Reinventing Revolutionaries

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Reinventing Revolutionaries

• Old and new insurgent movements in comparison
• From Ché to Subcomandante Marcos

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Whos who, where, what, and when
Ché Guevara
Subcomandante Marcos
Photo http//www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/ima
ges.htm
Photo http//patriagrande.net/mexico/ezln/
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Geography of insurgency
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Ernesto Ché Guevara the Cuban Revolution

• Ché Basic background
• I was born in Argentina I fought in Cuba, and I
  began to be a revolutionary in Guatemala. Ché,
  1963
• Medical student 1947-52 1951 Motorcycle journey
  ? political activism
• Left Argentina 1953
• Guatemalan counterrevolution ? belief in
  revolutionary armed uprising
• Key ideas, their origin impact
• Main ideas developed through Cuban Revolutionary
  experience (1953-1959)
• Selective viewing of the Cuban experience
• Influenced by Régis Debray and Fidel Castro
• Become guiding principle of all Latin American
  revolutionary struggles in the 1960s, and around
  the world
• Foco theory primacy of rural armed struggle
• Revolutionary conditions DID exist in Latin
  America
• Emphasis on rural insurgency, downplaying of
  urban resistance
• Why?
• Emphasis over subjective vs objective
  conditions for uprising
• Saw world as divided into two irreconcilable and
  hostile camps
• Ideas changed between 1960 and 1967

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How useful was the foco struggle in the Cuban
revolution? (1953-1959)

• Nature of the regime
• Batista dictatorship
• The geography
• Movement structure actors and repertoires
• Urban struggle
• Rural struggle
• Influential Allies
• U.S. arms embargo against Batista
• Middle class and large landowner support

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Subcomandante Marcos the Zapatista Insurgency

• What happened, and when?
• Who was involved?
• Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN)
• Spokesman Subcomandante Marcos
• Effectiveness?

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What happened, and when?

• Jan 1 1994
• 1000-2000 armed EZLN insurgents capture 5 towns
  and the city of San Cristobal de las Casas
• Declare war on the Mexican government, threaten
  to march on Mexico City
• Invite international media and NGOs, begin major
  media campaign
• Anti-imperialist, call for democracy, peace,
  justice
• Government response
• 12,000 troops, air campaign, human rights abuses,
  restrictions on movement and access to Chiapas
• Netwar major Internet and public information
  campaign calling on the government to withdraw,
  talk with the EZLN
• No use of armed weapons after first 2 weeks
• Jan 1995 Govt calls off military assault and
  agrees to negotiate
• 1996 onward Negotiations, constitutional reforms
  (approved 2001) and stalemate

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Who? EZLN organization in the words of Marcos
Armed struggle has to take place where the
people are, and we faced the choice of continuing
with a traditional guerrilla structure, or
masificando and putting the strategic leadership
in the hands of the people. Our army has become
scandalously Indian, and there was a certain
amount of clashing while we made the adjustment
from our orthodox way of seeing the world in
terms of bourgeois and proletarians to the
communitys collective democratic conceptions,
and their world view. - Subcomandante Marcos,
Quoted by Alma Guillermoprieto, The Shadow War,
New York Review, March 2, 1995, p. 39
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Who? EZLN movement structure
Informational Source The Zapatista Social
Netwar in Mexico, available at
http//www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR994/
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Goals

• Free elections
• Federalism autonomy for Indigenous communities
  and townships.
• Review of NAFTA
• Labor law, better housing, and better salaries
  for workers
• End to looting of Chiapas resources.
• Cancellation of debts brought about by credit,
  loans, or taxes.
• Solutions to problems of hunger and malnutrition
• Freedom for all political prisoners

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Repertoires

• Changing tactics
• From the war of the flea to war of the swarm
• Cell phones, Internet, NGOs, media
• Unprecedented transnational net presence
• Horizontal organization- from EZLN organization
  to network
• Conferences and nationwide discussions
• Theater of negotiations
• BUT military threat remains
• EZLN as paper tiger

Source includes The Zapatista Social Netwar
in Mexico, available at http//www.rand.org/public
ations/MR/MR994/
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Ya basta!
Photo http//www.premierpreciousmetals.com/andrew
pics/2002pics/zapatistas/page2.html courtesy of
Josebianni Pascaal
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Insurgency as netwar what made the Zapatistas
different

• NGO participation
• Transnational Advocacy Networks
• Human rights and indigenous rights networks
• In 1984, 4 human rights NGOs in Mexico
• By 1993 over 200 human rights NGOs
• Heavy EZLN reliance on information info
  technology
• Ideology, goals, and vision
• EZLN disavows Marxism, denies it has a blueprint
  for any future Utopia, calls for democracy, human
  rights, etc
• Self reflection
• EZLN denies it wants to seize power, invites
  participation from like-minded civic groups

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Efficacy?

• Short-term victories
• Drawn-out negotiations
• Two successive Mexican presidents halt fighting,
  despite government military success
• Drafts of Constitutional reforms autonomy plans
  (not fully implemented)
• Long-term stalemate
• EZLN militarily confined to small part of Chiapas
• Emergence of other, more violent rebel forces in
  other states
• EZLN loses control of the agenda Mexican
  democratic reform movement promoted by many
  groups