Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who
Speaker 1: Did Cool Stuff. You're a weekly reminder that whenever there's
Speaker 1: bad stuff happening, there are people doing good things too.
Speaker 1: And usually I'm like, and some of those people are
Speaker 1: morally compromised, and it's okay, or it's not necessarily okay,
Speaker 1: but it's okay that all kinds of people try and
Speaker 1: do things. I call the show Cool People Did Cool Stuff,
Speaker 1: but really, we're all cool people, and we're all doing
Speaker 1: cool stuff, and even if some of us are also
Speaker 1: doing uncool stuff, because actually we're all complicated people who
Speaker 1: do complicated stuff. I am your host, Margaret Kiljoy, the
Speaker 1: only person who can determine what is and isn't cool.
Speaker 1: And this week we're starting a series about the alter
Speaker 1: globalization movement that destroyed the neoliberal consensus and opened a
Speaker 1: crack in the facade of the neo colonial empire. It
Speaker 1: mean a lot of neo in this episode. People really
Speaker 1: liked using the word neo in the nineties, and then
Speaker 1: I think the Matrix just like killed all of that
Speaker 1: because they were like, yeah, we get it, you made it. Literally.
Speaker 1: Now there's like a literal guy named Neo and he's
Speaker 1: like the space Jesus. No, not space Jesus, computer Jesus.
Speaker 1: He's like, I don't know whatever, and a trans allegory,
Speaker 1: and like all good movies, it'll get turned into something
Speaker 1: terrible by writ wing people eventually. That's besides the point.
Speaker 1: As you might have noticed or remembered from part one,
Speaker 1: I am without a guest for this particular series because
Speaker 1: I wanted to keep real odd hours while researching and recording,
Speaker 1: and just to kind of mix things up a bit.
Speaker 1: I want to think my producer, Sophie Lickterman, my audio engineer,
Speaker 1: hi Eva. Eva's name isn't hi Eva, it's Eva, but
Speaker 1: everyone's to say hi to Eva hi Eva. And of
Speaker 1: course our theme music was written for us by unwoman
Speaker 1: in part one of this series a couple days ago
Speaker 1: or very more recently than that. If from my perspective
Speaker 1: and certainly my dog's perspective, who's going to go out
Speaker 1: as soon as I finished recording this. But I don't
Speaker 1: want to say exactly what he's going to go out
Speaker 1: to do because he's currently curled up by my feet
Speaker 1: and if I said the word, then he would think
Speaker 1: it's happening right now. Anyway, A couple days ago when
Speaker 1: you heard this, I talked about the rise of neoliberalism
Speaker 1: in the colonial core the UK and the USA, and
Speaker 1: how after the collapse of the USSR, neoliberalism rapidly began
Speaker 1: to spread around the globe. The end of the Cold
Speaker 1: War was heralded as the end of history. Society had
Speaker 1: found its final form, some people claimed, and that form
Speaker 1: was liberal aka capitalists. In this context democracy, Well, some
Speaker 1: people didn't want history to end. The end of the
Speaker 1: Cold War knocked out two of the three big polls
Speaker 1: of socialism. Democratic socialists took a real hit when there
Speaker 1: was no longer a USSR for them to look good against,
Speaker 1: and authoritarian socialist took a real hit when you know
Speaker 1: the USSR collapsed. But socialism might be best understood as
Speaker 1: a triangle. I have a bias towards thinking about things
Speaker 1: in triangle shape. The three points of the socialist triangle
Speaker 1: historically are anarchist or anarchistic socialism, authoritarian socialism, and democratic socialism.
Speaker 1: All three argue for public ownership of capital of the
Speaker 1: famed means of production. Anarchist socialism and authoritarian socialism are
Speaker 1: both revolutionary socialism in that they generally argue for directly
Speaker 1: seizing the means of production. Authoritarian socialism and democratic socialism
Speaker 1: are both Marxist and that their ideological lineage can be
Speaker 1: traced to Marx and before that, authoritarian socialism can be
Speaker 1: traced a Blanchy. But that is me nerding out and
Speaker 1: you do not have to remember that democratic socialists generally
Speaker 1: argue for working within the frameworks of democratic republics in
Speaker 1: order to move the government towards more socialist ends. This
Speaker 1: is why they aren't revolutionary. And with the fall of
Speaker 1: the USSR they thought they do really well. But instead
Speaker 1: it turns out capitalism was only playing nice with democratic
Speaker 1: socialism because democratic socialism was on its side of the
Speaker 1: Cold War against the USSR. As soon as the USSR fell,
Speaker 1: capitalism turned on its ally and destroyed it. It's not
Speaker 1: completely destroyed. I don't want to call that fight over.
Speaker 1: Democratic socialism still has an important role to play. But
Speaker 1: did the democratic socialist places took a real hit? And
Speaker 1: I am risky and oversimplifying things again. With authoritarian socialism
Speaker 1: knocked back and democratic socialism knocked back too, anarchists and
Speaker 1: anarchistic socialism stepped back into the ring. Bottom up socialism.
Speaker 1: This branch or pole or corner or whatever. Of socialism
Speaker 1: had been much more prominent in the nineteenth and early
Speaker 1: twentieth century, substantially more prominent than authoritarian socialism throughout much
Speaker 1: of the world. But after the Russian Civil War, by
Speaker 1: like nineteen twenty one, the Bolsheviks had staged their coup
Speaker 1: and put down the rest of the socialists. The authoritarian
Speaker 1: socialists came out on top of the socialist club, and
Speaker 1: you can see our long series about the Russian Civil
Speaker 1: War for war about that. Now, I want to be
Speaker 1: clear that the socialism that kicked in hard after the
Speaker 1: fall of the USSR was not anarchists with quotes in
Speaker 1: all ways, it was anarchist dick. There were and are
Speaker 1: plenty of self identified anarchists in this camp. But the
Speaker 1: thing that happened after the Cold War was that horizontally structured,
Speaker 1: direct action focus socialism came back to the center stage,
Speaker 1: and this time it called itself lots of different things,
Speaker 1: especially thanks to the strong grassroots and indigenous components. The
Speaker 1: actual group that really broke the end of history, the
Speaker 1: group that brought about the end of the end of history,
Speaker 1: came about in the kind of cool way that a
Speaker 1: bunch of horizontal militant democratic leftist groups have come into
Speaker 1: being a bunch of Marxist Leninist gorillas were like, you know,
Speaker 1: this Marxist Leninism thing isn't really working with us. We
Speaker 1: like ways of doing things better and created something syncretic
Speaker 1: and beautiful. It'll happen later with the Kurdish gorillas, but
Speaker 1: for now we're talking about how it happened in Mexico.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the Zapatistas. The Zapatistas take their name
Speaker 1: from Emiliano Zapata, a revolutionary leader from the Mexican Revolution.
Speaker 1: I am not going to side quest on him particularly hard,
Speaker 1: because I've been planning a Zapata and Pancho Villa episode
Speaker 1: since basically forever, or at least since I did the
Speaker 1: episode about the Maganistas, the indigenous anarchist movement that kicked
Speaker 1: off the Mexican Revolution. Suffice it to say that Emiliano
Speaker 1: Zapata was real interesting and specifically was into land reform,
Speaker 1: that thing where you take land away from the big
Speaker 1: rich landowners and redistribute it back out to individuals and communities.
Speaker 1: It was also probably queer, but I haven't done my
Speaker 1: deep dive on the guy yet, so I'll give you
Speaker 1: my verdict on that some other time. Zapatistas take their
Speaker 1: name from Zapata, but they're entirely their own thing. Their
Speaker 1: full and formal name is the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Speaker 1: The easy ln what the Zapatistas did and are still
Speaker 1: doing well. To quote SubCom Modante Marcos, the most famous
Speaker 1: spokesperson of the Zapatistas, who's also a brilliant writer, I
Speaker 1: just want to like point that out. He's actually one
Speaker 1: of the best selling authors in Mexico, and it's written
Speaker 1: a ton of stuff. And I've written like a novel
Speaker 1: that he co wrote. It's called The Uncomfortable Dead, I think,
Speaker 1: and it was with Paco Agnacio Dabio Dos. Anyway, he's
Speaker 1: a very poetic writer. Quote. It doesn't appear in any
Speaker 1: written texts, but rather the ones that haven't yet been
Speaker 1: written and yet have been read for generations. But that's
Speaker 1: where the Zapatistas have learned that if you stop scratching
Speaker 1: at the crack, it closes back up the wall heals itself.
Speaker 1: That's why you must keep at it, not only to
Speaker 1: deepen the crack, but above all, so that it does
Speaker 1: not clothes. But if there's no crack, well we'll make
Speaker 1: it by scratching, biting, kicking, hitting with our hands, head
Speaker 1: an entire body in order to make in history what
Speaker 1: we are a wound. Then someone will walk by and
Speaker 1: see us seize the Zapatistas hitting ourselves hard against that wall.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that passer by is someone who thinks that they
Speaker 1: know everything. They pause and shake their head and disapproval,
Speaker 1: passing judgment and declaring, you will never bring down the
Speaker 1: wall that way. But sometimes, ever so often, someone else,
Speaker 1: an other will walk by. They pause, look understand, stare
Speaker 1: down at their feet, at their hands, their fists, their shoulders,
Speaker 1: and their body, and then decide this spot is as
Speaker 1: good as any. We'll be able to hear them as
Speaker 1: they make a mark on the unmovable wall, if only
Speaker 1: their silence was audible, and they go at it end quote.
Speaker 1: And so the Zapatistas, by their own estimation, they've created
Speaker 1: an opening, a crack in the wall of the machinery
Speaker 1: of domination. And I just I really like that metaphor.
Speaker 1: You know, we can get really hard on ourselves about
Speaker 1: like not winning, right. We haven't created a you know,
Speaker 1: socialist utopia of whatever flavor. But our job sometimes is
Speaker 1: just to hold open a space and show that this
Speaker 1: is possible and that fighting against this is possible. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there's cracks in the other direction too, where even when
Speaker 1: you have a wall of anti capitalist podcasting, there's a
Speaker 1: wound in it, kind of a little way that the
Speaker 1: dark gets in, you know. We call those ad breaks.
Speaker 1: There's one. So where did the Zapatistas come from. Well,
Speaker 1: people have been fighting colonization since colonization first reached the
Speaker 1: shores of Turtle Island. But the most immediate organizational precursor
Speaker 1: to the Zapatistas is the Fueraes de libreasi on Nassanal
Speaker 1: the National Liberation Forces the FLN, a much more traditional
Speaker 1: Marxist Leninist gorilla group. I've read one source that says
Speaker 1: that this group started in Monterey in northeastern Mexico, and
Speaker 1: another that claims it started in Chiapas. I'd believe the former.
Speaker 1: I believe it started in Monterey. They started in August
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, after the nineteen sixty eight Flatal Local massacre,
Speaker 1: when the Mexican Armed Forces gonned down three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty to five hundred students in Mexico City. Basically people
Speaker 1: looked at that shit and were like, Yeah, why are
Speaker 1: we just protesting when they're shooting us, we should be
Speaker 1: shooting two and become hard to find, and so they
Speaker 1: formed the FLN. After a few years, some folks from
Speaker 1: the FLEN made their way down to Chiapas and set
Speaker 1: up in the jungle. Chiapas is a Mexican state down
Speaker 1: in the southeastern corner of the country, right up against Guatemala.
Speaker 1: About five and a half million people live there, so
Speaker 1: roughly the population of Finland, more than the total population
Speaker 1: of Ireland, and about two thirds the population of New
Speaker 1: York City. There's a rainforest in Chiapas, the Lacandan Jungle,
Speaker 1: that crosses the imaginary line between Mexico and Guatemala. There
Speaker 1: are a ton of Mayan ruins in the area, and
Speaker 1: an awful lot of different indigenous groups still live there.
Speaker 1: After several years of not really getting anywhere in the FLEN,
Speaker 1: now in Chiapas six folks were like, Okay, we're still
Speaker 1: part of the FLN, but this branch is called the EAZLN.
Speaker 1: So the EASYLN was founded on November seventeenth, nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: for two years, this small group of people lived in
Speaker 1: near total isolation in the mountains, just learning how to
Speaker 1: live there basically, and they didn't really make enough connections
Speaker 1: with the other people who lived there. In nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: a few more folks showed up, including a man who
Speaker 1: would one day become maybe the only famous Zappatista Subcovedante Marcos,
Speaker 1: the author that I was talking about before, who would
Speaker 1: go on to become its spokesperson. Now, the Flen didn't
Speaker 1: show up to find a blank slate in Chiapas, and
Speaker 1: I think that this part is really important. The book
Speaker 1: The Zapatista Experience by Jerome Beshett picks the start of
Speaker 1: the Zapatista story as October nineteen seventy four and an
Speaker 1: indigenous congress that brought together more than a thousand delegates
Speaker 1: from all sorts of indigenous communities in Chiapas. All sorts
Speaker 1: of different organizing bodies came from this meeting working together
Speaker 1: to try to turn shit around for people. And like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can say that the easy Eleen came from the Flen,
Speaker 1: and that is like technically organizationally true, but you're talking
Speaker 1: about like six people came from the atheln you're talking
Speaker 1: about the overwhelming majority of Zapatistas. This is more Their
Speaker 1: actual background is indigenous organizing, the Indigenous Congress, and I
Speaker 1: think it's important at this Congress they came together from
Speaker 1: a variety of positions. One important part of their organizing
Speaker 1: was future friend of the pod liberation theology. I think
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about liberation theology here and there.
Speaker 1: We talked about Brazil a while back. Anyway, Liberation theology
Speaker 1: is a branch of Catholic theology the fights to liberate
Speaker 1: oppressed people basically that have been growing in Latin America
Speaker 1: for a couple decades at that point, and had of
Speaker 1: course syncretized with indigenous theological structures. Then also at this congress,
Speaker 1: there are the Maoists, the northerners who came down from
Speaker 1: central and northern Mexico to help. They were part of
Speaker 1: an organization called Proletarian Line. But at least according to
Speaker 1: some of what I've read, the Proletarian Line folks, the
Speaker 1: Maoists they were like kind of into government, right like,
Speaker 1: because they want to create a government, and so they
Speaker 1: started working alongside the existing governmental power structures in the area,
Speaker 1: which caused a lot of tension and infighting. Throughout the seventies,
Speaker 1: all these indigenous groups started getting a ton of shit done,
Speaker 1: getting land redistributed, which has always been a major rural
Speaker 1: and leftist and decolonial goal. Land redistribution basically get land
Speaker 1: out of the hands of single rich people, the big
Speaker 1: plantations and shit. It's been the goal almost everywhere forever,
Speaker 1: and the American left needs to take a lesson from
Speaker 1: the rest of the Americas about that. The Indigenous goal
Speaker 1: was to break down the finca system the big est
Speaker 1: states and replace it with the traditional hido system, the
Speaker 1: communal lands. They tried and were repressed, and they tried
Speaker 1: and then were repressed, and occasionally they made gains, and
Speaker 1: so it went, and honestly, so it goes. While the
Speaker 1: maoist faction of the organizing was kind of losing steam.
Speaker 1: People were enamored with the idea of the state, and
Speaker 1: so they're negotiating heavily with a state, and people kept
Speaker 1: arguing about who got to be leaders, and eventually the
Speaker 1: infighting split that whole part of things apart. In nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, probably not coincidentally, the same year the easyln
Speaker 1: the Zapatista's got their start, although on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I've read that the Zapatista's at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: ZLN was like so disconnected from what was going on
Speaker 1: that maybe it was completely a coincidence. I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: or maybe this thing that I read was kind of
Speaker 1: exaggerating how isolated the Zapatistas were because to make the
Speaker 1: point about how when they started really working with people
Speaker 1: in the region, Because in nineteen eighty five, the EASYLN
Speaker 1: started recruiting or finally started succeeding in recruiting, and basically
Speaker 1: some folks would leave their villages to come live in
Speaker 1: the gorilla camps, while others would stay put and build
Speaker 1: the infrastructural base for the resistance movement in the communities
Speaker 1: they were already from. This is the clandestine period of
Speaker 1: the EAZLN, which was definitely necessary. It's called the Mexican
Speaker 1: dirty War because there's a lot of different dirty wars,
Speaker 1: where basically it's when the government fights dirty and just
Speaker 1: like kills a ton of people, usually with the US's help.
Speaker 1: The CIA is heavily involved in all this shit. The
Speaker 1: Mexican government was just assassinating hundreds of dissidents during that
Speaker 1: time and locking people up. As the government kept showing
Speaker 1: itself to be more and more fucked up, people got
Speaker 1: more and more sick of trying to play the liberal
Speaker 1: democracy game, and more and more people joined the Zapatistas.
Speaker 1: Soon there were thousands of them. There was one catch, though,
Speaker 1: that top down thing, the vanguard party that shows up
Speaker 1: to the jungle to teach everyone how to fight, that
Speaker 1: wasn't going to work for people. Marcos describes this as
Speaker 1: the quote first defeat of the EAZLN, which he is
Speaker 1: quite glad happened. He's quite glad the EAZLN was defeated.
Speaker 1: He wrote, quote, we were not teaching anyone to resist. Instead,
Speaker 1: we became students in a school of resistance, taught by
Speaker 1: those who had been doing it for five centuries. Still,
Speaker 1: though at this time they were ostensibly under the direction
Speaker 1: of the FLN, they were just starting to really build
Speaker 1: their own autonomy and democratic structures. Where they were and
Speaker 1: what they probably didn't have, but you, dear listener, do
Speaker 1: have a chance to have. Maybe they had it too. Honestly,
Speaker 1: advertising's kind of everywhere. This is an ad break, that's
Speaker 1: what's happening. I'm pivoting to ads. Here they are and
Speaker 1: we're back. Shit was heating up in Mexico at this point.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty eight, a man named Carlos Salinas Dicotari,
Speaker 1: usually just called Salinas, won the presidential election by a
Speaker 1: pretty transparent voter fraud. The New York Times refers to
Speaker 1: it as an open secret that this was fraud, and
Speaker 1: this was more or less fully confirmed in two thousand
Speaker 1: and four when some memoirs from the time were released.
Speaker 1: Everyone knew that the election was stolen from a leftist candidate.
Speaker 1: But Selinus held onto power and began to institute that
Speaker 1: neoliberalization shit fast and furious. His new government was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're just going to privatize all the communal lands. Fuck you.
Speaker 1: People marched against these policies. Tens of thousands of people
Speaker 1: marched against these policies, and there was a march of
Speaker 1: ten thousand indigenous folks that was heavily Easyln marching undercover
Speaker 1: in these big marches because at the time, of course,
Speaker 1: they couldn't be open about doing all these things because
Speaker 1: they were an armed gorilla group living in the hills Glendestinely,
Speaker 1: the Easyln held a referendum among their people and the
Speaker 1: overwhelming majority were like, yeah, no more hiding and waiting,
Speaker 1: armed uprising police, Which makes sense. Your government has just
Speaker 1: been completely stolen. You know it had been stolen before
Speaker 1: that too, him pretty sure. But anyway, the fact that
Speaker 1: this is a reference is actually pretty important because Marxist
Speaker 1: Leninists generally practice something called democratic centralism. The basic idea
Speaker 1: of democratic centralism is after something has been voted on,
Speaker 1: everyone has to go along with it, and this is
Speaker 1: to keep parties from splitting. It obviously doesn't work Leftist parties,
Speaker 1: Marxist parties in particular, famously split all the time. But theoretically,
Speaker 1: democratic centralism could be a form of direct democracy in
Speaker 1: which people vote on the actual issues and then everyone
Speaker 1: agrees to go along with the majority vote. In practice,
Speaker 1: democratic centralism means that the party leaders are elected and
Speaker 1: they decide what is to be done, and everyone has
Speaker 1: to obey their orders. So it's worse than the American
Speaker 1: system in terms of democratic process, which is saying something
Speaker 1: because we're not a particularly democratic nation as far as
Speaker 1: things go here in that we elect lawmakers and don't
Speaker 1: vote on issues, and money votes every day, and you know,
Speaker 1: there's so much money in lobbying and all that stuff whatever.
Speaker 1: But in this case there's no checks and balances. You
Speaker 1: elect the leader, the leader decides what to do. That's
Speaker 1: what Trumpists are practicing right now is democratic centralism. This Zapatistas,
Speaker 1: though they didn't let their elected dictators dictate, They held
Speaker 1: a referendum. They worked to find out what people actually wanted,
Speaker 1: even though they were ostensibly under the command of the FLN.
Speaker 1: So in January nineteen ninety three, the easy ELN told
Speaker 1: the FLN they were going to do an armed uprising,
Speaker 1: and the FLN was like, well, what do we say. No,
Speaker 1: the easy LN was like, now We're doing it. At
Speaker 1: this point, they formed a new governing group amongst themselves,
Speaker 1: the Indigenous Clandestine Revolutionary Committee, and started to break the
Speaker 1: chains of Marxist Leninist leadership. The new committee was led
Speaker 1: by indigenous leaders referred to as commandantes. They built a
Speaker 1: democratic structure, laws were not imposed from the top down.
Speaker 1: By the end of nineteen ninety three, for example, they
Speaker 1: had passed the Women's Revolutionary Law, which had taken four
Speaker 1: months of campaigning around various villages and communities to build
Speaker 1: up a consensus for this law to be passed. For
Speaker 1: adopting women's rights and centering them as the revolution within
Speaker 1: the revolution. And this is a ten point program. The
Speaker 1: first one reads, quote, women have their right to participate
Speaker 1: in the revolutionary struggle in the place and at the
Speaker 1: level that their capacity and will dictate without any discrimination
Speaker 1: based on race, creed, color, or political affiliation. Other things
Speaker 1: in the ten points include things like women get paid
Speaker 1: fairly and can work, and women have the right to
Speaker 1: decide how many children they will have and take care of.
Speaker 1: There's no forced marriages, guest to education, no beating women, etc.
Speaker 1: Women are fucking equal. Basically, they did all of this
Speaker 1: while they were in the middle of planning one of
Speaker 1: the most important military attacks in history. Feminism didn't take
Speaker 1: a back seat, Democracy didn't take a back seat. Equal
Speaker 1: rights and horizontalism were the revolution, alongside gorilla training in
Speaker 1: the hills, of course. Meanwhile, NAFTA, the North American Free
Speaker 1: Trade Agreement, was set to go into effect on January first,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four. On that day, Mexico was finally going
Speaker 1: to get to be fully modernized part of the big
Speaker 1: Boys club at the expense of their poor. So those
Speaker 1: Zapatistas were like, yeah, best one, we'll do it. Six
Speaker 1: five hundred indigenous people were armed and ready to go,
Speaker 1: and they took off at dawn. They wore balaclavas over
Speaker 1: their faces and red bandanas around their necks. They captured
Speaker 1: four cities in Chiappas, although I've also read five, including
Speaker 1: the place that was the cultural capital and previously used
Speaker 1: to be the governmental capital until eighteen ninety two. San Cristobaldeles,
Speaker 1: the military commander of the San Cristobal force, was a
Speaker 1: woman who I believe was a cook, although I haven't
Speaker 1: yet figured out her name. The implication what I read
Speaker 1: was that her name was being left out of history
Speaker 1: on purpose, not as a racer, but for her sake.
Speaker 1: But I don't know. It might be written out somewhere.
Speaker 1: There are so many books on the Zapatistas, and I'm trying,
Speaker 1: and I've been reading and learning about them the entire time.
Speaker 1: I've been a radical, because these are the people who
Speaker 1: set up the conditions that radicalized me. As they marched
Speaker 1: on the cities, their rallying cry was yabasta. It's usually
Speaker 1: translated as enough or enough is enough, and I like,
Speaker 1: enough is enough. Subcommadante Marcos took to the balcony of
Speaker 1: a government building and read the first Declaration of the
Speaker 1: Lacandan Jungle, which declared war on the federal army and
Speaker 1: demanded the removal of President Salinas the usurper. They called
Speaker 1: on Mexicans to struggle for quote work, land, housing, food, health, education, independence, freedom, democracy,
Speaker 1: justice and peace. In that declaration, they were very clear
Speaker 1: about where the movement came from. It says we are
Speaker 1: the product of five hundred years of struggle. Their original
Speaker 1: plan was to take Chiapas and keep marching towards Mexico City,
Speaker 1: planning to do something very similar to what the anarchist
Speaker 1: Maganestas had done nearly one hundred years earlier in the
Speaker 1: lead up to the Mexican Revolution, liberate territories and bring
Speaker 1: the revolution with them as they went. Their plan was
Speaker 1: to take control of the means of production away from
Speaker 1: the capitalists and give it to the regional governments, organize
Speaker 1: free elections, redistribute land, and institute the Women's Revolutionary Law.
Speaker 1: The Zapatistas had an advantage on their initial attack. The
Speaker 1: Mexican army was either drunk or hungover from New Year
Speaker 1: celebrations overall, and was slow to respond. This still wasn't
Speaker 1: an easy Fight. The Easy Alend chief of staff Subcome
Speaker 1: Dante Pedro, died while taking the city of Las Margaritas.
Speaker 1: He was one of the founders of the Easy Elen,
Speaker 1: a thin and blonde, hunchbacked man who was thirty one
Speaker 1: when he died. The Zapotitisa has also captured a general
Speaker 1: at his ranch, put him on trial, and released him
Speaker 1: with the punishment that he would have to quote live
Speaker 1: until the end of his days, with the pain and
Speaker 1: shame of having received the forgiveness and kindness of those
Speaker 1: people who have long been humiliated, kidnapped, robbed, and killed.
Speaker 1: But Mexico deployed twelve thousand soldiers and the Zapatistas were
Speaker 1: wildly outnumbered. Worse, the government was willing to just kill
Speaker 1: the shit out of their own civilians as a solution
Speaker 1: to the problem. After four days of fighting, the Zapatistas
Speaker 1: largely retreated from population centers to avoid putting more civilians
Speaker 1: in danger, and while the people of Mexico didn't rise
Speaker 1: up to overthrow their unelected leader, they did start a
Speaker 1: massive campaign demanding that the government cease fire, and by
Speaker 1: January twelfth, Selinus ordered a ceasefire and the Zapatista has
Speaker 1: announced that they were suspending their offensive. They stopped because
Speaker 1: it seemed to be what the people of Mexico wanted
Speaker 1: after ten years of preparing for war. The war lasted
Speaker 1: twelve days. The era of fire was over. Now was
Speaker 1: the era of the word. For several months, the Zapatistas
Speaker 1: were in peace talks with the government, but by early
Speaker 1: March they were like, all right, you've said a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff, mostly really negative, but we've got to go
Speaker 1: talk to our people and see how they feel about
Speaker 1: what you've said, because they see themselves as literal representatives
Speaker 1: of the people, not the embodiment of the people's will
Speaker 1: in some like czarist or authoritarian way, but literally like, well, no,
Speaker 1: I've been delegated to go talk to you all, but
Speaker 1: I don't make decisions. The people make decisions. I merely
Speaker 1: communicate with you about those decisions, which is what actual
Speaker 1: democracy looks like, and you don't get to know it
Speaker 1: because we live in where we live. Meanwhile, Mexico itself
Speaker 1: was in crisis. This one party pri had been ruling
Speaker 1: Mexico for decades and each president would serve one term
Speaker 1: and then pick their successor. But Selinas a successor was
Speaker 1: supposed to be this guy, Luis Donaldo Consolio Murrieta, but
Speaker 1: he started drifting from the party line. He started talking
Speaker 1: about the corruption of the government, he started talking about
Speaker 1: indigenous rights, and then on March twenty third, nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: he was assassinated. It is generally understood that the pri
Speaker 1: had him killed. The Zapatistas put out their second Declaration
Speaker 1: from the Lacandan Jungle, which is a call for a
Speaker 1: national Democratic Convention, where six thousand delegates from various organizations
Speaker 1: showed up to discuss building a bottom up democratic movement
Speaker 1: in the country. I love that the Zapatistas have always
Speaker 1: been in every tool in the toolbox kind of group.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about it more in future episodes. Though occasionally
Speaker 1: like support candidates in traditional politics, right, and they're also
Speaker 1: totally fine with occasionally you got to invade some cities,
Speaker 1: and they also are like, but we're also going to
Speaker 1: be working the whole time to build a bottom up
Speaker 1: democratic movement, and you know that rules and is where
Speaker 1: most of their successes come from. Although again not knocking
Speaker 1: the fact that they try every tool in the toolbox.
Speaker 1: By December, the Zapatistas took control of thirty territories in
Speaker 1: Chiapas and declared them territories and rebellion. This was the
Speaker 1: foundation of what's become the autonomous municipalities, which will forever
Speaker 1: be the real legacy of the Zapatistas. Taking over the
Speaker 1: big cities was cool and necessary by my estimation. But
Speaker 1: setting up an actual alternative society and defending it, that's
Speaker 1: the reason everyone knows who these people are. I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly when these signs went up, but when you
Speaker 1: drive into the autonomous territories, the signs along the road
Speaker 1: read quote, you are in Zapatista territory, where the people
Speaker 1: command and the government obeys. And everything I've learned leads
Speaker 1: me to believe that they mean it when they say
Speaker 1: that these autonomous regions. Of course terrified the government, which
Speaker 1: you know, wants to be the governing body. They don't
Speaker 1: want autonomous regions, they want to be the government. The
Speaker 1: state was like, all right, fuck you, we're just going
Speaker 1: to kill you. But they scoured the jungle and couldn't
Speaker 1: find the leaders, despite arresting a lot of suspected Zapatista
Speaker 1: sympathizers around the country. This is the advantage of having
Speaker 1: spent ten years building a gorilla base of operations, they
Speaker 1: did this crackdown where they were arresting sympathizers and shit
Speaker 1: in classic government way where they were like, oh, we're
Speaker 1: just looking to talk, but instead they would just arrest
Speaker 1: everyone and try and destroy the movement. They failed, and
Speaker 1: this is a really common thing too, when you try
Speaker 1: to exert power against power, they'll be like, fuck, you
Speaker 1: would kill and then when they can't kill you, they're like,
Speaker 1: just kidding, but we're like friends, Let's just talk it
Speaker 1: out as friends. So by March nineteen ninety five, the
Speaker 1: government was back to the negotiating table. It helped that
Speaker 1: the Zapatistas had support all over the country. When the
Speaker 1: government docks the now famous mask spokesperson Marcos and put
Speaker 1: out a warrant for his arrest with like his legal
Speaker 1: name or whatever, ten thousand people, tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: people marched in Mexico City saying we are all Marcos
Speaker 1: and so. All the while, while all these various failed
Speaker 1: and halfway successful negotiations are happening with the Mexican State,
Speaker 1: the Zapatistas started doing organizing and negotiating. It was probably
Speaker 1: even more important they started organizing and negotiating with the
Speaker 1: international community. They met with leftists and anarchists and grassroots
Speaker 1: activists of all sorts. There were a series of international consultas,
Speaker 1: and the worldwide alter globalization was born. How they did
Speaker 1: all of that and what it meant for everyone, including
Speaker 1: eventually me, we'll keep talking about next week. Anyway, that's
Speaker 1: part two of the series. I actually don't know how
Speaker 1: long this series will be. I'm guessing four parts, but
Speaker 1: we'll see. It depends on how many side quests I
Speaker 1: go down, because there's so many cool parts of the
Speaker 1: ultra globalization movement, Like, of course I want to tell
Speaker 1: you about the history of the Black Bloc, but I
Speaker 1: also want to tell you about all the like you know,
Speaker 1: radical clowns and people who put on giant inflatable tubes
Speaker 1: and use that to attack the police, and all of
Speaker 1: the different like farmers movements. And we've talked about some
Speaker 1: parts of the altglobalization movement already, you know, listen to
Speaker 1: our episode about the Argentinian cooperative movement and how as
Speaker 1: the Argentinian government fell into collapse as a result of
Speaker 1: all the austerity measures, how people just started taking over
Speaker 1: factories and running them on their own, because it turns
Speaker 1: out you actually don't need owners to get things done.
Speaker 1: You can get things done with the people who know
Speaker 1: how to do things, which are the work. And there's
Speaker 1: just so many cool parts to this story and it
Speaker 1: makes me really happy to get to tell you, well,
Speaker 1: this is another one of those episodes I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about ever since the very beginning of the show, and
Speaker 1: so I'm I'm glad to finally kind of take the
Speaker 1: time to do this deep dive. And thanks for coming
Speaker 1: along with me on this deep dive. As far as
Speaker 1: things to plug, I guess I'll keep plugging Strangers in
Speaker 1: a Tangled Wilderness, which is an anarchist worker cooperative publisher
Speaker 1: that I work with. We put out podcasts, we put
Speaker 1: out books, we put out other things, audiobooks, zines. One
Speaker 1: of the big things that we do is we put
Speaker 1: out zines of a lot of different types. We have,
Speaker 1: for example, our Skills Zine series and our Skills Zine series.
Speaker 1: We make all these zines as available as cheap as
Speaker 1: possible to buy in bulk from us or you can
Speaker 1: download and print them yourself. And we have like a
Speaker 1: first aid one and we have one about I think
Speaker 1: it's called doing it yourself or something. I don't have
Speaker 1: it in front of me. You think I would have
Speaker 1: this in front, but I don't. We have a zine
Speaker 1: about self managed abortion that hopefully won't well whatever. Actually,
Speaker 1: I hope it's useful to people like it's great and
Speaker 1: that's Strangers in a Tangled Olderness And you can find
Speaker 1: it at Tangled Olderness dot org or you can support
Speaker 1: on Patreon. If you give us ten dollars a month,
Speaker 1: we will mail you a zine anywhere in the world
Speaker 1: every month. And it's cool. And also all those zines
Speaker 1: are free if I'm want to read them well on
Speaker 1: the internet. All right, I'll see y'all next week. Bye.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
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Speaker 1: your podcasts.