Summary and introduction: Written by the young Mexican sociologist Enrique Pineda, the following article regarding the Zapatistas’ “Other Campaign” has been translated into English by Ciepac for our readers. We have received numerous requests for information, especially from outside Mexico, on the process set into motion by the EZLN in Chiapas, in Mexico and in the world after the EZLN’s “red alert” in June 2005 and the ensuing Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle and the “Other Campaign”.   We have found few better or more in-depth analyses than Pineda’s and so, with his permission, we post his analysis simultaneously in English and Spanish, certain that it will contribute to a better understanding of what’s occurring on the left and in Mexico, as the EZLN’s Subcommander Marcos (aka Delegate Zero) tours the country during the first phase of the “Other Campaign”, due to wind up at the end of June.  Although we do not agree with all aspects of Pineda’s analysis, we found  it valuable in helping to define our own stance.  The analysis supposes a passing knowledge of Mexican politics, and we have tried to clarify the more difficult references with notes in brackets.

Today the “Other Campaign” kicks off.  As an untried process, it will force us on the left to debate thoroughly its shortcomings and potential in order to meet its challenges.  The Other Campaign hopes to link diverse resistance movements.  The dangers lurking nearby are many.  Dangers such as the myths created by movements, organizations and intellectuals.  We must, however, quash the myths and exorcise the demons that have taken on a life of their own.  Fortunately the sound and fury of recent disputes has calmed and now it’s perhaps time to start debating essential points and move forward.  In what follows I explore six myths that are, I believe, groundless, but which nonetheless constitute obstacles to a real debate regarding what steps the left and the anti-systemic movements should now take.

Myth 1: The Zapatistas are dividing the left

This first myth is most frequently heard, so we’ll spend some time dissecting it.  Some folks have been especially shocked by the Zapatistas’ stinging criticisms of the PRD’s [Party of the Democratic Revolution] presidential candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador [hereinafter AMLO].  But the idea that the Zapatistas are dividing the left is a myth, because it supposes that the PRD and the movements had been united all along!  The division amongst the left, and especially the rift between political parties and movements is a tendency—some think irreversible—within a systemic crisis of the trappings of popular representation and the gradual but relentless decomposition of all political classes in virtually every corner of the planet.

The fissure between the PRD and the movements has widened in the past eight years.  It bears at least some of the following characteristics:

a)      It is an organic split in which parties on the left were absorbed by institutions, corruption, tribalism, pragmatism, job seeking and clientele-ism.  The majority of the population shuns these practices, as do many movements and organizations.  We’ll come back to this point later on.

b)      an ideological-tactical fracture.  The PRD abandoned the streets [grassroots mobilizations], leaving us within the movements to follow our own route…alone.  The PRD’s chaotic decisions regarding the UNAM [National Autonomous University of Mexico] students’ strike [1999] left thousands of young people on the left estranged, and the PRD separated itself from movements that are struggling for sexual diversity.  It estranged an indigenous movement when it voted for a law that disavowed the San Andrés Accords.  It has done almost nothing regarding issues such as the new “another world is possible” mobilizations, nor issues having to do with global solidarity and action: from Palestine to Venezuela, from indigenous rights to repression of social organizations.  Down on the streets the PRD’s bark is worse than its bite --it has been wanting in terms of information, solidarity movements, politicization and accompaniment of the grassroots struggles working to build a new country.

The PRD and its internal currents, convinced that today the struggle must be fought from within the halls of power, within congress and the government, have neglected the streets and, in so doing, have abandoned the struggles from below.  Then there is a third schism, of a pragmatic nature.

c)      The PRD’s legislative and governmental roles have begun to reveal their inconsistencies.  As mentioned before, the PRD approved a spurious law [on indigenous rights and culture] that led the Zapatistas to break definitively with the political class.  The excuse later given by the PRD: it was simply a tactical error.   Up to that point we had believed a parliamentary left was needed to take the voice of the downtrodden to Congress; then we realized how useless it was to have a party that makes leftist noises but votes with the right.  Further, the PRD continues to make “tactical” errors --its own term-- when it approves, for example, a biosecurity law, better known as the Monsanto Law, opening the door to GMO invasion of Mexico and turning over what remains of our countryside to the multinational corporations.  Not satisfied, AMLO himself sabotaged the approval of the Law of Coexistence in Mexico City’s Legislative Assembly, which would have improved living standards and legal safeguards for part of the City’s residents, including those with a sexual orientation other than heterosexuality.  Three laws, three movements, three tactical errors, three fractures.  But there’s more.  In matters of empowerment, the PRD failed to strengthen civil or grassroots organization, rather, it proposed policies within Mexico City that are unabashedly identified with the right, such as “zero tolerance” legislation, and favored the private sector over the grassroots in cultural affairs.  AMLO’s Mexico City government tilted in favor of conservative positions in issues such as regulations for marches and protest meetings, and even today, AMLO has gone so far as to prohibit massive electronic festivals.  These stances are not only not of the left, they are not even liberal.  They are signs of the growing programmatic schism in which, in Congress and in the Mexico City government, the institutional left [the PRD] has lost its strategy.  Hoping to curry favor and ally itself with the powers that be in Mexico City, the institutional left undertook maneuvers that brought it closer to the seats of power, while disguising such activities as a program for government.  This is one of the main reasons behind the division on the left, and which later became a strategic-ethical schism with the movements.

d)      While the Other Campaign proposes to build “below and to the left”, the PRD is bent on convincing us that its proposal is “upwards and to the right”.  AMLO and the PRD’s main leaders send signals that say don’t organize, don’t mobilize, don’t politicize below and to the left, but rather negotiate, ally, agree with the true power brokers, precisely the ones opposed to a more just, free and democratic Mexico.  AMLO’s program for the Mexico City government was warmly received by diverse economic interests: entertainment-industry multinationals saw their profits and power in Mexico City grow thanks to the franchising of Mexico City’s main square and the renewal of permits to run “Sports City”, to the detriment of independent cultural and artistic organizations that operate outside the market.  Construction company entrepreneurs were greatly benefited with the jump-start they received from state coffers, due to highway contracts that will run well into the next administration.  Tourism entrepreneurs benefited from projects for sprucing up the city’s Historic Center, thus ushering in long-term alliances that generate big profits for the private sector by gentrifying the downtown area and expelling the poor.  Big-time retailers were enthralled with AMLO, but not just any retailers…big multinational concerns such as Wal-Mart benefited the most, according to official Mexico City statistics, thanks to purchases charged to debit cards handed out by the City to the elderly and single mothers.  AMLO also forced the PRD to run a businesswoman as its candidate for governor in the State of Mexico (that’s right, an imposition), confirming a strategy that curries favor and builds alliances with the business class.  The Robles-Ahumada affair is a fitting symbol of this close, “intimate” relationship between the left’s political class and “progressive” entrepreneurs, and confirms the PRD’s tendency to build alliances “upwards and to the right”.

Numerous invitations, collaborations, joint ventures with the TV emporiums (especially Televisa) in countless acts, inaugurations and sundry activities are all part of the same strategy.  The fact that AMLO would call for a referendum on gay-lesbian rights, or muzzle himself on issues such as abortion or euthanasia, is a stunning concession to the Catholic Church, not so much to win its support as it is to obtain its “okay” in his race for the presidency.

Numerous party leaders and intellectuals are neither surprised nor do they condemn this open and unambiguous partnership.  On the contrary, they applaud and admire its “modern-ness”.  They forget that for every one reaping rich rewards, there are unfortunate individuals who lose everything.  Who won and who lost with [AMLO’s] Mexico City government?  The big hotel, entertainment, construction, multinational retail interests, and the Catholic Church certainly won.  The eternal losers with these projects are artists and cultural workers, street venders, the poor in the downtown quarter, the small shop-owners who can’t compete with Wal-Mart, and the gay movement.  But meanwhile AMLO is applauded for handing out debit cards.  AMLO’s principal allies, the allies of “the candidate of the poor”, are urban mega-project investors who will generate fat profits for themselves and other elites, while government funds are dolloped out to the poor.  Stability and confidence for those on top, stability and hand-outs for those at the bottom.  What a strategy.

The institutional left suffers from four fractures, four estrangements—organic, tactical, programmatic and strategic.  The Party of the Democratic Revolution has been left without a revolution and without democracy, and what remains is…the party.  The division has been simmering for some time.  Those of us who constitute an enormous segment of movements will have nothing to do with “that left”.  What the Zapatista movement has done, as in previous occasions, is to unveil, reveal, say what it sees and confirm what many of us had been saying.  The left no longer belongs to the PRD, not because of an abstract ideological classification (in which many intellectuals get caught up), but because of the PRD’s unspeakable decisions, its obsessions, strategy, vices and limitations.  E.g., because of its history and its practices.  The division on the left doesn’t stem from a communiqué from Subcommander Marcos, but rather from a years-old process of decomposition within the PRD.  The problem, ergo, is not the Zapatistas’ opinion, but rather the four ruptures alluded to.

Myth 2. Marcos or Andrés Manuel?  To vote or not to vote?

A political wit said recently “To vote or not to vote?  That is NOT the question!”  The debate whether to vote or not is not only absurd, it is a myth.  The EZLN has made its position clear: there is no call to abstain, but there is no call to vote either.  A call to abstain is absurd in any event, since there is no way to keep people from voting.  Movements and leftists who are looking for an impact for their vote should not look to the EZLN, or to the Other Campaign.  They should analyze and weigh the actions of the PRD; they should value what they might lose if the PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party] returns to a municipality or town council.  In some situations, but not all, the PRI will return regardless, because the PRI candidate will run under the PRD logo.  Movements should ponder whether their vote will detain forces on the right or not, because in many cases their candidate for governor will be of questionable extraction; for example, in Guanajuato the PRD is running an ex-official from the Fox administration.  There are other bizarre alliances that can only be understood with a healthy injection of pragmatism and a lack of principles (Hidalgo, Oaxaca and even the State of Mexico).  To vote or not to vote—it depends on the situation.

Some of us have decided not to vote for a party that approves spurious indigenous laws, opens the door to Monsanto, distributes milk with feces in it, commits frauds with “progressive” entrepreneurs, and pushes for zero-tolerance laws.  We have decided not to vote for the PRD or any other party.  That’s our decision, because we can’t see how to strengthen our movement with THAT way of doing politics, or how we can construct resistance or alternatives with THAT party, or even with the tendencies that we have described.  We don’t negate politics, but we refuse to participate in THOSE politics.  That’s our decision.  No, we don’t ask everyone to follow us, but we do ask that our decision be respected.

Many other folks will have to take a stand.  In some cases, a vote will have to be cast holding one’s nose; in others there will be some extenuating circumstance making it worthwhile to vote; in others it may not be worth the bother.  What’s relevant in this discussion of “Marcos or Andrés Manuel” is not the orientation of how, or whether to vote, but the strategy of our organizations, our resistances, our individualities.  Where and with whom can we build?  Why?  In what direction?  For what?  What’s important is not the affective relationships with Zapatismo or the pragmatic-electoral relationships.

The problem is not whether we vote or not.  The problem is believing that the structural future of Mexico lies in the ballot box and that elections are the quintessential change mechanism.  Or believing that party politics is the sole available, useful, worthy, functioning strategy.  There are other approaches, other forms, other ways, other actions being undertaken throughout the planet and in Mexico too.  The Sixth Declaration invites us to look at that “something else” and to begin asking those long-term questions.

With which strategy do we want to stand, support, consolidate, adhere, sum, construct?  Where should we put our efforts, as small as they may be?  Where do we contribute our imagination and our creativity?  Where is the greatest impact?  Where do we put our labor and struggles?  Those are the strategic decisions.  Voting…in these elections it might be a tactical decision to contain certain policies or certain personalities, in some places in some situations, but forget about going out to the streets to celebrate, because we won’t have won anything.

You may, like Subcommander Marcos himself says, vote or not vote, for one or the other, ally yourself or negotiate.  That’s not important; what is crucial is where to place our strategic strength over the coming years, and what politics we will exercise.  Some of us have no doubt, it’s down and to the left, it’s with Zapatismo.  In summary, the argument over the past few months isn’t about that little piece of paper in the ballot box, it’s the strategic discussion of how to build resistance and alternatives.

Myth 3. The Zapatista stance just strengthens the right

This is a self-defeating position.  Some movements believe that their criticism or even debate will make AMLO lose and so “it’s not the right time”.  This is a good myth.  But let’s get serious.  The 2006 election results do not depend on an intellectual’s critique in a progressive newspaper or whether some organization, or grassroots movement, gives, or denies, its vote to the PRD.  In past elections, left movements have generally turned out to vote without being able to tilt results in their favor.  The PRD knows this, so does AMLO, so do the powers that be.  But apparently some movements don’t get it.  Today, presidential elections depend mostly on the mass media, the money made available to a given campaign (which, by the way, and although AMLO denies it, means that the PRD, in alliance with the smaller parties, has almost as much money as the PRI).  It depends on getting the okay of the business sectors, it depends on the Church, on the clientele-ist structures, and, above all, it depends on the molding of public opinion throughout the years.  If AMLO is leading in the polls it’s because he’s been campaigning for years (even though he asked us to “play as if he were dead”).  If AMLO is ahead it’s because he had over 1,000 consecutive days of media exposure [as Mexico City’s mayor].  And not precisely because there was a grassroots movement being build which AMLO could lead, because, when one began to form on its own, it was demobilized and de-organized.  Let’s not confuse a movement with popularity.  Our current president is the best example of that.

Here’s the paradox: while movements and organizations debate and get worked up over giving their vote to AMLO, he couldn’t care less.  AMLO and the PRD are searching for turncoats from the PAN [National Action Party] and the PRI, they’re seeking more comfortable relations with the private sector and looking for Washington’s okay.  They’re hoping to pass as sufficiently moderate, oh sorry, sufficiently modern, to win over the middle class and the wealthy.  In other words, they’re more interested in currying favor with those that will determine the outcome of the elections.

The strength of the movements is not electoral politics, their strategic force is in the street, in their organization, in alternatives being built throughout the country, still obviously precarious, but they’re the sign that something else exists, other ways, other methods.  So, why worry because we’re criticizing AMLO?  When the plazas, brimming with yellow [one of the PRD’s signature colors] empty out, when all votes have been counted, the movements shall continue to exist and that’s where the Other Campaign will be.  That’s when the AMLO-ites should begin to worry.

Myth IV. AMLO is our Evo Morales [Bolivia’s recently elected president]

Here AMLO’s followers and apologists really have a screw loose.  This is yet another myth.  Anyone minimally acquainted with Latin American reality knows that this comparison is absurd (not just because of who Evo is, but mainly due to the enormous Bolivian indigenous movement), but it does lead us to a relevant discussion.  Do the wealthy and powerful oppose AMLO coming to power as much as they oppose Evo?  In other words, is there real opposition from the powerful to a PRD government?  The majority might respond affirmatively and point to the efforts made to strip AMLO of his immunity [while mayor of Mexico City] as ample proof.  We would respond that such an argument supposes that the economic elite, the political elite and the state constitute a homogenous block, something which, from our perspective, is incorrect.

In Mexico what’s happening is what someone called the elites’ piñata party: once the political apparatus lost the cohesion of the hierarchical, pyramidal and clientele-ist system, anchored on the president, and the piñata burst, power got distributed amongst the political class through a fierce struggle to capture bits and pieces of that power that previously had been homogenous and centralized.  Like children scurrying to pick up fruit and sweets, the political class threw itself on the floor in order to get something, whatever, no matter what the cost.  It’s a spectacle we’ve been watching since the start of Vicente Fox’s administration and it’s not over yet.  That’s why the infighting between and within the political parties is so mind-boggling.  The rest of the political class quite obviously opposes AMLO.  It’s a struggle for power, not for projects [e.g. money].  There is no hegemonic governing group, but an election is the perfect opportunity for a new dominant group to take hold.  That’s why the struggle is within the political class.  Behind the fracas for the piñata there is no real struggle by the economic elites.  They practically have a life-insurance policy.  The economic elites are smiling, because no matter who wins, he is sure to respect the system that ensures elite interests.  No matter who wins, even the candidate of the left.  The economic elites don’t give a damn if someone wants to hand out debit cards throughout the country or open high schools in every neighborhood, as long as it’s not with their money, which is exactly what happened in Mexico City.  The elites’ economic interests were not only not affected by AMLO’s administration in Mexico City, rather they were bolstered and strengthened.  Certain elite groups have already okayed AMLO’s candidacy.  Other groups are uncomfortable with him and still others are organizing to prevent his victory at the polls.

If bankers, consultants, chambers of commerce and even Washington have declared that they are receptive to a possible government from the left and are not disturbed with the prospect, why do AMLO’s followers continue to blather about plots from the right and hallucinate that Washington is practically shaking in its boots at the prospect of AMLO becoming president of Mexico?

Why do analysts from Standard & Poor’s or Mexico’s Association of Banks declare that AMLO is not [Hugo] Chávez and presents no economic risk?  Might it be that there is, in fact, none?  Might it be that Washington doesn’t think there is one either?  When AMLO is asked if he is the equivalent of Hugo Chávez, why does he answer that he is rather more like Felipe González or Ricardo Lagos? [ex “leftist” neoliberal presidents of Spain and Chile]  Might it be that he is, in fact, just that?

Myth V. AMLO is the only one who can pull off a break with neoliberalism

Aren’t the schisms amongst the institutional left that we’ve described, the limits to elections that we’ve mentioned, the weak influence that AMLO’s strategy has on the movements enough for someone to doubt this myth, just a bit?  Below, we discuss the sixth myth regarding voting for the least worst option.  It’s a position that recognizes the limits of the PRD and AMLO himself.  But it’s a stance that says, well, AMLO is not as bad as his opponents because, supposedly, he the only one who’s not a neoliberal.

Here we’ll try a stricter and less locally-flavored analysis.  The broader context of AMLO’s candidacy is one where, globally, neoliberal technocrats have lost favor.  The Menems, Salinas, Toledos and even the Foxs have lost maneuvering room, reeling from repudiation by their respective peoples.  Nowadays, even at the IMF and World Bank there is no consensus regarding the “speed” or the intensity with which neoliberal structural reforms must be implemented.  Thank God.  After the neoliberals’ golden years in the 80s and 90s, a whole wave of anti-systemic movements have struck throughout the world.  In Seattle and Genoa an emerging peoples’ movement stopped the summit meetings of the powerful, later blossoming into a wide-scale antiwar movement.  In Latin America neoliberal policies brought disaster, and people began to vote for the left.  Uruguay and Brazil are the best examples of this tendency.  Venezuelans, tired of their political class that had caved in on itself, voted for a strange but popular candidate who turned out to be more radical than expected.  But also in Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina movements, rebellions, quasi insurrections rose up and threw out presidents and political classes.  To the shout of “They must all go!”, the power from below, like a cyclone, leveled almost everything.  And we say almost everything because the insurrections, especially in Ecuador and Argentina, were unable to create an alternative to keep the political class from returning.

Notwithstanding setbacks, limits and obstacles, in the past six years we’ve been in the midst of an upsurge in anti-systemic movements.  It’s a stage in which at times it seems we are reaching insurrectional levels, but then calm sets in.  For the global powers, including the United States, this hasn’t gone unnoticed.  From CIA documents to right-wing TV broadcasts, the enemy has been clearly identified by name: Zapatistas, the Piqueteros in Argentina, the Landless in Brazil.  The indigenous peoples, the campesino [peasant] movements, the “another world is possible” protests are potentially destabilizing forces.

This wave of rebellions definitely is a danger to the system when taken together.  Not surprisingly, the elites have begun to talk more of a “war on poverty”, funding for poor countries, pardoning debts, slowing down structural reforms.  But let’s be clear: they are concessions to ensure the return of stability.  Some of these concessions, at times uncomfortable for the elites, granted reluctantly, most actually preferable for the global powers, speak of the possibility of coexisting with moderate left governments as long as they don’t affect structures or the overall dynamics of the system.  And that takes us back to AMLO.

In an interview with Televisa [principal partner in Mexico’s TV duopoly], AMLO turned to the cameras and called for understanding, essentially saying what we need in Mexico is to strengthen institutions, the state, and, of course, good governance.  This explains his campaign slogan, “for the good of all, first the poor”.  It’s an urgent cry to understand that his candidacy means stability for those on top but, even more important, stability below.  The message is clear, but it’s not for the poor, it’s for the powerful ruling class, for the rich.  The message between the lines is “you need me”.  I’m the only one who can guarantee stability below.  For your own good, to guarantee your own interests, I’m the candidate who represents legitimacy and stability of the political system without implying a transformation of the economic system.  You need me to keep the rabble under control.  For the good of all, first the poor.  This explains his entire strategy.  And that’s why, from our perspective, and as Subcommander Marcos says, AMLO is the serpent’s egg.

This explains AMLO’s stance regarding Mexico’s structural order: “let’s be clear that it would be unwise to alter the macroeconomic order: there should be discipline in the way inflation, the public deficit, internal and foreign debt are to be handled, as well as how stability is to be maintained in the other variables”.

This explains his wobbling on energy, where, in a meeting with entrepreneurs he says in a general way “no” to privatization, but in his “alternative strategy for the nation” he says specifically “we shouldn’t discard [the possibility] that domestic investors, through transparent mechanisms of association with the private and public sectors, could participate in the expansion and modernization of the energy sector or related activities”.

That’s why, when he goes to Hidalgo, AMLO says “I commit myself to reviewing the Mexe problem” [the closing of a teachers’ training school]; but, hold on, he commits to reviewing it, not resolving it.  And when he goes to Guerrero, he supports the La Parota dam construction mega-project, confusing his followers and angering local residents.  That’s why he supports the Tehuantepec Isthmus communication project, which is so strategic for US interests.  That’s why he supports the Army carrying out civilian police duties, including the war on drug trafficking.

Yes, of course, we’re afraid the PRI might return to power --although nowadays the party makes us laugh rather more than it scares us.  But, in any event, when we hear that AMLO is the least worst option, or that electing him will mean forsaking neoliberalism, the only thing we can do is doubt.

And we continue doubting when AMLO says, “the Party [PRD] has no owners: open the doors to the members of the PRI and the PAN”, not because we doubt that there are some honest folks within those parties, but rather because when AMLO talks of “opening” the PRD to the PRI and PAN, he’s not talking about opening it to the bases, but to the splits within the leadership and the intermediate sectors of those parties.  That’s why his political operators are [Manuel] Camacho and his candidate in Mexico City is [Marcelo] Ebrard: they are sure to bring PRI splits into the fold and with them a good chunk of votes.  “Why is that so bad” shout his supporters, “if the PRD was actually created through a split in the PRI?”.  Okay, let’s explain.  When those splits are not so much programmatic as they are pragmatic, resulting alliances coalesce around tradeoffs.  [Javier] Usabiaga in Guanajuato, or [Yeidckol] Polevnsky can bring in more votes, but in exchange for certain concessions: legitimacy, posts, jobs for their teams and their fractions.  For Lula to win in Brazil, the PT [Workers’ Party] had to join up with the Brazilian center-right.  The alliance was not cost free…none is if it’s electoral.  The center-right wanted jobs, posts, seats in congress, i.e., concessions that become an obstacle to a more radical program of social reforms.  AMLO can look for votes wherever he wants, but the votes he gets mean increasingly greater tradeoffs and concessions for his newfound allies, be they splits from the PAN or the PRI, be they entrepreneurial sectors, or from the Church.  Apparently AMLO not only looks for votes wherever he can get them, he is also creating a new elite group, in which the more critical voices of his party will be absent, his operators will be drawn from the PRI, movements will have no impact, and within which the ruling elites will cast their vote of approval.  This new elite group, in addition to the legitimacy it will gain at the ballot box, will be able to hammer out agreements with the economically powerful and, through cooptation exercised from within the government, and through policies disguised as “leftist”, will manage demands from below, subsuming movements and stabilizing the system as a whole without any radical changes.  So, please maestro, fanfare for this leftist government!

That’s why this AMLO myth (and the myths regarding his leadership and policies), is the principal obstacle to achieving a strategic balance among the movements.  AMLO is the least worse?  At the very least, movements should be doubting a bit, and hedging their bets on a wonderful myth that has become a candidate.  Why not think and imagine what’ll happen after next July 2 [election day].  The probability of AMLO winning is enormous and we don’t believe that the powers that be will interfere.  It’s likely that AMLO’s fate has already been decided and there is a growing likelihood that we’re in for six years of “let everything change…so that everything remains the same”, but with a difference-- those below and perhaps the movements may end up applauding this cosmetic change.  The resulting disbanding of the movements is assured.  We’ll witness the beginning of a dark period of demobilization, disorganization, and de-politicization.  We’ll see the state strengthened, not struggles; we’ll see institutions flourish, not the alternatives being built from below.  This is also a nightmarish scenario.  But there is a voice that is saying NO.  It’s the moment of the sixth declaration.

Myth VI. The Other Campaign is a future-less tower of Babel

We’ve arrived at the last myth.  “The Other Campaign is sure to fail because of its diversity, or perhaps because of its utopianism.”  Some people find it incomprehensible that the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle should appear at this moment; to others it seems that the Zapatistas took too long to hammer out a proposal.  From our perspective the Sixth Declaration began to be hatched when the Zapatistas headed home after the “March of the Color of the Earth” [2001].  Following the march, the Zapatistas took an important step back, forcing themselves to concentrate on the internal workings of their organization, which eventually gave rise to one of the most advanced proposals on earth in terms of indigenous autonomy and self-management [the current five “Caracoles” with their Good Government Councils].

The Sixth Declaration came out when it had to: after rearticulating the autonomous and self-management processes at home.  First things first, yes, but we’ve left out one detail: the outcome of [AMLO’s] impeachment process.  The upshot of the trial to impeach AMLO catalyzed and sped up what the Zapatistas had already decided years before.  AMLO sent everyone home [after the impeachment process was thwarted due to mass mobilizations in 2005] because, quite simply, he didn’t need them any longer.  The gesture confirmed his demagogic tendency to mobilize people when his interests are in danger (like his 1988 candidacy, his 1994 candidacy, his 2000 candidacy and now his 2006 candidacy, all tremendous mobilizations around his person), and then demobilize when the political outcome is assured.  Waiting for the outcome of the impeachment process was, it seems to me, a sage decision for the following step.  And the Zapatistas proceeded to take it.

But what’s most important is that the Sixth Declaration comes at a different political moment.  Some intellectuals-- never tiring of telling us what we’re doing is wrong, but few ever descending from their ivory-tower cubicles to set things right --foretell of the dangers we face: if the other declarations of the Lacandon Jungle failed, this one must fail too.  Perhaps, but perhaps not (we often wonder why these voices are less critical with the elites and with AMLO than with the Zapatistas).

“Perhaps not” doesn’t come from some abstract utopianism.  As opposed to the 90s, and as opposed to when the Zapatistas returned home [from the 2001 march to Mexico City] to build the “Caracoles”, our optimism rests on the new movements and social subjects that have arisen in these past four years, as well as resurgent sectors of traditional movements.  The Sixth Declaration acknowledges them all.  Much like the weak and incipient change in the power structure in Latin America and the global movements, there is a slow and progressive wave of anti-systemic movements in Mexico.  I would classify them in four categories: a) grassroots movements in the labor sector (such as in the IMSS- the Mexican Social Security Institute workers’ movement) and progressive radicalized leadership (such as in the SME- Electrical Workers Union); b) a small student and youth movement that has grown from a university protest movement to permanent structures, with new types of organization, more horizontal, festive and lasting, from occupations (squats) to autonomous cafes, to libertarian centers and autonomous radio transmitters (Radio Bemba in Sonora, Radio Plantón in Oaxaca, Take the Streets in Chiapas to Chanti Ollín in Mexico City); c) a reactivated and recharged peasants’ movement, with many contradictions and limitation but today struggling and resisting (The Countryside Won’t Take Any More movement); and d) a constellation of local struggles, peasant and indigenous, defending local resources and territories.  A multiplicity of micro-resistances that, slowly but surely, are trying to tie together a network of local resistances (such as La Parota or Xochistlahuaca and many others).

The difference with the Sixth Declaration and the Other Campaign has nothing to do with the Zapatistas, but rather with the movements and social subjects, that together with the Zapatistas and the indigenous movements are beginning to build tomorrow’s remarkable movement.

The Other Campaign is far from being an occurrence, a tantrum, a sectarian put-down.  The Other Campaign and the Sixth Declaration make up a long-term strategic proposal, undertaken in the context of unfolding events.  True, it’s a proposal with weaknesses and limitations.  Uncertain, no doubt about it.  But it’s a strategy based on parameters that, we believe, cannot be set aside:

·        The Other Campaign is shedding light on the resistances, on other ways, on other methods.  Again, it’s doing politics backwards: while the plazas are filling with party colors, the Other Campaign talks about the multiple and diverse resistances.  While party banners and noisemakers are being whipped about, the Other Campaign makes a community radio station visible here, political prisoners visible there.  It will shed light on those who are invisible: the indigenous people, the young, peasants, women.  A form of autonomy here, a workers’ resistance there.  We are witnessing the diversity and enormous size of the movement or, better put, the movements.

·        The Other Campaign will also bring greater meaning to what for years seemed to be an amorphous and fluctuating civil society.  Thousands of us have participated in these non-traditional movements around Zapatismo, that slowly begin to coalesce as a movement of movements, including a new civilian Zapatismo.

·        The Other Campaign will encourage the articulation of an important segment of the movements, ensuring that the struggles and movements work for the long term, after the elections, no matter what the outcome is.

·        The Other Campaign will promote the articulation of an important segment of the movements, with a program that will be a melting pot of resistances.   Zapatismo has tried all the aforementioned, but this time the effort centers on building a national program of struggle.

·        The Other Campaign sets traditional political relationships on their head in order to construct the future we want.  In traditional politics, the voter is the object, he/she is a numbered subscriber to a prefabricated proposal.  In the Other Campaign the participant is the active subject in the building process.  Therefore listening, not just speaking, is important, because in a way it transfers the construction of the program to those below.

·        The Other Campaign is a multi-layered organizing effort with diverse dimensions: we’ll link at the local, national and international levels.  The construction of a new civilian Zapatismo will be possible, alliances with Zapatismo can be generated, it will stimulate our imagination and our work from below.  It will be a movement of mobilization, of communication and of organization like none we’ve seen for many years.

·        The Sixth Declaration opens a complex and strategic dialogue, an essential one, for us of the movements to take the next step and fashion a new way of doing politics, and build a national program of struggle, anti-capitalist in nature, and so promote a new constituent assembly.

In our opinion, the Sixth Declaration is a strategic initiative that endeavors to construct a new power relationship which, with time, will allow us to advance towards a new constituent assembly.  This is not a legalist or state-ist proposal, but rather a horizontal struggle where many of the movements can be situated.  The proposal is already taking shape.  Could it fail?  Of course.  Those of us in the new anti-systemic movements know that history is never pre-scripted and nothing is inevitable, something that we of the traditional left believed once upon a time.

Do the Other Campaign, the Sixth Declaration, Zapatismo have errors, limits or lacunae?  Of course.  But it is here where we have decided to build, and look towards the future.  The Other Campaign is a Babel, but we are trying to find the translators.  The Other Campaign has no future?  That, brother and sisters, remains to be seen.

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Sociologist Enrique Pineda is an adherent of the Other Campaign.

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