At international gathering in Oventik, Zapatista communities decry recent attacks and desire “to build for life on collective lands”
~ Sonia Muñoz Llort ~
The first session of International Meetings of Rebellions and Resistance 2024-2025 was held in Oventik, in the EZLN-liberated territories in Southeast Mexico between December 28-30. The gathering’s political focus was the organisational changes that the Zapatista communities have undergone, as reflected in the ‘Declaration for Life‘. It also contained a special message to European activists.
On the first day of the gathering, three round tables presented a thorough analysis of what the Zapatistas call “The Storm”, the transnational crisis and proxy wars to continue privatising land and stealing from the people to further the capitalist struggle. The last three years have seen intensified attacks against Indigenous communities in the region, involving State forces, paramilitary forces, and drug cartels that operate at the border with Guatemala.
The “Table of Women” on the first day involved several Women commanders from EZLN Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command and authorities of the Collective Assemblies of Zapatista Autonomous Governments, together with Anselma, an otomí comrade from the Samir Flores Soberanes House of Indigenous Peoples and Communities, and anthropologist Sylvia Marcos. They explained how Indigenous women work against patriarchal violence on a daily basis, with a focus on health, education and the land.
The women emphasised how they maintain contact with other Indigenous communities to support their resistance against capitalist threats to peoples’ customs, such as the use of alcohol or drugs, the acceptance of government support, or the cultural whitewashing that some people undergo, denying their Indigenous roots.
The next day Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, in his presentation “Genealogy of the Zapatista Common”, talked about the historical development of dispossession, and how the land was organised as commons (el común) in his grandparents time. Through a visual explanation of the dispossession of common lands in the Mexican context, he shared how the political path towards decolonisation was already chosen a hundred years ago, and how we can learn from previous forms of organisation. He made clear the need for collective resistance to the capitalist system, and how dignified rage provides the Zapatistas with practices to fight for life in the everyday.
Moisés added that the Zapatista communities want neither war nor bullets, but to build for life on collective lands, because for them, there is no life in private property. He also said that they will continue to adjust their political strategies based on their own experiences, and through international collaboration with Indigenous communities in other territories.
The presentation also raised the question of how each community can build its commons, either as workers, or as citizens of their own communities. Essentially, we have to decide the way forwards ourselves, in the same way that the Zapatistas are building autonomously in connection with other communities.
Insurgent Captain Marcos, formerly Subcomandante Marcos, gave a talk titled “The Watchtower: Signs towards tomorrow”. Here he directed a message to those across the pond (meaning us in Europe), focusing our attention on what the Zapatistas call “the day after”. This means getting ready for what happens when capitalism falls during the struggle, which the Zapatistas suggest will last for another 120 years or seven generations. Last year, celebrating the 30th anniversary of their rebellion in southern Mexico, the EZLN published a text in which they discussed this idea. In the lead-up to the meeting, writing as ͶÀTIꟼAƆ ⅃Ǝ, Marcos has published a series of reflections and stories adding urgency to this proposition, presenting the reader with this challenge:
Imagine that you are going to be in a community. More specifically, in the assembly of that community… and the day after. Without electricity, without prepaid cell phones or rental plan, without “internet for all”, without Elon Musk and his small local equivalents of small subscriptions, without private vehicles designed to withstand riots and uprisings of the plebs (the extra armour on the cybertruck is charged separately), without fossil fuels to start the other vehicle and go look for a signal (while cursing the governments and companies in power), and without the possibility of buying a ticket on a modern interstellar rocket that will place you on another planet “all included” (that is, it includes the labour force that lives, reproduces and dies while serving you – notice how I elegantly avoided any reference to “exploitation” -).
None of that is possible anymore. Of course, in this hypothetical scenario in which you are in an assembly of a community isolated from everything, because ‘everything’ no longer exists.
There are several people who are with you and, to start that germ of society, in an assembly of that community, each of those people will say what they are, know and can do, and they will propose, discuss and agree on how to do it. they are going to organise. Well, actually I’m describing what is currently happening in a community assembly of indigenous peoples.
And, just as in a community assembly of indigenous peoples, the meeting sets an objective and proposes, discusses and agrees on what needs to be done, how, who is going to do it, where, when; in this hypothetical assembly, in which you are forced to be by circumstances, the objective is… to start over.
So let’s continue with the challenge that you imagine and place yourself in this situation and, for whatever reasons, the world as you knew it has collapsed.
The last days of the gathering were focused on cultural activities, including a theater play called ”The Collapse and the Day After. The Parts and the Whole. A play in 12 scenes”, which commemorated the 31st anniversary of the Zapatista rising on January 1, 1994.
