tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/zapatistas-8514/articles
Zapatistas – The Conversation
2016-11-24T14:34:44Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/68940
2016-11-24T14:34:44Z
2016-11-24T14:34:44Z
The ‘left-behind’ once had a real voice: the globalisation protesters of the 1990s
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147376/original/image-20161124-15365-uqh7l1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anti-WTO protesters in Seattle, 1999.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WTO_protesters,_1999_(26169377791).jpg">Seattle Municipal Archives via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the same day the <a href="https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/north-american-free-trade-agreement-nafta">North American Free Trade Agreement</a> came into force in 1994, a small band of armed revolutionaries led an uprising centred around the Southern Mexican city of San Cristobal de Las Casas. Named for Emiliano Zapata, a Mexican revolutionary of the early 20th century, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexicos-masked-marxists-meet-the-zapatistas-21726">Zapatistas</a> carried traditional weapons, but they weren’t revolutionaries out to seize control of the country. Instead, they sought to give a voice to the struggling peoples of the world in an era of corporate globalisation.</p>
<p>After a mere 12 days in control of the city, the Zapatistas <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-25550654">retreated</a> back to the jungle communities from whence they came. Via a rudimentary connection to the nascent internet, they began communicating their message of a transnational rebellion against the rule of corporate interests. They issued regular “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LVfiBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT162&lpg=PT162&dq=%22Declarations+from+the+Lacandon+Jungle%22&source=bl&ots=iAx9UXTzls&sig=evpNwZtPXgZ4QXD-yTuOld9mM9I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj275SPt8HQAhVDXBQKHXuUAEkQ6AEILDAD#v=onepage&q=%22Declarations%20from%20the%20Lacandon%20Jungle%22&f=false">Declarations from the Lacandon Jungle</a>”, which addressed not only their compatriots in Mexico but “the peoples and governments of the world”. In 1996, they <a href="http://artactivism.gn.apc.org/stories/tomorrow.htm">declared</a> that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We will make a collective network of all our particular struggles and resistances. An intercontinental network of resistance against neoliberalism, and intercontinental network of resistance for humanity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By the turn of the 21st century, this one spark of resistance had become a genuine global movement. Its members were a small percentage of the world’s population, but they mounted significant and visible protests outside meetings of the new global order: the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund, the G7/G8 and G20. These protests, in places such as <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-dark-side-of-globalization-why-seattles-1999-protesters-were-right/282831/">Seattle in 1999</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jul/17/italy.g8">Genoa in 2001</a>, pulled together many diverse groups from both the Global North and South, who proclaimed loudly that they too deserved a stake in the new financial order. </p>
<p>These groups spoke for the original “left behinds” of neoliberalism. They would become known as the <a href="http://democracyuprising.com/2007/04/01/anti-globalization-movement/">alter-globalisation</a> movement, calling not to roll back globalisation altogether, but for a different <em>type</em> of globalisation – one in which they too would have a voice.</p>
<h2>Fighting back</h2>
<p>Whenever national structures are broken down to allow for economic liberalisation, somebody or some group always loses, whether it is the small landholders in rural areas who suddenly find themselves competing in a “free” market dominated by multinational agribusiness corporations, or the workers of once-strong industrial regions whose employers are suddenly free to take their production facilities to cheaper parts of the world.</p>
<p>Ever since the late 1970s, most of the nation states and corporate interests of the Western world have steadily pushed for deregulation towards a global open market. And as various people and groups have lost out, they have consistently met different forms of popular resistance. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147392/original/image-20161124-15325-200xy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147392/original/image-20161124-15325-200xy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147392/original/image-20161124-15325-200xy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147392/original/image-20161124-15325-200xy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147392/original/image-20161124-15325-200xy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147392/original/image-20161124-15325-200xy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147392/original/image-20161124-15325-200xy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Taking it to the streets at the infamous 2001 G8 summit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AGenova-G8_2001-Manifestazione_disobbedienti.jpg">Ares Ferrari via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The populist convulsions of Trump and Brexit are but the latest responses to the disruption neoliberalism has visited on millions of people. But these responses have been channelled by unscrupulous politicians and media outlets into an insular nativism, pitting one social group or another against “outsiders” who’ve supposedly done them wrong. The dangers and historical precedents are alarming, <a href="https://theconversation.com/carl-schmitt-nazi-era-philosopher-who-wrote-blueprint-for-new-authoritarianism-59835">and well-documented</a>. </p>
<p>But however depressing it might be, those of us invested in social progress should not throw up our arms in despair. Instead, we should seize the opportunity to return to the alter-globalisation movement’s insurgent ideas. </p>
<h2>Opening up</h2>
<p>Like Trump and Brexit, this earlier “movement of movements” consisted of claims on behalf of people who felt left behind in the age of neoliberalism: look again at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JUZOGkw6tQ">footage</a> and the <a href="http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/11/revisiting-no-logo-ten-years-later">literature</a> of the protests of the time, we see and hear different voices around the world clamouring for a foothold in globalisation. </p>
<p>This is the crucial difference between today’s anti-global spasms and the alter-globalisation movement. Yes, all its sub-movements called for the regulation of global markets, and for better ways to ensure the spoils of a new globalised world were properly shared. But at the same time, they called for continued social, intellectual, and moral globalisation. </p>
<p>They called for the continued spread of the ideas of a universal humanity, the central dignity of all human life, and the collective global solidarity of peoples and political institutions that would be needed to deal with the 21st century’s global problems, such as climate change.</p>
<p>Beyond that, the very tools and concepts the alter-globalisation protesters used were products of globalisation. The internet allowed these groups to organise collectively, across borders, in ways that were previously unimaginable. Many of their ideals and principles had been built in part by the new international institutions of the postwar period: human rights, transnational governance, global citizenship. </p>
<p>This movement put the landless farm workers of the Global South side-by-side with the industrial trade unionists of the North, and yet it didn’t collapse into incoherence. Instead, it came together around a core principle: while its constituent groups all had their own distinctive concerns, they could all come together to fight their abandonment by corporate-led neoliberalism. </p>
<p>Outrage at that same world order has lately turned Western politics in a new and alarming direction – and to change course, it’s time to revive the alter-globalisationists’ ideas. We should be inspired not only by what it was against, but what it was for: a transnational movement of people seeking nothing more than the dignity that should be afforded to all humans across all borders. </p>
<p>This is a vision of social progress we urgently need. As today’s tide of populism signals a retreat from globalisation to the protection of individual nations, all at the expense of global solidarity, we should remember the world has a long and rich history of other alternatives to neoliberalism. To borrow one of the alter-globalisation movement’s familiar phrases: another world is possible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68940/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andy Price does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
As the world pulls up its drawbridges, it’s time to revive the ideas of a remarkable and unfairly derided movement.
Andy Price, Head of Politics, Sheffield Hallam University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/41933
2015-06-30T15:51:18Z
2015-06-30T15:51:18Z
An introduction to the booming world of Latin American digital arts
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86300/original/image-20150624-31507-7fofr3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Monika Bravo, detail of the installation [URUMU](https://vimeo.com/86606440).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo © Juan Luque </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea of “digital arts” may not immediately call Latin America to mind. Silicon Valley maybe, Old Street roundabout maybe; probably not Buenos Aires. But this is exactly where the most recent E-Poetry Festival, “renowned biennial international artistic gathering”, took place earlier this month. I attended, and the gallery space on the opening night was positively buzzing with internet artists, digital performance artists and sound, video and <a href="http://code-poems.com/">code poets</a>.</p>
<p>This is the first time the festival has been held in Latin America in its 14-year history – previous events have been held in the US, the UK, Spain and France. The choice to celebrate the event in the region is therefore significant. It’s indicative of a growing recognition of the important place of Latin American digital arts at international level and a nod to the longstanding Latin American representation in the festival, wherever it’s been held.</p>
<h2>Digital arts</h2>
<p>But first off, what are “digital arts”? </p>
<p>Broadly, they are any art form imaginable that can be adapted to digital formats. People are used to the fact that films are routinely made with digital technologies these days, but poetry can also be transformed with new technologies. It’s not just a case of “digitising” old poems so that they can be read online. Instead poems are being “born digital”: they can only be read via an interactive interface, clicking on links to find your way through. Some are “generative”, taking data from various sources available online and mixing it together in endless permutations. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86390/original/image-20150625-13008-19jki4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86390/original/image-20150625-13008-19jki4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86390/original/image-20150625-13008-19jki4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86390/original/image-20150625-13008-19jki4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86390/original/image-20150625-13008-19jki4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86390/original/image-20150625-13008-19jki4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86390/original/image-20150625-13008-19jki4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Orquesta de Poetas performing at the E-poetry festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy of the Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Internet art (or net art for short) and electronic literature work with a similar premise: you need to appreciate them via a computer rather than just “print them out”. Typically, contemporary digital art works display a high degree of hybridisation between art forms – poetry, visual art and performance can all be mixed in together. There’s also a tendency to play with the analogue and the digital, producing “multi-media” art installations and evolving works that move back and forth between old and new technologies at different stages in their “lives”.</p>
<p>Latin America might have found itself on the dark side of the “digital divide” over the past 20 years or so, but this really hasn’t impeded the development of digital arts in the region.</p>
<h2>Latin American culture</h2>
<p>The Latin American digital arts scene is really just the most recent manifestation of a strong avant-garde artistic and literary tradition in the region that goes back at least a century. This avant-garde movement has always been strongly international. Latin American contributions to Cubism, Surrealism and other manifestations of the European avant-garde have long been appreciated. The work of South American artists Wifredo Lam, Xul Solar or Joaquín García Torres is very much a part of it.</p>
<p>So it comes as no surprise to find one of the most significant contemporary Latin American digital artists, the Uruguayan <a href="http://netart.org.uy/">Brian Mackern</a>, reworking García Torres’s iconic <a href="http://www.wordsinspace.net/urban-media-archaeology/2011-fall/2011/11/30/inverted-map-of-south-america/">inverted map</a> of South America in his <a href="http://netart.org.uy/latino/index.html">Netart Latino Database</a>. He, like Torres before him, challenges us to turn our preconceptions of the region on their heads. This includes preconceptions which might suppose the region more suited to naive and low-tech forms of art.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85720/original/image-20150619-3343-9ozvca.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85720/original/image-20150619-3343-9ozvca.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85720/original/image-20150619-3343-9ozvca.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=706&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85720/original/image-20150619-3343-9ozvca.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=706&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85720/original/image-20150619-3343-9ozvca.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=706&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85720/original/image-20150619-3343-9ozvca.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85720/original/image-20150619-3343-9ozvca.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85720/original/image-20150619-3343-9ozvca.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brian Mackern’s Netart Latino Database.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">netart.org.uy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Revolution and its dangers</h2>
<p>Another preconception that quickly surfaces in the context of discussions of Latin American digital arts is the longstanding association of the region with all things revolutionary. Of course there is a relationship between some digital artworks produced by Latin Americans and proposals for social change, but just not in such a blanket fashion. </p>
<p>Latin Americans led the way in using the internet to initiate and sustain social protest: the Mexican <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_uk/video/the-zapatista-uprising-20-years-later">Zapatista Uprising</a> of 1994 was the first “revolution” to organise itself both on and offline. Given its success in “going viral”, it has been a source of inspiration for many other subsequent social movements. </p>
<p>Key in the online activism associated with the Zapatistas were some inspirational hactivist attacks on major institutions organised by Mexican-American artist <a href="http://visarts.ucsd.edu/faculty/ricardo-dominguez">Ricardo Domínguez</a> and colleagues at the <a href="http://www.thing.net/%7Erdom/ecd/EDTECD.html">Electronic Disturbance Theatre</a>. This kind of activism has also developed to become a form of art most often known as tactical media.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85719/original/image-20150619-3386-fuxae3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85719/original/image-20150619-3386-fuxae3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85719/original/image-20150619-3386-fuxae3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85719/original/image-20150619-3386-fuxae3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85719/original/image-20150619-3386-fuxae3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85719/original/image-20150619-3386-fuxae3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85719/original/image-20150619-3386-fuxae3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Electronic Disturbance Theatre’s Transborder Immigrant Tool.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stalbaum</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some tactical media artists creatively subvert common forms of media such as adverts or commercial websites. An example of this is Peruvian-American artist and filmmaker Alex Rivera’s spoof labour-outsourcing website <a href="http://www.cybracero.com/">Cybracero.com</a>. </p>
<p>Alternatively, they may offer subversive applications of common technologies, such as Domínguez and colleagues’ <a href="http://bang.transreal.org/transborder-immigrant-tool/">Transborder Immigrant Tool</a>. This is an app for mobile phones that helps indicate water sources to illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico to the US; this comes with poetry to help the traveller along their way.</p>
<p>Despite these examples, there’s a fuzzy logic in operation when foreign commentators attempt to “sell” the region and its digital arts by loosely linking the “revolution” in new media technologies with revolutionary political projects. The result is that the writings or art works in question are assumed to be “doubly revolutionary” regardless of their political colours, or even artistic merits.</p>
<p>Today’s Latin American digital arts scene embraces all sorts of different projects. Some works are intentionally highly political, others try to break new ground in terms of aesthetics or the way they use technology. </p>
<p>I’m not going to claim that there’s a revolution going on, but there’s definitely a sense that digital arts are booming across the whole region. And because so much of this work is available via the internet, Latin American digital arts are not so easily cast as something a bit unusual that happens “down there”, reflecting a world very different from our own. Instead, they are very much a part of the world we live in too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41933/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thea Pitman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Latin America might have found itself on the dark side of the “digital divide” over the last 20 years or so, but this hasn’t impeded the development of digital arts there.
Thea Pitman, Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/21726
2014-01-13T03:17:54Z
2014-01-13T03:17:54Z
Mexico’s masked Marxists: meet the Zapatistas
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38801/original/7w9rs7wk-1389323754.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C159%2C2048%2C1318&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mexico's Zapatistas are one of the world's longest running active revolutionary groups. But who are they, and what are they fighting for?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Jorge Núñez</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On New Year’s Day 1994, the world was taken by surprise. A group of indigenous people staged a rebellion against a Mexican state that had continued the trajectory of racism, neglect, genocide and exploitation which started with the arrival of the Spanish in the Americas over 500 years ago.</p>
<p>The Zapatista Front of National Liberation (EZLN) invoked the name of legendary Mexican revolutionary <a href="http://www.zapatistarevolution.com/who.html">Emiliano Zapata</a> but had a sophisticated and thoroughly modern agenda. They not only stood for the indigenous people of the southern state of Chiapas, so long neglected by corrupt rulers in Mexico City, but they also spoke out against Mexico’s accession on New Year’s Day of 1994 to the <a href="http://www.ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/north-american-free-trade-agreement-nafta">North American Free Trade Agreement</a> (NAFTA).</p>
<p>What makes the Zapatistas novel, and worth the countless books, <a href="http://www.vice.com/vice-news/the-zapatista-uprising-20-years-later">articles</a> and revolutionary tourism that has been afforded to them, is that their path is grounded in democracy, dialogue, inclusivity and mutual recognition of dignity. The Zapatistas have attempted to build alternative community and political structures which work through <a href="http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/andrew/zap_asr.html">direct democracy</a>. They also promote <a href="https://nacla.org/article/zapatismo-resurgent-land-and-autonomy-chiapas">autonomous projects</a> on the lands that were occupied during the early stages of the rebellion.</p>
<p>The Zapatistas did not arrive in a vacuum. They came out of the slow-cooking cauldron of oppression in one of Mexico’s poorest states, Chiapas. With their non-prescriptive leftist ideology, the Zapatistas were well suited to recuperate the class struggle in Chiapas, turning it into a campaign for national democratic reform.</p>
<p>When asked what the Zapatistas wanted, the group’s masked leader, Subcomandante Marcos, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/mar/03/extract">replied</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To open a crack in history. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Rather than wanting to create a model or vanguard party, the Zapatistas have created a radical social change process that is collaborative, democratic, imaginative and unclosed. And given the then-recent demise of socialist states and communism – as well as an apparent shift to a post-ideological consensus in the West – leftist thought was in part reinvigorated by the Zapatistas.</p>
<p>The group is founded on the <a href="http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/Zapatistas/chapter02.html">denunciation</a> of the NAFTA as a death sentence for indigenous peoples. Subcomandante Marcos argued that the privatisation of collectively held lands and the implementation of neoliberal economic policy would undermine small producers (<em>campesinos</em>) and make the country more dependent on imported crops and other commodities. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/the-environmental-and-social-impacts-of-economic-liberalization-on-corn-product-112460">case in point</a> is that liberalisation has pushed subsistence corn producers increasingly away from environmentally sound production practices and deeper into poverty.</p>
<p>The Zapatistas consist of mostly poor Mayans from Chiapas who not only invoke their own struggle for justice, but also link in to many global demands for a fairer world. Its sudden public appearance on January 1 1994, represented a stark reminder of the deep <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/mexico-poverty_n_3673568.html">poverty and marginalisation</a> that affects a large part of Mexican and global society. It also allowed for the struggles of indigenous peoples to be viewed as central rather than peripheral to the democratisation of Mexico.</p>
<p>They are regularly seen wearing black ski masks, even in the hot summer. These are often associated with criminals wanting to conceal their identity, and while the Zapatistas may fear government repression, the ski masks are also a brilliant stroke of representation. Since colonisation, the poor indigenous peoples have felt invisible and faceless. What has been valued is their labour and the riches of the land underneath their communities. </p>
<p>Exploited, displaced and murdered, the indigenous peoples have been and continue to be treated as inferior and non-human. The mask not only represents their desire for non-hierarchical organisation, but is an inversion of their exploitation.</p>
<p>One of the tangible achievements of the Zapatista rebellion has been the <a href="https://www.academia.edu/5354826/Resisting_Neoliberal_Homogenization_The_Zapatista_Autonomy_Movement_can_be_found_at_Latin_American_Perspectives_Additional_services_and_information_for">creation of</a> more than 30 autonomous municipalities and five regional autonomous governments in Chiapas. Although their national and international political presence has not always been strongly influential – partly due to their model of refusing state power – the persistent effort to build autonomous governments at the local level has produced results.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38790/original/5frw7yt2-1389313011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38790/original/5frw7yt2-1389313011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38790/original/5frw7yt2-1389313011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38790/original/5frw7yt2-1389313011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38790/original/5frw7yt2-1389313011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=939&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38790/original/5frw7yt2-1389313011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1181&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38790/original/5frw7yt2-1389313011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1181&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38790/original/5frw7yt2-1389313011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1181&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Zapatistas, led by Subcomandante Marcos, have prioritised land reform as a key grievance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Mario Guzman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In addition, one of the key questions that the Zapatistas raise, and one that is enduring in Latin America, is of agrarianism. Latin America has extremely unequal land distribution, so much so that Peruvian activist José Carlos Mariátegui saw land reform as a key step to <a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/mariateg/works/1928/essay03.htm">ending patterns of inequality</a> in the region.</p>
<p>The Zapatista rebellion <a href="http://www.unesco.org/most/vl4n1trejo.pdf">forced the government</a> to temporarily revive land reform in Chiapas as an issue to regain some political ground and avoid the growth of active support for the EZLN. In early 1994, independent organisations were able to take advantage of a weakness of the ruling PRI party and seized thousands of hectares of land and demanded recognition as community land. </p>
<p>This process was accompanied by the emergence of new, state-wide alliances between peasant and indigenous organisations.</p>
<p>The Zapatistas are one of the few groups in the world who believe in a radically different world, the last of the utopians. In a 2001 communiqué, they <a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/msr/volume2/article5">wrote that</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In our dreams we have seen another world, an honest world, a world decidedly more fair than the one in which we now live … This world was not a dream from the past … It came from ahead, from the next step we were going to take. And so we started to move forward to attain this dream … And it was for all. This is what we want. Nothing more, nothing less.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a world of incremental policy change and in which the only choice appears to be between Keynes or Hayek, the Zapatista-style dream is alluring.</p>
<p>And although they may not have had the impact or relevance many had <a href="http://libcom.org/library/unmasking-zapatistas">hoped for</a>, there are still lessons to be learnt. Subcomandante Marcos <a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ultimas/2013/12/28/rebeldia-cobija-al-ezln-igual-que-hace-20-anos-subcomandante-marcos-5968.html">recently argued</a> that while historiography “feeds off of individualities, history learns from peoples”. </p>
<p>This is one of the key lessons the Zapatistas can give the world. The collective dignity of the most oppressed should be privileged over that of elite individuals in our struggle for a better world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/21726/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Self does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
On New Year’s Day 1994, the world was taken by surprise. A group of indigenous people staged a rebellion against a Mexican state that had continued the trajectory of racism, neglect, genocide and exploitation…
Andrew Self, Postgraduate Associate at the Institute of Latin American Studies, La Trobe University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.