Tag Archives: zapatistas

What the Zapatistas Can Teach us About the Climate Crisis

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With their 1994 battle cry, “Ya basta!” (“Enough already!”) Mexico’s Zapatista uprising became the spearhead of two convergent movements: Mexico’s movement for indigenous rights and the international movement against corporate globalization. Skip to 2010: the movements for indigenous rights and against corporate globalization have converged again, this time globally, in the climate justice movement. Following the [...]

Can We Make a New Haymarket Synthesis?

zapatistas

Waiting for the next big social protest movement can be frustrating. Activists may find some solace, if not inspiration, from Andrej Grubacic and Staughton Lynd’s book Wobblies and Zapatistas (2008). In it, the leading voice for a new Anarchist movement and the veteran labor activist argue for an unorthodox mixture of Anarchism and Marxism. The mutual hostility [...]

From Reforms To Revolution: A Question of Tactics

By Ian Martin “Reformist!” What a dreaded word for any self-professed revolutionary to be attached to. It is one of those accusatory labels that ends intelligent debate and is designed to intimidate one into silence. Much like the labels of “communist!” or, more recently, “terrorist!” used by those in power and their propagandists. These labels [...]

Autonomy and Participatory Democracy: An Ongoing Discussion on the Application of Zapatista Autonomy in the United States

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Interview of Roberto Flores and Greg Tanaka, by Peter McLaren Over the last six years, the Zapatista struggle in the state of Chiapas, Mexico, has attracted the attention of those actively seeking social justice throughout the world. The Labor Party of Brazil in Porto Alegre, the mayor of Venice in Italy, and hundreds of thousands [...]

Fetishizing the Zapatistas: A Critique of Change the World Without Taking Power

By Louis Proyect 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 [...]

A New Direction For The Zapatistas

Over the summer the Zapatistas surprised their supporters by suddenly declaring a Red Alert out of the blue. After a couple of days of near panic it emerged that this was just because they were undergoing a consulta (a discussion and referendum) which would decide on a new path for the movement. This new path [...]

Zapatistas: the First Postmodern Guerrilla Group

New Year’s Day 1994 a new guerrilla group announced its presence to the world by occupying six towns in the Chiapas state of Mexico. Born in the Lacandona rainforest, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) had been gestating for ten years. Evading detection for much of that period, the timing of their military offensive was [...]

On the Continued Centrality of the Zapatista Movement After 14 Years

By Feliz Año Cabrones “It’s not just our duty and our hope in this country, but in the continent and the rest of the world. If in some way Zapatismo has achieved a synchrony of global sympathy, it’s not because we have made certain use of the word, or because of the unquestionable heroism of [...]