Field Notes from December of Resistance in Chiapas (2019)
written in 2020
Seher Aydar, a Kurdish activist and politician in Norway, active with Solidarity with Kurdistan, delivers a message about the Kurdish women’s struggle at an open mic session of the Second International Women’s Encuentro organized by Zapatistas in December 2019.
Celebration of Life: A December of Resistance and Rebellion
“We see that women around the world are attacked both as women and as members of their peoples. The situation is the same for us in Kurdistan,” Seher Aydar, Kurdish activist and politician from Norway, told me at the Second International Women’s Encuentro organized by Zapatista women in Chiapas, after she delivered a message about the Kurdish women’s struggle for peace, autonomy and gender equality in northeastern Syria under the ongoing Turkish occupation. “I’m excited to be here because this autonomous region shows that people can decide over their own lives. I think we are leading the same struggles against oppression by states, and the solution is to stand in solidarity with each other all over the world.” Seher was one of around 3,300 women from 49 countries who camped out near the Zapatista caracol in Morelia during the 3-days women-only gathering. They testified about violence against women and their communities and committed to joining efforts in fighting it.
Subcommandante Moisés is delivering a statement at the anniversary celebration, surrounded by the rest of the CCRI (Comité Clandestino Indígena Revolucionario — Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee).
Part of a month-long program called Celebration of Life: A December of Resistance and Rebellion, the women’s gathering took place alongside a film and dance festival, a Forum in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth, and the celebration of the 26th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising. In the last hours of 2019, the rebels of the Lacandon jungle celebrated their movement’s achievements listed by Subcommandante Moisés in his speech: establishment of autonomous health clinics and schools, collective use of land, preservation of indigenous language, culture and way of life, women’s empowerment and eradication of gendered violence. A leading voice of the indigenous peoples in Mexico, Zapatistas continue their struggle against the Mexican government’s persistent attempts to dispossess indigenous communities of their autonomy, territory and traditions. I examine achievements and challenges of the Zapatista social transformation as part of my report on the month of resistance in Chiapas, drawing on existing ethnographic research as well as my own interviews and conversations.
Male milicianos in formation are facing the stage with the CCRI at the anniversary celebration. Female milicianas are lined up along the perimeter of the field.
Origins
In August 2019, 25 years after the initial armed uprising, EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional — Zapatista Army of National Liberation) announced an expansion of their territory to the surprise of even their own followers. According to Juan López Intzín, a member of Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Center of Human Rights (Frayba), which has been accompanying Zapatistas since the very beginning, this was a message to the Mexican government about the continuous presence of the movement and its persistence in building autonomy. Zapatista communities are spread primarily in the northeastern and central parts of the state of Chiapas, in part occupying the land that was “recuperated” from private landowners and redistributed to landless peasants following the uprising. Since the proclamation of autonomy in 38 municipalities in defiance of the military encirclement in 1994, Zapatistas have been walking slowly but surely towards self-governance and economic independence from the state, while not challenging the sovereignty of the Mexican nation-state. In the few years that followed the uprising, they moved away from their initial demands on the Mexican government for guarantees of indigenous rights and basic material necessities within the framework of San Andres Accords. Instead, they have channeled their energy into building autonomous structures of governance. As the government failed to implement the Accords signed in 1996, the movement decided to boycott municipal elections, refusing to recognize officially elected authorities and choosing instead to elect their own leaders in open community assemblies in accordance with local usos y costumbres (customs and traditions). The de facto autonomous governments in noncontiguous territories under the movement’s control were institutionalized the same year through a system of aguascalientes — regional multiservice centers that served surrounding autonomous municipalities.
Legend on the right reads from up to bottom: New Caracoles, New Autonomous Municipalities, [Old] Caracoles; Train Maya [route]; Highways: Superhighway San Cristobal-Palenque. Map made by Maël Lhopital, a volunteer with DESMI.
Further reneging on the San Andres Accords, the Mexican government passed in 2001 a watered down version of Zapatistas’ demands, known as Indigenous Law, even though it was denounced by major indigenous and human rights organizations and voted against by indigenous populations. Zapatistas cut all relationships with the government in response and concentrated on the further consolidation of their autonomy. A period of inward silence resulted in the establishment in 2003 of a new system of governance consisting of 5 regional centers called caracoles — which literally means conch shells or snails in Spanish, a Mayan symbol that has traditionally been used to call the community to an assembly. These caracoles house Juntas de Buen Gobierno (JBG, or Council of Good Government) — administrative and political bodies serving several autonomous municipalities. Last year’s expansion involved the formation of 7 new caracoles and 4 new municipal centers, which, as Juan Lopez Intzín explained, allowed easier access to administrative, political and cultural hubs for the communities that previously had to travel long distances to reach them. While this expansion involved a relatively modest gain in territory, the move testified to the growth of the organizational capacity of and a continuous popular support for the movement.
“It’s People Who Decide”
During the dance festival, which took place in one of the new caracoles, freshly constructed for the December events, it caught my attention that uniformed Zapatistas were performing mundane tasks, such as making and selling popcorn. When I asked them about their responsibilities, an older man, who, as it turned out, participated in the 1994 uprising, responded that they were insurgentes who mostly stayed in the mountains but came to the festival to help out with running it. When asked whether they were involved in organizing the festival, he emphatically shook his head, saying that this was the responsibility of the JBG, that is the civilian government, with which the insurgentes like himself didn’t interfere.
Insurgentes in one of the new caracoles, named Espiral digno tejiendo los colores de la humanidad en memoria de l@s caídos (Dignified spiral weaving the colors of humanity in memory of the fallen ones) in Tulan Ka´u, where the film and dance festivals took place.
In fact, one of the rationales for the creation of JBGs in 2003 was to hand over control from the military-political organization EZLN, which had organized clandestinely since 1983 before going public in 1994, to civilian bodies elected by indigenous, “support base” communities, thus enabling democratic self-governance of Zapatistas’ supporters. As subcomandante Marcos commented on this change:
The military structure of the EZLN “contaminated” in some ways a democratic and self-governing tradition. The EZLN was, shall we say, one of the “antidemocratic” elements in a relation of direct community democracy. . . . Since the EZLN, on principle, is not fighting to take power, none of the military leadership or members of the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee can occupy positions of authority in the community or in the autonomous municipalities.
The current structure of the movement consists of several layers: at the top is the Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee-General Command (CCRI-CG) — a civilian political body, responsible for steering the movement. It consists of delegates from local CCRI committees whose members are chosen in the general assemblies of each Zapatista community. As Leandro Vergara-Camus documents through his fieldwork, the clandestine committee’s members constantly travel to different communities, attending meetings, helping solve local issues and presenting ideas discussed by the movement to the support base to get their opinion. The hierarchically organized military structure consists of insurgentes, men and women who live in camps located on inaccessible terrain, and milicianos/milicianas, members of Zapatista civilian militia who stay in their communities for protection purposes but can be called upon by the Zapatista army when necessary. Finally, there are support bases — communities that affiliate themselves with the movement, provide material support for insurgentes and militias and elect their own local, municipal and regional authorities.
At a community, or village, level, Zapatistas have retained the traditional decision-making mechanism of asamblea. Since the passing of the agrarian reform in Mexico in the 1930s, indigenous communities have been able to choose to own and manage their land as an ejido — a collective form of ownership that does not allow individual plots to be sold or offered as loan collateral without the community’s permission. When redistributing the land “recuperated” from big landowners during and following the uprising, Zapatistas decided to retain the ejido structure in order not to clash with traditional practices; however, they eliminated its undemocratic features. Ejido assemblies, the highest decision-making body of a community, traditionally tend to be exclusively male since women do not share in land titles; they exclude community residents without land, and their elected representatives — comisarios ejidal — are often in a clientelistic relationship with elites and political parties. Zapatistas, however, turned assembly into a mechanism of democratic decision-making, granting all members the right to vote, regardless of their land status, gender and age. These communal assemblies elect delegates to the next level in Zapatista administrative structure — a municipal council. On the regional level, each autonomous municipality is represented through delegates in a JBG of a corresponding caracol. JBG members serve for 3 years on a rotating basis in sessions as short as a few weeks. The frequent rotation is intended to prevent the emergence of clientelistic networks.
A key principle underlying the Zapatista project of autonomy is mandar obedeciendo (to lead by obeying). It implies that political leaders do not make decisions on behalf of their community as its representatives, but rather act as their community’s delegates, implementing decisions made in local assemblies. In theory this means that any ideas proposed at a higher level go through the consultation process with each community after which delegates carry their communities’ opinion back to a municipal meeting. In practice, however, as Vergara-Camus documents, levels of grassroots participation vary depending on the history and politics of each Zapatista community, as well as on the nature of decisions that need to be taken. There is a strong emphasis on consensus decision making, although that oftentimes means sitting through day long meetings where everyone has to be heard, and decision is not taken until a compromise is worked out. Leaders are chosen based on the indigenous tradition of cargo — an obligation to serve one’s community — and commit to unremunerated posts of responsibility. Another principle that ensures accountability is that of autocritica, which, as shown by Melissa Forbis in her ethnographic work, can happen both at an individual level and the level of the movement as a whole. For example, community members register their complaints against the JBG, while JBG officials prepare reports and self-critique at the end of every yearly cycle. Communities have the right to revoke the mandate of those officials who do not fulfill their duty of serving the people. However, as I learnt from several Zapatista members, those in positions of responsibility are first encouraged to reflect on their difficulties or mistakes in order to improve their ability to carry out tasks they are entrusted with.
Construct, Don’t Destroy: Zapatistas’ Autonomy
Asked what kind of dance they would perform during the dance festival, a young woman from one of the Zapatista communities responded, “anti-capitalist.” Alternated with performances by artists from Mexico and beyond, most dances by members of Zapatista communities portrayed the life before and after the 1994 uprising. As one of the dances unfolded, young women and men with covered faces dropped beer bottles that they were pretending to drink and picked up signs with the words Education, Health, Justice, Collective Work and Women’s Rights, referring to the hallmarks of the Zapatista self-governance.
Most of Zapatista dances at the festival presented the life before and after the rebellion. Here the youth are enacting the former, pretending to drink beer and holding a sign with the name of the most recent governmental aid program, Sembrando Vida, which, as Zapatistas argue, is designed to seduce the movement supporters into leaving the struggle.
Members of a Zapatista community enact in their dance the life after 1994. Signs are saying “Education,” “Health,” and “Collective Work.”
More than 100 performers of various dance genres — from classical to hip-hop — participated in the 4-day-long dance festival. German Pizano and Paulina Segura from Mexico performed a piece titled Zapata.
Education
Having adopted a position of refusal of any aid from the government, the EZLN took on the state’s function of service provision in communities affiliated with the movement. At the end of the second day of the dance festival, I struck a conversation with a young man who came from his community to help out at the event. Roberto finished primary and secondary school — the two levels of the Zapatista education system — and was planning to become an educator in his community. Since there are no educational institutions higher than secondary school in the Zapatista territories, I wondered about his training. He had been one of the 200 young people (100 men and 100 women) chosen by their communities to attend two rounds of the scientific conference organized by Zapatistas, titled ConSciencias para la Humanidad. Afterwards, Roberto participated in community workshops to share what he learnt there. As the initiative was suspended after two conferences in 2016 and 2017, Roberto continued working on his family’s milpa (cornfield), not sure as to whether and when he could continue his scientific education.
Zapatista autonomous schools are administered by “education promoters” — primarily local youth who teach in their own communities under supervision of an education committee elected by a local assembly. Since the autonomous education system was launched in 1999, Zapatistas have carried out training programs to prepare education promoters and develop curriculum in collaboration with solidarity groups, NGOs and volunteers from outside, as well as in consultation with the local population. As I was told by a Zapatista support base member, today communities have their own practitioners who train new promoters. Just like other positions of authority and responsibility, promoters do not receive salaries and have to farm their land for subsistence. While people in the community usually help plant and harvest promoters’ fields, the latter at times end up leaving their position due to financial difficulties or, in the case of women, the need to take care of their own children.
Talking to teenagers at the anniversary, I learnt that they study autonomy, history, agroecology and how to treat animals. The curriculum is tailored to prepare a new generation for tasks of governance and self-sufficiency. Classes are taught in both Spanish and indigenous languages, with the emphasis on the preservation of local traditions and knowledges. Community takes an active part in determining the methodology and curriculum as illustrated in a comment by an education promoter in one of the communities, quoted by Bruno Baronnet:
We consult our committee of education and our assembly regarding the true knowledges that are important to our people. It’s people who decide and we respect their opinion, even if sometimes I do not agree, as the other day during the assembly when I was ordered to no longer play with children during the school because some parents think that one cannot learn while enjoying oneself. I didn’t know how to tell them that it’s not at all true, but I will convince them next time. (The author’s translation from French).
Health
Similarly to autonomous schools, Zapatistas have developed their own health system, although in this aspect they still have to rely on specialists from outside the community. Most communities have a volunteer who receives training in both traditional and modern medicine in Zapatista-organized regional health centers. These volunteers provide basic services in a local casa de salud (house of health). More advanced treatment is available in clinics located in caracoles and some of the municipal centers. The clinic in Oventic, for example, is one of the most sophisticated: it provides regular basic surgery, dental, gynaecological and eye clinics; hosts a laboratory, an herbal workshop, a dozen beds for admissions, and is equipped with ambulances. Such clinics are assisted by volunteer doctors, together with local medical staff. Health coordinating committees, just like the education ones, exist on each administrative level, which ensures participation of communities in administering the autonomous health system.
There is an attempt to recover indigenous traditions of healing that have been disappearing due to migration, the government’s assimilationist policies and religious groups’ condemnation of these practices as “witchcraft.” The attempt is driven by a pragmatic concern of eliminating dependence on Western medicine. For example, as Melissa Forbis documents in her research in one of the autonomous municipalities, a training program for local herbalists had been initiated after community members and regional leaders evaluated their experience in the mountains where people had to flee from an offensive by the Mexican army in 1995. Many had become ill without much food or medicine and would have benefited from knowledge of plant medicine.
Zapatista women coming out of a clinic located in the caracol Morelia, near the “semillero” (seedbed) where the women’s encuentro and anniversary took place. One of the attendees fell sick while at the gathering and stayed in the hospital.
In mixed communities, where Zapatistas co-exist with non-Zapatistas, autonomous services are open to all. I was told, for example, that non-Zapatista parents sent their children to autonomous schools because they are known to be of a better quality. Same applies to Zapatista clinics since the lack of a doctor in indigenous communities is a common occurrence.
Justice
The Zapatista justice system in particular has gained trust and legitimacy beyond the movement’s supporters. It is known to be less corrupt or partial compared to governmental institutions of justice and adopts a restorative, rather than punitive approach. The emphasis is on the need to find a compromise that satisfies all parties. Moreover, it is free of charge and conducted in indigenous languages.
The system consists of several levels: at the first level, cases are resolved by community elders, especially if they concern issues internal to a Zapatista community, such as gossip, theft, drunkenness, or domestic disputes. If unresolved, cases go up to the next, municipal level where they are dealt with by an Honor and Justice Commission. Sentences most of the time involve some kind of community service work and minimal jail sentences for several days (as Forbis explains, community jail is a locked room with partially open door so that people can stop by to chat and pass food). Mariana Mora provides an illustration of the movement’s approach to punishment, documenting a case in which Zapatistas issued a year-long community service sentence for a robbery. Those found guilty were allowed to alternate service with work on their own cornfields so that their families did not have to share in the punishment. The commission explained their decision as follows:
We thought that if we simply put them in jail, those who really suffer are the family members. The guilty just rest all day in jail and gain weight, but their families are the ones who have to work the cornfield and figure out how to survive.
The highest level, that of the JBG, deals with cases that primarily involve other local political organizations, usually in disputes over land, or with local governmental authorities. Non-Zapatistas seek out the autonomous justice system not only when they have disputes with members of Zapatista communities, but also when they experience unjust treatment by the government’s officials. In such cases Zapatistas may decide to accompany the claimants to the public office and argue on their behalf. As Mora argues, these practices have contributed to the continuation of social ties with the communities that have politically distanced themselves from Zapatistas.
Production: Para Todos Todo, Para Nosotros Nada (Everything for Everyone, Nothing for Us)
As Maria at the mesa de critica (table of criticism) at the women’s encuentro explained to us, earnings from production and land collectives are used to finance the functioning of the autonomous government, schools and clinics, as well as collective projects and events of various kinds. Zapatistas established cooperatives that produce for external trade, primarily through fair trade networks, selling, for example, coffee and honey, and for local consumption, such as horticulture, bread-baking or cattle cooperatives. There are collective stores that resell at a low cost produce purchased wholesale so that community members can thus save the cost of travelling to larger towns and cities. Zapatista-owned transportation provides services to the local population and is used for collective needs. One of the recent inventions is popular banks, or revolving funds that make low-interest loans to members of the support base communities. These banks also generate funds that get invested in new collective projects. Some collectives are women-only and intended to provide an opportunity for women to gain confidence and participate in the social life of their communities.
Maria, member of a Zapatista support base community, in charge of mesa de critica (table of criticism) at the women’s encuentro, shared her experience and understanding of many aspects of the Zapatista struggle.
Ecology
As farming for household production remains the main source of subsistence for Zapatista families, the movement has been conscious about the need to preserve the land and natural resources it harbors, especially given the finite amount of land accessible to the movement supporters and the declining fertility of the soil. With this goal, communities have been developing agro-ecological methods of farming in collaboration with sympathetic civil society actors, such as DESMI, which accompanies communities in strengthening local practices of solidarity economy and agroecology. Children learn agroecology at school, while local communities have their agroecology promotores. There are efforts to protect local seeds against the introduction of the genetically modified ones and to replace agro-chemicals with agro-ecological substitutes. Mora quotes a leader in agroecology in one of the communities:
We are starting to learn how to conserve the earth and there are many ways to do this through compost and covers and ground cover. And the producers are trying to work with the environment because this is best … it is part of the circle of life. In conventional agriculture there are many parts, many machines, trucks, tractors, and there are plastics and fertilizers and many things to buy and process. It is not careful and does not preserve the earth.
Despite previous prohibitions, however, pesticides continue to be used in some communities, as Maria from mesa de critica admitted.
A Movement within a Movement: Zapatista Women Reclaiming their Rights
The Second International Women’s Encuentro was a testimony to Zapatistas’ progress in redefining gender roles and empowering women both in private and public spheres. As Maria from mesa de critica said, “We wanted to show the world that women can organize and defend themselves, without men’s support. What used to happen to us — we used to be put in jail, killed, disappeared — we don’t want that anymore. That’s why we are organizing. ”
Female milicianas at the Second International Women’s Encuentro. After standing in a military-style formation during the opening speech by Comandanta Amada, they proceeded to perform a combination of march and dance under the tunes of cumbia, a popular dance music.
Women’s rights have been an integral part of the Zapatista social transformation from the very first day of their uprising when the Women’s Revolutionary Law was publicly announced alongside other revolutionary laws. Subcommandante Marcos (now Galeano) referred to it as the first Zapatista revolution because women pushed for their demands within the organization itself and won them already a year before the EZLN went public. Significantly, unlike other demands that were made against the government, this law was addressed to indigenous communities themselves, and female Zapatista leaders declared publicly their right to transform traditions that oppress them. The women with whom I talked at the encuentro emphasized the effort they have taken to make both men and women within Zapatista communities embrace the need for women’s empowerment.
In accordance with the revolutionary law, women have to be equitably represented in the social and political life of their communities. They have been active at all levels of government, as militants and insurgents, promoters of health and education, and members of production collectives. Besides empowerment in the public sphere, the law stipulated freedom for women to choose their partners and how many children to have, forbade forced marriage and domestic violence, and prescribed severe punishment for rape and attempted rape. Family planning, women’s health and contraception are provided in Zapatista clinics and — even though they are not available all the time and in every locality — have become commonplace in the communities. Moreover, the ban on alcohol that was passed as a result of women’s organizing has greatly decreased domestic violence.
Zapatista women presiding over the Forum in Defense of Territory and Mother Earth, co-organized by EZLN and CNI, which took place in a new caracole in the autonomous university CIDECI, located in San Cristobal, the capital city of the state of Chiapas.
Shortcomings and Obstacles
Despite the movement’s encouragement of greater women’s participation both in discourse and practice, the changes in gender relations and women’s empowerment have taken place slowly and unevenly, with different degrees of success across communities, as ethnographers document.
Women are still underrepresented in civilian positions of authority, which, significantly, the movement is aware of. Addressing achievements of the JBG in their first year in a 2004 communique, subcomandante Marcos stated that the lack of change in gender dynamics in day-to-day life was one of the new self-government’s failures: while the percentage of women in the guerilla CCIR was between 30 and 40%, in the JBG it was on average under one percent. While there are no quotas for women’s participation, an older coordinator at the women’s encuentro told me that a regional JBG consists of 40 people — 20 women and 20 men. However, on lower levels, gender parity is not obligatory, and communities and municipalities decide for themselves.
Women at times end up abandoning positions of authority or participation in production collectives due to social pressure coming from community members of both genders. Those who take up roles outside the home may become targets of rumors and jokes usually alleging that they use their positions to secretly meet with men. Alternatively, men tend to intervene with women’s projects, taking them over or advocating for male inclusion, thus reducing opportunities for women’s engagement.
Women, thus, are in a constant negotiation within their communities. Forbis provides an illustration of how patriarchy gets reasserted despite the revolutionary discourse when she documents a story of Maria, a successful health promoter in her community, who, after the birth of her first child, became pressured by her mother-in-law to stay at home and take care of the family. Maria’s husband, a former Zapatista insurgent, told her that she had to give up her activities outside the home and threatened to find another woman. Maria brought the case to a community assembly where local authorities told her husband to stop preventing her from fulfilling her duty to the community.
As Zapatista women continue dealing with manifestations of gender inequality within their communities, they emphasize the consciousness raising aspect of their struggle. Mariana Mora quotes Judith, a female member of a municipal Honor and Justice Commission, who gets to deal with cases of divorce, domestic violence, infidelity and separations:
Conflicts are resolved with good faith. For example, if you punish with monetary fines or if you stick them in jail, then our brothers are not going to understand that they did something wrong when they mistreat their women. That is why giving advice is important. If a brother does not reason then we have to help him find his path… that is why we give the talks, so they no longer mistreat the women. That is what our guidelines state, that we have to give advice and ask them to ask forgiveness. But if the man continues to mistreat the woman, if the man says that is my tradition, I beat her because she doesn’t keep the kitchen clean, well that is not a real tradition, it is a real pretext so they can keep doing their dirty things. So then our guidelines climb in punishment and we have them do community work but the talks need to continue.
Educational efforts target women equally as men, as Judith testifies:
The work of Honor and Justice is also like what we do in the collectives. There we try to motivate the compañeras [women-comrades] and explain to them their rights. Even though sometimes we tell women what their rights are, they do not always understand … In my community we talk about this. If your husband mistreats you it isn’t because of gossip or because God wants to. They don’t have the right to treat you like that. That is why we also give talks to the women.
Lucas Avendaño, a Zapotec queer performer, is enacting a wedding ceremony, himself in the role of a bride and a Zapatista compa (comrade) as a groom. Photo credit: https://radiozapatista.org/?tag=comparte
It must be noted that the Zapatista movement has been open to transcending the gender binary and embracing difference. Zapatistas have reached out to queer and transgender communities to build alliances, invited gender-nonconforming individuals to their events, and addressed the issue of queerness in their statements. As Marcos stated in a communique on the occasion of the Pride March in Mexico City:
What do lesbians, homosexuals, transsexuals and bisexuals have to be ashamed of? Let those who rob and kill with impunity be ashamed: the government! Let those who persecute the different be ashamed!
A mural in the caracol Oventic in the school yard (taken on a rainy day rather common in the area). The painting on the left depicts Newroz, the traditional celebration of the New Year among the Kurds; the writing says both in Kurdish and Spanish “Live long the struggles of Kurds and Zapatistas!”
Challenges
War of Programs
Talking with Jorge, a member of a mixed-gender collective that produces souvenirs sold to visitors of the caracol Oventic, we learnt that in his village Zapatistas lived side by side with pristas — followers of the PRI party, which ruled Mexico and the state of Chiapas for more than 70 years, until 2000. Jorge admitted that some members of his community had been “leaving” the movement — that is, changing their political affiliation while remaining on their land — in order to receive governmental aid.
Economic self-sufficiency has been one of the challenges of the autonomous project and a reason why some Zapatista supporters leave positions of authority, all of which are unenumerated, and even the movement as a whole. One of the principles that the movement’s supporters are expected to uphold is the rejection of any governmental aid, which has been used by the state for counterinsurgency purposes. While the movement has relied on development aid from sympathetic NGOs and donations from international solidarity groups to finance its collective projects, individual families at times find themselves in economic hardship due to the precarious nature of subsistence farming or lack of sufficient land to meet their food needs. Bancos zapatistas have been recently created to address this problem by making loans to community members primarily in cases of emergency. Some people choose temporary employment on plantations or in the construction sector in urban centers, or migration to other parts of Mexico and even to the US — sometimes with a permission from the movement to leave and return. Alternatively, supporters opt for governmental aid, which means leaving the struggle.
The Mexican government responded violently to the 1994 uprising by employing military force, dismantling autonomous municipalities and fostering paramilitary groups that carried out attacks against Zapatista sympathizers. These counterinsurgency efforts culminated in the Acteal massacre in 1996 when a paramilitary group murdered 45 Tzotzil indigenous people, largely women and children belonging to Las Abejas, a pacifist indigenous organization based in dozens of communities in Chenalho, Chiapas. Since the “so-called” democratic transition initiated by president Vincente Fox, the Mexican government has relied less on direct violence, instead employing more insidious tactiques to co-opt and divide the movement’s supporters through the so-called “war of programs.”
When asked to give an example of challenges experienced by Zapatista communities, Maria from the mesa de critica started talking about Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life), the most recent program of the “mal gobierno” (bad government, as Zapatistas refer to the state), introduced under the new president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). The program may originate from noble intentions as the government offers monthly payments to small farmers to plant trees on their land parcels. However, as Juan López Intzín of Frayba explained to me, any government aid program, regardless of its goals, sows tensions and divisions within indigenous communities as cooperation with the government is believed to create dependency and endanger historic autonomy of these communities. While there are no exact numbers as to the degree to which Zapatista communities have been affected by such programs, they present a major concern to the durability of the movement.
More of the same?
While AMLO has been hailed within and outside Mexico as a progressive opponent of neoliberalism, Zapatistas and CNI argue that there is a continuity between the new president and his predecessors in terms of their treatment of Mexico’s indigenous communities. Sembrando Vida is just one illustration of this. In the beginning of 2019, right after AMLO was elected, Frayba documented an increase in the number of patrols in the caracol Realidad, one of the communities monitored by Frayba volunteer observers. This included frequent flyovers by armed planes and military helicopters, as well as plain clothes military entering the community, asking about EZLN activities and spying on Frayba volunteers. While there has been no recent violence on the part of the military, Juan López Intzín of Frayba considers their constant movement through and surveillance of the community as acts of harassment.
War of Megaprojects
That the increase in militarization would happen under AMLO came as no surprise to Zapatistas. They have long distrusted the self-proclaimed progressive, refusing to support him in three presidential elections, despite his repeated appeals for the movement’s support. Instead, diverging from the principle of non-participation in party-electoral politics, Zapatistas ran their own pre-candidate in the 2018 election — an indigenous spokeswoman of the CNI, María de Jesús Patricio, better known as Marichuy. While the campaign alienated some of the Zapatista followers, it increased the CNI’s visibility and expanded its base of supporters. As the CNI, together with EZLN, gathered for the fourth national assembly in December 2019, the Maya Train — the feature megaproject of AMLO — was condemned as an epitome of the new government’s extractivist policies. While it is presented by AMLO as a solution to problems faced by communities, such as lack of basic infrastructure, since it will bring in tourism and economic development, opponents predict harm to both the environment and communities along the train route. The project harbors risk of disrupting traditional lifestyles of indigenous communities, breaking up collective landholdings (ejidos) by offering individual farmers to rent out their parcels, and setting the stage for further megaprojects in the region.
Critics say that AMLO is able to push forward the projects that would have been opposed under his predecessors because of his progressive discourse. But when it comes to the real beneficiaries, it is hard not to see that AMLO’s policies are just more of the same. The major corporate villains, such as Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch and BlackRock, have expressed interest in investing in the train, while Trump’s administration sent a message to AMLO promising to invest in the project.
AMLO’s megaprojects have already seen its first victims. In February 2019, Samir Flores Soberanes, an environmental activist, a producer for a community radio station and a long-time delegate to CNI, was murdered right before the referendum on Plan Integral Morelos — a thermal-electric plant and pipeline which Samir opposed. The death came after AMLO publicly called the civil society groups that oppose his development projects “conservative.”
Samir was not alone. A series of international days of action in defense of territory and Mother Earth under the slogan “Samir Somos Todos y Todas” (We are All Samir), commemorated 11 members of CNI from various organizations and regions, involved in struggles against extractivist projects and/or organized crime, who were murdered in 2019 — under AMLO’s presidency.
Despite the challenges, Zapatistas remain a force to reckon with. The establishment of one the new caracoles in the autonomous university CIDECI, located in San Cristobal, is the first official Zapatista territory in the major city of the state of Chiapas — a symbolic message that the movement is here to stay. We in the global North have a lot to learn from the indigenous communities that have been making another world possible for the last 26 years. And we can offer something in return — by responding to their call for support of the new caracoles or by forming solidarity networks in our own countries and regions — such as the Sexta Grieta del Norte, an emerging network of organizations and individuals in the U.S that identifies with the Zapatista struggle and thought and aims to support communities in struggle in Chiapas and beyond. As the Zapatista movement keeps facing forces of global capitalism, international solidarity and cooperation are as important as ever.