Zapatistas

Zapatistas on Justice: It Is Not About Money

August 19, 2013 Andrea, interoccupy.net Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Police abuse, Zapatistas

With so many of their comrades having being murdered by people who are never punished, or else get exonerated and released (like the ones who committed the Acteal massacre), Zapatistas know about corruption in the capitalistic judicial system. They know about comrades being arrested under false charges, tortured, forced to sign false confession statements, judged by corrupted judges and serving lifetime condemns for crimes they did not commit. Criminals like the brother of Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, accused of drug smuggling and unlawful enrichment (more than $120 millions US DOLLARS), has just been exonerated of all his crimes two weeks ago, while rural Zapatista teacher Alberto Patishtán still serves an illegal sentence for crimes he did not commit. So Zapatistas know about justice being bought. That’s why they developed mechanisms to create a judicial system that is not about money.

Zapatista Freedom School Day 3: “Our Weapons are Our Words, Our Thinking, Our Hearts”

August 15, 2013 andrea, interoccupy.net Resist! Democracy, Human Rights, Zapatistas

"On their third day of classes in the Freedom School, Zapatistas “confessed” that they are armed – their weapons are their words, their thoughts and their hearts[...]One of the most powerful ideological attacks comes from the government media and corporate media. “They say there is no poverty, which we all know is not true, because there are children and families living in dumps. They broadcast TV shows that have nothing to do with us, useless TV shows, like TV Novellas and sports shows,” the Zapatista teachers said. They counter these attacks with talks, popular assemblies, and through their community radio."

Zapatista Freedom School Day 2–Women and Revolution

August 15, 2013 andrea, www.interoccupy.net Resist! Democracy, Women's Rights, Zapatistas

We Zapatista women have conquered freedom through our effort ever since we started our organization” they said. “We conquered freedom to reach equality between male comrades and female comrades. Our organization taught us that we are worth it, that we can participate. We can fill positions in the governments at every level – Local, MAREZ (Autonomous Rebellious Zapatista Municipality), and Good Government Boards, we can be sheriffs, health promoters, health coordinators, education and agro-ecological coordinators and so on."

The Zapatistas’ First School Opens For Session

August 15, 2013 Marta Molina, www.http://wagingnonviolence.org Educate! Human Rights, Latin America, Zapatistas

"Last December, tens of thousands of indigenous Zapatistas mobilized, peacefully and in complete silence, to occupy five municipal government office buildings in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. That same day, which coincided with the end of one cycle on the Maya calendar, Zapatistas released a communiqué, asking, “Did you hear it?” It appears that the answer was yes, because this week thousands of people from around the world are descending on Chiapas for the Zapatistas’ first organizing school, called la escuelita de libertad, which means the little school of liberty. "

“There Is No Recipe For Autonomy And No Limits” – Zapatistas In Their First Class On Autonomy

August 14, 2013 andrea, www.interoccupy.net Educate! Education, Human Rights, Zapatistas

“We know that autonomy is a dream, an utopia for some people, but in here it is a reality for us. We are already exercising autonomy, and what we can tell about autonomy is that there is no recipe for it. You should not ask for freedom to the government, you should exercise your freedom. We have seen that it is possible.”

Zapatistas Celebrate 10 Years Of Autonomy With ‘Escuelita’

August 14, 2013 Leonidas Oikonomakis, www.roarmag.org Resist! Democracy, Government, Human Rights, Worker Rights and Jobs, Zapatistas

"The dialogue with the government didn’t work but it enriched us, because we met more people and it gave us more ideas. After the “Color of the Earth march” in 2001 we said that with or without a law we were going to build our government the way we wanted."

What Does #Zapatista Freedom School Have To Do With #TPP?

August 12, 2013 Andrea, www.interoccupy.net Educate! TPP, Zapatistas

Do you know why the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) declared war against the Mexican Government on January 1st, 1994? Because that’s the date NAFTA got into effect without the consensus, the vote, or any possible approval by Mexican people. It got into effect even with the opposition of a vast movement across the country that US corporate media did not inform about to the US people. NAFTA in Mexico was the first “experiment” on how to do these fatal trades under the most unequal possible terms, with no protections for the workers and the environment, no enforcement rules for corporate, no sales taxes for the richest and no expiration dates. When the opposition movement was too big to fall, both the US and Mexican corporate-handled governments invented a “magic” formula to get away with whatever they wanted: “Fast Track”, meaning “in secret”.

Zapatistas Celebrate 10 Years of Autonomy with ‘Escuelita’

August 7, 2013 Leonidas Oikonomakis, www.roarmag.org Educate! Mexico, Zapatistas

It was 10 years ago, on January 1, 2003, when — having exhausted the road of dialogue with the government as well the one of a “big R” Revolution that would overthrow the Mexican state — the Zapatistas of Chiapas decided to “abandon the politics of demands, and with it, all contact with the state.” Instead, they chose to concentrate on building their own autonomous, horizontal forms of self-government within their own territories and with their own means. In other words, to ignore the state as an institution and “act as if they had already won”, comrade ‘Bruce Lee’ of the CCRI in San Cristobal declared during the commemoration of the 1994 uprising that “we don’t have to ask the government’s permission to be autonomous.”

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