Zapatistas

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

An Uprising Against the Inevitable
By Laura Carlsen

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation has had a tremendous impact
on Mexican, Latin American and global politics. Today it faces new
challenges on all three levels.

In June of 2005 the EZLN came out with the Sixth Declaration of the
Lacandona Jungle. The Sixth Declaration sets out a bold set of
political definitions: it declares the movement anti-capitalist (in
those terms) and describes neoliberal globalization as a global war of
conquest. It posits that "a new step forward in the indigenous
struggle is only possible if indigenous people join with workers,
peasants, students, teachers, employees… that is, all the workers of
the city and countryside." It reclaims the label of "left" saying "we
believe that it is on the political left where you find the idea of
resisting neoliberal globalization and building a country where there
will be justice, democracy, and freedom for everyone."

It also announces the beginning of the Other Campaign. With
presidential campaigns in full tilt, Subcomandante Marcos left Chiapas
in January of 2006 to tour the country and meet with groups that had
signed on to the Declaration. In scores of meetings throughout the
country, he has registered their demands and activities: battles
against environmental destruction, for workers' rights, against the
ostracism and oppression of sex workers, for indigenous civil and
territorial rights. Organized groups of youth, punks, leftists,
alternative media, small farmers, homosexuals, workers, women, and
"others" have organized to receive the EZLN representative.

Accustomed to swimming against the current, the Zapatistas chose to
denounce party politics just when a significant part of the left saw
in center-left presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador a
ray of hope for prying open the neoliberal stranglehold on the nation.

Laura Carlsen directs the IRC Americas Program (online at
www.americaspolicy.org) in Mexico City. This essay appears in the May
issue of the British political philosophy and culture magazine "Naked
Punch."

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maybe this strategy is a way to prevent AMLO from being dubbed a "commie"?

--
Jim Devine / "There can be no real individual freedom in the presence
of economic insecurity." -- Chester Bowles