Citizen Action Focus

Zapatismo Today: Five Views of the Bridge

By Luis Hernndez Navarro | January 16, 2004
Zapatismo is not a new political ideology or a rehash of old ideologies. Zapatismo is nothing, it doesnt exist. It only serves as a bridge, to
cross from one side to the other. So everyone fits within Zapatismo, everyone who wants to cross from one side to the other. Everyone has his
or her own side and other side. There are no universal recipes, lines, strategies, tactics, laws, rules or slogans. There is only a desire: to build a
better world, that is, a new world.
The Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous General Command of the EZLN.

I) Masters of Their Words

In certain offenses, the victims cannot testify in their
own behalf because no-one will listen to them. In this
context, the Zapatista rebellion is from the outset an act
of justicethe initial reparations of a crime where the
affected can finally speak and the world must listen. Its
voice touched lives, imaginations, experiences, and political conceptions and by doing so broke down the walls
that segregated Indian peoples and other peoples from
the right to communicate to others the offences suffered.
The rebels opened the doors to dialogue. And they did
this without renouncing their language. The rebellion
rejected the vocabulary of power and created its own language. In an age of confusion and perplexity, it took up
the task without asking permission and said something
different from what had already been said. Zapatismo
simultaneously won the right to speak and recognition of
the legitimacy of its discourse.
Faced with the pretension of the neoliberal story as
unalterable, the Zapatistas said new things in a novel
way. Zapatismo gave itself the right to courageously
name the intolerable, and by doing that gave new birth
to hope, and produced sense where before had been only
noise. Zapatismo became the master of its own terminology; it made the language respond to new necessities. It
facilitated the conversion of the act of naming problems
and solutions into a collective and common process. It
broadened the horizon for actions that were at once global, just, and radical. It renewed aspirations of freedom
that had been closed off; reformulating questions on how
to transform the world. It anticipated events and replanted political certainties.
Erupting at a time when grassroots dynamism was
weak, the rebellion today animates a grand cause and
forms part of the real movement of societyreanimating

the left so it is no longer just a world of ideas and dogmatic struggles. For the past ten years it has stirred our
passions, our language, and our communication. Its
alphabet stimulates the creation of community; its grammar helps forge a shared identity. Zapatismo today is one
of the languages of resistance.
From the start, the rebellion explained itself and needed no translators. Rather than depending on doctrine tied
to repetition and the conservation of existing meanings,
it formulated its own way of thought, closely linked to its
political practice. The Zapatista Army of National
Liberation (EZLN) introduced a language fed by the reality of its social base. It configured an ideological, ethical,
linguistic, and cultural horizon all its own.
In the creation of a new vocabulary, the rebellion also
produced a new iconography. Images travel faster than words,
and before their voice was heard in the first communiqus,
images proved the social composition and origin of the
uprising: broad, community-based, and indigenous.
Later, adding to the words, came the photographs,
videos, T-shirts, postcards, and posters that told the other
history as political drama, as a demonstration of ways of
being, as expressions of solidarity, as symbols of irreverence. Indians are no longer seen as before 1994. The
images endure and recreate the object represented.
The rebellion unleashed the power of the image that
expresses the fundamental fact of resistance. It makes it
impossible to reduce to folklore the picture of unarmed
indigenous women confronting the Army. The image
negates the pitying view of indigenous communities
through graphic documents that attest to their dignity
against repressive forces. The image impedes blocking
out the appearance of the invisible, no longer just governmental statistics but figures instantly identified by the red
bandannas covering their faces. It frustrated attempts to

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trivialize this epic movement of the voices from below by

making it out as a marginal protest by some species of
social archeology opposed to modernity.

them and many still do not hear them. In the First

Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, they called for the
people to depose the usurper that took control of the federal government through fraud (Carlos Salinas de
Gortari), and convoked other powers to take charge of
the situation. Simultaneously, they presented themselves
as a movement against oppression and for the liberation
of the people, and carried a program of historic demands
that remain unfulfilled.

But the words also created imagesstories that,

although they have never been painted, have turned out
to be exuberant, lasting, and convincing. Many of these
representations are landscapes and characters of an
almost mythical nature. The foliage of the Lacandona,
Durito, el Viejo Antonio (Old
Man Anthony), the Ancient
Gods, the Snailall became part
of the social imagination as
The EZLN has avoided
symbols of identity of the rebelideological rigidity,
lion that have every bit as much
force as flesh-and-blood characor converting itself into
ters.
a political party and
The rebellion has known how
to manage its weaknesses and
built the image of its own reasons. Its capacity to send messages is full of ingenuity. The
resistance is also a media event.

being trapped in the web of the

political institutions.

II) Revolution, Rebellion, and

Insurgency
Men at sometimes are masters of their fates: The fault,
dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, writes
William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar. On January 1st,
1994 campesinos and Indians in Chiapas rejected the
designs of the stars and burst out violently to govern
their own destiny. With the background of a profound
agrarian conflict with no immediate prospect of solution,
the proliferation of indigenous demands challenging a
regional system of archaic dominion broke open the
political arena. They shook off their conventional representatives and fixed a point of departure to create a new
regime that today after ten years takes the form of the
autonomous municipalities and in the Boards of Good
Government.
These Zapatista campesinos and Indians are the heirs,
standard bearers of la bolathat conglomerate of classes,
fractions of classes, and action groups that coalesced during the Mexican Revolution of 1910-17. La bola is the
name given to the multitude during the Revolution, and
refers to the mobilization of the small communities in
the armed uprising.
The rebels did not seek to take power and said so from
the first moment, although no-one wanted to listen to

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The essayist Toms Segovia

has pointed out that what is profoundly original about Zapatismo
is that an armed rebellion has
faithfully retained the character
of a social protest and not of a
political revolution. This protest
questions the legitimacy of
power itself. The EZLN has
avoided ideological rigidity, or
converting itself into a political
party and being trapped in the
web of the political institutions.

The rebellion is rooted in the sovereignty of society,

and refuses to recognize intermediaries in exercising that
sovereignty. It is an expression of a society that reflects
on itself and on its destiny, that creates its own norms
and by doing so, institutes itself.
Zapatismo, then, is a rebel force rather than a revolutionary one. The revolutionary seeks to take power from
above to transform society. The rebel, on the contrary,
seeks to question and erode power, and refuses to obey
authority from above. However, this definition does not
deny the social and political transformation that the
rebellion has produced. This has come on the heels of a
violent uprising of the masses to build a government of
its own destiny, which is one of the classic definitions of
a revolution.
The rebellion is also an insurgent movement, an
expression of those who have collectively declared themselves against the authorities and struggle against them.
Despite Zapatismos refusal to constitute a revolutionary
vanguard, it is a founder of new values. We say that our
duty is to initiate, follow, accompany, find and open
spaces for something and for someone, including ourselves. These spaces are also in the broadest sense of
the word, values. They embody a growing sentiment: the
vigilance of fundamental rights and values against the
violations of the present system.

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Insurgents do not always finish a movement they start,

but they remain in history as actors of founding processes. Whether the insurrection lasts or is squelched, nothing remains as before. Mentalities have changed, new
horizons have opened up, everyone suddenly sees realities that nobody saw before. Whatever the final destiny
of the Zapatista insurrection, its role in fermenting new
forms of seeing social change has been permanently
established.

III) Resistance and Utopia

Zapatismo does not aim to occupy government or take
power; it confronts power and resists it. It is not an
opposition party, it does not speak their language, it does
not move in the terrain of traditional political institutions.
Because it is not a party, it does not seek to substitute
one team of government for another, and refuses to
behave itself according to the rules of the game of power
like opposition parties do. The opposition opposes a government but not power, while
the rebellion opposes power
and rejects the current rules of
the game.

the possibilities of profound social transformation, it

makes it possible. That this politics does not exist fully
today does not mean it will never exist. Its presence is
contained in the resistance around the world.
Emancipation constitutes the only viable foundation of
politics todaywhereas neoliberalism is patently part of
a moribund framework of politics that is deepening a crisis of civilization. These acts of resistance are not the
outgrowth of an inherited doctrine, but rather give life to
strong values and principles lived out in a new way of
acting and thinking. They do not try to change things by
pushing their proposal but by underscoring their capacity
for doing. They not only think change, they live it. They
distinguish their struggle from their objectives.
Responses to the Zapatistas theoretical proposals
should be sought in practice. Theyre the product of specific experience, reflection on the reality they move in,
and not the result of prior ideologies. They come from a
new social and political actor.

Zapatismo has simultaneous

roots in local conditions and a
planetary perspective. The struggle
against neoliberalism, the
Zapatismo, then, is a rebel force
value
of the community, the
The rebels are another player
rather than a revolutionary one.
recognition of collective crethat instead of moving the chess
The revolutionary seeks
ation, the demand for identities,
pieces of institutional politics,
to
take
power
from
above
to
the defense of nature, the liberacheckmates adversaries by
tion of women and international
transform society.
upsetting the table. The rebels
solidarity are part of its storeresist and organize resistance.
house. It emerges from the conThey are the player that makes
vergence of various social
civil disobedience not the act of
processes and political currents.
a hero but a collective resource. The one who rejects traAmong the ingredients of this mix are Indian utopias, the
ditional politics or the political class not because they
agrarian struggle inspired by the original Mexican revolureject politics but, as they have said, this way of doing
tionary
Emiliano Zapata, the movement of Che Guevara,
politics.
and the liberation theology of progressive Catholics, and
The rebellion resists, and in doing so affirms its potenespecially Indian theology. The result is, however, differcy, its capacity for invention, for producing sense. It
ent than any of them.
defends the rights and values that power tramples,
For years the Mexican left has had a schizophrenic disrepresses, and denies. It resists, from its singularity, the
Its words and deeds do not correspond to each
course.
proposals of social formatting from the constituted order.
other.
It
defends radical proposals but develops narrow
It resists the injustice that exists. It survives and resists
sectoral and economic practices. It raises the banner of
simultaneously, and assumes an attitude coherent with
full citizenship but deals in corporatist politics. It defends
the age it lives in; it resists and encourages Utopia.
moral renovation but is guided by opportunistic pragmaResists and reconquers life. Death to death, long live
tism. Zapatismo overcomes this division by building a
life, proclaimed the Zapatistas last January first in San
proposal that responds to practice, links to an ethic, and
Cristbal de las Casas.
recognizes its own contradictions. Its thought is in synThe resistance anticipates the possibility of carrying out
chrony with its living.
another kind of political and program. Far from rejecting

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IV) Zapatismo as a Foreshadowing

of Things to Come
Cancun and Bolivia. Two points on the map that synthesize the paths traveled by the grassroots movement
against neoliberalism in 2003. In September, mass
protests derailed the meeting of the World Trade
Organization in Cancun. In Bolivia a month later, an
indigenous uprising toppled a government of businessmen that sought to sell off the natural resources of the
people.

twenty-first century. Not only for having used tools of the

Internet to transmit its message internationally and
break out of the military encirclement, but also because
it marked a point of inflection in the renovation of the
global left, a dike against the drainage of social democracy and its radical sectors, a revival of the deep yearning
for freedom that had been temporarily anesthetized. Also
because it responded with originality and innovation to a
proposal for a form of globalization that does not respect
differences and that believes modernity can best be built
by throwing out large parts of humanity.

Zapatismo illuminated the emergence of a new political

actor in Latin America: Indian peoples. Not that the
indigenous struggle didnt exist before on the continent.
Like in Mexico, the cause of the original peoples was a
reality before the uprisings in Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru,
Guatemala, Chile, Nicaragua, and Colombia. Born in the
most remote corners, an expresBolivia is another link in the
sion of an intolerable situation,
popular mobilization that for the
the cause gestated in the mounpast ten years has pulled down
tains well before the Zapatistas
Indian people claim a
corrupt and elitist presidents in
brought its message and presBrazil, Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador,
new way of organizing political ence to the political heart of
and Venezuela. It is an example
institutions that allows them
their nations. But Zapatismo
of resistance led by self-organgave it a visibility it had not had
to overcome their exclusion.
ized Indian peoples and grassbefore, showed its transforming
By doing so, they strengthen
roots groups in the region.
potential. The resentment accuthe pluralism that the
mulated in ethnic groups after
Cancun and Bolivia are
centralized state denies.
decades of exclusion and
moments of a cycle of struggles
oppression found in the EZLN
that in large part was initiated
rebellion a significant point of
by the EZLN. Many of the charreference.
acteristics of grassroots resistance to neoliberalism shown in these two places were
Ethnic-based movements have a long history. They
debuted in the uprising of the Mexican indigenous peohave survived the backlashes caused by stirring up
ples and their subsequent political initiatives, from the
national political waters. Contrary to the immediacy of
Meeting for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism in
the economic battles of the popular sectors, Indian
1996, to the Color of the Earth March in 2001, and the
demands for recognition and dignity stand the test of
establishment of the Boards of Good Government in
time. Having waited all these years to express them2003. Although not all aspects stem from Zapatismo,
selves, they are not willing to fade out soon. Indigenous
many of the keys that explain the battle of Cancun and
movements express the possibility of an alternative
the Bolivian uprising can be found there.
modernity.
When the Mexican rebels rose up in arms ten years
The new indigenous movement that arose from the
ago, many analysts called the uprising an anachronism.
convergence of a pacifist movement and armed
Some saw it as a late expression of the armed struggles
Zapatismo demands a new form of insertion in public
in Central America, or as a prehistoric backlash of a
spaces. Just how and when remains a complicated and
group of intellectuals that hadnt heard of the End of
unequal process, based on overcoming the exclusion creHistory.
ated by integrationist politics that denied difference.
From a first phase in which indigenous peoples demandA decade later it is clear that the uprising was the first
ed equality, they passed to a second in which difference
rebellion against the disorder of globalization of the
Cancun is a critical point in the mobilizations against
neoliberal globalization inaugurated by the demonstrations in Seattle in November of 1999. For nearly four
years, mass actions have mobilized in the North to
protest the effort to write a constitution at the service of
huge transnational companies.

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is affirmed. The evolution is similar to what workers

went through and what women are currently doing.

protect them and divided by deep chasms of social

resentment and insecurity.

It is a struggle for full citizenship based on the convicMany of the young people from developed countries
tion of being equal to the rest and having the same rights
who traveled to Chiapas during the past ten years to live
and obligations. It is simultaneously a struggle for dignity
in rebel communitiesreferred to by some in the tradiand against racism, a process of rejecting exclusion,
tional left with disdain as ear-ringers (aretudos)later
where concrete demands go beyond a state-client relabecame key figures in the network of networks of the
tionship to demanding rights. It also affirms that collecglobal justice constellation. They have forged a new contive struggle is the way to attain individual rights, always
cept of politics and the political, very close to that of the
recognizing difference. This supposes accepting the right
Zapatista rebellion and resistance. For this new generato exercise different forms of
tion the traditional vision of polauthority and to reaffirm collecitics has become both unaccepttive entities with their own
able and intolerable. The
rights. It demands the right to
With the creation of the Boards Zapatista example, under many
equality and a different exercise
names, has germinated in the
of Good Government, the
of that. In the heart of this prodiversity of countercultural
Zapatistas have instituted both movements and expressions in
posal is the struggle for selfdetermination, with the demand the national indigenous demand different latitudes.
for autonomy being an expresand the commitments agreed
Far from being a relic of the
sion of that struggle.
on with the government.
past, Zapatismo has turned out
Indian peoples have become
to be (as demonstrated in
already an autonomous political
Cancun and Bolivia) a social labactor with their own proposals.
oratory that anticipates the
This is an irreversible process and a significant advance
direction and the nature of resistance against neoliberal
toward a just society. They claim a new way of organizglobalization.
ing political institutions that allows them to overcome
their exclusion. By doing so, they strengthen the pluralV) The Commune of the Lacandon
ism that the centralized state denies. This is possible
Jungle
because their identity has been profoundly transformed
On August 8, anniversary of the birth of Emiliano
and more and more they identify as peoples rather than
Zapata, the Zapatista rebellion established a new conpopulations.
stituent power. It is a founding power, born from below,
Simultaneously, in South America the Mexican rebellion
that reproduces over time, questions the chain of comforetold the exhaustion of the traditional political class
mand and obedience, and rejects the humiliation inflictand the limits of institutional action. The Argentine
ed by racism. It is the Lacandon Commune, the Zapatista
crowds cry Out with everyone! was in many ways
Boards of Good Government.
announced in the Enough already! (Ya Basta) of January
The Boards of Good Government (Caracoles) were cre1994. Since then, country by country, governing elites
ated to coordinate the more than thirty autonomous
have been collapsing.
townships-in-rebellion in five regions of the territory conThe language of the Zapatistas struck deep in the heart
trolled by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. They
of many European and U.S. youth. Its call affected them
take the struggle of Indian peoples for recognition to a
not because these young people had it all and looked
new level, radically different from the previous one.
to Southeast Mexico as their way of playing revolution,
Recognition as peoples and the right to exercise selfbut because they saw it as a way to confront what they
determination and autonomy has been for many years a
themselves were experiencingprecarious job markets,
central demand of indigenous peoples. This demand, recunemployment, uprooting, atomization, loss of the
ognized initially by the Mexican state in the San Andres
meaning of life, racism, and exclusion. Their countries
Accords on February 16, 1996, remained unsatisfied
had been converted into modern Towers of Babel popuafter the disappointing constitutional reform approved by
lated by migrants who work with no social networks to
Congress in 2001. With the creation of the Boards of

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Good Government, the Zapatistas have instituted both

the national indigenous demand and the commitments
agreed on with the government.
The free township was one of the main rallying cries of
Emiliano Zapatas peasant movement. Their cry of Long
live the people, down with haciendas! was call to recuperate the land and territory taken from them by both
the liberals and the conservatives. The township and the
regional association of various townships has been for
decades the political space that many indigenous peoples
have used to preserve their normative systems, traditional forms of election, and cultural identity. Indeed, this
practice caused the governmental institutions to assume
a hybrid form of operationhalf constitutional and half
indigenous in many townships.
The autonomous townships and the Good Government
Boards reinvent these two historic traditions from their
own experience and according to the Zapatista world
view. They are simultaneously an ideal and a reality. The
Caracoles are an institution and the premonition of a different society.
The representatives chosen for the Boards of Good
Government have broad but precise mandates from their
constituents, and can be revoked if they do not carry out
the decisions of the assemblies. They rely on the collaboration of the traditional authorities or of the elders councils, thus mixing the new and the centuries-old and renovating ways of thinking about and applying indigenous
normative systems in their communities. Their jurisdiction includes justice, agrarian matters, health, education,

and the civil registry (births, deaths, and marriages).

From now on, a very important part of relations between
communities in rebellion and national and international
civil society will be the responsibility of the boards. It is
an ambitious move to build institutions of self-government and establish an alternative legal system that are
central components of any autonomy project.
What is being born in the jungles and mountains of
Chiapas has nothing to do with building a bridge
between the rebellion and the traditional political class.
That bridge has been burned by the arrogance of power.
A huge chasm separates the world of formal politics from
ever-more-important parts of Mexican society. Above,
without regard to the colors of the party to which they
belong, the professionals of power conspire, pose for pictures, make deals with big money, and prepare for power
to change hands. Below, the invisible make life, forge
identities, resist, and take control of their destiny.
Zapatismo has sketched out a new geography. La
Realidad, that little village in the Lacandon jungle, is
today on the map of world resistance.
The besieged have become the seizers.
Luis Hernndez Navarro
<[email protected]> is the Opinion Page
Coordinator of the Mexican daily newspaper La
Jornada and a longtime member of CECCAM (Centro de
Estudios para el Cambio en el Campo Mexicano). He is
an analyst for IRCs Americas Program (online at
www.ammericaspolicy.org).

Published by the Americas Program of the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org). 2004. All rights
reserved.

The Americas Program

A New World of Ideas, Analysis, and Policy Options
Founded in 1979, the IRC is a nonprofit policy studies center whose overarching goal is to help forge a new global affairs agenda for the
U.S. government and peopleone that makes the United States a more responsible global leader and partner. For more information,
visit www.americaspolicy.org or email [email protected].
Recommended citation:
Luis Hernndez Navarro, Zapatismo Today: Five Views of the Bridge, Americas Program (Silver City, NM: Interhemispheric Resource Center, January 16, 2004).

Web location:
http://www.americaspolicy.org/citizen-action/focus/2004/0401zap-five.html

Production information:
Writer: Luis Hernndez Navarro
Editor: Laura Carlsen & Tom Barry, IRC
Translator: Laura Carlsen, IRC
Layout: Tonya Cannariato, IRC

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