By Mariana Mora | Originally published in Spanish by La Jornada

Over the course of three decades, Zapatismo has managed to break through again and again into what appears to be the inevitable destiny of a historical outcome. Just when everything seems to be firmly agreed between those who cling to power and exercise violence, the rebel army and its support bases act in such a way that political inertia takes an unexpected turn. They cause exhaust leaks that bypass dead ends. At the same time, instead of predetermining the course of these counterstories, they cultivate conditions of openness. That is in part due to the transcendence of Zapatismo and its continued relevance. The commemorative gathering that was held between December 30, 2023 and January 2, 2024 activated that characteristic capacity of theirs.

The state of Chiapas, like the rest of the country, if not the world, is going through extremely complex terrain. On top of long-term colonial violence, layers of paramilitarism, organized crime, extractivist policies and development megaprojects are being heaped on. These generate landscapes criss-crossed by territorial dispossession, forced displacement and socio-environmental destruction. Faced with a highly constrained scenario, the commemorative events in the Dolores Hidalgo caracol, instead of responding to the situation, transcended their limits.

The speech given by Subcomandante Moisés ignored the electoral context, the proposals of the pre-candidates for the federal Presidency and state government, he avoided naming the actors who activate violence in the country. The commemorative event took on another meaning, it extended towards a horizon marked by the dignified life of Dení, that girl who will be born in 120 years, the protagonist of the third part of the series of communiques published by the EZLN between October and December 2023.

Acting from the possibilities of life to seven generations requires reinventing how the actions of a rebel army manifest themselves in the present. If its function is to defend life-existence in common, this is achieved, not by showing off a political muscle, nor by provoking a fight between roosters, but at the rhythm of a cúmbia. The militiamen marched, with the discipline that all military training requires, to the songs of Los Ángeles Azules and Celso Piña. From this same impulse the militiawomen danced the ska of Panteón Rococó. This is how collective vitality is cared for in scenarios saturated by the presence of the security forces of the Mexican State, the private armies of organized crime and the paramilitaries. It is an antidote to genocide.

At the end of the music, Subcomandante Moisés ordered from the stage: Shield formation! The hundreds of militiamen formed a circle that they asked everyone to enter: first the support bases, followed by the visitors. In that expanded space of protection they wrapped us in enough air to breathe their invitation to seek and build the sense of commonality among everyone.

The common was the central concept in which the commemoration rooted the future. The common adds dimensions and densifies the exercise of autonomy over the last 25 years. The common is not established through property, not even collective property, but it is no one’s territory because it belongs to everyone, such as the lands recovered after the 1994 uprising. Collective belonging and socio-natural relations are woven by through the relationships that care for and sustain life-existence. They require active and constant participation outside the State and its institutions. The common is in turn the meeting space. It manifests itself in the cross stitches of an embroidery in which the threads come together without any of them being subsumed or hidden among the others. What is the common is the web of threads capable of supporting much more than its own weight. Subcomandante Moisés referred in Tseltal to the dignified existence of life, to the lekil kuxlejal, and to the land that in turn is the people and is the whole, expressed through lum k’inal. They are the elements that his grandparents and great-great-grandparents have defended, elements that constitute that basis of what is common in Mayan territory. They are in turn a reference to creating the common from one’s own and linking various geographies.

The set of steps marked by the cúmbia, the embrace of the militia circle and the interpellation of the common produced an essential turning point in the face of current extreme violence. The common further distances the rebel army from the revolutionary genealogies that gave rise to it, transforming how that revolution is created. Perhaps it is one of the results of the internal critical reflection in which the EZLN and its support bases have been immersed in recent years.

The Zapatistas do not solve the challenges we face now. They offer more questions than answers. The tasks are immense, the path extensive. The guide is the book of living memory of those who were absent, including those who fell 500, 40 and 30 years ago. In his speech, Subcomandante Moisés insisted that although poetry, painting and art are important, they are not enough. The important thing is the action. But in this case, it is precisely the poetic embodied in the commemorative acts that allowed us to glimpse the possible in order to transcend the limits imposed by the present.

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Mariana Mora is a professor and researcher at the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (Ciesas, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social) and author of the book Kuxlejal Politics: Indigenous Autonomy, Race, and Decolonizing Research in Zapatista Communities

“Defend life to the rhythm of cúmbia” was translated by the Chiapas Support Committee from the Spanish. Originally published by La Jornada here, January 6, 2024: https://www.jornada.com.mx/2024/01/06/opinion/010a1pol