First World, Ha, Ha, Ha!

by Elaine Katzenberger (editor)

The Zapatista Army emerged from the jungle on New Year’s Day, 1994, and provoked a national crisis in Mexico. At a demonstration in Mexico City, over 100,000 people marched together and shouted, "First World, HA HA HA!"—a defiant declaration of solidarity with the rebels, an insurgent army of indigenous campesinos who have challenged the direction of Mexico's future. The Chiapas uprising was internationally hailed as a direct attack on the New World Order. It was a milestone in the continuing history of indigenous resistance in the Americas, and an important development in the growing worldwide struggle against global policies of economic colonization. In this collection, writers from Mexico and the United States provide the background and context for the Zapatista movement, and explore its impact, in Mexico and beyond. "Elaine Katzenberger has assembled an interesting and stimulating collection of voices from Mexico and the United States, of those in revolt and those reacting to the revolt . . . Listened to as moments of an ever wider and ever more multi-sided conversation, the voices in the book should contribute to that amplification by giving their listeners a sense of the complexity and breath of the discussion."—Harry Cleaver, Professor at University of Texas Elaine Katzenberger is a publisher and Executive Director for City Lights Booksellers and Publishers. Her edited works include fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Some works have won awards including the American Book Award and a PEN West Award for Excellence in Publishing. Katzenberger serves on the Board of Directors of the City Lights Foundation and is on the Advisory Board of Circuit Network.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Indigenous, Latin American History

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Melena Smirl]

if this doesn't make you want to change the world you have no soul

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read when I was 16. Made me want to run away to Mexico to fight.

[E Money The Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ha ha ha, indeed. These cool cats have been in the struggle for hundreds of years and governments caught in their neoliberal daydreams deserve to get pounced on.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compiled in the heat of the 1994 Chiapas uprising, the interviews, essays, and poems in this collection are mostly from Mexicans (or people who live there at least) and also not from the Zapatistas themselves, except in interviews. So that is unusual, I think, at least for an English language book about Chiapas. The Zapatistas do such great PR, and the texts attributed to Marcos are so poetic, so generally you get a whole lot of that with little contextual paragraphs from gringo professors... or other way around, all professor with little quotes from their informants... but that is NOT the case here. Right from the beginning there is an interview and then a diary from people who live(d) in the cities of Chiapas observing the rebels taking over their towns. Interviews are with Comandanta Ramona, and other masked ones. Medea Benjamin interviews Marcos, OK. (And Noam Chomsky mumbles something about world trade and policing...) There are also interviews with other organizations looking to improve the lives of the indios in Chiapas including Bishop Ruiz Garcia and unnamed representatives of SAIIC. True to the cover of the book there are a number of pieces that focus on women's issues. Some cool North American indigenous writers chime in: Ward Churchill and Leslie Marmon Silko. The most exciting, the best stuff in here really, are the photographs and the poetry. I want to big up San Francisco's City Lights... no other publisher could have pulled this off at that time with these vibes.

Overall, this is exciting stuff, filled with hope and lots of fun to read. Just how different from other guerrilla groups the Zapatistas would become wasn't totally clear yet when this book came out and the tentative "this could be good, will this be good, is this maybe even the start of something really really good?" feeling from the Mexican journalists and poets is very moving.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title says it all. An engaging bunch of essays about, by, and in solidarity with the Zapatistas. Get ready to get fired up!

[Jason Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't even know this book existed until recently. I could read it over and over again . . . but there is so much good stuff by, and about, the Zapatistas that I'll need to move on.

The main problem is that people talk about this stuff like its something new. It's new to us, maybe; this generation. But globalization is, as the Zapatistas say, 500 years old.

Even being written in 1995, Ja, Ja, Ja! contains some of the best stuff out there on zapatismo and globalization. And it still blows my mind that Ward Churchill (a contributing author here) lost his job over his informed politics. (Though, a few years later, it doesn't blow my mind that he also could never get his job back because he was ghost-writing some of his own evidence, apparently.)

[Miguel Espinoza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gives you much of the data and names surrounding the January 1, 1994 revolution. Definitely a great place to start to learn about Mexican’s unjust treatment of its indigenous people. For context, you may want to follow up with other materials.

[Ennu Leiwo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"There is a revolution coming from the South, and indigenous peoples are in the vanguard. Grassroots revolutionaries calling themselves the Mayan Zapatistas have raised their voices in protest against NAFTA. The Chiapas rebellion is an American intifada for indigenous peoples' liberation from First World oppression."

On January 1st 1994, the day NAFTA was put in action, the indigenous Zapatista army declared a war. After decades of extreme poverty, declining land rights and overall worsening quality of life in the indigenous communities, the poor, mostly indigenous inhabitants of Chiapas, Mexico, decided to take up arms against the corrupt goverment. The Zapatistas recognized their fight as a direct continuation to 500 years of anti-colonial struggle in the Americas, and in days, the movement gained unprecedented popularity.

"First World, HA HA HA!" is a brilliant collection of texts about this historical moment. Translated from original languages into English in 1995, the texts discuss the Zapatista movement from different viewpoints, with political urgency, clarity and revolutionary hope. Now, more than 30 later, the predictions of the book are truer than ever: as Iain A. Boal wrote, "The protest of Indian peasants in Chiapas gives only a bare glimpse of time bombs waiting to explode, not only in Mexico." As long as there is oppression, there will be resistance. And in the end, this "resistance will be as transnational as capital."

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays, interviews, and poems about the Zapatista struggle in Chiapas, Mexico and is a great way to learn about the first post-modern revolutionary movement. The editor has collected a wide-range of perspectives, from Zapatista soldiers, to non-Zapatista civilians from the area, to Mexican and US intellectuals. There are also some pictures and maps which are good but a bit sparse.

Overall, the book shifts quickly from subject to subject without any directed narrative, which leads to some repetition, but prevents any monotony. I will use this book in the future and highly recommend it to anyone interested in Mexico, anti-globalization, or indigenous movements.

[Ender · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have some knowledge about the Zapatistas, this reader will help expand it. While other books may provide communiques, First World, Ha Ha Ha! expands the scope of literature to include poems, articles, essays, interviews, and reactions to Zapatismo from numerous authors who possess different views. Some pieces are drier than others, but on a whole the book provides a healthy variety of texts. Also check out The Zapatista Reader edited by Tom Hayden and Our Word Word is Our Weapon by Subcomandante Marcos.

[Ash · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good introduction to the Zaptista movement.

[Ash Ponders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disjointed and lacking in rigor. Oh well.