The weekly newsletter of the México Solidarity Project

November 11, 2020/ This week's issue/ Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

Back to the Future: Zapatista Democracy

Does democracy rest on the cornerstone of elections? The United States has insisted on this standard over the years, at home and abroad. But in actual practice that cornerstone has a nasty habit of cracking. Inside the US, we’ve witnessed widespread voter suppression. Outside, US officials routinely only bless the outcomes of foreign elections if the winners make nice with US corporate interests.

And if those winners dare challenge those interests, the US has no problem intervening through “democratic” processes that range from arming insurrectionists to validating coups and assassinations. Think Chile under Nixon, Honduras under Obama, Bolivia under Trump. In a sense, US attitudes have always been Trumpean: Only the votes we like matter.

Indigenous groups don’t just have different methods for choosing leaders. They have a different definition. They see leaders not as bosses, but as servant who help people find solutions to common problems. They see the purpose of leadership as different too: not to aggrandize the wealthy few, but to ensure the well-being of everyone.

But can ancient wisdom have anything to offer our modern world? Ask Californians battling catastrophic wildfires. The controlled burning Indigenous people have practiced over millennia has caught the attention of scientists and environmentalists alike.

In local communities worldwide, we see new shoots of democracy growing beyond elections. People’s assemblies and budgeting are helping gain control over collective priorities and resources. Yes, we need to protect Morena’s electoral victories from US meddling. But we also need to respect the wisdom and autonomy of Indigenous communities. In harmony with the earth, including its human inhabitants, the Zapatistas are navigating back to the future.

The grandson of a Zapotec Indian, Gustavo Esteva found himself enlisted as a young man in the project of “Americanizing Mexico.” He opted instead to support Indigenous peoples, campesinos, and marginalized urban dwellers as they struggled to follow their own paths. When the Zapatistas rose up, Esteva found where he belonged. He served as a key Zapatista advisor in peace negotiations. Today, as founder of the Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca, he’s exploring with Indigenous people how to build communities of health and peace, dignity and comunalidad. More on these themes appears in Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures, the 1998 book Esteva co-authored with Madhu Suri Prakash

Many Americans feel that US-style “democracy” — “government of, by, and for the people” — ranks as by far the most important US export. Does the real product match the hype?

Gustavo Esteva: What’s happening today in the US offers a dramatic lesson for millions of people around the world. The US gave modern shape to the political form of capitalism, the “democratic nation-state.” But today, in the US and globally, we don’t see people really governing themselves through a system of “representation.” Instead, we see the perpetuation of the power of a self-appointed elite, now requiring increasingly authoritarian control over its people.

Elections have always been the centerpiece of the US model of “democracy.” The Zapatistas and other indigenous peoples reject electoral politics. How then do they choose their leaders?

Indigenous communities never believed that the electoral process offered an appropriate way to express the collective will or that elected leaders in México really represented them. For centuries, indigenous people have used assemblies as the communal supreme authority. These assemblies appoint municipal officers, chosen only from among those who have performed well in service to the people of the villages, without payment, for most of their lives. The procedure often unfolds like this. In January, those qualified are identified. Through informal discussions over the next few months, candidates are eliminated for various reasons. By October, the community has reached consensus on the person most suitable to serve. A final assembly asks that the person to lead the village. By custom, the chosen person must demonstrate humility by first protesting their selection before finally giving in. Individuals don’t decide to run for office. The community imposes leadership. And the leader/servant can be removed by the assembly at any moment.

Do women have an equal voice?

The combination of old patriarchal traditions with modern sexism became unbearable for women. Their courageous actions have been transforming political life in many regions, opening up, over the last ten years, the assemblies and leadership positions that were closed to women for centuries. In one community, Lachatao, the men in leadership called the women and told them: “We, the men, have been doing many wrong things in our community. We now want you, the women, to take all the political power to do something else.” And the women have led impressively.

Most have heard about the Zapatistas in Chiapas and their autonomous government. Do self-governing processes go beyond Zapatista territory?

The Zapatista regime includes hundreds of communities and has introduced many improvements over its 26 years. But we have hundreds and even thousands of other communities in Oaxaca — and other provinces — that could be described as caracoles, with no political parties, no elections, only assemblies. One measure of their success: Their Covid death rates have been lower than elsewhere in the country. They’ve handled Covid by focusing on healthy local foods and banning junk food, closing their communities to outsiders, and giving special attention to the old and those with health issues.  

Can caracoles — networks of resistance and autonomy — grow within the belly of capitalism and birth a new world order?

I see that even you in the US are engaged in social experimentation aimed at going beyond the very undemocratic “democratic nation-state,” without falling into new forms of despotism. Indigenous communities in countries like México have become a source of inspiration. But these communities do not claim to be “the” model. On the contrary, the Zapatistas envision “a world in which many worlds can be embraced.”

What are the Zapatistas saying amid the multiple crises of this crisis-filled year? We’ve extracted and edited these observations from a communique the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation released early last month. Signing the communique for the Zapatistas: Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.

A Mountain on the High Seas

We see and hear a socially sick world, fragmented into millions of people estranged from each other, doubled down in their efforts for individual survival but united under the oppression of a system that will do anything to satisfy its thirst for profit, even when its path is in dire contradiction to the existence of planet Earth.

We have seen and heard a nature which is gravely injured and yet, in its agony it is warning humanity that the worst is yet to come. Each “natural” disaster announces the next. Death and destruction are no longer off in the distance, limited by borders, customs, and international agreements.

We see and hear the powerful retreating and taking cover within the so-called nation-states and their walls. In this impossible leap backward, they are reviving fascist nationalisms, ridiculous chauvinisms, and a deafening torrent of meaningless blather. We are sounding the alarm about the coming wars fed by false, empty, deceptive histories that translate nationalities and races into supremacies that will be imposed with death and destruction. Disputes play out in various countries between the current overseers and those who aspire to succeed them, hiding the fact that the real boss, the owner, the ruler, is the same everywhere and has no nationality other than that of money.

In the darkness and confusion that precede these wars we hear and see that any trace of creativity, intelligence, and rationality is being attacked, persecuted and surrounded on all sides. Faced with critical thought, the powerful demand and impose their fanaticisms. They sow, cultivate, and harvest a death that is not only physical. It also includes the extinction of what is our unique human universality: intelligence. The arts and sciences are subordinated to political partisanship.

We have also seen and hear the resistance and rebellions that, even when silenced or forgotten, do not cease to be vital indicators of a humanity that refuses to follow the system’s hurried pace toward collapse. These teach us Zapatistas that the solutions may be found below, in the basements and corners of the world. They show us that if those above destroy bridges and seal borders, then we’ll just have to navigate rivers and oceans to find each other.

We have decided that it is time for our hearts to dance again, and for their sounds and rhythm to not be those of mourning and resignation. Various Zapatista delegations will go out into the world, walking or setting sail to remote lands, oceans and skies, not to seek out difference, superiority, or offense, much less pity or apology, but to find what makes us equal.

This is our pledge:

* In the face of the powerful trains, our canoes.

* In the face of the thermoelectric plants, our little lights that the Zapatista women put in the care of the women who struggle all over the world.

* In the face of walls and borders, our collective navigation.

* In the face of big capital, a common cornfield.

* In the face of the destruction of the planet, a mountain sailing through the small hours of the morning.

We are Zapatistas, carriers of the virus of resistance and rebellion. As such, we will go to the five continents.

Recent news reports and commentaries, from progressive and mainstream media,
on life and struggles on both sides of the US-México border

Peter Davies, AMLO will wait for official results before congratulating Biden, México News Daily. López Obrador’s decision not to congratulate Biden until court cases wrap up appears related to his own experience in close, contested elections.

Dave Graham, 'No more bullying': fresh start to U.S.-Mexico relations eyed under Biden, Reuters. Under Trump, Mexico has had to duck, feint, and move quickly to navigate abrupt demands that it stem migration or have over $600 billion in annual bilateral trade upended.

Fifty Years After Tlatelolco, Censoring the Mexican Archives: Mexico’s “Dirty War” Files Withdrawn from Public Access, National Security Archive. Last month marked marks the fiftieth anniversary of the notorious Tlatelolco massacre, when the Mexican government killed dozens of students and bystanders protesting the authoritarian regime in a public plaza in Mexico City.

Lexie Harrison-Cripps, ‘We have to keep fighting’: Asylum seekers at US-Mexico border, Aljazeera. Residents of a camp located across the border from Texas on what the US elections may mean for them.

Lisa Huriash, Cop suspended over Mexican and Trump-themed TikTok videos, South Florida Sun Sentinel. A police sergeant posted a song asking President Donald Trump to send Mexicans back to México.

Cuban drug against Covid-19 will be tested in the US, Brazil, and México, OnCuba. The Center for Molecular Immunology of Havana has worked with an Indian company to develop a new treatment.

Yolanda Morales, México sumó a septiembre cifra récord de remesas; llegan a 29,964 mdd: Banxico, El Economista. En cifras acumuladas, las remesas se incrementaron un 10% interanual entre enero y septiembre. In English: Workers sent home US $3.56 billion in remittances in September.

Jenifer Nava, Mientras PRI, PAN y PRD felicitan a Joe Biden, Morena se queda en silencio; recuerdan errores de las elecciones del 2000 en EEUU, Infobae. En el mismo orden que el presidente López Obrador negó dar una felicitación prematura, el partido señaló que será hasta cuando las instancias legales confirmen la victoria de Joe Biden o Donald Trump que se extenderán las respectivas declaraciones.

David Brooks, Trump avivó un movimiento progresista por la democracia: John Cavanagh, La Jornada. A la gente le preocupa que el magnate pida a sus seguidores salir a las calles, incluso armados, aseguró el director del Institute for Policy Studies.

The Mexico Solidarity Project brings together activists from various socialist and left organizations and individuals committed to worker and global justice who see the 2018 election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president of México as a watershed moment. AMLO and his progressive Morena party aim to end generations of corruption, impoverishment, and subservience to US interests. Our Project supports not just Morena, but all Mexicans struggling for basic rights, and opposes US efforts to undermine organizing and México’s national sovereignty. 

Editorial committee: Meizhu Lui, Bruce Hobson, Bill Gallegos, Sam Pizzigati. We welcome your suggestions and feedback. Interested in getting involved? Drop us an email!

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