Raúl Zibechi: Latin America Today, Seen From Below

Original interview published in the June 2013 issue MU Magazine, from the La Vaca popular media collective in Buenos Aires. Translated by Margi Clarke.  Reprinted with permission. Upside Down Word

1- ECUADOR

In Ecuador there is a government that proclaims a “citizen revolution” and that has a constitution with explicit environmental values that speaks of Well Being and the rights of Nature.  At the same time, there are 179 or 180 indigenous leaders and activists accused of sabotage and terrorism for doing what they always have done: blocking roads and occupying public land to protest and stop the mining projects that threaten their livelihood and communities.  The greatest struggle of the social movements right now is to defend water and to halt open-pit mining.  President Correa calls them “full-bellies” (‘pancitas llenas’) who have plenty to eat and can dedicate themselves to criticizing the government and the mining industry alongside their imperialist NGO allies (non-governmental organizations).

Zapatismo and the Latin American cycle of struggles

by Raúl Zibechi, Roar Magazine

Translated from Spanish by Tamara van der Putten

For the past twenty years since the Zapatista uprising on January 1st, 1994, social movements in Latin America have championed one of the most intense and extensive cycles of struggle in the world. Ever since the 1989 Caracazo, uprisings, insurrections and mobilizations have encompassed the whole region, delegitimized the neoliberal model, and recognized those from below — organized into movements — as central actors of social change.

Zapatismo: the art of building a new world

By Raúl Zibechi, Roar Magazine

As the media stopped paying attention, many forgot about the Zapatista revolt. But quietly, away from the spotlight, they have deepened their autonomy.

 Quietly, away from the spotlight and cameras, the Zapatista communities have deepened their autonomous construction to the point that one can now speak of a different society, governed by rules, codes, and laws distinct from those of the mainstream world.

At his six-year-old height, Carlos Manuel hugs his father’s waist as if he’ll never let go. He looks up at the ceiling and smiles. Julián, his father, tries to escape. The child gives up, but stays close to his dad. Irma, his eight year-old sister, observes from the kitchen corner where their mother, Esther, is working over a wood stove, flipping the corn tortillas that are still the staple food of rural families. The three other children, including the oldest, 16 year-old Francisco, observe the scene that is repeated like a ritual at every meal.

Participatory Democracy in Action: Practices of the Zapatistas and the Movimento Sem Terra

EZLN and the MST by peterrosset

Message from Abahlali baseMjondolo to the Zapatistas

Hope from the Margins

By Gustavo Esteva, Wealth of the Commons

These notes offer a quick glance to ways, in the south of Mexico, in which people are regenerating the society from the bottom up. It is a new kind of revolution without leaders or vanguards, which goes beyond development and globalization. It is about displacing the economy from the center of social life, reclaiming a communal way of being, encouraging radical pluralism, and advancing towards real democracy.

Constructing Mutuality: The Zapatistas’ Transformation of Transnational Activist Power Dynamics

by Abigail Andrews, 2010

This article examines the evolution of transnational Zapatista solidarity networks. Although scholars have described an emerging “mutuality” between the Zapatista movement and its allies at the level of international framing, this article considers how the Zapatistas forged this mutuality on the ground, through active redefinition of alliances with Northern supporters. It argues that the Zapatistas delimited who was included in their solidarity networks, set new terms for partnerships, and redefined legitimacy in their transnational alliances. In so doing, they asserted their autonomy from donors. They also fostered discourses and practices of mutual solidarity and Southern leadership, shifting the balance of power between North and South. The case both illuminates the possibilities for Southern movements to challenge Northern control from within and suggests potential pitfalls of doing so; by defying Northern NGOs’ influence, the Zapatistas may have risked their long-term viability.

Is it necessary for a liberatory politics to be conducted at a distance from the state?

by Anton Scholtz

Zapata’s blood

Wasn’t spilt in vain

So now the most poor wage war

To reclaim their name

So now the most poor wage war

To reclaim their terrain.

The Politics of Dignity and the Politics of Poverty

John Holloway on the Politics of Dignity and the Politics of Poverty. This is the text and notes for a talk given in Nottingham.

Nottingham

How far is Latin America from Nottingham? It depends on how you measure it. You can measure it in terms of a politics of poverty or you can measure it in terms of a politics of dignity.

If we speak of a Pink Tide in the area, we must remember that Pink is not a primary colour, that what seems to be pink is in fact a blend of colours that combine and conflict. There is a central issue that runs through so-called pink tide in Latin America and the way that we understand it. This is the contrast between a politics of poverty and a politics of dignity.

Dignity's Revolt

John Holloway, LibCom
 
Dignity arose on the first day of January 1994.
The 'Enough!' ('!Ya Basta!') proclaimed by the Zapatistas on the first day of 1994 was the cry of dignity. When they occupied San Cristobal de las Casas and six other towns of Chiapas on that day, the wind they blew into the world, 'this wind from below, the wind of rebellion, the wind of dignity', carried 'a hope, the hope of the conversion of dignity and rebellion into freedom and dignity'.(1)