Abstract
Between 1960 and 1980, under the repressive regime of the PRI that showed its most brutal expression in 1968 on the Plaza de las Tres Culturas at Tlatelolco and the powerful resonance of the Cuban revolution (Castellanos 2007; Pensado 2013; Henson n.d.), dozens of revolutionary groups were formed in Mexico with a common dream: that of social revolution (Cedillo 2012; Castellanos 2007). Herrera Calderon and Cedillo write:
Activists in the 1960s and 1970s were politically formed in the universities and schools, and radicalized by state repression and the influence of national liberation movements in China, Vietnam, Algeria, and above all Cuba. (Herrera Calderón and Cedillo 2012, 6)
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Notes
- 1.
Interview with Fernando Yáñez Muñoz conducted by Leonidas Oikonomakis on 13 January 2016.
- 2.
Non-indigenous.
- 3.
This approach contrasted with the cultural homogenization promoted by the Evangelical Protestant missionaries also present in the region.
- 4.
It was a subdivision of the Coalición de Brigadas Emiliano Zapata founded in 1968.
- 5.
Personal interview with Gaspar Morquecho conducted by Leonidas Oikonomakis on 19 August 2013 in San Cristóbal de las Casas Mexico.
- 6.
She had left the EZLN by the time of my fieldwork in Chiapas, but kept being affiliated with the indigenous communities.
- 7.
Author’s translation from Spanish.
- 8.
The man from whom Subcomandante Marcos took his nom de guerre, and who—according to Marcos’ testimonies—used to teach him the history of Mexico during their long journeys together in their first years in the FLN. His real name was Adelaido Villafranco (Henck 2007).
- 9.
“I took the name of a compañeros who taught me the history of Mexico that he knew like an encyclopedia, especially the military history. Finally they killed him and I took his name,” would narrate Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos to Le Bot (Le Bot and Marcos 1997) years later.
- 10.
Foquismo advocates that rebel groups that use a specific countryside geographical location of the country as a base of operations could create the conditions for the revolution, attack the state, and eventually but rather quickly defeat it and take state power. Prolonged People’s War (or Prolonged Popular War, as is the Nicaraguan term), which is a Maoist concept, is the idea of creating a parallel state in a specific geographical location of the country, maintaining the class-wide support of the people, while trying to expand their reach country-wide (Wickham-Crowley 1993).
- 11.
Author’s translation from Spanish.
- 12.
This is not the first time a detailed analysis of the contents of Nepantla is being attempted. To this author’s best knowledge the first such analysis was done by Adela Cedillo (2010a:116–118). I am trying to focus on how through these contents the FLN intended to contribute to the political education/formation of their members. I also include Fernando Yañez’s comments on it, product of an interview I had the chance to conduct with him.
- 13.
Though—at least to the author’s knowledge—the EZLN never officially ceased being the military wing of the FLN.
- 14.
In Mesoamerica, the caracoles (shells) were what used to call the community to a meeting. In the Zapatista discourse, they also represent the “spiral” through which the outside world enters the Zapatista one and the Zapatista gets to know the outside (Ross 2006).
- 15.
Otherwise it would have been: “Farmers in their majority, the indigenous of those lands.”
- 16.
In Chiapas at least, we know that before the arrival of the liberation theology clergy, the Maoist activists, and—eventually—the FLN, assemblyism was part of the indigenous communal life; an assemblyism that was rather patriarchal (in the sense that only the community elders and married men were involved) and that was excluding women and young unmarried men.
- 17.
“It is an army, and it is hierarchical like all armies” I was told during my fieldwork by a senior Zapatista member.
- 18.
At the caracol of Oventik where I spent one month during my summer fieldwork of 2012, I observed at first-hand the rotation in the GGJ, which took place every eight days. At the caracol of la Realidad, the rotation takes place every two weeks, while at Roberto Barrios every two months.
- 19.
For example, in the case of Chiapas State elections of 2004, the Electoral Commission had to present themselves to the various GGJs of Chiapas in order to reach an agreement that would allow the Electoral Commission to work in the autonomous municipalities. In that case, it must be said, the GGJs and the state authorities ended up coordinating really well (ibid.). The same, however, was not observed nor heard during fieldwork in Chiapas at the time of the 2012 presidential elections.
- 20.
Of course, this is an ongoing process which is by no means complete. There is still a long way to go when it comes to gender equality in Chiapas; however, it is a process that has already begun and shown some fruits. The fact that there now are women comandantas, promotoras, alumnas, and guerrilleras is already a sign that things are changing in the Zapatista communities.
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Oikonomakis, L. (2019). The EZLN and Its Emancipatory Road. In: Political Strategies and Social Movements in Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90203-6_4
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