From indios to indígenas: guerrilla perspectives on indigenous peoples and repression in Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua (original) (raw)
Related papers
An Attempt to Understand and Reflect on the Construction of Zapatista Resistance in Chiapas, Mexico
2018
The following paper is an attempt to understand and reflect uponon the construction of Zapatista resistance in Chiapas, Mexico. The Zapatista uprising January 1st, 1994 was the beginning of a struggle for autonomy and subsistence largely led by indigenous communities. The author will attempt to ground the Zapatista resistance in the long history of resistances in Chiapas and consider the new element in the oppressive structures in Mexico that is neoliberalism. After discussing the historical context, the paper will read the Zapatista organization and practices alongside theoretical conceptualizations ranging from Gramscian and Laclau-Mouffian hegemony as well as Castoriadian discussions on the project of autonomy to the theory of becoming posed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. After arguing that no theoretical conceptualizations can nor should adequately capture Zapatista lived experience, the paper will engage with anthropological insights largely infused by the Anthropology of Becoming presented by João Biehl and Peter Locke as well as the concept of prefiguration explained by Marianne Maeckelbergh. These approaches finally present new starting points for a positioning of anthropologists in contemporary social struggles that are defined by action and a desire for another world
LATIN AMERICAN GUERRILLA MOVEMENTS. ORIGINS, EVOLUTION, OUTCOMES
ROUTLEDGE, 2019
This volume comes from the hand of three of the best researchers on revolutionary movements in Latin America. The time elapsed and the partial end of the last guerrilla violence in Colombia with the accumulated knowledge allow the rigorous research that is reflected in this book."
Las Abejas: Pacifist Resistance and Syncretic Identities in a Globalizing Chiapas
2002
Recently I accompanied another group of students from Loyola University Chicago to the communities of the Las Abejas (The Bees) in the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. After a few introductory meetings with various local and international NGOs based in San Cristóbal de Las Casas we traveled to Acteal, in the municipality of Chenalhó and met with representatives of Las Abejas' Mesa Directiva (directive board). Joaquin Perez, a board member and a survivor of the massacre perpetrated by a paramilitary group in this village on December 22, 1997, accompanied us into the center of Acteal. As we were going down the stairs toward Las Abejas' main office, Joaquin updated me with Las Abejas' new projects, commissions and initiatives of resistance. We waited a few hours before meeting with the Mesa Directiva, as they were occupied with various groups, assemblies and committees. Coming from the United Stated to Acteal, I wasn't surprised to hear my students commenting on the obvious marginality and poverty of Acteal, a place that functioned until a few months ago as a refugee camp. One of my students, however, observing how people participated in the ongoing meetings, said: "These people are poor, but better organized than the United Nations!" Indeed, coming to these communities with a disposition to listen we have a lot to learn. Las Abejas has a lot to teach to caxlanes (non-indigenous people), particularly for their strong identity and strategies as pacifist resisters. On numerous occasions, I have heard representatives of Las Abejas speaking to international delegations about their economic struggle and impoverishment as displaced people and victims of paramilitary violence. Yet, I always remain astonished when, at the end of their testimonies, they don't ask for money, but for help in spreading their message. Before leaving Acteal, Antonio Gutierrez, one of the founders of Las Abejas, said to my students, "Our heart is happy that you came to visit us. The government and mass media present the situation of Chiapas as peaceful with no more problems or militarization. But you came here, and you have seen that reality is different than what they present.... Now you have heard our story, seen our places, eaten our food, slept in our poor villages. Now you are our voice! You know how the government is not allowing us to go outside the country to give testimony to our struggle. But you can. You are now the voice of Las Abejas." Since I began my fieldwork in Chiapas in 1998 Las Abejas has grown a tremendous amount in their organizational strength, political consciousness and economic experiences. But it is their Mayan and Christian worldview of organized poor people in resistance that continues to inspire their collective identity and actions. After September 11, 2001 Las Abejas communities discussed the tragic event that took place. Initially they were confused by the news, since most of the time, they hear reports of the United States attacking other countries. As survivors themselves, they fully have not abandoned their simple demands for equal justice for all." In Globalization and Postmodern Politics, Roger Burbach considers the similarities between the Zapatista movement in Mexico and the battle of Seattle against the World Trade Organization (WTO) (Burbach 2001). Both movements go beyond old revolutionary ideologies and manifest a new kind of resistance reinvented by the desires for economic justice and the ecological concern of our generation. In spring 2001, Roger Burbach offered an insightful presentation on this theme to my class 'Sociology of Resistance: Chiapas'. Finally, two important historical works, The War Against Oblivion and Acteal de Los Mártires, respectively of John Ross and Martin Alvarez Fabela, offer detailed accounts of the Zapatista strategies of resistance of the Las Abejas communiqués after the Acteal massacre, on December 22, 1997. Memory, as I suggest throughout my work, is an essential tool to attain peace with justice and dignity, as claimed by Las Abejas and the EZLN. This work on Las Abejas' pacifist resistance and syncretic identities is developed in eight chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the organization Las Abejas from its emergence in Tzajalchen in 1992 to the more recent development of its structure. It also presents the violent path that led to the Acteal massacre on December 22, 1997. Chapter 2 presents the methodological and theoretical frameworks used in my analysis. I describe how my own identity and cross-cultural experiences have helped my understanding of Chiapas and the relation with Las Abejas. I describe the challenges and risk involved in doing research in a low-intensity warfare context. Intense networks of communication and collaboration with local and international organizations are essential factors for entering in dialogue with Las Abejas. My personal concern was to conduct collaborative research with existing organizations, so that my work would be beneficial to them. My analysis of Las Abejas' syncretic identity of resistance finds numerous connections with other types of identity construction. The identity formation processes called syncretic, resistance, project and legitimizing are considered in relation to Las Abejas and the socio-cultural context of Chiapas. The religious character of Las Abejas' collective identity is placed in relation to recent reflections on religious identities in movements. The theoretical contributions I offer with this study of an indigenous-religious organization expand the work of previous studies on the cultural relevance of Latin American social movements. There are many people I have to thank. First of all, I would like to thank Liz, my wife, friend, and companion in my fieldwork. Thanks to her precious intuitions and valuable suggestions I was able to focus my research on more sensitive issues. She accompanied me on many trips to the communities. We struggled and lost our breath together climbing the steep, muddy paths to the mountain communities around Chiapas. My wife and I shared precious moments with various communities of Las Abejas (The Bees); from village celebrations, public actions of resistance to delicate disclosures of displaced families and testimonies of the massacre survivors. In San Cristóbal, we were able to reciprocate the hospitality we received in the communities. We shared the warmth of our fireplace with Las Abejas and other indigenous friends coming to San Cristóbal. I would like to give a special thanks to Antonio Gutiérrez, one of the founders of Las Abejas and certainly one of the most committed persons spreading Las Abejas message all over the world. He endured many difficulties trying to get his passport, so he could travel outside of Mexico to give testimony of Las Abejas' pacifist struggle for social justice and cultural dignity. It is still impressed in my mind when he came to San Cristóbal, after many hours of walking and traveling, in order to fax typewritten messages to the United Nations and to the European Union Commission for Human Rights. The U.N. High Commission for Human Rights did hear his words and sent representatives to visit Acteal and meet with Las Abejas. Thank you, Antonio for the many formal and informal dialogues to clarify my comprehension of Las Abejas dimensions of identity and resistance. I would also like to thank Pierre Shantz, a Canadian full-time member of CPT. We shared several moments together in Las Abejas refugee camps of Acteal, Xoyep and Tzajalchen. The children called him Pedro Xux (baldy) because of his shaved head. His example of an enthusiastic and totally dedicated person inspired all of us in building bridges of friendly cross-cultural relations with Las Abejas. Pierre is just an example of the many other courageous and committed CPTers that I do not mention here for brevity but are alive in my memories. One name, however, I cannot omit: Kryss Chupp. Her example as woman and mother completely dedicated to the promotion of nonviolent resistance brings hope and encouragement to Las Abejas' ongoing struggle. Thank you Kryss also for the numerous suggestions offered for the writing of this work. I also would like to thank the people of SIPAZ and for the collaboration we had in assessing the various religious groups in the Chenalhó area. It is my hope that the reflections reported here on Las Abejas' interreligious identity and character of inclusiveness will further inspire the ongoing effort for interreligious dialogue and reconciliation in the Highlands of Chiapas. Even though, for security reasons, I cannot mention the names, I would like to thank the humble and courageous examples of many pastoral workers of the SCLC Diocese. Among them the
STOCKHOLM STUDIES IN POLITICS, 2006
Latin America is undergoing processes of ethnic politicisation. Some argue that it makesgovernments more responsive to calls for social justice. Others reason that ethnic discourses are used by political elites to keep prevailing power structures and draw the poor away from the battle for equality. This study also explores how the struggle for social justice – asf ought by indigenous-peasant movements – has been affected by ethno-politics (the strategicu se of ethnicity for politicalpurposes). It uses a comparative historical socio-political approach focused on structural change and strategic agency. The point of departure is that the activity of the movements in the political arena is ultimately determined by economic and political structures. The literature tends to understand the ethnic politicisation in relation to a continent-wide move from a ‘national-popular’ and ‘corporatist’ socio-political order towards political and economic liberalisation. The shift has supposedly liberated ethnic identities that previously were blocked due to the way in which indigenous communities were ‘incorporated’ and subordinated politically. This study stresses the need to analyse ethno-politics and social justice in relation to partly enduring, partly changing oligarchic structures. The selection of Guatemala and Ecuador mainly rests on the divergent composition of their oligarchic classes. While Guatemala for much of the past century was dominated by despotic agrarian oligarchs, the Ecuadorian oligarchy was divided into a traditional agrarian and a modernist fraction. The study shows that dramatic openings for ethnic politicisation occurred in societies where corporatism had been weak and oligarchic features in relations over land and power endured. Due to the oligarchic legacies, however, the elites were unable to use ethnicity as a tool for exercising hegemonic control. They could not prevent discourses based on class from being reproduced and those based on ethnicity from being politicised in a way that was dysfunctional to the efforts to disarm the indigenous-peasant movements politically. The movements certainly acted differently. In Guatemala, the continued weight of the agrarian oligarchy made it more focused on the distribution of land and more unwilling or unable to allow itself to be fully integrated into the political arena prescribed by those in control of the state. In Ecuador, the demise of the agrarian oligarchy in the 1970s and the transfer of power to a neo-liberal fraction constituted the framework within which the movement moved away from the land struggle and towards ethno-development and plurinational political representation. In so doing, it accessed the ethno-political spaces more firmly, but it resembled the Guatemalan movement in keeping its strategy of mass mobilisation and contestation.
Twentieth Century Guerrilla Movements in Latin America
2021
collects political writings on human rights, social injustice, class struggle, antiimperialism, national liberation, and many other topics penned by urban and rural guerrilla movements. In the second half of the twentieth century, Latin America experienced a mass wave of armed revolutionary movements determined to overthrow oppressive regimes and eliminate economic exploitation and social injustices. After years of civil resistance, and having exhausted all peaceful avenues, thousands of workingclass people, peasants, professionals, intellectuals, clergymen, students, and teachers formed dozens of guerrilla movements. Fernando Herrera Calderón presents important political writings, some translated into English here for the first time, that serve to counteract the government propaganda that often overshadowed the intellectual side of revolutionary endeavors. These texts come from Latin American countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua, and many more. The book will be indispensable to anyone teaching or studying revolutions in modern Latin American history.
Identities, 2008
The present article focuses on the repositioning process toward the Mexican State that the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) underwent in the late 1990s. Linking the mass defections from guerrilla ranks at the time to EZLN policies that proscribed the acceptance of government "alms," I differentiate the various effects that political division has had on the Zapatista autonomy project. Narratives from two rebel villages in the Las Cañadas region highlight the existence of diverse sectors among the rebel movement's indigenous constituency. These vary in their loyalty toward the organization when their options for the accumulation of economic but also of social capital, exemplified by the education of their children, are concerned. After a presentation of both the Mexican government's and the EZLN's efforts to promote primary education in eastern Chiapas, I use the contest over community schools as a case in point to portray the wider struggle over local hegemony that both have been engaged in over the decade following the 1994 rebellion.
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