Zapatistas

History of the Global Now
Zapatistas
Terese Howard
10/6/09

On January 1 1994, the same day as NAFTA was instigated throughout North America, “a group of about 3,000…indigenous guerrillas, lightly armed and masked with black ski masks or red scarves, attacked and occupied several municipalities and townships in the south-eastern Mexican state of Chiapas” (Mentinis, xi). This was the first public appearance of the EZLN or otherwise known as the Zapatistas. That same year the Zapatistas declared war on the Mexican government. Why? This can only be answered by looking back at the lives of these indigenous Mexicans over the past hundred years or more. The Zapatistas “talked about the hundreds of years of oppression and exploitation of the indigenous populations, the crime of global neo-liberal reality, and the struggle for land, justice, freedom, and democracy for all” (xi). A slogan became “enough is enough.” The Zapatista revolution was not an anarchist revolution in language, however their goal of local autonomy without top down structures, collective decision making, and their critique of Marxism, has much in common with forms of anarchy and has been inspirational to anarchist around the world. So far thousands of Zapatistas have been killed, be it in battle, massacre, or secret and the “war on oblivion is still not over” (29). In 2001 Zapatista delegates met with the Mexican government to discuss approval of a bill that would give the Zapatistas and indigenous peoples autonomy over the area of the jungle in which they had lived for centuries. Congress made major adjustments to the bill and then approved the adjusted bill. The Zapatistas could not except this adjusted bill as an end and continue to fit for more complete autonomy in the jungle to this day.

Mentinis, Mihalis. Zapatistas: The Chiapas Revolt and What it Means for Radical Politics Pluto Press: London, 2006.