From My Archives — The Politics of Listening, Asking Questions, and of Opening Cracks in the Fabric of Capitalism: Preliminary Reflections on the Zapatista “Other Campaign”

By Gary Kinsman

 

The 1994 Zapatista revolt in Chiapas, Mexico against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and neo-liberalism inspired and helped circulate a wave of anti-capitalist global justice activism in the south and in the north. The Zapatistas put forward a refreshing perspective for radical social transformation based on a big No! to neo-liberalism and capitalism and many yeses recognizing the diversity of oppressions and struggles people are engaged in. They also refused the traditional left strategy of the taking or seizure of state power.

 

In 2005 the Zapatistas embarked on a political shift that is also becoming a major inspiration and learning experience for anti-capitalist activism in Mexico and around the world. In a dynamic bringing together of Mayan indigenous ways of knowing and resisting, and currents within critical marxism and anarchism, the Zapatistas have been able to grapple with the concrete questions arising from their struggles in Mexico and at the same time provide forums for discussion and activism for anti-capitalist activists on a global level.

 

In their 2005 Sixth Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle the Zapatistas reflect on their 11 years of struggle since 1994 – on what they learned and achieved as well as the contradictions and impasses they face. While re-affirming their roots and base in indigenous experience and struggle they also develop a perspective, as they have before, of  indigenous plus or indigenous and beyond. In doing this they move far beyond narrow confines of identity politics.

 

Taking Risks

 

In the context of their relative isolation in the Mexican and global contexts after their “march for indigenous dignity” to Mexico City and the defeat of the Indigenous Law in 2001 (the San Andres Accords) by all the major political parties, and after their resulting tactical retreat back to Chiapas to change the world and build autonomy there, the Zapatistas call for a strategic turn that entails significant risks for themselves.

 

“To our way of thinking, and what we see in our heart, we have reached a point where we cannot go any further, and, in addition, it is possible that we could lose everything we have if we remain as we are and do nothing more in order to move forward. The hour has come to take a risk once again and to take a step which is dangerous but which is worthwhile. Because, perhaps united with other social sectors who suffer from the same wants as we do, it will be possible to achieve what we need and what we deserve. A new step forward in the indigenous struggle is only possible if the indigenous join together with workers, campesinos, students, teachers, employees…the workers of the city and the countryside.”[6th Declaration].

 

This is based on using some of their resources and skills to facilitate the making of a broader cross-Mexico movement from the bottom up and from the left. In the Declaration they also develop their position of opposition to the entire political class in Mexico, both the right and the ‘left’, including the moderate, social democratic Party of the Democractic Revolution (PRD) which in the end did not support the law recognizing the rights, cultures, and autonomy of the indigenous peoples (the San Andrés Accords) that the Zapatistas fought so hard for.

 

The Zapatistas also undertake some important, if limited, initiatives regarding international solidarity and continue their commitment to facilitate discussion and organizing at the global level. In the Declaration they also address their own contradictions like the tensions between the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) as a hierarchical military organization and the direct democracy they develop and hope to develop in the Zapatista communities, articulating a number of ways for cutting across top-down organizing, including through developing “governing by obeying.” They strive to develop a different way of doing politics which became concretized in the Other Campaign as a non-electoral grass roots organizing campaign running parallel to the official Mexican election campaign which ended with very contested results on July 2nd. The Other Campaign is now continuing tied into building a campaign for freeing political prisoners after the mobilizations against electoral fraud have begun to subside.

 

Anti-Capitalism

 

In this Declaration the Zapatistas deepen their critical anti-capitalist analysis including developing excellent popular analysis of exploitation and reification (the transformation of social relations between people into relations between things) in capitalism.

 

“Capitalism means that there are a few who have great wealth, but they did not win a prize, or find a treasure, or inherit it from a parent. They obtained the wealth rather, by exploiting the work of the many. So capitalism is based on the exploitation of the workers, which means they exploit the workers and take out all the profit … Capitalism is most interested in merchandise, because when it is bought or sold, profits are made. And then capitalism turns everything into merchandise, it makes merchandise of people, of nature, of culture, of history, of conscience. According to capitalism, everything must be able to be bought and sold. And it hides everything behind the merchandise, so we don’t see the exploitation that exists. And then the merchandise is bought and sold in the market. And the market, in addition to being used for buying and selling, is also used to hide the exploitation of the workers. In the market, for example, we see coffee in its little package or its pretty little jar, but we do not see the campesino who suffered in order to harvest the coffee … and we do not see workers in the large company working their hearts out to package the coffee … So we see merchandise in the market, but we do not see the exploitation with which it was made.” (6th Declaration).

 

In doing this the Zapatistas move far beyond narrow critiques of neo-liberalism and imperialism to capitalist social relations themselves as the source of the problem. This need to walk further asking questions in our practical critique of capitalism and its connections to all forms of oppression is central to what can be learned from the 6th Declaration.

Anti-capitalism has been central to the development of the Other Campaign in Mexico. The theme of the need to take back what we produce from the capitalists was developed and deepened at the First National Workers’ Gathering of the Other Campaign on April 29 and driven home in Subcomandante Marco’s speech on May 1st in Mexico City. More recently in La Paz, Baja California Sur, on October 14, 2006 Marcos addressing people devastated by capitalist ‘development’ called for “the big hotels to be owned by all of you” and that the “newspapers will be the property of their workers” (Al Giordano, Narco News, Oct. 15, 2006).

A Politics of Listening and Asking Questions

Key to this declaration and approach is a politics of listening. This comes from the history of organizing of the the EZLN itself. Subcomandante Marcos tells us that the EZLN learned from the indigenous inhabitants of the Lacandon Jungle how to listen.

“That is the great lesson that the indigenous communities teach to the original EZLN. The original EZLN, the one that is formed in 1983, is a political organization in the sense that it speaks and what it says has to be done. The indigenous communities teach it to listen, and that is what we learn. The principal lesson that we learn from the indigenous people is that we have to learn to hear, to listen.” (Unpublished interview with Cristian Calonico Lucio, 11 November, 1995; quoted in Holloway and Pelaz 1998, p. 161).

 

This means that the Zapatistas and others involved in the Other Campaign do not know everything and do not have all the answers. The only way to learn is to listen to people talk about their experiences and struggles, to reflect on this, and to ask questions. As the Zapatistas suggest “walking we ask questions.” We move but it does not mean that all questions are already clear or resolved. Instead it is only as we walk – or move or organize – that we can listen, learn and ask more deeply rooted questions. As John Holloway suggests this develops a horizontal relation between activist/organizers and community and movement participants rather than the standard vertical relation of Leninist or Social Democratic parties where the party already has the answers and instead talks and monologues to people telling them what to do (Holloway, 2005a).

 

In the first stages of formulating the Other Campaign when the Zapatistas were meeting with people supportive of the 6th Declaration in the Lacandon Jungle they listened to them for hours and then tried to draw together these experiences and perspectives. In the first stage of the Other Campaign tour across Mexico Subcomandante Marcos (also known as Delegate Zero) would listen for hours during the day to people talk about their experiences and struggles. In the evening he would speak to larger assemblies where he would encouragingly bring together what people said, link it with what people elsewhere had said, and build broader forms of solidarity between struggles and experiences as part of the Other campaign.  This was central to the first stage of the organizing strategy of the Other Campaign. This process is now continuing in the northern states of Mexico, after a summer of interruption in response to state repression, as three Zapatista organizers have moved from Chiapas to central Mexico to continue the struggle for freeing the political prisoners. Later Zapatista organizers are to fan out across Mexico to facilitate people organizing in local areas and in solidarity with others struggling  elsewhere to build a stronger rebellious movement from below and to the left.

Opening Up and Extending Cracks in Capitalism

A key part of the motivation of the Zapatistas is a recognition that if they stay isolated in the Lacandon Jungle, despite the important transformations and improvements made in people’s lives there, that their radical impulse will eventually be tamed and undermined. The crack they opened in capitalist social relations would then be able to be closed. The only alternative is to widen this crack by extending the challenge to relations of oppression and power across Mexico and around the world. As John Holloway suggests  if our perspective is no longer the taking or seizure of power by the Social Democratic or Revolutionary Party but instead the undermining of power over and the expansion of oppressed and exploited peoples power to do (Holloway, 2005a) the politics of revolution revolves around the opening and extension of cracks in the fabric of capitalism where revolutionary alternatives can be made, expanded and linked together (Holloway, 2005a, 2005b). If these disruptions are not constantly expanded and extended – if they become isolated, or marginalized   – then subversive possibilities for social transformation can be extinguished.

 

The Other Campaign is based on a gamble that the crack in Mexico can be widened and extended and certainly its organizing so far (with all of its contradictions and difficulties) involving tens of thousands of people has suggested major possibilities for doing this. One possible recent sign of this is that Marcos and the Zapatistas are once again being referred to by Mexican authorities as a risk to “national security.” Another is the police repression that Other Campaign has faced.

 

Police Repression

 

The first stage of organizing by the Other Campaign was disrupted and cut short on May 3-4th, 2006 when over 3,500 federal, state, and municipal police attacked flower vendors in Texcoco and supporters in the town of San Salvador Atenco when residents came out is solidarity with the flower vendors. As a result two people were killed, many were brutally beaten and tortured, many women were raped and 200 were arrested (27 people continue to be held). This was a direct attack upon the San Salvador Atenco’s People’s Front for the Defence of the Earth (FPDT), which had previously been involved in a successful militant struggle against construction of an airport in their area,  and which is a part of the Other Campaign. This was a police attack on the entire Other Campaign and was also part of a “strategy of tension” some Mexican state forces embarked on during the election campaign to try to whip up support for parties of the right – the National Action Party (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) .

 

In response Marcos and the Zapatistas made a decision that the continuing tour of the Other Campaign across Mexico needed to stop until the prisoners were released and a new Red Alert was called in the Zapatista territories. The politics of listening had to give way to a politics of solidarity and mobilization. Very significant solidarity actions have been organized across Mexico and globally initiated by supporters of the Other Campaign. This turn to active solidarity was a crucial and necessary decision even though the Other Campaign was not fully prepared for it and was still supposed to be in the largely listening, learning from, and bringing together stage. The Other Campaign as the Zapatistas have now recognized (see “The Zapatistas and the Other Campaign: Pedestrians of History,” 2006 ) did not yet have a clear decision making process in place and since then a number of problems have emerged revolving around the short-circuiting of the direct democracy the Other Campaign aims at.

For instance, John Gibler points out that at the national assembly of the Other Campaign on June 30 and July 1st in Mexico City the Mexico City section of the Other Campaign had already called for an action in Mexico City on July 2nd before the meeting even began undercutting the ability of people from across Mexico to define what would take place on July 2nd (Gibler, 2006). Also some left forces associated with the Other Campaign basically abandoned defence of the political prisoners of Atenco and weakened the Other Campaign as they dived into support for PRD candidate Andres Manuel Opez Labrador (known as AMLO) once it was clear that the electoral authorities were denying AMLO the election he had won and a mass movement facilitated by the PRD was emerging against the electoral fraud (see “The Zapatistas and the Other Campaign: Pedestrians of History” 2006 ).

 

Hopefully these problems can be overcome and the politics of listening and asking questions linked more directly to a politics of mobilization and solidarity. In recent statements the Zapatistas seem to have come to terms with the need for more common definition and a collective decision making process within the Other Campaign.

 

The Oaxaca Commune

 

Starting before the election and continuing after it the situation in the southern state of Oaxaca has given inspiration to the Other Campaign and supporters of the Other Campaign have been actively involved in it. Rising in revolt against the PRI Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz,  and basing itself on a popular teachers strike, union and community groups formed the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). APPO has taken over government buildings, radio stations, and organized numerous blockades and mass marches and has developed forms of direct democracy basically making the state ungovernable with demands for the dismissal of the Governor (on this see Narco News). In response APPO and the teachers have faced repression and violence from the forces of the Governor and irregular PRI forces. Although APPO has entered into negotiations with the central government it refuses to give up on its central demands. Central Mexican state forces are currently being mobilized against the Oaxaca Commune and a movement of solidarity with the people of Oaxaca is also growing across Mexico.

Voting and the Elections

 

The Other Campaign encompasses people who called for not voting in the Mexican elections (like the Zapatistas) and those who were going to critically vote for PRD candidate AMLO.. As a result the Campaign did not call for people to vote for any candidate in the elections and focussed on building an extra-parliamentary movement. At the July 2nd demonstration in Mexico City on election day slogans pointed out that there can be no democracy when there are political prisoners, and that regardless of whether you were going to vote or not you had to organize. With the major electoral fraud organized against AMLO and the PRD, the Zapatistas and the Other Campaign quickly denounced it, while maintaining their political distance from AMLO and the PRD.

Nonetheless because of their critiques of the PRD and AMLO some supporters of AMLO (some of whom had been supporters of the Zapatistas in their campaign for the San Andres Accords)  resorted to blaming the Zapatistas and the Other Campaign for the election results. The mass response to the electoral fraud partially eclipsed the Other Campaign for part of the summer which continued as it needed to to focus on releasing the political prisoners and support for the APPO in Oaxaca. AMLO’s supporters moved into a campaign of non-violent civil disobedience,  funded and regulated by the PRD, against the Mexican electoral authorities calling for a major vote recount. While millions of people joined these protests in the end they were unable to win the vote recount they were demanding. While AMLO has been elected as the alternate ‘president’ this now appears to be more of a bargaining strategy with the PAN and Mexican state authorities than any attempt to bring about serious social transformation (Dan Le Botz, 2006).

 

As the Zapatistas point out (in “The Zapatistas and the Other Campaign: Pedestrians of History” 2006) AMLO’s project and that of the Other Campaign are very different. People do not need another leader, saviour,  or boss from above who promises freedom, but never brings it. Instead they need a grass roots movement of solidarity and resistance. That is what the Other Campaign is attempting to build.

 

The Other Campaign tour is now continuing through northern Mexico. The campaign for the release of political prisoners is being raised in the north and also by the three Zapatista organisers now based in central Mexico. The Other Campaign is redefining itself and learning from its experiences and from the people it is listening to and building active solidarity with.

 

Concluding Reflections

 

It is far too early to draw a balance sheet of the Other Campaign but it has already succeeded in building a cross-Mexico and more (that also includes Mexicans forced to move north to the USA to survive) left-wing anti-capitalist movement of solidarity. In learning from the current forms of the Zapatista revolt it is worth our while in the north to reflect on the politics of listening and asking questions and a politics of opening up and expanding cracks in the fabric of capitalism as a crucial part of doing revolutionary politics differently. We need to deepen out commitment to an anti-capitalist perspective which also challenges all forms of oppression, and deepen our critique of the political class, including its ‘left’ components. This means beginning to see more clearly how political parties like the NDP in the Canadian context serve to regulate and manage our struggles.

 

The global organizing coming out of the 6th Declaration is extensive and the possibilities for regional and international encounters is something we need to pay attention to. The Zapatistas

have called for an international encounter on December 30-31, 2006 and January 1-2, 2007

in Chiapas which it is hoped that activists from around the world will attend 

 

Coming out of the this wave of organizing by the Zapatistas may be something even more significant than People’s Global Action (PGA) which helped to push forward the global justice movement in Seattle and elsewhere which we should remember came out of previous global Zapatista organizing initiatives (see July 26th, 2006 Communique from the Intergalactic Commission of the EZLN).

 

We also have a continuing responsibility to join with those in Mexico calling for the release of all the political prisoners and for justice for those raped and tortured in the police attack on Atenco. Finally as the Zapatistas have reminded us many times the best form of solidarity is to rebel in the places where  we find ourselves, making revolution where we are and expanding the tears in the fabric of capitalism.

 

References and Resources

 

Chiapas Indymedia

chiapas.mediosindependientes.org/

 

Chiapas 1995  – www.eco.utexas.edu/~archive/chiapas95/

 

Communiqué from the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, Intergalactic CommissionSixth Commission, Oct. 2, 2006, http://www.elkilombo.org/documents/intergalacticoct2.html

 

Enlacezapatista

www.enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/

 

John Gibler, “Time and Urgency: Reflections on the Politics of Listening in the Other Campaign,” www.narconews.com/Issue42/article1981.html (7/6/2006).

 

Al Giordano, Imagine “the Big Hotels, Owned by All of You,” and that, “Newspapers Will Be Property of their Workers, ” Narco News, October 15, 2006, http://narconews.com/Issue43/article2169.html

 

John Holloway, Change the World Without Taking Power, The Meaning of Revolution Today, (London, Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2005a -New Edition).

 

John Holloway, “Moving Against-and-Beyond or Interstitial Revolution,” (2005b) at

spsip.red.m2014.net/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=3 (accessed July 2006).

 

John Holloway and E. Pelaz, eds., Zapatista! Reinventing Revolution, (London: Pluto Press, 1998).

 

July 26th Communique from the Intergalactic Commission of the EZLN, at chiapas.mediosindependientes.org/display.php3?article_id=125020

 

Dan La Botz, “Mexico at the Edge: Toward a Declaration of Dual Power,” MR Zine,
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/labotz130906.html

 

R J Maccani, Left Turn

Part One – “Outlines of a Mexican Rebellion,”

www.lefturn.org/Articles/Viewer.spx?id=865&type=w

Part Two – “Thoughts on Marcos and Leadership,”

www.lefturn.org/Articles/Viewer.spx?id=873&type=w

Part Three – “Enter the Intergalactic! The Zapatistas’’ Sixth Declaration in the US and the World”

http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/Viewer.aspx?id=972&type=W

http://www.leftturn.orgNARCO NEWS – www.narconews.com

 

Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona, Part One and Part Two

chiapas.indymedia.org?display.php3?article_id=113973

chiapas.indymedia.org?display.php3?article_id=114072

 

Concepcion Villafuerte, “What is the Sixth Zapatista Declaration? A Bit of History as the ‘Other Campaign’ Begins in San Cristobal de las Casas,” at www.narconews.com/issue40/article1527.html

 

Zapatista Network – a network of networks north of the rio grande

Zapred.revolt.org/index.html

 

“The Zapatistas and the Other Campaign: Pedestrians of History” 2006. Both at Narco News and at  Chiapas Indymedia.

 

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Gary Kinsman is a supporter of the 6th Zapatista Declaration, and hopes that the politics of Zapatismo can inform radical organizing within the Canadian state as well. He is one of the editors of Sociology for Changing the World, and teaches, lives, and organizes in Sudbury, Ontario.