Zapatista Ways of Doing Politics in the Neoliberal Era

• In Event: Reframing Autonomy: Decolonizing Practice in Indigenous and Afrodescendant Communities

Abstract

This paper will consider the Zapatista practice of autonomy as a strategic effort to avoid the traps of “neoliberal multiculturalism” and state mechanisms of clientelism and cooptation. Autonomy movements in Latin America have varied in their resistance strategies, including negotiated territorial quotas of governing authority, electoral attempts to form an indigenous state or to share of functional power within the state, and the Zapatista strategy of de facto autonomy that emphasizes creating new social subjectivities rather than engagement with the state. This paper will examine the possibilities and dilemmas of Zapatista autonomy, highlighting crucial decisions regarding interactions with the state, civil society, and international solidarity. Particular attention will be paid to initiatives such as the 1996 San Andrés Accords and 2001 “March of the Color of the Earth,” the 2003 formation of regional governing Caracoles, the 2005 Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle that launched the “Other Campaign,” the 2013 inauguration of the Escuelita Zapatista, and the joint initiative with the Congreso Nacional Indígena to gather signatures for an indigenous woman presidential candidate in 2018. I will argue that the dynamism and flexibility of the movement comes primarily from the everyday practices in the autonomous communities that develop collective identity, capacity, and consciousness. These practices are a kind of pedagogical politics that develop what Hardt and Negri call constituent power, as opposed to the constituted power of the state.

Author

• Richard Stahler-Sholk, Eastern Michigan University