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Celebration ofZAPATISMO

Gustavo Esteva

Dissenting Knowledges Pamphlet Series (no. 1)Vinay Lal, Founding Editor

PenangMultiversity & Citizens International

2004

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Published by

MULTIVERSITYand

CITIZENS INTERNATIONAL22 Taylor Road11600 Penang

Malaysia

2004

Printed byJutaprint

2 Solok Sungai Pinang 3Sungai Pinang11600 Penang

Malaysia

ISBN 983-41938-5-8

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Foreword to theDissenting Knowledges Pamphlet Series

Vinay LalFounding Editor

The world as we know it today is understood almostentirely through categories that are largely theproduct of Western knowledge systems and the

academic disciplines that have been charged with codifying,disciplining, organizing, institutionalizing and trans-mitting knowledge not only about the physical andmaterial world, but about the various social, political,cultural, religious, and legal institutions and practicesfound among diverse human communities. This pamphletseries is thus built on the twin recognition that there istoday no more urgent task than understanding the politicaland epistemological consequences of the imposition of theWest upon the entire world, and at the same timeendeavoring to work, in myriad ways, towards thedecolonization of academic disciplines. It seeks to furnishintellectuals, scholars, and activists who are committedto harvesting theories of knowledge, livelihoods andlifestyles, and forms of political awareness that arecalculated to create more genuine forms of equality, justice,and plurality with a more public forum of informed anddissenting opinion than is customarily available throughscholarly monographs and learned journals.

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The age of exploration and navigation, which commencedin Europe a little over 500 years old, eventually paved theway for the colonization of the Americas, South andSoutheast Asia, the Near East, Polynesia, Africa, and otherparts of the world over the course of the next 200-300years. The comparative study of colonialism points tonumerous ways in which the European impact wasexperienced differently across colonies. Historians havedrawn distinctions between plantation colonies, settlercolonies, and other colonies with varying degrees of directand indirect rule. In the Americas and Australia, theindigenous populations were wiped out; in South Africa,black and colored people were confronted with sternsubjugation under the Boers; and in the Congo, the sameresults, that is the extreme brutalization of the native peopleby the Europeans, were achieved in European-ownedrubber plantations. The British in India out-Brahminedthe Brahmins, refusing after the late eighteenth centuryto consort with the local populations.

One of the many idioms in which the great game ofcolonialism survives today is in those numerousdiscussions which seek to distinguish between “good”and “bad” colonialisms. British imperial historians, suchas P. J. Marshall, Denis Judd, and Niall Ferguson, stillengage with unbridled enthusiasm in this puerile exercise.Nonetheless, it is an indisputable fact that Europe’scolonization of the world, when it did not lead to theoutright decimation or extermination of native peoples,resulted in the extinction of lifestyles, cultural life forms,and the biological, cultural, and social inheritance ofcolonized societies. It is imperative to recognize that

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everywhere the colonizers sought to impose upon thecolonized their worldview. Nothing should be allowedto obscure the fundamental fact of colonialism and thepost-colonial era: every conquest is a conquest ofknowledge. The epistemological imperatives of the colonialstate have only in the last few decades begun to receivethe critical scrutiny of scholars and commentators. TheBritish in India, to take one well-known example, devotedthemselves to an exhaustive study of India’s social andintellectual traditions: grammars of Indian languageswere created, translations of scriptural texts wereauthorized, the legal texts of Hindus and Muslims werecodified, the land was mapped and its inhabitants counted,measured, and classified; “communities” were enumerated,marked, and named; and so on. What is true of India isalso, to a greater or lesser degree, characteristic of British,French, and Dutch colonies in other parts of the world.

The “conquest of knowledge” entailed, however, a greatdeal more than what was wrought under colonial ruleitself, and under conditions of globalization Westernknowledge systems have sought, largely with success, togain complete dominance across the globe in nearly allspheres of life. The economists’ conceptions of growth,poverty, scarcity, and development, marketed by all thesocial sciences, have come to predominate everywhere, andthe sum total of Western social science has not only beento mire the so-called developing world in ever more acutelevels of poverty, but to forestall the possibility ofworldviews and lifestyles that do not synchronize withthe conception of the “good life” that prevails in the“developed” West. The entire theory of development is

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predicated on a time-lag: countries that are under-developed or part of the developing world seek to emulatethe developed countries, but by the time they haveseemingly caught up, the developed countries have gonewell beyond to another plane of development. The native,to speak in a different tongue, always arrive late at thedestination; indeed, the theory of development condemnsthe underdeveloped to live not their own lives, but ratherto fulfill someone else’s conception of life. Developmentdoesn’t merely assure us that the past of the native mustbe entirely jettisoned; it also hijacks the native’s future. Ifthe native’s present is the European’s past, the native’sfuture is the European’s present.

Nearly every academic discipline is compromised. In allof the voluminous literature on globalization that hasemerged in recent years, there is scarcely the recognitionthat what has been most effectively globalized are theknowledge systems of the West. Paul Samuelson’swretched economics textbook is used in dozens of countries— dictatorships, monarchies, and so-called democraciesalike. Despite the pretensions of the social sciences,nowhere more on display than in the bankrupt disciplinesof political science and economics, their methodologies andfindings are far from being universal; indeed, consideringthe widening economic disparities in the US itself, andthe nakedly criminal and self-aggrandizing policies of oneAmerican administration after another, one might say thateconomists and political scientists have contributed not alittle towards wrecking their own home. If freedom isindivisible, it is important to recognize not only that theSouth has to free itself from that albatross around its neck

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that goes by the name of the ‘West’, but that the so-calleddeveloped countries have to be liberated from themselves.

This pamphlet series is one of many enterprises to haveemerged out of the desire of some scholars, academics,activists, and public intellectuals, who first convenedtogether in Penang, Malaysia in early 2002, to create anew forum, which has been termed “Multiversity”, thatwill at once enable a wholesale but rigorous and searchingcritique of the frameworks of modern knowledge as wellas more ecumenical political and cultural futures.Multiversity’s members are committed to the propositionthat there needs to be less conversation with the Westand more conversation between peoples of the South. Longbefore India, China, Southeast Asia, and Africa interactedwith Europe, they interacted with each other; indeed, theIndian Ocean was a global world, a crossroads, but partof the effect of colonialism has been to obscure these earlierhistories. The conception of what constitutes the “world”has narrowed so considerably that everywhere outsideEurope it means a knowledge only of one’s own countryand of the Euro-American world. These, apparently, arethe borders of our supposed cosmopolitanism.

There can be no intercultural dialogue or genuineexchange of ideas so long as the terms of the conversationare set exclusively by the West. It is necessary to add thatthe “multi” in multiversity and multiworld ought to bedistinguished from the “multi” in multiculturalism.Having ruthlessly homogenized itself, the United States,the leader of the West, has now had to embrace “multi-culturalism” and relentlessly peddles its multiculturalism

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to the world as a sign of its openness and tolerance.Multiculturalism of the American variety, which issynonymous with consumer choice and white domination(sometimes appearing in the relatively more “benign” formof primus inter pares), is now ironically poised to become atemplate for societies where the ground reality has alwaysbeen plural. Multiversity aims at resisting such insidiousforms of resurgent colonialism and creating the conditionsthat would permit dissenting knowledges to flourish. Thispamphlet series is a step in that direction.

Readers are invited to learn more about Multiversity byaccessing its website at http://www.multiworld.org.

University of California,Los AngelesSeptember 2004

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Celebration ofZAPATISMO

Gustavo Esteva

Zapatismo is nowadays the most radical, and perhapsthe most important, political initiative in the world.

The Zapatistas challenge in words and deeds every aspectof contemporary society. In revealing the root cause ofthe current predicaments, they tear to tatters theframework of the economic society (capitalism), the nation-state, formal democracy and all modern institutions. Theyalso render obsolete conventional ways and practices ofsocial and political movements and initiatives. Inreconstructing the world from the bottom up, they revealthe illusory or counterproductive nature of changesconceived or implemented from the top down. Their pathencourages everywhere resistance to globalisation andneoliberalism, and inspires struggles for liberation. Theyalso contribute to articulate those struggles.

Only hope remained in Pandora’s Box, after all evils hadescaped from it. By liberating hope and thus dis-coveringa net of plural paths, the Zapatistas paved the way for arenaissance. They are still a source of inspiration for thosewalking along those paths. But they do not pretend to

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administer or control such a net, which has its ownimpulses, strength and orientation. We all are, or can be,Zapatistas.

Behind our black mask, behind our armed voice, behindour unnameable name, behind what you see of us, behindthis, we are you. Behind this, we are the same simple andordinary men and women who are repeated in all races,painted in all colours, speak in all languages, and live inall places. Behind this, we are the same forgotten menand women, the same excluded, the same intolerated, thesame persecuted, the same as you. Behind this, we areyou. (The Zapatistas 1998, 24).

¡Basta! Enough!

At midnight of 1st January 1994, NAFTA — the NorthAmerican Free Trade Agreement between Mexico, the USand Canada — came into force. Barely two hours later,thousands of Indians, armed with machetes, clubs and afew guns, occupied four of the main towns in Chiapas, aprovince of Mexico bordering Guatemala, and declaredwar on the Mexican government. The rebels revealed thatthey were Indians of different ethnic groups callingthemselves Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional(EZLN). They appealed for an end to 500 years ofoppression and 50 years of “development”, and expressedthe hope that a new political regime would allow them toreclaim their commons and to regenerate their own formsof governance and their own art of living and dying. Itwas time to say “¡Basta! Enough!”

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For ten years, encircled by 50-60,000 troops, a third of theMexican Army, the Zapatistas have peacefully resisted the“low intensity” war waged against them by thegovernment. They have been continually exposed to publicattention. In fact, no contemporary social or politicalmovement has attracted more public attention and formore time than Zapatismo.1 But they continue to be amystery and a paradox. Can there be such a thing as arevolutionary group with no interest in seizing power?Revolutionary leaders who refuse to hold any public post,now or in the future? An army that fires words and civildisobedience, championing non-violence? An organisationprofoundly rooted in its local culture with a global scope?A group that is strongly affiliated with democraticprinciples, and yet is democracy’s most radical critic?People profoundly rooted in ancient Mayan traditions andyet immersed in contemporary ideas, problems, andtechnologies?

It is evident what Zapatismo is not.

The Zapatistas are not a fundamentalist or messianicmovement. Within their ranks, very different beliefs andreligions, most of them well rooted in their traditions,coexist harmoniously. They are very open and ecumenicalin religious matters. The majority of them are Indigenouspeople, but they did not start an Indigenous or ethnicmovement. They do not reduce the scope of their initiativeto Indigenous peoples, to a “minority” or even less tothemselves, to their own claims: “Everything for everyone,nothing for us” is not a slogan but a political attitudeand practice.

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The Zapatistas are not a nationalist, separatist or“autonomist” movement. They show no desire forChiapas to become a small nation-state, an Indigenousrepublic, or an “autonomous” administrative district, inline with the demands of minorities in some othercountries. They actively resist the modern propensity tosubsume local ways of being and cultural differences inthe homogenising treatment given to people classed as“minorities” in the modern nation state — usually anotherway of hiding discrimination and entrenchingindividualism.

The Zapatistas are not guerrillas. They are not fish thatswim in the sea of the people, as Che Guevara would defineguerrillas. They are not a revolutionary group in searchof popular support to seize power. Their uprising was thecollective decision of hundreds of communities notinterested in power.2 They are the sea, not the fish. Inexploring this condition, we can discover one of the mostimportant and confusing traits of the Zapatistas.

LISTENING WHILE YOU WALK

“The first fundamental act of the EZLN was to learn howto listen and to speak”, say the Zapatistas.3

On 17th November 1983 a group of six professionalrevolutionaries arrived in Chiapas to establish a guerrillacentre and base. Their first task was to learn how to survivein the jungle by themselves. After one year, the personlater represented as Old Antonio discovered them andintroduced them to the communities. Their marxist-

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leninist-guevarist ideology could not permeate theirconversations. “Your word is too harsh”, people kepttelling them. The guerrillas “square” ideas were thus notonly dented but so severely damaged that they becameunrecognisable. The first Zapatistas say that in this initialconfrontation they lost – they, those bearing that ideologyand that political project, a would-be guerrilla in the LatinAmerican tradition. But out of this intercultural dialogueZapatismo was born and rooted itself in hundreds ofcommunities.

In the following years, these communities tried every legaltool at their disposal, every form of social, economic orpolitical organisation. They organised marches, sit-ins,everything. They even walked two thousand kilometresfrom Chiapas to the capital, Mexico City, in order to findsomeone to hear their call. No one listened. Not the societyand not the government. They were dying like flies. Theythus preferred a dignified death to the docile march ofsheep to the slaughter.

The mountain told us to take up arms so we would havea voice. It told us to cover our faces so we would have aface. It told us to forget our names so we could be named.It told us to protect our past so we would have a future.(The Zapatistas 1998, 22).

All they had been left with was their dignity. They affirmedthemselves in it, hoping that their sacrifice might awakensociety, and that perhaps their children and grandchildrencould live a better life.

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They were the weakest. Nobody was listening. But theiruprising was echoed by the ‘civil society’,4 that urged themto try a peaceful and political way. They accepted such amandate and they made themselves strong in it, changingthe form of their struggle. Only 12 days after the armeduprising started, they became the champions of nonviolence.5

According to the Zapatistas, after the Dialogue of theCathedral in March 1994 (frustrated after the assassinationof the presidential candidate of the official party) and theelections of that year, they needed to create a different kindof space for dialogue:

We needed a space to learn to listen and to speak withthis plurality that we call ‘civil society’. We agreed thento construct such space and to call it Aguascalientes, sinceit would be the headquarters of the National DemocraticConvention, whose name alluded to the Convention ofthe Mexican revolutionary forces in the second decade ofthe 20th Century... On 8th August 1994 commander Tacho,in the name of the Revolutionary Indigenous ClandestineCommittee of the EZLN inaugurated, before six thousandpeople from different parts of the world, the so calledAguascalientes and he delivered it to national andinternational civil society...But the idea of Aguascalienteswas going más allá, beyond. We wanted a space for thedialogue with civil society. And dialogue means also tolearn to listen to the other and learning how to speak tohim or her.

When the Aguascalientes of Guadalupe Tepeyac wasdestroyed by the federal army, in February 1995, other

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Aguascalientes were born in different Zapatistacommunities. They have served since then many purposes,especially for the relationship with ‘civil society’.

In December 1995 autonomous municipalities started tobe created in the Zapatista area. In them, in spite of themilitary encirclement and other external pressures, theZapatistas practised their autonomy, both within each ofthe communities constituting every municipality andwithin each municipality, where the communitiesorganised and controlled a governing council.

After long reflection on these experiences, the Zapatistasintroduced important changes in their internal structureand in their ways of relating to ‘civil society’. In order toinform about them, burying the Aguascalientes and givingbirth to the caracoles (snails, seashells), they held a greatcelebration from 8th to 10th August 2003.

Internally, they decided to separate the military structurefrom the civil organisation and to harmonise the activitiesof the autonomous municipalities in every Zapatistaregion through Juntas de Buen Gobierno (Councils orBoards of Good Government). These new autonomousbodies were created “to take care that in Zapatista territorythose that lead, lead by following... In each rebel area therewill be a Junta, constituted by one or two delegates ofeach of the Autonomous Councils (of the municipalities)of the area”.

The autonomous communities and municipalities will thuscontinue functioning with their own structure, but now

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they will also have these Juntas de Buen Gobierno,embracing several municipalities. The Juntas will attendto conflicts and difficulties of the autonomousmunicipalities within the jurisdiction of each Junta.Anyone feeling that an injustice has been committed inhis or her community or municipality, or that things arenot being done as they ought to be done, according tothe community will and the principle of command by obeying,may have recourse to this new body. These Juntas willalso be in charge of any dealings with ‘civil society’ and ifneeded with government agencies.

Why call the new political bodies caracoles? The Zapatistasoffered different explanations.

The wise ones of olden times say that the hearts of menand women are in the shape of a caracol, and that thosewho have good in their hearts and thoughts walk fromone place to the other, awakening gods and men for themto check that the world remains right. For that reason,who keeps vigil while the others are sleeping uses hiscaracol, and he uses it for many things, but most of all asnot to forget.

They say here that the most ancient ones said that othersbefore them said that the very first people of these landsheld an appreciation for the symbol of the caracol. Theysay that they say that they said that the caracol representsentering into the heart, that this is what the very firstones called knowledge. They say that they say that theysaid that the caracol also represents exiting from the heartto walk the world, that this is what the very first calledlife. And not only, they say that they say that they said

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that with the caracol the community was called togetherfor the word to travel from one to the other and thusaccord were born. And also they say that they say thatthey said that the caracol was a gift for the ear to heareven the most distant words. This they say that they saythat they said.

The caracoles will be like doors to enter into thecommunities and for the communities to come out; likewindows to see us inside and also for us to see outside;like loudspeakers in order to send far and wide our wordand also to hear the words from the one who is far away.But, most of all, they will remind us that we ought tokeep watch and to check uprightness of the worlds thatpopulate the world.

At the celebration that buried the Aguascalientes andbirthed the caracoles, the Zapatistas announced that intheir territories the Plan Puebla-Panamá — a neoliberalscheme for Southern Mexico and Central America — wouldnot be applied. They proposed instead the Plan LaRealidad-Tijuana that “consists in linking all theresistances in our country, and reconstructing Mexico fromthe bottom up.”

As these highlights of the very complex story of Zapatismoillustrate, the Zapatistas do not enclose themselves in abody of doctrine or an ideology, which usually starts as aguide to action and ends transmogrified into a rigid andauthoritarian straightjacket. They have changedcontinually, enriching their statements and ways,according to changing circumstances and following theirintense interaction with other groups and organisations.

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They listen, learn from others, and apply in each step ahealthy self-criticism. Yet this is not mere pragmatism.They continue to be solidly attached to certain principlesof behaviour and they possess splendid moral integrity.They also possess the strength of character that emanatesfrom a well-rooted, open, and hospitable dignity.

There are few things more distinctive of the Zapatistasthan their capacity to listen . . . and to change, accordingto what they heard, introducing profound mutations intheir movement. What some people see as chameleonicbehaviour, or betrayal to sacred principles or doctrinairestatements, is instead an expression of vitality, flexibility,openness, and capacity to change. This is the challenge indescribing Zapatismo. You need to allude to the mutationsof the subject itself and its attitudes.

DESPERATELY SEEKING MARCOS

Many people still insist on reducing Zapatismo to Marcos.This looks like racism. An educated white man is surelymanipulating those poor, illiterate Mayas. They cannotsay what he is saying and even less conceive such amovement. This looks like racism.

But, what about the crowds? In 2001, SubcomandanteMarcos and 25 Zapatista commanders travelled to MexicoCity. For the first time, millions were able to see and hearthem. Time and again the crowds did not allow the otherZapatistas or local Indigenous leaders to speak. “Marcos!Marcos!” they demanded. No one else. They wanted tolisten to him. Were they also racists?

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In the plaza of Tepatepec, Hidalgo, a new legend started.For two years not a drop of water had fallen in the region.The very minute Marcos started his speech a torrentialrain began. “Of course,” said an old woman; “This manis turning our political system upside down. Whyshouldn’t he command the rain?” Was she racist? Or justan innocent searcher looking for hope incarnated in acharismatic leader?

And what about the millions collecting the Zapatistacommuniqués penned by Marcos, his stories, hisinterviews, his letters? What about the editors publishingwith impressive love and care his “selected writings”?(Subcomandante Marcos 2001) The book, with a forewordby Jose Saramago, celebrates him as one of the best LatinAmerican writers of all times. Norman Mailer writes,“Marcos has earned his indignation like few men alive”.Are these admirers racists as well?

Should we think, alternatively, that the “system”performed its usual operation and did not wait 30 yearsto sell Marcos T-shirts? (Benetton offered him one milliondollars to include his face in its collection.) Or should weaccept the view that he really is the timely saviour thatthe world was waiting for; an icon that globaphobics cannow use to express their dissent; the new flag for rebellionin these desperate times? Is Marcos the romanticrevolutionary, a living substitute for Che? Is he really anextraordinary leader, as wise as he is heroic, awakeningus out of confusion and conformity, and thus deservingtrust and subordination?

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No doubt, the person behind the mask is extraordinary.Who can deny his literary talent? Even the very anti-Zapatista Nobel Prize winner, Octavio Paz, recognised it.No one can question his political savvy. Loved and hatedby many people, Marcos, like the Zapatistas, remains amystery and a paradox, a puzzle. Does he really fit intothe image of a new revolutionary archetype?Unquestionably, he has charisma. He enchants both thecrowds and his readers. But, is he really a leader, romanticor not? And even more pertinent to the point, is he thevery core of Zapatismo, as Mao was for Maoism and Chefor Guevarism? Is this particular poet-writer-strategist-rebel-revolutionary what many of his followers andreaders seem to assume him to be?

During the Zapatista March to Mexico City, Marcosexperienced for the first time his mesmerising impact onthe crowds.6 He candidly declared afterwards that theZapatistas did not foresee this problem. Marcos becametheir spokesperson by accident, at the beginning of theuprising. Observing his effectiveness, they used himextensively in that role. The mask used to avoid personalitycult became counterproductive. His transformation intoan iconic image took them by surprise.

I do not want to minimise his role as a spokesperson. Ithas been critical in overcoming one of the main challengesfor the Zapatistas. Fully rooted in their own culture, theywere keenly aware that their radical otherness was anobstacle to conveying to others the spirit and meaning oftheir movement, without betraying their unique view of

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the world. How to avoid misinterpretation? How to betruthful without colonising others with their brand oftruth? How to share an attitude whose ‘global’ scopederived from its deep cultural rootedness in Chiapas?

Few Zapatistas are proficient in Spanish; none but Marcosmasters it. But the challenge for effective interaction wasnot only a question of language. It was associated withthe very conception and orientation of the movement,whose radical novelty comes from both its ancient culturalroots and its contemporary innovations. Their views, fullyimmersed in their own cultures, seemed impenetrable forpeople of other cultures. Their political stance, strictlycontemporary, was conceived outside the modern politicalspectrum. It has no clear precedents. There were no wordsto talk about it.

This challenge was evident since the uprising started. TheZapatistas needed to draw a line to differentiate themselvesfrom other armed movements in Latin America; the narco-guerrillas, and the classic peasant rebellions. Through veryeffective images, using both ordinary language and theepic tone of some predecessors, they appealed to people’simagination. Many analysts took the document withwhich they introduced themselves for a delirious andpolitically insane declaration. Instead, the people receivedit as a sign of hope, inspiring and awakening them. In amatter of hours, the Zapatistas established themselves ina new domain, outside the spectrum of classifications thatscholars, analysts, and reactionaries would try topigeonhole them in.

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After ten years of clandestineness, well trained in theintercultural dialogue through which Zapatismo wasborn, the Zapatistas and Marcos himself discovered hisfunction as a cultural bridge, in order to open a dialoguewith ‘civil society’ and spread the contagion of dignityand hope. Instead of a cold, abstract ideology, frozen inseductive slogans, Marcos used images, stories, metaphorsand characters like Durito and Old Antonio. He was notselling any political code or ideology “to plug everyoneinto”. In this way, his masked voice became the voice ofmany voices.

Marcos himself explained “the futility for scientists andthe police of speculating over who is behind the criminalnose and ski mask” (Gilly et al. 1995, Marcos 2001, 249).The Zapatistas show themselves by hiding and hide byshowing themselves. They are the face that hides itself tobe seen, the name that hides itself to be named. It is futileto look both for the individual “author” of plans andconceptions, or for the “real” individual self behind thenosed ski mask. Marcos, born on January 1st 1994, willsoon vanish. He will no longer be needed; he will not,like Cid or Che, win battles after death; he will not beused as a credential legitimising power.

Today, the Zapatistas are a source of inspiration, not ofguidance. They do not ask the people to affiliate themselvesto a church, a party, an ideology, a political strategy orplan. They inspire dignity, courage and self-respect. Theynourish with their moral strength and politicalimagination non-violent initiatives against neoliberalismand globalisation.

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Both the system and its discontents use Marcos. Bycriminalising or idealising the “individual” behind themask, they dissipate precisely what they try to take holdof. They are thus unable to see with new eyes theZapatistas’ radical stance.

Many others, however, derive continual inspiration fromthem. They do not need to desperately seek Marcos andidolise him. They know that we all are Marcos, in ourown way and place, with our own face and dignity, inour own struggle. As the participants in the ZapatistaEncuentro of 1996 declared,

The rebels search each other out. They walk towards oneanother…They begin to recognise themselves…andcontinue on their fatiguing walk, walking as is nownecessary to walk, that is to say, struggling . . . (TheZapatistas 1998, 43).

WALKING AT THE PACE OF THE SLOWEST

All the “revolutionary vanguards” are obsessively focusedon keeping their position of leadership and command.They must be at the top and control, by all means, the‘masses’. And they always are in a rush. They have to bethe first to arrive in the Promised Land, which usuallymeans seizing power. Once in power, they think, theywill be able to lead the people in the realisation of theirrevolutionary project.

The Zapatistas are instead focused on seeking consensusand walking at the pace of the slowest. No important

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political decision is taken by a small group of leaders. Asa consequence, the decision process is slow and complex.It requires long and convoluted forms of discussion andconsultation. They do not speed it up through the methodof voting, which always leaves a balance of winners andlosers, majorities and minorities. And the march itself,walking the consensual path, is unavoidably slow.

Such search for consensus rejects the assumption ofhomogeneity in the understanding of social subjects orissues, as well as in the basic attitudes of the assembledpeople, implicit in conventional “democratic consensus”.The ballot box for referenda, plebiscite and elections arenot only exposed to manipulation and control; they arealso based on the assumption that everyone shares acommon understanding of the matters to be voted for andthat the voters also share some basic attitudes determiningthe “democratic consensus” constructed through theirvotes. Fully aware of the many differences in the pluralityof interests, perceptions, attitudes and voices of the realworld, the Zapatistas try to identify by consensus the pathsto be walked. And in walking them, once agreed upon byeveryone, they adjust the pace of the walk to thosestraggling. The slowest, on their part, have beenaccelerating their pace, as they see the institutional rooffalling over them.At the same time, while walking that path, the Zapatistasare resorting to legal and political procedures, in order toconstruct another level of consensus. They seemconvinced that those procedures, integral to one another,

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are the best way to protect the structure of freedom theyare creating (Illich 1974).

The Zapatistas insist that they are rebels, notrevolutionaries. Perhaps they are right. The truerevolutionaries would be those ordinary men and womenmobilised by the dignified rebellion of the Zapatistas. Theyare producing a radical change at the grassroots, all overthe world. For the most part, the change has not yetcrystallised in enduring institutions, but seems to havevery solid foundations. It is perhaps the first socialrevolution of the XXIst century: the revolution of the newcommons (Esteva and Prakash 1998, Esteva 2000).

Democracy? Presence and representation

During their First Intercontinental Encounter forHumanity and Against Neoliberalism, in July-August,1996, Subcomandante Marcos explained, in an informalintervention, the attitude of the Zapatistas about powerwhen they were preparing the uprising:

We thought that we needed to reformulate the questionof power. We will not repeat the formula that to changethe world you need to seize power, and once in poweryou will organise it the way it is the best for the world,that is, what is the best for me, because I am in power. Wethought that if we conceived a change in the premise ofthe question of power, arguing that we did not want totake it, this would produce a different form of politics,another kind of politicians, other human beings who couldmake politics very different to the one practised by the

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politicians we suffer today along the whole politicalspectrum”. (EZLN 1996, 69).

On 1st January, 1996, in their 4th Declaration of SelvaLacandona, the Zapatistas invited everyone to explore atthe local level what the people can do without politicalparties and the government. For the Zapatistas, thequestion is not who is in power, or how any person, groupor party got a power position (through elections or othermeans), but the very nature of the power system. Theydo not believe that the improvement in the electoralprocedures, which seem to need everywhere a completeoverhaul, will be able to address the problems embeddedin the very structure of the ‘democratic’ nation-state. Theystopped thinking that the needed changes should, or can,come from above. They think instead that those changescan only be realised with the transformation of the societyby itself, from within, in people’s social fabric incommunities, barrios, municipalities.

Democracy, in fact, can only be where the people are, andnot “up there” at the top of the institutions, no matterhow perfect the procedures to elect representatives whowill shape and operate those institutions could be. Insteadof putting their trust in the constituted powers, whoselegitimacy they question, the Zapatistas deposit their hopein the constituent force, the force constituting theconstituted powers, the one that can give, or not, life,meaning and substance to them. Zapatismo has been, fromthe very beginning, an open appeal to this constituentforce of the society, an invitation to those forming it to

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directly and consciously deal with social transformation,not through their supposed representatives.

It is increasingly evident, everywhere, that the constitutedpowers are not respecting people’s will. The voices of 30million people, for example, occupying the streetseverywhere to stop the war in the Middle East, were notheard. This situation generates increasing disenchantmentwith formal democracy. It produces a feeling of impotence.Many people react with apathy, indifference, evendesperation. Both to vote, or to abandon the ballot box,may be useless or counterproductive.

The Zapatistas created an alternative path – a political force,instead of a political party, which transforms social andpolitical reality at the grassroots and can enclose theenclosers, encircling and controlling the powers that be.The Zapatistas know very well that their current struggleoccurs within the legal and political framework of theMexican State. But they are not trapped in the perverseillusion that the State is the only general political realityor a privileged form of political activity. Politics, for them,is a commitment to the common good, as expressed incommon sense, the sense held in the community. Theytake away from the State and the market the function ofdefining the good life and reclaim it as a faculty of ‘civilsociety’, i.e. the people.

The Zapatistas are also fully aware of the current debateabout the situation and prospects of the nation-state itself.They observe that this modern invention, within whichthe economic society was organised and promoted in both

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capitalist and socialist forms, is now exposed to a two-pronged attack by transnational forces and institutions,or by internal groups with ethnic, religious or ideologicalclaims. They seem clearly interested in the different notionsof nation and state, abandoned after the creation of thenation-state, which different groups are now reclaiming.They have expressed their sympathy to efforts attemptingto transform the homogeneous state (monocultural ormulticultural) into a plural state, according to diverseconceptions.7 But they have not committed their will ortheir discourse to any specific political design, suggestedas a substitute for the ‘democratic’ nation-state. They seemconvinced that “society as a whole” (the general design ofa society) is always the outcome of a multiplicity ofinitiatives, forces, and impulses – not the fruit of socialengineering or theoretical designs. They appeal tosociological and political imagination, while emphasisingthat what is really needed is the full participation ofeveryone, particularly those until now excluded, in theconcepts and practices that will give a new shape to thesociety and its political regime.

In their own regions, where they are in control, theZapatistas seem to be clearing a path in which democracymeans presence, rather than representation.

BEYOND BOTH UNIVERSALISM AND RELATIVISM

The idea of One World is an old western dream, projectand design, whose origins can be traced back to the parableof the Good Samaritan and the Apostle Paul.

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The Enlightenment secularised this heritage and turnedit into a humanist creed. Neither class nor sex, neitherreligion nor race count before human nature, as theydidn’t count before God. Thus the universality of theSonship of God was recast as the universality of humandignity. From then on, ‘humanity’ became the commondenominator uniting all peoples, causing differences inskin colour, beliefs and social customs to decline insignificance. (Sachs 1992, 103).

Accepting the assumption that there is a fundamentalsameness in all human beings, the construction of OneWorld was adopted in the West as a moral obligation. Itbecame a destructive and colonising adventure, attemptingto absorb and dissolve, in the same movement, all thedifferent traditions and forms of existence on this planet.This old project, supported by all the forms of the crossand the sword, is now carried on under the hegemony ofthe United States. At the end of the Second World War,such hegemony used the emblem of development (Esteva1992). The emblem of globalisation replaced it at the endof the cold war, promoting with more violence than evera universal culturicide.

The current global project is economic in nature: it attemptsthe transmogrification of every man and woman on earthinto homo economicus, the possessive and competitiveindividual born in the West, who is the social foundationof capitalism (and socialism), what makes possible thesocial relationships defining it. This economic project hasa political face: formal, or representative, democracy. Anda moral or ethical face: human rights. (When the economicproject requires it, these ‘faces’ are abandoned).

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“Enough!” said the Zapatistas to all this. For centuries,their communities entrenched themselves in their ownplaces, resisting colonisers and developers. Such culturalresistance often expressed forms of localism or evenfundamentalism. Through atrocious experiences, theZapatista communities have learned that in the era ofglobalisation no localism will survive and no culturalresistance is enough. They have also learned that capitalnow has more appetite than ever, but not enough stomachto digest all those that it attempts to control. Millions ofpeople, as a consequence, and clearly most Indigenouspeople, are becoming dispensable.

The Zapatistas transformed their resistance into a strugglefor liberation. They remembered the experience of EmilianoZapata, who gave them their name. In 1914, when thepeasant and Indigenous armies occupied Mexico’s capital,after the defeat of the dictatorship that was bringing themto the brink of extinction, Zapata and Villa, the two mainleaders of the revolution, fell into perplexity. Their uprisingwas not to seize power and govern the country. Theyonly wanted Land and Freedom. They thus came back totheir own places, dismantled the haciendas of the biglandowners who had been exploiting them, and startedto enjoy the land and freedom they had conqueredthrough their struggle. Four years later, both of themwere assassinated. True, thanks to the revolution, mostpeasants and Indigenous people got some land; but stepby step they lost their freedom and autonomy in thepolitical regime established after the armed struggle.

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Today’s Zapatistas, as the former, are not interested inseizing power and governing the country. But they havelearned the lesson of their predecessors. They are clearlyinterested in the kind of regime to be established in thecountry. It should permanently and fully respect their land,their autonomy, their freedom, their radical democracy.They do not attempt to impose on others their ownconceptions and ways. They only hope that such a regimewill be really conceived and constructed by all Mexicans— not by only a few, not by only the elite or arevolutionary vanguard. And that such a regime will bedefined by the harmonious coexistence of different peoplesand cultures.

This position challenges the assumption that there is afundamental sameness in all “human beings”. There arehuman invariants — that which distinguishes us from otherspecies — but not cultural universals. Each culture perceivesand conceives the world and even those invariants in adifferent way. This radical rejection of all forms ofuniversalism does not imply a surrender to the riskyadventure of cultural relativism. It assumes instead, firmlyand courageously, cultural relativity; the fact that no personor culture can assume or resume the totality of humanexperience; that there are not one or many truths (truthis incommensurable); that the only legitimate, coherentand sensible attitude before the real plurality of the worldis radical pluralism (See Panikkar 1995, 1996, and Vachon1995).

The Zapatistas resisted the secular, liberal temptation of“liberating” themselves from their own culture in order

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to adopt some “universal” ideologies or values. Wellaffirmed in their own cultures and communities, theyopened themselves to wide coalitions of the discontented.Their localisation is thus radically different to bothglobalisation and localism. It invites those still searchingfor a change in the frame of One World to create a wholenew world in which many worlds can be embraced. It isan invitation to go más allá (beyond) mere culturalresistance or economic or political claims (in a strugglefor a bigger piece of the existing pie), towards an epic oftransformation open to many cultures. It is an invitation,not preaching or instructing. It is not a sermon or a lesson,but a gesture.

The Zapatistas are fully aware that in the current situationany local reality is directly and immediately global, in thesense that it is exposed to interaction with global forcesand processes. To be deeply immersed in strictly localaffairs, to rigorously deal and cope with them, in the wayeveryone wants and can do, implies dealing with theintertwining, interpenetration and interdependence of alllocalities. This kind of awareness has compelled many ofthose discontented with the neoliberal shape of the globalproject to conceive alternative globalisations. TheZapatistas resist such temptation. They are fully and deeplycommitted to the articulation of all resistances, to widecoalitions of the discontented, to the gathering of allrebellions. But they do not attempt to subsume all thestruggles in a single definition of the present and thefuture, in a single doctrine, slogan or ideology. They areaware that the shared construction of a real por-venir (theworld to come) for all those discontented, increasingly

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dispensable for capital, can only be realised in a world inwhich many worlds can be embraced. They know thatthe time has come to bury for ever the dream and projectof constructing One World, which has been the pretext ofall colonialisms and today nourishes forms offundamentalism whose level of violence has no precedents.What is emerging, instead, can be expressed in the formula“One No, Many Yeses” (Midnight Notes 1997, Kingsnorth2003).

ZAPATISTAS AND ZAPATISMO

The record of the Zapatista impact until now is prettyimpressive.

l The Zapatistas were a decisive factor in thedismantling of the oldest authoritarian regime in theworld, Mexico’s ancient regime. They created an optionthrough the profound social and political trans-formation which started after the collapse of thatregime. Autonomous municipalities, in different partsof Mexico, and other initiatives inspired by theZapatistas have now increasing visibility and politicalspace. Their convening power grew from the fewthousands of the first week of 1994 to the 3-4 millionsinvolved in the national and international con-sultation of 1996, to the more than 40 million (40% ofthe Mexican population), for the 2001 March.

l The situation in Chiapas changed dramatically;thousands of peasants, mostly Indigenous, got the

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land they had been struggling for and a new balanceof political forces is now redefining the social fabric.

l In the territories occupied by the Zapatistas, in spiteof military encirclement and continual paramilitarythreats, they have been doing what they said fromthe very beginning that they wanted to do. Afterreclaiming their commons, they are regenerating theirown forms of governance and their own art of livingand dying. They have been able to operateautonomously, and to improve their living conditions,without any kind of services or funds from thegovernment. They are in fact living beyond the logicof the market and the State, beyond the logic of capital.

l All over the world, there are gestures, changes, andmobilizations that seem to be inspired by the Zapatistas.The highly visible social movements againstglobalisation, neoliberalism, or war, quote theZapatistas as a source of inspiration and support them.Thousand of committees, which call themselves“Zapatista committees”, operate across the world. Theywere founded as an expression of solidarity with theZapatista cause. They are still ready to offer suchsolidarity and some of them are actively engaged indoing something with or for the Zapatistas. Most ofthem are rather involved in local or issue struggles:for their own dreams, projects, initiatives, or against aspecific or general development or injustice: a dam, aroad, a dumping ground, a McDonalds . . . or a war,a policy, a government...

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One must go back very far in history to find anotherpolitical initiative with similar global repercussions.Wallerstein found in Gandhi and Mandela points ofcomparison.8 But a real historic equivalent would requiregoing much farther back.

While the Zapatistas affirm today that Zapatismo isstronger than ever, the political classes, the media, manyanalysts, and even some sympathisers are beginning toconsider that the Zapatistas are history. Parallel to theextensive celebrations organised around the world for their10th and 20th anniversaries (10 years after the uprising, 20after their beginnings), there were many attempts toorganise their funeral. It was said that they failed as asocial and political movement. That far from animprovement, the material conditions of the Zapatistacommunities had deteriorated under their leadership andcontrol, and that the Zapatistas are now increasinglyisolated in four municipalities in Chiapas, and are basicallyirrelevant in the national or international political scene.

The Zapatistas have frequently used a very loud “strategyof silence” that usually generates wide bewilderment andsuspicions about their political death. They have radicallyabandoned the conventional political arena. They openlyreject all political parties and refuse to have any contactwith the government, both for its services or funds —which they reject — or for a dialogue, since the governmenthas not honoured its word and signature in theAgreements of San Andrés. They refuse to participate inthe electoral process. All these elements contribute to

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explain the conventional, reactionary or even friendlyperception that the Zapatistas are history, that the peak oftheir movement and initiatives is over.

“We are just beginning”, Commander Abraham saidrecently (Muñoz 2003, 77). He is probably right. The depthof the radicality of the Zapatistas, and at the same timetheir amazing restraint, make it particularly difficult toappreciate their situation and prospects.

Words are windows of perception, the matter of thought.Depending upon the words we use, we see, we think, weact. They form the statements with which we governourselves and others. Words always enfleshed in theirbehaviour have been the main weapon of the Zapatistas.Using their words brilliantly and effectively, they havebeen dismantling the dominant discourse. Theycontinually undermine the institutional system ofproduction of the dominant statements, of the established“truth”. They thus shake, peacefully and democratically,the very foundation of the existing Power/Knowledgesystem.9 While this system hides within spectacular showsof strength its increasing fragility, the Zapatistas exploitsfor their struggle its profound cracks, denounce it as astructure of domination and control, and begin theconstruction of an alternative.

The importance of Zapatismo derives from its grassrootsradicality. It operates as a riverbed for the flow of growingdiscontent with conventional organisations, politicalparties, and governments, particularly to resist the

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neoliberal globalisation as the current form of capitalexpansion.

The Zapatistas opposed globalisation when it wasuniversally perceived as an ineluctable reality, a necessarypath, a historical fact. By revealing, before anyone else,that the emperor had no clothes, the Zapatistas awakenedthose who intuited the situation and yet did not dare torecognise it. In showing an alternative, they created anopportunity to escape from the intellectual and politicalstraitjacket in which the dominant “truths” had trappedus.

The radical promise of the Zapatistas is not a newideological construction of possible futures. It iscontinually self-fulfilled in their deeds, in their dailybehaviour, as a redefinition of hope. Their position is notequivalent to expectation, as the conviction that somethingwill turn out well. It expresses the conviction thatsomething makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.“Hope is that rejection of conformity and defeat” (TheZapatistas 1998, 13).

Such an attitude, defining Zapatismo, is called dignity bythe Zapatistas.

Dignity is that nation without nationality, that rainbowthat is also a bridge, that murmur of the heart no matterwhat blood lives it, that rebel irreverence that mocksborders, customs, and wars. (The Zapatistas 1998, 13)

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They are fully aware that “the expanding dignity of eachman and each human relationship must necessarilychallenge existing systems” (Illich 1972, 18). Theirlocalisation is a feasible and effective alternative to bothlocalism and globalisation. Their autonomy challenges thecentralism of the state, marginalises the economy andresists modern and capitalist individualisation promotedby both internal and external colonisers. Rooted in theirdignity, the Zapatistas have been erecting some landmarksand signposts in what looks like a net of plural paths(Zapatismo). Whoever walks by these paths can see, withthe diffuse and intense quality of a rainbow, a large rangeof political perspectives that herald a new social order,beyond both modernity and post modernity, beyond theeconomic society (be it capitalist or socialist), beyond formaldemocracy and the nation state, más allá (beyond) thecurrent conditions of the world and their intellectual,ideological and institutional underpinnings.

The Zapatistas seem increasingly to be ordinary men andwomen with extraordinary behaviour. They are one of akind, yet at the same time they are typical. They continueto inspire hearts and heads. They exemplify thousands ofinitiatives now being taken at the grassroots everywhere.The Zapatistas are no longer the Zapatismo circulating inthe world.

At the Intercontinental Encounter against Neoliberalismin 1996, the Zapatistas told all the participants that theywere not together to change the world — something quitedifficult, if not impossible to do — but to create a whole new

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world. This phrase was received with fascination andenthusiasm but also scepticism. To some, it appearedunfeasible and romantic. Step by step, however, as soonas many people started to escape from the dominantintellectual and ideological straightjackets, they discoveredin themselves a dignity similar to that of the Zapatistasand started to walk their own path.

Today’s Zapatismo is no longer in the hands of the Za-patistas, and may ignore its original or current source ofinspiration.

THE TRANSITION TO HOPE

I was talking with doña Trinidad, a magnificent old womanof Morelia, one of the Zapatista communities most affectedand harassed by both the military and the paramilitary. Iwanted to know how they were feeling in such difficultconditions. She told me, smiling: “We are still hungry. Weare still threatened and harassed. But now we have hope.And that changes everything”. I can imagine the terriblefeeling of living under such atrocious oppression andthinking that your children and grandchildren willcontinue to suffer it. If you can see the light at the end ofthe tunnel, if you can nourish some hope, restrictionsbecome bearable and life liveable.

The Zapatistas have brought prosperity to the communities,if we reclaim the original meaning of the word: from theLatin pro spere, according to hope. For ten years, they haveorganised their own lives with no dependence on the State,

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whose services, proposals, programs or projects they reject,and they have kept the market at their margin, instead ofhanging their very existence on it. They are still dealingwith too many restrictions, none of which is a noveltyfor them. But they have found the path that allows themto overcome one by one each of those restrictions, as theywalk their path.

Hope is the very essence of popular movements (Lummis1996). Nonconformity and discontent are not enough.Neither is critical awareness enough. People mobilisethemselves when they think that their action may bringabout a change, when they have hope, when they sharethe conviction that something makes sense.

With words and deeds, with amazing talent, imaginationand courage, the Zapatistas brought a new hope to theplanet. Millions of people seem now to be sharing andnourishing it. In celebrating the tenth anniversary of theZapatista uprising and the twentieth anniversary of theoriginal initiative, we all are really celebrating the beginningof Zapatismo.

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ENDNOTES

1 Zapatista communiqués are published at regular intervalsin a dozen languages and would fill several metres of a libraryshelf. They immediately appear on many internet web pages.(There are hundreds of web pages about the Zapatistas andthousands of references. Google cannot stop when you clickZapatistas.) The books, essays, and articles published aboutthe Zapatistas might well fill a mid-sized library. News aboutthe Zapatistas appears regularly in the media, whichcontinually attempt to forget them but are forced to bringthem back to the front page every time they take an importantinitiative.

2 The debate about the question of power has been very intenseand is continually enriched. See Esteva 1998, Esteva & Prakash1998, Esteva 1999, Holloway 2002, Esteva 2003. See alsofootnote 9.

3 Unless indicated otherwise, all the quotations come fromZapatista communiqués of July and August 2003.

4 Civil Society. The theoretical and political history of theexpression “civil society” is complex and convoluted. Duringthe last 20 years the people redefined its meaning and uses. Itwas used in Poland, the Philippines, Argentine and othercountries to dismantle authoritarian regimes. It was also usedto allude to the “third sector”, organisations existing outsidethe market (capital) or the State. And it basically expressedthe autonomous action of the people, at the grassroots. InMexico, the epic of the victims of the Mexico City earthquakein 1985 and the Zapatista uprising would be the key episodesgiving new content and meaning to the use of the expression.See Aubry 1994 and Esteva 2001.

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5 Non violence. Such mutation can be examined in Gandhianterms. For Gandhi, “non-violence is the greatest virtue,cowardice the greatest vice”. The weak may have no optionbut violence or passive resistance, the non-violence of theweak. What is needed, assumed Gandhi, is the non-violenceof the strong. He did not see any reason for 300,000,000 Hindusto be afraid of 150,000 British. Being the strong, they shouldresort to non-violence. (See the section on Non-violence inGandhi: Essential Writings, ed. V.V.Ramana Murti, New Delhi:Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1970, particularly pp. 170-174 and198). With this approach, it is possible to see how theZapatistas were using violence when they were the weakand resorted to non-violence when the uprising of the ‘civilsociety’ made them the strong.

6 This impact is in fact mysterious. He speaks in a very lowvoice, without exaltation, mocking himself all the time,always ending in an anti-climactic way his speeches. He looksas the opposite of any leader or demagogue. In person, itbecomes very evident how much he abhors a position ofpower. Would this be the secret of his fascination for anaudience tired of the rhetoric and attitudes of politicians andpublicists?

7 Multiculturalism/pluralism. The notion of multiculturalism doesnot modify the homogeneous character of the nation-state. Itis based on the idea of sameness (the possessive individual,homo economicus, as the fundamental atom of the socialstructure). It relegates to a secondary condition culturaldifferences. Instead of solving the problem, multiculturalismaggravates it. The plural state (not merely multicultural) is astep in the appropriate direction, in spite of its limitations.See Villoro 1997, 1998 and Esteva 2001.

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8 The comparison of Gandhi-Mandela-Marcos (Wallerstein2001) emphasises the element of non-violence and offers someinteresting angles of reflection. However, in fundamentalways this comparison distorts the analysis of Zapatismo,reducing it to Marcos.

9 Knowledge/power. See the works of Michael Foucault, for agood description of this system, its role on the constructionof modern society and its regime of power, and the currentshapes of the rebellion of “subordinated knowledge” aspolitical uprising. See, in particular, 1980, 1984, 2002.

REFERENCES

Aubry, A. 1994. ¿Qué es la sociedad civil? San Cristóbal de LasCasas: INAREMAC.

Esteva, G. 1992. “Development”, in: W. Sachs, ed., TheDevelopment Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London:Zed Books.

—. 1994. Crónica del fin de una era: El secreto del EZLN. México:Posada.

—. 1998. “Autonomía y democracia radical: el tránsito de latolerancia a la hospitalidad”, in: M. Bartolomé y A. Barrabas,eds., Autonomías étnicas y estados nacionales. México:CONACULTA/INAH.

—. 1999. “The Zapatistas and People’s Power”. Capital & Class68 (Summer).

—. 2000. “The Revolution of the New Commons”, in: C. Cookand J. Lindau, eds., Aboriginal Rights and Self-Government.Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

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—. 2001. “Introducción”, in: CEDI, Experiencias organizativas dela sociedad civil en Oaxaca. Oaxaca: CEDI.

—. 2002. “Más allá de la igualdad y la representación: lademocracia radical”, in: A. Hémond and D. Recondo, eds.,Dilemas de la democracia en México. México: IFE/CEMCA.

—. 2003. “Meaning and Scope of the Struggle for Autonomy”,in S. Mattiace, E. Hernández and J. Rus, eds., Mayan Lives, MayanUtopias: The Indigenous People of Chiapas and the Zapatista Rebellion.New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.Esteva, G. and M. Prakash. 1998. Grassroots Postmodernism:Remaking the Soil of Cultures. London: Zed Books.

EZLN. 1996. Crónicas intergalácticas: Primer EncuentroIntercontinental por la Humanidad y contra el Neoliberalismo. Chiapas:Planeta Tierra.

Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge, ed. Colin Gordon. NewYork: Pantheon Books.

—. 1984. The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow. New York:Pantheon Books.

—. 2002. Defender la sociedad. México: FCE.

Gilly, A., Subcomandante Marcos, C. Ginzburg. 1995. Discusiónsobre la historia, México: Taurus. Mentioned in SubcomandanteMarcos 2001, 249.

Holloway, J. 2002. Cambiar el mundo sin tomar el poder. BuenosAires. Herramienta, BUAP.

Illich, I. 1972. Celebration of Awareness: A Call for InstitutionalRevolution. London: Marion Boyars.

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—. 1974. Tools for Conviviality. London: Marion Boyars.

Kingsnorth, P. 2003. One No, Many Yeses: A Journey to the Heart ofthe Global Resistance Movement. London: The Free Press.

Midnight Notes. 1997. One No, Many Yeses. No. 12. JamaicaPlain, Mass.

Panikkar, R. 1995. Invisible Harmony: Essays on contemplation andresponsibility. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress.

—. 1996. “The Defiance of Pluralism”. Soundings 79, nos. 1-2(Spring/Summer).

Sachs, W. 1992. “One World”, in: W. Sachs, ed., The DevelopmentDictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books.

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos. 2001. Our Word is OurWeapon: Selected Writings. New York: Seven Stories Press.

The Zapatistas. 1998. Zapatista Encuentro: Documents from the1996 Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism. New York:Seven Stories Press.

Vachon, R. 1995. Guswenta or the Intercultural Imperative.Montreal: Intercultural Institute.

Villoro, L. 1997. El poder y el valor. México: FCE.

—. 1998. Estado plural, pluralidad de culturas. México: Paidós/UNAM.

Wallerstein, I. 2001. Immanuel Wallerstein: crítica del sistema mundocapitalista. Mexico: Era.

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SOME ZAPATISTA WEB PAGES

¡Ya Basta! Página oficial del Ejército Zapatista deLiberación Nacional (EZLN). http://www.ezln.org/

FZLN Página oficial del Frente Zapatista de LiberaciónNacional. http://www.fzln.org.mx/

Rebeldía La revista Rebeldía publicada por el FZLN on line.http://www.revistarebeldia.org/main.html

Acción Zapatista http://studentorgs.utexas.edu/nave/

Zapatista Net of Autonomy and Liberationwww.actlab.utexas.edu/~zapatistas/

Indymedia Chiapashttp://chiapas.mediosindependientes.org/

Zapatista Indexhttp://flag.blackened.net/revolt/zapatista.html

Introduction to México and the Zapatistashttp://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/begindx/

EZLN Chiapas Battalionwww.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/5225/bzalx/plalxbz.html

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OTHER IMPORTANT REFERENCES

Autonomedia. 1994. ¡Zapatistas! Documents of the New MexicanRevolution. New York: Autonomedia.

Collier, G. 1999. Land & the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas, rev. ed.Oakland: Food First Books.

Harvey, N. 1998. The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle for Land andDemocracy. Durham: Duke University Press.

Midnight Notes. 2001. Auroras of the Zapatistas. Local &Global Struggles of the Fourth World War. New York:Autonomedia.

Rovira, G. 2000. Women of Maize: Indigenous Women and theZapatista Rebellion. Latin America Bureau.

Womack, J. 1999. Rebellion in Chiapas: An Historical Reader. NewYork: The New Press.

—. 1995. Shadows of Tender Fury: The Letters and Communiqués ofSubcomandante Marcos and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.New York: Monthly Review Press.

—. 1998. Zapatista! Reinventing Revolution in Mexico, eds. JohnHolloway and Eloína Peláez. London: Pluto Press.

—. 2000. The Zapatistas: A Rough Guide, ed. Chiapaslink. London:Calverts Press.

2002. The Zapatista Reader. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books.

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Dissenting Knowledges Pamphlet Series

Multiversity (Penang/Goa)and Citizens International (Penang)

Founding Editor, Vinay Lal

No. 1 Gustavo Esteva Celebaration of ZapatismoNo. 2 Frédérique Apffel-Marglin & Margaret Bruchac

Exorcising Anthropology’s DemonsNo. 3 Ashis Nandy The Twentieth Century: The

Ambivalent Homecoming of Homo PsychologicusNo. 4 Vinay Lal Empire and the Dream-Work of AmericaNo. 5 Roby Rajan The Tyranny of Economics: Global

Governance and the Dismal Science

Citizens International (CITIZENS) is a global peoples networkbased in Penang, Malaysia which works on issues of peace, anti-militarism, cultural co-operation, environmental protection, sus-tainable development and traditional knowledge systems.

CITIZENS believes that peoples activism on these issues globallyis essential to arrest the world's rapid slide towards increasedmilitarisation of land, seas, space; wasteful production of arma-ments; irreparable destruction of our environment and ecology;war, poverty and pestilence for the global majority.

CITIZENS is managed by a Board of Trustees of experienced NGOactivists. The Chairman of the Board is S.M. Mohamed Idris, thePresident of Consumers Association of Penang (CAP) and SahabatAlam Malaysia (Friends of the Earth, Malaysia) (SAM) and Co-ordinator of Third World Network (TWN).

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GUSTAVO ESTEVA is agrassroots activist anddeprofessionalized intellectual.He works independently and inconjunction with Mexican,Latin American andinternational grassrootsorganizations and networks.He was an advisor to theZapatistas. In 2003 he launched

an effort of cultural regeneration currently involvingmore than 400 communities, of 10 Indigenous peoples,in Chiapas and Oaxaca, in Southern Mexico. He lives ina small Indigenous village in Oaxaca.

He has authored, coauthored or edited more than 30books and published more than 500 essays. His recentbooks include, with M.S. Prakash, GrassrootsPostmodernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures (Zed Books,1998) and Escaping Education: Living as Learning at theGrassroots (Lang Publishers, 1998).