Autonomy Is in Our Hearts: Zapatista Autonomous Government through the Lens of the Tsotsil Language (Kairos) - Softcover

Fitzwater, Dylan Eldredge; Clark, John P.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1629635804 ISBN 13: 9781629635804

Publisher: Pm Press, 2019

Synopsis

Following the Zapatista uprising on New Year's Day 1994, the EZLN communities of Chiapas began the slow process of creating a system of autonomous government that would bring their call for freedom, justice, and democracy from word to reality. Autonomy Is in Our Hearts analyses this long and arduous process on its own terms, using the conceptual language of Tsotsil, a Mayan language indigenous to the highland Zapatista communities of Chiapas. The words 'Freedom,' 'Justice,' and 'Democracy' emblazoned on the Zapatista flags are only approximations of the aspirations articulated in the six indigenous languages spoken by the Zapatista communities. They are rough translations of concepts such as ichbail ta muk' or 'mutual recognition and respect among equal persons or peoples,' a'mtel or 'collective work done for the good of a community' and lekil kuxlejal or 'the life that is good for everyone.' Autonomy Is in Our Hearts provides a fresh perspective on the Zapatistas and a deep engagement with the daily realities of Zapatista autonomous government. Simultaneously an exposition of Tsotsil philosophy and a detailed account of Zapatista governance structures, this book is an indispensable commentary on the Zapatista movement of today.

About this title

About the Authors

Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater has encountered the Zapatistas as a human rights observer, a participant in several international gatherings, and as a student at the Zapatista language school in Oventik. He currently lives in Portland, OR, and works at Burgerville, a regional Oregon fast-food chain, where he is an organizer for the Burgerville Workers Union, an affiliate of the Industrial Workers of the World.

John P. Clark is an eco-communitarian anarchist theorist and activist. He lives and works in New Orleans, where his family has been for twelve generations. He is Director of La Terre Institute for Community and Ecology, which is located on Bayou La Terre, in the forest of coastal Mississippi. He is the author or editor of fourteen books, most recently The Tragedy of Common Sense. He writes a column, "Imagined Ecologies," for the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism, and edits the cyberjournal Psychic Swamp: The Surregional Review. He was formerly Curtin Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Autonomy Is in Our Hearts

Zapatista Autonomous Government through the Lens of the Tsotsil Language

By Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater

PM Press

Copyright © 2019 PM Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-62963-580-4

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 
FOREWORD by John P. Clark, 
Introduction, 
PART ONE The History of Autonomous Government, 
CHAPTER ONE A Genealogy of Zapatista Political Aspirations: From the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to the Self-Determination of Peoples in Struggle, 
CHAPTER TWO The Zapatista Clandestine Organization: The Creation of a Collective Heart (O'on) and Collective Potentiality (Ch'ulel), 
CHAPTER THREE The Creation of the Caracoles: Relationships of Difference in the Collective Heart (Ko'ontik, Ko'onkutik), 
PART TWO The Practice of Autonomous Government, 
CHAPTER FOUR "The Community Has the Final Say": The Assembly and the Collective Work of Governance (A'mtel), 
CHAPTER FIVE Decolonizing Work: Zapatista Collective Work (A'mtel) and the Struggle against Systems of Desperation-Dependence-Displacement (Kanal), 
CHAPTER SIX Challenges in the Work of Collective Governance (A'mtel): Circumscribing Power, Creating Accountability, and Women's Participation, 
Conclusion, 
EPILOGUE Another World Is Possible, 
NOTES, 
BIBLIOGRAPHY, 
INDEX, 
ABOUT THE AUTHORS, 

CHAPTER 1

A Genealogy of Zapatista Political Aspirations: From the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to the Self-Determination of Peoples in Struggle

Subcomandante Moisés and Subcomandante Galeano announced the second grade of "freedom according to the Zapatistas" for early August 2015. Admission would only be for those students who received a good evaluation from their guardians during the first grade. In July, they clarified that second grade would consist of a video and that the final test would be six questions, because "As is our Zapatista way, [the questions] are more important than the answers." While the heart of the first grade of the escuelita was the contemporary organization of dignified life in the Zapatista communities, the heart of second grade was the story of the beginnings of this organization before January 1, 1994. If the first grade was the experience of Zapatista organization, the second grade describes the process of beginning to create this organization. Instead of asking, "What is the practice of our organization?" it asks, "What was our way of organizing ourselves?"

The video consisted of over three hours of testimonies from elder responsables from all five zones of Zapatista territory who have been with the organization since its beginnings in the early 1980s. They described how they joined the organization, their responsibilities in the organization, and how these responsibilities facilitated the growth of the organization. However, perhaps even more important than what they said was why they said it. At the end of most of the testimonies, the responsable would close by expressing his or her hope that maybe his or her word could serve the compañeros and compañeras of the Sixth in organizing themselves in their own calendars and geographies. Francisco from the zone of Caracol V Roberto Barrios said:

We invite you students of the national and international Sixth, we invite you to pay close attention. Take this seed, put it in practice, and soon you will be as we are today.

Evider from the zone of Caracol I La Realidad said:

You should be under no obligation. You yourselves should decide whether to do as we did. Wherever you are, you can see if this helps you or not there, the way in which we did the work and continue doing it.

Daniel from the zone of Caracol II Oventik said:

You can learn to inspire, to organize in your communities, in your neighborhoods, in your municipalities, wherever they are in your country.

Estel from the zone of Caracol III La Garrucha said:

Why don't we [women] govern? It's the men, the men silence us. ... I am not afraid of these men, because the most important thing is the struggle. I give thanks that we are here now, I give thanks that your eyes can see us, I give thanks to the compañeros of the Comandancia [CCRI], and I hope that the whole world will do this as well, compañeros, because it is important. Why? Because women are important, even the young girls who make demands as well, even the children. These are my few words.

Bernabe from the zone of Caracol IV Morelia said:

Hopefully you of the Sixth will take up the example of how we started in the organization. I am very happy because now we have advanced very far in the organization.

The responsables described how the EZLN came to be, but these closing words show that the proposal of second grade is not a history lesson concerning a past that is meant to remain in the past, it is a proposal for the present and the future: it proposes that others listen to the Zapatista way of organizing, and it offers the hope that by listening others can build their own forms of organization and, ultimately, their own forms of dignified life.

However, listening is not the same as following a blueprint. The Zapatista form of organizing is a "seed," in the words of Francisco; a "way," in the words of Evider; a "hope," in the words of Estel; an "example," in the words of Bernabe. What do these four choices of description say about the nature of the Zapatista form of organizing? First, they say that it is a certain "way," a logic and method that is particular to its own way of doing things that is different from other forms of organizing. Second, they say that it is just one "example" of this form, that it is a way of organizing that arises from a particular context, but that this particularity does not foreclose the ability of others to take up the Zapatista example as inspiration in their own contexts. Third, they say that this example of a form of organizing is a "seed," and when it is taken up and planted in a different place what grows will be similar in form, yet will have its own path of growth, its own branches, its own flowers and fruits. And fourth, it is a "hope" that this seed will undermine the gendered oppression within the community that plants it. Thus, there are four central questions that can guide a reflection on the second grade of the Zapatista escuelita and the Zapatista way of organizing more generally: What is its form and how is this form different than other ways of organizing? What is the social and historical context that shapes the particular example of this form? How was it intertwined with women's liberation in this context? Lastly, how might this form be planted and nurtured as a seed in different contexts?

To understand how the Zapatista form of organizing is different, we have to understand the forms of organizing that it is different from. Although there are as many forms of organizing as there are peoples who struggle for a dignified life, there are certain forms that have particular resonance in different historical moments. In the context of Latin America, many of the most important struggles in the second half of the twentieth century looked to the forms of revolutionary organization promulgated by the successful Cuban Revolution of 1959. The example of Cuba was an important inspiration for the Forces of National Liberation, the Marxist political-military organization that first organized the EZLN in the Lacandon Jungle of Chiapas. However, the EZLN that emerged on January 1, 1994 was organized in a different way and with different aspirations than the original FLN.

The FLN was founded by nine members of the Ejercito Insurgente Mexicano (Mexican Insurgent Army, EIM), which operated very briefly in Chiapas in 1968–1969. The FLN first created a guerrilla nucleus in Chiapas in 1972, inspired by the ideology of focoism promulgated by the Cuban revolution. Focoism held that the presence of an armed guerrilla cadre, no matter how small, could radicalize the exploited rural population and inspire them to take up arms. However, the FLN's first guerrilla nucleus neither developed broad connections with the local Tzeltal and Lacandon populations nor pushed them into armed revolt. It was discovered and destroyed by the Mexican military with the aid of the local indigenous peoples in 1974 after a raid of two urban safe houses in Monterrey and Nepantla revealed the location of the guerrilla encampment.

After this severe repression, which saw many FLN members killed or imprisoned, the organization created a safe house in San Cristóbal de Las Casas in 1978 with the goal of developing more extensive connections among the indigenous population and reorganized in 1980 under a new set of guiding principles in the Statutes of the Forces of National Liberation. In this period the organization was more inspired by the recent triumph of the 1979 Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua and adopted their more long-range view of guerrilla warfare based in prolonged struggle from organized base communities. In the early 1980s, the FLN established connections with members of the Ejido Lazaro Cardenas in northern Chiapas, which had been very active in land reclamation struggles, and trained several young people from the ejido in the San Cristóbal safe house. In 1983, they sent six members, three mestizo and three indigenous, to begin creating a rural clandestine organization that would create the organized base communities necessary for prolonged guerrilla struggle. With this move they began to grow significantly as an organization beginning in the Lacandon Jungle and Canyons region but eventually spreading throughout most of the eastern half of Chiapas. In 1993, with the organization of the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee (CCRI) and the declaration of war, the EZLN definitively broke its remaining ties to the FLN national leadership, abandoned the FLN statutes, and approved the ten Revolutionary Laws that still hold power in the Zapatista communities of today.

Thus, the differences that might reveal the particular form of the Zapatista way of organizing can be found in the history of the organization itself, in this process of change from 1983 to 1994, and in particular by comparing the aspirations implied by the 1980 Statutes of the Forces of National Liberation and the EZLN's ten Revolutionary Laws, which were approved by all the Zapatista communities on the eve of their uprising. While this comparison is necessary in order to begin to tease out the particular Zapatista form of organizing and political imagination, it is ultimately only the first step toward a deeper question: How and why did this change from the FLN to the EZLN occur? What were the particular aspects of the clandestine organization of the EZLN in the mountains of the Mexican southeast that brought about this change? However, these questions can only be answered by first understanding the particularities of the differences between the statutes of the FLN and the Revolutionary Laws of the EZLN — in other words, through an understanding of the particularities of the Zapatista form of liberation.

The Zapatista Form of Liberation

Both the statutes of the FLN and the Revolutionary Laws of the EZLN have the same basic goal of describing the processes of governance that give form to an armed organization as it struggles for national liberation. Both define the decision-making processes of the organization as well as the forms of governance that will be instituted in territory liberated by the organization in the course of the armed struggle. However, the similarities stop there. Each document outlines a fundamentally different form of decision-making and governance. Both express the desire to redistribute land and institute a system of fair wages, to create equality, justice, and dignity; however, they each describe entirely different processes for instituting these aspirations and entirely different actors who would have the power to decide what is fair, what is just, and what is equal.

In the case of the FLN, article six of the statutes, titled "long-range goals," outlines the forms of governance that will be instituted through the triumph of the revolution. Point A of this article states that the first goal of the FLN is to "defeat the bourgeoisie politically and militarily in order to liberate definitively our country from imperialist domination." Points B through D outline the form of governance that would be instituted to replace the old system of domination. The goals of the FLN after the triumph of the revolutionary armed forces are:

a) To install a socialist system that, through social ownership of the means of production, will suppress the exploitation of the workers and distribute among the population the wealth that it creates, according to the principle, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," transferring land to the peasants and factories to the workers.

b) To integrate a popular government with representatives of the revolutionary organizations that have participated in an outstanding and intransigent way on the various fronts of struggle (military, political, ideological) against the governing oppressor, in order to exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat, so establishing a workers' state, which will attend to the interests of the majority of the population, and in which work will be obligatory.

c) To form a single political party based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism.

The final point E of Article Six lists the resources that will be expropriated by the workers' state, including big factories and agricultural estates, credit institutions, means of communication and transportation, private schools, hospitals, recreational facilities, and large private residences. It also calls for the abolition of the army and obligatory military service, to be replaced by the formation of a "People's Army" and closes with the general promise to expropriate "the bourgeoisie's goods for the full benefit of the people" and "to stop the plunder of our wealth in natural resources."

This list of long-term goals should be familiar to anyone with a basic knowledge of the Cuban Revolution or with other similar Latin American guerrilla movements. The overarching assumption of these goals is that the agent of postrevolutionary change is a centralized socialist state organized into a single unified party made up of the triumphant forces of the revolution. A central state power carries out all the concrete actions of postrevolutionary change, such as the expropriation of lands and factories, the creation of fair working conditions, and the obligation to work. The revolutionary state is vested with the responsibility for the creation of justice and equality and the power to ensure the realization of this responsibility. The aspirations of good governance in the FLN statutes follow a model in which the desires of the people are submitted to the revolutionary state, which is conceived as their single legitimate representative and as the embodiment of their collective revolutionary achievement. In turn, the revolutionary state enacts the desires of the people for redistribution of resources and the means of production, which are seen as the material conditions for a dignified life. The statutes of the FLN lay out a future form of good government organized like the spokes of a wheel: the desires of all the different peoples and places of the nation radiate toward a central axle whose rotation is the motor force that moves them all down the road toward justice, equality, and a dignified life. It is a vision in which the peoples and places of the nation have the freedom to fully and equally make use of the means of production but do not directly participate in the process of administering their redistribution nor the process of governance over these means of production. This implicit model of power in the revolutionary form of good governance would be fundamentally altered in the Revolutionary Laws of the EZLN.

The Revolutionary Laws were first published in early January 1994 in the EZLN's underground newspaper in Mexico City, The Mexican Alarm Clock, after being approved by all the Zapatista communities in March 1993 as part of the collective decision to go to war. However, many of their tenets arose from practices that were already clandestinely in place in the organized Zapatista communities. The Revolutionary Laws lay out many of the same material aspirations as the FLN statutes regarding redistribution of land and the means of production. The Revolutionary Laws are much more specific and concrete regarding agrarian reform, prohibiting individual ownership of good-quality land exceeding 50 hectares (nearly 125 acres) and poor-quality land exceeding 100 hectares (nearly 250 acres). However, the most striking difference is the process for implementing and administering these reforms and expropriations. According to the Revolutionary Laws, all forms of administration and governance must be carried out solely by democratically elected civilian authorities specific to each population. This form of administration is indicative of a unifying theme consistent throughout all ten of the Revolutionary Laws: the source of authority for all significant economic and political decisions are democratically elected civilian authorities specific to each of the places and peoples in struggle. There is no law defining a national revolutionary government, and the military power of the EZLN is explicitly forbidden from having any influence on civilian authority.

This civilian authority is described in the Law of Rights and Obligations of the Peoples in Struggle. According to this document all the peoples in struggle, regardless of political affiliation, religion, or race, are guaranteed the following rights:

a) To elect, freely and democratically, their own authorities in whatever way they consider to be best and to demand that they are respected.

b) To demand that the revolutionary armed forces not intervene in matters of civilian authority or in the expropriation of agricultural, commercial, financial, and industrial capital, which is the exclusive power of the freely and democratically elected civilian authorities.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Pm Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1629635804
• ISBN 13: 9781629635804
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224