A challenge to the planet

Italian activists marching at the recent anti-globalisation protests in Prague chanted "Viva Zapata" as they blockaded bankers…

Italian activists marching at the recent anti-globalisation protests in Prague chanted "Viva Zapata" as they blockaded bankers inside their conference centre. The Italians were inspired by indigenous rebels in Chiapas, south-east Mexico, who declared war on an international trade agreement in January 1994. The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) launched their uprising the same day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was implemented, an accord they denounced as a "death sentence" for indigenous farmers.

This weighty volume is a timely reminder of how the Zapatista movement has opened the door to democratic reform throughout Mexico and helped raise the banner of resistance to unchecked global economic expansion. The Zapatistas inspired similar movements around Mexico, resulting in large swathes of the countryside falling under virtual martial law as corrupt governors struggled to maintain control over rebellious subjects.

The author traces the roots of rural rebellion in Mexico to the Spanish conquest, before jumping forward to the revolutionary struggle of Emiliano Zapata, who secured land and freedom, on paper at least, for Mexican peasants. Mexico's ruling party, recently defeated after 71 years in power, rolled back agrarian reform since Zapata's death in 1919, privatising communal landholdings to prepare the country for NAFTA rules. The Zapatista movement began life as a dogmatic Marxist guerrilla nucleus (1983) but quickly became "contaminated" by contact with indigenous communities, where village elders are the maximum political authority and regular village assemblies facilitate a democratic decision-making process.

The author interviewed Bishop Samuel Ruiz, one of the key witnesses to recent events in Chiapas, who retired last year after 40 years in office. Bishop Ruiz spoke of "Three Violences" in Chiapas. "The First Violence is the violence of the system, the tremendous concentration of wealth resulting in popular misery," he explained. The second violence is the "repression, torture and imprisonment of people organising against the First Violence." The Third Violence, according to Bishop Ruiz, is that of revolutionary groups such as the Zapatistas, "a result of the First and Second".

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The Zapatista leadership negotiated a peace accord on indigenous rights in 1996, winning limited autonomy for the region, but the ruling party reneged on the deal. Incoming President Vicente Fox, who assumes office in December, has pledged to demilitarise the region and implement the peace accord. However, the Zapatista dream goes beyond demands for local autonomy and embraces a new way of organising which demands consultation over all aspects of democratic rule, including the approval of international trade treaties.

The Zapatistas operate on the principle of revocation of mandate, whereby community leaders can be removed from office if they abandon campaign promises. The most interesting chapters of this book, however, are those devoted to grass-roots struggles all over Mexico, from villagers battling a golf resort near Mexico City to Chontal Indians battling oil development which threatens ancestral lands. This reader would have swapped some of the voluminous historical detail for further insight into the autonomous rebel villages, where bilingual education, preventive healthcare and subsistence crops suggest a remarkable experiment in alternative economic development.

The book's principal weakness is its attempt to cover too much ground as the author struggles to do justice to several complex conflicts, each of which could easily fill a book on its own. The result is a well-itten but incomplete digest of social unrest in Mexico, in which the author concludes that "the revolutionary moment of 1994" remains a challenge to the planet.

Michael McCaughan is a freelance journalist who specialises in Latin America