This report of the second Zapatista encounter in Spain is something of a break with my normal writing style as I got swept up in the romance (and as it happens a romance) of the second encounter in Spain. Don’t panic, the center section is a fairly detailed description of some of the actual discussions at the encounter. I spent the last day by the river and hence missed the decision by some to stay an extra couple of days and set up what became ‘Peoples Global Action’! Bad revolutionary!
Writer: Andrew Flood
Articles by Andrew N Flood
The EZLN (Zapatista National Liberation Army) came briefly to the worlds attention when they seized several towns in Chiapas on New Years day in 1994. This image of a new armed rebel movement in the period when such movements were meant to have recognised their own redundancy was startling and demonstrated that history was not yet over.
Since then most of the continued support the Zapatistas have received is strongly based on the idea that the Zapatistas are different. Different not just from the neoliberal world order they oppose but, more fundamentally, different from the armed revolutionary groups that exist and have existed elsewhere in the world. [This text as a PDF pamphlet]
This was a talk I gave to the WSM during the spring of 1997 as part of a set of re-orientation talks and debates we were having in that period and which set us up for the Seattle wave. This is perhaps foreshadowed where I wrote "the fact that the Zapatistas have emphasised the need for a global response has resulted in the creation of a global network against neoliberalism … This network is fragile, .. But the central importance of the gathering is that it is creating a new tradition of international solidarity."
Over the summer of 2005 the Zapatistas surprised their supporters by suddenly declaring a Red Alert out of the blue. After a couple of days of near panic it emerged that this was just because they were undergoing a consulta (a discussion and referendum) which would decide on a new path for the movement. This new path is to once more turn outwards and to aim to build a new alliance across Mexico and beyond.
Did the idea of the so called ‘Pensions Levy’ come from some of the very Irish Congress of Trade Unions leadership who are supposed to negotiate on behalf of workers. This is one revelation that emerged on Saturday morning at a meeting of over 100 public sector trade unionists and two delegates from the Waterford Glass occupation. We were meeting in the Davenport hotel, Dublin to discuss a collective response to government attacks on workers and in particular the public sector pay cut. Most of those present were on branch committees or even national executives with a couple of branches delegating representatives to the meeting. The gathering could in that context be said to reflect the views of a large number of branches across the unions that organise public sector workers.
The Nice referendum is one of those odd occasions where anarchists are recommending the same vote as individuals and organisations we find odious. For instance some of those calling for a No vote are making racist panic arguments saying a Yes vote will result in 7.5 million Eastern Europeans moving to Ireland! It’s rather obvious that anarchists who oppose all border controls have no time for such tripe.
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The Nice Treaty and globalisation
This article was written at the time of the second Nice referendum in Ireland as part of ‘Libertarians Against Nice’, a WSM initiated campaign that distributed 15,000 leaflets as well as carrying our other activity. Because of right nationalist opposition to the treaty we were keen to publish material that put forward a distinct perspective, one that argues against the treaty from a class rather than nationalist perspective.
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Space Aliens horrified by Earth
An alien spacecraft surveying the earth would surely be astounded by the ‘civilisation’ that inhabits it. On the one hand it has sent men to the moon and sequenced the human genome. On the other tens of millions die every year because they lack access to basic medicine and clean water. 2.6 billion people have no access to sanitation, 2 billion have no electricity and 100 million are homeless. How can this be?
Restructuring and Resistance is an inspired book that succeeds in explaining why many people in western Europe are opposing capitalist globalisation. It does this by doing what the mainstream media will not, giving them a voice.
The EU is continuing the exploitation of the people of North Africa through creating a special trade zone of some of the North African countries similar to the free trades zones North America has created in Mexico. In Ireland this has been most visible with ‘Fruit of the Loom’ closing plants in the north west of Ireland and opening new plants in Morocco where workers are paid one seventh of what the (low paid) Irish workers were paid.