Actions to Defend the Zapatista "Other Campaign"

RJ posted to NYC Indymedia:

The Zapatistas have declared a red alert! From now until May 8th, the Good Government Councils of the Zapatista communities are closed and the Mexican tour of Delegate Zero (SubC. Marcos) has been put on hold. For now, the words on the lips of every participant and supporter of the national anticapitalist initiative known as "the Other Campaign" are "We Are All Atenco!"

This is a call to organize actions at Mexican embassies and consulates throughout the world demanding an end to the attack on San Salvador Atenco and all repression against the Other Campaign!

Here in NYC, there will be a demonstration in front of the Mexican Consulate
(27 E. 39th St. between Madison and Park)
This Friday at 12:30!

This is one of those critical moments where visible solidarity will make a difference!

Zapatista Red Alert: The Other Mexico on the Verge of an Explosion from Below
The Story Behind the Zapatista Red Alert as the Other Campaign Arrives at Zero Hour

By Bertha Rodríguez Santos and Al Giordano
The Other Journalism with the Other Campaign in Mexico City
May 3, 2006

MEXICO CITY: From his first statements early this morning on Mexico City’s historic Alameda, Zapatista Insurgent Subcomandante Marcos was clearly informed about — and visibly bothered by — the police riot underway in the nearby city of Texcoco, where 800 heavily armed riot cops stormed the local flower growers’ market in the dawn’s early light, leading to a violent nationally televised standoff between the firearms of above and the worktools of below. By the afternoon — after “Delegate Zero” traveled through downtown Mexico City by foot, by subway and by motorcycle, through its most working-class neighborhoods, listening to the grievances of the people — he exploded in the Plaza of the Three Cultures: The Zapatistas have gone on Red Alert, the Other Campaign is suspended, and Marcos is heading to the scene of the crime to confront the Mexican State.

“To the death, if that’s what it takes,” as he said two days ago during a mass meeting in front of the national palace.

And now, the Red Alert…

The first clue came at 10 a.m. During a gathering with “sexual dissidents” — gays, lesbians, transvestites, “other loves” and sexual workers who have adhered to the Zapatista “Other Campaign” — on the historic central park of this metropolis known as La Alameda Marcos referred to the police raid underway in Texcoco: “If those above think that they are going to continue repressing us, they are mistaken. The Other Campaign is not just a movement of words. It is also a movement of action.” He announced that meeting with campaign adherents in downtown Mexico slated for six o’clock would be suspended to deal with the conflict underway, less than an hour from Mexico City.

After all, the compañeros and compañeras in the line of fire in Texcoco were the Other Campaign adherents of San Salvador Atenco, where, in 2001 and 2002, they chased out the federal government with machete swords and defeated an international airport imposed on their farmlands. These are men and women that Marcos visited on April 25 and 26 and urged to come to the aid of their neighbors; to show the rest of Mexico how to stand up for, and win, its rights and autonomy. This morning the men and women of Atenco went to nearby Texcoco and, together with the local people, drove out the invading police. The government response: to send more police, and thus what the TV news called a riot (in fact, a police riot) ensued.

Later, around noon, during a meeting with workers in Mexico City’s largest marketplace of La Merced, after listening to the complaints of the shopkeepers and others about how the governments — national, state and local — are trying to destroy the Mexican market to make room for Wal-Mart and similar shopping malls and supermarkets, Marcos again referred to the battle underway nearby, “the attack on the small businesspeople of Texcoco, because they are ugly, because they are dirty, and if we scratch the surface we will find a municipal mayor that wants to put a Wal-Mart there. They know that the shopkeepers there sell the better product, that is better than a damn tomato that looks nice but is made of plastic like the ones sold in a supermarket.”

All afternoon long, as don Marcos of la Selva found himself in the deepest corners of the concrete jungle of Mexico City, the country’s two national TV stations — the duopoly of Televisa and TV Azteca — broadcast, live, horrid scenes of violence, teargas, blood and death from the market and highway of Texcoco. At various points during the live broadcasts, women armed with machete swords forced the TV “reporters” to stop their distortions, at one point chasing a previously macho — but suddenly terrified, as he gazed at the sharpened swords of the women — Televisa reporter down stairs as the camera went dark.

At almost six o’clock, an hour away, the Zapatista Caravan, now at the Plaza of Three Cultures in Tlalteloco, received a phone call that a young boy had been assassinated by police in Texcoco. In a speech that will live in history from a plaza where, on October 2, 1968, more than a thousand young Mexicans were assassinated by the federal army for the crime of having demonstrated peacefully against a dictatorship of a government, Marcos spoke with rage and coherence. It was as if the dead themselves spoke through the voice of the spokesman of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN, in its Spanish initials):

“Years ago, here in the Plaza of the Three Cultures, there was a massacre. The government said that the army was attacked…. Today the media, including the radio, don’t ask what the public security forces are doing in San Salvador Atenco.”

He called upon all the Other Campaign adherents to organize “blockades” of highways and streets, and other actions, beginning at 8 a.m. tomorrow, Thursday, May 4.

He announced that the guerrilla troops of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation were now on Red Alert; that the Good Government Councils of Chiapas were closed for tomorrow; that the events of the Other Campaign were cancelled until this situation is resolved; and he offered, if the people of San Salvador Atenco ask, to come physically to their aid tomorrow.

Nobody doubts that the people of Atenco will call him — and the rest of the Other Campaign — into battle.

In the Plaza of the Three Cultures — where the dead still speak — Insurgent Subcomandante Marcos called, again, for a “civil and peaceful” rebellion, starting tomorrow, Wednesday, the Fourth of May.

The following day, the Fifth — El Cinco de Mayo — Mexico celebrates its victory against French colonialists. (And Narco News — our reporters today released from jail after two long nights behind bars in Oaxaca, but still seeking justice for the crime of the Mexican State and the U.S. Embassy against press freedom — now calls for a demonstration on Friday, Cinco de Mayo, in New York City, at 12:30 p.m., at the Mexican Consulate in New York City, 27 East 39th Street -be there and let the world media capital know that Mexico is still a dictatorship ruling with violence and repression.)

Thunderclouds are clapping above the central region of Mexico tonight, and from below, too. It’s a Red Alert. What happens from here on out is up to people like you, and maybe you, too.

To be continued…

Comments

[Red Guard]

Honest question:

Is the Zapatistas something more than a protest movement with good PR?

I don't quite understand what the big to-do is about them. It seems cool, but is Marcos some kind of spoken word artist whose crowds are a good reflection on his fine verse?

They come off like the vanguard of the anti-vanguard, but then they seem to have changed to a more "leftist" still not revolutionary orientation once they got penned up in Chiapas.

I really don't know. The people I know who like them the most tell me very different things. One guy says they are making a revolution to make revolution possible. That sounds interesting. Another tells me they "shit on all revolutionary vanguards" and do not intend to overthrow the current state.

Are they confused or are the Zapatistas confused or am I confused?

[leftclick]

At the time of their public emergence, 1994, it had seemed to many that radicalism in Latin America was on the downswing. By 1991, the FMLN had given up the armed struggle for electoral politics and the Sandinistas lost power in an election designed to favor the US-oriented candidate.

The EZLN seemed to represent not only an upsurge of radicalism, but also a credible indigenous-based approach that would learn from the supposed 'vanguardist' mistakes of the past. They ahve garnered a lot of support from all kinds of radical trends around the world but their mainstays seem to be radical social democrats and anarchists.

It is true that they do not intend to overthrow the state under the premise that they would have to reproduce a state if they did. Instead they emphasize struggles within 'civil society' and localism. They refuse refuse to characterize themselves as socialists or anarchists, but instead choose 'indigenismo'. However, it should not be hard to see the family resemblance with anarchism.

The EZLN has successfully put the issues of indigenous people front and center in a way that previous Latin American lefts had not. Combining a great literary style, self-effacing sokespeople and an innovative use of telecommunications, they've managed to galvanize popular movements on several continents. On onle level, this is pretty impressive, but we have to recognize that much of their influence is due their ability to provide popular movements with creative and revolutionary-appearing forms that ulitmately do not threaten the state, except in isolated pockets, which any developed state can tolerate. This way the state can simple whittle them down with a combination of tactics, without having to crush them outright in one fell swoop.

The problems with their approach are numerous and, except for the heavy indigenous component, are hardly new. Rather it is a combination of Guevarist-anarchist politics, that emphasize local action and a Gramscian 'war of position.' While they articulate the legitimate grievances of oppressed peoples, their decentralized strategy can only lead to two outcomes: 1] they will be an external loyal, but isolated, opposition movement, or 2] they will be re-integrated into the system as the internal 'opposition.' Either way the Mexican state isn't threatened. At the same time, they did unleash a lot of energy which sould have longer-term consequences but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

What disturbs me is that, the left in this country has shut down all critical discourse where the EZLN are concerned but are more than willing to attack them by proxy. The author John Holloway wrote a book called How to Change the World Without Taking State Power which was heavily criticized on this blog by the same people who then fawned all over the EZLN - even though he shares the EZLN's politics! Perhaps people don't want to be labeled racist or Eurocentric but as internationlists, it is our responibility to tell the truth as we see it.

[Link]

The Zapatista tactic is probably far more dangerous to the state then what the vangaurds propose(which would simply re-awaken it). It is dangerous because it is showing anti-statist tactics in practice that do not separate means and ends. If the mexican state ever is destroyed, the people with the most local, decentralizing tactics will be the ones who are the least likely to reproduce the state.

The Zaps aren't perfect, but they generally have the right idea. What they need is a truly thorough critique of the left as such which is the antithesis of the world of many worlds that they would like to create.

[leftclick]

A statement such as "If the Mexican state ever is ever destroyed" proves my point. Decentralized and localized tactics will not bring the state down. this kind of po0litics can only encourage a sort of left Hobbesianism in which the best people can hope for is perpetual struggle. In fact, the Zapatista tactic demonstrates the disparity between means and ends. Absolutist morality is not a viable strategy. If they intend to end exploitation and oppression generally, and not only in their corner of Mexico, they will fail. The only way for them to 'succeed' is to start lowering the standard of success.

[leftclick]

Here's the reality: taking down a state is an incredibly complex and huge task. As in any complex task, mistakes will be made, except that in this case millions of people will be affected - very badly. The trick is to minimize such mistakes, since they cannot be eliminated altogether. It is an awesome responsibility - one that neither the Zaptistas nor their supporters want to take up. This way they can stay 'morally pure' and point fingers at others, vanguardists, who will try. At no time do such 'decentralists' ever consider that they actually strengthen the state by their politics. The assumption is that if mass movements continue to accumulate victories on a local level, eventually they can overwhelm the state. It's very mathematical - but reality isn't a linear equation.

A true vanguard would learn from the real mistakes of the past - having a vanguard party is not one of them - and develop a new vision for the future. The fundamental question is: what is the line of that vanguard?

What's the price of not doing this? For one, thing, it leaves the existing state intact. Those who want to fight for a better world can only hope to make improvements in this one until, somehow, the system collapses. Liberation is tranformed from a genuine possibility into an unreachable ideal.

[leftclick]

To clarify: decentralization strategies strengthen the state by creating seemingly radical safety valves. After the Red Army Faction was crushed in Germany, it was revealed that the German governemt actually allowed the RAF to operate for as long as they did to give radicals something to rally around, which would ultimately be ineffective. Politically, the EZLN and RAF are not the same but the strategy of localization will lead to the same ends.

[Zelda's bitch]

A number of responses to make.

For one thing, if perpetual struggle is shown in anything, it is shown in the instrumentalist laden tactics of those who espouse an objective linear view of struggle. Look at the Marxian idea of the state. With the vanguardists who came later the excuses for keepin the state alive grew as apposed to shrank. It was no longer just a workers state, it had to be a vanguardist one, and it was not just an entire state that had to be recaptured, but all states on an international level. If that is not perpetual I don't know what is. Also I could not be further from moralism. I believe in the idea of revolutionary dispersal on a material level to avoid all that moralistic governmentality(that is simply recreated by the vanguard model)

As for taking down the state, it really is not that complex at all as Paris 1968 almost showed. It is a collection of fixed discoursive symbols at the end of the day. It all starts with people liberating there own head first(as people like Max Stirner and Wihelm Reich would point out). Alot of what keeps the Mexican state alive is the will of the European based mexican populace(some who harbour racist attitudes toward the indigenous struggle). The subsistance based localized existance of the Chiapas inhabitants don't exactly turn on many Mexicans at the moment(even though there is a fair bit of sympathy). Alot will come down to the rest of the mexican people within the industrial area realizing that another world of many is possible.

"What's the price of not doing this? For one, thing, it leaves the existing state intact. Those who want to fight for a better world can only hope to make improvements in this one until, somehow, the system collapses. Liberation is tranformed from a genuine possibility into an unreachable ideal."

Part of sufficiently destroying the state is letting that destruction come to you by avoiding the instrumentalist tactics that become internalized in those particular peoples heads guarenteeing the life of the state in one form or another. And do I have to say that liberation is as much personal as it is political.

"To clarify: decentralization strategies strengthen the state by creating seemingly radical safety valves. After the Red Army Faction was crushed in Germany, it was revealed that the German governemt actually allowed the RAF to operate for as long as they did to give radicals something to rally around, which would ultimately be ineffective. Politically, the EZLN and RAF are not the same but the strategy of localization will lead to the same ends."

If this were true then the Mexican state or would not be investing military time in trying to quell it. Ultimately the state is a logic on to itself that does not give a rats ass who controls it. If the Zapatista tactics spread, its in trouble

[Red Fawn]

"The author John Holloway wrote a book called 'How to Change the World Without Taking [State] Power' which was heavily criticized on this blog by the same people who then fawned all over the EZLN - even though he shares the EZLN's politics! Perhaps people don't want to be labeled racist or Eurocentric but as internationlists, it is our responibility to tell the truth as we see it."

Can I respect Che for his revolutionary spirit while also recognizing that Regis Debray was (and is) a doofus?

Respecting a popular movement is not the same thing as promoting its general line at any given moment.

Trying to learn from even those we need not emulate just seems a smart and decent thing to do.

The Zapatistas respond to a real social base. Holloway does not, in the same way -- and the limits he tries to articulate through ostensibly tailing the EZ is, in too many ways, not the same thing as the learning process that the Zapatistas are on.

Their position on a "revolution to make revolution possible" is not the same as Holloway's insistence that revolution is neither desirable nor [in liberating actuality] possible.

[Red Fawn]

Why do you say with such certainty that the EZ won't challenge the Mexican state?

Aren't they doing that now? Haven't they rejected accomodation with the PRD (leftish center)?

The Zaps broke out of Chiapas, and are in motion. They don't have a simple strategy and will likely be effected by the degree of popular response to their other initiative.

I agree with leftclick's general take... but it comes off a little deaf to recent moves. Any thoughts on "la Sexta Declaracion?"

[Comandante Gringo]

Red Fawn... Red Dawn... Red Pawn... Good chain of dialectical judo-logic there.
;>

I'm reading a lot of confusion here as the situation gets a lot messier, politically -- and a lot closer to home. Still, the north american Left has few concrete ties with the latin american Left, as it should have had all these years; and this is what must and will change -- not because of any good analysis and work from the NA Left, AFAIC (however nice and unexpected that would be); but simply because this is what must happen and will happen, in spite of the pervasive political incompetence both north and south of the Rio Bravo del Norte. Call it heuristic/stochastic, rule-of-thumb, seat-of-the-pants struggle, in the place of any solid analysis, ideology or competent strategy, vanguard or otherwise.

I don't know what happened in México today on this 5 de Mayo (I don't watch TV anymore and only Google News for bourgeois mass-lies at most, and what I get in the blogs and email); but I do know that, whatever the bourgeoisie throws at us 24/7, year after year -- there is a concrete reality of class struggle which grows and polarizes in spite of all this 'resistance is futile' crap we're handed -- as if constantly blaring propaganda at us magickly, or engaging in political or economic trix evaporates all the unwanted realities exuded by the present mode of production... I've always understood that this tactic can only work for liberals, social-democrats, and the petit-bourgeois pessimists of the respectable, anti-communist Left (i.e. middle-class 'anarcho-pacifists', etc.) -- and even then, only as long as this is not all exposed for the threadbare fraud it is.
Which is exactly where we are in history this very moment.

AFAIC, whatever is wrong with the Zapatistas: they must react in some concrete way to concrete developments in a quickly radicalizing México -- or face the prospect of a swift irrelevancy. And so what is happening today and in the next few weex is crucial to the future of the EZLN and its whole B.S. strategy of 'non-class-struggle' (or whatever it is or however anyone wants to characterize it.) And so I fully expect -- if the situation in México continues to hot up -- that the EZLN must suddenly decide to shit or get off that stinky honey pot.

My own guess -- assuming a hot summer of struggle -- is that the EZLN will split between those touchy-feely middle-class pacifist types -- vs. those others who are true proletarians in skimasks. But we'll just have to wait for better intel and the flow of time to clarify the present confusion and mystery, won't we..?

[Christopher Day]

The amount of pompous bullshit here is astounding. A few points:

1. Nobody posting here is doing anything remotely as important or as interesting as what the EZLN is doing. Criticism is fine, but a little humility from the Couch Commisars seems in order.

2. The 1994 uprising, while proclaiming a national project, was a product of particular conditions that were not and are not sufficiently general to the rest of Mexico to carry forward a strategy of peoples war. Mexico is 75% urban with a relatively robust professional and modern state aparatus.

3. While the 1994 uprising took place in the context of a system of one-party rule, Mexico was already in the process of a transition to a genuine multi-party system (admittedly accelerated by the Zapatista challenge) that still enjoys considerable legitimacy.

4. The EZLN has sought to simultaneously use its armed power to build dual power in Eastern Chiapas while remaining a relevant national political force in a context that is not favorable to armed struggle.

5. The politics of the EZLN have been evolving all along. The EZLN's historical roots are complex, but includes the Maoism of student cadres who built mass campesino organizations in the 70s and the Guevarist Forces of National Liberation that formally founded the EZLN in 1983. In the early 90s before the uprising they began to develop a more indigenista politics, but this was never the whole picture. After the uprising they embraced some of the class-free language of "civil society" that came out of the anti-dictatorship movements that swept much of Latin America in the late 1980s as well as Eastern Europe. Most recently, the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle suggest a return to a more explicit class politic that puts the struggles of campesinos, workers and the urban poor at the center of a broader coalition.

6. From a distance La Otra Compaña may look like just another theatrical stunt on the part of Marcos, but a closer look shows a serious effort to build a real national coalition that can challenge the capitalist state. The attack that has produced the red alert comes in the wake of statements by Marcos to the effect that the EZLN was prepared to take presumably armed action to defend struggles outside Chiapas.

While I cheer the advances of revolutionary armed movements I have little patience for those who from the relatively comfortable circumstances in the heart of the beast would chastise this group or that for its failure to pursue an agressive strategy of revolutionary warfare or its decision to negotiate an end to an inconcluslive civil war. While peoples war may ultimately be neccesary in most or all of these countries it is a deadly serious business that when undertaken rashly or prematurely inflicts great costs on the oppressed classes and the revolutionary movement.

I have a lot of love for the Zapatistas, but it doesn't blind me to their weaknesses. What I respect most about them is not that they have worked out the solutions, but that they have some real appreciation of the seriousness of the problems confronting the revolutionary left in the age of neo-liberal globalization. Their attempts to deal with those problems have been highly experimental and while they haven't been able to carry the armed struggle out of Chiapas, the fact that they are still here after 12 years and have persistently carved out a larger and larger political space for themselves on the national stage is impressive.

Related to this, the suggestion that they are allowed to exist because they fulfill some non-threatening pressure valve function is fucking horsehit. No capitalist state in the 21st century would willingly tolerate the continued existence of an armed guerrilla organization openly committed to its overthrow. While I have always doubted the common wisdom that the Mexican Army could take out the EZLN in short order, it is undoubtedly true that the Zapatistas have very skillfully raised the POLITICAL costs of such a move.

Whatever their limitations the Zapatistas have a hell of a lot more to teach all of us than we have to teach them and any criticisms we feel compelled to make should acknowledge this elementary fact.

[Lurigancho]

One interesting point in relation to the Other Campaign is that the Maoist forces in Mexico consider it a source of hope for building a broad popular upsurge against the system and are putting serious efforts into working within it. This is obviously contradictory, and their interventions are taking place in the context of the privileging of anarchist/social democratic politics within the Other Campaign.

Some of the importance of the Other Campaign to the Mexican Maoists is captured in the coverage that El Zenzontle (a Mexican Maoist monthly) has given to it.

While El Zenzontle does not have a website, adobe acrobat files of recent issues have been sent to the moderator of this website. Perhaps he might make them accessible through this website, so others can read their coverage of La Otra?

[ComandanteGringo]

Note to Christopher Day:
You don't know squat about what any of us do. (I originally wrote something REALLY nasty following here -- but upon a closer reading of Day's posting, I deleted it...)

And for the record: I'm no real supporter of the EZLN -- but I'm certainly no supporter of all those Leftists who're whoring around behind the PRD and its Lula-wannabe presidential candidate, López Obrador, either. If the EZLN is posing stark questions which demand answers, and they're providing some sorely-needed leadership in this period, and they end up shaking awake the mexican Left and working-class -- well, then I'm all for what they're doing right now. Today anyway. And only as far as _that_ goes.

And for the record too -- no, I don't think the EZLN has a lot to teach the marxist Left of, say, Nepal, or the european states, or even América del Sur. The EZLN have just as much to learn from the traditional "vanguardist" Left, AFAIC -- bold, imaginative experiments in the jungle notwithstanding. And I do not romanticize the peasantry, sorry. Clearly the EZLN has been _too_ influenced by the petit-bourgeois liberal-Left. And that's just a fact.

And for the record too: I'm not anyone who called for struggling to the last Zapatista. As you say: México is 75% urban. The real struggle is class-struggle in the cities with the rural masses as auxilliary (or auxilliary leadership, if you want).

[leftclick]

I never thought I'd see the day when anarchists [and 'ex'-anarchists] would uphold a so-called revolutionary movement that REFUSES to overthrow the state. Talk about lowering your standards.

I'm slightly disappointed but not completely surprised by the tone of Day's response. Generaly, his posts have been pretty thoughtful, but I found this one defensive and opportunist.

I agree with Comandante that the EZLN does not have more to teach us than anyone else - nor that they have nothing to learn from us. This is part of that ahistorical bullshit that anarchists love to run without proposing anything useful. Let me remind you and other EZLN supporters - we live inside the imperialist center!! If you believe that we would or should have been able to build a movement on the level of the Zapatistas given our situation pleased provide us with the master plan. I stand by my original statement that the EZLN has done nothing new but what they have done has been very effective given their context and line. And that's ultimately the issue here. Line. Something Day has emphasized in the past but seems to have forgotten about here.

Day says he has "little patience for those who from the relatively comfortable circumstances in the heart of the beast would chastise this group or that for its failure to pursue an agressive strategy of revolutionary warfare or its decision to negotiate an end to an inconcluslive civil war." A couple of things. Raising the specter of imperial arrogance is simply a way to shut down discussion - on the same level as accusing someone of racism, Eurocentrism or fascism for being critical. Your ability to support the EZLN comes from the same 'comfortable circumstances' as my critique. Either way, we both feel we can deem a movement worthy, or not, of our support. The only other option is to uncritically support any organization that struggles for social justice - so very attractive to much of the US left, which has also contributed to our political and theoretical impotence.

Secondly, I did NOT criticise them for not engaging in revolutionary warfare or people's war. In fact I did not make any practical suggestions at all. I was engaging them on the level of line - a line which took the overthrow of the state off the table. At no point did I suggest that taking down the state should have been their goal in 1994 or today. They said that they had no intention of overthrowing the state. Period. I don't recall any qualifiers regarding time frames. I respect their right to choose whatever tactics they feel necessary to achieve their goal. It's the goal that's under question here.

When Day pointed out that the EZLN has weaknesses [no shit - so does every other movement in the world], you also confuse two things: flawed practice in support of a good line and a fundamentally flawed line. My contention is that refusing to take down the state is fundamentally flawed. However, I think their practice has been brilliant in their way. Militant reformism couldn't ask for better representatives. Day provided no examples of their weaknesses whereas I at least tried to enumerate, in abbreviated form, some of their achievements. Overall my critique is not nearly as one-sided as his advocacy. As a counterpoint, I support the CPN[M] and what are they doing now? Engaging in peace talks. I am concerned that there is a possibility they might be sliding into social democracy but they are fighting a 12th-century based monarchy so I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. More importantly, they have not, explicitly anyway, given up on the goal of a socialist republic. The EZLN, on the other hand, has decided that they can live with a capitalist Mexican state as long as it responds to popluar pressure.

The RAF analogy was a bit provocative, and needed a little more fleshing out, so I can see why people interpreted it the way they did. To begi answering, I'll engage Red Fawn's question about why the Mexican gov't would want to crush the EZLN if they were not a real threat. Simple, the Mexican gov't believes that they are, but that doesn't make it so. The US gov't believed that the Civil Rights Movement was controlled by Soviet communists and constituted a revolutionary threat but that didn't make either of those claims true. Day claims that no modern capitalist state would tolerate "the continued existence of an armed guerrilla organization openly committed to its overthrow." Certainly after 9/11 you wouldn't think so but as I've said before the EZLN has made it clear that overthrow is not on their agenda. Besides, do you have any evidence that the US has severely cracked down on the militia movement in this country? No but then the militia movement are probably reduced in influence but they still exist - the direction in which is the EZLN is being pushed. As I pointed out, the EZLN does not share the politics of the RAF. They are not likely to to wind up engaging in low-level armed actions while the police look on. They are however, providing a radical veneer for reformism which constitutes a safety valve today. Whethere it can contain the pressures of a more radical components they have unleashed [thanks for the info on the Mexican Maoists Lurigancho] is another matter.

The Otra Campaña might 'challenge' the capitalist state. Red Fawn, then the EZLN has been challenging the state from day one. The question is: for what?

Zelda's comments are pretty much a rehash of anarchist confusion but I don't want to make that the argument here. However, I do want to tackle that point about taking down the state not being so hard. This is a flippant insult to the millions [including anarchists] who have suffered and died trying to do just that. Providing May '68 as an 'almost' example is just pathetic. Then to say that the state is just a set of discursive symbols is simply to scrape the bottom of the postrstructuarlist barrel. When people get beaten by police, it is quite a non-discursive experience.

If the Zapatistas ever seriously commit to overthrowing the state, I have a feeling that their politics and their organization will take on some familiar forms which will make their followers uncomfortable. However, I think EZLN supporters will be dreaming in comfort for quite some time.

[Link]

Ah gringo, no wonder people like you fucked up Eastern Europe. You and your industrial productive forces fetish. With friends like you the peasents don't need enemies. The fact is peasents have always shown more of an ability to live a more denentralized libertarian existance. You and your half baked views just can't accept that. The common Marxist line against the Zapatistas(be it ultraleftism(aufheben) or vanguardism) is that their struggle is not "general" enough. It's gotten old.

[Link on a leesh]

"Zelda's comments are pretty much a rehash of anarchist confusion but I don't want to make that the argument here. However, I do want to tackle that point about taking down the state not being so hard. This is a flippant insult to the millions [including anarchists] who have suffered and died trying to do just that. Providing May '68 as an 'almost' example is just pathetic. Then to say that the state is just a set of discursive symbols is simply to scrape the bottom of the postrstructuarlist barrel. When people get beaten by police, it is quite a non-discursive experience."

I am well aware of the number of anarchists that have died, however what kills them at the end of the day is a phenomena of symbolic authoritarian attachments(attachments which the left has not been able to get over, hence the fact that anarchists have been killed by mostly leftists in power). And how is being beaten by the police not a discoursive experiance? What you have is a group of people who have been socially conditioned to preserve that spook known as the law. Many people who get beat by police also believe in this and feel that the police forces should not be destroyed as such but decentralized to a community level. As long as the law, the criminal, and the sacred things that go along with it remain internalized in peoples minds(leftists included) there will be cops, or KGBers who beat people up.

[Jose Delores says...]

"It's better to know where you're going, but not know how, than to know how to go but not know where..."

[The Lacon-Don]

The quote above does not make any sense in terms of its relationship to the EZLN/Zapatistas strategy for revolution. Do not confuse lack of a vanguard blueprint for "not knowing where you are going". The two are very different, and the left would do well to understand that. They know where they are going, especially this last week they have explicitly stated that they are going to overthrow the Mexican government and "the capitalist system". They are building a huge power base all across Mexico right now. Check out narconews.com for a detailed look at what has been going on at these different stops on "La Otra Campagna", shit is heating up.

On another note, i would just like to agree with Chris Day and his recent post. Have some humility for what is going on in Mexico and the Zapatistas coutrageous struggle for self-determination.

[the burningman]

If you can't play nice, pretend.

Too pretty today for a long response, but there's a couple quick points.

The EZLN is a liberation organization. It is about building the power of oppressed people over the social relationships and institutions of their life. They are egalitarian, basically on the left -- and, in fact, do have much to teach us.

The sycophancy of the rad-lib activist left towards the EZLN, and the ways in which they were promoted as "anti-Vanguard" is atrocious. The refusal of their support sectors to anywhere, ever (from what I've seen since the initial uprising) do a criticial assesssment is downright shameful.

But political conflicts here with sectors who have been inspired by, and used the EZ as a semi-mythical representation of their own best selves, is beside the point.

The EZ is real, made up of real people and has had a tremendous catalytic effect. It is not a "petty bourgeois" movement, even if the social-democratic/small-@ anarchists are those who have promoted them the most.

It is a campesino organization, overwhelmingly peopled by volunteers and leaders from the base communities.

Has the EZLN used poetic metaphors and vaguery to create a new range of the possible? They have so attempted, to mixed -- mostly good -- effect.

Has the EZLN been irresponsible, speaking here from the "belly of the beast," in confusing their own post-Guevarism with some larger analysis of socialism as such? And by so doing attempted to "skip over" the debris of the 20th Century? Well, sure. And that's not so good.

I have supported, meagerly, the Zapatistas as best I can for the same reasons I support all liberation movements: people need to get free, to free themselves and to take it as far and as fast as they can.

But the bad habit of ideolgical supporters isn't canceled by the bad habits of random dogmatists.

And...

The Zapatista Otra Campaign is a change -- not a retreat. More reports are coming and Narco News is a very good source.

MLM is a minority fraction of the world's liberation movement that I believe concentrates great wisdom and (gasp) scientific understanding of social/economic reality AND change. But...

It's noticable that Maoists, both internationall and within the USA, have NOT taken a sectarian position towards the EZ or their movement. I think the RW's coverage during the early years was an early sign of their renewed vitality and great hopes for the region. They also did notice the limits the EZ set on their own movement.

Chris Day's post is informed, to the point -- and really why I love the guy. Look at what is happening, not what you THINK needs to be happening -- and make your call.

But also know that they have learned more than a little, and many -- myself included -- love the EZ exactly because they have been so willing to learn, and try anew.

[scorchedEarth]

Yeah I saw that statement too: “What we are proposing is to defeat the evil governments. I repeat: we will topple the municipal mayors, the state governments and the government of the republic, put them all in jail, kick the bankers, the big mall owners and capitalists out of the country and defeat the capitalist system!” I'm interested to see how that takes shape. Now more than ever we need serious, rigorous analysis of the political situation in Mexico. Neither blind cheerleading nor armchair speculation will do.

[the burningman]

RJ Mancini, a writer for LeftTurn magazine and activist here in New York is writing a bunch related to his recent, extended trip down to Mexico. LeftTurn.org has been running updates from time to time, and some will be featured here.

I don't know why some people think they've got so much figured out.

(let me rephrase that)

The important thing is to be good at learning.

[scorchedEarth]

Uh, learning would be good for both critics AND supporters, right?

[scorchedEarth]

Correction: I meant to say critical and uncritical supporters.

[El Otro, Yo Soy]

every single critic here should be a supporter and same around the other way

[ShineThePath]

I have to be honest, I haven't been so interested in the movement in Chipas. The last time I saw something on the Zapitistas was watching some documentary on it. From what I know, the movement has relatively been had a strong Anarchist tendency or Councilist tendency.

I haven't for a long time seen the significance of the Zapitistas. Though the Left in this country have been idolizing them for the last decade. It seems to be that the movements in Columbia, Nepal, India, and the Philipines are far more important. But some how for the last decade, the Left is utterly not informed of these struggles but praise the Zapitistas.

Now the only reason why I can understand the praise from the Left for the Zapitistas, is because of our their seemingly anti-Leninist politics. I really never met anyone, beyond genuine Communists, who has genuinely criticized the Zapitistas for not trying to take state power...they have largely been made into the battle cry for Anarchists and other Left anti-Communists it seems.

I think we should have a general concrete understanding of the EZLN before we give our criticism, so I agree with Chris, the Couch Commissars and arm-Chairmen should not think so highly of themselves to assert what they think as being key. So I won't actually criticize the EZLN for I am not really well read on this subject, but I guess give just some "empiricist" insight into the base of supporters in the US.