The Imagination to Listen: Reflections on a Decade of Zapatista Struggle

In the poetics of struggle and lived experience, in the utterances of ordinary folk, we discover the many different cognitive maps of the future, of the world not yet born. --Robin Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination ON JANUARY 1, 2003, DURING THE COMMEMORATION OF THE NINTH ANNIVERSARY of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) uprising against the Mexican government in the state of Chiapas, more than 20,000 Zapatistas, their faces covered with ski masks and red bandanas, marched into the central plaza of the colonial town of San Cristobal de las Casas. From the main avenue, Insurgentes, the Zapatistas poured into the town's center in a procession that lasted several hours. As they arrived, each person raised machetes in the air to remind the world that the rebellion continues despite the lack of a solution to the protracted conflict. After six years of mobilizations exclusively focused on the recognition of indigenous rights, this historical march served to resituate the Zapatista demand for the recognition of differences as an integral part of broader anti-globalization struggles and to reinforce the rebel army's participation in such global processes. In the words of EZLN comandante Mister, one of the seven comandantes present, The mal gobierno [the evil, corrupt government] thinks that we, as indigenous people, don't think about what happens globally. But we know the world, because we have met the women and men from all the countries that have come here and that have spoken to us about their struggle, of their worlds. With their words we have traveled. For that reason we tell the powerful of the world that if they are to globalize with the globalization of death, then we will also globalize for freedom. For that reason, rebel brothers and sisters, we struggle for democracy, liberty, and justice for all the pueblos and nations of the world. With these words, the Zapatistas broke an almost two-year silence and positioned themselves in dialogue with anti-neoliberal social movements in Mexico and around the globe. These words echoed a sentiment proclaimed a decade ago when, on January 1, 1994, the same day NAFTA took effect, a primarily indigenous army declared war on the Mexican state. The government responded by sending troops and, after numerous clashes and hundreds of thousands of people throughout Mexico calling for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, a ceasefire was achieved 12 days later. Since that time, the EZLN has carried out various attempts at negotiating with the Mexican government. It has engaged in a continuing series of dialogues with what is loosely referred to as a national and international civil society---that amorphous entity once described by Mexican cultural critic, Carlos Monsivais (1987: 79), as "community efforts of solidarity, the space independent of government, strictly speaking the zone of antagonism." Ten years of dialogues with members of civil society have contributed to the construction of political practices and discourses against neoliberal relations, in favor of radical democracy, and for "un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos [a world where many worlds fit]." This has taken place despite the presence of 60,000 elements of the federal army and the constant harassment and even assassination by military-trained paramilitary groups, within a context of low-intensity warfare. (1) One way to reflect on the past decade of failed negotiations with the state, dialogues with civil society, and low-intensity warfare would be to describe the transformations and challenges of Zapatista-state political relations. Such reflections typically appear in the media and simply narrate state-EZLN interactions by focusing on the suspended peace talks and on the eventual unilateral state-initiated constitutional reforms. Such a narrative would begin with the Peace Dialogues of San Andres Sak'amchen de los Pobres at the end of 1995, discuss the eventual signing of the San Andres Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture on February 16, 1996, describe the reasons for the suspension of further negotiations, and conclude with the Mexican Congress' approval of constitutional reforms in 2001 that recognized a limited set of indigenous rights. …