Nothing is ever easy, especially in a hostile environment, but the members of the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), an indigenous autonomist movement in the province of Chiapas in southern Mexico, continue to show the peoples of the world that autonomy and self-management in an alternative system of good government is not only possible, but works, despite hostility and repression.
Nothing is perfect, but the model is viable and we have a lot to learn from the Zapatista movement. The EZLN shows the way of the federation of free communes, of perseverance and the way of unity. Zapatista autonomy illustrates the concept of society versus the state dear to the political anthropologist Pierre Clastres.
– Resistance 71 –
A medieval historian, Jérôme Baschet has lived between Paris and San Cristóbal de Las Casas for more than fifteen years. He has devoted many works to the Zapatista movement, including "The Zapatista Rebellion. Indian insurrection and planetary resistance" (Flammarion, 2005). In 2013, he prefaced "Ethics and politics" and "Them and us" (Snail Editions), works bringing together the recent texts of sub-commandants Marcos and Moisés.
In January 2014 will be published his new book, largely based on the Zapatista inspiration "Farewell to capitalism. Autonomy, society of good living and multiplicity of worlds" (La Découverte).
On this twentieth anniversary of the indigenous uprising of 1er January 1994, is the Zapatista dynamic still so meaningful and hopeful for anti-globalization resistance and emancipation struggles in the world?
In recent years, mainly from 2007 to 2011, it was common to hear that the Zapatista movement had exhausted itself. In Mexico, the media and some rather hostile intellectuals fueled rumors about the rout within the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) or about the death of Subcomandante Marcos. For all of them, and to tell the truth for everyone, the massive mobilization of December 21, 2012, the "day of the end of the world", was a total surprise: more than 40.000 Zapatistas occupied, in an impressive silence and in an orderly and peaceful manner, five towns in Chiapas (almost the same as the 1er January 1994). This constituted a scathing denial to all the rumours, demonstrating that the relative discretion of the previous years did not mean a decline, but the silent preparation of a new stage of the struggle. Since then, the “little Zapatista school” has constituted an impressive demonstration of strength and political inventiveness. Among the other initiatives announced in the series of communiqués entitled “Them and us”, there is the call to constitute a planetary network of struggles, called “la Sexta” (in reference to the Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona). For this, the Zapatistas emphasize that it is no longer a question of making the list, known to the point of nausea, of the NOs of what we refuse, but of collectively elaborating the YESes that characterize the worlds that we want. In terms of the construction of these alternative worlds, it seems to me that the Zapatistas have developed an experience which, without in any way constituting a model, is one of the most important that can be observed today. It would be a pity, for all those who do not despair of a real project of emancipation, not to turn their gaze towards this experience, to learn from it what can be learned, to seek there a possible source of inspiration and, at the very least, renewed energy and hope.
In 2013, the Zapatistas launched a new invitation to "Zapatistas" from all over the world to come and experience the realities of daily life in the autonomous rebel communities, during what they called the "little Zapatista school" (including a first session took place in August, a second and a third around this 1er January 2014). You took part in it: what assessment do these communities make and what assessment do you yourself make of the situation of "de facto autonomy" that they have built for more than a decade (in reaction to the government's non-respect of the agreements of San Andrés supposed to formalize a certain form of indigenous autonomy)?
The “little school” in August, which allowed nearly 1500 people to share, for a week, the life of Zapatista families, was an exceptional and sometimes overwhelming experience, including on the emotional level. It was also, for the Zapatistas themselves, the opportunity to make a collective evaluation of autonomy, which was recorded in four elegant booklets given to the participants of the “little school”. This assessment is very honest; it gives ample space to the difficulties, to the trial and error of those who, at the time of establishing themselves as authorities, knew that they were not prepared for it and had to “walk by questioning”; many shortcomings and sometimes serious errors are also recognized. Nevertheless, what has been achieved is remarkable. Based on Indian traditions while renewing them profoundly, a system of self-government has been set up at the level of villages, communes and regions. Five “councils of good government” operate, render justice, organize collective decision-making on the basis of a complex mechanism of consultation of local, communal and regional assemblies. An autonomous health system has been set up; hundreds of autonomous schools have been established and more than a thousand teachers have been trained. And this on the basis of an absolute refusal of any government aid. What the Zapatistas have created can be considered a self-government of radical democracy. They demonstrate that politics is not a matter for specialists and that ordinary people (which we are too) are capable of taking over the tasks of organizing collective life. They call this autonomy, a term which, for them, has nothing to do with a simple decentralization of the powers of the State, but designates a clearly anti-systemic approach, both the construction of another social reality and the implementation place of a non-state form of government, in which the separation between rulers and ruled tends to be reduced as much as possible. This is the “assessment” of Zapatismo, twenty years after the ¡Ya basta! from 1994, and that's something.
What is the social viability of such an emancipatory experience in a political, military and economic context that is still just as adverse?
The situation of the rebel communities is certainly less dramatic than it was between 1997 and 2000 (paramilitarization orchestrated by the federal government, tens of thousands displaced, the Acteal massacre in December 1997). Nevertheless, counter-insurgency hostility remains evident today. It acts above all through groups and organizations that the authorities incite to harass the Zapatista communities, in particular in order to take away from them land recovered in 1994 and which they have been cultivating since then (they have not been legalized, for lack of a peace agreement ending the conflict). There are currently several Zapatista communities that have had to abandon their villages as a result of actions of this kind, carried out with arms drawn. Another example, denounced last year: a non-Zapatista organization had received government aid; the agreement provided that the project thus financed should use a shed that the Zapatistas have been using since the 1990s to store their coffee harvest.
If the EZLN responded to violence with violence, this would be the ideal pretext for an intervention by the federal army. Pursuing the construction of autonomy therefore presupposes having enough composure not to “respond to provocation”. It also depends on the vigilance of Mexican and international "civil society", which is essential, because it reminds the federal authorities that the Zapatistas are not alone.
In some regions and communities of Chiapas, the indigenous population itself is hostile to the Zapatista rebellion. How are these divisions, sometimes violent, evolving today?
Apart from these situations of open conflict, almost always induced or encouraged by the authorities, Zapatistas and non-Zapatistas are quite capable of coexisting peacefully. This is what happens in most villages in Chiapas. A large part of the indigenous population, without being Zapatistas, is not hostile to them and often shows them genuine respect.
Moreover, Zapatista clinics are open to non-Zapatistas, who know that they will be treated better there than in public hospitals where racism and inefficiency reign (numerous recent cases of indigenous women having given birth at the entrance to public hospitals without be supported). It is also common for non-Zapatistas to appeal to one of the “Councils of Good Government” to resolve a legal matter. They benefit there from a free justice, fast and exercised by people who know the Indian reality, which is not the case of the constitutional authorities, whose corruption is deep. One of the five "councils of good government" recently expressed concern that it had too many cases of non-Zapatistas to deal with: it simply decided, without going back on the principle of gratuity, to ask that the modest expenses be covered travel (by microbus) of people in charge of justice, when they had to go to the scene of the case!
At the national level, the Zapatistas have recently revived the dynamics of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), which federates the struggles of the Indian peoples of Mexico against the exploitation of their territories. Beyond that, what are the relations of the EZLN with the various components of the Mexican left?
Founded in 1996, the National Indigenous Congress brings together organizations from most ethnic groups in the country (more than fifty in total). Its last general meeting, last August, was convened at the initiative of the EZLN and took the name of “Tata Juan Chavez chair”, in honor of one of the founders of the CNI, who recently passed away. Hundreds of delegates from Indian organizations across the country drew a chilling list of attacks on their territories and forms of community organization, from the illegal diversion of water from the Yaqui River in Sonora State to to the massive installation of wind turbines destroying the lagoon ecosystem from which the fishermen of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec live, not to mention the recent attacks against the community police in the mountainous regions of Guerrero. The CNI is the place of convergence and mutual support between these multiple Indian struggles.
The Zapatistas having said and repeated that they totally reject politics from above, that of the state and the party system, their relations with the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (but can we still call it "leftist" ?) as well as with López Obrador, who is trying to found a new party, are non-existent. For the Zapatistas, what matters is to weave links with organizations whose struggle is not part of an electoral perspective, as they did in the framework of the Other Campaign.
We remember that on the day of the indigenous Zapatista uprising of 1er January 1994 was also that of the entry into force of the North American Free Trade Agreements – NAFTA (Mexico, United States, Canada). Twenty years later, what assessment do the Zapatistas make of this opening of the Mexican market to the big neighbors to the North? What influence did it have on their own struggle?
For the Zapatistas, it is clear that NAFTA, signed between such manifestly unequal powers, is part of the “fourth world war” which, by subjecting peoples and States to neoliberal logic, tends to destroy them. More specifically, NAFTA functioned as a “weapon of mass destruction” against the Mexican peasantry. In the 1980s, Mexico was self-sufficient in basic production; today, it imports half of the maize consumed, to say nothing of other cereals. The outright abandonment of the rural world was explicitly part of President Salinas de Gortari's plan when he signed NAFTA. It was about emptying the countryside and putting an end to an archaic way of life whose technocratic logic likes to point out that it contributes almost nothing to the national GDP. The result is catastrophic: migrations, destructuring of communities, drop in production, imposition of new forms of consumption, increased dependence on the market, etc. Alongside other organizations that defend peasant agriculture and promote food sovereignty, autonomy as it is being built in Zapatista territory presents itself as an alternative to the Mexican rural disaster.
What are, in your eyes, the perspectives of the Zapatista dynamic (“anti-capitalist, bottom left”) as a critique in action of the dominant model and of a certain relationship to politics?
The Zapatista movement (notably “la Sexta”) is defined both by a consistent anti-capitalism and by a refusal of politics from above, that which is centered on state power and the interplay of parties. This second point obviously refers to a sensitive question, which unfortunately causes many divisions within the world left. For the Zapatistas, this posture is the result of a history punctuated by betrayals (agreements signed by the government but never respected, votes by parliamentarians of all parties contrary to the constitutional reform project resulting from the San Andrés Accords). It is also based on the fact that the choice to conquer State power leads, in a world whose globalization is irreversible, to a submission, more or less disguised, to systemic logics and, moreover, to an accentuation of the separation between rulers and ruled. On this basis, there is no other option than to multiply the spaces enabling the construction of alternative forms of collective organization to be initiated. But beware, the Zapatistas do not advocate the strategy of desertion and it is not a question, for them, of creating a few islands of peace supposedly protected from capitalist disaster. They know very well that, to build, you need an organized collective force. And, while the autonomy they have built is arguably one of the most expansive "liberated spaces" currently in existence, they also know that such autonomy must be constantly defended against multiple assaults and that it necessarily remains partial, given its systemic environment. As a result, building and fighting against must be conceived as two inseparable approaches. During the “little school”, one of the Zapatista maestros asked all of us: “And you, do you feel free? For them, the answer is clear. Despite extremely precarious conditions, they made the choice of freedom; they themselves decide their own way of organizing and governing themselves. It is without doubt this taste for freedom and the dignity which results from it that we perceive in the way of being so singular of the Zapatistas.
Interview by Bernard Dutermé
Source (s): Cetri.be via Resistance71
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