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Title: Libertarian Chiapas
Author: Dino Taddei
Date: 2000
Language: en
Topics: Chiapas, interview
Source: Retrieved on 4th August 2020 from http://struggle.ws/mexico/accounts/lib_chiapas_00.html

Dino Taddei

Libertarian Chiapas

A good friend and comrade has been to visit us in Milan: he is Pietro

Vermentini, who has been living in Chiapas for over three years, working

in the field of popular education through the FOCA organization

(Formación y Capacitación — Training and Education), a Mexican

organization active in both the educational and the health spheres,

focusing its actions on the recovery of traditional indigenous medicine.

Of course, we could not miss out on this opportunity to find out more

about what is happening in Mexico.

Not so long ago, not a day passed without news of what was happening in

Chiapas. Is the fact that we hear less talk of it today due to a

conscious choice by the media, or has the situation really changed?

I believe there have been events recently, such as the Ocalan case or

the war in Kosovo, that have — obviously — attracted the attention of

both the media and our comrades here, but this doesn’t mean that the

situation in Chiapas has ‘normalized’.

From what you have been able to observe, in what situations can you

detect the strongest trace of a libertarian attitude?

There are certainly very strong traces in the autonomous municipalities;

we need only think that one of the most important Zapatista communities

is called Flores Magon, named after the Mexican anarchist who was most

representative of the libertarian side of the Mexican revolution.

The municipalities are an experience that links up with the indigenous

community tradition. While in other South American guerrilla wars of a

Marxist mould there are orthodox links with models used at any latitude

and with any culture, with forced collectivization of the land, in the

Zapatista case, each community decides for itself, creating a large

variety of situations, with communities that have decided on completely

communal ownership of the land and others where a mixed system is in

force, with common land and individual land; in some cases a couple that

has married receives a piece of land from the community. All through

direct forms of democracy, without decisions from above.

There is a substantial difference between the Zapatista army, which has

its own internal rules, and the bases of grass-root support, which

self-organize by means of the community assembly. Contacts between the

communities are maintained by the CCRI (Clandestine Indigenous

Revolutionary Committee), a collective organization that can only take

important decisions after consulting the communities. Through the tool

of the assembly, communities with Zapatista majorities but with strong

minorities supporting the government manage to coexist, also because the

Zapatistas have never seen the indigenous Priista [supporter of the

governing PRI party] as an enemy, but more simply as someone who has

bowed down in order to eat. A tactic widely used by the government to

divide indigenous communities is to guarantee privileges to those who

move away from the Zapatistas — a sack or two of corn or a tractor are

very convincing arguments for those who are struggling to survive.

This campaign of delegitimization had its peak in May last year, with

the psychological offensive of desertion: in all the Mexican media,

great prominence was given to the supposed mass desertion from the

Zapatista ranks, with the interviewing of fifteen or so ex-Zapatistas,

who accused the EZLN of only fighting for power and said that because of

this many like them were leaving. Filmed by the television channels,

they ostentatiously took off their balaclavas, declaring that they

wished to enter lawful society again, accepting the government proposal:

“A machine gun for a sack of grain”.

Of course, two days later the Zapatista army provided the names of these

people and their communities of origin, declaring that they had never

been Zapatistas, and that they had each received a new tractor for this

service: you need only go and see them at their homes. But this counter-

information had no outlet in the media.

It is also true that one quality of the Zapatista army is that of

allowing to return home those who, after years of guerrilla in the

forest, are tired and prefer to help the movement in some other way,

obviously provided they don’t become informers. This is no minor

difference from other guerrilla wars, for which there is no return

ticket.

What role do Mexican anarchists have?

The Mexican anarchist movement is small-scale; nevertheless, it is

seeking to support the Zapatista initiative to the maximum. In the past

the “Love and Rage” collective opened a libertarian school in Zapatista

territory, but the experiment ended badly, because of the ambiguous

attitude of certain individuals. Currently small groups or individuals

operate in Chiapas, and in Mexico City there is a large group of

youngsters who publish the magazine Letra Negra.

What kind of numbers can the Zapatista movement count on today?

It is difficult to quantify the support the movement enjoys in the

cities and towns, particularly in a reality so multiform as Mexico. One

indicative figure — though numbers may well be considerably larger — is

that of the voters at the last consultation launched by the Zapatistas:

over three million people voted. This is not an exceptional number,

considering that the country has ninety million inhabitants, but you

must consider that almost half the population is under fifteen years

old, that the news of the consultation was by word of mouth alone and

that only a million people participated in a similar initiative in 1995.

What type of relationships have the Zapatistas been able to create with

Mexican civil society?

Despite the continuing desire to forge alliances involving other sectors

of Mexican society, it is hard to make any headway. Yet something is

moving; the university was occupied recently, something that hadn’t

happened since the harsh repression of ’68. The protest started in

Mexico City and spread to the other universities in the country. The

reason that sparked the protest was the shocking increase in university

fees, but very soon the matter began to take on political implications.

A delegation from the EZLN went to establish contacts with the students.

The government is in difficulty in this protest, because they cannot

identify the leaders, to buy or frighten them off, as — at the moment —

the movement is based on an assembly model and those negotiating are

only spokespersons on behalf of the assembly. This method was borrowed

from the Zapatistas, who don’t take any important decision without first

consulting the communities supporting them. This is the great challenge

for the Zapatistas: not to win a war militarily (one already lost at the

start) but to involve the people, to decide their own destiny. This

challenge meets with powerful resistance from Mexican civil society,

dominated by logics of power, by micro-factions, so grass roots

organizations struggle to take off.

The Zapatista Front (an organization created precisely to coordinate

civil initiatives) continually seeks to stimulate the birth of new

autonomous focuses and indeed that was the purpose of the latest

consultation: to encourage self-organization. In fact, to administer

this vote two thousand civil brigades were formed throughout the

country. These did not dissolve after the consultation; quite the

opposite, they created a national coordinated structure. The Zapatistas

refuse to direct movements from above; their proposal is very simple:

“we will not structure you, organize yourselves”.

Unfortunately Mexican civil society is not used to this libertarian

approach, and many can’t manage to free themselves from authoritarian

mechanisms, those of delegation. At some meetings of the Zapatista

Front, when faced with important decisions, some delegates ask to

adjourn the meeting to report back to the community, while others — with

the excuse that it is necessary to act quickly — go beyond the delegate

powers they have received.

Unfortunately civil society finds it difficult to accept direct forms of

democracy. This type of resistance is less noticeable in Chiapas, in the

indigenous communities that traditionally adopt these methods. And

perhaps the peculiarity of the Zapatista movement is their knowledge of

how to interact with this basic cultural identity. The difficulties are

our own: a lot of Mexican and foreign organizations that use the

Zapatista message as a reference point in reality have an internal

structure that is hierarchical and authoritarian. But the Zapatistas do

not give up; they know that much time is needed for change to take

place: they direct their message at society, not at power, and therefore

the time needed for the transformation is long, but the important thing

is to proceed along the right path. The EZLN discourse is this: “we

don’t want power for ourselves, because nothing guarantees that we will

not end up like our oppressors. On the contrary, we want to decentralize

it, to dilute it, so there is less power and more participation”.

Currently, what is the effect of the presence of the government army?

Considerable; among the guerrilleros operating in the Lacandona Forest

and the support communities, the possibilities for exchange have been

weakened: the strategy of the army is to deprive the Zapatistas of their

social hinterland. This initiative has borne fruit for the army, because

now it is much more difficult for the Zapatistas to participate in the

life of the community. Yet these community experiences are hard to

liquidate, as they are so deep-rooted; they have brought about

substantial changes not only to land management plans but also at a

cultural level.

We need only consider the role acquired by women in community decision-

making; for instance, in the Zapatista communities it is forbidden to

drink alcohol, on account of the clearly devastating effects this

produces on indigenous people, and this decision was made at the

insistence of the women. Let’s not forget that women represent one third

of the Zapatista forces, the highest presence among Latin American

guerrillas. As Comandante Ana Maria recalls: “In the EZLN relationships

between men and women are on a level of perfect parity”. This is no

small matter, considering the ultra-macho attitudes existing in Mexico.

But don’t you think there is a contradiction here, with Marcos’ role

within this experience, as a charismatic leader?

The danger of transforming Marcos into a sort of icon does exist, but he

is the first to be aware of this, and does not waste a single

opportunity to ironize about it. After all, the Marcos myth is more a

construction that is external to the Zapatistas, where in reality a very

much more collective decision-making process exists than people would

think: the Command of the EZLN is not Marcos, but a collective body,

it’s as simple as that; the fact that Subcomandante Marcos is an

excellent communicator and an effective symbol for the Zapatista

struggle is a whole other story.

Interview by Dino Taddei