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Title: Class, Colonialism and the Zapatistas
Author: Bromma
Date: July 22 2003
Language: en
Topics: class, colonialism, Zapatistas
Source: Retrieved on 4th August 2020 from https://web.archive.org/web/20031003054135/http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/07/22/2221225

Bromma

Class, Colonialism and the Zapatistas

I started off wanting to like “A Commune In Chiapas?” (This article

about the Zapatistas, written for the English journal Aufheben, was

circulated as a pamphlet by Arm the Spirit/Solidarity.) I appreciated

its willingness to criticize radicals who “project their hopes onto this

‘exotic’ struggle.” I was ready to agree with its skepticism about the

rhetoric of Subcommandante Marcos, about romantic views of indigenous

life, about social democracy masquerading as “civil society.” I was glad

to see that the pamphlet included some background history about Mexico

and a chronology of the Zapatista uprising. Most of all, I looked

forward to its attempt to analyze the events in Chiapas from a class

perspective.

I shouldn’t have got my hopes up. “Commune” is actually a pretty

conservative piece of writing. Conservative in its view of class.

Conservative in its distaste for national liberation struggles and

radical anti-colonialism. Above all, conservative—even predictable—in

its Eurocentric assumptions about Indians. A narrow form of academic

Marxism acts like parental web-screening software, preventing the

authors from seeing even the basic outlines of the Zapatista struggle.

The January 1, 1994 uprising in Chiapas resulted from a fusion of

indigenous peoples’ struggles for survival with a band of revolutionary

Marxist guerrillas. This fusion produced an innovative movement which

slammed a body blow into global capital. “Commune,” on the other hand,

was written by theoreticians who lack respect for indigenous struggle

and apparently have little use for real-life revolutionary Marxist

guerrillas. Not surprisingly, their main message is that the Zapatistas

have limited historical significance.

The pamphlet’s aim is not so much to learn lessons from the Zapatista

struggle as to grind ideological axes. The authors claim to represent

the voice of moderation, avoiding what they see as twin errors: wishful

thinking about Chiapas (which they ascribe to autonomist Marxists, among

others) as well as a dismissive attitude among self-styled “ultra-left”

groups in Europe. But actually “Commune” is squarely in the dismissers’

camp. Like them, it disdains what it calls “anti-imperialist and Third

Worldist ideology.” Like them, it applies a series of formulaic litmus

tests to the events in Chiapas, and judges the Zapatista struggle as

essentially backward.

The authors’ theoretical basis for this judgment is a crude class

analysis, pivoting on the assertion that the Indians of Chiapas are

“semi-proletarian peasants.” “Commune” argues that weaknesses in the

Zapatista movement result from an unequal struggle between two

ideological tendencies: the Indians’ “traditional” and “conservative”

peasant world view, and a slight countervailing proletarian tendency.

The authors consider the Maya “essentially peasant”; their proletarian

impulses are said to be based in material circumstances “extremely

marginal” and “peripheral” to modern capital. It’s no contest. “Indeed,”

the article says, “one could argue that the uprising itself has…

reinforced the peasant aspect over the proletarian.” We will see that

this excursion into class theory has little to do with reality. For the

most part, it’s simply a way to attack on the Zapatistas’ revolutionary

authenticity while sounding scientific.

“Commune” makes the obligatory disclaimer about how “the self-activity

of the Indigenous, above all else...defines this struggle.” But it

actually says precious little about self-actuating indigenous resistance

in Chiapas—or its broader context. It completely avoids the key fact

that the struggle between European colonialism and Mesoamerican

civilization is the central contradiction of Mexican history. It doesn’t

dwell on the long record of Indian struggles against ranchers, caciques

and the government that led up to the events of the 1990s: Indian

demands in the Mexican Revolution, the struggle for ejidos in the 40s

and 50s, the pioneering communities of the 60s and 70s in Chiapas (which

historian John Womack calls “improvised soviets”), the battle against

the government’s creation of the “Lacandon Zone,” etc. It doesn’t take

into account the long genocidal war in neighboring Guatemala, which sent

thousands of politicized Maya pouring across the border into Chiapas.

(The Maya have moved back and forth across this artificial border for

its entire history.) It doesn’t mention the growth of an international

indigenous-rights trend starting in the 1970s, centered around the

Encounters of the Indigenous Peoples. It doesn’t recognize the rising

significance of militant indigenous struggles today in Mexico, the

Americas, or the world. And it certainly doesn’t treat the indigenous

leadership of the Zapatistas as an authentic leadership, capable of

making important political decisions independently.

Instead, the article focusses relentlessly on the “mediations” by

outside forces which supposedly delimit the Zapatista phenomenon. The

authors find it sad and ironic that “the Chiapas uprising would not have

reached the heights it did without the vanguardist form” that these

outsiders brought. Coming in for particularly critical scrutiny are the

“Che Geuvara Leninists” of the Fuerzas de Liberación Nacional (FLN),

personified by Subcommandante Marcos, as well as Catholic liberation

theology advocates such as Bishop Samuel Ruiz. With all this mediation

going on, the authors are convinced that real proletarian politics is

out of the question for the EZLN. The backwardness of the Maya makes

that impossible: “A more generalized and proletarian movement, to

achieve its goals, could not accept the relations of mediation and

representation that the Indians [sic] peasants do.”

Having unceremoniously ushered the Indians off to the sidelines of world

revolution, “Commune” makes a backhanded attempt to be generous: “The

Zapatistas may be marginal, but we cannot deny them their revolutionary

subjectivity.” After all, the authors admit, the rebels are courageously

fighting the state, refusing to lay down their arms. It’s “inspiring.”

And at least “the racism which has done so much to bond this organized

expression of class struggle has not been transformed into Indian

nationalism, unlike the Black Power movements of 1970s America.”

It has to be said: “Commune” is appallingly chauvinist. It’s chauvinist

in an offhanded, unintentional way—a way that’s so typical among

European and Euro-American leftists that it usually passes unnoticed—by

them.

It seems that the authors of “Commune” know little about indigenous

cultures in Mexico, or their long anti-colonial struggles. (A good

starting point for study is Guillermo Bonfil Batalla’s México Profundo,

available in English translation from the University of Texas Press.)

But they nevertheless feel comfortable describing Indian communities as

“hotbeds of patriarchy and alcohol-fuelled domestic violence.” At one

point the Indians are characterized as “docile” in the face of

oppression—a patent falsehood contradicted in practice by centuries of

militant resistance. “Commune” would have us believe that an “obsession

with Mayan tradition” prevents the Indians from developing proletarian

consciousness. The authors even pose a rhetorical choice between

“guerrilla fighters or Mayan Indians,” as if the two were logically

incompatible. To top it off, the authors pat the Indians on the head for

supposedly not falling into “Indian nationalism” like those foolish

Black Panthers!

In its chauvinist blindness, “Commune” makes the classic Eurocentric

error about Native peoples: that “traditional” equals “backward.” This

thoroughly ignorant proposition, commonly used as a pretext for

marginalizing Native struggles, is one of the main reasons that Indians

tend to be skeptical of the Left.

Guillermo Bonfil put it well: “One of the most common ideas about Indian

cultures is that they are conservative and reject change, even when that

change might constitute a significant improvement. This is a prejudiced

image within colonial ideology, which sees those colonized as causing

their own colonization. Cultural resistance is a real fact, but it has a

meaning very different from that attributed to it.”

As Native American activist Jimmie Durham explains, “We define a

‘traditional’ Indian as one who maintains the whole body of his people’s

vision (political system) and that includes total resistance to

colonization, speaking his own language, etc. So our progressives are

what look like to you our ‘conservatives’.” Bullseye.

The Zapatistas are first and foremost an embodiment of the Mayan

struggle for self-determination and autonomy. The Maya may or may not be

a nation in a conventional European sense, but they are certainly a

civilization, a people. They are a people who have lived in their

ancestral territory for millennia, who have common linguistic roots and

much common culture and heritage, including hundreds of years of

anti-colonial struggle. At the same time, they are a people made up of

peoples. There are several separate cultural groups within the Maya,

most of whom also have a determined ancestral territory, separate

lifeways and cultural attributes. The various Mayan languages have

evolved independently to the point that they are sometimes mutually

unintelligible.

Under colonialism, the Maya have faced wave after wave of painful forced

migration, a fact that has put formerly isolated communities into

contact and often mixed them. Maya have also been forced to deal with

ladino culture, which they have confronted through multiple

strategies—resistance, diversion and appropriation for their own use.

Today, as in the past, the Maya are defending and reinventing themselves

in order to survive genocidal attacks and throw off the latest form of

colonialism. This is the stage on which the EZLN is an actor.

So any reality-based analysis of the Zapatistas has to start by

acknowledging that they are actually “guerrilla fighters” largely

because they are “Mayan Indians.” Their “Indian-ness” is central to

their resistance; a critical part of what makes it so radical and

strong.

Moreover, contrary to “Commune,” the Zapatistas’ identification as

Indians has been a major impetus for internationalism. It has helped the

EZLN reach out beyond their remote region, starting first of all with

the connections they are forging with other indigenous struggles in

Mexico and around the world. Their demand for self-determination

connects them naturally with indigenous and anti-colonial peoples

everywhere.

This isn’t the place to rehash old theoretical arguments on the Left

about how important self-determination and the struggle against genocide

are to proletarian revolution. In any event, Indian struggles have their

own particularity, apart from any general formulas. I would simply

observe that it’s impossible to analyze class forces—in Chiapas or

anywhere—without some understanding of race, colonialism and genocide as

deep expressions of class. Unfortunately, in the case of “Commune,” the

longing for “pure” class struggle (without the “taint” of nationalism)

has distorted the authors’ view of the situation in Chiapas. The Maya AS

A PEOPLE are almost completely off their radar screen.

If the struggle for Indian self-determination is the authors’ biggest

taboo, disciplined guerrilla organization comes in a close second.

“Commune” strains to discredit the revolutionary process in Chiapas.

Ever since the Zapatista uprising first exploded into world

consciousness, the nature of the relationship between the urban ladino

guerrillas like Marcos and the longstanding indigenous struggles in

Chiapas has been a pressing issue for activists. This is a particularly

important question for those who consider themselves revolutionaries,

since armed struggle movements with the impact of the EZLN’s aren’t

exactly a dime a dozen these days.

Marcos and his original FLN comrades arrived in Chiapas from central

Mexico in the early 80s. They were Maoists, advocates of the “mass

line.” That is, they did not see their role to be dictating the

direction of the struggle from above. Rather, they hoped to join,

support or ally with struggles of the oppressed, promoting a proletarian

line through a process of give and take: “from the masses, to the

masses,”in Mao’s terminology. The guerrillas brought with them a set of

somewhat rigid political assumptions, some authoritarian baggage, and

some specialized political knowledge. As Marcos puts it: “The EZLN was

born having as points of reference the political military organizations

of the guerrilla movements in Latin America during the sixties and

seventies.” With all the formidable strengths and weaknesses that

implies. Still, the guerrillas’ commitment to working with indigenous

peoples as a basis for revolutionary organizing put them on a serious,

dangerous path.

For years, a small unit of the FLN concentrated on learning how to

survive in the mountains of Chiapas and made initial contacts with the

people there. This process started to change the militants, grinding

down their “romantic vision” of guerrilla war as it strengthened them

physically and politically. “The environment,” Marcos says, “brings you

back to reality.”

From all accounts I’ve seen, the Marxist militants’ early approaches to

the Indians were principled, if orthodox. FLN cadres advocated a classic

guerrilla war with a final aim of overthrowing the Mexican state.

However, as their relationship with the Indian population became closer,

the nature of the guerrilla project started to change significantly.

The Indians were already quite interested in developing more of an armed

capacity—but mainly to defend their communities from the ranchers.

Marcos again: “In this initial political work, a connection began to

take place between the proposals of the guerilla group, the initial

group of the EZLN, and the communities. This means that there were

different expectations of the movement. On the one hand, there were

those who hoped that armed action would bring about a revolution and a

change of power, in this case the fall of the governing party and the

ascension of another party, but that in the end it would be the people

who took power. On the other hand, there were the more immediate

expectations of the indigenous people here. For them, the necessity of

armed struggle was more as a form of defense against groups of very

violent, aggressive and powerful ranchers.”

The actual mass-based EZLN was originally set up in response to the

Indians’ needs, as a defense force against the ranchers’ gangs. As the

“relationship of convenience” between the FLN activists and the

indigenous population started to deepen, and as more Indians began to

join, the political equation shifted:

“The moment arrived in which the EZLN had to consult the communities in

order to make a decision. At first, we only asked if what we were doing

was going to cause problems for the companeros....A moment arrives in

which you can’t do anything without the approval of the people with whom

you work. It was something understood by both parties: they understood

that we wouldn’t do anything without consulting them, and we understood

that if we did anything without consulting them, we would lose them.”

From that time on, Marcos says, the whole mechanism of leadership and

decision-making was gradually transformed. The Clandestine Revolutionary

Indigenous Committee (CCRI) became the key leadership body, and the EZLN

ultimately adopted a broad-based, communal form of organization

compatible with long-standing practices of the indigenous communities.

This aspect of Zapatismo has attracted particular interest and support

from anti-authoritarian radicals worldwide.

Marcos: “In this interweaving, in this exchange between two different

forms of decision-making, the most orthodox proposals of Marxism or

Leninism, theoretical concepts or historical references...were

confronted by an ideological tradition…born of war—in this case, the war

of the Conquest that began, well, not exactly five hundred years ago,

and that continues through different historical periods. It

continues...it continues, and it grows. If we had been orthodox

leftists, we would never have worked with indigenous peoples. Now,

today, I believe there are many theories in crisis.”

Here Marcos is describing a process familiar to generations of

revolutionaries: “outside” organizers being transformed by the

oppressed, the oppressed absorbing and taking over the tools of the

organizers for their own purposes. He is also describing his own

adjustment to the fact that the Indians’ struggle had a fundamentally

anti-colonial character. The authors of “Commune” have no confidence in

either of these political developments—but many of the Indians did.

Revolutionaries in Chiapas—indigenous and ladino—were divided about the

wisdom of attacking towns and cities. People had different ideas about

what the purpose of such an offensive would be, and what its prospects

for success were. In practice, the question was decided by the Indians

in the Zapatista communities, who undertook a long process of

discussion, deliberation and voting. According to some sources, Marcos

personally opposed the nature and timing of the offensive, but was

democratically overruled by indigenous cadres. As a members of the CCRI

General Command told a reporter, “It was the people themselves who said

‘Let’s begin already.’” Shortly after the uprising, Marcos described it

like this: “One year ago, towards the end of January, the Clandestine

Committee said, ‘We are going to take arms.’ And they gave me the order,

‘Hey you, take charge of this, we’re giving you a time limit to work

with, choose when.’”

I quote Marcos not because I think he understands everything, or because

I think the Zapatistas are flawlessly correct. Mainly, I think it’s

important to understand that the relationship between the urban

revolutionaries and the indigenous social base of the rebellion is a

complicated, mutual, dynamic interaction. An important one. It’s not the

clichéd “mediation” that “Commune” conjures up. The Indians are not

backward innocents being led around by the nose. Nor are the ladino

revolutionaries dictating a rigid, unvarying political formula from on

high. The real-life process by which Marxist ladino militants fused with

a rooted, experienced indigenous struggle needs to be carefully studied

by serious radicals, not dismissed out of hand as an ideological poison.

Of course, some might argue that Marcos is lying about what happened,

and covering up his slick manipulations. Among revolutionaries, that’s a

pretty serious charge. But that’s exactly what “Commune”’s authors want

us to believe. Based on distorted interpretation of John Womack’s book,

Rebellion in Chiapas, they allege that “until September 1993, Marcos and

the Indian cadres were following orders from the High Command of the FLN

in Mexico City, though he has since made every effort to hide it.”

(September 1993, of course, would have been just a few months before the

uprising.) The authors also tell us that Womack has “destroyed the image

Marcos has tried so hard to portray of Indigenous forcing urban leftists

to abandon their ideology in the years before the uprising took place.”

Rebellion in Chiapas, a reference book written by a Harvard historian

who is generally supportive of the Zapatista cause, is a valuable

resource. One of its useful characteristics is that, while it’s full of

human sympathy, it is also ruthlessly skeptical towards all the actors

involved in the drama in Chiapas. Womack is a student of realpolitik,

who digs to get behind the rhetoric and spin. He is rather cynical about

some things, including, at times, the politics of indigenous activism.

(One thing to keep in mind in that regard is that Rebellion is a

documentary history—and much of the revolutionary Indian perspective is

not available as written documents.) But overall, Rebellion manages to

demythologize the EZLN without disrespecting it. The same can’t be said

of “Commune,” which misuses Womack’s analysis, twisting his facts and

putting words in his mouth.

There’s some interesting information about the FLN in Womack’s book,

mainly from the 1980s, that reveals limitations and dogmatism in its

politics, along with revolutionary commitment and insight. What

Rebellion does not show is what the authors of “Commune” wish it to

show—that the Zapatista uprising was secretly stage-managed by

ideologues in Mexico City.

A small group of cadres from the FLN was definitely very influential in

the rise of the EZLN in Chiapas. Taking a road of considerable sacrifice

and courage, Marcos and his comrades offered their services as

guerrillas to the Indian communities, and argued for a revolutionary

path. But the indigenous leadership and base of the uprising were hardly

naive or gullible. Rooted in a long tradition of anti-colonialism, and

having experienced waves of would-be leaders and activist organizations,

they were politically aware, and aware of who Marcos was. (The title

“Subcommandante,” by which he is universally known, was a rank of the

FLN, one which he has held since the 80s.)

Moreover, the FLN militants in Chiapas, deeply committed to the movement

there, started to break with the FLN national organization well before

“Commune” says. John Womack, in correspondence, estimates that the

Mexico City leadership “began to steadily lose control there to its

‘bases’ in 1992....This failure issued in the change of command in the

EZLN in January 1993, when Marcos became military secretary and the CCRI

formed. This was practically a coup within the FLN.” There had to have

been significant ideological conflict for some time leading up to the

split. As Womack says, “There are many possible interpretations of this

change” within the FLN.

For my part, I see no reason to believe that the basic transformation

Marcos describes, with indigenous leadership and organization gradually

taking over the struggle, is a fabrication. It’s compatible with the

nature and timing of the split in the FLN, and it’s credible as a

revolutionary dynamic. Marcos’ analysis, in fact, seems to explain much

about the distinctive character of the Zapatistas—much that is admirable

and worthy of study, too. I’m sure he has highlighted certain aspects of

it for the benefit of the media, and he certainly hasn’t tried to put a

spotlight on the FLN’s involvement. Neither would I in his situation.

But if the authors of “Commune” have hard facts to back up their

insinuations of gross manipulation and dishonesty, they should bring

them forward. John Womack’s book isn’t going to do it for them.

“Commune” seems to want nothing less than a magically-pure,

un-”mediated” struggle to spring up out of an idealized proletariat.

Because the Zapatistas don’t fit this stereotypical scenario, and

because they fight openly as Indians, the authors find them lacking. So

they try to explain the Zapatista rebellion—whose dynamism is impossibly

to deny—in a condescending and mechanical fashion. They cast the worst

possible light on the “mediation” of the FLN guerrillas, while treating

the Maya by default as hapless clients. Throughout “Commune,” this

reductionist approach not only reflects cultural prejudice, but also

trivializes the rich and virtually continuous history of armed struggle

in Mexico. The heroism and creativity of generations of revolutionaries

and oppressed peoples in Mexico are reduced to a series of ideological

imperfections and blunders in which nothing fundamental was learned. For

example, “Commune” brings up the working class upsurge of the late 1950s

mainly to question “to what extent working class self-activity was

mediated,” and to highlight how “all the ideological drag of Stalinism

was present.” The guerrilla organizations of the 1970s, some of which

had significant mass support, are dismissed in two sentences as “tainted

by the militarist ideology of Che or Mao.” How formulaic and lifeless

this approach is!

As for the Zapatista uprising itself: Was the New Years’ Day rebellion a

“failure,” as “Commune” says? This may be the pamphlet’s most revealing

conclusion.

I guess it all depends on what you mean by failure. The Zapatistas

didn’t necessarily expect that their revolt would trigger a general

insurrection in Mexico. Here is Marcos, speaking in his trademark style:

“We weren’t expecting the Mexican people to say: ‘Oh, look, the

Zapatistas have taken up arms, let’s join in,’ and that then they would

grab kitchen knives and go after the first policeman they found. We

believed that the people would respond as they did, that they would say,

‘Something is wrong in this country, something has to change.’” On the

other hand, John Womack thinks that the Indian cadres intended their

uprising to result in a general revolt and the fall of the Salinas

government. Not having insider knowledge, my only comment is that

sometimes oppressed people are desperate, and feel that they have no

choice but to fight back the best way they can, despite the risks, when

an opportunity presents itself. “We have nothing to lose,” the

Zapatistas say. Armed struggle under these conditions may not be pretty

or perfectly planned. But, more often than many leftists admit, it’s how

revolutions actually start; how leaps in revolutionary consciousness

actually happen.

What’s undeniable is that the rebellion had an enormous impact, shaking

Mexico to the core and sending shock waves far beyond. It initiated a

period of armed class conflict that continues up until right now. The

EZLN uprising was immediately followed by a burst of strikes and land

occupations regionally. Nationally, it helped trigger armed struggle

among Indians in Guerrero, Sinaloa and other states, as well as a range

of other militant insurgencies and mobilizations—all of which changed

the landscape of Mexican politics. Whatever happens in Chiapas now,

indigenous Mexico has elevated its anti-colonial struggle to a new

level. In fact, the Zapatista uprising has raised the level of

indigenous struggle worldwide. Not coincidentally, the revolt helped

galvanize the wave of international anti-globalization protest of recent

years. (In case we’re tempted to forget, that opposition didn’t start in

Seattle.) The EZLN exposed underlying weaknesses in the new capitalist

world order, demonstrating that its interdependent fabric is vulnerable

to revolution. Can this all be dismissed as “failure”?

The success of the uprising, although clearly partial, is actually the

most important thing for radicals to understand about the Zapatistas:

How could a revolutionary struggle that seemed so isolated, so doomed by

our default parameters, end up striking such a heavy blow against

neo-liberalism? Yet that success is exactly what “Commune” declines to

examine. Because this leads into “forbidden” terrain. That is, into the

real world of armed struggle and of Indian resistance, where traditional

leadership and traditional culture are often part of anti-colonialism

and world revolution instead of being backward, feudal, “peasant”

remnants.

Not all Indians who call themselves “traditional” are freedom fighters,

as we know. In Chiapas, both religious reactionaries and PRI hacks have

sometimes hidden behind a facade of Indian cultural identity while

attacking Indian interests. Still, because of the particularities of

Indian history, traditional leadership and culture throughout the

Americas tend to be more communal, more suspicious of capitalism and

commodification, more woman-centered and more radical than their

assimilationist counterparts.

After all, the traditions we’re talking about aren’t European feudal

traditions. In most cases, what traditional Indians seek to defend is

simply the continuance of their civilization—a civilization just as

valid, and just as relevant to the solution of modern problems, as what

the West has produced. (To take just one example, Euro-environmentalism

often looks pretty superficial from the perspective of traditional

Native beliefs.)

In “American Indian Culture: Traditionalism and Spiritualism in a

Revolutionary Struggle,” Native American activist Jimmie Durham

comments: “From the earliest times the wars against Indians were not

only to take over land but also to squash the threatening example of

Indian communism….So we have always defined our struggle not only as a

struggle for land but also as a struggle to retain our cultural values.

These values are communistic values.”

It’s not that whatever the Zapatistas or other Indians do is

automatically wonderful. The EZLN, for one, never claimed to have

achieved the perfect society, nor that their activity is immune from

criticism. But criticism should be specific, based on what is happening

in the struggle, not on reductionist class schemes (or innuendo).

Unwilling to even consider that the Zapatistas might have something to

teach THEM in the way of revolutionary insight or leadership,

“Commune”’s authors consistently evade the fact that there is a powerful

material basis for militant, anticapitalist Indian traditionalism, a

basis quite different from what Western radicals know in their own

societies. As Durham says, “We do not need to go through an industrial

revolution so that we can come out as communists on the other side.”

To be a traditional Indian doesn’t mean to be ignorant of what’s going

on outside your territory. Nor does it mean to be provincial in outlook.

Peoples facing genocide don’t have the luxury of hiding their heads in

the sand. Many traditional Indian societies are quite flexible, and

willing to adopt lifeways, ideas and technologies that they find useful

from other cultures. (One of these, obviously, is the gun.)

Anthropologists and historians have commented specifically on the Maya

as a people who have been quick to incorporate the things they wanted

from other societies, often transforming what they have appropriated.

On the most general level, indigenous traditionalism means simply to

value the ways and wisdom of your people and to defend them against

annihilation. This continuity and community is a source of great

strength; a weapon that’s been deployed for hundreds of years to fight

against, and survive under centuries of colonialism. And this—not

peasant superstition—is why so many diehard Indian revolutionaries, past

and present, have identified themselves as ‘traditionals.” (One

world-famous example is Leonard Peltier, still a captive of the U.S.

government, who is respected by Indians both for his traditional

understanding and for his armed struggle for Indian self-determination.)

So what about the class nature of the Zapatista struggle? Are the

insurgents ”semi-proletarian peasants”? I don’t know—and neither do the

authors of “Commune,” as far as I can tell.

I think that class analysis is key to revolutionary theory, strategy and

tactics. But naming people as a particular class has never worked as an

easy shortcut for explaining how they act. Classes are living,

developing organisms. They rise and fall, absorbing new elements and

losing others as they evolve. In some social formations, class is

expressed most powerfully through race, or nationality, or gender, or

religion. Classes make decisions. Even “pure proletarians” sometimes

choose the wrong path and embrace disaster. On the other hand,

non-proletarian classes sometimes rise to history’s occasions,

transforming their class stand and even, sometimes, becoming

proletarians as part of the revolutionary process.

We also should acknowledge that it’s time to take a fresh theoretical

look at class. Previous conceptions have brought revolutionaries a long

way, but they haven’t been adequate to explain, let alone prevent, the

defeat of the last wave of global revolutionary struggle. And the world

has changed radically in the meantime. The emerging economic order is

almost certainly characterized by new classes and new class

configurations. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t use the tools of

class analysis available to us, just that we should be careful about

jumping to easy conclusions.

Obviously this is a huge subject that can’t be addressed here in any

depth. But it’s relevant, because “Commune” uses class categories in

such a rigid way to make such bald generalizations. It’s simplistic view

of class in Chiapas is tied to its Eurocentrism. Guillermo Bonfil points

out that European paradigms of class and modernity are often used as a

smoke screen for colonial thinking: “What here we call advanced, modern,

and urban is not the leading edge of an internal self-development, but,

rather, the result of the implantation of Western civilization from

above. What we call backward, traditional and rural is not the beginning

point of that development, but, instead, the underlying stratum of

Mesoamerican civilization....In terms of the dominant ideology, Indian

civilization does not exist. The civilizational conflict is masked by

the phraseology of development, in its various modalities, which

converts the imposition of a foreign civilization into a natural and

inevitable process of historical development.”

Because “Commune”’s authors refuse to look at the Zapatistas as the

political expression of a people—part of the struggle for Mayan

self-determination—they are unable to think about class structure (or

its absence) among the Maya themselves. Instead, they try to cram the

Indians into a class slot in “mestizo” Mexico. This leaves way too many

questions unanswered. Is it true that all the Maya, men and women, are

from the same class? To what extent is their society materially based on

an ancient communalism, predating class society? Is the Zapatista

movement a multi-class national liberation struggle? How should we think

about Indians who perform mostly wage labor but look to their native

land and community as their social anchor? (I think that “Commune”

seriously underestimates the economic and social role of paid labor

among the Indians.) How about the Maya who live in the cities, or

migrate to the U.S., but try to maintain traditional ways and ties? How

should we analyze the labor—often extensive—that is performed as a

communal service in the traditional manner? “Commune” isn’t interested

in these questions, and doesn’t give enough hard information about Mayan

economic life to allow us to even speculate.

Calling the Indians “peasants” is not as illuminating as it sounds. For

starters, I question whether any of us —Marxist or otherwise—understand

in a rigorous, scientific way exactly what “the peasantry” is. Clearly

it isn’t the unmitigated bastion of reaction that the authors of

“Commune” cartoonishly sketch. (Has anybody every heard of the Chinese

Revolution?) More to the point, “the peasantry” as a category is viewed

by virtually the whole Left in an oddly gender-blind way.

Let’s suppose that a (male) peasant personally owns land, owns “his”

wife and daughters like property, and compels them to do backbreaking

labor under threat of violence or death. Are those women “peasants” just

like their owner/master/husband/father? Isn’t there a theoretical

problem here that we need to look at?

Of course we can’t blame “Commune” for this gender myopia—it’s probably

no worse than most Left theory in this regard. But the custom of

automatically defining women’s class according to who “their” men are

strikes me as one of the things radicals need to detox from. Especially

those of us who want to use class analysis as a tool of struggle.

Interestingly, while “Commune” calls Indian women “virtual slaves in

their own villages” before the rise of the Zapatistas (a controversial

statement that it doesn’t document), the article doesn’t treat this as a

serious CLASS contradiction with the men. Nor, on the other hand, does

it try to explain how the women managed to transcend both “slavery” and

the FLN’s anti-proletarian “mediations” to become guerrillas. Indigenous

women’s story ends up getting lost in fuzzy concepts like the “the

tradition of the village” and the “the ‘different world’ of the

peasant.”

We really do need to think about class and gender in trying to

understand the Zapatistas, because the class position and class politics

of Mayan women seems be at the heart of the class situation in Chiapas.

As Marcos says, “the first uprising of the EZLN was in March of 1993,”

when indigenous women, singing and chanting, forced the CCRI to adopt

their version of the “Law of Women.” Indigenous women have continued to

develop their leadership and autonomy within and through the Zapatista

struggle. It seems likely to me that the women are the key determinant

of the EZLN’s future, as they were to its early dynamism.

Organized, anticapitalist, oppressed women with guns—this is absolutely

the last thing imperialism wants to see in Mexico, or anywhere else. And

the class-fluid position the Zapatistas find themselves in apparently

means that women have unusual leeway in choosing their own future. In

fact, the Zapatistas are living evidence that the “traditional Mayan

culture” that “Commune” bemoans provides at least as much of an opening

for rebel women as Western culture does.

The Zapatistas’ security barriers and the smoke from Marcos’ preppy pipe

obscure much of what’s happening behind the scenes, among the women.

(Maybe that smoke screen’s an advantage, though.) What indigenous women

decide, probably outside our view, is going to have a lot more impact on

the trajectory of the Zapatista struggle than the so-called “essentially

peasant nature” of Indians. From that perspective, “Commune”’s orthodox

labeling scheme looks sadly academic. It’s the authors who are being

conservative here, not the Indians.

In any event, trying to analyze rural Indian life using European peasant

models is a losing proposition. Even “mestizo” rural society in Mexico

has many unique features. Some Mexican theorists have likened it to what

Marx called the “Asiatic mode of production,” rather than a European

peasant model. Bonfil, for his part, argues that it can only be

understood as the underlying Mesoamerican social structure, distorted by

colonialism. In any event, traditional Indian communalism in Mexico is

yet another step removed from the European past.

Significantly, Indian demands for land have little in common with

European peasant attachment to land. Indians do demand a stable land

base for their collective survival, but most of them don’t have a

privately-owned plot that’s been in the family for generations. Nor is

that their goal. Most of the Indians of Chiapas are fiercely loyal to

communal land tenure, which is both rooted in ancient indigenous

traditions and integral to the Mexican Revolution. The Zapatistas,

embodying that loyalty, see privatization of land as a bitter enemy. In

fact, the bourgeoisie’s determination to repeal of Article 27 of the

Mexican Constitution, which protected the ejidos from privatization,

helped fuel the uprising. This reflects a completely different kind of

consciousness from “Commune”’s stereotype of Native peasant

backwardness.

I think it’s impossible to analyze the Zapatistas from a class point of

view without situating their struggle theoretically within colonial

class structure. The Chiapas uprising isn’t just about class versus

class in Mexico. It’s (also) about an oppressed indigenous people

resisting imperialism. Overall, what’s most critical to understand is

that the Maya of Chiapas—Totzil, Tzeltal, Tojolobal, Chol, Mam, Zoque

and others—are colonized peoples under genocidal attack. Multinational

capital, using the Mexican ruling class as its main representative,

wants to control the Indians’ natural resources (which apparently

include huge oil reserves). It plans to liquidate the Maya’s

relationship to their land, cutting the roots of their communal

traditions and rebellious culture in the process. This is merely the

latest in a long series of colonial assaults on indigenous Mexico. It’s

being met as it has been for five hundred years—with determined,

creative struggle for self-determination.

The Indians are being forced into confrontation with modern global

capitalism in a series of rough shocks and disruptions. These apparently

have done nothing to provoke Indian demands for private land tenure.

Instead the Maya have repeatedly carried out militant struggle for

communal land. At the same time they’ve exploited their other options

for survival, such as wage labor (which has actually been one of their

survival modes for a hundred years), craft work, migration and small

manufacturing. This has almost certainly complicated the class situation

in Indian communities. Native peoples have experimented widely with

different types of social organization—legal, clandestine and in

between. They’ve taken advantage of tactical and strategic openings

provided by liberation theologists, leftists and others, adapting the

outsiders’ agendas to their own interests. The various Indian social

formations that have come into existence on this shifting terrain are

best looked at not as elements of a single unified “mestizo” class

structure, but rather as attacked and/or dispossessed indigenous

communities defending their whole civilization while undergoing rapid

transition. (That transition can go in more than one direction, of

course. Some Indian communities in Chiapas have thrown in their lot with

the Mexican government and the ranchers’ death squads.)

Like so many other indigenous societies around the world, the Indian

communities of Chiapas are neither being left alone, nor are they

experiencing a gradual internal evolution/devolution towards capitalism.

Instead, on top of all the existing layers of colonialism, the Maya are

being slammed abruptly into the path of a new-style capitalist

juggernaut. Like other Native peoples, they live where the bourgeoisie

has found surprising quantities of valuable old-line industrial raw

materials—oil and gas, timber, minerals, etc. Moreover, by location,

culture and, yes, tradition, Native peoples are arrayed diametrically

against what Vandana Shiva calls “the new enclosure of the commons”—the

intensified privatization and commodification of the biosphere—which

capitalism badly needs to survive. (The creation of “ecological

reserves” on Native territory is heavily implicated in this theft of

biological wealth.) The new bourgeois world order is putting regions

that were once seen as “marginal”—suitable, that is, only for neglect or

use as “reservations”—on the front lines of capitalist development.

Native communities are therefore under tremendous pressure. But, unlike

many other world populations under assault today, indigenous peoples

often have high levels of social coherence and long histories of armed

resistance against colonialism and genocide. They emerge onto the

terrain of advanced global capitalism with viable anticapitalist

traditions and communal values. These are communities who spontaneously

share core values with indigenous peoples they may never have met, some

living thousands of miles away. This is the broader global context out

of which the Zapatistas arise.

Indigenous peoples, and indigenous women in particular, represent a

material force in the world, one that has proven its potential for

powerful anti-colonial insurgency. Given their histories and their

unusual situation—both “marginal” and central to imperialism—indigenous

peoples who take the path of struggle sometimes have an opportunity to

reforge their communities in a blend of the traditional and the

cutting-edge. Like the Zapatistas have done. Despite suffering the most

difficult conditions, such peoples nevertheless have as good a chance as

anybody to live as the actual “alternative” communities that the Left

talks about so much. In other words, to choose their own future.

Indigenous struggles are loose cannons on neocolonialism’s deck. What

seem at first (Western) glance to be limited local struggles can explode

unexpectedly, destabilizing old political arrangements and sending

tremors through the whole system. We sense instinctively that within

indigenous rebellion are forces that can be very dangerous to

imperialism practically and that flatly contradict it ideologically. But

sometimes, as with “Commune,” our limited metropolitan paradigms aren’t

up to the task of explaining their significance.

Will indigenous politics around the world continue to jell? Will the

earth’s consummate survivor peoples figure out how to resist more

effectively on the new terrain of neocolonial politics? Will

woman-centered traditions assert themselves within indigenous resistance

movements, as they have in the past? I don’t know. But what the

Zapatista uprising represents is a real post-modern challenge to

imperialism, rooted in a deep tradition of anti-colonial and

anticapitalist struggle—not just a peripheral peasant movement with

slick spin control.

The way things are going, a lot of us will someday find ourselves

bobbing and weaving through the chaotic, mortally dangerous skirmish

zones of the neocolonial landscape. This isn’t just something that

happens to Indians. Under imperialism’s fluid new world “order,”

disaster and hardship can strike any population at a moment’s notice.

When and if we face the kind of adversity the Maya face, I wonder how

many of us will react with the courage and creativity of the Zapatistas.

What will our community and our values be then? I wonder if the women

will have arms, and know how to use them. And in those dire

circumstances, I wonder who will seem more “backward” and who will seem

more “advanced”—us metropolitan Leftists, or those “traditional”

Indians—who, after all, continue to survive and maintain their unity in

Chiapas nine long years after rising up in arms against the entire

capitalist system.