Abstract
Just ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising in Mexico,
The group is widely defined as libertarian-socialist. It has declared war against the Mexican state and believes in civil resistance.
As the 25th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising approaches, analysts agree the movement has drawn media attention to issues such as poverty and land rights. The massive social project has also had a lasting impact on freedom of expression for minorities in Chiapas.
Indigenous people in Zapatista communities take part in local councils with rotating membership so everyone has a direct say in decisions. Children in the territory attend autonomous schools. They learn indigenous rights and history, both topics which are almost absent from state curriculums.
Less widely known is Radio Insurgente, the official Zapatista station which broadcasts across the territory from secret locations. Funded largely by donations, the clandestine channel offers a mix of local news, music and politics. The station says it aims to serve as “the voice of the voiceless”.
Jorge Santiago, a former development worker based in Chiapas, told Index that the Zapatistas have energised independent media in the state.
“For many years, there was little concrete knowledge about life in the indigenous communities because no media outlets were close to them,” said Santiago, who was detained as a suspected Zapatista leader in 1995 but released after two months because of a lack of evidence.
“Since the rebellion, many organisations have emerged to fill this void,” he added. “This alternative media has shaped thinking within the communities and generated reflection outside them.”
Alongside community groups such as Radio Insurgente, independent collectives including Promedios and Koman Ilel have raised awareness of the challenges facing indigenous groups.
While the armed Zapatista uprising lasted only 12 days, Santiago says the rebellion provided the group with an international platform that they continue to exploit to this day.
Subcomandante Marcos, real name Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, is the balaclava-clad former Zapatista spokesman, who has helped generate public interest and sympathy for the movement. Although he officially retired in 2014, market vendors in Chiapas still offer handcrafted Marcos dolls as souvenirs, and T-shirts and badges bearing his masked image are popular throughout the state.
The rebels continue to bypass the mostly negative coverage on national television and radio. They have always maintained a distance from foreign Marxist movements. Instead, they locate their struggle within the context of the 500-year mistreatment of Mexico’s indigenous population. Many journalists say the Zapatista project has had a lasting impact on their work. Alejandro Páez, then aged 25, travelled to Chiapas in 1994 as a correspondent for El Diario de Juárez newspaper.
“[The rebellion] gave me a deeper understanding of Mexico,” Páez said. “It forced me to read about extreme poverty and what it means to be abandoned… In fact, the events forced the whole country to face its indigenous groups, its poor.”
Children sit in a local schoolhouse of a Zapatista community in Chiapas, Mexico
CREDIT: Giles Clarke/Getty
The Zapatistas failed in their original aim of sparking an armed revolution in 1994. As a result, they began to talk less about violent struggle and focused on social projects such as setting up alternative governments in Chiapas.
Today, the movement runs autonomous communities across five regions of the state, with a population of around 300,000.
Zapatista leaders play a key role in planning and decision-making. But for local matters, a democratic system is in place, with residents taking turns to sit on local councils.
“The Zapatista democracy encourages indigenous people to take part in the political process,” said Adela Cedillo, a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied the movement in Chiapas. “People discuss issues related to their daily lives, such as crop management and community work.”
The rebels also run their own education system in the autonomous territories. These centres are very different from public schools, where Spanish is the classroom language and the curriculum imposes outside norms and values on indigenous children.
Many of the autonomous schools are bilingual, so students preserve fluency in an indigenous language. The Zapatista curriculum also celebrates local knowledge and customs.
“There is a genuine interest in connecting students with their roots and histories,” Cedillo said. “These schools are doing their best to initiate a cultural revival.”
But the prospect of violence looms over daily life in the region. In 2014, paramilitaries attacked the Zapatistas at a dialogue between rebels and local farmers. The assailants killed a Zapatista schoolteacher and wounded 15 others.
For many, the violence brought back memories of the 1997 massacre in the village of Acteal. In that attack, government loyalists stormed a church and murdered 45 people – mostly women and children – because they supported the Zapatistas.
While these bloody incidents caused a stir across Mexico, the press has mostly ignored the movement since the 1994 rebellion. The reduced media interest has restricted the group’s ability to exert national influence.
The rebels put forward María de Jesús Patricio Martínez as a candidate for Mexico’s presidential election this year. She made history as the first indigenous woman to run for president in the country. As an independent candidate, she needed to collect more than 850,000 signatures from registered voters to earn a place on the ballot. However, she was disqualified from the race after her campaigners managed to collect fewer than 250,000.
Meanwhile, Zapatistas have formed links with international activists online.
“The Zapatistas have not limited themselves to local struggles,” said Isain Mandu-jano, the Chiapas correspondent for Proceso magazine. “They were one of the first radical groups to understand the importance of the internet. That online strategy became a model for later movements.”
In fact, they have tended to have greater impact beyond Mexico’s borders in recent years.
“Indigenous movements in Latin America study their strategies,” said Leonidas Oikonomakis, an academic at the University of Crete who has researched the Zapatistas. “They almost always seek autonomy.”
By pursuing freedom from the state’s institutions, these groups hope to set their own agenda on education and information.
Zapatista principles also resonate in European countries such as Greece and Spain, where governments have sought to restrict the right to protest. Many activist groups in these countries have adopted the kind of participatory democracy they would like to see extend into wider society.
“In Greece and Spain, social movements rotate positions of power and are always talking about the Zapatistas,” Oikonomakis said.
He adds that the movement offers hope to any group that feels ignored by mainstream politics.
“I have seen Zapatista influences all over the globe,” Oikonomakis said. “They offer a proposal that resonates everywhere.”