💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › andrew-flood-understanding-the-zapatistas.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 07:00:45. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Understanding the Zapatistas
Author: Andrew Flood
Date: March 1999
Language: en
Topics: Zapatistas, Mexico, rebellion, Workers Solidarity
Source: Retrieved on 4th August 2020 from http://struggle.ws/ws99/ws56_zapatista.html
Notes: Published in Workers Solidarity No. 56 — Spring 1999.

Andrew Flood

Understanding the Zapatistas

It is now five years since the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National

Liberation) came to the attention of the world when they seized five

towns in Chiapas on New Year’s day in 1994. The years since have seen

only a couple of weeks of actual warfare. However the uneasy cease-fire

has seen hundreds of land occupations and several national and

international gatherings.

Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people have travelled to Chiapas

to see the rebellion with their own eyes. Hundreds have been deported by

the Mexican government for doing so. Solidarity groups exist in most

western countries, including Ireland. In 1993 Chiapas was as anknown

backwater in Mexico. Now, in the eyes of many activists, it has moved to

centre stage.

In this context the lack of serious discussion of the Zapatistas by the

revolutionary left is surprising. There exists a certain amount of

(mostly) uncritical reporting by individuals and a few essays aimed at

putting the rebellion in a broader context. But the ‘official left’

either remains silent, or worse, produces ham fisted and lazy critiques

that merely compare the rebellion to Cuba and Ché Guevara and say ‘they

failed, so will the Zapatistas’.

From early in 1994 members of the Workers Solidarity Movement took an

interest in the rebellion. In the years since some of our members have

visited Zapatista communities in Chiapas and have started to learn about

Mexican history and politics. We have published some of our findings. In

Workers Solidarity no.55 we carried an article describing the democratic

assemblies and other decision making processes in the Zapatista

community of Diez de Abril.

Origins of the Zapatistas

It is widely known that the EZLN was initiated in the 1980’s by a small

group of Marxist revolutionaries. However this can only be half the

story. Many such groups were attempting similar strategies throughout

Mexico. Why was it that in Chiapas this particular group succeeded? In

order to do so they had to abandon their Marxist-Leninist politics. But

principally it was the radicalisation of the indigenous people of

Chiapas from the 1970’s that created the conditions for rebellion.

They have much to rebel against. The state is controlled by nine wealthy

families and, particularly in the highlands, the ordinary people have no

rights and no security. Resistance is inevitable.

Three factors were influential in inspiring the uprising in Chiapas. The

first of these is the influence of Liberation Theology. Central to this

was the arrival of a new Catholic bishop, Samuel Ruiz. Although

initially hostile to social radicalism he was soon to initiate a method

developed in Brazil which saw the Church identify social problems and

encourage people to non-violently demand justice. Often these were very

basic issues such as workplace deaths.

The second factor is what the EZLN term ‘Civil Society’. By this they

mean a combination of NGO’s (Non-Government Organisations), unions,

community projects, political parties and individuals. Many of these

organisations were formed locally. Following the 1968 massacre of

students in Mexico city many urban activists left to organise in the

poor rural areas of Mexico. The result was a blossoming of education

projects and peasant organisations all aimed at empowering a section of

Mexican society that was previously voiceless.

The third factor was a new found confidence and politicisation amongst

the indigenous people. The Mexican government organised a national

indigenous congress, intended to bring together the indigenous people

from all over Mexico so they could improve their handicraft production.

This also, unwittingly, provided a platform for the indigenous to

exchange their grievances and begin a process of national co-ordination

that would politicise many.

The process greatly escalated in the face of government plans across the

Americas to celebrate the 500^(th) anniversary of the ‘discovery’ of

America. To the indigenous of course this represented the start of 500

years of at best, enslavement; and at worst genocide. Their response was

to organise national and then continental meetings which opposed the

official celebrations in the 1989 to 1992 period.

A failed strategy

It is within this highly politicised atmosphere that a small cadre of

revolutionaries, influenced by the ideas of Ché Guevara moved to Chiapas

around 1983. They had almost no local contacts but hoped to become the

political-military leadership that would lead a peasant insurrection

surrounding the cities. This was a common enough strategy in Latin

America in this period and most left criticisms of the Zapatistas are

based on a critique of this strategy. However this misses the point that

in the original terms of this small group they failed and abandoned this

strategy.

The main EZLN spokesperson sub-commander Marcos has described this

“initial proposal of the EZLN [as] a completely undemocratic and

authoritarian proposal”. “Our conception was vertical: What is necessary

is a group of strong men and women, with ideological and physical

strength, with the resistance to carry out this task”. Their conception

of revolution was common to that of all Leninist parties.

They saw the revolution as needing a strong leadership in order to

direct the masses. They saw the USSR as socialist even if perhaps a

somewhat flawed sort of socialism. They saw the seizure of state power

by a party ‘on behalf’ of the people as key to success. World events

were however to call this conception into question

The collapse of the Soviet Union

As a model of an alternative society the USSR had a certain popularity

with ‘3^(rd) world’ revolutionaries. In the ‘1^(st) world’ it only

appeared to offer a trade off of political freedom for limited economic

equality. In the ‘3^(rd) world’ political freedom was not a part of

capitalism and the USSR seemed to offer a model for national

development.

By the late 1980’s the USSR was in a deep economic and political crisis.

The EZLN was forced to go through a long period of questioning. Although

they came to the correct conclusion in rejecting the soviet model they

also decided this removed the usefulness of talking in terms of

socialism, revolution, or the normal jargon of the left. They continue

to see the USSR as representing socialism and conclude that this sort of

system simply failed.

Anarchists, on the other hand, described the soviet economy as a ‘state

capitalism’ created by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. As such while its

collapse can be seen as a defeat for the ideas of Leninism, it was a

step forward rather then a step back for socialism.

The peace process in Latin America

Towards the end of the 1980’s and the start of the 1990’s, more and more

Latin American guerrilla groups entered into various peace processes.

The reality of these was that few ordinary people benefited from them

while guerrilla commanders got land or political careers. A cynicism

developed about the way the leaderships cashed in on the process. This

is reflected in the Zapatista slogan “Everything for everybody, nothing

for ourselves”.

Despite the failure of their original political perspective the EZLN

still offered something to communities. The social struggles were

meeting with increased repression, in particular from armed thugs

belonging to the landlords, known as ‘white guards’. The EZLN were

capable of offering a measure of armed defence to some communities.

Marcos identifies this as the reason why a small number of indigenous

youth came to join the organisation and they were able to operate in

some of the communities.

However the communities were not willing to accept the leadership of the

EZLN. This created a period of friction in which the political-military

leadership plan of the original cadre was defeated and replaced with one

where the army was answerable to the community. This is expressed in

another popular Zapatista slogan “To lead by obeying”.

Marcos identified the events around the 500^(th) anniversary as the

moment at which they turned from a movement of a couple of dozen into an

army of hundreds and then thousands. The communities ordered the EZLN to

go on the offensive against the state. The one compromise the army

command got was a years delay to train for offensive operations. And so

on New Years day 1994 the EZLN emerged from the jungle and seized the

major cities of the Chiapas highlands.

The Mexican influence

From the time of the rising the Zapatista have insisted that they cannot

be understood as another Latin American ‘guerrilla’ group or as Marxist

Leninists but rather as Mexican revolutionaries. In part this is a

response to the Mexican governments’ assertion that the EZLN want to

break up the ‘Mexican’ nation and implement politics that failed

elsewhere in Latin America.

Mexico has a strong and often unique revolutionary tradition of its own.

Once you start to find out about this tradition then many aspects of the

politics of the Zapatistas start to fall into place. From the time of

the Mexican Revolution of 1910 it has been common for revolutionaries to

form alliances with indigenous communities. Many of the writings of

Mexican leftists, in particular from the anarchist tradition, focus on

the communal and democratic aspects of indigenous culture as the

beginnings of a model of free society.

The most successful of these alliances was the movement of Emilliano

Zapata. This movement adopted the anarchist slogan ‘Land and Liberty’

and explicitly refused to seize state power, most famously when, on

capturing Mexico city Zapata refused to even try out the presidential

throne.

The nature of the Zapatistas

The most common mistake made in viewing the Zapatistas is to treat the

movement as a political party or organisation rather than a social

movement. If by the ‘Zapatista movement’ we understand all those

communities who identify themselves as Zapatistas and we look at the

structure of those communities then we find the real parallel is with

‘workers’ councils’ or ‘soviets’ rather than with a political party.

These structures are common to many revolutions in which the working

class dominates or at least has an independent voice and represent an

attempt to take over the running of that society in a libertarian way.

The common feature of all the Zapatista communities is not a common and

worked out political program but rather a commonly agreed structure of

decision making. It is not at all clear that there exists any program

beyond the demands for dignity, liberty and justice. However what is

agreed upon is the decision making structures which combine a radical

democracy with more traditional indigenous assemblies.

As described in our last issue, the communities have an assembly meeting

once or more per week where all members of the community can talk and

vote. Within the community there is often a community council of

delegates who have responsibility for particular tasks and these meet

more frequently. There may also be sub- assemblies related to particular

groups, (for instance women’s assemblies) or to particular jobs like

sewing.

Between the communities there exist several structures. Most important

are the autonomous municipalities of which there are 32. Each

municipality includes around 50 communities. It’s worth quoting at

length from an Enlace Civil A.C. (NGO) report on these

“The communities of an indigenous zone or area are the ones who decide,

at an assembly of all their members, whether or not they will belong to

the autonomous municipality.

It is the communities who elect their representatives for the Autonomous

Municipal Council, which is the authority for the municipality. Each

representative is chosen for one area of administration within the

autonomous municipality, and they may be removed if they do not fully

comply with the communities’ mandates.

[....]

The Councils are elected and renewed every one or two years, according

to the municipality.

The activities and the responsibilities of each autonomous municipality

are dependent on the will of their members, and on their level of

consolidation. They do not manage public resources, and their budget, if

it exists at all, is very limited, and due to the co-operation of some

of their members. Those who hold a position on the Municipal Council do

not receive a salary for it, although their expenses should be paid by

the same communities who request their presence, through co-operation

among the members. In some cases, members of the Council are supported

in their farm work, so they can dedicate themselves to their [Council]

work, and not have to go the fields.

The autonomous municipalities resolve local problems of coexistence,

relations and exchanges between communities, and they attend to minor

crimes. The application of justice is based on customary law. For

example, in cases of common crimes, the punishment imposed by the

Autonomous Council is reparation of the damages: instead of punishment

by jail or fines, a sentence is imposed of working for the community, or

for the aggrieved family.”

A council system

As can be seen this structure fulfills many anarchist desires for such

bodies, including delegates that are mandated and recallable and who

serve limited terms of office with no special privileges because of

their positions. Although security and language problems mean that there

are few reliable reports by observers of these processes, they are

referred to again and again in interviews with Zapatistas at all levels

of the organisation from Marcos to individuals in the communities. They

also tie in with what WSM members and other Irish observers have seen

and been told about Diez de Abril.

At the level of the entire movement a delegate body exists called the

CCRI (Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee). Again this is a

body of mandated and recallable delegates and importantly it is this

body rather than Marcos or any other individual that commands the army.

The importance of these structures to understanding the Zapatista

rebellion is frequently overlooked because of the concentration on

searching the EZLN communiqués and interviews for information which will

help to define this movement. This confusion arises from treating the

Zapatistas as an orthodox political party with a coherent program, which

it is not. However as we have seen this confusion is understandable

given the development of the Zapatista movement from a small cadre of

relatively orthodox Marxist revolutionaries whose view of the revolution

was very much politico-military leaders making decisions which the

peasant masses would follow.

Essentially a state of what revolutionaries call ‘dual power’ exists in

Chiapas

struggle.ws

has existed publicly since 1995 with the declaration of the 32

autonomous municipalities. The state has the local government, the army

and police and attempts to get the communities to respect and obey this.

The Zapatistas have the community assemblies, the EZLN and the

municipalities and attempts to get the people to respect these. The

Zapatista structures described here share many similarities with

‘councils’ or ‘soviets’ that are created by the workers (or peasants) in

most 20^(th) century revolutions. Both forms of authority cannot coexist

in the long run, eventually one must defeat the other. Which is why

since 1995 the state has continued its low intensity war against the

Zapatistas.