Editor’s note: Annaliese Pope, a master’s student in Sociology at Western, recently returned from a trip to a mountainous region in Mexico, where she was one of 3,000 people from around the world to receive an invitation to attend a school on autonomous government in secluded Zapatista communities. The Zapatistas are leftist Mexican revolutionaries; this year marks the 10th anniversary of their autonomous government.
What follows is an edited version of Pope’s reflections on that trip.
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In 1983, a group of indigenous people – the Zapatistas – in the mountains of southeastern Mexico, organized against the oppression they faced from a Mexican government implementing neoliberal policies that would make Mexico more attractive to foreign interests. These policies often involved the privatization of communal lands as well as the removal of indigenous people from these lands.
A critical turning point was the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Jan 1, 1994. On that same day, after 10 years of clandestine organization and military training in the mountains, the Zapatistas flooded several cities in Chiapas and overtook the major city of San Cristobal de las Casas. After a 12-day battle with the Mexican government, the Zapatistas were recognized as a serious and legitimate presence in Chiapas.
The next 10 years were spent in negotiations between the Mexican government and the Zapatistas. One agreement was reached, stating the Mexican government would respect the rights and autonomy of the Zapatistas, halt all attempts to privatize and appropriate their lands and cease all military aggression.
Several days after the agreement, the Mexican military sent helicopters to harass Zapatista communities by dropping bombs next to their villages. It has also been reported that paramilitary groups, who receive funding from the Mexican government, used severe violence against Zapatistas as a harassment technique. This accelerated to the point of the massacre of 45 Zapatistas in Acteal in 1997.
At this point, the Zapatistas terminated discussions with the Mexican government and began organizing amongst themselves to create their own autonomous governments.
In 2003, they celebrated 10 years since their initial uprising and had an international Encuentro, or ‘meeting’, where they invited individuals from all over the world to their communities, to demonstrate solidarity and to discuss organization against neoliberalism on a global scale.
This year was the second Encuentro and the Zapatistas decided to invite people from all over the world to their communities, not just for the Encuentro, but also to live with them for a week in their homes to understand what life is like. Part of this experience would include classes about what freedom means to the Zapatistas as well as the creation, organization and functioning of resistance through their autonomous governments.
This experience is the Escuelita Zapatista, or ‘Little Zapatista School.’
I’ve lived in Mexico several times, for a total of about two and a half years. During my time there, I met a group of travelling musicians, artisans and street performers. I spent a great deal of time living with them; we used to play instruments on city busses to make cash.
I returned to Mexico in the fall 2012 to do fieldwork with this group for my thesis; I was with them in San Cristobal de las Casas in December when the Zapatistas had a silent march to demonstrate their presence in Chiapas and raise awareness for their continued struggle. Witnessing this inspired me to do more research on the Zapatistas and I continued to follow their activity online after I returned to Canada following my fieldwork.
(Upon my arrival at the Little Zapatista School), I was assigned a guardian, a Zapatista that would stay with me 24/7 and translate the local indigenous language into Spanish so that I could understand what was going on.
Ten students and their 10 guardians were assigned to a small community of 10 families on the side of a mountain in the jungle with no electricity, no water, where we would take baths in the river and sleep in hammocks.
In order to achieve the experience of complete immersion, the students were kept separate from one another. We woke up every morning at dawn to cut corn in the fields with machetes, that we would later grind by hand and make into tortillas, atole (a type of corn drink) and several other foods. In the afternoon, we hiked down the mountain to bathe in the river and then spent several hours studying the texts we were given alongside our guardians.
On my last day there, I was sitting on a tree stump outside of the shack, waking up, drinking coffee and looking at the mountains when the small elderly Mayan Zapatista woman I was staying with came in front of me with a chicken, gave me a wide grin and killed the chicken in front of me. I’m a vegetarian and hadn’t eaten meat in eight years, but it was clear the chicken had been killed in my honour, so I wouldn’t have allowed myself the option of not eating it.
The senora made soup with the chicken and I got violently ill several hours later. Two doctors were sent to see me and I was later taken to the hospital. Although it was clear I came from a place where I was economically fortunate enough to not have to take a bath in a river, I was not allowed to pay for my medical treatment. The Zapatistas covered all of the costs, as they would for their own. They laughed at me when I asked to contribute. “We don’t work that way here,” they said.
The Zapatistas have created an economic system in which each village has several areas of collective work such as food, artisan goods or livestock. These are then sold. Everyone contributes; the money earned goes into a collective fund. Whenever a family needs something, such as a new corn grinder, clothes, etc., they are given money from the fund. This is where the payment for my medical care came from.
Although many Zapatistas still live in poverty, many say they are happier because they are in control of their lives and have autonomous governments. As well, life has changed greatly for Zapatista women. Before the uprising, women were in a subordinate position. Now, they are expected to contribute and are respected for their input. Half of all government boards are women. Men help women with women’s work, such as corn grinding and other tasks “too feminine” for them to perform before.
We need to be more conscious of on-the-ground impacts of foreign policy and financial agreements, especially in the ‘Global North.’ NAFTA threatened to take away the Zapatistas’ land, which is synonymous with control of their lives, but also with life itself.
There is a different way of understanding I was constantly confronted with during this experience. I would ask a lot of questions that weren’t answered. I understand certain indigenous knowledges emphasize experiential learning over question-and-answer learning, because the former is seen to be more reflexive and developmental and the latter a bit rude.
I’m still reflecting on my experiences and believe I will be doing so for quite some time.