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This paper details the history, organizational structures, and strategies

of the Zapatista movement originating in Chiapas, Mexico, and contains an

analysis of the potential and limitations of the movement. The paper is thus

organized into three sections. The first section will discuss the history and

origins of the Zapatistas, the second will discuss Zapatista organizational

structures and strategies, and the third will conclude the paper with some

reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of the movement, and its

potential to endure as a social movement.

By “Zapatista movement,” I refer to not just the Zapatista Army of

National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN), but

to the entire set of individuals and groups mobilized by the actions or

messages of the EZLN. As will become clear after the first two sections of

this paper, the Zapatista movement may be thought of as consisting of two

distinct spheres of Zapatista activity: one consisting of local organizations in

Chiapas, Mexico, and another consisting of what Olesen (2005) calls a

transnational solidarity network, which operates at the transnational level.

Both components of the Zapatista movement have their origins in the EZLN,

the formation of which I will now trace in the first section of my paper.

1. Zapatista origins: the historical roots and organizational

development of the EZLN

In this section I will discuss the origin and development of the Zapatista

movement by tracing the roots of the EZLN’s formation in the 1980s leading

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up to the 1994 insurrection. Next, I briefly discuss how the EZLN turned

from a socialist revolutionary organization into an indigenous-based

resistance movement. I will then examine how the Zapatista movement

spread beyond the organizational structure of the EZLN itself to become a

social movement that involved elements of both Mexican and global civil

society.

Womack (1999) and Barmeyer (2009) note that the Zapatista movement

grew out from the intersection of two community organizing efforts

conducted under the auspices of Bishop Samuel Ruiz García and by the pan-

Mexican socialist organization Forces of National Liberation (Fuerzas de

Liberación Nacional, FLN) respectively. This took place on a backdrop of a

history of autonomous community organization by the Lacandón local

communities. Historically, the Lacandón communities were settled by a

stream of young, disaffected and dispossessed migrant laborers from the

Chiapas central highlands (Womack, 1999). This migration stream,

beginning in the 1950s, resulted in Lacandón communities with a young,

mostly indigenous demographic profile, settled far from central towns

controlled by the PRI party machine (Partido Revolucionario

Institucional, PRI, Mexico’s dominant political party). This lack of pre-

existing power structures and the relative lack of stratification in

communities of displaced, immiserated settlers allowed decision-making in

communal assemblies—an organizational form later to become a distinctive

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feature of Zapatista-controlled territories— to become the predominant

form of administration there.

The community organizing by the Bishop and by the FLN differed in

their motivations and goals. As detailed by Womack (1999) and Barmeyer

(2009), Bishop Ruiz, influenced by liberation theology, aimed at conducting

missionary work in a way that bettered the actual living conditions of the

diocese’s population, and enabled them to organize and lead communities

themselves instead of facing an organizational structure imposed by Church

authorities. Left-wing organizations like the FLN, on the other hand, saw in

the poor yet organized Chiapas population an opportunity to expand

socialism and use Chiapas as a base for revolution. The Bishop and the

FLN’s organizing efforts intersected when diocesan officers invited FLN

social workers (including Subcommander Marcos, who was later to become

a well-known Zapatista spokesperson) to help regain control over the Union

of Ejido Unions (UU), a union of communal landholding communities that

the church helped to establish, but which then fell under the sway of the

Proletarian Line (LP), another socialist organization active in Chiapas.

Womack (1999) notes that church officers were apparently unaware of the

FLN cadres’ socialist affiliations or goals.

With this access to community organizations and unions, the FLN

began organizing clandestinely for an armed revolution. They worked within

Church-established unions to build the structure of the EZLN which would

become the core of the Zapatista movement later. This was not, however, a

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process of imposing socialist ideals on a passive indigenous audience. On

the contrary, the EZLN became “indianized” in the process of organizing its

forces in Chiapas, shifting their goals from class struggle and socialist

revolution to an ethical struggle to assert the basic rights and dignity of the

indigenous (Higgins, 2004). Higgins points to two main factors that led to

this “Indian turn”. Firstly, FLN members themselves, struggling to find the

relevance of their urban-based socialist discourses to the reality of life in

rural indigenous communities, were driven to re-think their ideology.

Secondly, extensive community organizing efforts had already taken place

in Chiapas before the FLN’s entry, most of which were conducted

autonomously by the communities or with the encouragement of long-

standing insiders such as Bishop Ruiz. The only reasons that could make the

FLN proposal of insurrection attractive to local communities, was the sheer

lack of economic and political opportunities that persisted despite all the

other initiatives already taken. All this meant that while indigenous

communities felt motivated by necessity to ally with the growing EZLN, they

continued to be assertive within the organization, as per the customary

autonomy in previous community organizations.

On 1 January, 1994, the EZLN proclaimed its First Declaration of the

Lacandón Jungle and launched its armed rebellion. This was swiftly checked

by the Mexican Army, and the conflict ended in 12 days. Within those 12

days, however, Mexican civil society reacted quickly to the conflict with

large protests, sympathetic to the Zapatistas but demanding peace and

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negotiation—a reaction which the EZLN did not initially expect (Womack,

1999, chap. 23). Responding to this public pressure, first the Mexican

government and then the EZLN declared ceasefires and commenced

negotiations. I will detail the complex developments that took place after

negotiations in the second section of the paper below. For now, I will focus

on two fundamental changes in the Zapatista movement that occurred in

the wake of the public reaction to the 1994 rebellion: a new focus on civil

society instead of armed insurrection, and the building of a global

consciousness in connection to the Zapatistas.

On March 23, 1994, while government-EZLN negotiations were still

taking place, Luis Donaldo Colosio, the expected successor to then-

president Salinas of Mexico, was assassinated. In view of this, the EZLN

decided not to accept the government’s proposals in the negotiation,

because, as Subcommander Marcos explained, coming to an agreement

with a government leadership that could not reliably ensure the security of

their own heirs would not guarantee much (Womack, 1999, chap. 28). The

Zapatistas thus turned towards an appeal to civil society, which they

prominently addressed starting from their Second Declaration of the

Lacandón Jungle (June 10, 1994). This focus on civil society marks a shift

away from the strategy of armed insurgency towards a nonviolent social

movement, and, I argue, also marks the expansion of Zapatismo into a

broader social movement that goes beyond the organizational base of the

EZLN alone, to involve both national and transnational groups.

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What made this turn to civil society possible? Gilberth and Otero

(2001), in arguing for their view that the Zapatista uprising was a principal

force for democratization in Mexican politics, have shown how the EZLN’s

rebellion in 1994 served as a powerful call to action for Mexican civil

society. Initially, protestors turned out in the tens of thousands to rally

against the government’s use of force, securing concessions in the form of a

unilateral government ceasefire and agreement to negotiations. The EZLN’s

uprising also sparked new discourses of opposition to neoliberalism in

urban Mexico, symbolized by its starting date—1 January 1994, the day

NAFTA went into effect. This resistance unraveled urban Mexicans’

conception of neoliberalism and NAFTA as signs of modernization. It also

led to the crumbling of legitimacy for the Salinas administration, for, by

passing NAFTA, it had aimed to legitimate itself through discourses of

neoliberal progressivism. The Zapatista uprising quickly demonstrated the

shortcomings of progressive neoliberal rhetoric, in the process transforming

the movement from a small armed rebellion into a potent symbol of

resistance to state and market oppression. It is this symbolic power that

drew activist support to the EZLN, and made it possible for the Zapatistas

to transform into a social movement that appeals more to civil society than

to force of arms.

Nor was this symbolic power only potent within Mexican borders.

Olesen (2008) argues that the Zapatistas have managed to create a “global

consciousness” by becoming a “universal symbol of exclusion and

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oppression”. Admittedly, this comment is more appropriate for a later

period, when the Zapatistas began to explicitly address topics such as the

parallels between their conditions and those faced by indigenous

communities worldwide. However, as Olesen (2005, p.3) notes in his

timeline of the development of transnational Zapatista solidarity networks,

the network was already existent during the 12-day uprising, when

transnational activists joined Mexican civil society to protest against

government use of force. The emergence and development of the Zapatista

transnational solidarity network will be detailed in the next section of this

paper.

In sum, the Zapatista movement emerged upon a background of pre-

existing communal organization by Chiapas indigenous communities. The

nucleus of the movement was the EZLN, which was built up from the

confluence of community organizing efforts by the Catholic diocese under

Bishop Ruiz, and clandestine appropriation of these networks by FLN

cadres, including Marcos, for purposes of armed revolution. This was the

initial recruitment network for the Zapatista movement. While organizing

indigenous communities in Chiapas, the EZLN became “indianized”, shifting

their goals away from traditional and universalistic socialist ideals of

proletarian revolution towards a struggle to make the needs and demands

of Chiapas indigenous communities heard. The military failure of the 1994

12-day rebellion, and resulting civil society reactions to it, resulted in the

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transformation of the Zapatistas from an armed resistance group to a social

movement that engages with civil society.

Following on from this, the next section will focus on two things: first,

the shifts in the Zapatistas’ strategies, discourses, and self-framings in

response to changing political opportunities, economic necessities, and local

social conditions; second, the post-uprising organization of the Zapatistas

and their support networks at both national and transnational levels.

2. Strategies and tactics, organization and structure

In this section, I turn my attention to the strategies and tactics of the

Zapatistas, and the structures of Zapatista organizations. This section is

divided into three main parts. The first is a detailed discussion of the

organizational structures, strategies, and tactics of the EZLN in its

formative and early post-insurrection period, stretching from late 1993 to

1998. The second section details the rise and structure of the Zapatista

transnational solidarity network. The third and fourth parts introduce two

later changes in Zapatista organizational structures, strategies and tactics—

the first being the establishment of autonomous municipalities, which began

in 1994 but became more extensive after 2003, the second being the so-

called “Other Campaign” of engagement with Mexican activists outside

Chiapas, which began in 2006.

Looking back at the origins of the Zapatista movement detailed in the

first section of this paper, a few points regarding the early organizational

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structures, strategies, and tactics of the Zapatistas may be observed. In the

period leading up to the armed insurrection of January 1994, the initial

organizational structures of the Zapatista movement consisted of

autonomous community organizations grouped around settlement and

church, upon which the FLN grafted the EZLN military hierarchy. This

organizational structure remained largely intact after the failure of the

insurrection. However, as has also been noted, after the failed insurrection,

the strategy of the Zapatistas shifted away from military action to civil

society engagement.

During this period, several distinct tactics were used by the Zapatistas.

The first, perhaps in contradiction with popular perception of the Zapatistas

as a democratic bottom-up movement, involved consolidation of solidarity in

Zapatista-controlled communities by the expulsion of inhabitants against

the movement. This action is best documented by Barmeyer (2009, pp. 39-

40), who records three villages where up to a dozen families were expelled.

Noting the Zapatistas’ slow takeover of land vacated by expulsion,

Barmeyer argues that the expulsions were aimed at maintaining community

cohesion and not economically-motivated. Despite the use of expulsion, an

authoritarian tactic, it is important to bear in mind that the Zapatista

uprising was still a collaborative project between indianized FLN socialists

and local communities. Support for the Zapatista cause was, at that time,

still the dominant sentiment in the Chiapas lowlands communities, a fact

that Barmeyer affirms in his ethnographic account. Community dissent,

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motivated by economic necessity, was a later phenomenon, which I will

examine in the third section of this paper.

In line with their new post-rebellion strategy of appealing to civil

society, the Zapatistas made use of specific negotiation tactics. It is

important to note that the Zapatistas themselves did not actually believe in

the sincerity of the government in negotiation. Some regarded it as a

potential trap to lure and capture Zapatistas (Marcos, 1997, quoted in

Womack, 1999). Mistrust of the government ran even higher with the

assassination of the expected successor to the Mexican presidency, Luis

Donaldo Colosio, in March 1994. Thus the Zapatistas believed that the

government was neither sincere in their intent to negotiate, nor cohesive

enough to follow through with any promises from the negotiations. Instead,

Zapatista negotiation tactics were calculated to present their cause

positively to Mexican civil society, and to buy time so that changes in

Mexican national politics might result in higher support for the Zapatistas.

Womack (1999) notes that the Zapatistas hoped the next presidential

election, in which Ernesto Zedillo was expected to be elected, would be so

corrupt that Mexican civil society would be driven to more aggressive anti-

government action. The Zapatistas also repeatedly attempted to incite

participatory political action in Mexican national politics by calling for a

National Democratic Convention (Second Declaration of the Lacandón

Jungle, June 10, 1994) and a Zapatista Front of National Liberation (FLZN)

(Fourth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle, January 1, 1996). These calls

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for direct, widespread Mexican activism came to nothing. Mexican civil

society, while voicing sympathy for the Zapatistas, did not take action above

and beyond that (Womack, 1999). This was to become an enduring difficulty

for the Zapatistas, a difficulty only partially alleviated by transnational

support for the Zapatista cause, and the Zapatistas’ recent (since 2006)

efforts to connect with other Mexican activists in the so-called “Other

Campaign”, which I will describe later.

Finally, one other tactic the Zapatistas used in the early post-rebellion

years was the invitation of transnational activists to Zapatista events in

Chiapas. Thus in 1996, two events for transnational activists, celebrities,

and intellectuals were held in La Realidad, in the Zapatista-controlled

region in Chiapas. These events, first the Continental Encounter for

Humanity and against Neoliberalism (April 1996), and then the

International Encounter (July 1996), had several aims. Most importantly,

the presence of foreign observers in Chiapas was intended to provide a

degree of safety from state violence. Barmeyer (2009) recounts that in his

time in Zapatista territory, he was tasked with prominently showing himself

whenever Mexican Army convoys passed through—a tactic which often did

turn back military patrols. The avoidance of visible violence by state

authorities was crucial for a Mexican government eager to present itself

internationally as a modern neoliberal state that respected personal

freedoms and property rights. The logic of this could be considered an

example of what Keck and Sikkink (1998) call the “boomerang pattern” in

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transnational activism. According to this model, social movements that face

domestic repression could appeal to transnational advocacy networks based

in other countries, which could then exert external pressure on the

offending national government. Mexico is a good case for this, since the

sensitivity to Euro-American perceptions of Mexico’s neoliberal-oriented

government resulted in reluctance to commit violence on the Zapatistas

before the eyes of foreigners.

Besides protection by the physical presence of foreign observers, the

Continental and International Encounters also aimed to increase

transnational awareness and media attention of the Zapatista movement.

The media-oriented nature of the events is evident from the list of

individuals the Zapatistas invited—not just transnational human rights

activists, but also media celebrities and artists (including, among others,

Francis Ford Coppola and Oliver Stone), political figures (such as Danielle

Mitterrand), and famous intellectuals (Noam Chomsky among them). To

some extent, this is consistent with the maximization of foreign scrutiny to

prevent government violence. However, as Olesen (2005) notes, the

personal ties generated through these events translated into new

electronically-mediated relationships in the Zapatista transnational support

network. It is to this network that I now turn my attention.

Marcos (1997, quoted in Womack, 1999), the most widely known

spokesperson of the EZLN, has noted that over time, two strands of

Zapatismo have emerged: “original” or “armed” Zapatismo, consisting of

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the members of the EZLN and community organizations in Chiapas, and

“civilian Zapatismo”, consisting of national and transnational activists

mobilized by EZLN-related issues. While the events and activities described

in the above sections were almost exclusively related to the EZLN and

associated organizations in Chiapas, the Zapatista transnational solidarity

network involves the intersection of the EZLN Zapatistas with civil society

actors, both Mexican and international. Olesen (2005) describes the

Zapatista transnational solidarity network as a tiered set of connections

relaying Zapatista-related news. At the base level are the local communities

of Chiapas. These pass information to individuals and organizations

physically present in Chiapas and in personal contact with the EZLN. In

turn, this second tier in the network conveys information outward to a third

tier of actors, based worldwide, who typically perform editorial functions by

condensing and summarizing information from multiple second-tier sources.

Olesen considers second and third-tier actors the core of the transnational

Zapatista solidarity network, as their work maintains regular ties between

each other and also between themselves and more peripheral actors. They

are thus crucial to the network’s continued existence. Information from the

third tier is accessed by a worldwide community of committed (fourth-tier)

and transitory (fifth-tier) individuals and groups, which form the periphery

of the network.

The transnational Zapatista solidarity network is not built on such a

network infrastructure alone. It also involves constructing a global

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consciousness, a framing of the Zapatista movement in a way that makes it

relevant for actors in disparate locations worldwide. Olesen suggests that

the Zapatistas have constructed a globally-relevant frame by emphasizing

universal respect for, and openness to communicate with, unique identities.

This also implies the assertion and defense of diverse minority identities

against forces which may endanger them, whether these forces involve

economic inequalities, political exploitation, racism or other forms of

oppression. This global frame is exemplified by the Zapatista slogan “a

world in which many worlds fit”. The global framing of the Zapatistas bears

similarities to what Donatella della Porta (2006) calls a “master frame”. In

particular, the assertion of universal dignity for diverse identities can

perform what della Porta terms frame-bridging: serving as a common

standpoint from which to articulate critiques of diverse forms of oppression

from neoliberalism to racism. The construction of this discursive frame of

universal respect for diverse identities could in fact be considered the

signature achievement of the Zapatistas—an argument I will elaborate on in

the third section of this paper.

Now, I will return the discussion to the Zapatistas of the EZLN, to

discuss two changes to Zapatista organization, strategy and tactics which

occurred in the later years of the Zapatista movement. The first of these is

the establishment of autonomous municipalities. While lowland Chiapas

communities have always practiced autonomous organization and

community governance, the increasing encroachment of the Mexican state-

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party patronage system increased interference with local autonomous

governance. The introduction of the EZLN military structure threatened to

impose an undemocratic formal hierarchy over these communities as well, a

risk that EZLN leaders such as Marcos (2001, quoted in Olesen, 2005)

recognized. In response, the Zapatistas gradually established autonomous

regional self-governance with civilian administrations separate from the

military hierarchy. According to Barmeyer (2009), the first autonomous

municipalities were set up in December 1994. Through the late 1990s, the

autonomous municipalities were then consolidated on land vacated during

the insurgency. The organization of autonomous municipalities culminated

with the establishment in 2003 of “Councils of Good Government” (Juntas

de Buen Gobierno), essentially regional governments above the level of

municipalities.

Barmeyer (2009) describes the administration of Zapatista communities

at the community and municipality level as drawing on administrative

structures that already had a long history under the ejido (communal

landholding community system). Any such community had three

administrative committees: a commissariat, a council for land control, and

an autonomous police agency. The commissariat was responsible for day-

to-day administration; the land control council dealt with land use related

issues, including land conflicts between communities and proper use of

forest resources; the police agency enforced communal laws. Ad hoc

committees could also be elected by community members at any time to

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administer specific projects. Finally, each village had one representative

from the EZLN’s military command structure, responsible for maintaining

the flow of information from EZLN to community and vice versa, as well as

to call for votes when the EZLN leadership needed feedback on proposed

changes to military action. An example of community feedback is the

selection of January 1, 1994 as the date to begin the armed rebellion—the

date was not the military leadership’s first choice, but community members

voted for earlier rebellion and the military command complied. The

community level administrative structure detailed above was replicated at

the municipality level. At both the community and municipality levels,

administrators were elected biannually but could be instantly recalled by

their communities at any time. Administrators were not paid, except for

reimbursement for travel costs incurred due to administrative work, and

community assistance on their planting fields. Finally, EZLN regulations

prohibited any individual from holding a civilian administrative post and a

military post at the same time. This was aimed at reducing the influence of

the EZLN on community administration. Councils of Good Government were

administered by 2~3 (unpaid) delegates from each autonomous municipality

administration in its domain. Delegates administer the Council in a rotating

manner, with 15 days for each delegation. The extremely short period of

rotation prevents patronage relationships from developing and also

minimizes disruptions to administrative delegates’ personal lives, since

unlike municipal administrations, Council administration typically takes

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place away from a delegate’s home community. Barmeyer notes that the

short rotation period does not seem to be an impediment to efficiency, since

at the municipal level community members select for administrators based

on known competence.

The last part in the story of Zapatista tactics involves the

commencement of the so-called “Other Campaign” in 2006. This campaign,

introduced by the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle, involved

sending delegations of EZLN leaders to speak with left-leaning Mexican

civil society organizations across the nation. This represents an interesting

move by the Zapatistas, as it focuses on the national rather than the local or

transnational localities Zapatista discourses have often stressed. It also

appears to reframe their domestic voice slightly, emphasizing political

orientation rather than indigeneity. Given the lack of analytical literature on

this newest phase of the movement for the time being, it remains to be seen

what the effects of this new tactic of Zapatista mobilization will be.

Looking back at the history of Zapatista organization, strategy, tactics,

and framing, it is tempting to conclude that, while being unambiguously

successful, even inspiring, at the transnational level, the Zapatistas have

faced mixed fortunes in their local context. In the next section, I evaluate

further the achievements and weaknesses of the Zapatista movement at the

local and transnational levels, and conclude with a discussion of what the

future of the Zapatistas might be like.

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3. Transnational solidarity versus local uncertainty

In this section, I will examine the achievements and weaknesses of the

Zapatista movement. I argue that at the transnational level, the Zapatista

movement can be considered very successful, especially because their

discourses have spread to and inspired many disparate social movements

worldwide. At the local level in Chiapas, however, the Zapatistas have been

less successful and their situation more precarious, partly because of the

vagaries of local economic and political conditions, and partly because the

strong adherence of the Zapatista leadership to idealistic principles

sometimes results in failure to respond adequately to local political and

economic circumstances.

I have noted earlier how the Zapatistas have constructed a “master

frame” (Donatella della Porta, 2006) of their struggle by framing the

movement as one of many potential struggles to assert universal respect for

unique identities (Olesen, 2008). The Zapatistas’ master framing project can

thus be summed up as the project of making an alternative global through

intercommunication and mutual respect between countless unique and

different locals. This model of globalization is contrasted against more

exploitative forms of globalization, such as transnational neoliberal

capitalism, which seek to homogenize disparate populations. By casting the

Zapatista struggle as a fight for minority identities to be heard, but without

specifying what those identities must consist of, the Zapatistas have created

a form of struggle which disparate minority groups struggling for

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recognition can all identify with, without thereby subordinating themselves

to any sort of shared, trans-local identity. This characteristic of Zapatista

discourse, concisely expressed by the Zapatista maxim “a world in which

many worlds can fit”, may be considered the signature discursive tool which

enables Zapatista discourses to span disparate movements growing out of

very different contexts. The great effectiveness of Zapatista discourses in

exerting a transnational frame-bridging effect can be seen in how Zapatistas

are hailed as a positive example by activists spanning very different

contexts and aims, from anti-neoliberal activists in Canada (e.g. Naomi

Klein, 2002) to anarchists in Texas (e.g. Scott Crow, 2011).

At the transnational level, therefore, the Zapatistas are an impressive

success, not only in spreading word of their cause globally, but also by

making their struggle relevant to a large and diverse cross-section of

activists worldwide, energizing those disparate movements by setting an

example and by pointing out the relevance of those individual struggles to

each other. This global success, however, contrasts starkly with the less

optimistic realities of life in Chiapas, Mexico, where the indigenous of the

Lacandon Jungle, the Zapatistas of the EZLN, face an uncertain future. I

will now detail why this is so.

The first source of uncertainty for the Zapatistas in Chiapas stems from

economic factors. When conducting ethnographic work in the villages of

San Emiliano and La Gardenia, both core communities in the Las Cañadas

heartland of Zapatista territory, Barmeyer (2009, p.121-134) observed that

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there is a dimension of opportunism in the attitudes of local communities

towards choosing support for the Zapatistas or the government. Support for

the initial rebellion was associated with hopes for economic betterment

through separation from the exploitative party-state political system which

tended to reward non-indigenous and party loyalists. Similarly, dissent in

later years was motivated by portions of Chiapas communities deciding they

would be better off with the party-state system’s handouts after all—a

sentiment hauntingly portrayed by community members’ inversion of the

Zapatista slogan “for everyone, everything; for us, nothing” as a cynical

comment on the unrealistic altruism and very real long-term privations

associated with supporting the Zapatista cause (Barmeyer, 2009, p.127).

These tensions were further aggravated when, in order to maintain

cohesion within the movement, the EZLN instituted the policy of requiring

community members to refrain from accepting government handouts, a

policy known as “la resistencia”. At these moments, large proportions of

village communities quit the movement and moved out of the autonomous

village communities. Some of them returned, however, when they failed to

receive any actual handouts from government officials. Because of these

fluctuations in allegiance driven by local-level economic forces, the support

base of the Zapatistas in Chiapas can be considered unstable at best. To the

Zapatistas’ credit, they refrained from using authoritarian means to hold

the village populations under their control—a conclusion which can be

inferred precisely by observing how freely such allegiance shifts occurred.

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Barmeyer (2009, p. 234) estimates that more than half of all the

autonomous community members that constituted the Zapatistas’ original

support base had changed their allegiance at least once. While this reflects

well on the authenticity of Zapatista claims of being democratic, it also

results in great uncertainty for the EZLN in Chiapas, since they can never

be sure how strong their support base is.

On top of the uncertainty stemming from shifting allegiances driven by

local economic conditions, uncertainty in the effects of political strategies

also plagues the Zapatistas in Mexico. Over the course of their existence,

the Zapatistas in Chiapas have faced two types of political uncertainty,

involving their interactions with other Mexican civil society groups on one

hand, and their interactions with political parties on the other.

I have noted in section 2 above (p.8) that inaction of Mexican civil

society has been a constant problem, from the point of view of the

Zapatistas. Even though the sympathetic response of Mexican civil society

played a decisive role in shaping the Zapatistas into what they are today,

there was a lack of mass mobilization against the Mexican government,

despite the Zapatistas’ repeated efforts to instigate this. It is unclear

whether the lack of results from the Zapatista calls for national civil society

solidarity against neoliberalism and the corrupt Mexican state-party system

reflects the Zapatistas’ poor understanding of Mexican civil society divisions

and disagreements outside the Chiapas context. In any case, one of the key

objectives of the recent “Other Campaign” is to enable the Zapatistas in

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Chiapas to learn about the views, strategies, and challenges of left-leaning

and/or indigenous groups from different parts of Mexico (Hernandez

Castillo, 2006). This effort is crucial to prevent Zapatista isolation within the

national context. It remains to be seen whether this will be a successful

effort, and whether a new basis for national civil society solidarity could be

built from there.

Another uncertainty that the Zapatistas in Chiapas must face from time

to time is their ambivalent relationships with political parties. Although the

Zapatistas have consistently condemned the PRI party, the principal

controller of state-party patronage relationships in Chiapas, the Zapatistas

have been ambivalent in their stance towards the left-leaning PRD party

(Womack, 1999). In the late 1990s the Zapatistas expressed tentative

support for the party but then refused to endorse their political candidates

on the grounds that they wanted to stay out of party politics. Since 2005,

however, the Zapatistas have begun criticizing the PRD and distancing itself

from the party, on the basis that corruption and business-friendly interests

within the party have stripped it of much of its left-leaning political identity.

Some authors, such as Hernandez Castillo (2006) see the recent blanket

condemnation of all PRD activists by the Zapatistas as an unwise move,

since this makes the Zapatistas even more politically isolated in Mexico, and

seems like a contradiction with the Zapatista principle of flexible

engagement with all who are willing to listen. However, Hernandez Castillo

admits (p.117-119) that racist, exclusionary, and indifferent attitudes

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towards the indigenous are common among the Mexican political elite,

regardless of party or ideology. On this basis, the Zapatista decision to stay

out of party politics is understandable. This does not, however, mitigate the

risk of political isolation that the Zapatistas continue to face in the Mexican

context.

The Zapatista movement has sometimes been called the first

postmodern revolution. Looking at the stark contrast between transnational

Zapatismo and the unstable conditions the Zapatistas of Chiapas still face

today, one can get a sense of why this might actually be a useful way to

describe the movement. The upbeat images of the Zapatistas as seen by

activists outside Mexico make no reference to the more prosaic, local-level

and often village-level conflicts and instabilities that have constantly

plagued the Zapatistas of Chiapas. We could thus consider transnational

Zapatismo a hyperreal construct (Baudrillard, 1994), a vision of a reality

which never really existed in Chiapas. The Zapatista movement thus

appears to consist of two quite different groups: one made up of

transnational activists mobilized by idealized messages from or about the

Zapatistas, and participating in either the Zapatista transnational solidarity

network, or in social movements inspired by the Zapatistas, the other made

up of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, those members of the movement who live in

the communities under Zapatista control and participate in, or collaborate

directly with, the EZLN.

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Z. Choo

This two-sidedness to the Zapatista movement poses serious difficulties

for speculation on the future of the movement. On one hand the

transnational components of the Zapatista movement are robust and face

very few acute threats; on the other hand, the sustainability of the Zapatista

movement in Chiapas is constantly under threat by local economic and

political circumstances, threats which transnational Zapatistas are seldom

aware of. Optimists might note that even if the efforts of the EZLN prove

unsustainable, the spirit of Zapatismo will live on in the many movements

they inspired worldwide. But one wonders if that would be an empty victory,

since the movement would not then have fulfilled its original purpose of

fighting for the dignity and autonomy of the indigenous communities of

Chiapas. Only time will tell if this original Zapatista cause will succeed.

Conclusion: Zapatismo as movement with specific local roots but

diverse transnational effects

In this paper, I have traced the origins of the Zapatista movement,

which lay in the confluence of community organizing efforts by several local

social groups in Chiapas, Mexico. I detailed the organizational structures of

the Zapatistas, which consist of the military structure of the EZLN and

autonomous self-administering communities at the local level, and an

electronically-connected support and solidarity network at the transnational

level. I then traced how the social movement that grew from those roots

changed over time, both in ideology (from socialist revolution to indigenous

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Z. Choo

dignity) and in strategy (from armed rebellion to civil society engagement

and administrative autonomy). Finally, I identified the differences that set

apart the transnational and Chiapas branches of the Zapatista movement,

showing how transnational Zapatismo has become successful by exerting a

bridging influence between disparate social movements worldwide, while

eliding the many local-level difficulties that continue to threaten the

Zapatistas in Chiapas.

I conclude that the main lesson to be learned from the Zapatista

movement is that we cannot assume either coherence across time or

coherence across space in the motivations and goals of social movements.

This is because activists, even though they may be motivated by framings of

their social movement which transcend their local context (and in the case

of the Zapatistas, ‘local’ can often mean the level of an individual village),

are always nevertheless responding constantly to local and personal social

conditions which they face in their everyday lives. The choices of individual

persons, households, and local communities that constitute a social

movement can shape or splinter the movement itself. Even when a social

movement is able to construct a master frame which is accepted by all its

members in disparate localities, the different ways activists respond to their

local conditions in each different location will affect the subsequent

evolution of the movement in that location. If our world is one in which

many worlds fit, it is also a world in which each of those many worlds

evolves in a different way. The one question that remains for the Zapatistas

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Z. Choo

is whether their all-embracing conception of their cause can continue to

make a difference in the one local world which continues to be their original

site of struggle—Chiapas.

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Z. Choo

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