Zapatismo, Luis Villoro, and American Pragmatism on Democracy, Power, and Injustice (original) (raw)

The Authenticity of Indigenous Rebellion in Mexico: Luis Villoro’s Critique of Leopoldo Zea’s Nationalism

Leopoldo Zea, disciple of José Gaos and arguably the most recognized Mexican philosopher of the twentieth century, enriched post-colonial Latin-American philosophy through his writings on authenticity and national autonomy. Before his 2004 death, Zea maintained his presence within national debates by opposing Zapatismo’s threat to Mexico’s integration with the United States through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Consequently, Zea placed himself at odds with many of his contemporaries and may have contradicted his own work on authenticity.

The Provocative Cocktail: Intellectual Origins Of The Zapatista Uprising, 1960-1994

2013

I would also like to thank the scholars I have gotten to know through conferences and workshops who have either commented on my work or otherwise assisted me, including Lesley Wood, John Krinsky, Jeff Goodwin, and Mauricio Font. I am also grateful to Patrick Coy and the anonymous reviewers at Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change for their comments on an article that became the basis for Chapter 6 of this work. It is an honor for me to thank each of my interview subjects for sharing their stories about and insights into the indigenous campesino movement in Chiapas and the radical left in Mexico:

“Why Not Share a Dream: Zapatismo as Political and Cultural Practice,” Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 29: 1 (2005): 6-37.

Against this monster, people all over the world, and particularly ordinary working people in factories, mines, fields, and offices, are rebelling every day in ways of their own invention. Sometimes their struggles are on a small personal scale. More effectively, they are the actions of groups, formal or informal, but always unofficial, organized around their work and their place of work. Always the aim is to regain control over their own conditions of life and their relations with one another. Their strivings, their struggles, their methods have few chroniclers. They themselves are constantly attempting various forms of organization, uncertain of where the struggle is going to end. Nevertheless, they are imbued with one fundamental certainty, that they have to destroy the continuously mounting bureaucratic mass or be themselves destroyed by it.

The Zapatista rebellion and Mexican reluctance to repress a dissident group

2018

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