Reading the world anew: Zapatista stories, the denial of singularity, and the creation of a plural world

ABSTRACT

This article examines the Zapatista political project for autonomy, and against coloniality and neo-liberalism, through two Zapatista stories, “La historia de los espejos” (“The Story of the Mirrors”, 1995) and “La historia de los otros” (“The Story of the Others”, 1998). It offers a close reading of these stories to show that the language of the Zapatista project emerges at the intersection of literary and political registers, enunciating a discourse of liberation and autonomy where the poetic and the political are intrinsically linked. In these stories, the recreation of the world is realized through two related processes: the critique and disavowal of a singular hegemonic reality and the repudiation of the “universality” of late capitalism. A parallel reconstruction foretells and mythologizes the emergence of a plural world, as captured through the axiom “a world where many worlds fit”.

KEYWORDS:

• Zapatistas
• Latin American fiction
• poetics
• decoloniality
• pluriversality
• transmodernity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

References

• Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books.
   Google Scholar
• Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
   Google Scholar
• Barthes, Roland. 1974. S/Z. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang.
   Google Scholar
• Barthes, Roland. [1953] 1999. Writing Degree Zero. Translated by Annette Lavers and Colin Smith. New York: Hill and Wang.
   Google Scholar
• Blaser, Mario. 2013. “Ontological Conflicts and the Stories of Peoples in Spite of Europe: Toward a Conversation on Political Ontology.” Current Anthropology 54 (5): 547–568. doi:https://doi.org/10.1086/672270.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Casanova, Pablo González. 2005. “The Zapatista Caracoles: Networks of Resistance and Autonomy.” Socialism and Democracy 19 (3): 79–92. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300500257963.
   Google Scholar
• Collazos, Óscar, Julio Cortázar, and Mario Vargas Llosa. 1970. Literatura en la revolución y revolución en la literatura (polémica) [Literature in the Revolution and Revolution in Literature]. Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno Editores.
   Google Scholar
• Conant, Jeff. 2010. A Poetics of Resistance: The Revolutionary Public Relations of the Zapatista Insurgency. Chico, CA: AK Press.
   Google Scholar
• de la Cadena, Marisol, and Mario Blaser, eds. 2018. A World of Many Worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
   Google Scholar
• de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. 2007. “Beyond Abyssal Thinking: From Global Lines to Ecologies of Knowledges.” Eurozine (Contribution by Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais) 1: 1–33.
   Google Scholar
• de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. 2014. Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. London and New York: Routledge.
   Google Scholar
• Demuro, Eugenia, and Israel Holas Allimant. 2020. “Mapping the Interstices: Intertextuality, Language, and Authorial Voice in Zapatista Poetics.” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 26 (1): 25–42. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/14701847.2020.1717110.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Di Piramo, Daniela. 2010. Political Leadership in Zapatista Mexico: Marcos, Celebrity, and Charismatic Authority. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
   Google Scholar
• Dussel, Enrique. 2002. “World-System and Transmodernity.” Nepantla: Views from the South 3 (2): 221–244.
   Google Scholar
• Dussel, Enrique. 2006. 20 Tesis de Política [20 Theses on Politics]. Pátzcuaro, Michoacán: Siglo XXI: Centro de Cooperacion Regional para la Educación de Adultos en América Latina y el Caribe.
   Google Scholar
• Dussel, Enrique. 2007. Política de la Liberación: Historia Mundial y Crítica [Politics of Liberation: Global History and Critique]. 3 vols. Vol. 1. Madrid: Editorial Trotta.
   Google Scholar
• Dussel, Enrique. 2012. “Transmodernity and Interculturality: An Interpretation from the Perspective of Philosophy of Liberation.” Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1 (3): 28–59.
   Google Scholar
• Earle, Duncan, and Jeanne Simonelli. 2004. “The Zapatistas and Global Civil Society: Renegotiating the Relationship.” European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 76 (April): 119–125. doi:https://doi.org/10.18352/erlacs.9689.
   Google Scholar
• Escobar, Arturo. 2017. Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Esteva, Gustavo. 2003. “The Meaning and Scope of the Struggle for Autonomy.” In Mayan Lives, Mayan Utopias, edited by Jan Rus, Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo, and Shannan Mattiace, 243–269. New York: Rowan & Littlefield.
   Google Scholar
• EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional), Sixth Commission. 2016. Critical Thought in the Face of the Capitalist Hydra I. Durham, NC: Paperboat Press.
   Google Scholar
• Gollnick, Brian. 2008. Reinventing the Lacandón. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
   Google Scholar
• Gräbner, Cornelia. 2010. “Four Paths Five Destinations: Constructing Imaginaries of Alter-Globalization through Literary Texts.” Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 6 (2): 93–112.
   Google Scholar
• Gribomont, Isabelle. 2019. “The Zapatista Discursive War: Literary Subversion in Subcomandante Marcos Writings (1994–2017).” PhD thesis, Spanish, St Andrews University.
   Google Scholar
• Grosfoguel, Ramón. 2011. “Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality.” Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1 (1): 1–38.
   Google Scholar
• Grosfoguel, Ramón. 2012. “Decolonizing Western Uni-versalisms: Decolonial Pluri-versalism from Aimé Césaire to the Zapatistas.” Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1 (3): 88–104.
   Google Scholar
• Horat, Anita. 2004. “Un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos: concepción política y poética del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) [A World Where Many Worlds Fit: Political and Poetic Conceptions of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN)].” Boletín Hispánico Helvético 4: 105–117.
   Google Scholar
• Ibáñez, Alfonso. 2009. “La utopía de Un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos [A World Where Many Worlds Fit].” Xipe Totek 18 (2): 138–153.
   Google Scholar
• Karides, Marina, and Thomas Ponniah. 2009. “In Defense of World Social Forum VII.” Societies Without Borders 3 (1): 20–34. doi:https://doi.org/10.1163/187219108X256181.
   Google Scholar
• Khasnabish, Alex. 2010. Zapatistas: Rebellion from the Grassroots to the Global. London and New York: Zed Books/Palgrave Macmillan.
   Google Scholar
• Klein, Hillary. 2015. Compañera: Zapatista Women’s Stories. New York: Seven Stories Press.
   Google Scholar
• Law, John. 2015. “What’s Wrong with a One-world World?” Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 16 (1): 126–139. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2015.1020066.
   Google Scholar
• Lozano, Brenda. 2019. “The Zapatista Women’s Movement.” Frieze 200 (Jan–Feb). https://www.frieze.com/article/brenda-lozano-zapatista-womens-movement
   Google Scholar
• Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente, and CCRI–EZLN. 1993. “Declaración de la Selva Lacandona [First Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle].” Accessed July 25 2016. http://palabra.ezln.org.mx/comunicados/1994/1993.htm
   Google Scholar
• Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente. 1995. “La historia de los espejos [The Story of the Mirrors].” Palabra EZLN. http://palabra.ezln.org.mx/comunicados/1995/1995_06_09.htm
   Google Scholar
• Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente. 1998. “The Story of the Others.” In Our Word Is Our Weapon: Selected Writings, edited by Juana Ponce de León and Subcomandante Marcos, 390–391. London: Serpent’s Tail.
   Google Scholar
• Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente, and CCRI-EZLN. 2006. “The Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona” Accessed July 24 2016. https://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl-en/
   Google Scholar
• Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente. 2014. “Between Light and Shadow.” Accessed November 11 2016. http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2014/05/27/between-light-and-shadow/
   Google Scholar
• Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente. [1996] 2001. “Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle (Excerpt).” In Our Word Is Our Weapon: Selected Writings of Subcomandante Marcos, edited by Juana Ponce de Leon, 78–81. London: Serpent’s Tail.
   Google Scholar
• Mentinis, Mihalis. 2006. Zapatistas: The Chiapas Revolt and What It Means for Radical Politics. London: Pluto Press.
   Google Scholar
• Mier González Cadaval, Rodrigo, and Irene Fenoglio Limón. 2014. “The New Children of Resistance: Becoming a Child through the Stories Told by the EZLN.” Bookbird 52 (3): 31–41.
   Google Scholar
• Mignolo, Walter. 2002. “The Zapatistas’ Theoretical Revolution: Its Historical, Ethical, and Political Consequences.” Utopian Thinking. Published By: Research Foundation of SUNY for and on Behalf of the Fernand Braudel Center 25 (3): 245–275.
   Google Scholar
• Mignolo, Walter. 2007. “Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of De-coloniality.” Cultural Studies 21 (2): 449–514. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162647.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Mignolo, Walter. 2013. “On Pluriversality.” Convivialism/Transnational. Accessed November 1 2015. http://convivialism.org/?p=199
   Google Scholar
• Mignolo, Walter. 2018. “Foreword: On Pluriversality and Multipolarity.” In Constructing the Pluriverse: The Geopolitics of Knowledge, edited by Bernd Reiter, ix–xii. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Mignolo, Walter, and Freya Schiwy. 2003. “Transculturation and the Colonial Difference. Double Translation.” In Translation and Ethnography: The Anthropological Challenge of Intercultural Understanding, edited by Tullio Maranhão and Bernhard Streck, 12–34. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
   Google Scholar
• Mignolo, Walter, and Madina Tlostanova. 2006. “Theorizing from the Borders: Shifting to Geo- and Body- Politics of Knowledge.” European Journal of Social Theory 9 (2): 205–221. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431006063333.
   Google Scholar
• Muñoz Ramírez, Gloria. 2008. The Fire and the Word: A History of the Zapatista Movement. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books.
   Google Scholar
• Olguín, Ben. 2002. “Of Truth, Secrets, and Ski Masks: Counterrevolutionary Appropriations and Zapatista Revisions of Testimonio.” Nepantla: Views from the South 3 (1): 145–178.
   Google Scholar
• Pleyers, Geoffrey. 2010. Alter-Globalization: Becoming Actors in a Global Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
   Google Scholar
• Ponce de Leon, Juana, and Subcomandante Marcos. 2001. Our Word Is Our Weapon: Selected Writings of Subcomandante Marcos. London: Serpent’s Tail.
   Google Scholar
• Quijano, Aníbal. 2000. “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.” Nepantla: Views from the South 1 (3): 533–580.
   Google Scholar
• Quijano, Aníbal. 2007. “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality.” Cultural Studies 21 (2): 168–178. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601164353.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Rabasa, José. 2010. Without History: Subaltern Studies, the Zapatista Insurgency, and the Specter of History. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
   Google Scholar
• Reiter, Bernd. 2018. “Introduction.” In Constructing the Pluriverse: The Geopolitics of Knowledge, edited by Bernd Reiter, 1–15. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Reyes, Alvaro, and Mara Kaufman. 2011. “Sovereignty, Indigeneity, Territory: Zapatista Autonomy and the New Practices of Decolonization.” The Southern Atlantic Quarterly 110 (2): 505–525. doi:https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-1162561.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• Rovira, Guiomar. 2000. Women of Maize: Indigenous Women and the Zapatista Rebellion. London: Latin America Bureau.
   Google Scholar
• Taylor, Analisa. 2003. Indigeneity in the Mexican Cultural Imagination: Thresholds of Belonging. Tuscon, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
   Google Scholar
• Vanden Berghe, Kristine. 2007. “Cambios y constantes en la narrativa del Subcomandante Marcos: De los relatos a la novela Muertos Incómodos (falta lo que falta) [Changes and Constants in the Narrative of Subcomandante Marcos: From the Stories to the Novel the Uncomfortable Dead (What’s Missing Is Missing)].” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 23 (2): 387–408.
   Google Scholar
• Vanden Berghe, Kristine, and Bart Maddens. 2004. “Ethnocentrism, Nationalism and Post-nationalism in the Tales of Subcomandante Marcos.” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 20 (1): 123–144. doi:https://doi.org/10.1525/msem.2004.20.1.123.
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Israel Holas Allimant

Israel Holas Allimant is lecturer in Spanish at Deakin University. In 2014 he published Contrahegemonías: los límites de la política occidental según el caso de los Zapatistas y los Piqueteros (Counterhegemonies: The limits of western politics according to the Zapatistas and the Piqueteros). He is currently completing a manuscript about Roberto Bolaño’s writing and its relation to the avant-garde movement Infrarrealismo.

Eugenia Demuro

Eugenia Demuro is senior lecturer in Spanish and Latin American studies at Deakin University, and the course director of the Bachelor of International Studies. With a background in sociology and literary theory, she has published in national and international journals on Latin American studies (race and politics and 20th-century fiction), including Language Sciences, the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, and The International Journal of Multilingualism. Her current research explores ontology, politics, and language/languaging.