An Attempt to Understand and Reflect on the Construction of Zapatista Resistance in Chiapas, Mexico (original) (raw)
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Inspiring alterpolitics (R. Ciavolella & S. Boni coords). Focaal. Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, ISSN 0920 12 97, 2015
Since 1994, the Zapatista political autonomy project has been claiming that “another world is possible”. This experience has influenced many intellectuals of contemporary radical social movements who see in the indigenous organization a new political alter-native. I will first explore some of the current theories on Zapatism and the crossing of some of authors into anarchist thought. The second part of the article draws on an ethnography conducted in the municipality of Chenalhó, in the highlands of Chiapas, to emphasize some of the everyday practices inside the self-proclaimed “autonomous municipality” of Polhó. As opposed to irenic theories on Zapatism, this article describes a peculiar process of autonomy and brings out some contradictions between the political discourse and the day-to-day practices of the autonomous power, focusing on three specific points linked to economic and political constraints in a context of political violence: the economic dependency on humanitarian aid and the “bureaucratic habitus”; the new “autonomous” leadership it involved, between “good government” and “good management”; and the internal divisions due to the return of some displaced members and the exit of international aid. https://doi.org/10.3167/fcl.2015.720105
Creative Resistance And Utopian Subjectivities: Zapatista Autonomy As Discourse, Power, And Practice
2018
This thesis explores the Zapatistas’ autonomous project based on an alternative discourse that acts as resistance to the hegemonic system of neoliberalism and the regimes of power that maintain it. Drawing from Escobar’s (1995) post-structuralist discursive analysis, it traces the reinforcing relations of power in the hegemonic system through examining the development discourse, its connections to coloniality, and its privileging of Euro-centric forms knowledge which shape subjectivities to set the limits of possibility and, in that, assert violence towards non-dominant peoples and the environment. Thus, in order to change the dominant order and prevent this violence, there must be change at the level of discourse. The Zapatistas have created an alternative discourse (Zapatismo) that provides the basis for utopian creative resistance through opening the limits of possibility and capacitating people to create their ideal realities. The thesis explores the effects of this discourse on...
The Indigenous Uprising in Chiapas as a Praxis of Liberation
Inter-American Journal of Philosophy, 2020
In this paper I focus on the indigenous uprising in Chiapas trying to understand its originality as a result of several factors: from the historical process of confrontation between the indigenous people and the white elites; to the influence of the theology of liberation in the awakening of consciousness that generated the uprising; to the transformation of the original revolutionary model in favor of a movement of civil resistance, built around the goal of a multicultural democracy; to the ability to understand and adapt to the decisive changes that the world has experienced in the last four decades. In this sense, this fight can be seen as one of the several anticipations of the struggle against neoliberal globalization. In my view, then, it is the awareness of the concrete problems of the indigenous communities, along with the utopian horizon of their struggle, that molds the originality of the Zapatista movement.
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This article focuses on the interplay between shifting regulatory practices of the Mexican neoliberal state and attempts to destabilize them by Zapatista civilian support bases, as they enact practices of autonomy, particularly through the sphere of conflict resolution. In doing so, the article suggests that the cultural practices of justice unsettle relevant regulatory forces during a particular moment in Chiapas state formation and are hence central to disrupting the continued legacies of colonial power – knowledge. Similarly, the argument offers a framework of analysis that allows us to trace the possibilities and challenges of indigenous and afro-descendent struggles in subverting hegemonic state processes.
Mouvements, 2014
Neozapatismo irrupted onto the Mexican and world stage almost exactly twenty years ago, which, at the time, marred the celebrated beginning of “free trade” with the United States. As an “indigenous” and “anti-capitalist” movement with a masked and highly cultured “Subcommander” as its celebrity spokesperson, and centered around the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), it has evoked many images but engendered few studies into its concrete relationships with the other groups and persons who share the same place of struggle each day in Chiapas. At a time when the fascination with the EZLN has faded, Maya Collombon offers her analysis.
Alongside Contemporary Zapatismo: Resistance Networks and Mobilizations in Chiapas in the 2000s
Mouvements, 2013
Neozapatismo irrupted onto the Mexican and world stage almost exactly twenty years ago, which, at the time, marred the celebrated beginning of “free trade” with the United States. As an “indigenous” and “anti-capitalist” movement with a masked and highly cultured “Subcommander” as its celebrity spokesperson, and centered around the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), it has evoked many images but engendered few studies into its concrete relationships with the other groups and persons who share the same place of struggle each day in Chiapas. At a time when the fascination with the EZLN has faded, Maya Collombon offers her analysis.
I will begin this paper with an outline of the causes and motivations of the Zapatistas' insurgence. Then I will show how their structures of organization realize new ways of doing politics – radically democratic, non-dogmatic and thus open for discourse and association with other emancipatory movements. The discussion will be connected to an analysis of P. Gross' " Quiet War With the State: Henry David Thoreau and Civil Disobedience " , which shows intellectual influences of the anarchist tradition and, more recently, of Gilles Deleuze' " Postscript on the Societies of Control " that discerns a new historical age due to the impact of expanding global capitalism. My attempt is to contextualize the insurgence in Chiapas historically and follow the question whether the Zapatistas can be aptly described as a post-modern revolutionary movement, as some authors do. The paper will also deal with the revolutionary use of violence in the case of the Zapatistas who claim to favour the political way but at the same time need protection for the autonomous communities, mainly against paramilitary troops. My main source concerning the background and the inner structure of the movement is " ¡La Lucha Sigue! EZLN – Ursachen und Entwicklungen des zapatistischen Aufstands" by Luz Kerkeling but also primary sources of the EZLN, papers of mexican sociologists and articles of rather left-winged newspapers.