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Title: The Zapatista Dream
Author: Yvon Le Bot
Date: 1998
Language: en
Topics: Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, Zapatistas
Source: Jan/Feb 1998 issue of L&R, Retrieved on 2016-06-13 from https://web.archive.org/web/20160613072509/http://loveandrage.org/?q=node/39

Yvon Le Bot

The Zapatista Dream

El Sueño Zapatista (The Zapatista Dream) is a collection of interviews

by Yvon Le Bot in collaboration with Maurice Najman with Subcomandante

Marcos, Mayor Moises, and Comandante Tacho of the Zapatista National

Liberation Army (EZLN). It has been published in French by Editions de

Seuil and in Spanish by Plaza & Janés (Enrique Granados 86–88, 08008,

Barcelona, Spain). It details the history of the EZLN, and its political

development. We hope that these excerpts will generate interest in

publishing an English edition of the book. The following extracts are

all from interviews with Subcomandante Marcos.

—the Editors

---

The Guerrilla Foco

The Zapatismo of1994 has behind it three main components: a

political-military group, a group of politicized and very experimental

indigenous people, and the indigenous movement of the Selva (jungle). A

starting point would be the Marxist-Leninist political-military

organization with a style very similar in its military profile—not

politically, just militarily—to the national liberation guerrilla

organizations of Central and South America. An organization based on the

idea that the possibilities for peaceful struggle were exhausted, that

it was necessary to confront the authorities, to defeat them and

establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and of communism. At its

start this clandestine organization was very close to the urban one.

It’s an organization with a composition that is majority middle

class—almost no workers, a few campesinos and no indigenous people.

Its political analysis foresaw a radicalization and polarization of the

different elements of Mexican society—the state on one side, the people

on the other—and that this polarization was going to result in a civil

war. On the military plane this posed a new possibility—that didn’t

consist of preparing for war, for initiating a war, but rather to

prepare for when the war breaks out. It’s an organization that doesn’t

intend to initiate combat but rather to appear when it becomes

necessary. The idea is that, in this case, the people were going to need

an armed group to defend themselves, to fight, to resist the actions of

the Federal Army, of the government’s army.

This group had these characteristics: it is politically healthy, it is

militarily healthy, and it is very modest. Being submerged allowed it to

survive the repression that groups that were openly engaged in military

actions were suffering.

The Indigenous Elite

On the other hand we have an indigenous movement with two main elements:

a very isolated group, that is the indigenous people of the Selva, and

another movement that we could call the politicized indigenous elite,

with a great organizational capacity, with a very rich experience of

political struggle. They were in practically all the political

organizations of the left that there were then and they were familiar

with all the prisons in the country. And these groups entered into

contact with each other.

The EZLN’s plan for the future was to build a regular army, thinking

already in terms of its command structure, its articulation, its

territory, its organic character. This was proposed and the politicized

indigenous elite offered to find a place where this could be done

without the danger of being detected. This is when this group decided to

establish itself in the Selva Lacandona. It went in and founded the

EZLN, in November 1983, in an encampment that was called “The

Nightmare.”

We went to learn to live in the mountains, to learn to fight, and to

wait for some day when the revolution would explode in Mexico. Already

back then we had established that the revolution was not our personal

possession, but that others were going to make it and we were going to

help. In military terms, during these months in the mountains, as we had

no foreign support nor advisors, nor anything, we had to resort to

training ourselves militarily based on the experiences of the Latin

American guerrillas that we had read about, but above all based on the

guerrilla and counter-guerrilla manuals of the US military. We learned

how to be guerrillas in the manuals of the Rangers, the SIESPOS, the

SEALS, and all the commando-type structures in the US Army and NATO.

Here we learned what the guerrilla was, what a regular army was, we

learned this from the military history manuals. From the epoch of the

War of Independence we learned about the army of Morelos and above all

from the Revolution about Villa’s Northern Division and Zapata’s

Liberating Army of the South. Accordingly we organized into units,

sections, companies, battalions, divisions, army corps, army, the great

army, the same as their command structures. Our organizational plan is

very close to that of the armies of Villa and Zapata.

Conditions Ripen

This guerrilla group was isolated. For that reason it failed to detect

other things that were beginning to develop in the zone—the sharpening

conditions of repression, of life, of misery—that would allow this

indigenous movement, this indigenous mass that we now see, to become

ready to enter into contact with the guerrilla group. But this contact

between the communities and the armed group—this group of urban origin,

the guerrilla of the university—didn’t happen with people coming from

the city. These people came from the mountains, had lived in the

mountains three, four or five years. For the indigenous people this

signified a lot.

This politicized indigenous group began to talk with some of the leaders

of the indigenous communities that were conscious of the armed struggle.

This was to coincide with the growth of the Guardias Blancas and acts of

repression, above all in the Selva and in the North of Chiapas, where

the indigenous people naturally had to defend themselves. At the time

that the armed struggle was proposed to them they said “Well, if they

are going to teach me to fight and they are going to get weapons, that’s

what I need.” It’s a very practical interest, very immediate, of

survival, that allowed this first contact between the indigenous

communities and the political military group—and from this impact would

emerge what we now know as Zapatismo, not that of right now, because

that already has other ingredients, but the Zapatismo that emerged in

January 1994.

This intermediary group had talked with their families, also indigenous

people—Tzeltales, Tzotziles, Choles, and Tojolabales, and these families

decided to send their youngest children to the mountains to become

guerrillas. Here we had this political-military group with the

indigenous ingredient within it. After a little while—I’m speaking of

1984—we ceased having a majority of Ladinos and Mestizos, and the

indigenous people became the majority. At the time that contact was made

with the communities the indigenous element was already the majority in

the political-military organization, even if this wasn’t reflected in

the command structure. It was reflected in its internal life, because

already there had been an initial cultural shock that had been necessary

to assimilate and resolve: to learn the language, but to learn something

more than the language; the use of the language, of the symbols of what

different things represented, what the sense of the symbol and their

meaning for the communities and all that.

This is a kind of translation enriched by the perspective of political

transition. The idea of a more just world, everything that is socialism

in its broadest features, but digested and enriched with humanitarian,

ethical and moral elements that come more from the indigenous people

themselves. Quickly the revolution was transformed into something

essentially moral; ethical. More than the redistribution of wealth or

the expropriation of the means of production, the revolution became the

possibility that to be human was to have the space for dignity. Dignity

started to be a very strong word. (This wasn’t our contribution), This

wasn’t a contribution of the urban element, the communities contributed

this

The EZLN Defeated

In our perspective they were exploited people that had to be organized

and shown the road. Put yourself in our place: we were the light of the

world. They were blind people who had to open their eyes. This didn’t

change until the translator, Old Antonio, appeared. At the time that the

communities entered into contact with us someone emerged who seemed like

a literary character, but who was real, (who existed). That old man

became the link with the communities, with their world, and with the

part that was most indigenous. By way of him, by way of those political

leaders and leaders of the communities, the EZLN began to understand the

history of [the communities] political roots, of their consciousness, of

their historical consciousness. What became clear was that we were not

talking with an indigenous movement that was waiting for a savior, but

rather with an indigenous movement with a long tradition of struggle,

with a lot of experience, very resistant, very intelligent as well, to

which we would simply serve as something like an armed wing. In

this—we’re speaking of the period 85–87—we are learning. We quickly

realized that there is a reality for which we were not prepared, we

discovered the indigenous world, we saw that they weren’t just people

interchangeable with any other, that they weren’t waiting for us, that

we hadn’t come to teach them what we had developed for whatever other

sector. We thought that it was the same to talk with a proletarian, with

a campesino, with an office worker, or with a student. Everybody was

going to understand the word of the revolution. And then we were

confronted by a new world for which we had no response.

The virtue of this military organization was in recognizing that it

didn’t have an answer and that it had to learn. That was the first

defeat of the EZLN, the most important and it marked what was to follow.

When the EZLN faces something new and recognizes that it has no solution

for that problem, that it has to wait and learn, that it no longer is

the teacher. All we had to offer before this reality was a ton of

questions, but no answers.

And here began the process of transformation of the EZLN from an army of

the revolutionary vanguard to an army of the indigenous communities—an

army that is one part of the indigenous movement of resistance among

many other forms of struggle. We didn’t understand this, for us the

armed struggle was the backbone, the highest stage, etceteras. I think

what allowed the EZLN to survive and grow was accepting that defeat. If

the EZLN had not accepted it, it would have been isolated, it would have

remained small, the EZLN that emerged on January 1, 1994 would never

have been born. Its an army of thousands of combatants, even if poorly

armed they are thousands, and to find thousands of people ready to fight

until death is not an easy thing.

It is very difficult when you have a theoretical schema that explains

all of society to you and you come to society and find that your schema

explains nothing. It’s a difficult thing to accept: to recognize that we

had dedicated all of our lives to a project and that this project is

fundamentally crippled.

The situation in the city was grave. The urban part of the organization

didn’t grow, it continued to stagnate. What then happened was that the

indigenous youth who had joined us in the mountains and that had to

learn medicine, communications, carpentry—all that an army needs to

maintain itself, we sent them to the city and with them we sent the

virus. If was as if the tactical indianization of the EZLN had moved and

contaminated the urban part of the EZLN and it was indianized as well.

The majority of the members of the army were indigenous and the majority

of the urban structure, which was very small—I’m talking about a few

dozen people—was also of indigenous origin. Thus it produced the

contamination, even if it had less effect. We really suffered a process

of re-education of remodeling. As if they had disarmed us. As if they

had taken apart all the elements we had—Marxism, Leninism, socialism,

urban culture, poetry, literature—everything that formed a part of us

and also things we didn’t know we had. They disarmed us and then

returned our arms to us, but in a different form. And this was the only

way to survive.

An Army is Born

Until 1988 our contact with the communities was still sporadic. The

people of the villages started to go to the mountains, to the

encampments, to the celebrations of April 10, November 17, and September

16, the historical celebrations of Mexico or the EZLN. Still we didn’t

go to the villages, except in hiding and at night. There weren’t

“controlled” villages as we say, villages where everybody are Zapatistas

like here.

In any case in that period from 89 to 90 we went from hundreds to

thousands of combatants. And the villages in which some families had

supported us came to be entire villages, canyons, areas, regions of

areas that were completely Zapatista. We could walk in a canyon, day or

night, entirely among compañeros, knowing who came and who went, we had

absolute control over what occurred in the canyons in those years. It

was a Zapatista boom, a phenomenal expansion so all out of proportion

such that we quickly began to fill the organizational chart that had

been a dream or a nightmare in ‘83-’84: companies, battalions,

divisions: that army quickly became possible. We began to organize it as

a people’s army. That is to say an army for fighting and for production,

that was not only prepared for combat, but that worked in the service of

the communities. Our army worked collective cornfields, it had what we

have now built in the Aguascalientes—clinics, meeting centers, sports

fields—where the military units would come together to work and build a

playground, things in the service of the community.

From the Conquest to the CCRI

In 1992 we didn’t perceive a question that was very important to the

indigenous communities, that was the character of the Conquest, what the

discovery of America signified, as they were then celebrating the 500

years since the discovery of America and planning big official

celebrations. Within the indigenous movement, I don’t know about

nationally, but at least locally, a kind of restlessness started over

what this signified and the necessity of demonstrating, and they set out

to remember the 500 years as they really had been, as a movement of

resistance against domination. The process of radicalization

accelerated, the villages now came to a point of no return on the

question of going to war, expressed through the indigenous leaders, the

leaders of the communities and of the regions that will later become the

CCRI (Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee). The indigenous

leaders proposed to start the war in 92. The military leadership, in

agreement with the comandancia, of which I was a part then, we put

forward that the conditions weren’t there, that the international

situation wasn’t favorable, that the national situation as well was

unfavorable for any attempt at change, even more for armed struggle.

Together we decided that it was necessary to consult the people: this

was the first consulta in the villages on what was going to be the

Zapatistas line of work. This is in the second half of 1992 and it

coincided with the indigenous mobilization for the celebration of the

500 years, the big October 12 march on San Cristobal that the indigenous

people posed as the last civil appearance of the indigenous movement

that has already become Zapatista.

At this time, in these communities the consulta happened: an explanation

was made in each village about the conditions in the communities, in the

ethnic groups, what the international situation was, the national

situation, and the question t hand was whether it was time to start the

war. In these months, in September, October and beginning of November as

well, the consulta was made in 400 or 500 communities of the four ethnic

groups, among the Tzotziles, Choles, Tojolabales, and Tzeltales, in Los

Altos, the North, and the Selva, and the majority of the population

participated in this consulta: the women for the first time as a special

sector, and the youth, who before had not participated in decisions of

the communities, and even less those of this type. It was a kind of

referendum by means of recording each of the proceedings, and after the

march in October the votes were counted.

A broad majority came out definitely in favor of starting the war

immediately, and the communities gave the formal order to the EZLN to

make the war together with them. This provoked problems for us in

logistical, tactical, and strategic terms. We weren’t an army prepared

to take the offensive. From when we were a political-military

organization, we set out that war was going to come at some moment, but

not that we were going to look for it. And after our contact with the

communities we had conceived our military role in defensive terms. We

supposed that the communities would be attacked, that the army would

come in or discover us, or that there would be evictions and we would

have to resist, to fight the Guardias Blancas and behind the Guardias

Blancas would come the police and behind them would come the army.

Therefore we had a defensive military plan that covered all of Las

Cañadas and the most important points in Los Altos.

When we had the results of the voting there was a meeting in December

1992 between the leaders of the indigenous communities and the EZLN

commandancia in the mountains in which the necessity of changing the

decision-making structure in light of the plan for war was put forward.

The indigenous communities must take control over the whole organization

of the EZLN, even in the city, and it was posed that it was necessary

that the war not be a local one, but rather in the whole national

territory, or at least in all the states where the EZLN was to be found.

In this moment—I’m speaking of the end of 1992—the commandancia of the

EZLN remained formally in the hands of the political-military

organization, but in reality it already resided in the leadership of the

communities, those we then called the responsables of each zone and

ethnicity, of the three regions, and of the four ethnicities.

The CCRI was born in January 1993. There was a meeting with

representatives of the compañeros from the city, of the regular troops

of the insurgents, and of the villages. At this meeting the possibility

of the war was discussed, because it was an initiative of the indigenous

communities and it didn’t resonate in the city. If we looked at the

proposal with skepticism, they looked at it with even more, because they

had a better handle on information. Everything was in place for it to be

a complete fiasco. Therefore, after a long discussion that lasted

several days it was decided that the political-military organization

would cede control, that it had to opt for a democratic mechanism for

making decisions in which the greater part of the organization would

decide on the course of action and would carry it out, and the greater

part of the organization was the communities. Then the indigenous

representatives, the leaders, approved the results of the consulta,

voting for war, as the villages, the communities, had already voted.

Thus they took formal command of the EZLN. They constituted themselves

as the comandancia of the army, and the responsables of the ethnic

groups and the zones took the name and the rhythm of work of the

Revolutionary Indigenous Clandestine Committee (CCRI). Then the leaders

of the four indigenous ethnic groups met for the first time, now as

leaders, now with the title of comandantes to resolve to work together

and make war as indigenous people and not as one ethnicity, but as the

four principal ethnicities of the state. The general character of the

war was also established, that it was for national demands, not just

indigenous ones, but national ones. The principal demands, the banners

of the struggle are: democracy, liberty, and justice.