The human rights project and the transformation of social (b)orders: on the political nature of human rights activism in the wake of the Zapatista uprising

ABSTRACT

Benjamin Gregg proposes the normative ideal of the human rights state as a means towards advancing his vision of the human rights project that locates the validity of human rights in their addressees. Reviewing the prerequisites for participating in the human rights state in the context of post-colonial societies, I argue that the human rights project requires a profound transformation of the social order towards an inclusive, rights-based system that empowers subaltern communities to author and claim their own human rights. Yet, I will show as with respect to the marginalisation of indigenous communities and the Zapatista uprising in Mexico that social transformation in the name of human rights is politically contested and not intrinsically inclusive and reconciling. Human rights activists apply securitising strategies that mobilise support by invoking a threatening Other and reinforcing social antagonisms, but also rely on de-securitising strategies to forge alliance across social borders. Drawing on Ernesto Laclau’s theory of the split between politics and the political, I will argue for integrating into the human rights state framework a theoretical perspective that grasps the political nature of human rights activism and its consequences in conflicts.

KEYWORDS:

• Human rights activism
• politics of human rights
• human rights state
• conflict transformation
• securitisation
• Zapatista
• post-colonial theory

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the participants in the field research in 2013–2014 for their time and dedication. Special thanks go to my interview partners and the representatives of SIPAZ and Peace Brigades International for the insights they provided me with. Moreover, I am very grateful for all the input and critical feedback I received from René Wolfsteller and Benjamin Gregg in the process of drafting this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Frank Richard Georgi holds a Diploma in Political Science from the Free University Berlin, Germany. He is a doctoral researcher at the School of Global Studies of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Richard’s research focuses on the ambiguous effects of human rights activism on conflict transformation and reconciliation processes from a comparative point of view. He is particularly interested in the nexus between conflict transformation and security/securitisation, the politics of human rights activism, civil society and social mobilisation, and post-foundational approaches to social order and antagonism. His research is inspired by his former position as a human rights observer in Chiapas, Mexico, and his continuous human rights work.

ORCID

Richard Georgi http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5407-1734

Notes

1. Benjamin Gregg, The Human Rights State: Justice Within and Beyond Sovereign Nations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 4.

2. See for example Véronique Dudouet and Beatrix Schmelzle, eds, Human Rights and Conflict Transformation: The Challenges of Just Peace, Berghof Handbook Dialogue No. 9 (Berlin: Berghof Conflict Research, 2010); Michelle Parlevliet, ‘Human Rights and Conflict Transformation: Towards a More Integrated Approach’, in Advancing Conflict Transformation: The Berghof Handbook II, ed. Beatrix Austin, Martina Fischer, and Hans J. Giessmann (Opladen/Farmington Hills: Barbara Budrich, 2011), 377–404.

3. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Use and Abuse of Human Rights’, Boundary 2 32, no. 1 (2005): 131–89.

4. Ibid., 147.

5. Sirin Bernshausen and Thorsten Bonacker, ‘A Constructivist Perspective on System Conflict Transformation’, in The Non-Linearity of Peace Processes: Theory and Practice of Systemic Conflict Transformation, ed. Daniela Körppen, Norbert Ropers, and Hans J. Gießmann (Opladen/Farmington Hills: Barbara Budrich Verlag, 2011), 3–38.

6. Human Rights Center Fray Bartolomé de las Casas (FrayBa).

7. See for example Raffaele Marchetti and Nathalie Tocci, Civil Society, Conflicts and the Politicization of Human Rights (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2011).

8. Gregg, The Human Rights State, 13.

9. Ibid., 15.

10. See Benjamin Gregg, Human Rights as Social Construction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 87ff.

11. Gregg, The Human Rights State, 3.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., 11, 50.

14. Ibid., 4, 219.

15. Ibid., 27–8.

16. Ibid., 5–6.

17. Ibid., 6.

18. Ibid., 2.

19. Ibid., 10.

20. Ibid., 12.

21. Ibid., 23, 220.

22. Ibid., 84.

23. Ibid., 88.

24. Ibid., 96, 114.

25. Ibid., 86.

26. Ibid., 85.

27. Ibid., 7, 87.

28. Ibid., 6–7.

29. See Wendy Brown, ‘“The Most We Can Hope For … ”: Human Rights and the Politics of Fatalism’, The South Atlantic Quarterly 103, no. 2/3 (2004): 451–63; David Chandler, ‘Ideological (Mis)use of Human Rights’, in Human Rights: Politics and Practice, ed. Michael Goodhart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 109–25.

30. Gregg, The Human Rights State, 117.

31. Ibid., 120.

32. Ibid., 7; Gregg, Human Rights as Social Construction, 228–32.

33. Gregg, The Human Rights State, 122.

34. Ratna Kapur, ‘Human Rights in the 21st Century: Take a Walk on the Dark Side’, Sydney Law Review 28, no. 4 (2006): 673.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid., 675.

37. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 217.

38. Spivak, ‘Use and Abuse of Human Rights’, 132, particularly footnote 2.

39. Ibid., 182.

40. Ibid., 165.

41. Ibid., footnote 65.

42. Ibid., 166.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid., 167.

45. Ibid., 156.

46. Ibid., 167. On the issue of non-Western meanings of justice and social organisation, see also: Kebeet von Benda-Beckmann and Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Gesellschaftliche Wirkung von Recht. Rechtsethnologische Perspektiven (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2007).

47. Spivak, ‘Use and Abuse of Human Rights’, 131, 150, 157.

48. Ibid., 153.

49. Ibid., 131.

50. Ibid., 153.

51. Ibid., 137.

52. Gregg, The Human Rights State, 120.

53. Ibid., 121.

54. Shannon Mattiace, ‘¡Zapata vive! The EZLN, Indian Politics, and the Autonomy Movement in Mexico’, Journal of Latin American Anthropology 3, no. 1 (1997): 32.

55. Ibid., 45.

56. International Labour Organization, Ratifications of C169 – Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169), [Online]. http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=1000:11300:0::NO:11300:P11300_INSTRUMENT_ID:312314 (accessed 15 January 2013); see also Hirotoshi Yoshioka, ‘Indigenous Language Usage and Maintenance Patterns Among Indigenous People in the Era of Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Mexico and Guatemala’, Latin American Research Review 45, no. 3 (2010): 7.

57. Shannon Speed and Jane Fishburne Collier, ‘Limiting Indigenous Autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico: The State Government’s Use of Human Rights’, Human Rights Quarterly 22, no. 4 (2000): 877–905.

58. Indigenismo is a state policy in which white-mestizo agencies deal with indigenous issues. While indigenismo had different forms and expressions, it consistently excluded the indigenous as participants who can determine their own fate. See Mattiace, ‘¡Zapata vive!’, 63.

59. Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for “Indian” Pasts?’, Representations 37, Special Issue (1992): 2.

60. See for example James W. Wilkie, ‘The Six Ideological Phases of Mexico’s “Permanent Revolution” since 1910’, in Society and Economy in Mexico, ed. James W. Wilkie (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin America Center Publications, 1990).

61. Chakrabarty, ‘Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History’, 5.

62. Ibid., 10.

63. Alberto J. Olvera, ‘Civil Society and Political Transition in Mexico’, Constellations, An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory 4, no. 1 (1997): 108.

64. Speed and Collier, ‘Limiting Indigenous Autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico’, 881.

65. Ibid., 888–90.

66. Olvera, ‘Civil Society and Political Transition in Mexico’, 118–20.

67. See Hubert C. de Grammont, Horacio Mackinlay, and Richard Stoller ‘Campesino and Indigenous Social Organizations Facing Democratic Transition in Mexico, 1938–2006’, Latin American Perspectives 36, no. 4 (2009): 27.

68. Olvera, ‘Civil Society and Political Transition in Mexico’, 18.

69. Chakrabarty, ‘Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History’, 18.

70. Lynn Stephen, ‘The Zapatista Opening: The Movement for Indigenous Autonomy and State Discourses on Indigenous Rights in Mexico, 1970−1996’, Latin American Research Review 2, no. 2 (1997): 2–41.

71. See Guillermo de la Peña, ‘A New Mexican Nationalism? Indigenous Rights, Constitutional Reform and the Conflicting Meanings of Multiculturalism’, Nations and Nationalism 12, no. 2 (2006), 279–302.

72. EZLN, Documentos y comunicados, vol. 1 (Mexico D.F.: Ediciones Era, 1994): 33–5.

73. Clifford Bob, The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005): 117, 152.

74. Jonathan Fox, ‘How Does Civil Society Thicken? The Political Construction of Social Capital in Rural Mexico’, World Development 24, no. 6 (1996): 1089–103.

75. Bob, The Marketing of Rebellion, 139.

76. Thomas Olesen, ‘The Transnational Zapatista Solidarity Network: An Infrastructure Analysis’, Global Networks 4, no. 1 (2004): 89–107; Abigail Andrews, ‘How Activists “Take Zapatismo Home”: South-to-North Power Dynamics in Transnational Social Movements’, Latin American Perspectives 38, no. 1 (2011): 138–52.

77. See Shannon Speed, Rights in Rebellion. Indigenous Struggle and Human Rights in Chiapas (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007).

78. Speed and Collier, ‘Limiting Indigenous Autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico’, 883ff.

79. See Linda Lopez, ‘Advancing Human Rights Policy: Does Grassroots Mobilization and Community Dispute Resolution Matter? Insights from Chiapas, Mexico’, Review of Policy Research 22, no. 1 (2005): 77–92.

80. Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (London: Lynne Rienner, 1998); see also Ole Wæver, ‘Securitization and Desecuritization’, in On Security, ed. Ronnie D. Lipschutz (New York: Colombia University Press, 1995): 46–86.

81. See for example Enlace Civil, Report 1996–1998. Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities. The Resistance of the Indigenous Communities in Response to the War in Chiapas, [Online]. http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/comment/auto_munc_nov98.html (accessed 15 January 2013).

82. Bob, The Marketing of Rebellion, 172; see also Lene Hansen, ‘Reconstructing Desecuritisation: The Normative-Political in the Copenhagen School and Directions for How to Apply it’, Review of International Studies 38, no. 3 (2012): 525–46.

83. Soledad Loaeza Tovar, ‘Las relaciones estado-iglesia católica en México 1988–1994. Los costos de la institucionalización’, Foro Internacional XXXVI (1996): 107–32.

84. FrayBa, Ni Paz ni Justicia: informe General y Amplio acerca de la guerra que sufren los Ch’oles en la Zona Norte de Chiapas (Diciembre de 1994 a Octubre de 1996) (San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas: Centro de Derechos Humanos ‘Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas’, 1996).

85. See Bob, The Marketing of Rebellion, 171–3.

86. FrayBa, Let’s Raise our Voices for Justice!; Annual Report July 1994 to June 1995 (San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas: Centro de Derechos Humanos ‘Fray Bartolomé de las Casas’, 1996).

87. Olvera, ‘Civil Society and Political Transition in Mexico’, 119; See also Alberto J. Olvera, ‘Las tendencias generales de desarrollo de la sociedad civil en México’, in Sociedad civil, esfera pública y democratización en America Latina, ed. Alberto J. Olvera (México D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, Universidad Veracruzana, 2003), 42–70.

88. Ernesto Laclau, ‘Identity and Hegemony: The Role of Universality in the Constitution of Political Logics’, in Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogue on the Left, ed. Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek (London: Verso, 2000), 82f.

89. Torben Bech Dyrberg, ‘The Political and Politics in Discourse Analysis’, in Laclau. A Critical Reader, ed. Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart (London: Routledge, 2004), 243, 245, 252.

90. Rodolphe Gasché, ‘How Empty Can Empty Be? On the Place of the Universal’, in Laclau. A Critical Reader, ed. Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart (London: Routledge, 2004), 24.

91. Dyrberg, ‘The Political and Politics in Discourse Analysis’, 250.

92. Ibid., see also Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s) (London: Verso, 1996), 20f.

93. Ernesto Laclau, ‘Why do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics?’, in The Lesser Evil and the Greater Good, ed. Jeffrey Weeks (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1994), 168.

94. On different forms and strategies of de-securitisation see Hansen, ‘Reconstructing Desecuritisation’, 539–40.

95. See Michel Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment’, in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Book 1984): 47–50.