What do Australian Historians and Intellectuals have to say about Globalisation?
Why we love the Zapatistas
by
A new lie is sold to us as history. The
lie about the defeat of hope, the lie about the defeat of dignity, the lie
about the defeat of humanity. (Subcommandante
Marcos in the invitation to an Intercontinental gathering against Neoliberalism,
30/1/96)
We have nothing to be ashamed of. We are
the product of the encounter between indigenous wisdom and resistance and
the rebelliousness and valor of the generation of dignity which lit the dark
night of the sixties, the seventies and eighties with its blood. (EZLN, cited in Lorenzano, 1998: 126)
Zapatismo is not an ideology; it is not a bought and paid for doctrine. It is…. an intuition. Something so open and flexible that it really occurs in all places. Zapatismo poses the question: “What is it that has excluded me? What is it that has isolated me? In each place the response is different. Zapatismo simply states the question and stipulates that the response is plural, that the response is inclusive”
In Seattle, Zapatista graffiti is everywhere. A remnant of the anti free
trade demonstrations that took place there last year. The word Zapatista,
EZLN and Ya Basta! (Enough!) adorn the walls of numerous buildings. Various
political leaflets, advertising everything from teach ins, to upcoming protests
and seminars portray the image of a ski-masked face of a Zapatista. It is
obvious the movement for global justice loves the Zapatistas. What is it that
has captured our imaginations? Is it because like the movement themselves
the Zapatistas in their fight against globalization and neoliberalism have
come to symbolize a revival of protest and hope in a barren landscape of activism?
Do we see in the Zapatistas the seeds of a different possibility, a movement
whose strategies are seductive and pervasive, using novel forms of communication
and creation to speak for the marginal? It
is indeed their strategies and aims that make this struggle exceptional. The
large numbers of people who have become involved in this protest and the subsequent
worldwide discussions and recent demonstrations against neoliberalism and
globalization are evidence that there is a compelling desire for rebellious
and radical action. In a contemporary
world where we are presumed to believe that there are no alternatives to capitalism,
the Zapatistas have attempted to provide an alternative discourse.
As the world embraces globalization and as we are led to believe it
is ‘inevitable’, as radicalism purportedly declines, it has been said that
the Zapatistas have ‘opened up a world that appeared to be closed and given
life to a hope that seemed to be dead’ (Holloway, 1998: 1).
Indeed the Zapatista uprising bought not only political upheaval, but
also a renaissance of ‘the local’ in Mexico: articles, books, journals, videos,
songs, poems, paintings and plays.
There are two key aspects to this
struggle, which make the notion of protest important to examine here. Prior to the demonstrations in Seattle and
Washington, the Zapatistas in one of the first times since the 1960s used
radical dissent and action in determining the agenda. In a period of history in which we are frequently told there is
no alternative, in this particular case indigenous voices are being heard,
creating alternatives and showing that change is possible. Secondly, the creativity of the Zapatista rebellion
is notable. The Zapatista Liberation
Army (EZLN) has presented revolution in new ways, using new methods, challenging
old notions of revolution and just by its actions challenging the government
rhetoric of the Zapatistas as terrorists etc.
However, the Zapatista rebellion is a paradoxical example of a resistance
to globalization. On the one hand
it has opened up new political spaces through a combination of the use of
new technology, and on the other it has allowed assimilation by a globalised
consumer culture. Its decision to
bypass conventional organizations and engage in what could be termed ‘antidisciplinary
protest’ (Stephens, 1998) is reminiscent of the sixties desire to reinvent
the concept of revolution. In speaking about power and possibility in relation
to the dialogue between the Zapatistas and the Mexican government Marcos commented:
this is not a fair dialogue, it is not a dialogue between equals, but in
this dialogue the EZLN is not the weak party, it is the strong party. On one side of the government there are only
military force and the lies spread by some of the media. And force and lies will never, never, be stronger
than reason. They can impose themselves
for days, months or years, but history will finally put each one in its place.
(Subcommandante Marcos, 5/5/95, La Jornada, 11/5/95)
How can we interpret this? Can it be maintained that the Zapatistas are
stronger than the Mexican government or that reason is stronger than force?
One way of approaching this would be to look
at an alternative theory of power, such as Gandhi’s notion of truth force
(Satyragraha). This notion seems to embody both the challenge and the paradox of
the Zapatistas and their rebellion. How
can a group of indigenous peasants, not only contest the proclamation of modernity
by the Mexican government signing the NAFTA agreement, but also want to change
the world, without seizing power? In
addition, when their discourse is centered around stories, children, jokes,
ridicule and dance, how can this rebellion be taken seriously?
The Zapatistas pose a theoretical and practical challenge: a challenge
to established ideas about the indigenous people of Latin America, a challenge
to the understanding of the Mexican State and a challenge to the revolutionary
left, in the broadest sense. As Marcos
stated in a comment on the first year of the uprising:
Something broke in this year, not just the false image of modernity sold
to us by neo-liberalism, not just the falsity of government projects, of institutional
alms, not just the neglect of the country of its original inhabitants, but
also the rigid schemes of the Left living in and from the past.
In the midst of this navigating from pain to hope, political struggle
finds itself naked, bereft of the rusty garb inherited from pain: it is hope
which obliges it to look for new forms of struggle, that is, new ways of being
political, of doing politics: a new politics, a new political morality, a
new political ethic is not just a wish, it is the only way to go forward,
to jump to the other side. (Subcommandante Marcos - Citado por Rosario Ibarra,
La Jornada 2/5/95)
He may have also added, a new political theory, a new understanding of
politics and of power. One of the key points in what makes the Zapatista movement
persuasive is the way in which they have consciously by passed and rejected
conventional organizations of the Left and the revolutionary model of social
change through the seizure of state power. This comes from a recognition that the failure of past world wide
revolutions has become part of the globalization rhetoric, insisting that
there is no alternative (Holloway, 1998: 3).
The Zapatista understanding of the struggle is unlike most previous revolutions
or movements in that the Zapatista revolution does not aim to take state power.
Underpinning this notion of struggle is the belief that humanity cannot be
achieved through winning state power. Statements issued by the EZLN such as ‘we do not want to struggle
for power, because the struggle for power is central to the world we reject;
it does not form part of the world we want’ (Holloway, 1998: 4) are part of
what make the Zapatistas so appealing. This
is a notion evident in the practice of most people, and the fact that a revolutionary
organization such as the EZLN makes a statement about abolishing power, makes
them in a sense very ordinary and thereby very extraordinary. (Holloway, 1998:
5). Therefore the Zapatistas are a struggle, not for power, but against it,
and by doing this, they fluidly articulate themselves with some of the most
advanced trends of contemporary political thinking. For example they dispense with the vision of
the society as a whole as a premise for political action (Focault, 1977).
They employ the ideas of Gramsci when Marcos says:
It is civil society that must transform Mexico-we are only a small part
of that civil society, the armed part - our role is to be the guarantors of
the political space that civil society needs. (quoted in Rossett, 1994)
Additionally, the refusal of the Zapatistas to form a political party,
or follow a prescriptive ideology almost implies that the Zapatistas belief
is one of ‘you live the revolution by being the revolution’ again reminiscent
of sixties antidisciplinary movements (Stephens, 1998: 32). Further as the Zapatistas put it in a recent
communiqué:
The ‘center’ asks us, demands of us, that we should sign a peace agreement
quickly and convert ourselves into an ‘institutional’ political force, that
is to say, convert ourselves into yet another part of the machinery of power.
To them we answer NO and they do not understand it.
They do not understand that we are not in agreement with those ideas. They don not understand that we do not want
offices or posts in the government. They
do not understand that we are struggling not for the steps to be swept clean
from the top to bottom, but for there to be no stairs, for there to be no
kingdom at all. (La Jornada, 1997)
If the Zapatista struggle is then a struggle against power, this would
imply that the methods of struggle adopted can not be those of the powerful.
How can one fight against the powerful without adopting their methods?
This raises another paradox: that of the Zapatistas opting for the
traditional structure of an army. The
Zapatistas have an image of ‘romantic revolutionaries’ rejecting society and
state power, yet returning to one of the very structures that maintains this
power. The army, whether state or
revolutionary could be argued is
a site for intense concentration of power, disciplinary methods and self alienation,
through the maximum subordination of normal effective life. In the idea that power is military force, power
and dehumanisation are treated as practically identical.
The Zapatistas speak of what they say as the ‘word of those armed with
truth and fire’ (la palabra de los armados de verdad y fuego). The fire is there but the truth comes first, not just as a moral
symbol, but as a weapon; they are armed with truth, and this is a more important
weapon than guns. Although they are organised as an army, the
premise is a Gandhian one aiming to win by truth. In a world where the powerful
will seek to impose their will with force, it is necessary for the Zapatistas
to be also ‘armed with fire’.
There certainly are a number of examples which demonstrate clearly the
Zapatista uprising began peacefully, through the occupation of towns, until
the Mexican army proceeded to bomb the Zapatistas and their villages (Holloway,
1998: 6). Following the widespread
popular support for the Zapatistas within Mexico, contributed largely to the
populations condemnation at the violence, a cease-fire, was negotiated, which
ultimately meant the Zapatistas had to find new ways of pursuing their struggle.
That the struggle would continue became clear almost immediately, when
the government offered a pardon to the rebels.
The Zapatistas responded:
What are we supposed to ask pardon for?
What are they going to pardon us for?
For not dying of hunger? For
not being silent in our misery? For
not having accepted humbly the giant historical burden of contempt and neglect?
For having risen up in arms when we found all roads blocked?
… Who should ask for pardon and who should grant
it? Those who, for years and years,
sat at a laden table and ate their fill while death sat with us, death, so
everyday, so ours that we stopped being afraid of it? Those who filled our pockets and our souls
with declarations and promises? Or
the dead, our dead, so mortally dead of ‘natural death’, of measles, whooping
cough, cholera, typhoid, tetanus, pneumonia, paludism and other gastrointestinal
and pulmonary delights? Our dead so
equally dead, so democratically dead of pain because no one was doing anything,
because all the dead, our dead, just went off like that, without anybody keeping
the count, without anyone saying at last the ‘Enough!’ that would restore
meaning to those deaths, without anyone asking those dead of always, our dead,
to come back and die again, but now in order to live. … Who
should ask for a pardon and who should grant it? (EZLN, quoted in Holloway,
1998: 7)
Through this communiqué, two things emerged: firstly, the Zapatistas would
not give up and secondly, the use of the communiqué as a new and powerful
form of struggle, initially circulated by hand and later through technology.
These communiqués, were full of stories, humor, memories and poetry.
The use of symbols, which previously were not seen as ‘tools’ of revolution,
and their concept of ‘dignity’ as a new category of revolution, assisted in
the Zapatistas becoming not a militant group but a ‘community in arms’, including
as Holloway writes, ‘with all the traditions and practices of cooperation
that the word ‘community’ implies and with all the transformation of those
patriarchal and oppressive traditions that rebellion implies. Their aim was to make a revolution not Revolution’
(Holloway, 1998: 8).
Central to the strategy of this revolution is the idea of hope. This is hope, not that springs from certainty
of the end result, but from confidence in the necessity of the project, as
‘hope is the dignity, the struggle to walk upright in a world which pushes
us down’ (Holloway, 1998: 15). Crucial to the concept of reinventing revolution
is the insistence of the principle of ‘mandar obedeciendo’ (command by obeying), the idea that the leaders
of the movement must obey the members, and that all major decisions should
be taken through a process of collective decision making. This principle has meant constant frictions
in negotiation with the government. Given
the poor conditions of communication in the Lacandona Jungle, and the need
to discuss everything thoroughly, the principle of ‘command by obeying’ means
that decisions take time. When the
government representatives insisted on rapid replies, the Zapatistas replied
that they did not understand the indigenous clock. As recounted by Commandante David afterwards
the Zapatistas explained that
We as Indians, have rhythms, forms of understanding, of deciding, of reaching
agreements. And when we told them
that, they replied by making fun of us; well then, they said, we don’t understand
why you say that because we see you have Japanese watches, so how do you say
you are wearing indigenous watches, that’s from Japan. (La Jornada 17/5/95)
and Commandant Tacho commented
They haven’t learned. They understand
us backwards. We use time, not the
clock. (La Jornada 18/5/95).
The principle of ‘command by obeying’ involves a sociocultural dynamic
which is expressed in clear, ethical political values. This has been described as another aspect which
makes the Zapatistas different from past revolutionaries. The Zapatistas are not guerillas with a particular
social base, but in fact are the social base themselves (Lorenzano, 1998:
126). ‘By engaging in this process,
the indigenous community has become the ‘polis’, a community not just of land,
language and culture, but a political community, with deliberate legislative
capabilities’ (Loreanzo, 1998: 126). This principle of ‘command obeying’ requires the Zapatistas to give
great importance on the experiences and concepts of truth, dignity, sincerity
and integrity. The constant affirmation
of ‘for everyone, everything; for ourselves nothing’, is an example of the
Zapatistas promoting horizontal social solidarity occurring through a strategy
which leads to a ‘revolution that makes the revolution possible’(126).
Esteva and Suri Prakash recently suggested that colonised peoples have
three choices in response to colonisation: become good subjects, accepting the premises of the modern West without much
question, become bad subjects, always
revolting against the parameters of the colonising world; or become non subjects, acting and thinking in ways
far removed from those of the modern West (1998: 45). The Zapatistas are revealing what it is like
to be non subjects, those ‘without voice, without face’ (as in the faceless
symbolism of wearing balaclavas) affirming their own forms of local thinking
and action in particular cultural spaces.
The Zapatista struggle must be seen as the experience of popular power
and one which evolves from the surviving traditional ways of the indigenous
community, where democracy, dialogue and discussion of common problems are
central, and the principle of command obeying which structures ‘public life’.
By listening, the Zapatistas learnt of the struggle of the people and
that the culture of the people, in a sense was the culture of struggle. For
example, as Marcos writes:
That is the great lesson that indigenous communities teach to the EZLN.
The original EZLN, the one that formed in 1983, is a political organization
in the sense that it speaks and what it says has to be done.
The indigenous communities teach it to listen, and that is what we
learn. The principal lesson that we learn from the
indigenous people is that we have to learn to hear, to listen. (Marcos 1995:47)
The identity of the Zapatistas again appears contradictory. On the one hand they use the language of class
struggle, even as they renounce earlier vanguardist formulations in their
appeals to civil society. They go
to great lengths to make it clear their appeal to the poor of Mexico, regardless
of ethnicity. Yet they cloak themselves
in ethnicity, in Indianess. The use
of history and collective memory of past struggles, permeates the Zapatista
communiqués in the form of stories and myths (Lorenzano,1998: 162). This was particularly drawn upon by Marcos
who surprised everyone when he appeared on horse back, his chest crossed with
cartridge belts. For Mexicans, his
appearance awakened and recovered the collective memory of Emiliano Zapata
(Rajchenberg & Heau Lambert, 1998: 19).
This unforgettable image has been used by Mexican filmmakers and has
become the archetype of the noble revolutionary. As Marcos’s individual identity was hidden behind his ski mask what
remained was the symbolic identity of an agrarian guerilla hero. This has been described as more influential
than any of his speeches. ‘He represented
the re-emergence of the emblematic defender of peasants who had died for his
ideals’ (ibid.). Rajchenberg and Heau-Lambert
in writing about this, also note the didactic symbol of Mexican national history.
They comment that: ’in Mexico, the sign of a hero is not a gun but
a horse, and the Mexican imagination has woven a series of representations
around the horse, as the horse has been appropriated as a symbol of victorious
strength at the service of a popular hero’ (1998: 21).
The Zapatistas have not only visual symbols in their protest but also historical
experiences. When they called the
Revolutionary Convention in 1994, it took place in a part they baptised as
Aguascalientes, after the Sovereign Revolutionary convention of 1914 which
is signified as the first experiment of true citizenship. This is a strategic act in that the EZLN is
attempting to demonstrate that the past of the indigenous Indians is linked
with the nation’s history.
In examining the representation of the Zapatistas, one is immediately drawn
to their well-known image of their faces covered with black balaclavas. This
image has had enormous impact in the North where in a global exchange of symbols
activists wore ski masks in the protests in both Seattle and Washington, which
have subsequently been made illegal by the American government. These images
of ski masked wearing demonstrators were flashed across TV screens and the
net by both independent and mainstream media, giving the protestors an air
of ‘this is serious now’ mingled with a romantic otherness. What do these
images signify? Obviously there are
practical reasons of security and protection. The masks however have been noted to be a powerful
pre-Hispanic symbol, which is always present in Mexican culture and is traditionally
used in transformative ways. Belausteguigoitia
(1996a) argues that the Zapatistas use the mask as a form of resistance and
as an element of performance in battle.
According to Belausteguigoitia (ibid.) the Zapatistas use the mask to comment
ironically on the official belief in Mexican society that the indigenous people
are equals to the government. They use the mask to affirm they are equal, but to also show that
they can appear suddenly and multiply their numbers in unexpected ways. Yet she also points out that with the mask
the Zapatistas are representing the obvious: the invisibility of indigenous
people to Mexican society. She argues
that in this way they represent all those who have been marginalised by society.
And of course they use the powerful strategy of camouflage: to see
without being seen, and at the same time to give the impression that Zapatistas
are spread all over the indigenous communities of Mexico.
Peace negotiator Camacho has demanded that Marcos bear his face at the
peace talks. Marcos replied:
Why such a fuss over a ski mask? Is Mexican political culture not the culture
of the veil? I am willing to take
of my ski mask if Mexican society will take of its mask which was placed there
years ago by foreign yearnings…and wakes up from the long sluggish dream that
‘modernity’ imposed at the cost of everything and everyone. (Subcommandante
Marcos, 1994, quoted in Belausteguigoitia, 1996)
Another reason of the mask has been documented by Esteva and Suri Prakesh
(1998: 181), who write that the anonymity of the mask aims to prevent the
glorification of particular leaders. Yet
this seems a paradox given that the well-known masked face of Marcos, is almost
as recognisable as that of Che Guevara. However, as has been stated by the above authors
in quoting from a Zapatista women’s leader, Anna Maria, the most fundamental
and symbolic reasons for the ski mask were:
For our own people, the Zapatista have no ski mask; they are not heroes
or leaders, but men and women who command by obeying; receiving instructions
from communities. After explicitly
renouncing any ambition for power, the men and women are chosen by their communities
to perform specific duties. Nothing
more. For the others - the public
and the media, keeping the ski mask allows them to underline the invisibility
of the marginalised, discriminated groups all over the world. (Maria, 1998: 181)
The notion of truth is another concept articulated by the Zapatistas.
Truth, their truth is not just that they speak the truth about their
situation or about the country, but that they are true to themselves.
In this notion truth is dignity and dignity is to assert ones humanity
in a society which treats people with inhumanity, to assert wholeness in a
fragmented society, to assert control over ones life in a society which denies
such control. To be armed with truth
or dignity could be said is to assert the power of living now that which is
not yet.
In the assertion that they are armed with truth and dignity, the conventional
concept of power is reversed. Power
is not that which is, but that which is not. In contemporary society where that which is
dominates, in which identity is primary, to be armed with dignity is to assert
once again the power of non-identity. In
society based on human alienation, the Zapatistas raise the notion of non-alienation,
of that which is suppressed, of singing, laughing and dancing, the ‘rejection
of seriousness and the somber mood of disciplinary politics’ (Stephens, 1998:
35).
If we can presume these aspects already do exist, then we can see them
as representing the negation of the untruth of global society. Truth exists as struggle against untruth, dignity
as a struggle against degradation, non-alienation as struggle against alienation,
non-identity as struggle against identity, the not yet as struggle against
the present. In short they exist as
the Ya Basta! (Enough!) inside each
individual. This is expressed well
by Antonio Garcia de Leon in his prologue to one of the editions of the Zapatista
communiqués, where he says ‘as more and more rebel communiqués were issued,
we realized that in reality the revolt came from the depths of ourselves’
(cited in Holloway, 1998: 81). Therefore,
the power of the Zapatistas is the power of Ya Basta, the negation of oppression. This
is of significance when examining the strategies used by the Zapatistas.
It can assist us in understanding why they have not been suppressed
by the military. Perhaps it is not due to their military strength but rather
to the resonance of their Ya Basta! in Mexico and elsewhere in the
world.
Considering power in this way also is useful in understanding aspects of
the Zapatistas’ politics. The understanding
of people as already having dignity in a society which degrades them, and
as already having truth in an untrue society is the crucial point in their
concept of revolution. Understanding
people as having dignity implies a politics of listening, a politics of mutual
recognition. Revolution then becomes
an articulation of the struggle of dignity, rather than the bringing of class
consciousness to the people. From this follows another key phrase of Zapatista
discourse - ‘preguntando caminamos’
(asking we walk). Revolution is redefined
as a question rather than an answer. It refers to the creative and imaginative articulation
of dignity now, and not to a future event.
The notion of dignity and of listening to people’s struggles also helps
to explain why the Zapatistas do not call for supporters to join them in the
jungle, but rather insist that people should struggle wherever they are in
whatever way they can. In effect they
do not say ‘we are right join us’ but, ‘we must all struggle to express our
Ya Basta!’. The various political initiatives they have undertaken - the National
Democratic Convention in Aguascalientes, the national and international consultations
on the aims and future of the Zapatistas, the movement of national liberation,
the indigenous forum and the international encounters against neo-liberalism
all aim at stimulating others to strengthen their own struggles for democracy,
freedom and justice. In this respect the Zapatistas can not be more
local more firmly rooted in their own communities and traditions, as they
do not pretend to represent others. The
International Encounters are a good illustration of a new political style
being created at the grassroots. These
prevent isolation, fundamentalism and parochialism in local thinking and action.
This strategy has been used also in providing protection against the
danger that revolutionary ideals would be incorporated in mainstream political
processes and to ensure that the protest does not result in mirroring the
power it is protesting against. Therefore the Zapatista rebellion can not be
denied or confined, and it will remain ambiguous and contradictory.
Over the last five years, this group of rebels has advanced to a remarkable
extent the themes of oppositional thought and action that have been discussed
through the world recently: the issues of gender, age, childhood, death and
the dead. All flow from the understanding
of politics as a politics of dignity, a politics which recognizes the particular
oppression of, and respects the struggles of, women, children and the elderly.
Respect for the struggles of the old is a constant theme of Marcos’s
stories. The way in which women have been imposed recognition
of their struggles on the Zapatista men has been briefly discussed previously.
The question of childhood and the freedom to play is a constant theme
in Marcos’s letters as highlighted at the beginning of this article. Therefore,
it is not necessarily the struggle of the Zapatistas - the military conflict
and the prolonged dialogue that has raised these important issues.
Rather these issues are central to the struggle.
As Stephens writes in Anti-Disciplinary Protest, speaking of
the sixties:
In refusing, among other things, the discipline of politics, the aim was
to prevent radical protest from being contaminated by all that it strove to
resist. Laughter, paradox and parody
were paraded as ethical forms which would guarantee the purity of the movement
thereby protecting it from adulteration by the things it despised. (Stephens
1998: 36)
The Zapatista struggle seen in this context, is not only about avoiding
notions of state power and conventional revolutionary protest, not only about
gaining material improvements, but rather creating a world in which people
can live with dignity, a mutually recognized world in which people can relate
to each other without hiding behind masks.
Seen in this light, the theatre and dances that punctuate the Zapatistas
rebellion enables them to maintain
a movement that will not be compromised. Such strategies therefore are not
simply an embellishment of their revolutionary process but central to it. These are used deliberately, in order to avoid
any resemblance to the state which is being opposed. Additionally, it could be said that the Zapatista
attempts to use strategies that borrow from popular indigenous culture. The
refusal of rationality and seriousness can be considered an example of contemporary
cultural protest. It has revived images,
names and events, it has politicized the language of society and its symbolic
and historic content. It has managed
to de-ritualise politics and make fun of its sacred forms. The creation of
‘festivals of resistance’ in the North has borrowed heavily from these strategies.
The roaming ‘ corporate loan sharks’ in Washington (activists wearing plastic
jaws, fins and grey tuxedos), a sculpture that ate pieces of earth and shitted
out coins, the activists in Calgary who pulled their pants down spelling out
‘wind power now’ and later organized team earth to play team Shell in a hockey
match for the fate of the planet, the giant puppets used as barricades, all
indicate the Zapatista notion that art, symbolism and humor should not just
be an ornament but an integral part of resistance. In contradiction, the movement
pushes beyond identity politics, whilst creating a space for it. Interestingly
enough in Washington at the World Bank protest and recently in Philadelphia
at the Republican convention, protestors art studios and convergence spaces
have been shut down by the police where activists have been building floats
and puppets as demonstration props.
Some authors have written about
the danger that the protest response of those whose existence is threatened
by globalization will become pluralistic and a mere assertion of identity
(Holloway, 1998: 3). In this analysis,
groups that are threatened by globalization have easy recourse to a romanticized
identity, which separates them from others rather than uniting them.
The world of protest therefore becomes a world of many identities counterposed
to one another. This is where the Zapatistas importance lies,
their assertion of identity, is not defensive and romantic, or one of defending
traditions, but rather: ‘We want a world in which there are many worlds, a
world in which our world, and the worlds of others will fit: a world in which
we are heard, but as one of many voices’ (Holloway, 1998: 171). There appears however to be a distinction here
between the Zapatistas perspective, and how they are perceived by activist
communities in the west and questions remain whether revolution for the west
can ever not be considered as romantic.
The Zapatistas have altered current assumptions about social protest.
In many respects they have provided an example of a new social movement,
however, despite their borrowings from the sixties or Gandhi.
Gandhi's approach that ‘I am my people’s leader.
There go my people. I must
follow’ is similar to Marcos’ strategies of leadership (cited in Esteva &
Suri Prakash, 1998: 184). Like Gandhi,
the Zapatistas do not place their principle focus on negotiating deals with
the government but instead rely on dialogue with the people. Whilst this dialogue ‘shames’ the government
into reducing military or police force, it also reveals to the people their
own strength. They continually reiterate
the need to reinvent a new regime, juxtaposing conventional democratic power
with styles of power that rise from below.
This power involves commanding through obedience. They are challenging the notion that globalization
is inevitable, that local and indigenous movements are backward or infeasible
or ineffectual, that revolution is a top down process and that the metaphor
of protest mirroring the dominant order cannot be reversed.
However, such a strategy means that uncertainty permeates the whole Zapatista
undertaking. There is none of the
sense of the inevitability of history which has so often been a feature of
past revolutionary movements. There
are no promises. It is a revolution
that walks asking, not answering. How
can such a movement be revolutionary and bring about social transformation? The Zapatista answer is focused on the notion
of dignity and in this analysis as dignity implies self emancipation.
The consistent pursuit of dignity in a society based on the denial
of dignity is in itself revolutionary. This requires a shift in our understanding
of revolution. Revolution in this
way requires us to think of it as the ‘cumulative uniting of dignities, the
snowballing of struggles, the refusal of more and more people to subordinate
their humanity to the degradations of capitalism’ (Holloway, 1998: 187). An uncertain revolution, is however an ambiguous
and contradictory one. Holloway discusses
the symbolism that the Zapatistas are not ‘they’: they are ‘we’.
He explains that at many demonstrations in Mexico people have chanted
‘we are all Marcos’, and that this is representative of the struggle of the
Zapatistas being the life struggle of all of us (Holloway 1998: 198).
This is demonstrated by a quote by Major Anna Maria of the EZLN:
Behind us are the we that are you. Behind our balaclavas is the face of
all the excluded women. Of all the forgotten indigenous people. Of all the
persecuted homosexuals. Of all the despised youth. Of all the beaten migrants.
Of all those imprisoned for their word and thought. Of all the humiliated
workers. Of all those who have died from being forgotten. Of all the simple
and ordinary men and women who do not count, who are not seen, who are not
named, who have no tomorrow. (Chiapas, No3: 103)
Prior to Seattle and Washington all we may have been left with was a series
of images that provided us with hope
that radicalism is alive and well: the romantic revolutionary; the indigenous
Indian, ‘the other’, wearing hand woven cloth and black ski masks using lap
tops to get the message out; women with scarves wrapped around their head
in traditional dress with guns strapped around them, and amongst this poetry,
laughter, dancing and song.
But the recent protests against global capital have changed that and it
is easy to see why we love the Zapatistas.
We have learnt from them. Their process itself, borrows from the radical
and anti disciplinary protest of the sixties, which is so familiar and it
offers us hope. It is a process which allows us to assimilate it in to our
already pre conceived notions of social change. It is a social protest we
in the world can understand. The use of symbolism, stories, ridicule, imagery
and dance were central to the protests that took place in the Seattle and
Washington ‘festivals of resistance’. The
Zapatistas use of technology to mobilize worldwide discussion on neoliberalism
inspired us to do the same. The creation of the Independent Media Center in
Seattle, a key organization in the dissemination of information during the
Seattle protests, was informed by the Zapatistas. They borrowed from the Zapatista
notion of Zapatismo, an ‘intuition that is something so open and flexible
it occurs in all places’. Zapatismo
poses questions of exclusion and isolation and states that in each place the
response will be different. Therefore
asserting what makes sense for each community and location, the notion of
‘one no and many yes’s. The notion
of a movement with out leaders, of localized, direct and understood forms
of structure, convergence spaces, the reinventing the concept of revolution,
all these strategies and aims have been inspired by the Zapatista struggle.
Seattle and Washington demonstrated that we are at last coming to realize
that the Zapatista example of participatory democratic, localized resistance
at the grass roots is the way to move. The Zapatistas are perhaps no more
severely oppressed than other communities in the world, but they cite special
relevance to many activists because they are applying relatively unique methods
of resistance, and engaging not only in economic and political struggle but
also race, gender, age and ecology. The Zapatistas have shown us that we not
only should fight for what we are against but also put forward a vision of
what we want. And this is being acted
out now through contemporary counter culture, celebrating, and constructing
new zones and spaces, whether this is through convergence spaces or independent
media, whilst keeping the struggle explicitly political and like the Zapatistas,
by posing a significant challenge to majority culture. This continuing possibility
of the resistance, the desire for alternatives and expression of creativity
are some of the reasons why we love the Zapatistas.
As the Zapatistas tell the world “nuestra lucha es tuya” our struggle is
yours.
And it is empowering.