The Zapatista “caracoles”: Networks of resistance and autonomy

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Notes

1. [The conch is a large and cavernous seashell, pointed and spiral, which can amplify sounds - both what one hears and what one emits. The indigenous people of Chiapas, writes Subcomandante Marcos, “held the figure of the conch in great esteem.” It was, for them, a symbol of knowledge and of life. They used it “to summon the community” and as “an aid to hear the most distant words.” Marcos, Chiapas: La Treceava Estela, July 2003. www.ezln.org/documentos/2003/200307-treceavaestela-a.es.htm]

2. [Agreements signed in February 1996 between the Mexican government and EZLN representatives in the town of San Andrés Larrainzar, Chiapas. The government recognized the Indian people's autonomy and agreed to enact the necessary constitutional reforms that would guarantee indigenous political participation and indigenous political and cultural rights. The March 2001 Senate approval of a constitutional reform disregarding the proposal elaborated by the government-appointed Peace Commission (COCOPA) based on the San Andrés Accords marked the end of the negotiations maintained until this moment by president Vicente Fox.]

3. [Name given to certain towns in EZLN-controlled territory in reference to the Convención Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Convention) held in the town of Aguascalientes in October 1914 by representatives of the popular armies led by Emiliano Zapata and Francisco Villa as counter to the increasingly conservative position assumed by the middle-class and elite constitucionalista fraction of the Mexican Revolution.]

4. [Recurrent characters in Subcomandante Marcos's writings. Durito (the “little hard one”) of the Lacandón, a knight-errant and beetle with a penchant for storytelling, represents Subcomandante Marcos's “other self.” Marcos, the beetle's lackey, endures verbal abuse, sleepless nights, and many hours of dictation with great humor and a healthy dose of self-mockery. Through his tales of Don Antonio, a Mayan shaman whom Marcos comes to know in the course of a decade, the author passes on the oral tradition that has been kept by the indigenous communities. As Marcos's editor Juana Ponce de León remarks, these characters “serve to highlight the indigenous belief that only by asking questions do we begin the process of change and that everyone is needed to ask and answer questions together …” See Juana Ponce de León, ed., Our Word Is Our Weapon: Selected Writings by Subcomandante Marcos (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001), p. xxvii.]

5. [Literally, “people-governments,” as distinct from representative assemblies.]

6. [The brainchild of President Vicente Fox of Mexico and sponsored by the Interamerican Development Bank, the Plan Puebla-Panamá is a multibillion-dollar development project encompassing the eight Central American governments and nine southern Mexican states and aimed at the transformation of this impoverished and conflictive region of 64 million people into a free-trade zone.]