The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN), often referred to as the Zapatistas, is a revolutionary leftist political and militant group based in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico.

Since 1994, the group has been in a declared war "against the Mexican state", although this war has been primarily defensive, against military, paramilitary and corporate incursions into Chiapas.[citation needed] In recent years, it has focused on a strategy of civil resistance. The Zapatistas' physical base is made up of mostly rural indigenous people but includes some supporters in urban areas and internationally. Their main spokesperson is Subcomandante Marcos (a.k.a. Compañero Galeano and Delegate Zero in relation to "the Other Campaign"). Unlike other Zapatista spokespeople, Marcos is not an indigenous Maya.[1]

Since their 1994 uprising was countered by the Mexican army, the EZLN has abstained from military offensives and adopted a new strategy that attempts to garner Mexican and international support. Through an Internet campaign, the EZLN was successful in disseminating an understanding of their plight and intentions to the public. With this change in tactics, the EZLN has received greater support from a variety of NGOs. The Zapatistas have achieved documented improvements in Chiapas in the areas of gender equality and public health, although they remain unable to establish political autonomy for the province.[6]

We don’t want to impose our solutions by force, we want to create a democratic space. We don’t see armed struggle in the classic sense of previous guerrilla wars, that is as the only way and the only all-powerful truth around which everything is organized. In a war, the decisive thing is not the military confrontation but the politics at stake in the confrontation. We didn't go to war to kill or be killed. We went to war in order to be heard.

The Zapatista Army went public on January 1, 1994, the day when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect. On that day, they issued their First Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle and their Revolutionary Laws. The declaration amounted to a declaration of war on the Mexican government, which they considered so out of touch with the will of the people as to make it illegitimate. The EZLN stressed that it opted for armed struggle due to the lack of results achieved through peaceful means of protest (such as sit-ins and marches).[8]

Their initial goal was to instigate a revolution throughout Mexico, but as this did not happen, they used their uprising as a platform to call the world's attention to their movement to protest the signing of NAFTA, which the EZLN believed would increase the gap between rich and poor people in Chiapas—a prediction that has been vindicated by subsequent developments.[9] The EZLN also called for greater democratization of the Mexican government, which had been controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for 65 years, and for land reform mandated by the 1917 Constitution of Mexico but largely ignored by the PRI.[10] The EZLN did not demand independence from Mexico, but rather autonomy, and (among other things) that the natural resources extracted from Chiapas benefit more directly the people of Chiapas.

On the morning of January 1, 1994, an estimated 3,000 armed Zapatista insurgents seized towns and cities in Chiapas, including Ocosingo, Las Margaritas, Huixtán, Oxchuc, Rancho Nuevo, Altamirano, and Chanal. They freed the prisoners in the jail of San Cristóbal de las Casas and set fire to several police buildings and military barracks in the area. The guerrillas enjoyed brief success, but the next day Mexican army forces counterattacked, and fierce fighting broke out in and around the market of Ocosingo. The Zapatista forces took heavy casualties and retreated from the city into the surrounding jungle.

Armed clashes in Chiapas ended on January 12, with a ceasefire brokered by the Catholic diocese in San Cristóbal de las Casas under Bishop Samuel Ruiz, a well known liberation theologian who took up the cause of the indigenous of Chiapas. The Zapatistas retained some of the land for a little over a year, but in February 1995 the Mexican army overran that territory in a surprise breach of ceasefire. Following this offensive, the Zapatista villages were mostly abandoned and the rebels fled to the mountains after breaking out of the Mexican army perimeter.

The extraordinarily complex and rich history of political discussion and organizing in Chiapas from the 1970s to the 1990s produced something genuinely original, a new leftist language and vision. This includes negotiation about what it means to be Indian within a larger Mexican nation. It includes discussion about new forms of democracy and an inventiveness regarding civil society—exemplified by the convention in the jungle; by the Zapatistas’ national consulta, in which they asked people around the nation to comment and vote; by Marcos’s communiqués; and by the accords on Indian autonomy hammered out with government negotiators in 1996. The new leftist vision also includes a communication and public debate deeply rooted in popular cultural idioms—indeed, in the language of rock and roll and its progeny.

Army camps set up along all major thoroughfares failed to capture the guerrilla movement's commanders. Instead, the Mexican government pursued a policy of negotiation, while the Zapatistas developed a mobilization and media campaign through numerous newspaper communiqués. After the First Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle, subsequent declarations have focused on non-violent solutions, both through political channels and through the assumption of many of the functions of government in the state of Chiapas. After the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, the Zapatistas have not engaged in further military actions. Other groups in Chiapas, such as the pacifistLas Abejas, support many of the goals of the Zapatista Revolution without condoning the use of violence to achieve those goals. A strong international Internet presence prompted numerous international left-wing groups to support the Zapatista movement.

With the coming to power of the new government of President Vicente Fox (the first non-PRI president of Mexico in over 70 years) in 2001, the Zapatistas marched on Mexico City to present their case to the Mexican Congress. Although Fox had stated earlier that he could end the conflict "in fifteen minutes,"[12] the EZLN rejected watered-down agreements and created 32 "autonomous municipalities" in Chiapas, thus partially implementing their demands without government support but with some funding from international organizations.

Subcomandante Marcos in 1996

On June 28, 2005, the Zapatistas presented the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle[13] declaring their principles and vision for Mexico and the world. This declaration reiterates the support for the indigenous peoples, who make up roughly one-third of the population of Chiapas, and extends the cause to include "all the exploited and dispossessed of Mexico". It also expresses the movement's sympathy to the international alter-globalization movement and offers to provide material aid to those in Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, and elsewhere, with whom they make common cause. The declaration ends with an exhortation for all who have more respect for humanity than for money to join with the Zapatistas in the struggle for social justice both in Mexico and abroad. The declaration calls for an alternative national campaign (the "Other Campaign") as an alternative to the presidential campaign. In preparation for this campaign, the Zapatistas invited to their territory over 600 national leftist organizations, indigenous groups, and non-governmental organizations in order to listen to their claims for human rights in a series of biweekly meetings that culminated in a plenary meeting on September 16, the day Mexico celebrates its independence from Spain. In this meeting, Subcomandante Marcos requested official adherence of the organizations to the Sixth Declaration, and detailed a six-month tour of the Zapatistas through all 31 Mexican states to occur concurrently with the electoral campaign starting January 2006.

Federal Highway 307, Chiapas. The top sign reads, in Spanish, "You are in Zapatista rebel territory. Here the people command and the government obeys." Bottom sign: "North Zone. Council of Good Government. Trafficking in weapons, planting of drugs, drug use, alcoholic beverages, and illegal selling of wood are strictly prohibited. No to the destruction of nature."

The ideology of the Zapatista movement, Zapatismo, synthesizes traditional Mayan practices with elements of libertarian socialism, anarchism,[14][15] and Marxism.[16] The historical influence of Mexican Anarchists and various Latin American socialists is apparent in Zapatismo. The positions of Subcomandante Marcos add a Marxist[17] element to the movement. A Zapatista slogan is in harmony with the concept of mutual aid: "For everyone, everything. For us, nothing" (Para todos todo, para nosotros nada).

The EZLN opposes economic globalization, arguing that it severely and negatively affects the peasant life of its indigenous support base and oppressed people worldwide. The signing of NAFTA also resulted in the removal of Article 27, Section VII, from the Mexican Constitution, which had guaranteed land reparations to indigenous groups throughout Mexico.

Another key element of the Zapatistas' ideology is their aspiration to do politics in a new, participatory way, from the "bottom up" instead of "top down". The Zapatistas consider the contemporary political system of Mexico inherently flawed due to what they consider its purely representative nature and its disconnection from the people and their needs. In contrast, the EZLN claims to reinforce the idea of participatory democracy or radical democracy by limiting public servants' terms to only two weeks, not using visible organization leaders, and constantly referring to the people they are governing for major decisions, strategies, and conceptual visions. Marcos has reiterated, "my real commander is the people". In accordance with this principle, the Zapatistas are not a political party: they do not seek office throughout the state, because that would perpetuate the political system by attempting to gain power within its ranks. Instead, they wish to reconceptualize the entire system.

In an unusual move for any revolutionary organization, documents released by the EZLN[18] (in Spanish) before the initial uprising in 1994 explicitly defined a right of the people to resist any unjust actions of the EZLN. They also defined a right of the people to:

demand that the revolutionary armed forces not intervene in matters of civil order or the disposition of capital relating to agriculture, commerce, finances, and industry, as these are the exclusive domain of the civil authorities, elected freely and democratically.

It added that the people should "acquire and possess arms to defend their persons, families and property, according to the laws of disposition of capital of farms, commerce, finance and industry, against the armed attacks committed by the revolutionary forces or those of the government."

From the First Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle, the Zapatistas presented to the people of Mexico, the government, and the world their Revolutionary Laws on January 1, 1994. One of the laws was the Women's Revolutionary Law,[19] which states:

Women, regardless of their race, creed, color or political affiliation, have the right to participate in the revolutionary struggle in any way that their desire and capacity determine.

Women have the right to work and receive a fair salary.

Women have the right to decide the number of children they have and care for.

Women have the right to participate in the matters of the community and hold office if they are free and democratically elected.

Women and their children have the right to Primary Attention in their health and nutrition.

Women have the right to an education.

Women have the right to choose their partner and are not obliged to enter into marriage.

Women have the right to be free of violence from both relatives and strangers.

The Zapatistas' response to the introduction of NAFTA in 1994 reflects the shift in perception taking place in societies that have experienced colonialism.[20] The theory of postcolonial gaze studies the cultural and political impacts of colonization on formerly colonized societies and how these societies overcome centuries of discrimination and marginalization by colonialists and their descendents.[21] In Mexico, the theory of the postcolonial gaze is being fostered predominantly in areas of large indigenous populations and marginalization, like Chiapas. Over the last 20 years, Chiapas has emerged as a formidable force against the Mexican government, fighting against structural violence and social and economic marginalization brought on by globalization.[22] The Zapatista rebellion not only raised many questions about the consequences of globalization and free trade; it also questioned the long-standing ideas created by the Spanish colonial system. Postcolonialism is the antithesis of imperialism because it attempts to explain how the prejudices and restrictions created by colonialism are being overcome.[21] This is especially obvious in countries that have large social and economic inequalities, where colonial ideas are deeply entrenched in the minds of the colonials' descendents.

An early example of the Zapatistas' effective use of the postcolonial gaze was their use of organizations like the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to raise of awareness for their rebellion and indigenous rights, the Mexican government's lack of respect for the country's impoverished and marginalized populations.[23] Appealing to the ECOSOC and other traditionally Western-influenced non-governmental bodies allowed the Zapatistas to establish a sense of autonomy by using the postcolonial gaze to redefine their identities both as indigenous people and as citizens of Mexico.[24]

Since December 1994, the Zapatistas had been gradually forming several autonomous municipalities, called Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities (MAREZ). In these municipalities, an assembly of local representatives forms the Juntas de Buen Gobierno or Councils of Good Government (JBGs). These are not recognized by the federal or state governments; they oversee local community programs on food, health, education, and taxation. The EZLN political formations have occurred in two phases generally called Aguascalientes and Caracoles.

After the cessation of fighting in mid-1994, the EZLN called for a Democratic National Convention. As part of the call, they began the practice of setting up cultural spaces for exchanges and meetings between the EZLN and Zapatistas, on the one hand, and political and cultural sectors of civil society in Mexico and the international community, on the other. These spaces were called Aguascalientes, in memory of the city of Aguascalientes that had harbored the Supreme Revolutionary Convention of Aguascalientes that brought together, among others, the most progressive forces of the Mexican revolution (such as the Magonistas, the Villa, and the Zapatistas). This new "Aguascalientes" was created in the Lacandon Jungle, near the community of Guadalupe Tepeyac Tojolabal, in the municipality of Las Margaritas, from August 6 to August 9, 1994.

At the end of 1995, the EZLN again proposed to build new Aguascalientes, as a symbol of resistance and rebellion. In 1996, the Aguascalientes I (Reality), Aguascalientes II (Oventic), Aguascalientes III (La Garrucha), Aguascalientes IV (Morelia), and Aguascalientes V (Roberto Barrios) became headquarters of the political and cultural initiatives of the Zapatistas in the form of the National Indigenous Forum, National Civil Committees Meeting for National Dialogue, Special Forum for State Reform, First American against Neoliberalism and for Humanity, and First Intergalactic. These cultural centers, which had auditoriums, health clinics, toilets, baths, libraries, stairs, and bedrooms were always surrounded by army camps and federal databases.

In January 1996, the "governor" insurgent Chiapas, Amado Avendaño Figueroa, inaugurated another Aguascalientes in Tijuana, Baja California. In the heart of University City, built by students who had participated in the 1999–2000 strike at UNAM, would the Water Mirror Aguascalientes, where the Zapatistas sent a message to young people and students in the country under The March of the Color of the Earth. The same happened in Xochimilco, where a group of indigenous organizations founded another Aguascalientes.

More ephemeral and symbolic was the Aguascalientes in Cuernavaca, Genaro, opened by one of the delegates who visited Zapatista lands Morelos in March 1999 in connection with that year's consultation, and Aguascalientes El Angel in Mexico City. Both spaces worked as statements about the Lacandon Jungle and the San Andrés Accords, and voting, then disappeared.

Caracoles and the Councils of Good Government (JBG) of the Zapatistas were formed in summer 2003. A feast was held to mark the founding from 8 to 10 August 2003, in Aguascalientes Oventic. This was a the culmination of a series of changes in the EZLN and the 27 Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities (MAREZ). The changes came after a long analysis of MAREZ and Aguascalientes, the problems they had faced, and their relationship to Mexican and international civil society. The new organizations were meant to represent a major advance in the autonomy of communities and indigenous peoples of Mexico.[13] The EZLN declared that the Councils of Good Government also marked a transition where the EZLN military would no longer give orders in civil matters in the autonomous communities. The Caracoles is an attempt to unilaterally implement San Andres expression and culture and rights of Indigenous people in Mexico.

Carcoles replaced the old Aguascalientes, respecting to a greater or lesser extent areas comprising (about four, and up to eight, municipalities each). The Good Government Councils were arranged and persist in what is called the center of Caracol, where there are also offices of governance monitoring, reporting, in some clinical cases, in cases secondary regions, etc.

From the beginning, the EZLN has made communication with the rest of Mexico and the world a high priority. The EZLN has used technology, including cellular phones and the Internet, to generate international solidarity with sympathetic people and organizations. Rap-rock band Rage Against the Machine is well known for its support of the EZLN, using the red star symbol as a backdrop to their live shows and often informing concert crowds of the ongoing situation. As a result, on trips abroad, the president of Mexico is routinely confronted by small activist groups about "the Chiapas situation". The Zapatistas are featured prominently in Rage Against the Machine's songs, in particular "People of the Sun", "Wind Below", "Zapata's Blood", and "War Within a Breath".[25]

Before 2001, Marcos' writings were often published in some Mexican and a few international newspapers. Then Marcos fell silent, and his relationship with the media declined. When he resumed writing in 2002, he assumed a more aggressive tone, and his attacks on former allies angered some of the EZLN's supporters. Except for these letters and occasional critical communiqués about the political climate, the EZLN was largely silent until August 2003, when Radio Insurgente was launched from an unknown location.

In mid-2004, COCOPA head Luis H. Álvarez stated that Marcos had not been seen in Chiapas for some time. The EZLN received little press coverage during this time, although it continued to develop the local governments it had created earlier. In August, Marcos sent eight brief communiqués to the Mexican press, published from August 20 through 28. The series was entitled Reading a Video (possibly mocking political video scandals that occurred earlier that year). It began and ended as a kind of written description of an imaginary low-budget Zapatista video, with the rest being Marcos' comments on political events of the year and the EZLN's current stance and development.

In 2005, Marcos made headlines again by comparing the then presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador to Carlos Salinas de Gortari (as part of a broad criticism of the three main political parties in Mexico, the PAN, PRI, and PRD), and publicly declaring the EZLN in "Red Alert". Shortly thereafter, communiqués announced that the EZLN had undergone a restructuring that enabled them to withstand the loss of their public leadership (Marcos and the CCRI). After consulting with their support base, the Zapatistas issued the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle.

Since the Zapatistas' first uprising, the newspaper La Jornada has continuously covered them. Most communiqués and many of Marcos's letters are delivered to and only published by La Jornada, and the online edition of the newspaper has a section dedicated to The Other Campaign.

The independent media organization Indymedia also covers and prints Zapatista developments and communications.

On June 28, 2005, the EZLN released an installment of what it called the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle. According to the communiqué, the EZLN had reflected on its history and decided that it must change in order to continue its struggle. Accordingly, the EZLN had decided to unite with the "workers, farmers, students, teachers, and employees ... the workers of the city and the countryside." They proposed to do so through a non-electoral front to talk and collectively write a new constitution to establish a new political culture.

On January 1, 2006, the EZLN began a massive tour, "The Other Campaign", encompassing all 31 Mexican states in the buildup to that year's presidential election, which the EZLN made clear they would not participate in directly.

On May 3–4, 2006, a series of demonstrations protested the forcible removal of irregular flower vendors from a lot in Texcoco for the construction of a Walmart branch. The protests turned violent when state police and the Federal Preventive Police bussed in some 5,000 agents to San Salvador Atenco and the surrounding communities. A local organization called the People's Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT), which adheres to the Sixth Declaration, called in support from other regional and national adherent organizations. "Delegate Zero" and his "Other Campaign" were at the time in nearby Mexico City, having just organized May Day events there, and quickly arrived at the scene. The following days were marked by violence, with some 216 arrests, over 30 rape and sexual abuse accusations against the police, five deportations, and one casualty, a 14-year-old boy named Javier Cortes shot by a policeman. A 20-year-old UNAM economics student, Alexis Benhumea, died on the morning of June 7, 2006, after being in a coma caused by a blow to the head from a tear-gas grenade launched by police.[26] Most of the resistance organizing was done by the EZLN and Sixth Declaration adherents, and Delegate Zero stated that the "Other Campaign" tour would be temporarily halted until all prisoners were released.

In late 2006 and early 2007, the Zapatistas (through Subcomandante Marcos), along with other indigenous peoples of the Americas, announced the Intercontinental Indigenous Encounter. They invited indigenous people from throughout the Americas and the rest of the world to gather on October 11–14, 2007, near Guaymas, Sonora. The declaration for the conference designated this date because of "515 years since the invasion of ancient Indigenous territories and the onslaught of the war of conquest, spoils and capitalist exploitation". Comandante David said in an interview, "The object of this meeting is to meet one another and to come to know one another’s pains and sufferings. It is to share our experiences, because each tribe is different."[27]

The Third Encuentro of the Zapatistas People with the People of the World was held from December 28, 2007, through January 1, 2008.[28]

In mid-January 2009, Marcos made a speech on behalf of the Zapatistas in which he supported the resistance of the Palestinians as "the Israeli government's heavily trained and armed military continues its march of death and destruction." He described the actions of the Israeli government as a "classic military war of conquest". He said, "The Palestinian people will also resist and survive and continue struggling and will continue to have sympathy from below for their cause."[29]

On August 8, 2013, the Zapatistas invited the world to a three-day fiesta to celebrate ten years of Zapatista autonomy, in the five caracoles in Chiapas. 1,500 activists from all over the world will join the event, named the Little School of Liberty according to the Zapatistas.[30][31]

Recently, the Zapatistas have been steadfast in resisting the violence of neoliberalism by practicing horizontal autonomy and mutual aid. Zapatista communities continue to build and maintain their own anti-systemic health, education, and sustainable agro-ecological systems, promote equitable gender relations via Women's Revolutionary Law, and build international solidarity through humble outreach and non-imposing political communication. In addition to their focus on building 'a world where many worlds fit', the Zapatistas continue to resist neocolonial state-sanctioned low-intensity warfare. The Zapatista struggle re-gained international attention in May 2014 with the death of teacher and education promoter Galeano who was murdered in an attack on a Zapatista school and health clinic led by 15 local paramilitaries.[32] In the weeks that followed, thousands of Zapatistas and national and international sympathizers, mobilized and gathered to honor Galeano. This event also saw the famed and enigmatic unofficial spokesperson of the Zapatistas, Subcomandante Marcos, entomb himself, which symbolized a shift in the EZLN to completely Indigenous leadership. It was also a welcoming re-emphasis to the international community to focus on organizing collectively, and through listening, which are key principles and practices of the Zapatistas.

The Zapatista idea is the use of tactical media to draw public attention to a political cause. Used as a form of political activism, the Zapatista idea is the notion that "the important thing is the spectacle that you make out of an event in the media, as opposed to the event itself".[33] The concept derives from the Zapatistas' ability through new media to communicate and generate universal solidarity in Mexico and worldwide. An example of the use of new media technology is through the Chiapas Media Project.

The "communications revolution has generally shifted the 'balance of power' from the media to the audience".[34] This has allowed the Zapatista idea to flourish, opening up new channels and providing a powerful forum for political participation by citizens (see e-democracy) on an unprecedented scale. "Digital, networked media allow for faster, diverse, two-way communications between users who have both more control and more choice"[35] as they become simultaneously users, producers, and agents of social change.