Zapatistas, et al. (RE: East Timor, Kosovo, and Kuwait)

Mr P.A. Van Heusden pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk
Thu Sep 23 05:51:22 PDT 1999


On Wed, 22 Sep 1999, Doug Henwood wrote:


> Nathan Newman wrote:
>
> >Whether we are talking about the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil, the
> >Indonesian labor movement, the South Korean democracy movement, or the
> >upsurge of latino power in California, there are incredibly dramatic
> >examples of movements that have continued to grow globally.
>
> I alternate between thinking that these are promising examples of a
> newer left - popularly rooted and democratic - and thinking that
> their very dispersion and specificity, untied to any broader vision
> or strategy of radical transformation, is itself symptomatic of the
> weakness of the left. What have the Zapatistas, for all their charm
> and promise, really achieved? They've certainly seduced lots of
> intellectuals by their stylish antistatism, but can they really
> challenge the Mexican army and U.S. capital?

Clearly they cannot - if they could, they wouldn't be in the situation they are now. However, I think it is interesting to consider what is actually happening...

I think there are two sides to the story here. A couple of years back, I heard Osmarino Amancio Rodrigues from the Brazilian National Council of Singueiros (Rubber Tree Tappers) speak at a conference in Cape Town (if you want the full speech, check out http://www.newsandletters.org/4-98essa.htm). The NCS is the organisation Chico Mendes belonged to.

The situation that people like Rodrigues are facing has a similarity to the situation faced by the peasant communities of Chiapas - large amounts of land are, on the one hand populated/exploited by a small number of capitalists (and their often impoverished workforce). On the other hand, there is a substantial indigenous population living in and around the space claimed by the capitalist structures (in Chiapas, the less fertile mountain regions around the ranches, in Brazil the forest which was targetted for exploitation).

Geographically, the situation is pretty ideal for guerilla warface. What differs between the Brazilian NCS (or Zapatista) approach, as opposed to previous styles of guerilla warfare, is the focus on the state. Marcos' communiques seem to make it clear (to me at least) that he sees the state as the iron fist of capital - working to develop the interests of the national capitalists. A similar situation is encountered in Brazil. But it seems to me that, maybe because of the objective circumstances at present, neither the Zapatistas, nor the NCS see a seizure of state power as on the agenda.

In essence, at present the Zapatistas and the NCS offer two demands. 1) An end to the interference of their national capitalists. 2) A market for their products (this was pretty clear from Rodrigues' talk, but less clear from the paper on News & Letters' WWW site). Underlying these demands is the point of view that 'peasant' (i.e. direct producer, as opposed to waged labourer) communities in Chiapas and Brazil have little to gain from 'modernisation' - a word which Marcos correctly points out, in the Mexican context means integration into (and being forced into poverty by) capitalism.

The particular situation in Latin America, and the crisis of modernisation (pretty visible in Mexico and Brazil) which follows from the state of world capitalism, makes a struggle for autonomy from the centre (which is what this struggle is, I think) possible. This does not mean that the Zapitasta struggle can be simply transplanted to another realm - even another peasant realm.

I think this is where the most powerful criticism of 'indigenous-ism' must come in: in the 'North', the struggles in Brazil and Chiapas are too often seen (particularly by the academics and administrators of NGOs) as primarily alternative - an alternative value system, an alternative to both capitalism and socialism, an alternative to ecological destruction (or even an alternative to human use of the ecosystem), etc. Yet they are precisely integral - their dynamic is inseperable from the dynamic of global capitalism.

The correct response to Chiapas is not to see it as an alternative to our problems in the 'North' (or in the semi-North-semi-South of South Africa), but rather to support it as a fight against capitalism - and to fight to make an alternative to capitalism in our own situations. The Zapatistas can inspire (which is positive), but they cannot build our own movements for us.

Peter -- Peter van Heusden : pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk : PGP key available Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower. - Karl Marx



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