The Bridge Called Zapatismo

Abstract

Study of a social movement in LosAngeles called Casa del Pueblo reveals the limitations of current theory on transnational social movements and advocacy networks. Whereas current theory tends to view the diffusion of political culture as a one-way process whereby Western ideas diffuse from the wealthier North to the Third World, Casa del Pueblo was born out of a transnational activist network created by the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista National Liberation Army-EZLN) in Mexico, a trailblazer of the global justice movement. Casa del Pueblo is a multiracial, largely Latino community group that organizes undocumented immigrants in Echo Park on a variety of issues. It borrows from the Zapatistas an expressive politics focused on consensus building and the active participation of all members and shares with them an emphasis on cultural and political autonomy. The record of Casa del Pueblo and similar transcultural movements in the United States and elsewhere suggests the need for a more interdisciplinary and multicultural approach to the study of transnational movements and advocacy networks.

Zapatismo as a Resonant Public Pedagogy

“…The Spanish-speaking guerrillas who joined the indigenous in Chiapas carried with them a Marxist-Leninist ideology, but Zapatismo evolved to reflect Mayan values (Wolfson, 2012: 158–159). It also inherited histories that came to the fore during the “world revolution” of 1968 such as the “soft Maoism” and liberation theology, with associated ideas for indigenous autonomy generated at the Indian Congress held in Chiapas in 1974 to address the hegemonic spread of evangelical Protestantism (Dellacioppa, 2009: 7–9). Hybridity and appreciation of difference have remained key, but what resonates also is the critical disposition toward a neoliberal world—a world that confines agency to market choices and reduces politics to the election of candidates to govern over and for others.…”

“…As a pedagogy, Zapatismo is not, as has been argued (Wolfson, 2012), a Marxist-Leninist doctrine, although its initial hybridized philosophy had its roots in people-focused (rather than party-oriented) Maoism, among other influences (Dellacioppa, 2009). It is also not a “clear political line, based first and foremost in the interest of the peasants of southern Mexico,” as Wolfson (2012:163) argues.…”

“…Then as now, the pedagogy producing much of the resonance of Zapatismo has to do with the recovery of traditions to inform political activity. The Zapatistas use traditional indigenous cargo systems that mix religious and civil authorities in rotating positions of leadership in a hierarchy predicated on responsibility (Dellacioppa, 2009: 94–95). These systems facilitate the community assemblies in which decisions are generally made through consensus and politics is lived and opposed to power-over.…”

“…The end of Marcos and the rebirth of Galeano exemplifies Zapatismo as a public pedagogy with a resonance attentive but not reducible to the individual. There is a “sacred” respect for the dignity of the individual among Zapatistas (Dellacioppa, 2009: 107). Zapatismo recognizes that, while each person has a perspective nobody else has, that perspective is possible only in relation to the collective, which creates the conditions under which the personal becomes political.…”

“… 6. The university connection with the Zapatistas is not often emphasized. After the Mexican student movement and the state repression that followed in 1968, especially the massacre at Tlateloco, many militants realized that there was no reforming the state and went on to become Zapatistas (Dellacioppa, 2009: 6–7). For more information on Strike Debt Carbondale or to read the movement’s Debt Resistor’s Manual or learn more about its Rolling Jubilee project, see strikedebt.org. …”