A Brief History of the Zapatistas
Chiapas is the most resource-rich state in Mexico, including the agricultural production of coffee, corn and cocoa, the growth of cattle-ranching, hydroelectric power, and timber harvested at irresponsible rates from the Lacandona rainforest. Most
importantly, Chiapas has some of the richest oil reserves in Mexico, which best explains the government's intransigence as well as the role of the United States in the region. In spite of the abundance of natural resources, poverty and the level of infrastructure in the form of schools, hospitals, and basic services remain abysmal. The disparities can be explained by the domination of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) over the last 65 years, which has meant high levels of corruption both at the state and national level as well as the strengthening of large landholders and their private armies (guardias blancas).
That the region has such a large indigenous population also contributes to the repression in Chiapas, since while modern Mexican nationalism includes indigenous people nostalgically, policies and development practices have been genocidal for centuries.
The systematic brutalization of indigenous communities and the tight control of the political machinery that allowed for no democratic openings constitute the conditions against which the Zapatistas organized. NAFTA is a key factor, since it sells off Mexican sovereignty and further erodes the autonomy of indigenous communities. The institution of NAFTA was preceded by the repeal of Article 27 of the Mexican constitution, which protected communal land holdings from privatization, part of the victory of land reforms of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The Zapatistas have insisted that the further privatization of land means the death of indigenous cultures that are centrally determined by a collective relation to the land.
In the original declaration of war and in subsequent communiqués, the Zapatistas have explained that their struggle is for the following eleven points: work, land, housing, food, health care, education, independence, liberty, democracy, justice, and peace. (Subsequently, in the unprecedented national and international plebiscite called by the EZLN last summer that drew approximately 1.2 million voters, five new items were also added: culture, information, security, combating corruption, and protection of the environment.) The Zapatistas have insisted throughout the peace talks and other forums they have sponsored that only a complete transformation of the political system, allowing for an authentic democratic space and for local autonomy, will achieve these demands. Because the Zapatistas did not rise up for provisional concessions and were quite prepared to die with dignity, they have been unwilling to compromise their basic principles in spite of the government's attempts to limit severely the range of negotiations and to co-opt them.
A key component of the Zapatistas' uniqueness is that from the very beginning they have refused a vanguard role, calling out to different sectors of Mexican civil society to take up the struggle in their own ways: "We think that revolutionary change in Mexico will not be a product of action in just one direction. In other words, it will not be, in the strict sense, an armed revolution or a peaceful revolution. It will primordially be a revolution that is the result of struggle on various social fronts, with many methods, under many social forms, with varying degrees of commitment and participation. And the result will be, not one of a party, organization, or coalition of organizations with its triumphant specific social proposal, but a sort of democratic space for the resolution of confrontation between diverse political proposals" (January 20, 1994).
Unlike virtually all other armed revolutionary movements, the Zapatistas have not sought to seize state power. Taking up arms was the only way to be heard and part of a larger strategy for expanding the space for democratic struggle. Learning from the mistakes of other Latin American struggles as well as from the failures and betrayals of the state socialist/capitalist model developed in the Soviet Union and elsewhere (including India), they have launched various call to civil society, such as the historic Convención Nacional Democrática (CND), an earlier incarnation of the Encuentros that brought over 6000 people to Zapatista controlled territory in August 1994. They have thus acknowledged with respect the legitimacy of other actors, including independent organizations within Chiapas such as the Organización Campesina [Peasant] Emiliano Zapata (OCEZ), who have struggled against violent land evictions. Even as, in the course of the last two and a half years, the Zapatistas have concluded that civil society cannot by itself transform the entrenched political structure and have contemplated converting themselves into a political force proper, most recently through the Frente Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (FZLN), they have refused to define themselves as a political party or to seek office.
Many people have attempted to reduce the success and significance of the Zapatistas to the leadership of Subcomandante Marcos, a Westernized mestizo educated in Mexico City who left for the jungles of Chiapas over twelve years ago. Marcos of course is the figure from whom we have heard the most through incisive and poetic communiqués published in Mexico and subsequently translated and distributed through new networks made possible by the development of fax and Internet technologies. However, this repeated insistence on Marcos' sole leadership betrays a racist spirit, echoed by government negotiators in peace talks last year, that imagines that indigenous people are only capable of spontaneous outbursts and unable to understand complex political ideas or generate independent thought. Marcos himself has spoken at length about his own full transformation through contact with indigenous communities, their needs, histories, and living traditions.
Not to discount the importance of Marcos as someone who has successfully served as a bridge between urban and indigenous worlds and fulfilled a fundamental role as cultural and political translator, the Zapatistas are an almost entirely indigenous organization without ties to other movements in Latin America, to Cuba, the former Soviet Union or China. They follow a model of direct democracy that grants voice to and seeks consensus among all members of the communities.
Particularly extraordinary about the organization of the Zapatistas is the subordination of the military to civilian leadership and approval. The highest authority of the Zapatistas is the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee-General Command (CCRI-CG), made up of representatives from all of the Zapatista communities, including such ethnicities as the Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolobal, Chol, Mam, and Zoque. If the Zapatistas consist of several thousand armed soldiers, there are tens of thousands of villagers who constitute their base of support. The communities themselves issued the order to the army to launch the armed phase of the struggle; and they, after extensive consultations, the process and results of which were described in great detail in communiqués, rejected the terms of the initial peace proposal in June 1994 and subsequently ratified the process by which peace talks would proceed in the second phase of talks beginning in 1995. The Zapatista decision-making process of painstaking dialogue, input, and approval across communities was also reflected in the ratification of the Women's Revolutionary Laws and demands that we do not read their insistence on cultural survival and autonomy as seeking static tradition.
Not withstanding the official cease-fire, violated unilaterally by the government last February when the army attacked entire villages, destroying everything and forcing communities to flee into the mountains, even since the re-establishment of the peace talks, the Zapatistas and other indigenous communities have endured a low intensity war. Military maneuvers and mobilizations, the brutality of the judicial police, and the unregulated lawlessness of the "white guards" hired by the large ranchers have meant constant intimidation and the frequent incidence of rape, false arrests, violent land evictions, and selective assassination. The Zapatistas have been challenged to determine how to negotiate with such an obviously duplicitous government.
This situation is further exacerbated by the involvement of the U.S. in Mexican affairs, which includes increased military "cooperation," the sale and donation of equipment designated for the "drug war" but used to kill poor peasants and Indians, and the militarization of the border to regulate labor and immigration. The U.S.'s imperialist ambitions, combining military and economic objectives and strategies, are perhaps best illustrated by the infamous Chase Manhattan memo that so outraged the
world, in which Riordan Roett advises that in order to restore investor confidence, the "government will have to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective control of the national territory and security policy" (1/13/95).
Yet the Zapatistas have countered their powerful enemies by challenging civil society to participate in the process of producing a radical shift in political culture and social relations. From July 27 - August 3 of this year, nearly three thousand
activists and community representatives from 42 countries gathered in five different villages in Chiapas, Mexico for the Intercontinental Encuentro For Humanity and Against Neo-liberalism. This historic conference, convened by a guerrilla army
in the jungle, follows an earlier set of five preparatory Continental Encuentros announced at the beginning of the year, to be held in the Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Australia.
importantly, Chiapas has some of the richest oil reserves in Mexico, which best explains the government's intransigence as well as the role of the United States in the region. In spite of the abundance of natural resources, poverty and the level of infrastructure in the form of schools, hospitals, and basic services remain abysmal. The disparities can be explained by the domination of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) over the last 65 years, which has meant high levels of corruption both at the state and national level as well as the strengthening of large landholders and their private armies (guardias blancas).
That the region has such a large indigenous population also contributes to the repression in Chiapas, since while modern Mexican nationalism includes indigenous people nostalgically, policies and development practices have been genocidal for centuries.
The systematic brutalization of indigenous communities and the tight control of the political machinery that allowed for no democratic openings constitute the conditions against which the Zapatistas organized. NAFTA is a key factor, since it sells off Mexican sovereignty and further erodes the autonomy of indigenous communities. The institution of NAFTA was preceded by the repeal of Article 27 of the Mexican constitution, which protected communal land holdings from privatization, part of the victory of land reforms of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The Zapatistas have insisted that the further privatization of land means the death of indigenous cultures that are centrally determined by a collective relation to the land.
In the original declaration of war and in subsequent communiqués, the Zapatistas have explained that their struggle is for the following eleven points: work, land, housing, food, health care, education, independence, liberty, democracy, justice, and peace. (Subsequently, in the unprecedented national and international plebiscite called by the EZLN last summer that drew approximately 1.2 million voters, five new items were also added: culture, information, security, combating corruption, and protection of the environment.) The Zapatistas have insisted throughout the peace talks and other forums they have sponsored that only a complete transformation of the political system, allowing for an authentic democratic space and for local autonomy, will achieve these demands. Because the Zapatistas did not rise up for provisional concessions and were quite prepared to die with dignity, they have been unwilling to compromise their basic principles in spite of the government's attempts to limit severely the range of negotiations and to co-opt them.
A key component of the Zapatistas' uniqueness is that from the very beginning they have refused a vanguard role, calling out to different sectors of Mexican civil society to take up the struggle in their own ways: "We think that revolutionary change in Mexico will not be a product of action in just one direction. In other words, it will not be, in the strict sense, an armed revolution or a peaceful revolution. It will primordially be a revolution that is the result of struggle on various social fronts, with many methods, under many social forms, with varying degrees of commitment and participation. And the result will be, not one of a party, organization, or coalition of organizations with its triumphant specific social proposal, but a sort of democratic space for the resolution of confrontation between diverse political proposals" (January 20, 1994).
Unlike virtually all other armed revolutionary movements, the Zapatistas have not sought to seize state power. Taking up arms was the only way to be heard and part of a larger strategy for expanding the space for democratic struggle. Learning from the mistakes of other Latin American struggles as well as from the failures and betrayals of the state socialist/capitalist model developed in the Soviet Union and elsewhere (including India), they have launched various call to civil society, such as the historic Convención Nacional Democrática (CND), an earlier incarnation of the Encuentros that brought over 6000 people to Zapatista controlled territory in August 1994. They have thus acknowledged with respect the legitimacy of other actors, including independent organizations within Chiapas such as the Organización Campesina [Peasant] Emiliano Zapata (OCEZ), who have struggled against violent land evictions. Even as, in the course of the last two and a half years, the Zapatistas have concluded that civil society cannot by itself transform the entrenched political structure and have contemplated converting themselves into a political force proper, most recently through the Frente Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (FZLN), they have refused to define themselves as a political party or to seek office.
Many people have attempted to reduce the success and significance of the Zapatistas to the leadership of Subcomandante Marcos, a Westernized mestizo educated in Mexico City who left for the jungles of Chiapas over twelve years ago. Marcos of course is the figure from whom we have heard the most through incisive and poetic communiqués published in Mexico and subsequently translated and distributed through new networks made possible by the development of fax and Internet technologies. However, this repeated insistence on Marcos' sole leadership betrays a racist spirit, echoed by government negotiators in peace talks last year, that imagines that indigenous people are only capable of spontaneous outbursts and unable to understand complex political ideas or generate independent thought. Marcos himself has spoken at length about his own full transformation through contact with indigenous communities, their needs, histories, and living traditions.
Not to discount the importance of Marcos as someone who has successfully served as a bridge between urban and indigenous worlds and fulfilled a fundamental role as cultural and political translator, the Zapatistas are an almost entirely indigenous organization without ties to other movements in Latin America, to Cuba, the former Soviet Union or China. They follow a model of direct democracy that grants voice to and seeks consensus among all members of the communities.
Particularly extraordinary about the organization of the Zapatistas is the subordination of the military to civilian leadership and approval. The highest authority of the Zapatistas is the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee-General Command (CCRI-CG), made up of representatives from all of the Zapatista communities, including such ethnicities as the Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolobal, Chol, Mam, and Zoque. If the Zapatistas consist of several thousand armed soldiers, there are tens of thousands of villagers who constitute their base of support. The communities themselves issued the order to the army to launch the armed phase of the struggle; and they, after extensive consultations, the process and results of which were described in great detail in communiqués, rejected the terms of the initial peace proposal in June 1994 and subsequently ratified the process by which peace talks would proceed in the second phase of talks beginning in 1995. The Zapatista decision-making process of painstaking dialogue, input, and approval across communities was also reflected in the ratification of the Women's Revolutionary Laws and demands that we do not read their insistence on cultural survival and autonomy as seeking static tradition.
Not withstanding the official cease-fire, violated unilaterally by the government last February when the army attacked entire villages, destroying everything and forcing communities to flee into the mountains, even since the re-establishment of the peace talks, the Zapatistas and other indigenous communities have endured a low intensity war. Military maneuvers and mobilizations, the brutality of the judicial police, and the unregulated lawlessness of the "white guards" hired by the large ranchers have meant constant intimidation and the frequent incidence of rape, false arrests, violent land evictions, and selective assassination. The Zapatistas have been challenged to determine how to negotiate with such an obviously duplicitous government.
This situation is further exacerbated by the involvement of the U.S. in Mexican affairs, which includes increased military "cooperation," the sale and donation of equipment designated for the "drug war" but used to kill poor peasants and Indians, and the militarization of the border to regulate labor and immigration. The U.S.'s imperialist ambitions, combining military and economic objectives and strategies, are perhaps best illustrated by the infamous Chase Manhattan memo that so outraged the
world, in which Riordan Roett advises that in order to restore investor confidence, the "government will have to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective control of the national territory and security policy" (1/13/95).
Yet the Zapatistas have countered their powerful enemies by challenging civil society to participate in the process of producing a radical shift in political culture and social relations. From July 27 - August 3 of this year, nearly three thousand
activists and community representatives from 42 countries gathered in five different villages in Chiapas, Mexico for the Intercontinental Encuentro For Humanity and Against Neo-liberalism. This historic conference, convened by a guerrilla army
in the jungle, follows an earlier set of five preparatory Continental Encuentros announced at the beginning of the year, to be held in the Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Australia.