and hope); mandar obedeciendo (to lead by following); nuncajamas u n mundo s in nosotros (never again a world without us); andtodo para todos y nada para nosotros (everything for everyone andnothing for ourselves). The Zapatista intervention invites us to be clearabout what we actually mean by these concepts, and to collectively arriveat an agreement of what they should look like in practice. We want to avoidapproaches that rely on an authoritative, hierarchical apparatus o r auniquely "enlightened" system that directs, commands, or leads. We seekinstead to arrive a t a political practice that activates, a process thatrespects the agency, the voice, the creativity, and the engagement of anentire community. I t is, as Marcos recently remarked, "an effort a tencuentro," an encounter noted for a number of "tendencies" with thegoal of "building common points o f discussion." Thus, i t is crucial thatthese tendencies be understood as something more than slogans.

The Zapatista intervention is not only a confrontation with the party-stateor with the institutions of global capital and the cadres of intellectuals intheir service, but i t has generated controversy from within the Left. TheZapatistas' proposal o f a "revolution t o make a revolution possible"presents tendencies t h a t s tand i n contrast w i t h t h e strategies,organizations, and formations of the Left of past generations. Zapatismodoes not seek to impose an ideology, an organization, or a party line, andin this sense, the Zapatistas have made it clear that the old language andmethods no longer function. However, they are not proposing new dogmasto replace the worn-out language and ideologies of previous movements.They refuse to do battle within a framework that allows fo r endlesspolitical a n d academic debate, a process t h a t fosters hierarchy,authoritarianism, and elitism. The Zapatistas do not claim to provideanswers but, as they argue, "pose questions." "It is already known that ourspecialty is not in solving problems, but in creating them. 'Creating them?'No, that is too presumptuous, rather in proposing. Yes, our specialty isproposing problems."

While w e have come t o know the Zapatistas through the i r publicinterventions and direct actions, we are still unfamiliar with their specificinternal processes of organization, especially the link between the militaryand civil formations. On the other hand, Zapatismo is available to us as apolitical and cultural practice we can discuss, analyze, interpret, and enactwithin t h e contex t o f a global ly networked mobil ization againstneoliberalism. F o r analytical purposes i t i s important t o distinguishbetween the Zapatistas and Zapatismo. The EZLN (the Zapatista Army forNational Liberation) i s the army that serves the base communities.Zapatistas are comprised of the EZLN and their supporters. Zapatismo isa political strategy, an ethos, a set of commitments claimed by those who

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claim a political identity. Althoughthe r o l e o f t h e E Z L N a s acatalyst has been cr i t ical , evenSubcomandante M a r c o s h a sadmitted, "the EZLN has reached apoint where i t has been overtakenby Zapatismo."

A Politics of Refusal

The EZLN has on several occasions.and w i t h remarkable consistencyand sensit ivity, presented t h e i rviews to the world in the form o fdeclarations and communiqués. "Asthey say i n these mountains, theZapatistas have a very powerful andindestructible weapon: the word."Their w o r d , o f f e red t o u s i nsolidarity, brings with i t an analysisof neoliberalism and an invitation tojoin in struggle.

Anniversary of Lapatista uprising, San Cristobal, Chiapas,January 1,2003.

The Ya Basta!, or "Enough!," of January 1, 1994, inaugurated the publicphase o f the EZLN's struggle and introduced the world to Zapatismo.Although ini t ial ly the Zapatistas declared war against the Mexicangovernment and threatened to march on the capital in the hope of servingas a catalyst for a general uprising, they quickly broadened their agendaand shifted their focus to creating and developing the political spacenecessary for radical democratic practice. Ya Basta! does more thandeclare an opposition to oppressive forces; i t also represents a directaction with specific goals and strategies and invokes a long history ofstruggle. The 500-year legacy of resistance and the more recent history ofrevolutionary struggle i n Mexico coalesced into a prolonged "No!" onJanuary 1. "And so, with singular joy we dedicated ourselves to resisting,to saying 'no,' to transforming our poverty into a weapon. The weaponof resistance."

The Zapatistas' direct action declared Ya Basta! to the neoliberal project:the increased globalization of capital that is to be achieved by openingmarkets to trade, privatizing natural resources and state-run services,eliminating workers' rights, reducing the social wage and benefits, andhomogenizing communities through consumerism, the commodification ofeveryday life, and the exaltation of private property and individualism.

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The Zapatistas' f i r s t declaration was t imed t o coincide w i t h t h eimplementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),and i t outlined a l is t o f grievances and demands that spoke t o thestructural violence the indigenous peoples of Chiapas have endured forgenerations. The immediate goals stated in the eleven demands they putforward—including work, land, housing, food, health care, education,independence, liberty, democracy, justice, and peace—articulated theneeds and rights being denied to growing portions of Mexico's indigenouspopulation, as well as all peoples made miserable by neoliberal policiesthroughout the world. NAFTA provided no alternatives, making it "a deathsentence for the indigenous people." Ya Basta! is a statement of refusal,rebellion, and survival in the face of a future denied. The "No" can beshared, and as Gustavo Esteva has eloquently phrased it, transformed into"many yeses!"

The challenge posed by the word spoken defiantly in resistance is toparticipate in a new political space (encounter), develop new politicalrelationships or strategies o f doing politics (dialogue), and collectivelyarticulate a new political project (autonomy). The Zapatistas' commitmentto creating political space and their selfless initiation of dialogue requiresa response and participation by all parties. One response was heard inthe Ye Basta! shouted by the "many-headed street movement" in Seattleand echoed i n subsequent rumblings during the series o f proteststhat followed.

A Politics of Space

Prior to Seattle, the Zapatistas hosted an astonished international Left ina series of encuentros, or encounters, which took place in the mountainsof Chiapas. It has been through these gatherings, convened and hosted bythe EZLN, that the Zapatistas have had the most profound impact. "Theaudacity of the Zapatistas," the Midnight Notes Collective reminds us,"was to open a clearing in the forest heavily patrolled by the Mexican Armyand to allow others to come to speak to each other about capitalism andrevolution." These gatherings established a crucial bridge betweendifferent worlds, and that bridge is manifest in a new "international"—notan international based on rigid party doctrines or the dogmas of competingorganizations, bu t a n "International o f Hope," a web constituted b ynumerous autonomies, without a center or hierarchy, within which variouscoalitions of discontents can express themselves, in order to dismantle theforces and regimes oppressing all of them.

The Zapatistas have not organized beyond their own communities i nChiapas; rather they have animated and inspired countless numbers of

Zapatista communities mobilize to San Cristobal, Chiapas to celebrate anniversaiy of the uprising, 2003.

Anniversary of Zapatisra uprising, San Cristobal, Chiapas. January 1, 2003.

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"Perhaps," Subcomandante Marcos declares, "the new political morality isconstructed in a new space that is not the taking or retention of power, butserves as the counterweight and opposition that contains it and obliges i tto, for example, 'lead by obeying.—

The Zapatistas demonstrated that i t is possible to organize collectiveaction based on a communitywide dialogue, consensus, and commitment.Given that in any local context there is not simply one single, homogenouscommunity, how do we determine who leads and who obeys? Mandarobedeciendo, or "lead by obeying," suggests going beyond a system ofhierarchy and rank where elites are conferred the duty and right to direct.The leadership of a community, the process from which it emerges and isarticulated, requires clarification, such that mandar obedeciendo is notan excuse for a small coterie to direct, either out of cynicism or ambition.Mandar obedeciendo requires humility and a commitment to listening,neither of which can be taken for granted. I t is an invitation to a profoundtransformation, col lect ive a n d individual. Transformation i s b o t hnecessary and integral to struggle as we provoke, incite, facilitate, inspire,listen, and work with one another with humility.

The emergence o f the EZLN as a people's army is a narrative o ftransformation. The small group of urban revolutionaries who traveled toChiapas expecting to become a revolutionary vanguard abandoned theirconceptions o f revolution once t h e y were "contaminated b y and

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subordinated to the communities." In another move of transformation thecommunity itself became armed. The Zapatistas emerged from a contextof a variety o f ethnic groups, polit ical organizations, and economicinterests. Early in the struggle, during the critical moment of the originalEZLN's transformation from a vanguardist guerrilla to a community inarms, the Zapatistas reflected not one single indigenous identity, but theinterests of Tzeltal, Tolojobal, Tzotzil, Chol, and Mam peoples, to namejust a few.

The political imperatives of mandar obedeciendo also challenge many ofthe assumptions and previously unexamined strategies o f organizingassociated with "solidarity" efforts that often rely on a singular model,plan, or program fostering paternalism and elitism. Solidarity campaignstoo often focus on a single issue, developing networks of short-lived andfragile coalitions that can be resistant to crucial modifications and slow toadapt t o shift ing contexts. More important, solidarity projects tha trepresent, define, and speak for the struggle(s) of others presuppose theprogress o r development o f t hose b e i n g a i d e d a n d n o t t h etransformation of those providing the aid. Unfortunately, they are too ill-prepared t o acknowledge the transformations already taking place i ntargeted communities.

In the effort to go beyond solidarity, mandar obedeciendo begins with thepremise that communities made up o f diverse constituencies are, t ovarying and complex degrees, already organized. Taking our cues from theEZLN, we can imagine, in place of solidarity work, a politics of refusal,listening, and community-building in which people become part of "thestruggle" in their own way, at their own pace, and without being measuredby any specific model of "conscientization" or a political program specifiedby "the organization." We must operate from the premise that a givencommunity possesses the resources for its own transformation and has thecollective genius t o marshal those resources f o r pol i t ical action.Encuentro as a model o f political work presupposes individual andcollective transformation that results from dialogue, and it allows for thepossibility of individual and collective transformation into a communitywith purpose. Thus, the Zapatistas provide an important example of thepossibilities for an unarmed guerrilla operating in sites o f privilege, aresistance that makes direct action and disciplined formations centralelements of their political practice without abandoning dialogue.

Todo para todos, nada para nosotros, "everything for everyone, nothingfor ourselves," underscores the commitment to define struggle not bytaking state power, but imagining a new world, "a world where many

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worlds f i t ." Forsaking the desire to replace one elite with another, todopara todos, nada para nosotros invites us not to submit to individualneeds but to elaborate collective ones. More important, i t asserts thatcommunities are driven by collectively articulated obligations, not by thecompeting interests of individual needs. Zapatista political proposals andstrategy posit a "collective subject," demanding the fundamental rightsthat emerge from collective identities and communal needs.

Caminamos preguntando, or "we walk asking," challenges us to travel indialogue with one another, always with a view of a shared horizon. We areoften schooled t o repress the fundamental impulse t o question. Acommitment to inquiry allows us to transcend the facade of ideology andthe oppression of rigid institutions in favor o f discovery. I t contests aprocess in which we have been "educated" to accept being left out orrendered invisible t o everyone, including ourselves. The violence o fcultural homogenization produced through social f ict ions and t heideological maneuvers of a "democratic" system attempt to force us todeny ourselves as we deny the uniqueness and diversity o f others.Processes o f exclusion target specific communities, especially thosegroups who have chosen to resist, such as the communities who havetaken u p arms i n Chiapas. Other groups, such as youth, women,communities of color, constituencies who craft diverse, often seeminglyless obvious strategies of resistance, have also been marginalized as welland are threatened by relentless processes of homogenization.

Such exclusions could also be exerted in revolutionary movements, ahistory the Zapatistas have struggled not to repeat. Violence was not ameans to dominate, or even convince others of the virtues of a Zapatistavision or program. Ideas asserted through the force of arms are alwayssuspect, and as Marcos admits, "the task of an armed movement should beto present the problem, and then step aside." Able to pursue and developa "model of peace," their change in strategy corresponds to Gandhi's oftenmisunderstood explanation o f nonviolence as being an appropriatestrategy of the strong, not the weak. They have not abandoned the "modelof war" altogether, but have held i t in abeyance, the two possibilitiesworking in conjunction to expand their political project for Mexico andbeyond. Zapatista strength derives not only from their mobilizations butfrom the way in which people have rallied to their banner, confident intheir commitment not to take state power and impose themselves as arevolutionary vanguard. "For us i t would be a failure. What would be asuccess for the politico-military organizations of the sixties or seventieswhich emerged with the national liberation movements would be a fiascofor us," claims Marcos.

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Nunca j amas u n m u n d osin nosotros, "never again aworld without us," seeks toreverse t h e h i s t o r y o fmarginalization i n w h i c hcommunities h a v e b e e nsystematically silenced. Thenunca jamas is a declarationthat recognizes t h a t p r o -cesses of marginalization andhomogenization portend theextinction o f a peop le .suggesting the necessity foraction t h a t m u s t inc ludecultural renewal. I t proclaimsthe poss ib i l i t i es o f areimagined world, a world inwhich t hose i n rebe l l ionhave responsibi l i t ies a n dobligations to one another. Asa statement against elitism itreminds us that the struggleis n o t l i m i t e d t o t h eZapatistas o r those i n the South,multiple struggles in numerous sites.

but must be reimagined to include

Zapatismo offers a strategy of struggle on a variety of fronts, includingcultural ones. Fundamental to the Zapatistas' struggle to make themselvesvisible has been the claim that they narrate their own history and speaktheir own truths. The "not forgetting" reminds us to recover our past whilewe document our struggle. I n asserting critical elements o f a vibrantMayan culture, the Zapatistas have successfully resisted market forcesthat seek to homogenize all people. Their struggle has been successfulprimarily because it has been rooted locally, a deliberate effort to maintaintheir commons by reclaiming their history, culture, and community.

We must also reclaim our histories and cultures as we reclaim ourcommons. In sites of privilege such as those found in the "the west," aconsumer culture fosters values, attitudes, and practices peculiar t oa disposable, individualistic, and competitive society. I f we begin with adefinition of community that stresses sharing knowledge of what workslocally between generations a n d fu l f i l l ing collectively determinedobligations wi th one another, then we must ask ourselves how do we

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collectively define obligations and acknowledge local wisdom in the face ofcultural homegenization?

Notes in Conclusion

The Zapatistas' commitment to difference rather than identity, dialogueover command, and autonomy in opposition to state or market control hasrevealed a radical new practice, a commitment to theoretical reflectionand direct action that does not subordinate local struggles (issues inparticular contexts), priorit ize actions (strategies o f resistance), o ralternative practices (strategies for living outside o f state and marketforces) t o any specific political formation, program, o r ideology. TheZapatistas have refused t o d o bat t le w i th in a framework o f o ldorganizational structures. Thus, they have insisted that they will not fallback into the past that, as Marcos suggests, was defined by the battle overideologies. During the March for Indigenous Dignity the Zapatistas made itclear they were not trying to turn back the clock to a bucolic past of nativeharmony. "No," proclaimed Marcos, "we Indian peoples have come in orderto wind the clock and to thus ensure that the inclusive, tolerant, and pluraltomorrow which is, incidentally, the only tomorrow possible, will arrive. Inorder to do that, in order for our march to make the clock of humanitymarch, we Indian peoples have resorted to the art of reading what has notyet been written. Because that i s the dream which animates us asindigenous, as Mexicans and, above all , as human beings. Wi th ourstruggle, w e are reading the future which has already been sownyesterday, which is being cultivated today, and which can only be reapedif one fights, if, that is, one dreams,"