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The Zapatista Reader
The electrifying effect the Zapatista peasant rebellion has had on leading figures in the intellectual, political, and literary world since the Zapatistas woke them up on New Year's Day, 1994, has provided inspiration for activists all over the world. A remarkable synergy has also developed between leading writers, novelists, and journalists and Subcomandante Marcos, the enigmatic, pipe-smoking and balaclavered leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, who seems like a character out of a "magical realism" novel. This reader includes a wide sampling of the best of the writing to emerge on the subject. The book is a journey through an insurgent and magical world of culture and politics, where celebrants and critics debate what Carlos Fuentes has described as the world's first ‘post-communist rebellion.' Included are essays by Paco Taibo II, Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Elena Poniatowska, Ilan Stavans, Carlos Monsivais, Jorge Castenada, Jose Saramago, John Berger, Marc Cooper, Andrew Kopkind, Bill Weinberg, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alma Guillermoprieto and Eduardo Galeano.
503 pages, Paperback
First published November 9, 2001
About the author
Tom Hayden
95 books30 followersThomas Emmet Hayden was an American social and political activist, author, and politician.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 24, 2011
The Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico is one of the most interesting popular movement against capitalist globalisation that there is, and this collection of documents from within the movement and from supporters and observers is one of the best introductions to and outlines of the movement and what it stands for.
August 31, 2008
I'm no different from anyone else. I, too, have fallen in love with Subcomandante Marcos.
February 3, 2023
Such diverse reading material about the history of zapatismo and the EZLN’s ongoing struggle against neoliberalism and globalization. Marco’s literary flow, imagery and storytelling is unmatched, following a mix of revolutionary anger, indigenous compassion and socialist solidarity. A must read for anyone wanting to know more about why the Zapatistas declared war against the Mexican government in 1994.
April 12, 2008
Yeah, they're Indians and they're pissed!
April 12, 2018
Good history of Zapatistas from many viewpoints, but unfortunately exclusively Pro-Zapatista. Heyden writes a couple entries but most are from historians, journalists, activists, and famous Latin American writers.
It allows for both a history of the Zapatistas as well as their message, either directly from the Subcommandante Marcos mouthpiece as well as from other contemporaries.
However it was a bit too long as often 3 pieces would simply tell the same message, the entire edition became bulky at 400 pages without adding more substance. Furthermore, it was very one-sided as a Pro-Zapatista reader without any counter remarks from the other side (mainly the Mexican government). I would have liked a few legitimate voices from the other side to provide a well-rounded analysis. This is why I gave it 3 stars instead of 4 or 5.
It allows for both a history of the Zapatistas as well as their message, either directly from the Subcommandante Marcos mouthpiece as well as from other contemporaries.
However it was a bit too long as often 3 pieces would simply tell the same message, the entire edition became bulky at 400 pages without adding more substance. Furthermore, it was very one-sided as a Pro-Zapatista reader without any counter remarks from the other side (mainly the Mexican government). I would have liked a few legitimate voices from the other side to provide a well-rounded analysis. This is why I gave it 3 stars instead of 4 or 5.
March 31, 2022
This is a tricky book to rate in my opinion. On one hand the Zapatistas are an exceptional movement who receive little to no coverage in todays news, this book addresses that and provided me with an organized source of knowledge that I do appreciate. The speeches and letters written by Marcos move me, even though I ultimately disagree with the world view of the Zapatistas, which is a testament to how they have conducted a wonderful grassroots indigenous mobilization for rights despite being in highly unfavorable circumstances.
However, while the Zapatistas have a lot to teach us, the book itself becomes highly repetitive after the first few chapters. Article after article, interview after interview, the book spirals into simply rephrasing the pages past and in doing so struggled to hold my attention.
Overall this is worth a read, but in my opinion not a book worth finishing.
However, while the Zapatistas have a lot to teach us, the book itself becomes highly repetitive after the first few chapters. Article after article, interview after interview, the book spirals into simply rephrasing the pages past and in doing so struggled to hold my attention.
Overall this is worth a read, but in my opinion not a book worth finishing.
May 13, 2008
I figured this would read like a university course text, but so far it´s fun to read. Really good, poetic writing in some parts. I don´t know anything about the subject (just spent a week in San Cristobal de las Casas and only watch one terrible documentary that tried to make Zapatistas seem cool by juxtaposing explosions and guns with Rage Against the Machine music) so this is a good book for me. Much more information. And, I swoon over masked revolutionaries.
February 21, 2017
While an excellent compendium of writings by and about the Zapatistas which covers a lot of ground. However, I found it rather uneven in its quality and sometimes repetitive. Also, there was precious little about the issues of land rights in the book, which are central to to the Zapatista cause.
August 31, 2025
Marcos to "Spanish novelist Manuel Vazquez Montalban . . . 'we wanted to go further and organize a politics which went beyond rancor. We go a lot deeper than fundamentalist movements.'" (2)
The prosaic poetry and painful truth of this, with its echoes of Fanon: "Flying over the Chiapas highlands 30 years later, I was reminded of the jungles of Vietnam, the rainforests of Brazil, the mountains of El Salvador, all the fault lines of the war between the forces of market modernity and the world of the wretched of the earth. So much starvation, so many genocides, so much overpowering technology, so many Che Guevaras dead in the long struggle to challenge the West. And as a result, so much resignation, weariness, cynicism had taken root, from the barrios of the poor to lecture halls of the left. Worst of all, the West was oblivious to the oblivion the Zapatistas were fighting. One mindset floated in the bubble of modernity while the other tired to shake off a 500-year nightmare" (77, "Chiapas" by Tom Hayden.)
The Zapatista uprising "certainly surprised, and temporarily challenged, the NAFTA elite with its claim to invincibility. And in November 1999, led by young rebels in an improbable alliance with labor unions, the 'battle of Seattle' actually stopped an international meeting of the WTO from completing its business . . . . direct participatory democracy versus the globalists with their secret tribunals who were usurping the traditional powers of elected governments. . . hundreds of protesters wore ski masks like the Zapatistas, asserting that they were unmasking the invisible global trade bureaucracy. . . . But was it real, or were Chiapas and Seattle like the Oglala ghost dances of the 1890s, the last cry (grito) of history's rearguard before our fate was sealed?" (78, In Chiapas, Tom Hayden).
Zapatistas: from Marxist emphasis on class to "descendants of the original Zapata and the land reform tradition," from party to movement, from proletarian revolution to "galvanizing all sectors of civil society," from seizure of power to disavowal ("for everyone, everything; for ourselves, nothing), from Internationale to awaking the world's conscience., from revolutionary war to using guns to show determination and words to fight the battle. "the Zapatistas were committed to the end of modern history as we know it, and to a revindication of the history of the indigenous whose plight is the enduring contradiction at the center of modernity's claims of 'progress.'
"under President Clinton the US increasingly has financial investments to protect from rude insurgencies. The $20B Mexican bailout of 1995 benefited Chase Manhattan, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Saloman Brothers, and Goldman Sachs, which included Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin as a partner." Chase Manhattan wrote the 1994 memo saying US government would need to eliminate Zapatistas to "demonstrate their effective control of the national territory and of security policy" (87).
Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia, who worked with the Zapatistas, attended the 1968 conference in Medillin, Colombia when "the Latin America bishops embraced liberation theology with its 'special preference for the poor.' The Medillin manifesto recalled that Jesus was sent to 'liberate the poor from slavery, hunger, misery, oppression, and ignorance' and mandated development of 'grassroots organizations for the redress and consolidation of their rights and the search for true justice'" (90)
The Zapatistas don't want reform; "they seem deeply satisfied for now to insist on the relevance of dreamers -- armed dreamers to be sure -- against the vision less nightmares of modernity." (97)
Their book Our Word is our Weapon; "and [Marcos] then sends whimsical mock telegrams to all of 'civil society': THE GRAYS HOPE TO WIN. STOP. RAINBOW NEEDED URGENTLY. (117)
Marcos: "It is not necessary to conquer the world. It is sufficient to make it new. Us. today." . . "their goal is not to win control, but to seize and build autonomous spaces where 'democracy, liberty, and justice' can thrive." (121).
Goals: "control over land, direct political representation, the right to protect their language and culture" they are "not interested in Revolution, but a revolution that makes revolution possible" (121)
"For Zapatistas, these autonomous zones aren't about isolationism or dropping out . . . these free spaces, born of reclaimed land, communal agriculture, resistance to privatization, will eventually create counter-powers to the state simply by existing as alternatives" (121).
Has inspired: anarchist squats of Italy (social centers), Landless Peasants' Movement of Brazil (Ocupar, Resistir, Producir), National Autnomous University of Mexico (We say that the university belongs to those who study in it).
What Marcos is doing is "not a doctrine but 'an intuition,' And he is consciously trying to appeal to something uncynical in us, that he found in himself in the mountains of Chiapas: wonder, a suspension of disbelief, myth and magic. So, instead of issuing manifestos, he tries to riff his way into this place, with long meditations, flights of fancy, dreaming out loud . . . . a kind of intellectual guerilla warfare: Marcos won't meet his opponents head-on, instead surrounds them from all directions" (122 Unknown Icon by Naomi Klein).
How Marcos is making a different kind of history from MLK, Marcos saying "I can't make your history for yo. But I can tell you that history is yours to make." (Klein 123)
Marcos, quoted in: "We want autonomy so that the majority always rules, not just every so often. So that he who leads does so by obeying. So that being the tovernmnet become sa responsiblity to and a labor for the collective, rather than a way to get rich at the expense of the governed. So that itis no longer a crim eto be an Indian, to live as an Indian, to think as an Indian, to dress as an Indian, to speak as an Indian, to love as an Indian, to be the color of an Indian" (Carlos Moncivais, "From the Subsoil to the Mask that Reveals" 131)
Carlos Montemayor
Herman Bellinghausen
Marcos as the first to construct a theory linking "globalization to the marginalization of the poor peoples of the South" US won the Cold War, then emerged "a financial superpower which began issuing global directives" which produced globalization, the world as one big business. . . . they tried to "convince the world that globalization is irreversible and that any other project would be utopian, unrealistic. At the world level, the big battle now taking place - which we could call the Fourth World War - has its own lineup of forces. On one side are the supporters of the global economy, and on the other is everyone who, in one way or another, is resisting it. Anything that obstructs the onward march of globalization is now under threat of destruction." (139, Ignacio Ramonet, "Marcos Marches on Mexico City" )
Marcos's favorite writers known for their optimism of the will and pessimism of the intellect (Gramsci, Cervantes, Lewis Carroll, Brecht, Julio Cortazar, Borges) (140)
The 3-decade liberation theology work of Bishop Samuel Ruiz of San Cristobal de las Casas "laid the intellectual groundwork for the revolutionary discourse of Marcos and his comrades" (149)
they speak of "armed theater" of the Zapatistas - but I think one could argue that that has become twisted by the Jan. 6 rioters into their own perversion of armed theater (151 Saul Landau "The Zapatista Army of National Liberation: Part of the Latin American Revolutionary Tradition - but also very different")
"As long as the neoliberal order dictates the way people live, where they work, and all terms of economic and environmental life, we can look to the mountains and jungles of Chiapas for creative ideas about how to resist - short of seizing state power through guerilla war" (Landau 154).
In the demise of the concept of class struggle, we forget that it was never about whether markets should be "free" or planned, but about who would own the means of production "whether democracy should extend also to the economic realm or remain an illusion of the political process, always distorted by political realities and imperatives that inevitably stem from the concentration of wealth in a few hands. Yet, the predominant discourse in what appears as the left these days is increasingly dominated by concepts like civil society, citizens, plurality, the defense of social or ethnic identity, with social classes or economically derived identities not entering the picture. Increasingly, actions which in any way affect the functioning of the engines of economic production or build organized political power are becoming rare, socially unacceptable, or outmoded, and being substituted by events, actions which more and more have the nature of spectacles which generate images fit for prime time news - turtle suits, painted faces, brown uniforms, and ski-masks; symbolism substitutes for substance" (183)
"We cannot let go of the belief that there is a better way to live than by parasitic relationships in which so few concentrate so much, so many suffer endlessly, in which our environment gets plundered and our collective futures squandered" (185)
"We will go on to all of the towns. The truth is that we are the majority. That is the truth." (213)
"We invite people to do the same, not to rise up in arms, but to struggle for a truly free and democratic government in Mexico that can fulfill the aspirations of each and every person. We do not want a dictatorship of another kind, nor anything out of this world, like international Communism. We want justice where tehre is now not even minimum subsistence - such as in the whole state of Chiapas. . . [we want] what they have denied us until now, which is the right to have an opinion, to feel, to dissent." (211, "Testimonies of the First Day, from La Jornada, January 19, 1994).
"We cannot let ourselves be treated this way, and we have to try to construct a better world, a world truly for everyone, and not only for a few, as the current regime does" (212, "Testimonies of the First Day, from La Jornada, January 19, 1994)
destroyed the land deed in San Cristobal.
"The thing is that we are the majority. That is the truth." (232, "Testimonies of the First Day, from La Jornada, January 19, 1994)
"The Zapatista demands as expressed in their Lacandon Jungle Declaration were cultural: work, land, housing, health, education, independence, freedom, democracy, and peace." and others 373, Voices from the Jungle, Elena Poniatowska, from Distant Relations, Trisha Ziff (Ed.), Smart Art Pres, 1995)
399 - there are Indians who oppose the Zapatistas; there was a massacre in Acteal led by a PRI mayor whose son had been killed;
The prosaic poetry and painful truth of this, with its echoes of Fanon: "Flying over the Chiapas highlands 30 years later, I was reminded of the jungles of Vietnam, the rainforests of Brazil, the mountains of El Salvador, all the fault lines of the war between the forces of market modernity and the world of the wretched of the earth. So much starvation, so many genocides, so much overpowering technology, so many Che Guevaras dead in the long struggle to challenge the West. And as a result, so much resignation, weariness, cynicism had taken root, from the barrios of the poor to lecture halls of the left. Worst of all, the West was oblivious to the oblivion the Zapatistas were fighting. One mindset floated in the bubble of modernity while the other tired to shake off a 500-year nightmare" (77, "Chiapas" by Tom Hayden.)
The Zapatista uprising "certainly surprised, and temporarily challenged, the NAFTA elite with its claim to invincibility. And in November 1999, led by young rebels in an improbable alliance with labor unions, the 'battle of Seattle' actually stopped an international meeting of the WTO from completing its business . . . . direct participatory democracy versus the globalists with their secret tribunals who were usurping the traditional powers of elected governments. . . hundreds of protesters wore ski masks like the Zapatistas, asserting that they were unmasking the invisible global trade bureaucracy. . . . But was it real, or were Chiapas and Seattle like the Oglala ghost dances of the 1890s, the last cry (grito) of history's rearguard before our fate was sealed?" (78, In Chiapas, Tom Hayden).
Zapatistas: from Marxist emphasis on class to "descendants of the original Zapata and the land reform tradition," from party to movement, from proletarian revolution to "galvanizing all sectors of civil society," from seizure of power to disavowal ("for everyone, everything; for ourselves, nothing), from Internationale to awaking the world's conscience., from revolutionary war to using guns to show determination and words to fight the battle. "the Zapatistas were committed to the end of modern history as we know it, and to a revindication of the history of the indigenous whose plight is the enduring contradiction at the center of modernity's claims of 'progress.'
"under President Clinton the US increasingly has financial investments to protect from rude insurgencies. The $20B Mexican bailout of 1995 benefited Chase Manhattan, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Saloman Brothers, and Goldman Sachs, which included Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin as a partner." Chase Manhattan wrote the 1994 memo saying US government would need to eliminate Zapatistas to "demonstrate their effective control of the national territory and of security policy" (87).
Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia, who worked with the Zapatistas, attended the 1968 conference in Medillin, Colombia when "the Latin America bishops embraced liberation theology with its 'special preference for the poor.' The Medillin manifesto recalled that Jesus was sent to 'liberate the poor from slavery, hunger, misery, oppression, and ignorance' and mandated development of 'grassroots organizations for the redress and consolidation of their rights and the search for true justice'" (90)
The Zapatistas don't want reform; "they seem deeply satisfied for now to insist on the relevance of dreamers -- armed dreamers to be sure -- against the vision less nightmares of modernity." (97)
Their book Our Word is our Weapon; "and [Marcos] then sends whimsical mock telegrams to all of 'civil society': THE GRAYS HOPE TO WIN. STOP. RAINBOW NEEDED URGENTLY. (117)
Marcos: "It is not necessary to conquer the world. It is sufficient to make it new. Us. today." . . "their goal is not to win control, but to seize and build autonomous spaces where 'democracy, liberty, and justice' can thrive." (121).
Goals: "control over land, direct political representation, the right to protect their language and culture" they are "not interested in Revolution, but a revolution that makes revolution possible" (121)
"For Zapatistas, these autonomous zones aren't about isolationism or dropping out . . . these free spaces, born of reclaimed land, communal agriculture, resistance to privatization, will eventually create counter-powers to the state simply by existing as alternatives" (121).
Has inspired: anarchist squats of Italy (social centers), Landless Peasants' Movement of Brazil (Ocupar, Resistir, Producir), National Autnomous University of Mexico (We say that the university belongs to those who study in it).
What Marcos is doing is "not a doctrine but 'an intuition,' And he is consciously trying to appeal to something uncynical in us, that he found in himself in the mountains of Chiapas: wonder, a suspension of disbelief, myth and magic. So, instead of issuing manifestos, he tries to riff his way into this place, with long meditations, flights of fancy, dreaming out loud . . . . a kind of intellectual guerilla warfare: Marcos won't meet his opponents head-on, instead surrounds them from all directions" (122 Unknown Icon by Naomi Klein).
How Marcos is making a different kind of history from MLK, Marcos saying "I can't make your history for yo. But I can tell you that history is yours to make." (Klein 123)
Marcos, quoted in: "We want autonomy so that the majority always rules, not just every so often. So that he who leads does so by obeying. So that being the tovernmnet become sa responsiblity to and a labor for the collective, rather than a way to get rich at the expense of the governed. So that itis no longer a crim eto be an Indian, to live as an Indian, to think as an Indian, to dress as an Indian, to speak as an Indian, to love as an Indian, to be the color of an Indian" (Carlos Moncivais, "From the Subsoil to the Mask that Reveals" 131)
Carlos Montemayor
Herman Bellinghausen
Marcos as the first to construct a theory linking "globalization to the marginalization of the poor peoples of the South" US won the Cold War, then emerged "a financial superpower which began issuing global directives" which produced globalization, the world as one big business. . . . they tried to "convince the world that globalization is irreversible and that any other project would be utopian, unrealistic. At the world level, the big battle now taking place - which we could call the Fourth World War - has its own lineup of forces. On one side are the supporters of the global economy, and on the other is everyone who, in one way or another, is resisting it. Anything that obstructs the onward march of globalization is now under threat of destruction." (139, Ignacio Ramonet, "Marcos Marches on Mexico City" )
Marcos's favorite writers known for their optimism of the will and pessimism of the intellect (Gramsci, Cervantes, Lewis Carroll, Brecht, Julio Cortazar, Borges) (140)
The 3-decade liberation theology work of Bishop Samuel Ruiz of San Cristobal de las Casas "laid the intellectual groundwork for the revolutionary discourse of Marcos and his comrades" (149)
they speak of "armed theater" of the Zapatistas - but I think one could argue that that has become twisted by the Jan. 6 rioters into their own perversion of armed theater (151 Saul Landau "The Zapatista Army of National Liberation: Part of the Latin American Revolutionary Tradition - but also very different")
"As long as the neoliberal order dictates the way people live, where they work, and all terms of economic and environmental life, we can look to the mountains and jungles of Chiapas for creative ideas about how to resist - short of seizing state power through guerilla war" (Landau 154).
In the demise of the concept of class struggle, we forget that it was never about whether markets should be "free" or planned, but about who would own the means of production "whether democracy should extend also to the economic realm or remain an illusion of the political process, always distorted by political realities and imperatives that inevitably stem from the concentration of wealth in a few hands. Yet, the predominant discourse in what appears as the left these days is increasingly dominated by concepts like civil society, citizens, plurality, the defense of social or ethnic identity, with social classes or economically derived identities not entering the picture. Increasingly, actions which in any way affect the functioning of the engines of economic production or build organized political power are becoming rare, socially unacceptable, or outmoded, and being substituted by events, actions which more and more have the nature of spectacles which generate images fit for prime time news - turtle suits, painted faces, brown uniforms, and ski-masks; symbolism substitutes for substance" (183)
"We cannot let go of the belief that there is a better way to live than by parasitic relationships in which so few concentrate so much, so many suffer endlessly, in which our environment gets plundered and our collective futures squandered" (185)
"We will go on to all of the towns. The truth is that we are the majority. That is the truth." (213)
"We invite people to do the same, not to rise up in arms, but to struggle for a truly free and democratic government in Mexico that can fulfill the aspirations of each and every person. We do not want a dictatorship of another kind, nor anything out of this world, like international Communism. We want justice where tehre is now not even minimum subsistence - such as in the whole state of Chiapas. . . [we want] what they have denied us until now, which is the right to have an opinion, to feel, to dissent." (211, "Testimonies of the First Day, from La Jornada, January 19, 1994).
"We cannot let ourselves be treated this way, and we have to try to construct a better world, a world truly for everyone, and not only for a few, as the current regime does" (212, "Testimonies of the First Day, from La Jornada, January 19, 1994)
destroyed the land deed in San Cristobal.
"The thing is that we are the majority. That is the truth." (232, "Testimonies of the First Day, from La Jornada, January 19, 1994)
"The Zapatista demands as expressed in their Lacandon Jungle Declaration were cultural: work, land, housing, health, education, independence, freedom, democracy, and peace." and others 373, Voices from the Jungle, Elena Poniatowska, from Distant Relations, Trisha Ziff (Ed.), Smart Art Pres, 1995)
399 - there are Indians who oppose the Zapatistas; there was a massacre in Acteal led by a PRI mayor whose son had been killed;
July 14, 2010
The highlight of this book is definitely the beautiful writings of Subcomandante Marcos himself. But I thoroughly enjoyed some of the essays and articles that included these writings- namely the piece by Eduardo Galeano. The book offered a variety of perspectives on the Zapatista Movemt, and I loved picking it just to give myself confidence in my ability to organize.
August 16, 2012
This was a required reading for me and I still own it. It's a collection of stories and articles that lay out a history of the Zapatista movement. I still never hear much about the movement, which is still going on in Chiapas Mexico, as far as I know. Indigenous people murdered, arrested, and driven into the jungles of southern Mexico by a government that allows drug cartels to thrive.
August 16, 2013
This isn't a book you read from start to finish. In fact, you're never quite "finished" with it. The collection of essays and articles allows the reader to jump from section to section, though it helps if one is familiar with the movement. Everyone should own a copy. It will enlighten and empower you.
April 27, 2016
Excellent collection of reportage and analysis, and, of course, all of El Sup's most important writings through 2001. The inclusion of just a few more Zapatista voices would have made this a comprehensive collection.
October 18, 2017
Read this book in 2004 after driving my old Saturn down to Chiapas to visit a Zapatista community.
May 27, 2026
tom hayden's sometimes incoherent politics and theses i find irritating shine through a bit too much in the cherrypicked pieces of the first section in particular regarding discussions on cuba and marxism. distracting and repetitive. a variety of perspective wouldve made it much less obvious how cherrypicked these pieces were. however some truly great pieces were included and its always such a joy reading marcos excerpts. so despite the historical inaccuracies that could be quite annoying, did thoroughly enjoy
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews