On January 1, 2014 the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) will celebrate the 20th anniversary of their armed uprising in defense of territory and identity. Article by Simon Sedillo.
In August of this year the Zapatistas celebrated the 10-year anniversary of their “caracoles”, autonomous communities, and their “juntas de buen gobierno”, traditional self-governance bodies throughout Zapatista territory.
For us at SOA Watch these anniversaries and now the
birth of an autonomous education model in Zapatista communities known as the
“Escuelita Zapatista” representing a growing wave of indigenous strategies for
self-defense and self-determination throughout Mexico. A watchful eye can
recognize a growing trend in which indigenous communities are returning to
traditional methods of self-governance and self-defense in the face of a so
called Drug War that has ravaged communities with violence and undeniable
corruption at the local, state, and federal level.
The Escuelita model is the latest
of the Zapatista strategies to counter a military political economy that has
systematically devalued and excluded Mexico’s indigenous people from a peaceful
life with liberty, dignity, and justice. Throughout the Americas, public
education models have not only excluded indigenous communities from access but,
even more damaging, they have excluded indigenous world views and methods of
politics and economics from entering the debate about sustainable public
development. Indigenous women are the primary carriers of this
traditional knowledge. In the face of the neoliberal military political
economy entire sectors of society are treated as disposable variables in an
equation for profit where workers, students, peasants, young people, women,
people of color, poor people, indigenous communities and in particular
indigenous women are militarily targeted for exclusion.
By simply taking a look at
Mexican advertising, television programming, and news reporting we can see in
particular the exclusion of indigenous women. All the billboards, all the
commercials, all the soap operas, all the female newscasters, and every single
mannequin in even the most indigenous of states are composed of tall skinny white
women. It is as if indigenous women did not even exist. One of the
most prevalent cosmetic products sold in super markets through out southern
Mexico is skin bleach, (name brand: White Secret) because indigenous identity
has been devalued into a deathly silence. What the Zapatistas, like so
many other movements for indigenous self-determination, have proven time and
time again is that the greatest threat to the neoliberal military political
economy has never been communism, has never been terrorism, and certainly has
never been narcotics trafficking but rather has always been grassroots
community based organizing for self-defense and self-determination.
Today, the Zapatistas have
inspired indigenous communities through out Mexico to also engage in new and innovative
practices of armed self-defense against a phenomenon we are beginning to
identify as the “narco-government”. With over 90,000 dead, 10,000
disappeared, and the world’s highest assassination rate for journalists in just
under 6 years, it is Mexico’s indigenous nations who are taking the lead in
defending themselves. Over 13 states in Mexico now have armed community
patrols who are actively confronting a fusion between organized crime and
corrupt electoral politics. Most notably the state of Guerrero has well
over 70 communities, and most recently the state of Michoacan has well over 20
communities that are engaging in armed self-defense. These communities have
expelled political parties, military personnel, and local, state, and federal
police from their communities and have returned to traditional forms of
self-governance, including general assemblies, rotational positions of
traditional authority, and armed self-defense patrols.
For over 500 years, Mexico’s indigenous populations
have been told by public education that their identity is backwards, that their
traditions are obsolete, that their methods of self-governance are pointless to
even discuss much less to exercise. The Zapatistas have spear-headed a
national movement of indigenous self-reevaluation, which has now culminated in
movements like the one seen in Cheran, Michoacan where for the last 2 years an
entire community has now recognized the worth of their traditional methods of
seeing the world, organizing their communities, and defending themselves.
It seems easy to stand on the sidelines of such movements and criticize the use of weapons as contrary to the tenants of pacifism or nonviolence among academics, activists, and intellectuals in the Global North who spend a lot of time talking about the horrors of our planet without ever having survived a single atrocity. We hear constant over intellectualizations of simple realities, which push entire communities to engage in armed self-defense. Meanwhile, the weapons and training, which end up in the hands of organized crime thugs and paramilitaries, are primarily coming from the United States. Meanwhile, the profits from this bloody Drug War are ending up inside of the U.S. and other international financial institutions.
It is easy to talk about peace
when you benefit from a system based upon violence for others and peace for a
privileged few. We must begin to consider armed self-defense in
indigenous communities as an exercise in nonviolence. To exclude these
movements from our movements in the Global North is to drive nails into the
coffin of indigenous peoples. Merely acknowledging our privilege is the
same as asserting supremacy. When it comes to privilege, the best thing to do
is assume responsibility for the privileges one has. It is not about
atonement or consciousness; it is about taking action. This can only be done
through sacrifice. What are you willing to sacrifice to make sure that there is
peace with justice, liberty, and dignity for everybody, everywhere, all the time?
Zapata Vive - La Lucha Sigue
*http://www.soaw.org/presente/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=400&Itemid=74
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