The Zapatista: What happened?

[Flying Purple People Eater]

I haven't heard anything about the Zapatista movement since 2002, and judging by the current political climate of Mexico, they haven't really done all that much. Does anyone know of any historical texts or information about them, along with critiques on what they are currently doing and how they faltered?

Are they a dead group? How active are they?

[Jack]

They're pretty much just sitting there, they've gotten their little slice of the pie in Chiapas and done some propaganda work (The Other Campaign) but that's pretty much it.

[Let's Get Free]

The Zaps are building threads of local resistance, and aim to weave a grand tapestry of rebellion. Last I heard from them, the were building resistance to the imposition of wind turbines by wind companies on the indigenous ecosystem.


Yesterday, October 31, using the date of All Saints and that most people are taking matters to welcome family and friends who have died, the government of Gabino Cue took advantage of this moment to send items state police to make way for wind companies by Álvaro Obregón, so they could start their construction work in San Dionisio del Mar. Because of this, today, Álvaro Obregón ejidatarios formed a blockade to prevent the passage several state police vans, thus demanding respect for the decision of the community not to allow installation of wind project in the upper lake, it is an act of barbarism technology called green economy, attempting to install 132 wind turbines in this fragile ecosystem of mangrove container countless ecosystems, and home to Ikoots and Zapotec peoples and get the most important part of their diet and their family economy
Gabino Cue Monteagudo WE DEMAND RESPECT FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DECISION NOT TO ALLOW THE INSTALLATION OF THIS megaproject in its territory and immediately REMOVE the state police that is threatening, harassing and confronting the peoples in resistance
REPONSABILIZAMOS TO state and federal governments WIND AND BUSINESSES OF VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION being suffered by the people in resistance

NOT TO wind project in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec
ISTHMUS Peoples Assembly in Defense of Land and Territory


http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2012/11/04/la-asamblea-de-pueblos-del-itsmo-denuncia-la-incursion-de-la-policia-estatal-para-abrir-paso-a-las-empresas-eolicas/

[skitty]

I haven't heard anything about the Zapatista movement since 2002, and judging by the current political climate of Mexico, they haven't really done all that much. Does anyone know of any historical texts or information about them, along with critiques on what they are currently doing and how they faltered?

Are they a dead group? How active are they?

My next-in-line book is "Our Word Is Our Weapon". It seems highly regarded-you might give it a try.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

Havn't really followed them for a while. But as said they focus theire work on chiapas and have never (at least what i know...) claimed to bring change to Mexico as a whole.

[bricolage]

They effectively reached a stalemate with the government where the latter would leave them be. The Other Campaign that someone mentioned above was in 2006 and I don't think it was very successful. Essentially they've been unable to spread and are now, I hear, at most risk of getting popped off by the cartels.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

Havn't really followed them for a while. But as said they focus theire work on chiapas and have never (at least what i know...) claimed to bring change to Mexico as a whole.

Anarchism in one community!

They are a commune in the middle of the capitalist world.

[Ravachol]

For a text on the zapatistas:

A commune in chiapas? - Aufheben on the Zapatistas (http://libcom.org/library/commune-chiapas-zapatista-mexico)

[Anarchocommunaltoad]

How has the region been affected by the narco wars?

[Rafiq]

The Zapatistas were never able to build class based political power and therefore crumbled. An example of the failure of Bakuninism.

[l'Enfermé]

^The worthlessness of the Bakunists and Bakuninism has been sufficiently demonstrated by Engels almost 140 years ago, no new lessons are required. (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/bakunin/index.htm)

[Grenzer]

Well I don't think too many serious people ever expected much of the Zapatistas. They are not anarchists, communists, or Marxists. They did succeed brilliantly in creating a radical aesthetic, which as we know is all that is needed to draw in most leftists.

Bakuninism is indeed worthless, but I don't think the Zapatistas could be considered to be part of that school of political thought. They are not anarchists or communists of any kind. They're just kind of their own thing, and in my opinion, should just be examined within their own contexts. Trying to draw historical analogies with things that have little or nothing to do with them just confuses the issue.

[Rafiq]

I don't think the Zapatistas adhered directly to Bakuninism but their organisational tactics can validate the impotence of bakuninism.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

The Zapatistas were never able to build class based political power and therefore crumbled. An example of the failure of Bakuninism.

It didn't crumble, tens of thousands of people in rural Mexico live in Zapatista controlled communities and a number of new communities have sprung up inspired by the EZLN. Their "failure" was in their inability to spread to the urban working class, but they can hardly be blamed for that - their primary objectives were largely to defend and expand upon already-won rights for rural indigenous Mexicans, which they have done for the most part in the communities in which they are active.


I don't think the Zapatistas adhered directly to Bakuninism but their organisational tactics can validate the impotence of bakuninism.

How so? Because they don't have a centralist party and avoid participation in the State? I think it leads to a confused analysis to try to impose the analysis of 19th century Anarchism on late-20th/early-21st century indigenous militancy. The situation in Mexico was vastly different than the situation in Spain, as were the actions of the EZLN Spanish. As such, Engel's critique as presented in the article offered isn't relevant to this situation. The Zapatistas ran up against the material realities of a movement operating in the post-Soviet era in a part of the world which was under immediate threat of economic imperialism by the USA and the Mexican State. Despite this they organized the peasants to resist neoliberal exploitation of their homes and as a result expropriated a great deal of land. They still continue to exist as autonomous communities, even if they have only spread a little bit in Mexico. So considering the conditions they faced they did a good job. We shouldn't be uncritical but we shouldn't be overly critical either and apply analysis out of context.

[Orientalist]

What is sapatissta? :confused:

[Rafiq]

It didn't crumble, tens of thousands of people in rural Mexico live in Zapatista controlled communities and a number of new communities have sprung up inspired by the EZLN. Their "failure" was in their inability to spread to the urban working class, but they can hardly be blamed for that - their primary objectives were largely to defend and expand upon already-won rights for rural indigenous Mexicans, which they have done for the most part in the communities in which they are active.


How so? Because they don't have a centralist party and avoid participation in the State?

No, their failure was their reluctance in attempting to build class-based political power (and therefore become a party of the 'urban working-class' and so on). This doesn't signify "participating with the state", but active political struggle against the enemies of the proletarian class. Without this, no movement which claims to bear the future of the proletariat can sustain itself.

[Os Cangaceiros]

All this talk about "Bakuninism" doesn't make any sense to me. I've read a fair deal about the Zapatistas in the past, and their relationship to anarchism is only very peripheral (namely, the fact that north american anarchists were inspired by their activities, and the historical influence of Mexican anarchists like the Magon brothers). The two figures of inspiration for the movement were Emiliano Zapata and Che Guevara, yet somehow they always get lumped in with anarchism. It's bizarre.

The EZLN was not a communist movement, of course. It was a populist movement rooted in the indigenous population of Chiapas. Their goal was never to uplift the proletarian masses or whatever. Looking at the EZLN from a detached point of view, and analyzing them purely on their success as an advocacy group, I'd say that they were pretty successful. They tried something other than the traditional form of armed struggle (unlike the EPR), which in a world with no USSR was probably the best tactical decision.

I have no idea what they're doing now, though.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

No, their failure was their reluctance in attempting to build class-based political power (and therefore become a party of the 'urban working-class' and so on). This doesn't signify "participating with the state", but active political struggle against the enemies of the proletarian class. Without this, no movement which claims to bear the future of the proletariat can sustain itself.

OK, but how much of that stems from a conscious unwillingness to organize urban labor, and how much from the relative isolation of the indigenous communities in which they are active? IMO the issues you raise seems to come more from the fact that their support base consists of rural communities and their main campaign was to defend the collective property rights of indigenous communities, not to bring about a Proletarian revolution in the cities. They were merely fulfilling the material necessities of their constituents, which were the indigenous Mayan communities.


I have no idea what they're doing now, though.

Their current actions mostly involve efforts to improve the material conditions within communities which they already control. However there are communities which are inspired by the EZLN organizing well outside of their traditional territory in Chiapas.
Some examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_Municipality_of_San_Juan_Copala
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/world/americas/in-mexico-reclaiming-the-forests-and-the-right-to-feel-safe.html?_r=0
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/comment/airportAUG02.html

They're definitely not going anywhere any time soon, even if their relevance seems questionable based on their relative quiet over the past decade.

[Anarchocommunaltoad]

How have they been affected by the drug wars? I could see the PRI or whatever the fuck they're called allowing the cartels control of the area in compensation for closing up shot near sensitive locations. That or they'll be the first to die when US predator drones are allowed to bomb in Mexican airspace.

[black magick hustla]

All this talk about "Bakuninism" doesn't make any sense to me.

yea cuz' its a slur made up by emotionally stunted dnzites.

anyway the ezln where there own thing, and as other folks alluded here they were concerned with a situation very specific to them. the whole ezln being anarchist is an invention of white leftists trying to recuperate radical looking brown people into their shitty world vision

[Grenzer]

Os, you have to understand that for people like Borz, "Bakuninism" is to them as protestantism was to Spanish inquisitors. It's an insidious influence that hides within anything vaguely leftist that rejects Kautsky. Bakuninism is an omnipresent force within anything and everything. Even if it rejects Bakunin, you can be sure there is a latent Bakuninist influence hiding in there somewhere.

In their grand narrative, anything that rejects voluntarism and the Kautskyite mass party can be traced back to the original sin of Bakunin(ignoring the fact that even Marx and Engels dissed voluntarism). So even if you don't have anything to do with Bakunin, they'll be looking to slap that label on. I guess that ends up leading to weird shit like pretending that the Zapatistas are somehow a vindication of Kautsky's stained legacy.

Left communists, anarchists, Luxemburgists, ultra-leftists, they're all Bakuninists. lol Might even throw in some Trots while we're at it too. Problem is, as you mentioned, the Zapatistas aren't even communists.

[Rafiq]

Ghost, why don't you stop making an ass out of yourself and realize that Bakuninism for us is more than 'someone who disagrees with us'. It has nothing to do with voluntarism. It has it's origins in none other than Marx and Engels and for you to dismiss it as a "kautskyite" slur demonstrates your own incompetence in understanding (class struggle) Marxism. Marxists have always held that a proletarian struggle must intristically be a political struggle. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/bakunin/index.htm) It isn't a term used to attack 'Ultra leftists' (a term I have always had great disdain for).

Earlier in this thread you claimed Bakuninism was useless. And now, because BMH dismisses it as a "dnzite" term, you deny it's existence. Really ghost you're just pathetic at this point. Sorry Marxism wasn't able to for fill your fantasies about being a great leader but the least you could do was politely declare your withdrawal from Marxism with at least an ounce of maturity rather than resorting to cheap insults and outright slander.

[Rafiq]

yea cuz' its a slur made up by emotionally stunted dnzites.


What's a dnzite? Tell me? The 'Revolutionary Marxist' tendency on this site, the users which adhere to it, have very profound disagreements with each other and there can be no homogeneous catagorization of those of us who are not keen in dismissing everything DNZ sais (although disagreements exist objectively). We are not a homogeneous group like Trotskyists and Maoists are, rather, we represent a very broad tendency of Marxism which preceded the ideological bastardizations that came with the degeneration of the October revolution while opposing the disdain for politically exercised class power displayed by Left Communists. As I was looking for a shorter, more simplified version of what Orthodox Marxism can be defined as, as much as I've tried to avoid wikipedia, the author did quite a good job:


A strong version of the theory that the economic base (material conditions) determines the cultural and political superstructure of society.

The view that capitalism cannot be reformed through policy and that any attempt to do so would only exacerbate its contradictions or distort the efficiency of the market (in contrast to Reformism) and that a post-capitalist, socialist economy is the only solution to these contradictions.

The claim that Marxism is a science.

The attempt to make Marxism a total system, adapting it to changes within the realm of current events and knowledge.

An understanding of ideology in terms of false consciousness.

That every open class struggle is a political struggle, as opposed to economist claims.

A pre-crisis emphasis on organizing an independent, mass workers' movement (in the form of welfare, recreational, educational, and cultural organizations) and especially its political party, combining reform struggles and mass strikes without overreliance on either.

The socialist revolution is necessarily the act of the majority.

These theoretical foundations precede DNZ by quite a while. And seeing that there aren't many classical Marxists around today, none of you self proclaimed "Marxists" would do so without the radical changes in Marxism made by Orthodox Marxists.

And while I vehemently oppose Bakunin as a reactionary, while I disdain works by the Anarchist intelligentsia I do recognize that no matter how incompetent and disorganized, Anarchism was a current of the communist movement and was intrinsically proletarian in nature (but there do exist petite bourgeois tendencies within 'social anarchism').

[l'Enfermé]

It's funny how no one mentioned Kautsky, his legacy, the mass party, or voluntarism(in fact one finds nothing but rejection of voluntarism in the writings of Lenin, Kautsky, etc). I don't see a reason why you should run around RevLeft without missing a single chance to ramble about "Kautskyism" and be obsessed so much about contributing to the character-assassination attempts aimed at DNZ, who is one of the most friendly and polite users on this board(but he has an infrequent hobby for inventing neologisms, so let's demonize him!), so. Petty and classless shit one would expect from lesser men. You are very fond of mocking Ismail because of his tendency to bring Hoxha into everything, yet you involve DNZ's name and "Kautskyism" in everything though the irony of this is entirely lost on you.

Holy shit!, I would never have imagined you could be so petty, GB.

And no, that comparison with the Spanish Inquisition is rather inaccurate. The Spanish Inquisition was primarily aimed against (former) Jews and Muslims, not Protestants. Most of the four to six thousand victims of the Inquisition were killed in the first few decades, before the reformation(the Inquisition was established in 1480, Luther wasn't excommunicated until 1620 or something and the Council of Trent wasn't convened until 1545). The Protestant repression was a very mild thing compared to the Jewish one.

[black magick hustla]

Ghost, why don't you stop making an ass out of yourself and realize that Bakuninism for us is more than 'someone who disagrees with us'. It has nothing to do with voluntarism. It has it's origins in none other than Marx and Engels and for you to dismiss it as a "kautskyite" slur demonstrates your own incompetence in understanding (class struggle) Marxism. Marxists have always held that a proletarian struggle must intristically be a political struggle. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/bakunin/index.htm) It isn't a term used to attack 'Ultra leftists' (a term I have always had great disdain for).

Earlier in this thread you claimed Bakuninism was useless. And now, because BMH dismisses it as a "dnzite" term, you deny it's existence. Really ghost you're just pathetic at this point. Sorry Marxism wasn't able to for fill your fantasies about being a great leader but the least you could do was politely declare your withdrawal from Marxism with at least an ounce of maturity rather than resorting to cheap insults and outright slander.

so tell me, what a 1873 essay about bakunin's faction in spain has anything to do with an indigenous group fighting against neoliberalism?

[black magick hustla]

don't see a reason why you should run around RevLeft without missing a single chance to ramble about "Kautskyism" and be obsessed so much about contributing to the character-assassination attempts aimed at DNZ, who is one of the most friendly and polite users on this board(but he has an infrequent hobby for inventing neologisms, so let's demonize him!), so

because you fucking creeps come to interesting threads and derail them with shitty theories borrowed from that asshole third positionist. if you didn't throw in bullshit like "bakuninism" or eulogize some shitty turn of the century corpse in every interesting thread you wouldn't be called out. dnz used to do that bullshit a lot but now he doesn't have to cuz' he has his newest acolytes doing the same thing. i mean bakuninism, really?

[black magick hustla]

obama has shown the failure of abrahamlincolnism

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Thanks to you all for the information - It's been really helpful. Although this topic seems to have been derailed.

so tell me, what a 1873 essay about bakunin's faction in spain has anything to do with an indigenous group fighting against neoliberalism?
You're taking this out of context. Rafiq was demonstrating that the name 'Bakuninist' was not a pointless blanket term created by the supposed masses of 'DNZites' that infest this board in order to silence political debate, but a very real and specific description that has been used by many Socialists, including Marx.

[Rafiq]

so tell me, what a 1873 essay about bakunin's faction in spain has anything to do with an indigenous group fighting against neoliberalism?

Because of their reluctance to involve themselves in political struggle? Okay, I will admit, they were never proletarian based, but as an example this should go to show that isolating yourself in a commune or whatever (and struggling only for 'economic power') against the hoards of capital will ultimately fail.

[blake 3:17]

@Rafiq -- your analysis is completely wrong. To the extent they are Bakuninist only proves Bakunin right.

The basic idea was to start an uprising on January 1, 1994, the day NAFTA took effect, probably lose militarily, but spark a national and urban proletarian uprising.

Marcos' strategy was deeply informed by Che's foco strategy, which Che didn't follow in Bolivia. Marcos took it in an opposite direction and has been able to defend communal land rights in Chiapas, bring down the dictatorship of the PRI, establish some foundations for an alter-globalization, and we're supposed to hate him or the EZLN for that. The primary problem with the FZLN (the national partner) was that it didn`t break with authoritarian socialist models.

[The Douche]

The basic idea was to start an uprising on January 1, 1994, the day NAFTA took effect, probably lose militarily, but spark a national and urban proletarian uprising

Texts that talk about this?

[skitty]

Texts that talk about this?

http://www.amazon.com/Our-Word-Weapon-Selected-Writings/dp/158322663X

I'm about halfway through it.

[MarxSchmarx]

Are we really incapable of having a discussion without taking needless swipes at members who aren't participating in a thread or their perceived lackys? And for what it's worth, Bakuninism apparently is a real word:

www.merriam-webster.com/diactionary/bakuninism (http://www.merriam-webster.com/diactionary/bakuninism)

Just try to keep discussions on topic. It's really not that hard. Invoking dead or well known leftists to make a point is expected, articulating political disagreements is important, but let other posters speak for themselves first before trying to lay criticisms on them.

If you don't like someone's phrasing of something, call it out on the merits, not by ad hominem associations.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Because of their reluctance to involve themselves in political struggle? Okay, I will admit, they were never proletarian based, but as an example this should go to show that isolating yourself in a commune or whatever (and struggling only for 'economic power') against the hoards of capital will ultimately fail.

They weren't reluctant to involve themselves in political struggle, they lacked the ability to topple the Mexican state on their own. Simply put, there was a need to organize the peasants in Chiapas and the peasants needed to do something to defend their communities, which necessitated their uprising whether or not they had been able to organize urban workers as well. I don't think we can blame the EZLN for something which, practically speaking, they had no ability to do on their own.

The general point is that none of the specific criticisms which Engels levied at Spanish Bakuninists apply here, because the strategies utilized by the EZLN and the material conditions in rural Chiapas were distinct.


As soon as they were faced with a serious revolutionary situation, the Bakuninists had to throw the whole of their old programme overboard. First they sacrificed their doctrine of absolute abstention from political, and especially electoral, activities. Then anarchy, the abolition of the State, shared the same fate. Instead of abolishing the State they tried, on the contrary, to set up a number of new, small states. They then dropped the principle that the workers must not take part in any revolution that did not have as its aim the immediate and complete emancipation of the proletariat, and they themselves took part in a movement that was notoriously bourgeois. Finally they went against the dogma they had only just proclaimed -- that the establishment of a revolutionary government is but another fraud another betrayal of the working class -- for they sat quite comfortably in the juntas of the various towns, and moreover almost everywhere as an impotent minority outvoted and politically exploited by the bourgeoisie.

Well, the EZLN did set up "good governance" councils in their communes, but there's no participation in bourgeois institutions of state or business. The good governance councils are not bourgeois statelets by any standard.


This renunciation of the principles they had always been preaching was made moreover in the most cowardly and deceitful manner and was prompted by a guilty conscience, so that neither the Bakuninists themselves nor the masses they led had any programme or knew what they wanted when they joined the movement. What was the natural consequence of this? It was that the Bakuninists either prevented any action from being taken, as in Barcelona, or drifted into sporadic, desultory and senseless uprisings, as in Alcoy and Sanlúcar de Barrameda; or that the leadership of the uprising was taken over by the intransigent bourgeois, as was the case in most of the revolts. Thus, when it came to doing things, the ultra-revolutionary rantings of the Bakuninists either turned into appeasement or into uprisings that were doomed to failure, or, led to their joining a bourgeois party which exploited the workers politically in the most disgraceful manner and treated them to kicks into the bargain.

The EZLN and the Zapatista communities were not ignorant of what they wanted but had very specific goals to protect their communities from NAFTA, protect their collective property, liberate themselves from PRI control and inspire workers/peasants elsewhere in Mexico to take similar actions. The first two goals were fulfilled and the power of the PRI was weakened greatly, and the communes continue to exist as autonomous economic agents. Now, the movement hasn't exactly spread like wildfire since the uprising but their defensive goals were met, unlike the Spanish communities mentioned by Engels.


Nothing remains of the so-called principles of anarchy, free federation of independent groups, etc., but the boundless, and senseless fragmentation of the revolutionary resources, which enabled the government to conquer one city after another with a handful of soldiers, practically unresisted.

This never happened in Chiapas. First off, the movement was never predicated on the "principles of anarchy" but solidarity between a number of indigenous communes and their control over traditional local resources.


The outcome of all this is that not only have the once so well organised and numerous Spanish sections of the International -- both the false and the true ones -- found themselves involved in the downfall of the Intransigents and are now actually dissolved, but are also having ascribed to them innumerable atrocities, without which the philistines of all nationalities cannot imagine a workers' uprising, and this may make impossible, perhaps for years to come, the international re-organisation of the Spanish proletariat.

The Zapatistas remain relevant ideologically and have become famous for largely avoiding atrocities and violent revolutionary excess.

[Die Neue Zeit]

if you didn't throw in bullshit like "bakuninism" or eulogize some shitty turn of the century corpse in every interesting thread you wouldn't be called out. dnz used to do that bullshit a lot but now he doesn't have to cuz' he has his newest acolytes doing the same thing. i mean bakuninism, really?

All I did was popularize CPGB comrade Mike Macnair's rediscovery of an indictment against Bakunin's approach to strategy in all its forms, which is shared by posters like yourself.

Nix that: it was Ghost Bebel himself who popularized the term way, way more than I ever did, when he was a small-r revolutionary Marxist.

[Art Vandelay]

Os, you have to understand that for people like Borz, "Bakuninism" is to them as protestantism was to Spanish inquisitors. It's an insidious influence that hides within anything vaguely leftist that rejects Kautsky. Bakuninism is an omnipresent force within anything and everything. Even if it rejects Bakunin, you can be sure there is a latent Bakuninist influence hiding in there somewhere.

In their grand narrative, anything that rejects voluntarism and the Kautskyite mass party can be traced back to the original sin of Bakunin(ignoring the fact that even Marx and Engels dissed voluntarism). So even if you don't have anything to do with Bakunin, they'll be looking to slap that label on. I guess that ends up leading to weird shit like pretending that the Zapatistas are somehow a vindication of Kautsky's stained legacy.

Left communists, anarchists, Luxemburgists, ultra-leftists, they're all Bakuninists. lol Might even throw in some Trots while we're at it too. Problem is, as you mentioned, the Zapatistas aren't even communists.

The irony is fucking palpable. I, for one, can distinctly remember you hurling the slur of 'bakuninism' (I term I don't believe that I have ever used) at all left-communists in the left-communist thread a while back. Honestly though, all your showing is your inability to grasp the theories you claimed to hold for the past couple months. On top of that your displaying the fact that you switch political positions more frequently than your average revleft noob. For someone who has made plenty of comments in the past making fun of 'nox' (or other members for that matter) for making drastic political shifts overnight, you might want to take a look in the mirror, cause there caricatures your setting up are just getting comical.