Developing Zapatista Autonomy
Title | Developing Zapatista Autonomy PDF eBook |
Author | Niels Barmeyer |
Publisher | |
Pages | 322 |
Release | 2009 |
Genre | Chiapas (Mexico) |
ISBN |
Based on his own experience and further research in Chiapas, Barmeyer provides an in-depth analysis of the advances and limitations of the Zapatista autonomy project over the past fourteen years.
Autonomy Is in Our Hearts
Title | Autonomy Is in Our Hearts PDF eBook |
Author | Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater |
Publisher | PM Press |
Pages | 315 |
Release | 2019-02-01 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1629635987 |
Following the Zapatista uprising on New Year’s Day 1994, the EZLN communities of Chiapas began the slow process of creating a system of autonomous government that would bring their call for freedom, justice, and democracy from word to reality. Autonomy Is in Our Hearts analyzes this long and arduous process on its own terms, using the conceptual language of Tsotsil, a Mayan language indigenous to the highland Zapatista communities of Chiapas. The words “Freedom,” “Justice,” and “Democracy” emblazoned on the Zapatista flags are only approximations of the aspirations articulated in the six indigenous languages spoken by the Zapatista communities. They are rough translations of concepts such as ichbail ta muk’ or “mutual recognition and respect among equal persons or peoples,” a’mtel or “collective work done for the good of a community” and lekil kuxlejal or “the life that is good for everyone.” Autonomy Is in Our Hearts provides a fresh perspective on the Zapatistas and a deep engagement with the daily realities of Zapatista autonomous government. Simultaneously an exposition of Tsotsil philosophy and a detailed account of Zapatista governance structures, this book is an indispensable commentary on the Zapatista movement of today.
A Beginner’s Guide to Building Better Worlds
Title | A Beginner’s Guide to Building Better Worlds PDF eBook |
Author | Levi Gahman |
Publisher | Policy Press |
Pages | 200 |
Release | 2022-05-31 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1447362179 |
This ambitious book offers radical alternatives to conventional ways of thinking about the planet’s most pressing challenges, ranging from alienation and exploitation to state violence and environmental injustice. Bridging real-world examples of resistance and mutual aid in Zapatista territory with big-picture concepts like critical consciousness, social reproduction and decolonisation, the authors encourage readers to view themselves as co-creators of the societies they are a part of – and ‘be Zapatistas wherever they are'. Written by a diverse team of first-generation authors, this book offers an emancipatory set of anti-colonial ideas related to both refusing liberal bystanding and collectively constructing better worlds and realities.
Autonomy and Development in Zapatista Territory
Title | Autonomy and Development in Zapatista Territory PDF eBook |
Author | Niels Alexander Barmeyer |
Publisher | |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2004 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
The Speed of the Snail
Title | The Speed of the Snail PDF eBook |
Author | Ana C. Dinerstein |
Publisher | |
Pages | |
Release | 2013 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
The recent re-emergence of autonomy as a central demand in many social movements across the world (which involve claims for self-determination, organisational self-management and independence vis-à-vis the state and capital) has opened a theoretical space to re-think its meanings in novel ways. Particularly interesting are in this regard autonomous practices, which have been presented by movements as offering an alternative to social relations of capitalism. In this paper I offer an illustrative case study of new political and juridical bodies (the 'Snails' and Good Government Council) operated by the Zapatista movement in the Chiapas region, Mexico. I use this case to illustrate the Zapatista's struggle for autonomy with, against and beyond the Mexican State, and the role of the law and policy making in disciplining the rebel communities of Chiapas. By exploring the Zapatistas' critique of civil society and development, I engage with Bloch's 'principle of hope' in order to theorise autonomy as a form of 'organising hope'. I suggest that autonomy delineates spaces where a utopian impulse is articulated, made concrete, realised, experienced, and also disappointed. The data presented comes from the author's research project on social movements and collective autonomy in Latin America (RES-155-25-0007) funded by the 'Non-Governmental Public Action' programme of the Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
The Zapatista Experience
Title | The Zapatista Experience PDF eBook |
Author | Jérôme Baschet |
Publisher | AK Press |
Pages | 252 |
Release | 2024-09-24 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1849355711 |
An exploration of the Zapatista project, from its conception to the present. On the thirtieth anniversary of the Mayan Indigenous uprising in Chiapas, The Zapatista Experience reconstructs the trajectory of the Zapatista struggle over the last three decades, both in its concrete achievements and in its contributions to the renewal of critical and antisystemic thinking. The Zapatista rebellion has become a reference and source of inspiration for many struggles around the world due to its major contribution in reformulating a credible and desirable path to emancipation, a path that broke with previously dominant conceptions: state-centric, productivist, Eurocentric, modernist, and patriarchal. Baschet demonstrates how the Zapatistas have succeeded in materializing, on a massive scale, the concrete experience of another way of living, a forerunner of possible emerging worlds. The autonomous rebel territories of Chiapas are among the most developed and radical of the "real utopias" that exist in the world today, exceptional in their experiments in self-governance and anti-State political form, argues Jérôme Baschet. The Zapatista Experience orients readers in the profusion of Zapatista writings concerning, for example, the elaboration of a different understanding of politics, the Zapatistas' planetary conjunctural analysis of capitalism as a total war against humanity, their conception of Indigeneity that breaks with both modernist individualism and identity politics, and their notion of time and history. All this in clear opposition to neoliberal capitalism.
Uprising of Hope
Title | Uprising of Hope PDF eBook |
Author | Duncan Earle |
Publisher | Rowman Altamira |
Pages | 348 |
Release | 2005 |
Genre | Education |
ISBN | 9780759105416 |
The Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico, have often been portrayed in reductive, polarized terms; either as saintly activists or dangerous rebels. Cultural anthropologists Duncan Earle and Jeanne Simonelli, drawing on decades-long relationships and fieldwork, attained a collegiality with the Zapatistas that reveals a more complex portrait of a people struggling with self-determination on every level. Seeking a new kind of experimental ethnography, Earle & Simonelli have chronicled a social experiment characterized by resistance, autonomy and communality. Combining their own compelling narrative as participant-observers, and those of their Chiapas compadres, the authors effectively call for an activist approach to research. The result is a unique ethnography that is at once analytical and deeply personal. Uprising of Hope will be compelling reading for scholars and general readers of anthropology, social justice, ethnography, Latin American history and ethnic studies.