From Recognition to Revolution and the Other Way Around:
Unraveling the Zapatista Discourse

By Salomon Berman

"The most concerned ask today, ‘How is man to be preserved?’ But Zarathustra is the first and only one to ask: ‘How is man to be overcome?’”                                            -Friedrich Nietzche

Introduction

A sharp separation between the politics of cultural identity and the politics of material welfare has become common in the literature of the social sciences. According to this distinction, while the politics of material welfare underscored disputes and conflicts in the past, cultural conflicts are typical of present times. The end of the cold war draws the borderline between past and contemporary times:
        During the Cold War the world was divided in the First, Second and Third Worlds. Those divisions 
        are no longer relevant. It is far more meaningful now to group countries not in terms of their political or   
        economic systems or in terms of their level of economic development but rather in terms of their culture  
        and civilization.[1]

Within the politics of material welfare diverging views concerning the organization of the economy contended in major conflicts. Two such views were in sharp contrast for the great part of the past century: one emphasized distributive justice, the other efficiency in production and distribution according to merit. So prominent has become the second view today that it no longer seems disputed. Instead of material interests, diverging cultural identities seem to be the whereabouts of most current conflicts. Amongst the several elements constituting one’s identity, ethnicity (simply defined as physical characteristics) and religion are said to be the main instigators of conflict.[2] Why this is so is seldom made explicit by the proponents of this distinction. It seems rather that people of different ethnic or religious backgrounds have a ‘natural’ propensity to fight each other, as if their energies to fight came from their guts.

From yet another perspective identity struggles have a less ‘natural,’ more socially constructed, interpretation. Following Karl Marx, in its several manifestations social critical theory holds that social phenomena stems from the relationship between man and nature and therefore should be understood in the context of material life. Since it regulates the material life of most people in this world, the capitalist mode of production is the source of most current social phenomena. This is so even if sometimes the connections between capitalism and social phenomena are not evident at first glance. The challenge for the social critic in dealing with the so-called cultural conflicts is thus to stretch their factual relationship with their material basis, or in other words, rather than as natural phenomena, to make them meaningful in the context of capitalism.   

A case in point involves the so-called national minorities. Groups of people who feel themselves sharing some common cultural identity distinctive from most people in a state often mobilize, sometimes violently, with a stated purpose of attaining some sort of cultural autonomy or political independence. At the outset what seems to be at stake in these struggles is the recognition of minorities’ rights of self-determination, upon which they ground their claims. Yet these conflicts are not out of the range of materialistic interpretations. A common reading within social critical theory for recognition struggles sees them expressing a defensive attitude of the economically oppressed at times that confronting capitalism directly seems harder than ever.[3] In this reading, by reinforcing a distinctive identity and claiming rights of self-determination, the so-called ‘national minorities’ attempt either at keeping material resources heretofore under they control from capitalist expansion or, in a less defensive modality, at taking back natural resources they controlled in the past.

Whatever the case, in sharp contrast to struggles revolving around the politics of material welfare, usually the social critic does not put much hope in struggles for recognition. A prominent social critic wrote at the end of the cold war in this vein: “The time just past was a time of hopes, no doubt of hopes oft deceived, but of hopes nonetheless. The time just forward is to be a time of troubles, and of struggles born more of desperation than of confidence.”[4] 

This sense of disappointment with the result of past struggles and lack of trust in contemporary ones is all but understandable. Most social critics see themselves committed to social practice. They see in capitalism the source of social afflictions, and thus their social practice focuses on opposing capitalism. Since capitalism is based on violence, violence would be necessary for its transcendence. The violent and non-violent social movements that struggled for a more even distribution of wealth under the politics of material welfare gave some hope to the social critic because they openly questioned capitalism. They focused on a ‘real’ variable, and thus had an emancipatory capacity. People who took part in these struggles not only were conscious of the harms caused by capitalism, but were able to confront capitalism with a vision of an alternative mode of production which, at least in theory, was found on humans’ well being.

There is no reason to suggest that the ills of a mode of production that puts profit and not humans’ well being at the center of humans’ creative activity have disappeared with the conclusion of the cold war. Capitalism has not become ‘human.’ The proliferation of contemporary profitable destructive enterprises such as war, narcotics and child pornography, coupled with continuing ecological degradation and an increase in pauperization worldwide, just emphasizes that. What almost totally disappeared with the end of the cold war, indeed, was the most viable alternative that capitalism has ever had. Thus for the social critic the end of the cold war does not signify the victory of liberalism over totalitarianism, but rather a new stage in the expansion of capitalism worldwide. This is a stage in which capitalism is so strong that it is no longer questioned. Neoliberalism is the name of this unrestrained version of capitalism that became popular doctrine amongst policy makers almost everywhere following the end of the cold war. 

With capitalism stronger than ever, recognition struggles seem indeed unlikely to counterbalance it to any substantive degree. Not only are these struggles untargeted—that is, they divert the terms of conflict from its ‘real’ source. But they also occur in a fragmented fashion.  Most national minorities choose to fight their struggle solo, so each has little chance of success:   
            In essence identity politics is self-defeating… in encouraging groups to affirm their singular identities 
            at the expense of shared national identities, it undermines the very conditions in which minority     
            groups, especially disadvantaged groups, can hope to achieve some measure of justice for their   
            demands.[5]

However, for the social critic these are times of hope as well. A system of worldwide oppression cannot run any longer without meeting worldwide resistance. This was first evidenced in Seattle (1999), and later on in Prague (2000); Quebec and Genoa (2001); and Porto Alegre and Barcelona (2002.) Today, there is no meeting of the promoters of worldwide capitalism proceeding without parallel street demonstrations and alternative meetings being held. From opposition and resistance follows a proposal. It seems rather a matter of time until a new alternative to neoliberalism is articulated, and it remains to see whether it would be powerful enough and attractive enough to overthrown capitalism.[6]

Any social activist who has participated in demonstrations against neoliberalism (often called the anti-globalization movement) can tell us about the widespread presence of ‘national minorities’ in these demonstrations. This fact already contradicts the many assertions regarding the ‘particularistic,’ exclusive concern of ‘identity’ groups with their own. It reminds us also that the distinction between economics and culture, or between the politics of material welfare and the politics of identity is a conceptual, not a real one. Theoretically, the possibility of a new powerful alternative to neoliberalism springing from the ‘politics of identity’ deserves serious consideration.    

The writings of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) provide us rich and challenging material for such consideration. By extracting their recurrent themes, this essay shows how the Zapatistas (members of the EZLN) integrate the politics of material welfare and the politics of cultural identity in a coherent discourse. For its coherence, it is argued that the Zapatista discourse has force. The purpose of this article is thus not only to elucidate the inner coherence of the Zapatista discourse, but also to assess the force of this discourse in terms of its forging potential of a viable alternative to the current neoliberalist status quo.   

An Ever Unfolding Discourse

January 1,1994 is a date that many Mexicans find difficult to forget. On this day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), aimed at decreasing trade transaction costs across Mexican, U.S., and Canadian borders, came into effect. Mexicans remember this date as special, however, because it marks the explosion of an armed uprising in the Southeastern state of Chiapas. In a well-coordinated and surprising armed operation, the then mostly unknown Zapatista Army of National Liberation successfully seized the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas and six other towns. The first guerrilla warfare to emerge in the post cold war era was thus begun. 

Despite the stated intentions of the rebels to “advance to the capital of the country overcoming the Mexican federal army,” they promptly withdrew to their positions in the Lacandon Jungle, where the rebellion gestated and most of them continue to live.[7] Armed direct confrontations between the rebel and federal armies lasted only for a few days. Twelve days after the uprising began, the then President of Mexico, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, announced a ceasefire by the part of the Mexican army. Nine days later he even conceded amnesty to the rebels. The ceasefire has been roughly maintained up to today, despite a single short rupture by the Mexican government on February 1995. No Zapatista military advances are noticeable over these eight years of rebellion. 

Yet the Zapatista rebellion has advanced. By ways other than the arms the EZLN has become a relevant interlocutor in the Mexican political agenda and in the worldwide struggle against neoliberalism. These ‘ways other than the arms’ are based in the use of the word and the hearing of others’ words. In one word: ‘dialogue.’ While by no means unimportant, the military aspects of the Zapatista rebellion were promptly surpassed by an ongoing dialogue taking place between the rebel group and a variety of groups and personalities within Mexico and worldwide. To this array of groups and personalities the Zapatistas refer by the term ‘civil society.’[8] 

Modern and post-modern means of mass communication —the Internet but also radio, television and newspapers—and later on physical meetings, have set the stage for the dialogue between the rebel group and civil society. It is through this dialogue that the Zapatista rebellion mostly develops. As subcomandante Marcos, the charismatic spokesperson of the Zapatistas, observes in an interview with the well-known Argentine poet, Juan Gelman:   
            It is like a reciprocal nourishing—we see it this way--, we knock on doors, we find one open and  
            enter. Then we knock on others and so on; throughout the use of language we are knocking on  
            doors, and we follow where we perceive openings.[9] 

Dialogue means exchange of ideas. In the process of exchanging ideas a Zapatista way of thinking, a ‘discourse,’ is constructed.  At the same time it is also deconstructed and reconstructed. A ‘Zapatista discourse’ thus unfolds as the rebels propose proposals and ideas that shape themselves anew following the comments of the different groups who take part in the exchange. 

Important features of this ‘ever unfolding speech’ are irony, a great sense of humor, an emphasis in form (how things are said) no less than in content (what is being said), and its inclusiveness. The Zapatista discourse tries to keep room for a wide range of ideas so people and groups with different preferences and beliefs can continuously participate in its shaping. For its inclusiveness, such a discourse may be advantageous for a rebel group. People of different customs and beliefs can see in the Zapatista movement both a proper expression of their own thoughts and a response to their needs. On the other hand, different voices push movement in different directions. It might well be that the Zapatista discourse lacks the cohesion necessary to bring about action capable of transforming the dominant social order in any substantive degree. The open question is thus whether the Zapatista discourse has the potential of bringing about a viable alternative to the current status quo without at the same time losing in inclusiveness, which paradoxically, is the very source of its force. The response might be in the affirmative, as I will argue. 

Following the Zapatista thought to its origins, three different—yet overlapping in many senses—currents of thought converged in the process that led to the explosion of January 1, 1994. The EZLN was founded somewhere in the Lacandon Jungle on November 17, 1983, by a small group of political activists who aimed at causing a popular uprising all over Mexico. Their first encounter, and thus exchange of ideas, was with the indigenous populations of Chiapas. Marcos recounts: “Our square conception of the world and of revolution was badly dented in the confrontation with the indigenous realities of Chiapas. Out of those blows, something new (which does not necessarily mean ‘good’) emerged, which today is known as ‘neo-Zapatismo.’”[10]  For its influence in the same areas of Zapatista influence, the catechism as understood by the theology of liberation is often stated as an additional current of thought influencing the gestation of the uprising within the Lacandon Jungle.[11]  

Judging by the first hours of the rebellion, it seems that the synthesis among Marxism, indigenous customs and beliefs, and the preaches of liberation theology catechists influenced a given population to rebel in quest of a certain improvement in their material conditions: “We have always used the same work tools,”—said Mario, an EZLN officer interviewed at the beginnings of the rebellion—“the scythe, the shovel…all these are very old tools without which we could no longer exist. This is a war against time.”[12] The Zapatista ‘war against time’ reflects the wishes of poor peasants to be included in a modernization process that has left them behind, or, more precisely, from which their material condition is a by-product. Thus, while highly critical to modernity—as emphasized later on—and insofar as material welfare is the central discourse of modernity, in its essence, the Zapatista is not an anti-modern movement. It is not a reaction against modernity but, first and foremost, an attempt of a poor population who rebelled to enjoy the blessings of modernity. 

Similar conclusions can be reached from the first official document the rebel group made public on January 1, 1994.[13] In “The first declaration of the Lacandon Jungle” the rebels define themselves as poor to the point of starving to death and dying from curable sicknesses. They say they have nothing, “absolutely nothing, not even a decent roof, no land, no work, no heath care, no food or education…” The colors of their uniforms, “red and black as the symbol of working people on strike,” gives us an additional confirmation on the centrality of the politics of welfare at the beginnings of this uprising. 

Yet today it is difficult to place the Zapatista struggle within the politics of material welfare alone. Since the first hours of the rebellion the Zapatista speech began to broaden and transform itself in the process of dialogue with civil society. The set of points summarizing the objectives of the rebellion provide direct evidence of this broadening. In the first declaration of the Lacandon Jungle the rebels declare the pursuit of 11 objectives: “work, land, housing, food, health care, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice and peace.” A short while after “culture” and “information” were added to these points.[14] The objectives of the Zapatista rebellion are 16 today with the subsequent addition of “security, war against corruption and the conservation of the environment.”[15] 

Beyond these general demands, the Zapatistas do not hold any ‘ideological manifesto’ displaying their way of thinking in an ordered fashion and according to a number of defined precepts. Instead, they constantly make public statements on a wide range of themes and under several contexts. Zapatistas’ own written documents, alternately named ‘declaration,’ ‘communiqué’, or  ‘letter’, as well as interviews with, essays, and speeches by the EZLN’s main officers, are often published in Mexican newspapers. In addition, the Zapatistas’ public statements are also easily available in several languages through the Internet and a no small amount of published books.

Given the absence of any summarizing document of EZLN thinking and the vast amount of written materials by the rebel group, one might get lost in trying to elucidate any meaning in the Zapatista discourse without drawing analytical separations or without implementing any principles of classification. Though not drawn by the Zapatistas themselves, one such necessary analytical separation would be to ask whose populations do the Zapatistas speak for, or from which viewpoints do the several statements of the EZLN are issued. Three main responses arise: indigenous people, the Mexican nation, and humanity as a whole.   

Recognition

By its ethnic composition, the EZLN is overwhelmingly indigenous. Most of its members are Mayans, and amongst the distinctions within the Mayan people most members of the EZLN are of the Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Chol, and Tojolabal ethnic groups.  Up to today, the only non-indigenous member within the EZLN ranks known to the wider public is Marcos. It follows rather naturally that the EZLN assumes an indigenous voice. Sometimes the Zapatistas speak in the name of the indigenous people from only a part of Mexico—that alternately can be Chiapas, the Southeast, or a few Mayan groups—especially while communicating with indigenous groups out of Chiapas. At other times, in messages referred to broader audiences, the Zapatista statements assume the voice of indigenous people in Mexico, or even, especially while dialoging with international groups, they assume an indigenous viewpoint that makes no references to state divisions and geographical locations.    

Taking into account that Columbus discovered the American continent in 1492 and that the Zapatista rebellion began on January 1, 1994, the First Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle makes one reference to the indigenous identity of the EZLN. The first sentence of its opening paragraph reads: “We are a product of 500 years of struggle.” Though clear, this is an implicit rather than an explicit acknowledgment of indigenous identity. Explicitly, the Zapatistas identify themselves in this document as poor, as stated above, or more specifically, as Mexican poor. The Zapatistas’ demands in this document, in addition, do not include the ones they ask as indigenous today.

It was a matter of short time, however, until it became all the more common for the Zapatistas to define themselves openly as indigenous people and to emphatically embrace what they understand as an indigenous cause. In a communiqué dated on January 6, 1994, alluding to speculations on their ‘foreign’ origins, the rebels say: “the government says it is not an indigenous uprising, but we think that if thousands of indigenous people rise up in arms, then yes, it is an indigenous uprising.”[16] The shift from an implicit acknowledgment to an open and politically articulated emphasis on indigenous identity might be explained in one of two ways or any combination of both. 

From an instrumentalist perspective, it seems plausible that the Zapatistas quickly realized the obsolescence of their socioeconomic discourse at a time when ‘end of history’ arguments were taken seriously. Accordingly, in an attempt to justify their struggle in the eyes of the wider public, they began to emphasize their ethnic composition more consonantly with the contemporary discourse used by most rebel groups worldwide. Since through their ethnic discourse they have gained much sympathy amongst the wider public, they continuously utilize it in order to further some other political and socioeconomic ambitions. 

The second approach uses a relational understanding of identity. According to this understanding: 
A social group exists and is defined as a specific group only in the encounter and interaction among people who experience some differences in their way of life and forms of association…. So a group exists and is defined as a specific group only in social and interactive relation to others. Group identity is not a set of objective facts, but the product of experienced meanings.[17] 

Thus the Zapatistas’ own understanding of self, as well as the political articulation of this understanding, should be understood in their relationships with other groups. As the Zapatistas were seen as indigenous by their ‘significant others’ in civil society, they redefined, reaffirmed, and politically activated their indigenous identity.

Either way, the Zapatista indigenous voice is a resonant one. Following a Zapatista initiative, the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), an organization that coordinates indigenous mobilization at the national level, and in which most indigenous groups in Mexico are members, was created. At least in two of the Zapatista marches from Chiapas to Mexico City indigenous issues have captivated the Mexican public agenda: once in September 1997, and once again on February-April 2001. 

As indigenous the Zapatistas demand from the Mexican government to recognize what they understand as indigenous rights and culture. In conformity with their slogan, “everything for everyone, nothing for us” they do not see themselves demanding privileges, but rights. Far away from accepting any sectarian gain, or any offer limited to Chiapas or their communities, the Zapatistas take the recognition of indigenous rights as a matter of principle upon which a multicultural state that recognizes its multinational composition should be constituted. Therefore they have engaged in formal and informal negotiations with the Mexican federal government on this basis and accordingly seek to conduct this struggle in cooperation with other indigenous groups in Mexico and not a small amount of academics and other legal, anthropological, and political experts.

In this sense the Zapatista struggle takes the shape of a national minority looking for recognition and takes place on a national or a state level. A more general understanding of the basic claims usually involved in such struggles would help us elucidate the meaning and the significance of the Zapatista indigenous voice.

According to Charles Taylor, two basic elements are merged in recognition struggles: dignity and authenticity.  Dignity is sound in the context of oppression, and comes to the fore as a demand of disadvantaged groups to be treated as equals. Authenticity comes as an essential need to behave according to one’s own principles. From this need emanate the politics of difference, which lead minority groups to demand from states and governments a different treatment from the one they give to the rest of the polity. The problematic—some may say the incoherent—dimension of recognition struggles lies in the apparent tension implicit in making simultaneous demands for equal respect and differential treatment, or between the politics of equal dignity and the politics of difference: 
          These two modes of politics…come into conflict. For one, the principle of equal respect requires that
          we treat people in a difference-blind fashion. The fundamental intuition that humans command this          
          respect focuses on what is the same in all. For the other, we have to recognize and even foster  
          particularity. The reproach the first makes to the second is just that it violates the principle of  
          nondiscrimination. The reproach the second makes to the first is that it negates identity by forcing  
          people into a homogeneous mold that is untrue to them.[18]      

This conflict can find a satisfactory solution only within a framework in which groups could recognize each other as ‘distinct’ and ‘equals’ at one and the same time. A framework in which difference would not mean inequality and equality would not mean uniformity. Using the Canadian experience as a point of reference, Taylor argues for a ‘soft,’ or modified kind of liberalism as an approximation to such a framework. In contrast to the standard ‘benign neglect’ version of liberalism in which cultural differences within a state are relegated to the private realm, Taylor calls for uniform treatment of all groups in matters of fundamental liberal rights –“rights to life, liberty, due process, free speech, free practice of religion, and so on”[19]—but to the recognition of cultural differences in less fundamental matters, such as language, so the cultural survival of minority groups could be ensured.

For Taylor cultural survival is a starting point. It is what really is at stake in struggles for recognition.[20] While corresponding to the general lines of Taylor’s scheme, the Zapatista discourse—and arguably many other recognition struggles—takes issue with Taylor’s analysis in that it evidences motivations behind the wishes of indigenous people to survive as a culturally distinct group. The Zapatistas distance themselves from the narcissistic views of those who want their culture to prevail at any cost, and thus feel sorrow as it vanishes into cultural hybrids while the inevitable contact among people of different customs and beliefs. Their point is rather that the terms in which this contact takes place have since long ago been unfavorable for the indigenous population. Under different titles such as ‘civilization,’ ‘modernization’ and ‘progress,’ indigenous populations have been stolen from their lands and invariably ‘incorporated’ into the lower echelons of a society that offers them exclusion, alienation and marginalization. Consequently, they would want to change the mere terms of this encounter.

In a speech worth citing in length for its clarity, Marcos spells out just this rationale: 

        There are only two options for the indigenous in Mexico today: either resist or “modernize.” 
        Those of us who resist "modernization" are living in houses with dirt floors, walls of sticks or mud, roofs of cardboard or branches. Our table is full of want. 
        Those who "modernized" are living in houses with dirt floors, walls of pieces of nylon, roofs of cardboard or plastic. Their tables are full of want.
        Our houses have illness and poverty as floor. So are those of the "modern" indigenous.
        Our walls are made of mud or plastic and poverty. So are those of the "modern" indigenous. 
        Our roofs are of straw or cardboard and of poverty. So are those of the "modern" indigenous. 
         Those of us indigenous who are resisting are struggling to survive the same as those who are "modernizing."
          But some of us are what we are, and the others are pretending not to be what they are. 
          Faced with these two options, the March of Indigenous Dignity, the March of the Color of the Earth, is trying to build a new one:
          The recognition of our difference. 
          This difference is organized in autonomy. In it we are different, and in it we are with the others we are.    Autonomy is integration.[21]

The contemporary version of the process that sets the terms of contact between the indigenous and other populations, and the official economic policy of the Mexican government, is neoliberalism. Under this framework those with a high amount of commodities are highly appreciated and those who live in material scarcity are often neglected. Since indigenous populations normally live in material misery, they are mostly disrespected in Mexican ‘modern’ society. 

Deprived of material welfare, what the indigenous populations claim to have is a great spirit. They cannot be robbed of their dignity:
           The indigenous peoples …have made theirs a word which is not understood with the head, which         
           cannot be studied or memorized. It is a word which is lived with the heart, a word which is felt deep   
           inside your chest and which makes men and women proud of belonging to the human race. This word  
           is DIGNITY. Respect for ourselves, for our right to be better, our right to struggle for what we believe 
           in, our right to live and die according to our ideals. Dignity cannot be studied, you live it or it dies, it 
           aches inside you and teaches you how to walk. Dignity is that international homeland which we forget 
           many times.[22]

Since it ‘teaches you how to walk’, dignity thus emerges as an inner force that allows the indigenous to move in the first place. It is the inner energy that nourishes the Zapatista rebellion. And it is difficult to overstate its importance for the Zapatistas. In a well known statement, Marcos defines the Zapatista ‘ideological direction’ this way: “either we live or die with dignity.”[23]  Likewise, some have called the Zapatista struggle “Dignity’s revolt.”[24] 

Armed with dignity, the indigenous people who rebel have learned to appreciate the high values implicit in indigenous life.[25] They have reencountered themselves. Zapatistas often speak about the high ecological and democratic values of indigenous customs and beliefs. They also have emphasized the treatment the indigenous give to the old, which is very highly respected, to the dead, which is never abandoned, and as a fundamental part of their ecological discourse, to the earth, with which the indigenous cohabit rather than master. An additional point of emphasis is the pragmatism implicit in the indigenous judiciary methods, which are driven by a problem-solving logic rather than the distribution of punishments.

Since they appreciate their own customs and beliefs, indigenous populations would want to rule their lives according to them. The problem they confront for doing so today is precisely neoliberalism, which greed has no limit, and now attempts at their “annihilation as a social group, as a culture, as a form of collective life,” offering misery in exchange.[26] But the Zapatista demand for recognition comprises more than mere survival. It goes beyond the evasion of further deterioration to an attempt at improving a given status quo. This is best evidenced by the distances prevailing between the extent of indigenous autonomies offered by the Mexican government and the extent of autonomy the Zapatistas are demanding.

Autonomy is the institutional expression of recognition. While discussing the terms of recognition of indigenous rights, the Mexican government and the Zapatistas have reached an impasse in this regard. According to the Zapatistas, indigenous autonomies should comprise, in addition to the communal and the municipal, a regional level. The several Mexican administrations that have dealt with this theme have endorsed, under different versions, a proposal that comprises autonomy only in the first two levels. For more than a few interpreters, this impasse reveals the respectively progressive and conservative ambitions regarding the status quo: while the government seeks to go thus far as recognizing a nevertheless existing situation, the Zapatistas are looking for a change, in the benefit, according to their view, of the indigenous people of Mexico.[27] They seek a form of autonomy that would provide the material provisions into which indigenous ‘culture’ could flourish. Otherwise they would not find the recognition of their ‘cultural’ rights very meaningful. And, to be sure, they have not expressed any disposition of giving up in this demand.

Recognition struggles often confront two main criticisms. The Zapatista struggle is not an exception.  First, it is often argued that while national minorities ask for an equal treatment at the state level, their internal socioeconomic and political order is oppressive and unequal. Then by granting them autonomy in judicial matters, to take one issue, any liberal state would violate its most fundamental principles regarding freedom—of speech, of property, of movement, and even of life—and equality—between men and women, to say the least. Thus, the argument goes, by granting autonomy to illiberal national minorities the liberal state actually perpetuates rather than reduces oppression.

As an answer to this criticism, the Zapatistas often admit that indigenous communities are hierarchical and in many senses ‘oppressive’. This is so today, this has been so in the past, and this probably is true for the future. But this is so with or without autonomy. The Zapatistas are an indigenous force that opposes oppression inside indigenous communities. They, for example, strongly endorse gender equality. Prominent EZLN officers, such as Ramona, Ana Maria, Yolanda, Susana and Esther, are women. In the central event along the last (2001) march of the EZLN to the capital of the republic, it was an indigenous woman, Esther, who spoke in name of the EZLN before the Mexican congress. In a nationally televised speech, she said to her audiences: 

I would like to explain to you the situation of the indigenous woman who are living in our communities, considering that respect for women is supposedly guaranteed in the Constitution.

The situation is very hard…

For many years we have suffered pain, forgetting, contempt, marginalization and oppression… our fathers make us to marry by force. It does not matter if we do not want to, they do not ask for our consent…They abuse our decisions. As women, they beat us, we are mistreated by our own husbands or relatives. We cannot say anything, because they tell us we do not have a right to defend ourselves…We, the indigenous women, do not have the same opportunities as the men, who have all the right to decide everything…

And that is simply the way life, and death, is for us, the indigenous women…

That is why we decided to organize in order to fight as Zapatista women.

In order to change the situation, because we are already tired of so much suffering, without having our rights.[28]

By inference, the fact that the forces struggling for the establishment of indigenous autonomy and against oppression inside indigenous communities are the same is strongly suggestive. The granting of autonomy might strengthen their position within indigenous communities, and then, rather than perpetrating oppression, autonomy would be a tool against it.   

A second argument against recognition struggles, at times endorsed by the Mexican government amongst others, claims that implicit in demands for autonomy are secessionist tendencies. Thus to grant autonomy is a step toward the disintegration of the nation. A national government cannot cede in demands for autonomy since by doing so it damages the interests it represents. To this argument the Zapatistas oppose their ‘unity in difference’ logic: “The EZLN, and the best of the national indigenous movement,” they say, “does not want the Indian peoples to separate from Mexico, but to be recognized as part of the country with their differences.”[29] This is precisely the Zapatista search for an ‘equality in difference framework,” capable of softening the tensions between their simultaneous demands for equality and difference.   

The Zapatistas very often emphasize their ‘patriotic’ Mexican credentials.  The name ‘Zapatista’ is after a national revolutionary figure. They carry the Mexican flag everywhere, including the January 1, 1994 assault. In the First Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle they define themselves Mexicans and call the Mexican people to rebel. They have shown also great knowledge of Mexican history, and often use it as well as the Mexican constitution to justify their claims. They see this Mexican identity compatible with their indigenous identity in the political sphere. This ‘compatibility contention’ is based on a concept of nation at the state level, the Mexican nation, made up by several nations, or peoples, that exist at smaller levels:

The nation should recognize that it is made up of differences and that it can survive and grow recognizing these differences. The indigenous question is a national one. Not only because there are indigenous people in all the Mexican territory or because they form an essential part of the history of this country. But also because their difference aspires to a unity with the others who make up the contemporary Mexico. To recognize this difference in the maximum law of the Republic and include it in a project of a free, sovereign, and independent Nation, is to do justice and make possible the defense of our homeland faced with liquidation in a commercial sale.[30]

This Zapatista concept of nation contrasts with the nation-state model built on the maxim one nation, one state. From the perspective of this last model, actually, once a group defines itself as a nation, or as a ‘people’, it is reasonable to attribute it secessionist tendencies. But since the Zapatistas do not assume such a model, to attribute them secessionist tendencies sounds somewhat hollow. After all, if the Zapatistas’ intentions were secessionist, their strong insistence of being recognized in their difference by the legal frame binding Mexicans together, the Mexican constitution, would not make much sense. They would rather avoid any commitment with the maximal Mexican legal charter.

Divergent models of nation, and not precisely the ‘patriotism’ of the Zapatistas, are thus at stake. The question to be asked is thus which is currently the best for the integration of the indigenous peoples in the Mexican nation. The Zapatista argument has an experimental vantage point since at least for several decades the nation state model has been the dominant one in Mexico, and arguably has failed to integrate the indigenous populations. Under the nation-state model the indigenous have been forced to behave as individual citizens according to others’ customs and beliefs in order to advance in Mexican society. The results have been gloomy. Not only are the indigenous at the bottom of that society in any socioeconomic scale, but they are also with a denigrated sense of self either as members of a modern society that does not really accept them or as indigenous people who find themselves segregated to the remote corners of the country, not only in a geographic sense. 

Time has come for the indigenous in Mexico then to change the terms of their relationship with other groups in the Mexican nation, or so the Zapatistas argue. According to their view the indigenous shall make their own customs and beliefs valuable both for them and for other groups first, and this will serve as a basis for a new and more equal interaction between them and the rest of the Mexican nation. Rather than an attempt at secession, the Zapatista claim for the establishment of indigenous autonomies can then be interpreted as an attempt at building an equal basis of coexistence among different peoples that form together a ‘multinational nation’, however paradoxically this term may sound.

National Liberation

Consistent with their Mexican identity and their understanding of nation, the Zapatistas often speak as part of the Mexican nation. As such, they recurrently emphasize three of their original demands: “The Democracy, Liberty and Justice that we want, we want for all Mexicans and not only for the indigenous.”[31] These three principles are included in the 11 original EZLN demands stated in the First Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle. Likewise, the Zapatista statements addressed to the Mexican people generally conclude with these three words. In struggling for the realization of such principles the Zapatistas have converged with wide sectors of Mexican civil society. A manifestation of this convergence is the National Democratic Convention (CND), held on Zapatista territory on August 1994. For three days, the Zapatistas and some 6,000 other Mexican social activists, intellectuals and the like met to speak on democracy, liberty and justice on the eve of the elections. A further example is the Zapatista National Liberation Front (FZLN), erected on September 1997 following an EZLN call. This front is a civil organization formed by Mexicans—with no emphasis on their ethnicity—with the aim of struggling for democracy, justice and liberty in Mexico. 

From the three main points the EZLN raises as part of the Mexican nation, democracy is the most elaborated in Zapatistas’ writings and speeches. It often appears as a precondition for other demands and good-wishes to be meaningful, or as a point of entry to achieve other demands, including democracy itself. For example, in a letter to diverse means of communication first published in January 1994, and reaffirmed by its quotation in later statements, Marcos explains that in the national arena the EZLN aims at opening a ‘democratic’ space in which different political proposals could be discussed in a process of policy resolution:

This democratic space for resolution will have three fundamental premises which are inseparable historically: democracy, in order to decide upon the dominant social proposal, liberty in order to subscribe to one or the other proposal and justice in which all proposals should be enclosed.[32]

This statement also uncovers a second meaning of democracy, as a ‘process of decision making,’ which is subordinated to the existence of the first one. This is to say, a certain procedure could be considered democratic only if it occurs under a context in which people can discuss freely and equally all matters concerning their public life. To avoid confusions and in conformity with commonplace usages of the term, it is possible to call the first understanding of democracy substantive and the second procedural. The first understanding corresponds to a definition of democracy as the people’s sovereignty or ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ The second understanding responds to an institutional definition of democracy as free and fair general elections of policy makers. Looking at the evolution of the meaning of democracy throughout the Zapatista discourse over time, it immediately appears that while both meanings are easily discernible in the Zapatistas’ first statements, they have not been emphasized evenly. As a demand, the Zapatistas strongly emphasized the procedural meaning of democracy at the beginning of their rebellion. Their most recent statements emphasize the substantive one.  

This shift in emphasis is easily attributable to the so-called democratization of the Mexican state. And of course, there is no shortage of authors and informed opinions on the important contributions of the EZLN to this process.[33] As is widely known, President Salinas had throughout the term of his administration a problem of democratic legitimacy in the eyes of many Mexicans. The reasons are mainly procedural: he ascended to power following a 1988 election process, results of which are unclear even today. Taking advantage of this democratic weakness of the Mexican executive, the First declaration of the Lacandon Jungle denies the legitimacy of President Salinas. As if intending to make clear the grounds of this contention, it calls Zapatista troops to allow “liberated peoples to elect their own administrative authorities freely and democratically” in their advance.[34] 

Things exposed in this form, what is needed in the first place in order to increase democracy in Mexico goes without saying: a due electoral process—free, fair and transparent elections. The first of the Zapatista demands submitted during the February 1994 dialogue reads: “We demand that free and democratic elections be convened with equal rights and obligations for all political organizations that struggle for power, with true freedom to choose one proposal or another, and respect for the will of the majority.”[35]

At that time many Mexicans found in this Zapatista concrete demand for democracy more than a seed of justice—a point that helps explain at least in part the support the Zapatistas initially received by wide sectors of the Mexican public. But this demand cannot be maintained any longer, in great degree for its success. The Mexican state has democratized. The last two Mexican presidents have arrived to power via due electoral processes.  Presidencialismo, the strong dominance of the executive branch in Mexican politics, and another point of Zapatista contention, has been attenuated by a better equilibrium with the other two governmental branches. Even the long lasting Mexican ruling party has lost its supremacy in power, as unequivocal proof that procedural democracy in Mexico functions well today. 

Along with the democratization of the Mexican state the Zapatista democratic discourse has shifted to a more substantive understanding of democracy.  The Zapatista slogan ‘to command obeying’ compresses the substance of this discourse. It was first introduced in a communiqué signed by the Zapatista general command dated on February 26, 1994. In this communiqué the Zapatistas tell about a primary organizational principle of theirs that they learned from indigenous elders: “(s)he who rules obeys if (s)he is real, (s)he who obeys rules through the common heart of real men and women.”[36] This principle comprises a strong accountability of public officers, which is possible due to the short distance between them and their constituencies in indigenous communities. Practicing this principle, according to the Zapatistas, public authorities in indigenous communities are rapidly replaced if they fail to obey the will of the people they represent. In addition, the Zapatistas often tell about the consensual methods of decision-making practiced in indigenous communities, in which the will of the majority is not superimposed upon minorities but a dialogue continues until a consensus is reached. Zapatistas see in this practice a high democratic value, and is often paralleled to the treatment minorities deserve in a truly democratic polity.   

From their understanding of democracy and the democratic practices of indigenous communities, the Zapatistas articulate a proposal for a more democratic polity at the national level. Their clear appeal is for bringing the locus of decision-making processes to local levels, as near as possible to the citizens. As written in a communiqué informing the Zapatista position towards the 2000 elections: “The Zapatista concept of democracy is something that is built from below, with everyone, even those who think differently from us. Democracy is the exercise of power for the people all the time and in all places.”[37]  In ‘empowering’ the people they see the procedural processes that have allowed the ‘alternation of power’ at the state level valuable, but not enough.  Democracy should be deepened by creating new spaces for the participation of more people in the taking of decisions that affect their lives, not only at time of elections and through political parties, but also between elections and besides political parties. Thus the space the Zapatistas attempt to open is wider than the occupied by political parties and elections, and to their view the void is to be filled out by organizations in ‘civil society,’ which in distinction to parties, do not organize with the aim of taking power up, and in distinction to business, do not organize with the intention of profit. An example of such organization is the FZLN.  An example of specific democratic practices the Zapatistas demand the national government carry out at the national level is the holding of plebiscites while important decisions are at stake. They themselves often recur to this practice for the taking of important decisions concerning their fate. 

Revolution

In the same form in which the Zapatistas identify themselves as indigenous and part of the Mexican nation, they see themselves forming part of a nation of nations, or humanity. As human beings the Zapatistas speak about the desired kind of relationships that in their opinion should reign among humans. They repeat values such as dignity, pluralism, tolerance, equality and respect of diversity as inherently human. This voice is strongly critical of neoliberalism. Zapatistas see in neoliberalism an economic system of worldwide dimensions that both constraint nations’ autonomous decisions and menaces indigenous people with extinction. It is inherently inhuman and therefore humans should oppose it for the sake of humanity as a whole. On this front the Zapatistas do not rise up demands addressed to a specific referent, as they do in the two previous fronts to the Mexican state. Their protest voice aims at bringing about a radical change of social relationships on a worldwide scale.   

The resonance of the Zapatista ‘human’ voice is by no means negligible. In July-August 1996, they organized the “First Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and against Neoliberalism.” For one week over Zapatista territory, some 3,000 persons from the five continents and some 43 nationalities discussed the social grievances caused by neoliberalism and the best ways for opposing it.[38] The Zapatista uprising in general, and this meeting in particular, are very often mentioned by prominent activists as cornerstones of the so-called anti-globalization movement.[39]  

Zapatista’s attempts of bringing about a change in social relationships on a worldwide scale begin by saying what is wrong with neoliberalism. Particularly but not exclusively, this critique is displayed with lucidity in two essays authored by Marcos. The 7 Loose Pieces of the Global Jigsaw Puzzle dates to June 1997.[40] Most recently some previous writings and speeches of his have been compiled under the title The Fourth World War.[41] Although neither essay contains abstract discussions on the origins of surplus value, capitalist accumulation and so on, they are not banal in the sense of displaying multiple unfounded slogans against neoliberalism in the style of political pamphlets. They rather depict the worldwide effects of neoliberalism, or more accurately, the distance between the neoliberal discourse of ‘progress’—clearly articulated by Mexican policy makers, amongst others—and an existing reality of ongoing child starvation and suffering, deterioration of work conditions, unemployment, proliferation of illicit enterprises, environmental destruction, and so on:

The neoliberal modernity appears more like the beastly birth of capitalism as a world system, than like utopic "rationality". "Modern" capitalist production continues to base itself in the labor of children, women and migrant workers. Of the 1 billion, 148 million children in the world, at least 100 million of them live in the streets and almost 200 million of them work. It is expected that 400 million of them will be working by the year 2000. It is said as well that 146 million Asian children labor in the production of auto parts, toys, clothing, food, tools and chemicals. But this exploitation of child labor does not only exist in underdeveloped countries, 40% of English children and 20% of French children also work in order to complete the family income or to survive. In the "pleasure" industry there is also a place for children. The UN estimates that each year a million children enter sexual trafficking.[42]       

These and other statistics appearing in Zapatista’s writings would easily stand on any test of academic rigor. They are taken from U.N. and other international institutes publications, as well as from books and articles written by academics. 

Of course, this and any other Zapatista analysis of neoliberalism belongs to a genre that one might call ‘critical political economy,’ and so the political conclusions of ‘what should be done.’ Opposing capitalism was, is, and though we do not know for how long, will be the main aim of critical political thinking. Accordingly, the Zapatistas place themselves within the political left, to which they try to contribute with a new proposal, not of whether, but of how neoliberalism should be fought: “We believe we have opened another window, a window within the window of the left,” writes Marcos in a letter to Don Pablo Gonzáles Casanova.[43] He continues: “that our political proposal is more radical than those which appear at your window and that it is different, very "other" (note: I did not write "better," just "different").”[44] Casanova agrees: “In Chiapas and in the world it is emerging a movement based on dignity as the most solid basis of a new political morality.”[45]

So the novelty of the Zapatista movement lies in its revolutionary proposal. This is best appreciated against a background of the ‘leftist’ ways known to us for changing social relationships. Progressive revolutionary orthodoxy, whether in its Marxist-Leninist, Marxist-Maoist, or ‘electoral democracy’ variations, is based on the notion that in order to bring about radical social changes it is first necessary to assume state power. From a standpoint of power it would then be possible, according to these doctrines, to institute a worker dictatorship as a transitory step towards a classless society, the ultimate ambition of a revolutionary and the major aspiration of humanity at once. 

The Zapatistas seek indeed to turn social relationships on their head, but against any orthodoxy they seek to do so without seizing state power. This is, in their view, their first contribution to revolutionary doctrine.[46] The ‘sense’ of their proposal —for many not immediately apparent—is best perceived when distinctions between left and right, or capitalism and socialism, are abandoned in favor of a critical exploration into the meaning of modernity in contemporary times. 

Social and political theorists have tried to grasp the essence of contemporary social relationships with titles like ‘late modernity,’ ‘second modernity’ or ‘post-modernity.’ Whatever the terms used, they agree that there are important differences between current social relationships and those prevailing from the ‘industrial’ to the ‘information’ revolution, or during the ‘modern’ stage of modernity, in which the revolutionary doctrines enunciated above evolved. According to Zygmunt Bauman, for example, while ‘modern’ society was a society of producers, ours is of consumers. “Of course,” says Bauman,

the difference between living in our society and living in its immediate predecessor is not as radical as abandoning one role and picking up another instead. In neither of its two stages could modern society do without its members producing things to be consumed – and members of both societies do, of course, consume. The difference between the two stages of modernity is one of emphasis and priorities ‘only’ – but that shift of emphasis does make an enormous difference to virtually every aspect of society, culture and individual life.[47]

A vision of ‘progress,’ a belief in human capabilities to transform the world for good, was the sine qua non of a ‘producers society.’ This vision promised material welfare to all. It envisaged a condition in which all humans could cover their basic material necessities of food, health and housing with ease. It also “declared the intention to make similar the life conditions of everyone and everywhere, and so everybody’s life chances; perhaps even make them equal.”[48] The nation state was the main agent for achieving such aspirations. Within nation states, rulers and ruled worked together in the pursuing of material welfare and equality. They did not necessarily worked in harmony, and they arguably had diverging interests, but they were nevertheless ‘engaged’ in the same ‘modern’ project. The political discussions, that indeed existed, revolved around the best ways to realize the goals of society. The vision of progress itself was only rarely and sporadically put into question. And in a society of producers, capitalist, communist or else, rulers needed the work of the many to fulfill the requirements of production and bring material welfare to all. Since rulers and ruled were engaged in the framework of the state, it made complete sense to take up state power in order to replace one way of achieving progress for another, as happened more than once.

But this is no longer true for a consumer society. While consumption has perhaps increased (especially leisure time consumption as exemplified by such industries as tourism) following a technological revolution in information many people are not needed any more in the production process. And since most of them have also no consuming capacity, they are no longer needed at all. The Zapatistas argue in this context, for example, that under the terms of ‘free competition’ stipulated by the North American Free Trade Agreement—negotiated and approved without asking their consent and evidently without thinking about them—the products of indigenous populations are no longer competitive and their skills useless: “There is no clause…speaking about the indigenous people…How could we compete with the U.S. or Canadian farmer if we cannot compete even with the local dealer that takes our coffee crops away?”[49]  Indigenous are therefore amongst those populations becoming obsolete as the ‘new economy’ advances.   

Since many people are no longer needed, the new tactic of the rulers is of disengagement. Isolation from the masses of the people, and disengagement from their not yet fulfilled commitments for universal material well-being. The ‘successful’ is seceding from the rest of society, to use Bauman’s jargon. This is apparent at the nation-state level. Despite rhetoric of progress by many governments, in fact neoliberal policies of ‘deregulation’ are a tactic of disengagement by ruling elites. Thus at a time of unemployment safety nets are reducing. At a time of aging, state health provision is contracting. In many other spheres the state in many states and following neoliberalist recipes, is shrinking as well. For Bauman the state is no longer culturally and economically sovereign, and what is left with are the powers of repression. Marcos helps him through this exposition:

In the cabaret of globalization, the state goes through a striptease and by the end of the performance it is left with the bare necessities only: its powers of repression. With its material basis destroyed, its sovereignty and independence annulled, its political class effaced, the nation-state becomes a simple security service for the mega-companies that neoliberalism erects...[50]   

If this is the ‘state of the state’ then to take up state power means to assume control over repression forces and barely something more. Yesterday’s oppressed under such circumstances could become oppressors after seizing power, but the relationships of oppression would persist. In place of conquering governments, then, the Zapatistas propose to build a new world that would develop in parallel to the existing one, until the latter would become redundant: 

The religion that accuses us of having committed a ‘mortal sin’ is called neoliberalism. We have to resist the death threat of the powerful.  But we also have to construct another world and in this new world should be room for every people and every tongue. This is the Zapatista thinking and this is our word.[51]

Thus, strictly speaking the intention is not to surrender neoliberalism, but to make it obsolete. The ‘new’ world with room for ‘many worlds’ can be constructed precisely by the ‘disengaged,’ by those being left aside as the ‘new economy’ advances. Many of the Zapatista statements call the ‘disengaged of the world’ to unite dignities in the construction of a ‘new world with room for many worlds’ explicitly, but the following excerpt of a communiqué addressed to diverse media dating back to May 1994, has already become the ‘unofficially official’ such a call. On the walls of many cities around the world is inscribed:

Marcos is gay in San Francisco, a black in South Africa, Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Isidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, an indigenous person in the streets of San Cristóbal…a rocker on campus, a Jew in Germany, an ombudsman in the Department of Defense, a feminist in a political party, a communist in the post-Cold War period…a pacifist in Bosnia, a Mapuche in the Andes…an artist without a gallery or a portfolio, a housewife in any neighborhood…a sexist in the feminist movement, a woman alone in a Metro station at 10 p.m., a retired person…a peasant without land, an underground editor, an unemployed worker, a doctor with no office, a non-conformist student, a dissident against neoliberalism, a writer without books or readers, and a Zapatista in the Mexican southeast. In other words, Marcos is a human being in this world. Marcos is every untolerated, oppressed, exploited minority that is resisting and saying ‘Enough!’[52]  

The chances are good that any of us would recognize herself in one or more of these ‘oppressed minorities,’ and thus the Zapatista call is in fact addressed to a majority of the world population. But ‘majorities,’ in the Zapatista call, should be made up by the effort of minorities. That is, using the same ‘unity in difference’ logic as exposed above in the national context, in the Zapatista convocation minorities do not stop being minorities as a result of their unison. The need is therefore to find a framework in which different peoples could cohabit as equals in the nation of nations level.    

Hence comes the second main Zapatista innovation to revolutionary doctrine. Against any rational instrumental logic—according to which actions are goal-oriented and which constitutes the benchmark of modern thinking—the Zapatistas refuse to have any definitive vision of how the world they are pursuing would look like. They refuse to play the role of any avant-garde or illuminated elite that points the correct way to others. To know the end from the beginning excludes people, since they, from their ‘Zapatista’ particular viewpoint can formulate it only from one position amongst many. In addition, there is no way to know a priori whether their self-formulated conception of a new world would work in practice. Instead they argue that the construction of a new order is only possible through the participation of all those interested in its creation.

Without knowing the end, questions, or intentions, are good enough for moving, an idea comprised by the slogan, “asking we walk.” While asking, in the process of elucidating and at the same time building this alternative world, every group should follow its own voice and own rhythm, so it can be heard and thus be taken into account by others. Bauman’s ‘solidarity of explorers’ grasps the possible benefits of such enterprise: 

While we all, singly or collectively, are embarked on the search for the best form of humanity, since we would all wish eventually to avail ourselves of it, each of us explores a different avenue and brings from the expedition somewhat different findings. None of the findings can a priori be declared worthless, and no earnest effort to find the best shape for common humanity can be discarded in advance as misguided and undeserving of sympathetic attention. On the contrary: the variety of findings increases the chance that fewer of the many human possibilities will be overlooked and remain untried. Each finding may benefit all explorers, whichever road they have themselves chosen.[53]

Aware that a neoliberal socioeconomic order is unlikely to give up without a meaningful alternative to replace it, the Zapatistas thus see themselves as one group collaborating with others in the construction of such alternative. They maintain that this alternative should arrive, if anything, only through this long process of participation and discussion among different points of view.

Conclusions

In contrast to common distinctions drawn in the literature of the social sciences between present and past conflicts, there is no line separating the politics of material welfare from the politics of identity in the Zapatista discourse, but rather an intrinsic correspondence between them. For the Zapatistas, struggling for the recognition of indigenous rights is to struggle against neoliberalism at once. Key to this simultaneity is the way ethnicity serves as a resource for the Zapatista struggle. The Zapatistas do not struggle in the name of the indigenous against non-indigenous or peoples from other ethnicities, but against the sources of indigenous marginalization, as they perceive them. These sources are mostly socioeconomic, or at least have a clear socioeconomic address in neoliberalism today.

The Zapatista struggle does not propose therefore the extermination of, or even separation among, different peoples, but rather seeks frameworks for the peaceful cohabitation of different peoples within one space. These frameworks, both at the national and at the ‘nation of nations’ levels are most of necessity democratic, since—as a matter of indisputable assumption for the Zapatistas—different people could peacefully cohabit a given space only as equals. The Zapatistas present us therefore a case—by no means unique, just overridden by literature—of an inclusive rather than exclusory identity struggle. An identity struggle that seeks ways to transform the ruling economic order, and that propose doing so through a dialogue between ‘equal’ distinct identities. 

There are risks to such an enterprise, of course. Groups may become tired of dialogue before a new order of things is accorded. As resolutions would acquire more definite shape, other groups may retire from the dialogue. An additional risk is that the dialogue will continue indefinitely for the sake of dialogue itself, without arriving at concrete alternatives to neoliberalism on a worldwide scale. In the meantime, of course, neoliberalism will continue to run smoothly.   

A famous Mexican mariachi song says that the target “is not to arrive first, but knowing how to arrive.”  The Zapatistas way of countering neoliberalism certainly does not guarantee ‘success.’ There is no guarantee that through this process the ‘explorers’ would consent on any human alternative to neoliberalism. Yet, if this process renders any meaningful alternative to neoliberalism, there are good reasons to argue for its success. Surely this alternative will present itself as a reality and not as a theory to be translated into practice from above, since in this proposal theory follows praxis and not the other way around. In a time of increasing social exclusion, this alternative will be also highly inclusive. It necessarily will be a product of a joint effort made from different points of view, and thus cannot avoid taking them into consideration. Those, arguably, are good reasons for the social critic to support such an enterprise. 

 ***

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-------------- May 18, 2002.

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