Gustavo Esteva (Universidad de la Tierra)
Learning to Be Activated
In my view, Zapatismo is nowadays “the most radical, and perhaps
the most important, political initiative in the world…No contemporary political
or social movement has attracted public attention as Zapatismo has, in both
quantitative and qualitative terms.
None. The Zapatista rebellion,
Wallerstein wrote, “has been the most important social movement in the world,
the barometer and alarm clock for other anti-system movements around the world”
(La Jornada,
“But the Zapatistas continue to be a mystery and a paradox. Can
there be such a thing as a revolutionary group with no interest in seizing
power? Revolutionary leaders who refuse to hold any public post, now or in the
future? An army that fires words and civil disobedience, championing
non-violence? An organization profoundly rooted in its local culture with a
global scope? A group that is strongly affiliated with democratic principles,
and yet is democracy’s most radical critic? People profoundly rooted in ancient
Mayan traditions and yet immersed in contemporary ideas, problems, and
technologies? “Everything for everyone, nothing for us”, a principle daily
applied in their initiatives, includes power: they don’t want power, even
within their own communities, where the powers that be don’t dare to interfere.
What kind of movement is this? Is it possible to apply to them, to their ideas
and practices, conventional or alternative notions of Power or power? Do they
fit in the archetypal model of the Prince? How to deal with their ideas and
practices expressing their radical freedom, their fascinating notion of liberty
and liberation?
“One of the reasons why so many seem to want to forget Zapatism…is
the depth of their radicalism. The Zapatistas challenge in words and deeds
every aspect of the contemporary society. In revealing the root cause of the
current predicaments, they tear to tatters the framework of the economic
society (capitalism), the nation-state, formal democracy and all modern
institutions. They also render obsolete conventional ways and practices of
social and political movements and initiatives. In reconstructing the world
from the bottom up, they reveal the illusory or counterproductive nature of
changes conceived or implemented from the top down. Their path encourages
everywhere resistance to globalization and neoliberalism, and inspires
struggles for liberation. They also contribute to articulate those struggles.
“In my view, however, there is nothing about the Zapatistas more
important that their contribution to hope and imagination. For the Mahabharata,
“when hope is destroyed, great grief follows which, forsooth, is almost equal
to life itself” (Vol. XII, 186). For Iván Illich, “the Promethean ethos has now
eclipsed hope. Survival of the human race depends on its rediscovery as a
social force”. (Deschooling Society, London: Marion Boyars, 1972,
105). This is exactly what the Zapatistas have done: to rediscover hope. In
liberating hope from their intellectual and political prison, the Zapatistas
created the possibility of a renaissance.” (Celebration of Zapatismo, Penang:
Citizens International, 2004).
This is what I have been writing about the Zapatistas. Some of
their ways are clearly pertinent for all contemporary activists: Listening
while you walk and Walking at the pace of the slowest are in my view
the two most important lessons to learn with them. They timely revealed that
the Emperor had no clothes…and dared to derive from this awareness the
pertinent consequence: ¡Basta! Enough! To fully assume this
statement, and transform it into a political attitude, requires a lot of
courage and dignity.
Courage and dignity are the stuff defining APPO, the Asamblea
Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (The Popular Assembly of the Peoples of
Oaxaca). It is a social movement that comes from afar, from very Oaxacan
traditions of social struggle, but it is strictly contemporary in its nature
and perspectives and its views of the world. It owes is radical character to
its natural condition: it is at the level of the earth, close to the roots.
It’s acquired an insurrectional tint after trying all the legal and
institutional ways and finding the political routes that it traveled to be
blocked. But it does not dance to the songs played by the powers that be. It
composes its own music. It invents its path when there are no indications.
APPO is a political initiative of the Oaxacan people themselves
(not any leader or group), which established itself as the main player in the
political life of Oaxaca, and has expressed itself organizationally as an
assembly. The initiative started out in the form of a revolt and rebellion,
until it crystallized into a social and political movement of a radically new
kind. Born at the grassroots, from the deepest entrails of Oaxacan society, it
expressed a discontent as old as it was generalized, which found in Ulises Ruiz
(the corrupt, authoritarian, psychopathic governor) an apt emblem of all that
it wanted to change. Guided by a vigorous transformative impulse, it is
oriented toward the creation of a new society and brings to the world, in the
midst of a rarified political environment, a fresh and joyful wind of radical
change.
Both the Zapatistas and APPO have been for me, as for millions of
people, a continual source of inspiration. Fifty years ago I started my
activism. In the time of Che Guevara it naturally took the shape of a Latin
American would-be guerrillero. Once I learned non violence and thus
abandoned such path, I tried almost every form of activism, in very different
settings. In the 80s I learned to abandon the attitude of promotion (moving
the people in a certain direction), and replaced it with commotion/contagion:
moving one-self with the other and with the whole being, not only the mind.
This new attitude is an expression of radical hospitality – opening
heart and mind to the otherness of the other, opening one-self to an authentic
intercultural dialogue (even with the people of your own culture!).
Both the Zapatistas and APPO have confirmed and enriched my
conviction about non violence and the value of horizontality, of carefully
avoiding vertical and formal structures. They have been very important in the
final, radical renunciation to any form of social engineering. With them, I am
returning from the future, trying to avoid all attempts to hang our activities
for social transformation from any intellectual or ideological construction
about the future or the society as a whole, thus packing our images of both the
past and the future into a present of transformation.
Apparently, what the people may appreciate at this point, given
the current combination of their deep discontent, increasing awareness and
great courage, is the participation of activists ready to be activated by the
people themselves, activists humble enough as to surrender their own truths
(the statements through which they govern their own lives and attempt to govern
others) to the new truths emerging from the people themselves. At the same
time, they should be ready to fulfill a very important function: to
articulate people’s truths, giving to them the shape that can elicit in
them the pertinent Aha! effect and also become a source of hope.
The dominant meanings of terms like ‘power’,
‘freedom’, ‘justice’, ‘non-violence’ and ‘social change’ require a complete
overhaul. They were conceived for another era. The paradigms of the XX century
are now bankrupt. We cannot rule our lives with the ideological inventions of
the XIX century.
We need to fully recognize that our era is
dying. Evidences of the new era are
appearing everywhere, but they are perceived as anomalies of the old one, which
looks stronger than ever. We need to resist such images and refuse to fool
ourselves with them. Our role is perhaps to clearly articulate the options, in
all their diversity, and be ready to follow the social majorities in their
courageous path.
How can we change our daily lives today, in
creating a whole new world?
What can we do by ourselves without the
political parties or the government?
How can we organize our struggle and our
resistance in the mold of the society we want to create?