Visiting writer says Zapatista movement leaves ‘shiny path’

Duncan Earle, the co-author of “Uprising of Hope: Sharing the Zapatisma Journey to Alternative Development” gave a lecture Wednesday on his research centered on the Zapatista movement as a form of alternative development.

Earle, who specializes in working with indigenous people in Chiapas, Mexico, and Guatemala, has done field research and disaster relief in both areas for many years. He’s written close to 40 articles on the subject of Chiapas since the early ’80s.

His presentation, “The Zapatista Alternative: Challenging the Neo-Liberal Model in Mexico & Beyond,” during professor Ronald Loewe’s anthropology class, People of Mexico and Central America, focused on the Zapatistas from an ethnographical approach.

He discussed ways communities increase their educational capabilities and healthcare, have more equitable and functioning governments and develop an alternative form of economy. Earle referred to these communities as practicing “Zapitalismo” as opposed to “capitalismo” and what he defined as a form of socialized capitalism.

The Zapatistas, a revolutionary group based in Chiapas, Mexico whose social base is mostly indigenous, has been at war with the Mexican government for more than 10 years. Zapatista ideologies have crept out of the Zapatista areas and influenced local communities, as well as other countries in Latin America, such as Brazil and Argentina.

“Zapatismo is a movement whose theory is its practice,” Earle said. He said it doesn’t just happen on its own but that, “you have to do it. It takes commitment.”

Both Earle and Jeanne Simonelli, Earle’s colleague and co-author of “Uprising of Hope,” immersed themselves in Chiapas, speaking to both supporters and opponents of the Zapatista movement.

In understanding Zapatismo, it is a mistake to simply interview leaders — immersion into the culture is necessary, Earle said.

The Zapatistas’ symbol for governance is a snail.

“It’s slow, very well-grounded, if attacked it pulls itself in, and it leaves a shiny path behind,” Earle said. “And out of this comes democracy, liberty and justice.”

They have a rotational and participatory sense of leadership, Earle said.

“It’s the notion that every leader is an obstacle to leadership development. So if you have leaders in those leadership positions too long, then you’re not developing new leaders,” Earle said.

According to Earle, the Zapatistas do not want to be mistaken for terrorists. Its mask-wearing attire is related to the notion of anonymity.

“They like to think that they’re interchangeable parts, that they’re faceless,” he said.

Consensus about decisions is necessary at a community level in Zapatista culture, Earle said.

Subcomandante Marcos, the spokesman for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the comandancia have stayed out of civilian governance.

“They have really sequestered themselves away from everything except for security issues and of course talking to the outside world,” Earle said. “It’s always a very difficult balancing act between security issues, keeping the peace, keeping conflicts from happening and keeping their long-term ideals about a better society.”

Earle described the Zapatista movement as a “human revitalization movement,” as he pulled up his buttoned shirt to reveal a colorful Zapatista T-shirt with a slogan on its left side rather than on the chest. The shirt reveals words such as “rebelliousness,” “love,” “autonomy,” “equality” and “respect” attached to human organs.

On Jan. 1, 1994, the Zapatistas declared war on the Mexican government.

“They had a 13-day shooting war followed by a 15 years of co-evolution with civil society,” Earle said.

The violence ended and shifted to what Earle refers to as “the development wars,” which he defined as “the competition between the Mexican government doing very dependency-oriented development and the Zapatistas doing very autonomous-oriented development competing with each other for the hearts and minds of the Chiapan people.”

The Zapatistas, he said, realized it didn’t need the government’s permission to gain autonomy.

“Our way of gaining our indigenous rights and our rights to construct our own society are derived from our doing it,” Earle said.

Asides from being economically autonomous, the Zapatistas provide free medical attention to those who need it.

“The Zapatistas don’t believe we should profit by other people’s illness,” Earle said. “That it’s a social obligation of society to treat its ill people for free because, after all, when you’re ill is when you got the least resources.”

It trains the local people, and every community has two medical practitioners. Earle showed students a picture of a 21-year-old female with a third-grade education level, sawing up her mother-in law’s knee while her husband tells her jokes.

“Talk about a tense moment in surgery,” Earle said, jokingly.