A young woman spends every Saturday working with a group of volunteers who are trying to reforest a huge empty lot in Zapopan to turn it into an outdoor school where people can learn about ecosystems.
Maria – not her real name – drew her inspiration from a family of Zapatistas with whom she lived for a while in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.
“The good vibrations from that family and the entire village affected me deeply,” she says. “I was inspired, and I feel that same inspiration here in Guadalajara from the people I’m working with.”
Another woman in Guadalajara – “Eva” – left her job and teamed up with friends to start a school, free from the restraints of what they call “the system.” All the teachers belong to a collective inspired by and collaborating with the Zapatistas. Their group is one of about 30 collectives in the Guadalajara metro area working hand in hand with the rebels of southern Mexico.
According to Eva, the Zapatistas declared war against the government of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari on January 1, 1994 because of “inequality, marginalization of the poor and the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada.”
After a brief conflict with Mexican armed forces, the rebels agreed to lay down their arms and engage in a dialog with the federal government. The San Andres accords of 1996 granted autonomy, recognition and rights to the indigenous population of Mexico, although many of these promises have not been kept, the activists say.
Continues Eva: “In 2005 the Zapatistas issued what they call the 6th Declaration of the Selva Lacandona, in which they said they were tired of dealing with the government, begging from the government and pinning their hopes on the government, whose leaders, they felt were just puppets of the large corporations. So the Zapatistas said they were breaking contact with the government and going it alone.”
The Zapatistas declared Chiapas autonomous, and since 2005 have been quietly working on developing their own health-care system and clinics, educational, legal and justice systems and even their own banks.
“They are doing such a good job that nearby communities which are not Zapatista now come to them for help,” says Eva.
She says signs at the entrances to each Zapatista-run town now read: “You are in Zapatista territory. Here the people rule and the government obeys.”
“This is how government ought to work everywhere in the world,” she says.
The 6th Declaration urged ordinary Mexican citizens to form collectives and start changing society from the bottom up. Many of their ideas coincide with the teachings of Irish-born philosopher and economist John Holloway, author of “How to Change the World without Taking Power.” Holloway has lived in Mexico since 1991 and has been working closely with the Zapatistas.
For eight years, the Zapatistas have worked on restructuring social institutions to make them democratic and free from corruption. In 2013, they then began offering courses to the general public at what they call “La Escuelita Zapatista.”
“At these courses or workshops you pay whatever you want to donate, plus 300 pesos for your books,” says Eva. “One of the places where they are held is the University of the Earth, in San Cristobal, which actually does not belong to the Zapatistas. From here you go by camion to spend one week living in a mountain town, which they call a caracol, where you can ask about anything you want. Each person is assigned a guardian or votan. There was even a baby at the course I went to and they gave it a votan too.”
Marta Molina of the organization Waging Nonviolence recently interviewed Alex, a student from San Francisco, California, who took the course. “There are two main lessons,” he said. “First, is the discipline to accomplish what you say you’re going to do. The second is being a self-critic and evaluating our mistakes and victories.” He also quoted the Zapatistas, saying, “We walk slowly because we are going far.” This long-term view, Alex said, is what’s lacking in the United States.
The Zapatistas, says Eva, are represented in Guadalajara by the Rincon Zapatista cultural center, located at Santa Monica 310 (between Garibaldi and Angulo), open Thursday to Saturday from 5-9 pm, and on Sunday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“It’s open to the public and it has a cafeteria where you can get a really delicious breakfast on Sundays,” says Eva.
Their webpage is enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx, where you’ll find good English translations of their declarations and other communiques. And yes, they are even on “Feisbuc” as they spell it. Just look for “Enlace Zapatista.”
OPINION: Creating a genuine, incorruptible Utopia in Chiapas?
I am glad the Zapatistas are walking slowly and reflecting constantly, because it appears to me that they have taken upon their shoulders some of the weightiest social challenges ever known.
Inspired leaders have tried again and again over the ages to create fair and democratic institutions for governing, educating, policing, judging, banking and so on. In some cases there have been successes, but by and large, the temptation to grab power or to “dip the hand into the cookie jar,” as the Zapatista leader Subcomantante Marcos put it, has turned the best-laid plans into hollow mockeries of what their founding fathers (and mothers) dreamed of.
Communes, churches, charities, hospitals, universities have started out charged with the idealism of their founders only to fall prey to human greed for money, power or both. The awarenesses which inspired the pioneers are turned into platitudes a few generations later, catechisms to be memorized by bored school children.
I hope “How to Keep our Hard-Won Awareness Alive a Hundred Years from Now” is one of the topics being taught at the University of the Earth in San Cristobal. If so, the Zapatistas may succeed where everyone from Confucius to Zapata himself have failed and a genuine, incorruptible Utopia, a Utopia that regenerates itself, may rise out of the Lacandon Jungle of Chiapas.
Eva is not worried about that. She replied to my concern with a quote from the Zapatistas’ most recent communique of March 1, 2015:
“Our struggle is not a sudden flash of lightning that illuminates everything and then vanishes in an instant. It is a light that, although tiny, is nourished every day, hour after hour. It does not presume to be unique or almighty. Its objective is to join with others, not to illuminate a monument but to light up the path so we don’t get lost. In other words: the struggle doesn’t sell out, doesn’t give in, and doesn’t give up.”