Women’s delegation to International Women’s Gathering in Chiapas

“Revolutionary struggles cannot achieve collective liberation for all people without addressing patriarchy, nor can women’s freedom be disentangled from racial, economic, & social justice.” -Victoria Law

The Zapatista women will host the First International Gathering of Politics, Art, Sport, and Culture for Women in Struggle in Chiapas, Mexico from March 7-11, 2018. A delegation of women from all walks of life, racial, social-economic, and cultural backgrounds strongly feel that we could learn much from our Zapatista sisters. Their indigenous perspectives and willingness to decolonize and reshape the political landscape into something that works for all people speaks to us as we look at the challenges we face in the US and Canada.

Zapatista women convoke International Women’s Gathering

by Chiapas Support Committe, January 5, 2018

Communiqué of the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee, General Command of the Zapatista National Liberation Army

Chiapas, Mexico: Tourist Development Behind State Repression of Indigenous Movement

by Martha Pskowski, cipamericas, via Earth First! Newswire, Feb 10, 2015

“We organized to take this land. Why? Because we know that the government is dispossessing land all over the country. On December 21^stwe woke up at 6am to recuperate this land. Four hundred of us compañeros and compañeras from the community arrived.”

The masked representative of San Sebastián Bachajón, Chiapas, describes in a Jan. 1 interview how residents of this Tzeltal indigenous community reclaimed the entrance to the Aguas Azules waterfalls on Dec. 21, 2014. Government officials at the tollbooth handed over the building without resistance to the non-violent indigenous movement led by the residents of San Sebastian Bachajon.

Zapatista Communities Celebrate 20 Years of Self-Government

Zapatistas march on Dec 21, 2012, in Chiapas.

by Laura Carlsen, Yes Magazine, Jan 17, 2014

There are two tests of social change movements: endurance and regeneration. After two decades, Mexico’s Zapatista movement can now say it passed both.

Thousands of Zapatistas turned out this month to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the 1994 uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). At the New Year festivities in the five caracoles, or regional centers of Zapatista autonomous government, veterans and adolescents not yet born at the time of the insurrection danced, flirted, shot off rockets, and celebrated “autonomy”—the ideal of self-government that lies at the heart of the Zapatista experience.

Meanwhile, in Mexico: Thousands of Masked Zapatistas March

Zapatistas: “to be heard, we march in silence”

by Leonidas Oikonomakis on December 21, 2012

The Zapatistas are back! Flowing like the water of the river that beats the sword. And while some were anticipating the Christmas holidays, some others the end of the Maya calendar, and others still the new Communiqué from the Comandancia General of the EZLN that was announced back in November, the main cities of Chiapas woke up today with memories of 1994.

Insurgent Mexico

“Mexico presents special concerns. It is vital to Mexican & US security that existing & incipient insurgent movements be examined, understood & resolved. This is an undertaking as complex & challenging as any in Latin America, which forms a backdrop to what may be happening in Mexico.”

Dr. Graham H. Turbiville, “Mexico’s Other Insurgents,” Military Review, June-July 1997