Gilberto López y
Rivas, Chiapas Support Committee
Raúl Zibechi’s most
recent book, Decolonizing critical thought and rebellions, autonomies and
emancipations in the era of progressivism, recently published in our country
(Mexico) by Bajo Tierra Ediciones(2015), constitutes a solid and profound
contribution to the debate about ideas within the ambit of resistances and the
anti-capitalist autonomic processes, as well as a large-scale critique of the
progressivisms of the so-called institutionalized lefts, considered by the
author as even a “new form of domination.”
It is divided into four
sections preceded by an introduction: 1) Societies in movement, 2) Movements in
the progressive era, 3) Progressivisms as new forms of domination, and 4) Below
and to the left. The work is founded on the author’s experiential knowledge of
important anti-systemic movements in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile,
Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela, Uruguay and, especially, in Mexico, starting with
the Zibechi’s coexistence with the process of the Maya peoples grouped together
in the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN).
The introduction is key
to comprehending the extensive 375-page text, and it begins with the impactful
and little known story about the massacre of at least 200 Algerians and the
arrest of another thousand in Paris in October 1961, as well as about the cost
in human life and those tortured in the war for liberation, which according to
reports from the National Liberation Front (Frente de Liberación Nacional), “of
a total of between 9 and 10 million inhabitants, one million Algerians died,
while another million were tortured.” Zibechi points out that there was never
any punishment for murdering Algerians and that this is the climate in which
Frantz Fanon reflected, considered as the “zone of non-being (…) where the humanity
of those beings is violated day after day, hour after hour. The present state
of Fanon’s thinking is recovered upon questioning hegemonic critical theory, in
other words, Soviet Marxism of the 1950s and 1960s, and for thinking and
practicing resistance and revolution from the physical and spiritual place of
the oppressed: “there where a good part of humanity lives in situations of
indescribable oppression, aggravated by the re-colonization that the neoliberal
model supposes.” Zibechi maintains that a strategy continues being necessary
that attacks the “inferiority complex” suffered by the colonized, and he asks:
“Of what use is the revolution if the triumphant people are limited to
reproducing the colonial order, a society of dominators and dominated? Because
of that, broaching the question of subjectivity is a strategic political issue
of the first order, without which the dominated repeat the old history:
occupying the material and symbolic place of the colonizer, thus reproducing
the system that it fights.” Criticizing the liberating role that Fanon
attributes to violence, upon “elevating the people to the place of leader,” the
necessity of bringing up the problem of subjectivity as a political priority is
revisited, “thus breaking with the centrality of the economy and with the
exclusive role conceded to the conquest of power and to the recuperation of the
means of production and of change through the theory of revolution.”
Starting with these
ideas, Zibechi develops aspects that he considers central, and that are
certainly present in the texts that make up the volume: autonomy and dignity,
power, reproduction and family, community or vanguard, identity, collective
production of knowledge and the creation of a new world. He points out that
those that live in the “zone of non-being” cannot be autonomous in an
oppressive society, since violence is daily life and society doesn’t recognize
them as human beings. Therefore, the colonized (Fanon), those below
(Zapatistas), must create safe spaces to which the powerful cannot accede. At
the same time, the autonomies of the indigenous peoples, campesinos and
mestizos must be integral; that is, approach all aspects of life, from food
production to justice and power. The dominated cannot appeal to State justice,
but must create their institutions. In this way, the processes of change cannot
be ordered around the current states. Autonomous processes are founded on
democratic powers, not state (powers), and are anti-colonial because they
destroy the subordinate relationships of race, gender, generation, inherited
wisdom and power, constructing other new ones in which differences co-exist
without any one of them being imposed.
The movements of the
“zone of non-being” are counted in families. The fundamental political step is
the passage from reproduction in the family home to collective reproduction in
the movements, modifying the immobility of the dominated society, renewing
their blood and their spirit (Fanon). Reproduction is where the society of
those below can make “an effort on their own behalf.”
Fanon also continues in
his denunciation of the elitism of the lefts, including the notion of a party
that he considers “imported from the metropolis.” His rejection of an
organization centered on the most conscious elites and organized on the basis
of their ability to negotiate and become imbedded in the state apparatus. They
have no need to destroy it, since they hope for a place in the system’s shadow.
Zibechi emphasizes that Zapatismo, to the contrary, proposes to organize the
entirety of the people. The EZLN inverted the colonial logic of the lefts, by
placing itself at the service of the communities; that is, “from a
revolutionary vanguard to governing by obeying; from the taking of Power of
those above to the creation of power in those below; from professional politics
to daily politics; from the leaders to the peoples” (sub Marcos). Zapatismo
travels this path of decolonizing critical thinking, Zibechi maintains,
revitalizing traditions of a community character, and starting from their
wisdom, they teach that a revolutionary theory separated from reality and
placed on top of it (reality) is not necessary for constructing a new world.
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Originally Published in
Spanish by La Jornada
Translation: Chiapas
Support Committee
Friday, August 14, 2015
