(en) France, Organisation Communiste Libertarie (OCL) - Courant Alternatif, CA #236 - The small school Zapatista autonomy (fr, pt)

The war that bloodied Mexico since 2006, drug trafficking cartels war inextricably 
intertwined in the economy and in the workings of the state, has done away with the Indian 
mainstream media strength and construction of autonomy in Chiapas, but also in Oaxaca, 
Guerrero and Michoac?n. ---- However, there is a year 21 December 2012, reappeared by 
thousands of men and women of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) occupying 
several hours the central squares of the five cities of Chiapas in southeastern Mexican. 
Due to the remoteness and dispersion of Indian communities in the mountains, a long 
preparation and a great capacity for mobilization were necessary for this massive and 
simultaneous action in five different places. The Zapatista movement asserted its vitality 
intact and his mastery of a time when the old Mayan calendars coincide and the rich 
history of the uprising that emerged on 1 January 1994.

Reappropriation by indigenous peoples of Chiapas memory of Emiliano Zapata blew on the 
embers never completely extinguished Mexican Revolution. She has given presence in Oaxaca 
anarchism Flores Magon brothers, Librado Rivera of, Anselmo Figueroa, Praxedis Guerrero, 
these "magonistes" who fought for Tierra y Libertad. She woke the memory of the rebellion 
of Rub?n Jaramillo, resurgence of Zapatistas in the early sixties in the State of Morelos, 
Guerrero followed in the organization of rural households guerrilla teachers Genaro 
V?zquez and Lucio Caba?as, massacred with their supporters in 1972 and 1974.

Celebrated by Marcos, military leader and spokesman of the EZLN, the revolutionary 
mythology, spiced with a good dose of self-mockery, has however moved to the essential 
place of peoples and self-organization. The role of women has increased in the foreground, 
deliberately knocking the Indian tradition and machismo. Ramona, Ana Mar?a Esther and many 
other Maya women of Chiapas embodied in critical moments this Zapatista rebellion that 
celebrates three decades. The end of 1983 saw settle in the Lacandon jungle first armed 
group creating the EZLN, after ten years of clandestine preparation 1994 is the year of 
the uprising in January and the declaration of autonomous municipalities In December, the 
summer of 2003, Caracoles, five civilians centers where sit the Good Government Councils 
from the Zapatista municipalities succeed the five Aguascalientes created in 1996 to 
receive the "national and international civil society."

The main stages that mark the progress of the Zapatista movement thirty years have 
themselves been shaped by three key time in the recent history of Mexico. The State 
massacre instead of Three Cultures in Tlatelolco, October 2, 1968, and the "dirty war" 
that ensues in rush illegal armed organizations and several generations of rebellious 
students. In 1974, Chiapas, near the Guatemalan civil war, a native Congress held in San 
Crist?bal de Las Casas under the auspices of Bishop Samuel Ruiz for forty years 
(1959-1999) of the Diocese dense Indian population - putting into practice a "liberation 
theology." The tseltales delegations Tsotsiles, Cholesterol, Tojolabal ... involved in 
their languages ??and openly denounce the state of misery and slavery-these peoples 
previously described in the novels of the German anarchist B. Traven. In 1985, the 
earthquake that devastated Mexico City sees organize a base population to overcome the 
negligence of the government and the diversion of international aid by the Institutional 
Revolutionary Party (PRI, the party-state from 1929 to 2000). Self-organization of the 
barrios and colonias located in this opportunity recognition as "civil society", with a 
somewhat different sense of what is meant here in the journalistic vocabulary.

The construction of the self is the great work of the organization of women and men in 
Mayan and Zoque people of Chiapas known as the EZLN. At its head is the Clandestine 
Revolutionary Indigenous Committee (CCRI), whose members, commanders and commanding, have 
no military duties. Since 2013, the military leadership of the EZLN, subject to the CIRB 
is two-headed, Marcos now shares this responsibility with Subcomandante Insurgent Mois?s 
Indian Tseltal who joined former amateur M?tis student literature, mythology and 
subculture urban. The "insurgents" men and women in arms, form only a small part of the 
vast majority of civil organization of tens of thousands of members. This is what it means 
to highlight and convey escuelita zapatista, "small Zapatista school," the last public 
initiative rebels. She met in August 2013 nearly two thousand participants from Mexico and 
around the world to live each and every one week in a Zapatista home, in the middle of a 
village, guided by Votan, so initiator, man or woman , daily life in the rebel 
communities. Between late December 2013 and early January 2014, five thousand new 
"students" will in turn look at the invitation of the Zapatista villages, the main aspects 
that the movement has chosen to highlight: self-government (the loads in community, 
authorities, community-assemblies, communal, area, Caracoles, etc.). resistance and 
autonomy (education, justice, economy, health); participation of women.

Ra?l Zibechi, Uruguayan researcher studying Latin American social movements in terms of 
autonomy struggles, often well advised, evoked after the events of December 2012 in 
Chiapas' Zapatista stubborn persistence. " It is not only to be under the charm and 
influence of this unprecedented move in the history of social rebellions both in its 
duration and its amplitude in all aspects of life and the national and echo international 
it arouses. Written by Eduardo Galeano, John Holloway, George Caffentzis, Gustavo Esteva, 
Raoul Vaneigem or J?r?me Baschet, for example, have been influenced or reinforced by their 
encounter with the rebels mountaineers of the Mexican Southeast. Social criticism found in 
the Zapatista experience new perspectives such as the struggle for the "common" that is 
revitalized in urban areas and irrigates the self-organized in Turkey and Brazil 
resistance, often with explicit references the Zapatistas.

The Zapatistas do not have all the answers and do not claim they "learn by advancing." 
Their story has already gone through several turns, shifting alliances and perspectives. 
They clearly broke with the Mexican political class after the failure of the attempt to 
vote by Parliament in April 2001 a bill drawn agreements on indigenous rights and culture, 
signed at San Andr?s in February 1996 Zapatista delegates and government representatives. 
This rupture followed the march the color of the earth, which lasted several weeks during 
which the mobilization of the delegation of the EZLN who traveled the country has affected 
hundreds of thousands of Mexicans, and sounded like a retreat to their territory. Two 
years later, the proclamation of self-government communities announced the implementation 
of these agreements by the parties themselves. However, the San Andr?s concern throughout 
Mexico and the National Indigenous Congress, born in 1996 at the invitation of the 
Zapatistas, trying to defend and promote the spirit and practice of autonomy. Yaquis in 
Sonora (North), the Pur?pechas in Michoac?n (Centre), and to Nurio Cher?n in particular 
Amuzgos and Nahua in Guerrero to Suljaa and Ostula, the Zapotecs, the Mixes and other 
peoples Oaxaca, in the mountains and on the Pacific coast, organize and fight strongly, 
but the highlands of Chiapas and the Lacandon forest remain for Mexico stronghold of 
self-government of indigenous peoples.

The influence of the Zapatista movement out of Mexico is particularly evident in social 
forums, including the EZLN has yet held aloof, and large anti-globalization protests, 
where sympathy for the rebellion in Chiapas were often expressed by libertarians who saw 
it as a counterweight to the strategies of transformation of society through the conquest 
of state power. The Zapatistas are not inspired by John Holloway and his essay Change the 
world without taking power, the opposite is true. Networks of solidarity with the EZLN 
grew rapidly for four years but the Acteal massacre in December 1997, changed their nature 
by putting them forward the humanitarian dimension. Solidarity collective rebellion became 
"human rights monitors" and found themselves in the field of AI. The media coverage of 
these observation missions in Chiapas and Mexico brought a misunderstanding between these 
networks and the Zapatistas was fatal to the collective of Barcelona's oldest and most 
dynamic in Europe, which dissolved itself in 2010. This group did manage Catalonia active 
synthesis of libertarian practice, past and present, and self-governance of the Zapatista 
communities, which gave him a unifying role in Europe has not found a successor.

In 2005, a work of collective in-depth allows the EZLN to adopt the Sixth Declaration of 
the Lacandon Jungle, the Sixth clearly anticapitalist. In international networks, this 
reflection and new start did not happen and adherence to the Sixth remained symbolic and 
virtual. Rare solidarity collectives that survive today have failed to interpret this 
statement and only work as echo chambers. Zapatista slogans become incantations that do 
not change a routine activism. This "Europe Zapatista" is nothing more than a decorative 
exoticism organizations adrift. It was in New York, in the Chicano and Latin Harlem, the 
Sexta was best practice translation in the struggles of the Movement for Justice in the 
Barrio against real estate companies. New York, a connection is made via the internet and 
video exchange between the Zapatistas and the South African movement Abahlali baseMjondolo 
occupants of huts, which also boasts its self-organization and rejects electoral politics. 
The EZLN, virtually silent for four years, reaffirmed in January 2013 the Sixth 
Declaration, putting an end to the Mexican experience of the Other Campaign and providing 
an international dimension to the Sixth in which could include movements as Abahlali, and 
autonomous anticapitalist struggles. We'll see if the "small school Zapatista" manages to 
convey to the international thousands who have participated in the sense of time, the 
relationship to the land and territory, the community and the congregation that 
characterizes the Indian resistance five centuries of domination and exploitation.

Belial, December 2013