By Gilberto López y Riva | La Jornada

In Mexico, a democratic transition does not take place with the collapse of the state party regime, upon the arrival of Vicente Fox to the Presidency of the Republic. There is a rotation of State parties, in which there is systemic continuity, a mere replacement of political elites, within the framework of what we have called supervised democracy.

In this context of a failed democratic transition, the rebellion of the Zapatista Mayas of January 1, 1994 erupted, on a global level, at a time when the capitalist system was celebrating its triumph over real socialism, and even when one of their spokesmen referred to the end of history. This movement represented an important oxygenation of the movements of rebellion and emancipation, of construction and strengthening of concrete utopias, which is being felt, 30 years after the historic armed uprising.

The rebellion of the indigenous peoples imposed on the national question the urgent debate on their rights to self-determination and autonomy. Which has been systematically denied by the Europeanizing and pro-American oligarchic elites, and by a mestizocracy, all rooted in deeply racist neocolonialist mentalities. It also made evident the need to accept the multilingual, multicultural and pluriethnic character of the majority of the nations of our America, including Mexico.

This rebellion opens the way to a transformation of the autonomous subjects themselves, that is, the indigenous peoples. This gave rise to the Zapatista governments of leading by obeying, revolutionary women’s laws, and the participation of young people in all instances of community power. All of this imbued with a remarkable ethical coherence that is consolidated with the application, in everyday life and political life, of Zapatista principles, which contrast with the pragmatism, deterioration and amnesia of the anti-capitalist strategies of the institutionalized left.

On the path of a failed negotiation with the Mexican State, which continues to this day, the Zapatista Mayas established an alliance, strengthened during all these decades, with the indigenous resistance movement at the national level, with the founding of the National Indigenous Congress (Congreso Nacional Indígena) in 1996. This alliance is further uplifted during Marichuy’s campaign to achieve the candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic in 2018 and, above all, in the current movement in defense of the territories against recolonization, militarization and use of organized crime as another armed actor of counterinsurgency and hitman for corporate interests.

For the anti-capitalist left, the EZLN-CNI-CIG is a reference for political action that integrates a pole of resistance not only in Mexico, but also in the international arena. This movement has allowed it to coalesce and maintain a certain unity in diversity, which cultivates the critical thinking, commitment and dedication that distinguished the revolutionary left at crucial moments in the history of the emancipation of humanity, of its fight against class exploitation, patriarchy, racism and forms of oppression of humans.

In short, the rebellion of the Zapatista Maya in 1994 and the subsequent development of this movement as a builder of autonomous powers in permanent change propose an emancipatory alternative. Although surrounded by a criminal variant of counterinsurgency, The EZLN represents a source of anti-capitalist, anti-racist and anti-patriarchal struggle, together with the National Indigenous Congress (CNI)–Indigenous Government Council (CIG, Consejo Indígena de Gobierno) and the support of numerous solidarity groups from national and international civil society. This movement raises the need to reformulate the reconstitution of the nation, but, from below, as explained in the Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona, by closely linking the problems, demands, struggles and resistance of the popular majorities, that is, rooted and nourished in the space and time of the people nation.

Despite a counterinsurgency strategy, active since 1994 and currently intensified by the extreme actions of provocation by criminal paramilitarism, militarization and militarism deployed in the extent and depth of the national territory by the fourth transformation government, the EZLN celebrates 40 years of its foundation, with a bold political initiative for life, against capitalism, racism and patriarchy, which has taken its dialogue with peoples and movements in struggle to the ends of the world, starting in the rebellious land of Europe. Maintaining the flame of concrete and possible utopia, the ethical congruence of everything for everyone, nothing for us, is an extraordinary political merit of the EZLN in these 40 years of struggle and 30 years of its rebellion, without surrendering, without selling out and without give up

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Published by La Jornada here https://www.jornada.com.mx/2024/06/21/opinion/019a2pol

Translated by the Chiapas Support Committee.