The Zapatistas, Radical Democratic Citizenship and Woman's Struggles
The Zapatistas, Radical Democratic Citizenship and Woman's Struggles
The Zapatistas, Radical Democratic Citizenship and Woman's Struggles
Abstract
The Zapatista uprising in Chiapas has presented a challenge for
theories of democracy and citizenship. Although the demands of
the Zapatista Army of National Liberation are framed in terms of
democratization, we should not assume that these demands can be
contained within the individualist parameters of liberal political
philosophy. I use social movement theory and discourse analysis to
discuss the novelty and political significance of the Zapatista rebel-
lion, giving particular attention to indigenous women within the
movement and their gender-based claims.
(1989a, 3). This more eclectic approach allowed for analytical descrip-
tion of particular case studies, but stopped short of engaging in theo-
retical debates on definitional issues.
Similarly, Arturo Escobar and Sonia Alvarez, editors of The Making
of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategy and Democ-
racy (1992b), avoided a single definition of social movements. In
their introduction, they discuss Touraine's classification and allow
the reader to decide upon its utility. They suggest that some degree
of analytical distinction is necessary but warn against dismissing some
social movements because they do not visibly challenge state institu-
tions in the traditional ways. They also refer to Elizabeth Jelin's (1986)
argument that it is the researcher who constructs the object "social
movement" by reading a set of practices through a particular lens.
Furthermore, social movements are seen more as processes rather than
unitary, coherent, collective actors. Social movements do not appear
on the political scene as already constituted. Instead, we need to
adopt a more dynamic and historical perspective that defines social
movements in terms of their evolution as "agents of contestation"
(Escobar and Alvarez 1992a, 7).
The problems of definition are partly resolved by referring to the
novelty of today's social movements. Slater drew on the work of
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985) in defining the novelty
of "new social movements." In Western Europe and the United States,
new movements were seen as responses to new forms of subordination
characteristic of postwar capitalist societies. For these authors, the
increasing commodification, bureaucratization, and massification of
everyday life were seen as generating counter-hegemonic struggles to
resist the impersonal power of the market and the state. Examples of
such struggles included feminism, environmentalism, and pacifism.
New social movements also represented a crisis of traditional para-
digms of interest representation. Rather than assuming the separate
location of a political level where interests rooted in the social sphere
find representation, Laclau and Mouffe argued that the politicization
of more and more social spaces led to the emergence of autonomous
social movements, thereby dissolving the traditionally accepted divi-
sion between the political and the social. The feminist slogan "the
personal is political" or the student movements' struggles to democra-
tize university education can be seen as examples of the expansion of
democratic struggles to more social arenas. Finally, Slater (1985b)
referred to the value which new social movements place on grassroots
democracy, or basismo, in opposition to the hierarchical and patriar-
chal relations of centralized power that marked political parties and
"old" social movements such as the labor unions. Again, new social
Zapatistas and Women's Struggles • 165
cratic politics (Laclau 1990a; Laclau and Mouffe 1987; Mouffe 1992,
1993).
For students of Latin America, it was clear that economic exploita-
tion remained more important for social protest than it was in the
postindustrial societies of the West. However, class identities could
not be simply read off from economic relations here either. Instead,
they were mediated by numerous political discourses which sought to
construct the meaning of "class" in distinctive ways. Laclau's own (1977)
analysis of Peronism in Argentina sought to demonstrate how political
identities were articulated through discourses of nationalism and popu-
list ideology, thereby dissolving the notion of any "true" objective set
of interests which define proletarian or peasant consciousness.
If all identities are inherently relational, the task for the Left is
to articulate multiple subject positions within a radical democratic
discourse that would contest all forms of authoritarian politics. How-
ever, Laclau and Mouffe (1985) questioned whether radical democ-
racy is possible in the Third World, as it is contingent on the prior
constitution of a democratic imaginary. That is, radical democracy
cannot emerge directly from authoritarianism but only as the exten-
sion and deepening of the democratic revolution initiated by the En-
lightenment. This project is not constrained by the hegemony of bour-
geois liberalism, but is open to radical transformation through the
struggles of diverse social movements around multiple points of antag-
onism. In contrast, in Third World countries, Laclau and Mouffe
(1985) argued that the political field has traditionally been divided
more clearly in binary oppositions, for example, between peasants
and landowners, people and oligarchy, nation and imperialism, or
proletariat and bourgeoisie. Social agents therefore occupy popular
subject positions in contrast to the democratic subject positions occu-
pied by new social movements in the postindustrial West.
Nevertheless, Laclau (1985) concluded his essay in Slater's volume
by asking whether the transitions from military rule in Latin America
in the early 1980s would lead to the reproduction of traditional
political spaces which have tended to reduce all political practice to
a relation of representation. Or, he continued, "will the radicalization
of a variety of struggles based on a plurality of subject positions lead to
a proliferation of spaces, reducing the distance between representatives
and represented?" (Laclau 1985, 41—42). That is, would the new
social movements remain imprisoned by the political discourses of
the past, such as the Leninist faith in the revolutionary vanguard or
the national variants of populism, both with their cult of the leader
and their invocation of a collective will? Or would these movements
break with the past and articulate new political visions from numerous
points rather than one central point of antagonism?
168 • Harvey
The fact that Laclau posed this question contradicts the idea that
radical democracy can only emerge in postindustrial society. In posing
the question, he addressed the potential for social movements to ex-
pand the political arena to previously marginalized groups. Social
movements were new to the extent that they not only presented new
demands but did so within new political discourses. Identity therefore
became as central to analysis as structural conditions. In fact, the
impact of structural reforms in the economy and the state could only
be interpreted through a relational analysis of popular movements'
strategies of resistance, negotiation, and accommodation. While class-
based identities remained important, they were not the only ones;
researchers documented the uses of gender, ethnicity, and religion in
social movement activity. In later work, Laclau (1990b) reiterated his
position that the main obstacle to radical democracy in the Third
World was the failure of the Left to take seriously the specifically
democratic tasks of socialism. In answering Aletta Norval's (1990)
question as to whether a radical democratic politics could emerge in
South Africa and other Third World countries, Laclau (1990b) replied
that this was possible but depended on the transformation of the
political imaginary of liberation movements and vanguard parties
which have historically tended to construct totalizing ideologies that
ignore or suppress ambiguity, difference, and dialogue. Laclau's per-
sonal experience of Left politics in Argentina also fed his concern
about the lack of articulation between socialism and democracy in
Third World liberation struggles (Laclau 1990c). For him, socialism
is a part of the global democratic.revolution of the past 200 years.
The point is not to subordinate democracy to socialism but to further
them both by working for their political articulation.
The argument that new social movements were indeed "new" did
not convince everyone. For some, it appeared to leave out the historical
dimension of popular protest. Referring to the Mexican case, Alan
Knight (1990) described the continuities in popular movements, not-
ing that identity had always been problematical and contingent. It
was therefore no great revelation to find different sectors of the work-
ing class simultaneously supporting the ruling PRI, the Mexican Com-
munist Party (PCM), or the far right. Mexico's new popular move-
ments of the 1980s could be understood by reference to the effects
of economic crisis on the poor, while the supposedly "new practices"
were simply an extension of quite traditional strategies of appealing
to those in positions of power. In short, the popular movements in
Mexico were not new in the way that new social movements theorists
believed. Although they may have involved new actors or new de-
mands, their practices remained the same and should not be misread
as the sign of an emerging democratic political culture.
Zapatistas and Women's Struggles • 169
For example, the history of new peasant movements since the mid-
1970s can be seen as a series of attempts to establish mechanisms of
self-government and participation in decision-making. The forerun-
ners of the EZLN were at the same time entirely pragmatic in that they
sought solutions to issues that were determined through participatory
means to be the those that most required attention (Harvey 1990,
1992). The release of jailed leaders, the recovery of communal lands,
the creation of economic apparatuses to retain peasant surplus—these
were not abstract problems of theoretical discussion, but the condi-
tions of possibility for the democratic constitution of the social. This
democratic imaginary was not constructed out of thin air but from
the contingent articulation of existing discourses that had begun to
subvert local systems of power relations. The assertion of land rights
by indigenous organizations, the decision to remain independent of
political parties, the priority given to mechanisms of broad participa-
tion and self-government, and the critique of caudillismo—each of
these involved conscious decisions, taken through political delibera-
tion and struggle, to transform the real conditions of economic and
sdcial existence in Chiapas. None of them was able to be fully realized
as horizons of political identification. The nondemocratic practices
of caudillismo persisted, and participation was too often limited to a
supporting role in demonstrations and marches. Nevertheless, the
assertion of popular democratic ideals within these struggles served
as a horizon or political frontier that established a democratic identity
in opposition to the antidemocratic practices not only of the PRI and
the caciques, but also of popular organizations.
The emergence of this democratic imaginary appeared to be contin-
ually frustrated by successive rounds of co-optation, repression, and
the accompanying factionalism within peasant movements. This cer-
tainly appeared to be the case before 1 January 1994. With the reforms
to Article 27 of the Constitution and the signing of NAFTA, peasant
organizations were split into fragments from which no articulatory
politics could be expected.7 In this context the federal government's
antipoverty strategy (PRONASOL) had the effect of simply multiply-
ing the fragments as each local committee petitioned the executive
for its own share of social spending. Participation was redefined ac-
cording to the logic of individualized projects, displacing the earlier
attempts to build participatory mass movements for social change.
The articulatory practices of the Salinas government were so logically
coherent that they even merited a name. "Social liberalism" combined
neoliberal economics with targeted social welfare programs and the
freeing of individuals from the paternalism of a corrupt and unaf-
fordable bureaucracy. By the end of 1993 it appeared that this political
reconstitution of the social was complete. The cardenistas had been
174 • Harvey
During the last years, the Power of money has set a new mask
on its criminal face.
Disregarding borders, with no regard to race or color, the Power
of money humiliates dignity,
insults honesty and assassinates hope. Renamed "neoliberal-
ism"—the criminal concentration
of privilege, wealth and unaccountability—it democratizes mis-
ery and hopelessness.
The new distribution of the world has only one place for money
and its servants.
Men, women and machines are equal in servitude and dispos-
ableness.
The lie governs and it multiplies itself in means and methods.
We. Today.
This political frontier can be seen as an attempt to articulate a
plurality of struggles around the right to participate in a political
community as full citizens. This is not the same as demanding that
the economic and cultural resources of a community be made available
to more people. It is instead questioning the way that a community
makes decisions regarding what those resources should consist of in
the first place. It is not therefore a matter of allowing an abstract
notion of the community (which is itself politically constructed) to
serve as the maximum authority on issues of morality, economics, or
education. On the contrary, radical democratic discourse reveals the
lack of an ultimate grounding for such authority and instead exposes
its political (and therefore precarious) status. This does not deny any
grounding for political action. What it denies is the affirmation of
some objective rationality which underpins the development of his-
tory. However, what we do have is the present configuration of power
relations and the conditions of possibility for alternative configura-
178 • Harvey
Feminism, for me, is the struggle for the equality of women. But
this should not be understood as a struggle to realize the equality
of a definable empirical group with a common essence and iden-
tity—that is, women—but rather as a struggle against the multi-
ple forms in which the category 'woman' is constructed in subor-
dination. (1993, 88; emphasis added)
Given that there are many ways of understanding feminism, Mouffe
makes the politically relevant point that a nonessentialist approach
to women's struggles allows us to understand how the subject is
constructed through different discourses and subject positions, rather
than being reducible to some objective, prepolitical, and a priori
determination. She concludes by stressing the broader applicability
of this relational and political understanding of subjectivity and citi-
zenship:
[A project of radical democratic citizenship] is also better served
by a perspective that allows us to grasp the diversity of ways in
Zapatistas and Women's Struggles • 181
Conclusions
It should not be assumed that the struggles of the Zapatistas will
be resolved in favor of popular or indigenous notions of citizenship
and democracy. The failure of the peace talks in San Andres to achieve
more than a minimal accord demonstrates the scale of the problems
indigenous organizations face. The apparent ambivalence of the gov-
ernment to the success of the peace talks, combined with the rise of
violent attacks against Zapatista sympathizers, is also an indicator
of the reluctance to reconsider the direction of economic policy
and the scope of political reform. As a result, it appears that earlier
forms of populism and revolutionary nationalism are being replaced
not by citizenship and democracy, but by a neoliberal authoritarian
state.
It is worth noting that one of the principal features of such a state
is its absence or weakness in regions where powerful private elites
dispense their own brand of justice. Imagining a three-colored map
designating the presence of legitimate and efficient state institutions,
O'Donnell (1993) ranked such regions as "blue" (high state presence),
"green" (middle) and "brown" (low). Chiapas has long been a "brown
area," despite the proliferation of federal and state agencies, since the
real power is exercised through extra-legal means, including guardias
blancas. O'Donnell's proposed solution involves the strengthening of
social and political institutions, but he recognized that this is a difficult
proposition because the current political crisis has led to a loss of
faith in social cooperation, solidarity, and civic commitment among
large portions of the population. It is here that the EZLN has at least
had some success, in creating a national movement in which the
aspirations of democracy and citizenship have become the articulating
principles for diverse subject positions. However, the articulating prin-
ciples of a radical democratic citizenship cannot be some abstract,
universal notion of equality and liberty. While equality and liberty
are entirely appropriate goals for any democratic movement, the actual
political construction of such a project is far more complex and contra-
dictory than this implies. At the same time, however, the contradic-
tions do not mean that the struggle to redefine citizenship and democ-
182 • Harvey
NOTES
This article includes material from my forthcoming book entitled The Chiapas
Rebellion: the Struggle for Land and Democracy (Durham, N.C.: Duke Uni-
versity Press).
1. "Neoliberalism" here refers to the ideological and economic project of
those sectors of global capitalism that have sought to reintroduce the liberal
economic doctrines associated with the expansion of European capitalism in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although neoliberalism differs in
some important respects from the theories of Adam Smith (most notably in
regard to the dominance of monopoly capital), it does emphasize the pre-
sumed benefits of free trade, privatization, unhindered markets, and minimal
state intervention. During the 1980s most national governments in Latin
America adopted neoliberal economic policies. Although the precise package
of reforms varied, the social costs tended to be similar: increasing income
inequality, the decline in social services, the concentration of wealth, and the
exclusion of the most vulnerable sectors. For the Mexican case, see Otero
(1996).
184 • Harvey
2. The encounter was organized around the following five themes: (1)
what type of politics do we now have, and what type of politics do we need?
(2) the economic question: horror stories; (3) Culture and media (from graffiti
to cyberspace); (4) What type of society is not a civil society? and (5) Many
worlds fit in this world. The proceedings, speeches, and resolutions have
been published in EZLN (1996).
3. These questions are inspired by Chantal Mouffe's critique of essential-
ism in general, and of feminist politics in particular. See Mouffe (1993),
particularly chapter 5, "Feminism, Citizenship and Radical Democratic Poli-
tics."
4. Much of this discussion will refer to four edited volumes published
between 1985 and 1992: Slater (1985b), Eckstein (1989b), Foweraker and
Craig (1990), and Escobar and Alvarez (1992b). These volumes are particu-
larly important because they consciously address the conceptual and theoreti-
cal problems of defining social movements, debating their novelty and estab-
lishing their political significance.
5. Teleological interpretations of social change assume an inevitable and
knowable outcome of historical processes. For example, in the 1950s and
1960s, modernization theorists argued that industrial capitalism in Latin
America would lead to economic growth, a strong middle class and the telos
(end point) of liberal democracy. For its part, Marxist theory often assumed
the telos of the collapse of capitalism, its replacement by the dictatorship of
the proletariat, a transitional period of state socialism and then, after the
withering away of the state, the realization of full communism, the telos of
all humanity.
6. For a similar critique of both liberal and neo-Marxist interpretations
of apartheid discourse in South Africa, see Norval (1996).
7. Article 27 was amended in 1992, bringing an end to land reform and
opening the possibility for the privatization of communally held lands known
as ejidos which had been distributed by successive administrations since the
end of the Mexican Revolution in 1917.
8. For an account of women's participation and the gender-specific impact
of the militarization of Chiapas, see the two volumes compiled by Rojas
(1995, 1996). See also Rovira (1997).
9. The EPR made its first public appearance in the state of Guerrero in
July 1996. It represents the convergence of several clandestine revolutionary
groups which trace their roots to the guerrilla struggles of the early 1970s.
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