The Zapatistas' Dignified Rage: Final Public Speeches of Subcommander Marcos

by Subcomandante Marcos, Nick Henck (Editor), Henry Gales (Translation)

For over two decades, Mexico’s Zapatista indigenous movement has stood as a beacon of hope for activists around the world working against economic exploitation and government oppression. Subcommander Marcos was their military leader and spokesperson, a poetic advocate who was, for many, almost indistinguishable from the movement he championed. On May 25, 2014, in the town of La Realidad, deep in the Zapatistas’ heartland, Subcommander Marcos delivered a speech before thousands of supporters in which he declared that he would henceforth “cease to exist,” a change that made way for the movement’s indigenous members to assume a more prominent role.

Readers will find that speech in The Zapatistas’ Dignified Rage, along with fourteen others he gave between the end of the “Other Campaign” in 2007 and his farewell announcement in 2014. While he made fewer public appearances during this period, he simultaneously increased the depth of his analysis. Collected here in English translation for the first time, these talks include some of his most explicit, detailed, and inspiring criticisms of capitalism, political parties, vanguards, electoral democracy, gender and racial discrimination, disingenuous solidarity, and much more. While others have voiced similar criticisms, Marcos was exceptional for also being a charismatic representative and spokesperson for a globally relevant social movement made up of tens of thousands of people.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Theory, Latin American History, Philosophy, Activism

280 pages, Paperback

Published January 9, 2018

About the author

Subcomandante Marcos (date of birth unknown) is the spokesperson for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), a Mexican rebel movement. In January 1994, he led an army of Mayan farmers into the eastern parts of the Mexican state of Chiapas in protest of the Mexican government's treatment of indigenous peoples.

Marcos is an author, political poet, adroit humorist, and outspoken opponent of capitalism. Marcos has advocated having the Mexican constitution amended to recognize the rights of the country's indigenous inhabitants] The internationally known guerrillero has been described as a "new" and "postmodern" Che Guevara. He is only seen wearing a balaclava, and his true identity remains unknown.

Reviews

[∃Ⓐ∀ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uncountable books and articles have been written by journalists, academics, bloggers, etc., about the Zapatistas. Many recite Marcos's eloquent and poetic speeches, "Para todos todo, para Nosotros nada," interlaced with their own words of political theory and academic socialist, anarchist, Marxist, and whatever other flavors of ideology. Few texts attempt to capture what this book, in my opinion, captures. Through Subcomandante Marcos's speeches, this book highlights the essence of the Zapatista movement that can sometimes be difficult for many on the left to accept. This essence lies in trying to understand two words repeated throughout the book: calendars and geographies.

Marcos's speeches highlight the need to broaden our views and our gaze beyond the dichotomies that are all too often used by those power to entice the powerless to support them. For instance, leftists in North America may look down at those fighting power in countries with "leftist" governments like Venezuela (and yes, I am sort of stepping on a soapbox myself now) and Mexico (Marcos criticizes Lopez Obrador throughout the book) and judge them for disagreeing with the powerful left. "They are not revolutionaries," they might claim, or, as some have done to Zapatistas, denounce them to be right-wingers for not subscribing to the ruling party beliefs and methods when the ruling party claims to be socialist. Marcos reminds us that the types of problems that the left wants to solve cannot be solved from above, from those who hold power, nor can they be solved by specialists (in Marcos words, specializations are but "a form of private property for knowledge") who look and judge from the outside.

To understand any radical movements from other countries, hell, to understand different communities other than our own, it is necessary to recognize the differences in geographies and calendars. Otherwise, the observer is no better than elitists who claim to "not see color." Marcos does not attempt to teach us how to rebel or mobilize, nor does he teach us a new ideology. If there is anything to learn from the speeches in this book is not just that "another world is possible," but that for that world to be possible, we must first understand that many worlds, many calendars, and geographies must also fit in.

[E Money The Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, witty, insightful, inspiring, and often hilarious final speeches of everyones favorite mythical revolutionary: SI Marcos. He finally answered our most pressing questions:

What is Zapatismo?
How do the indigenous people of Chiapas view themselves within the international struggle?
What are it’s views of feminism?
What of vanguardism?
Of democracy?
Of academia?
What finally becomes of Don Durito?
Will cat-dog ever find love? 🙀

This is easily one of the best collections of speeches I’ve read and would recommend it to anyone with any interest in what “good governance from below” means.

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One speech tackles specifically Gaza and the Palestinian struggle. Due to what is currently happening today, February of 2024, this speech from January of 2009 should be paid special attention to.

The speech is titled “On Plantings and Harvests” and details how the EZLN relates with the dispossession of indigenous peoples of Palestine. How the “war” being fought is between a well-armed and mechanized professional military armed by the globes largest superpower and “men, women, children, and elders, not soldiers.”

Now forgive me for a long quote, but I feel it’s important to not just the question of Gaza in 2009 (and in 2024!) but also the entire ethic of the Zapatista movement.

“And maybe, a boy or a girl from Gaza will survive too. Maybe they will grow, and with them anger, indignation, and rage will grow. Maybe they will become soldiers or militants in one of the groups that fights in Palestine. …

And then, up above, people will write about Palestinians’ violent nature and will make declarations condemning violence and go back to discussing Zionism or anti-semitism.

And then nobody will ask who planted what is being harvested.”

Now today in 2024. In only a few months, 10s of thousands of children have been intentionally blown to smithereens. Besides the uncountable dead, both from bombings and intentional starvation/deprivation, a recentish study suggested over a thousand children have already had to have limbs amputated. This study is 2 months old now and occurred when Gaza still had a *few* operational hospitals. Now even those have been bombed.

Perhaps then this is only complicated when viewed from above. But when, as Marcos suggests we do, we view it from below it is really quite simple. It is another genocidal dispossession of an indigenous people. Or an ethnic cleansing. The ‘civilizing of savages’. Regardless of what you call it, the Zapatistas now have a 500+ year legacy struggle against just that.

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Just came back to this review a year later after reading Ya Basta 1) to boost this review (and book! best one on Zapatismo I’ve read) and 2) update that the bombings never stopped and the intentional starvation of innocents only intensified.

[thalia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Para todos, todo. para nosotros, nada.
Subcomandante Marcos’ words are difficult to summarize. Somehow he is simultaneously a comedian and public theater playwright, a leftist intellectual (who of course never speaks or writes like one), a guerrilla strategist, a memoirist, political commentator… he shares songs, tactics, history, insight into his various relationships, that are each strong, messy, vulnerable, sensual.
I think this will be one to return to.

[Hope Phelps · Rating 5 out of 5]

"We are not interested in government jobs and appointments, or statues and monuments, or museums, or going down in history, or prizes, or honors, or ceremonies. What we want is to be able to get up each morning without fear being part of the day's agenda. Fear of being indigenous, women, workers, homosexuals, lesbians, young, elderly, children, others. But we think this is not possible with the current system, within capitalism."

[Doug Brunell · Rating 3 out of 5]

An insightful, tragic, and often funny translation of Subcommander Marcos' speeches and communication toward the end of his "life." Reading his words makes you wish our own "leaders" were as thoughtful and eloquent, but instead they remain stammering morons on a stage. Marcos is no moron, and his quest for freedom should remain inspirational in us all.

[Ramiz Zamir · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If you’ll allow me to give a piece of advice: you ought to cultivate your sense of humor a bit, not only for your mental and physical health, but also because you’re not going to understand Zapatismo without a sense of humor. And those who do not understand, judge; and those who judge, condemn."

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of Marcos's language is a bit flowery in the translation but some great insight here into the ideology of the Zapatistas.