[Marxism] Zapatistas

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Posted to lbo-talk by Henwood:

[One of the reasons I've gotten more skeptical about "changing the world 
without taking power" is the relatively small impact the Zapatistas have 
had on Mexico 11 years after they burst onto the scene. Here's a John Ross 
piece on them - with an interesting typo ("moat") in the last graf. But can 
you really build moats around your autonomous zones and keep out capitalism?]

11 Years After the Zapatistas Took San Cristobal de las Casas, This 
Colonial City has Become a NAFTA Theme Park

John Ross

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS CHIAPAS (January 11th) - It has been 11 New 
Years now since ski-masked Mayan Indian rebels marched into this colonial 
citadel in the very first hour of that beacon of corporate globalization, 
the North American Free Trade Agreement, and declared war on the Mexican 
government. But on New Year's Eve 2005, this majestic highland city where 
the Zapatista rebellion was born, is looking more and more each day like a 
NAFTA theme park.

In the past year, San Cristobal city officials have inaugurated a sprawling 
mall (a monster Wal-Mart is contemplated) replete with the highlands' first 
McDonald's and a ten-plex Cineopolis movie palace (a threat to the city's 
flourishing network of cine clubs.) Holiday Inn has come to Los Altos 
morphing San Cris into just another branch office tourist town, and 
Coldwell-Banker, the international real estate cartel, sells the 
picturesque homes that line the city's narrow, gleaming cobblestone streets 
to well-heeled foreigners. Just to make the global makeover a fait a 
complis, two maquiladoras (foreign-owned export assembly plants) are doing 
business north of the city under the logos of KN Knitwear and SpinTex, 
taking advantage of the cheap pool of Indian labor in Los Altos to turn out 
knockoff sportswear for Target and other U.S retail titans.

full: 
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20050117/001470.html

===

Understanding Chiapas

Although I pride myself in being knowledgeable about Latin American 
politics, it astonished me to discover how little I knew about the origins 
of the Zapatista struggle. The left has paid much attention to the 
elliptical but inspired communiqués of Subcommandante Marcos. We have also 
participated in and studied the Zapatista solidarity movement on and off 
the Internet. Our analysis of why Mayan peasants launched the struggle in 
the first place has not kept pace unfortunately with these other 
activities. Theory has lagged behind practice. The purpose then of this 
post is threefold. I want to identify the root causes of the Zapatista 
rebellion. Next, I want to reply to Harry Cleaver's idea that the Zapatista 
movement represents some kind of new paradigm for the left. Finally, I want 
to examine the explosive class/indigenous aspects of the struggle in the 
context of my continuing study of these issues.

Despite all the discussion of the Zapatistas in the mass media and the 
Internet, there are actually very few scholarly works written in English. 
Journalist John Ross wrote a book 4 years ago that is now out of print. Dan 
La Botz, author of the excellent book on the Teamsters for Democratic Union 
called "Rank and File Rebellion," has written a study of the overall 
political and economic crisis in Mexico. I suspect is quite good, given his 
track record.

However, I can't imagine a more useful or informative book than George 
Collier's "Basta! Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas," published 
by Francis Moore Lappe's outstanding Food First Foundation. Collier, an 
anthropologist, has spent 30 years researching peasant life in Chiapas. His 
father was John Collier, Sr., who was Commissioner of Indian Affairs under 
Franklin Roosevelt and an activist for indigenist causes. My remarks on 
Chiapas draw extensively from his excellent book that I recommend to 
everybody for more complete information. (Food First is at www.foodfirst.org.)

It is important to realize that the peasant rebellion broke out in Chiapas 
for reasons almost identical to those behind the rebellions in Peru and 
Guatemala I previously reported on: land hunger. While the Mexican 
Revolution delivered the most substantial land reform in Latin American 
history, it never broke from the capitalist system. So the contradictions 
of the capitalist system have attacked the land claims of the indigenous 
peoples and the peasants, no matter how sweeping the various land reform 
acts. In Peru and Guatemala, semi- feudalism confronted the largely Indian 
peasantry. In Mexico, it has instead been the undiluted machinations of 
capitalism itself.

full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/indian/chiapas.htm

===

Fetishizing the Zapatistas: a critique of "Change the World Without Taking 
Power"

As should be clear to even the most casual observer on the left, the 
Chiapas rebellion has become as much of a paradigm for the post-Marxist 
left as October 1917 was for an earlier generation of Marxists. The 
collapse of the USSR, the difficulties faced by socialist Cuba and an 
ostensibly brand-new way of doing politics in Chiapas put wind in the sails 
of ideological currents that never were committed to classical Marxism to 
begin with, including the autonomist and anarchist movements. In contrast 
to the anarchists, autonomism has positioned itself as retaining the 
emancipatory core of Marxism, while disposing of the dross. This is one of 
the central messages of John Holloway's "To Change the World Without Taking 
Power". We will assess this claim in due time, but first some background on 
the Zapatista left in general and how it took shape.

Although the Chiapas revolt grew out of Mayan resentment over unemployment, 
land hunger, racism and other injustices that face indigenous peoples 
everywhere in the world, it transformed itself very rapidly into a global 
movement that at time appeared as spokes radiating from Subcommandante 
Marcos's laptop, just as an earlier generation rotated around the Kremlin.

The Zapatistas became hosts of a series of 'encuentros' (encounters) in 
Mexico and elsewhere, the first of which was held in Chiapas in August 
1996, two and a half years after the start of their revolt. Some 3,000 
guests from 43 different countries came together as part of an 
International Encounter Against Neoliberalism and for Humanity to discuss 
how to "change the world".

With the armed revolt at an end, the EZLN had begun to explore nonviolent 
options. According to the August 5, 1996 Guardian, some high profile guests 
including Danielle Mitterrand (the wife of the French social democratic 
leader), Eduardo Galeano and Douglas Bravo were encouraged by this 
transition. Bravo was himself a former guerrilla fighter in Venezuela 
during the 1960s but became committed to a kind of "civil society" 
reformism that eventually led him to join the opposition to Hugo Chavez.

When asked what he expected from the gathering, Subcommandante Marcos said: 
"I haven't a damn clue." This led French intellectual Regis Debray to 
comment. "This is a return to the essential resistance." Debray, like 
Bravo, was once part of the foquismo left in Latin America but in more 
recent years has become part of the French cultural establishment, serving 
for a time as adviser to President Mitterand whose wife shared Debray's 
enthusiasms for heterodox leftisms.

full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/modernism/holloway.htm

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