Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities

Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities
Fully or partially controlled territory by the Zapatistas in Chiapas
Inhabitants	363,500

The Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities or Municipios Autónomos Rebel des Zapatistas (MAREZ) are the result of the Zapatista Revolution. They are a society following the indigenist ideology of Neo-Zapatismo. They control roughly a third of the Mexican state of Chiapas with a population of around 360,000 people. This is not to be confused with the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, the societies military force, famous for their military victories.

Decision-Making

At a local level, people attend a general assembly of around 300 families where anyone over the age of 12 can participate in decision-making, these assemblies strive to reach a consensus but are willing to fall back to a majority vote.

Each community has 3 main administrative structures: (1) the commissariat, in charge of day-to day administration; (2) the council for land control, which deals with forestry and disputes with neighboring communities; and (3) the agencia, a community police agency.

The communities form a federation with other communities to create an autonomous municipalities, which form further federations with other municipalities to create a region. The Zapatistas are composed of five regions.

Foreign Policy

Although the Zapatistas have made several treaties with the Mexican state in order to preserve their peace and autonomy, the Mexican state has violated the treaties and often massacred Zapatista civilians. They also encourage trade and often hold festivals inviting foreigners to stop attacks from the state and get necessary skilled or technical labor from volunteers. They also sell coffee via a network of cooperatives across the world.

Law and Order

Each community has an autonomous police agency (agencia), more akin to a neighborhood watch, and a judicial council. There is almost no crime and prison population, due to an emphasis on restorative and transformative justice over punitive justice and due to common ownership of land preventing hunger, the control of work and education.

The only two people in jail (in a society of 360,000, which means they have the lowest prisoner population per capita in the world) are in jail for being foreign agents planting marijuana crops to justify military incursions into their communities. Another important measure has been a ban on alcohol, a measure demanded by many Zapatista women to combat domestic violence and implemented throughout the territories around the start of the 1994 uprising.

Economy

Zapatista economics combines the theories of Mutualism and Collectivism advanced by anarchist theorists. There are self-managed businesses specializing in the raising of cattle, pigs, chickens, farming coffee, artisans making clothing, blacksmiths, vegetable gardens (also growing corn, beans, bananas, sugar and so on). Land is commonly owned in areas called ejidos, which is used for farming, housing or construction of other projects.

Public Services

The Zapatistas run hundreds of schools with thousands of teachers modeled around the principles of democratic education where students and communities collectively decide on school curriculum and students are not subjects to grading. On average, the Zapatistas have more schools than the surrounding indigenous communities governed by the right-wing PRI.

The Zapatistas maintain a high-quality universal healthcare service which has been praised by the World Health Organization for reducing infant mortality and providing strong primary care to residents. Residents of the Zapatisa communities believe their health services are better staffed, equipped and less racist towards indigenous people than most services in Chiapas. It also works with surrounding hospitals and freely takes in patients from other communities who need to use the medical facilities that only the Zapatistas have. Since 1994, the Zapatistas have built 2 new hospitals and 18 health clinics in the region to increase the well-being of communities.

Environmental Protection

The Zapatista communities claim to be firmly environmentalist and to have stopped the extraction of oil, uranium, timber and metal from the Lacandon Jungle and stopped the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers in farming. Several eco-socialist and eco-anarchist authors have praised the efforts of the Zapatistas to construct an ecological society.

Cultural Changes

The Zapatistas have reclaimed dignity and freedom for numerous indigenous people in Southern Mexico. They have been involved with preserving the language and culture of the Tojolabal, Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Chol, Zoque and Castilian people. Throwing many holidays, music shows and festivals in their honor. It is reported that social services within the Zapatista communities are more accessible to indigenous people and there is a smaller degree of racism among the population.

Zapatistas have also made many strides to abolish patriarchal culture from the region. The 1994 Revolutionary Law of Women, women have a right to work at any job they choose, to reproductive freedom, and formal gender equality. One person reported on the changing conditions of gender equality:

A Basque friend I met in Chiapas a couple of years ago told me that what had impressed him the most during his last visit to the Zapatista communities was the position of women. The Basque comrade had come to Chiapas for the first time in 1996, two years after the uprising, and he could still vividly remember that women used to walk 100 meters behind their husbands, and whenever the husband would stop, they would stop as well to maintain their distance. Women would be exchanged for a cow or a corn field when they were married off—not always to the man of their choice. The situation has been very neatly depicted in the Zapatista movie Corazon del Tiempo.

Almost 20 years later, my Basque friend returned to Chiapas for the first grade of the Escuelita Zapatista. This time he would freely dance with the promotoras after the events, while some of the highest-ranking EZLN commanders—or to be more precise for the lovers of statistics: 50 percent of the Commanders of the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee—are actually women.

In addition, women are now forming their own cooperatives contributing to family and community income; they are becoming the promoters of education (teachers, that is), nurses and doctors; and they serve as members of the Good Government Councils, or Juntas de Buen Gobierno, and as guerrilleras.

Let me give you another example that speaks for itself: In one of the Zapatista caracoles, there is now a music band called Otros Amores (“Other Loves”). Otros Amores is the phrase the Zapatistas use for the members of the LGBTQ community. All this in a previously deeply conservative, machista region (and country). Just try to imagine something similar in the rest of Mexico—or wherever you may be coming from!

Women also make up about a quarter of the EZLN. The Good Government Board in the Zapatistas' region of La Realidad has seen an increase in women membership. The first term had only one woman out of the 24 members. The second term had 5 women, and the third term had 12 women, or 50 percent. The sixth declaration of the Lacandon Jungle shows solidarity for:

"women, young people, the indigenous, homosexuals, lesbians, transsexual persons, migrants and many other groups who exist all over the world but who we do not see until they shout enough already of being despised”.

Criticism

There is plenty of legitimate criticism that Left-Libertarians can make of the Zapatistas whilst still acknowledging their incredibly contributions to Left-Libertarianism. For some, their attempt to exit capitalism has been significant, but not far enough, still practicing a degree of wage labor and rent. They have also been criticised by environmentalists for their practices of deforestation and hostility towards vegetarianism. Even other indigenous activists have criticised them for logging traditional land and coming into conflict over resources with other indigenous communities.

See Also

• Zapatista Army of National Liberation
• Zapatista Revolution
• Neo-Zapatismo
• Zapatismo
• Chiapas Conflict
• Mexico