An article by Jorge Gaupp
This travel diary is organized in two parts, of which the second one is now published. Both the journey and the publication are part of the action-research we are developing in the European project ReDes_Ling, Resisting Linguistic Inequality (Staff Exchanges ref. 1011131469). In this research we study linguistic inequality and seek to reverse it. We highlight various forms of inequality, based on certain premises:
– The asymmetrical relationship between linguistic groups translates into social differences, economic disadvantages, unequal access to rights, lack of material and emotional well-being, or inability to develop one’s own potential (Bonnin 2013).
– Linguistic discrimination is as pervasive as other forms of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, sexuality or gender (Baugh 2003; Lippi-Green 1997; Urciuoli 1996).
To reverse the role of languages in these inequalities, we need to bridge the gap between academic research and society’s perception of language, with exchanges between interdisciplinary teams of academics and organizations.
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Zapatista Meeting
This does not mean, of course, that Zapatismo is a Catholic current. The comandanta herself also criticized Catholic hypocrisy: “We are not going to be like the religions, which talk about loving one another and many times do the opposite, all of them have this duality. She spoke these words on December 29 at the “International Encounters of Resistance and Rebellion” celebrating the anniversary of the Zapatista uprising, attended by some 2,000 people, half of whom were “citizens.” “When we say ‘citizens’ it is not to offend, but because it is your place of struggle, the world we fight for is also for you,” would say the Capitán (formerly Subcomandante Marcos and Subcomandante Galeano) on the first day.
The event started on December 28, at CIDECI. It was impressive, to be honest, to see that gigantic assembly hall, in which there were barely 30 of us dancing cumbia days before, now packed with more than 1000 people inside and many others outside. It is, in any case, a smaller attendance than in the nineties, when half the world was paying attention to Zapatismo. That may be why I felt a very good reception: clearly the “citizens” who attended the event were no longer doing it as a passing trend.
Image 12. Main auditorium of CIDECI, San Cris.
Image 13. Insurgentes outside the CIDECI auditorium, San Cris.
Image 14. Craft tents during the International Days of Resistance and Rebellion. CIDECI, San Cris.
This lower attendance does not imply that Zapatismo cannot regain relevance in the coming years, in the face of foreseeable partial collapse of the environment due to capitalism. This is clearly the Capitan’s discursive bet before the outside world, as can be seen in his series of posts “The storm and the day after”. If, perhaps, in the 90’s Zapatismo was popular in Europe for its accurate attack on a neoliberalism whose destruction of the previous social fabric was still visible, today it can be attractive for its capacity to counter-program the collapse.
But also, if anything remains of the democratizing wave that followed the Arab Spring, zpatismo might be seductive for its ability to construct and communicate a democratic form of government. This was my main motivation to go to Chiapas, following the work we had done in the seminar “Language, Power and Capital” around the signifier “democracy”. The government of the people through assemblies and representatives with imperative mandate is something common to many indigenous American peoples (in fact, it was North American Indians who taught, by example and word, the modern ideas of freedom and democracy to the enlightened Europeans, if we follow Graeber and Wengrow in The Dawn of Everything). A friend from Chiapas tells me, for example, how in Chilón and other places in the state there are experiences of indigenous government equal to and even more interesting than those of Zapatismo, although very probably influenced by the experience of the EZLN.
However, many of these peoples seek to go unnoticed, perhaps as part of the classic “weapons of the weak” investigated by James Scott. This is not the case of Zapatismo, whose strategy of visibility has worked well, as it has won the sympathy of a good part of Mexican and international society, making it more difficult for the government to carry out a blatant repression without a decrease in social support. For this, the figure of the Capitán or “the Sup” has been key: great thinker, great writer and better orator, he gives off a charisma to the outside world that his comrades in the movement have not yet been able to match. “I wanted to be a bridge between the Zapatistas and the outside,” he says. People still crowd around to take pictures with him, and are expectant before his speeches.
Image 15. Insurgent Captain Marcos surrounded by followers.
His fresh speech, cultured and full of humor, connects well with the debates (especially of the radical left) in Europe and Latin America: “The Mayans already imagined Borges’ Aleph, the everything at once everywhere”, he says shortly after starting his first talk. It was notorious, for example, how he made amends to several of his European and Latin American table mates, who made an almost absolutely catastrophist and defeatist speech: “What’s the use, what’s the point of explaining to the searching mothers that the situation is screwed up”. “Thirty-one years ago we were a minority with everything against us. There were 4 of us and we were wet (in the bad sense of the word), poorly armed and poorly fed. Everyone said there were no objective conditions, no one supported us, and here we are.”
Regarding language, some interesting phrases can be highlighted: “Among the Zapatistas, Castilian is the 3rd, 4th or 5th language”, but “although they don’t speak to you, they look at you and undress you; they look at what you do and how you do it. The Zapatista identifies a compañero in what he does, not in what he says”. Some time ago, he also introduced the word otroas or compañeroas in his stories to refer with respect to queer people in the movement. He finds it more useful in everyday life than otres or compañeres, signifiers that he associates with discourses overloaded with academic and pretentious words typical of urban elites and, therefore, more exclusive than inclusive. But, in any case, the emphasis remains on the material part of the day-to-day life of the average Zapatista person, usually a peasant: “Mari Jose, compañeroa, is not taken into account for her gender preference, but for how she does her work”.
Image 16. Web image, Enlace Zapatista.
CCRI-CG Comdantas
Ten years ago, Marcos left the strategic leadership of Zapatismo in the hands of Subcomandante Moisés, who in turn opened it up to a collective leadership, that of the Comité Clandestino Revolucionario Indígena-Comandancia General (CCRI-CG) of the Zapatista Army, a transversal body made up of insurgent men and women whose identity is not public. This leadership is mainly concerned with mediating, administering justice when required by the communities, and proposing long-term ideas, but has no power to appoint other locally constituted authorities, who are the main decision-makers.
So much so, that for the last two years they have been reconfiguring the organization chart, since the hierarchical model, “the pyramid” with the Juntas de Buen Gobierno (JBG) at the top of the hierarchy had caused a lack of commitment and initiative below (in the authorities of each village), delegating problems to the JBGs that could be solved locally, losing information and efficiency along the way. So now they are betting on a more decentralized model: the Local Autonomous Governments. Elected by their village, neighborhood, ejido assemblies… are constituted as the main and sovereign entity, which will only convene regional sectorial committees, or even the new Asamblea de Colectivos de Gobierno Autónomos Zapatistas, when a problem requires it.
Image 17. Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés explaining the new organizational chart. CIDECI, San Cris.
Image 18. Embroidery with the 7 Zapatista principles of good government. Municipality of Oventik.
Image 19. Poster in the Municipality of Oventik.
This change, very broadly speaking, was explained by the comandantas and the “sub Moi” in their interventions, with special emphasis on the word democracy, to which they gave a much more tangible meaning than us in Europe, who live under dissociated representative governments. This idea of dissociation implies ceasing to make decisions the day after casting the vote, as was established more than 200 years ago by the founders of the first contemporary republics, seeking precisely to flee from the word “democracy”, which was frowned upon because they believed it only led to confrontations between factions and demagogy. In Zapatismo, however, the imperative mandate never disappeared and each office (“to represent and not to supplant”) is revocable at any time.
Image 20. Women’s table at the International Days of Resistance and Rebellion. CIDCEI, San Cris.
In the end it is as simple, as a subcomandanta puts it: “Democracy is that the people deliberate and decide”. Specifically, “Democracy is the agreement that is reached between men and women, that is made at every moment when it is needed, not every 6 years. That is business”. The idea, therefore, is that “we are all deputies and senators”. “We do not have hope in a single person, even if he or she is of our ethnicity. We believe in thinking in common”. Again, as for more than 300 years, indigenous American peoples offer practical examples of an effective democracy that we in Europe consider ours without even having achieved it. And, also as 300 years ago, after their European tour, they mock our hypocrisy and feeling of superiority: “Instead of them asking us for forgiveness, we should ask them for it for taking so long to come to them”.
Image 21. Theatrical performance at the International Days of Resistance and Rebellion. Municipality of Oventik.
Image 22. Insurgents in formation, listening to Subcomandante Moisés. Municipality of Oventik.
Image 23. Insurgentes celebrating January 1st. Municipality of Oventik.
Criticism and self-criticism
It is not, however, all self-affirmation and harangue in Zapatismo, as reflected in the restructuring of its own system after a process of self-criticism. The movement is aware that many young men and women want to leave, and tries to avoid this with a discourse on the dangers faced by migrants, with a controversial policy of refusing to take back those who have emigrated, and with training in many areas. Although, yes, not as many as young people might wish for.
Added to this are gender roles, which further limit effective life options. It was especially interesting, during the event, to listen to three generations of Zapatista women and to observe how things have improved enormously for them (“before a woman could not speak in public or leave the house, now we have the dream of being surgeons”), but this does not avoid observing that gender roles are still marked for some women who are conceived as “grandmothers, mothers and young women”. Apparently, the union of Tsotsil and Tzeltal tradition with Catholicism does not favor reproductive rights such as abortion for women in the area (Wójtowicz-Wcisło, “The right to elective abortion in Chiapas, Mx” 2020). Mercedes Olivera Bustamante would reply that “one can begin the work for sexual, reproductive rights (…), but we have a completely backwards work: we start from systemic violence, from economic violence, and little by little we are approaching individuality” (Lecciones feministas de las mujeres zapatistas, 2024).
Image 24. Painting on a wall in the neighborhood of La Merced, San Cristóbal de las Casas.
Finally, a comment on the difficulty of combining the defense of indigenous tradition (also in material aspects: medicine, agriculture…) with the need for technological progress in a state of latent war against the Mexican State. As we know from Scott, all over the world, places of difficult access (and especially rugged mountains) have allowed the survival of autonomous societies in the face of state attempts at assimilation (The Art of Not Being Governed, 2024). But we also know that these autonomies have been reduced proportionally to the advance, for states, of technologies of access to difficult areas. Thus, the weapons that served in 1994 may well not be as effective in the event of a new state or organized crime offensive supported by drones and geolocation technology, just to give two examples. I am sure the CCRI-CG has reflected on this, but the conference reflected much more an alliance with sectors of the cultural and humanistic world than with places of technological innovation.
Everything expressed here is, in any case and as its name indicates, the preliminary, fragmented, superficial, subjective and very summarized approach of an external observer, designed to serve as a starting point for more in-depth investigations by the rest of Redes_Ling’s colleagues in future visits.
REFERENCES
Baschet, Jérôme. Adiós al capitalismo: Autonomía, sociedad del buen vivir y multiplicidad de mundos. NED, 2015.
Enlace Zapatista. https://enlacezapatista.
Galeano, Subcomandante Insurgente. Habrá una vez. No imprint and no date.
Graeber, David and Wengrow, David. The dawn of everything: a new history of humanity, 2022.
Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society, 1971.
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente. Relatos del Viejo Antonio. Virus, 2004.
Olivera Bustamante, Mercedes. Lecciones a las feministas de las mujeres zapatistas. Cooperativa Editorial Retos, 2023.
Scott, James C. The art of not being ruled: an anarchist history of the Southeast Asian highlands. 2024.
–. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. Yale University Press, 1985.
Vázquez, Guadalupe; Hernández, Mariana; Jiménez José Alfredo and Gómez, Juan. El camino de la no Violencia. Ed. Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, 2024
Wójtowicz-Wcisło, Marta. “The Right to Elective Abortion in Chiapas, Mexico.” European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revista Europa de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, no. 110 (July-December 2020), pp. 39-58.
