A-Infos (en) Mexico, Anarkismo.net: Broken Barricades: The Oaxaca Rebellion in Victory, Defeat, and Beyond - by Collective Reinventions II. (2/2)

V ---- "…it can be calculated that, with little effort, more than 10,000 men 
would be ready to come to this parish from the surrounding mountains, bold like 
the climate of the land, as is witnessed by the atrocious happenings that have 
taken place, more in this one province than in all the others of the realm; and 
so wary are these men that I have heard and know things about them in this 
business that cannot be said of very experienced captains." ---- Fr. Alonso de 
Cuevas Dávalos, Bishop of Oaxaca, in his letter to the viceroy from Tehuantepec, 
April 1660 (8) ---- In trying to trace the contours of the larger context in 
which the Oaxaca rebellion emerged, one is reminded of explorers seeking the 
origins of the Nile: it all depends on how far back one wants to go. As the 
above citation indicates, the Oaxaca region was considered a rebellious land a 
full century after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and it was the scene of 
several major revolts against colonial authority. In describing the same revolt 
of 1660 that so alarmed the good Bishop of Oaxaca, another of his compatriots 
referred gravely to “circumstances of rebellion and bad spirit” that prevailed 
in the region.

Supporters of the current rebellion have been tempted to draw a direct line from 
incidents like the 1660 Tehuantepec revolt, which occurred in the south of what 
is now Oaxaca state, to the events of today, viewing the contemporary movement 
as being only the latest episode in an unbroken tradition of aboriginal 
opposition to Western society in all its guises, whether in the form of Spanish 
conquistadors, the Mexican state, U.S. imperialism, or globalized consumer 
culture. This theme has frequently appeared in the discourse of indigenous 
radicalism itself, where the connection between past and present has been made 
literal in the celebration of “500 years of resistance” on the part of native 
peoples to “foreign” (i.e., non-indigenous) domination.

If one sympathizes with the thrust of this argument, there are nonetheless 
problems with any idealization of native traditions, and with the construction 
of an imperfectly understood communality set against the supposedly absolute 
evils of Modernity. In stating this, one does not impugn, or describe as “false 
consciousness,” the viewpoints of the indigenous themselves about their lives, 
their struggles, and their fundamental grievances against the ruling order, both 
local and global. On the contrary, it accords these viewpoints the autonomy they 
deserve (who else but the indigenous can speak for, rather than just on behalf 
of, native cultures?), and it recognizes a certain incapacity on the part of the 
outside observer to grasp the realities of indigenous societies, to see the 
world in the same way as those looking at it through autochthonous eyes.

However, recognizing such a limit to understanding does not require a wholesale 
abandonment of critical faculties in favor of the empty generalities that 
characterize so much of the language of First World supporters of Fourth World 
radicalism, rhetoric that is more emotive than analytical, and more acclamation 
than a substantive encounter with indigenous realities. To read some accounts, 
one would think that there had existed some pre-Columbian Golden Age in which 
peace, equality, and cooperation reigned throughout the lands that would come to 
be known (in homage to their European colonizers) as the Americas. Put simply, 
this legend doesn't allow facts to get in the way of its utopian story line. It 
ignores or trivializes the existence of hereditary (and absolutist) authority, 
castes, slavery, and tribal warfare in the indigenous world prior to the Conquest.

To return to reality and to the situation in Oaxaca, a key challenge for 
outsiders (and the status of being an extranjero is not one that is necessarily 
possible to overcome, but may be one that, when allowances are made, affords a 
perspective that is of value precisely because of its focal length from the 
subject) is precisely that of grappling with the relationship of the rebellion 
to indigenous culture. Participants have stressed that there has been a strong 
imprint left on the movement by the example of traditional “practices and 
customs” ( usos y costumbres, which can also be translated as “customary law” or 
"traditional practices") observed in many villages in Oaxaca state. This 
influence is underlined, to begin with, by the central importance attached by 
the movement to the idea and practice of an assembly, with the assembly form 
being construed by participants as integral to the rebellion’s experiment in 
direct democracy in 2006.

The elements of usos y costumbres that are most often described by observers and 
by indigenous peoples themselves are, in addition to the importance of the 
village assembly as the sovereign body of consensual decision-making: 1) the 
system of cargos or offices that a village citizen is expected to serve in; 2) a 
form of obligatory and unpaid labor on behalf of the community known as tequio; 
3) a practice of reciprocal exchange of gifts and services known (in Zapotec) as 
guelaguetza; 4) a deep commitment to the value of cooperation; and 5) the 
continuing communal ownership of lands.

It is worth noting that nearly all of these “practices and customs” are ones 
that have changed over time, and have undergone fundamental transformations, as 
has, of course, the very structure of indigenous society in Mexico, beginning 
with the disappearance of its hereditary nobility. Moreover, if today’s usos y 
costumbres are not whole and intact practices from another age that have been 
preserved in some kind of cultural amber, they are also not uniform, varying 
considerably within Oaxaca state.

As an example of how history has modified what are presented as “timeless” 
traditions, one can take the example of one of them: tequio, generally described 
as unpaid, but obligatory, labor on behalf of the community. Along with the 
importance of cooperation in indigenous villages, this practice is often adduced 
as a living example of mutual aid in a communal society, which in many cases in 
Oaxaca it undoubtedly is. However, it is interesting to trace the etymology of 
the word itself and to see the different meanings it has acquired in various 
contexts. Tequio is derived from the Nahuatl (Aztec) word tequitl, and 
originally meant “tribute,” as in labor and lands due to the traditional 
nobility (the pre-Columbian, indigenous ruling caste) or other overlords 
(including the Aztec conquerors of other indigenous tribes). It was later 
integrated and codified as the tribute system of the Spanish colonizers, who 
deftly made use of tribal and caste divisions within indigenous society, 
fissures that had already played a major role in facilitating the Conquest itself.

While tequio, as it is practiced in contemporary Oaxaca, may conjure up in some 
North American or European minds a vision of voluntary collaboration - as in the 
community gardens of Berkeley’s People’s Park in 1969 or in still earlier 
cooperative endeavors in Provo Amsterdam - its positive connotations are again 
something that developed and were modified over time, and not everywhere. In 
parts of Central America, the negative meaning has not been lost: in Nicaraguan 
Spanish, tequioso means “overbearing,” “cumbersome,” or “bothersome,” clearly 
showing its root in a word associated with coerced labor, obligation, and duty.

The system of cargos is also problematic, and hardly merits the enthusiasm of 
anti-authoritarians who are proponents of assemblies and revocable delegates. In 
approximately 15% of traditional Oaxacan villages, women are formally barred 
from participating in the village assembly, and from holding office (a cargo). 
This fact has recently received a good deal of attention in the Mexican media as 
the result of the case of Eufrosina Cruz Mendoza, who could not stand for 
president in her native village of Santa María Quiegolani (in Oaxaca state) for 
the simple reason that she is female. Such an example of a kind of gender-based 
apartheid should give serious pause to anyone trying to see Oaxacan villages as 
being contemporary analogues to the rural collectives of the Spanish Revolution. 
It also underlines the degree to which the contemporary Oaxacan movement broke 
new ground vis-à-vis traditional indigenous culture, especially (but not only) 
in regards to gender roles. In many ways, then, the Oaxaca rebellion was not an 
atavistic or “traditional” phenomenon. The assembly in the urban Oaxaca 
rebellion - to the extent that it functioned as a gathering of the rank-and-file 
participants electing mandated, revocable delegates - was something different 
than an assembly of all the citizens of a indigenous village. It may have had a 
link to communal practices in Oaxaca state, but it was also an innovation 
compared to those same traditions, with more in common with autonomous forms 
produced in other struggles in Latin America in recent decades, ranging from 
Chile 1973 (the cordones industriales) to the recent piquetero movement in 
Argentina.

The relevance of indigenous customs and practices is open to question in other 
respects as well. In many traditional Oaxacan villages, one is obliged to 
perform “socially useful labor” and to accept responsibility in a number of 
defined positions (the aforementioned cargos). If one refuses or evades such 
obligations, one is deprived of citizenship in the village, in effect becoming 
ostracized from the life of the community. Oaxacans who leave their village and 
become immigrant workers in the U.S. and Canada still must fulfill such 
obligations in order to retain their status as village citizens. It is testimony 
to the importance of such an identity that many such immigrants return to their 
villages to acquit their responsibilities; it is revealing of the ambiguities of 
such an identity that its communality implies a certain coercion and that today 
the notion of what is voluntary or freely given is undermined by the fact that 
village members can pay others to perform their tequio obligations: the rural 
commune meets the cash nexus, and not only at this point. Remittances from 
Oaxacans working in the U.S. and Canada serve to buoy the state economy, but 
they have also transformed aspects of village life in rural Oaxaca, bringing 
satellite dishes and other appurtenances of the consumer society so disdained by 
First World supporters of indigenous cultures.

Furthermore, in the present array of social power in Oaxaca, the system of usos 
y costumbres - practices that have a legal, codified status in the state - can 
be understood as a form of recuperation, as a way of integrating traditional 
indigenous society into pre-existing structures of political and social power. 
The official enshrinement of usos y costumbres took place in 1995 during the 
tenure of the PRI governor José Murat, at precisely a time when the ruling elite 
in Oaxaca felt under attack by demands for autonomy from indigenous movements in 
the state. A careful study by Alejandro Anaya Munoz reveals the elite’s 
strategy, in the face of this threat, to have been one of cooptation and the 
integration of indigenous demands, combined with the traditional resort of 
buying off local caciques and making pay offs to villagers at election time (9).

What then, in the end, can be said about the relationship of traditional 
practices to the social movement in Oaxaca? Clearly, there is one, but as 
explained above, it is not unequivocal. This does not mean that it is trivial, 
either, or that the indigenous perspective is somehow only a secondary question. 
However, a definitive theoretical position vis-à-vis these issues may be a 
chimera. Rather than trying to arrive at an answer that in any case could never 
be definitive, but only approximate, one may have to pose questions instead, and 
to insist on the wrinkles in a landscape that others see as flat or uncomplicated.

For unconditional - and uncritical - supporters of indigenous struggles there 
are no such conceptual problems. They simply endorse traditional practices as 
being innately egalitarian and communal; some even go so far as to make 
extravagant claims about the cosmovisíon (view of the world) of native peoples, 
raising the dissimilarity between traditional and modern mentalities to the 
level of pure ontological difference (10). This a classic example of an 
essentialist argument: there is a true “Indian-ness” that is ahistorical, 
immutable and organic. And what emerges from such thinking is a kind of identity 
politics based on an indigenist fundamentalism.

Conversely, traditional Marxists tend to be preemptively dismissive of any 
argument on behalf of radical peasantries and their communal traditions. In 
this, one hears the voice of the Master: the Marx who famously referred in the 
opening section of The Communist Manifesto to “the idiocy of rural life.” There 
is, of course, more to the Marxist argument than mere condescension, including a 
younger Marx’s own rhapsodizing in The German Ideology about a communist society 
in which he could hunt, fish, and philosophize all on the same day, without 
having to be defined by any one activity (11). However, for almost all Marxists, 
who base their perspective on a theory of necessary, inevitable stages of 
history, there is only one possible passage to a post-capitalist future, and 
that gate is opened by the industrial working class. All other agency on the 
part of subordinated social elements is discounted; at best, it can be an 
adjunct to the actions of the working class, who must play a vanguard role 
(except, although this is never admitted by Marxist theorists, when they must 
follow the lead of the real vanguard: the radical intelligentsia to which the 
theorists belong).

In recent years, however, Marxist teleologies have been thrown for a loop more 
than once, and dissident Marxists have recognized this. Autonomist Marxism has 
shown itself to be much more open to a consideration of non-traditional social 
movements (in Argentinia, Bolivia, and Mexico) as being charged with radical, 
anti-capitalist potentialities. Unfortunately, their writings on the subject 
often veer into post-modernist self-parody, as when the terms “valorization” (as 
a positive term relating to radical protagonists and their autonomous actions) 
and “biopolitics” appear.

In contrast, the anarchist tradition historically has been far more open to the 
consideration of radical initiatives by peasants, and has gone much further than 
Marxism in including a critique of the domination of nature (a project that is 
at the heart of productivist Leninist states) as part of its rejection of social 
hierarchies, the state, and capital. It precisely for this reason, along with an 
insistence on the importance of cooperation and community, that the works of 
Kropotkin, Réclus, and Landauer have acquired a new relevance, even for some 
Marxists. And in the case of Latin American anarchist thinkers, and the kinds of 
issues present in Oaxaca, there is a much more direct connection. Peruvian 
anarchists in the very early years of the twentieth century not only were trying 
to integrate indigenous perspectives into their theory of how an Andean 
libertarian communism could be achieved, they included Andeans among their 
ranks. There is a certain, sweet irony in the fact that the histories and 
movements that seemed so antiquated or obsolete to 20th century Latin American 
Marxists (with a few exceptions, José Carlos Mariátegui among them) are now 
receiving the attention they deserve. Historians of Latin American anarchism 
continue to uncover a past that has implications in the present, and they have 
not yet begun to exhaust the subject (12).

As for Oaxaca, one need look no farther than its most famous anarchist native 
son: Ricardo Flores Magón, whose influence on the current social movement there 
is such that there is an entire sector whose orientation is Magonista (and this 
has been described in a previous section). Although, and this was also mentioned 
earlier, there is a possibility for any radical tendency to be neutralized or 
bought off by the state (and there does seem to have been a kind of recuperated 
Magonism among the various political currents in Oaxaca), at the core of Magón’s 
own thinking is an uncompromising insistence on revolutionary transformation and 
the linking of ends and means in the struggle to bring about a free society. His 
anarchism included more than a mere sensitivity to indigenous issues: in a very 
real sense, these concerns were at the core of his radical vision.

Magón famously declared in 1911 that “the Mexican people are suited for 
communism,” by which he emphatically meant libertarian communism, an egalitarian 
society beyond the state and capital, and beyond the tyranny of party bosses of 
whatever stripe. And this was no mere assertion of his own credo: he based his 
affirmation on observations made in Oaxaca and elsewhere in Mexico, where he 
knew that a tradition of communal ownership and cooperation had survived into 
the twentieth century:

"The Mexican people hate, by instinct, authority and the bourgeoisie. Everyone 
who has lived in Mexico can assure us that there is no one more cordially hated 
than the policeman, that the soldier, admired and applauded in all other places, 
is seen with antipathy and contempt, and that anyone who doesn’t make his living 
with his hands is hated.

This in itself is enough for a social revolution which is economic in nature and 
anti-authoritarian, but there is more. Four million Indians live in Mexico who, 
until twenty or twenty-five years ago lived in communities possessing the lands, 
the waters, and the forests in common. Mutual aid was the rule in these 
communities, in which authority was felt only when the tax collector appeared 
periodically or when “recruiters” showed up in search of men to force into the 
army. In these communities there were no judges, mayors, jailers, in fact no 
bothersome people at all of this type."

( Regeneracíon, September 12, 1901. Translation by Chas Bufe, Dreams of Freedom: 
A Ricardo Flores Magón Reader, AK Press (2005) )

The common lands question is one that has intrigued a number of radical analysts 
of the situation in Oaxaca. While one might want to believe that in Oaxaca and 
Chiapas some sort of equivalent of the Russian mir survives as a opening through 
which society could make a radical leap - on the basis of collective property 
and communal, cooperative practices - into libertarian communism, in the absence 
of greater proof this only utopian speculation. As it is now, the “rural 
communes” of Oaxaca are often locked in disputes with each other over their 
collectively owned lands, and the demand for indigenous “autonomy” often seems 
more a call for a kind of radical autarky than any general, revolutionary 
transformation of society.

For modernizing capitalism or productivist Marxism, social differences are to be 
steamrolled in the name of homogenization, a process in which there is no place 
for traditional practices, except in their instrumentalization as folklore or 
cultural window dressing. But if traditional societies can be characterized 
precisely by the qualities that differentiate them from dominant society, there 
is another kind of difference that cannot rise up in a consensual, collective 
society at the village level. What is not there is a certain complexity and 
variation, as well as an aleatory quality that is usually associated with a more 
urban life. There is little possibility of a subculture, and ultimately, of 
politics in such communities. It is no accident that the initial site of the 
Oaxaca rebellion was in Oaxaca City and not the countryside, a fact that also 
largely accounts for its assuming a different complexion than the Zapatista 
movement in Chiapas.

Moreover, there is a danger in imbuing traditional society or some radical 
peasantry with a redemptive, salvationist mission that replicates that formerly 
assigned to the industrial proletariat. Today’s anti-authoritarians run the risk 
of furthering a kind of contemporary Third Worldism in their uncritical support 
of the Zapatistas and the Oaxacan movement, and even more nuanced 
interpretations sometimes reek of vicarious pleasure, the enjoyment of radical 
violence at a distance, one that is both geographic and social. There must be 
some more meaningful and creative way to engage the Oaxaca rebellion than that 
which basically corresponds to watching the street fighting of others (and 
lamenting the fact that circumstances don’t allow one to engage in the same sort 
of activity oneself).

However laudable the concept, mere emulation is another non-starter. In the 
first place, especially for those in advanced capitalist societies, all the 
world is not like this place called Oaxaca, much as one might like to think so. 
To be sure, there are cops and corrupt, arbitrary authorities everywhere, and to 
that extent one could say, if one wanted to engage in empty posturing, that “We 
All Live In Oaxaca.” But the specific mix that generated the Oaxaca rebellion, 
the particular socio-economic structure and history of the city and region, is 
not reproduced in the “metropoles” of the North, or even in those of the South, 
for that matter.

However, it would be a mistake to understand the Oaxaca rebellion as only a 
local, and localized, phenomenon. Oaxaca is literally part of the world, and 
especially in the context of a globalized economy, whether it wants to be or 
not. Oaxacan workers have emigrated to the US and Canada, and have brought their 
politics with them. The circulation of people who move within Mexico (and 
outside it) is impelled by forces that affect those in other countries and 
regions, and to that extent, others have a stake in the outcome of rebellions 
such as that in Oaxaca. This stake goes beyond the abstractions of political 
economy or even the concrete encounters with some aspect of Oaxaca that might 
occur in everyday life (if you live in California, for example, the person 
cleaning your dishes in a restaurant or picking the fruit and vegetables that 
end up on your table might very well be Oaxacan).

VI

“Geography is not an immutable thing. It is made, it is remade every day; at 
each instant, it is modified by men’s actions.”
-- Elisée Reclus, L’Homme et la terre (1905-1908)

For those outside of Mexico, especially in the United States and Canada, a study 
of the various processes that link these countries to Mexico, and to Oaxaca 
specifically, is perhaps more timely than an illusory attempt to “fully” 
understand the question of usos y costumbres. The phenomenon of large numbers of 
Oaxacans seeking work in the North is generally well known, but there are more 
aspects to this than the simple question of remittances or even of the status of 
illegal immigrants in a hostile (i.e., increasingly nativist and racist) 
socio-political environment.

Oaxacan workers have brought their culture and their politics with them in their 
travels to the North. They have created their own labor organizations, with 
their own publications, and have often brought to these activities a 
specifically indigenous perspective, which cannot therefore simply be 
assimilated as “Hispanic” or “Mexican-American.” It would seem incumbent upon 
supporters of the Oaxacan rebellion to learn more about the Oaxacans in 
California, Oregon, or British Columbia, for example, and about their struggles, 
which have included demonstrations in Los Angeles in 2006 against police 
repression back home in Oaxaca (13).

There are also ways to make connections to Oaxaca, and to make a conscious 
choice to aid the most radical wing of the movement there. There is material 
support that can be given to organizations; there are protests that can be (and 
have been) organized at Mexican consulates in support of political prisoners, 
and in the United States generally against anti-immigrant hysteria. There are 
also, and not secondarily, words: ones that go beyond mere received opinion, 
even of the “alternative” kind. The best tribute to the rebellion is to partake 
of its spirit in taking risks, and by sticking one’s neck out, even on the 
written page.

In a contemporary era characterized in many parts of the globe by war, misery, 
and environmental destruction - and made all the more dreary by mass 
indifference, resignation, or distraction in the face of this, especially in the 
misnamed “advanced” societies - events like the Oaxaca rebellion are as 
inspirational as they are rare. One can be fairly certain that, at least in 
Latin America, other radical social movements will emerge, and that they too 
will have their anti-authoritarian, emancipatory currents. But unless these 
consolidate themselves and become conscious of their aims and their enemies (who 
include, in addition to the generals and thugs of the right, the bureaucrats and 
caudillos of the left), they are doomed to remaining interesting footnotes to 
history, rather than doors that open on to a brighter future.

March 2008

Collective Inventions would like to thank Claudio Albertani for his comments on 
an early draft of this essay, and also Loren Goldner for sending materials 
collected in Oaxaca. Of course, they are in no way liable for the opinions 
expressed here.

Those nearer to home who have helped immensely with this project know who they 
are, and how much their assistance has been appreciated.

We hope to publish a more complete printed version of this pamphlet in the near 
future. Translations of selected texts from and about the Oaxaca rebellion can 
be found at: www.collectivereinventions.org

Notes:

1 For all of the Zapatistas’ disavowal of their being a vanguard in the 
tradition of Latin American Marxism-Leninism - a disavowal that led to the EZLN 
becoming the favorite army of the world anarchist and altermondialiste movements 
- it is still not clear how far Marcos has moved from the Maoist background of 
his youth. For all of the editions (in countless translations) of every 
utterance of the Subcommander, no one among the legions of Zapatists seems to 
have asked themselves a few obvious questions: Why is it that it is almost 
always Marcos - the intellectual who is both the ideologue and strategist of the 
EZLN - who speaks in the name of the Indians of the Lacandon jungle? How does 
the aura of celebrity surrounding Marcos differ from other cults of personality? 
And just where does internationalism begin, and Mexican nationalism end, in the 
Zapatista program? After all, the EZLN doesn’t call itself the Zapatista Army of 
National Liberation for nothing.

2 The Oaxacan experience has attracted participant-witnesses who have produced 
interesting and detailed accounts of events. It also been a magnet for the kind 
of “revolutionary tourist” denounced long ago by Hans Magnus Enzenberger 
(“Tourists of the Revolution,” Dreamers of the Absolute, London: 1988) and whose 
breathless dispatches from the frontlines have not necessarily been accurate or 
informative. In the former category, one must mention George Lapierre, whose 
chronicles of the first six months of the rebellion are rich in detail and 
insight, and are frankly vastly superior to the earnest, but highly simplistic 
articles that comprise Nancy Davies’s The People Decide: Oaxaca’s Popular 
Assembly, New York: 2007. Unfortunately, Lapierre’s accounts - written orignally 
in French - have not yet been translated. Many of his accounts can be found 
compiled in the special issue of the French journal CQFD, “La Libre Commune 
d’Oaxaca,” January-February 2007 (www.cequilfautdetruire.org).

3 For the ICC’s verdict on Oaxaca, see http://www.internationalism.org/ . For 
the anarchist insurrectionist critique of APPO, which in its itemization of the 
various political maneuverings within APPO was both prescient and precise, see 
the text by the Coordinadora Insurreccional Anarquista 
(http://espora.org/okupache//b21hart_imp.php?p=1249&more=1). A notable early 
analysis of the Oaxaca rebellion, and one that avoided the pitfalls of either 
abstract denunciation or uncritical support, was “This Is What Recuperation 
Looks Like” by Kellen Kass, published in A Murder of Crows, no. 2, March 2007 
(it can be found on line in the library section at www.libcom.org).

4 A kind of vulgar Marxism is the common currency of much of what passes for 
radical analysis these days. And in an era of war, economic turbulence, and a 
globalized capitalism that indeed has battered down all the walls of China (as 
if to fulfill Marx’s prediction of 1848), this should not be surprising. The 
campaign to “vindicate” Marx does not stop there, however, and when the term 
“vulgar Marxism” is used disparagingly by a writer, it usually only means that 
he or she is about to deploy a slightly more sophisticated argument, but one 
still based on Marxist categories. It is this Deeper Marxism that rules both the 
academic and militant left, including the parts of both that style themselves as 
anti-authoritarian, whose reliance on a Marxist crutch only shows their lack of 
autonomous critical skills. While the critique of Marxism past and present lies 
outside of the scope of the present essay, it is something implied in the 
orientation of our tendency toward renewal and reassessment in conceiving of an 
emancipatory social project.

5 To fully understand the dimensions of the crises that have buffeted the 
Mexican economy in recent decades, one must go back at least to the debt crisis 
of 1982, when the Mexican state - in the paradoxical position of being both a 
producer of oil revenues and a debtor nation receiving recycled petrodollars in 
the form of loans from international banks - defaulted on its debt payments. By 
means of a policy of austerity and privatization, Mexico qualified in 1987 for a 
“rescue” by international financial institutions, one negotiated by none other 
than the consigliere of the Bush family, James F. Baker. Further concessions on 
the part of Mexico would be demanded on the part of the Clinton administration 
as part of another “bail out” program, all of this forming a prelude to the 
implementation of the terms of the NAFTA treaty and, simultaneously and in 
response to NAFTA, the beginning of the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas.

6 See the interesting points raised about the nationalist left in Mexico by the 
Grupo Socialista Libertario in its critique of the EZLN’s Other Campaign 
(translation can be found at www.collectivereinventions.org).

7 See the article by David Recondo, “Oaxaca el ocaso de un régimen,” Letras 
libres (Mexico), February 2007. Magón's own anarchism is discussed later in the 
present essay, as are the revolutionary politics of organizations such as the 
Alianza Magonista Zapatista.

8 Quoted in Judith Francis Zeitlin, Cultural Politics in Colonial Tehauntepec, 
Stanford: 2005, p. 168.

9 Alejandro Anaya Muñoz. Autonomía indígena, gobernabilidad y legitimidad en 
México: la legalización de usos y costumbres en Oaxaca, Mexico City: 2006.

10 For one example of this, see Brenda Aguilar, “Autonomías Latinoamericanos: 
Algunas reflexiones sobre Utopías Posibles,” 2008 
(http://anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=7625)

11 For a Marxist critique of a radicalism based on peasant “otherness,” see Tom 
Brass, “Neoliberalism and the Rise of (Peasant) Nations within the Nation: 
Chiapas in Comparative and Theoretical Perspective,” The Journal of Peasant 
Studies, Vol. 32, Nos. 3&4, July/October 2005.

12 See, for example, Wilfredo Kapsoli, Ayllus del sol: anarquismo y utopía 
andina, Lima (1984), as well as books by Osvaldo Bayer (on the Patagonian 
general strike of 1921) and Sergio Grez Toso (on the history of Chilean anarchism).

13 For background on Oaxacan workers in the United States and Canada, see Lynn 
Stephen, Transborder Lives: Indigenous Oaxacans in Mexico, California, and 
Oregon, Duke University Press (2007)

Part 1:

http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=8457
Anarkismo.net is an anarchist communist international project. 
http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=8458
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
http://ainfos.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
http://ainfos.ca/en