From the war against oblivion to the struggle for life
January 1 is a date of great importance for Latin America and the Greater Caribbean. Not only does it celebrate the beginning of a new year, it is also an emblematic date for the struggles of our peoples.
On January 1, 1804, after 12 years of war, the people of Haiti won their independence. It was the first anti-colonial revolution to triumph on the continent. Almost a century and a half later, on January 1, 1959, also in the Greater Caribbean, the Cuban revolution triumphed, a movement that was born anti-imperialist and soon became socialist as well.
Later, on January 1, 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation declared war on the Mexican State and its oblivion. The Zapatista gamble soon took a clearer direction: without giving up their weapons, they opted to build schools, clinics, hospitals, to distribute the recovered lands, to self-management, self-government and territorial self-determination. Autonomy is what they call this way in which they resist and at the same time create something new.
Over these 28 years, Zapatismo has built an alternative that combines the knowledge of the people and the knowledge of other resistances. Articulating from the local to the global, today the Zapatista resistance is recognized in the world for being an experience of government from below, of a to command by obeying which also embraces the banners of anti-capitalism, anti-patriarchy, anti-racism and which fights and alerts the world, as Fidel Castro did before, of the risks that socio-environmental collapse means for humanity.
As in the past, the lords of war and money do not tolerate anyone who dares to give an example that another world is possible. That is why, with paramilitaries and criminal groups, but also with the omission and guarantee of impunity offered by the three levels of government, today the Zapatista people continue to suffer the war.
It has been 28 years since the Zapatista Ya Basta resonated throughout the world. Today the Zapatista Mayan people themselves invite us to fight a crucial battle, the fight in defense of Life. The Cat-Dog already wrote it down in his notebook: “Either you are with the system or with nature. Either with death, or with life.”
And you, which side do you choose?
To know more: https://bit.ly/EZLNyCNI
*Raul Rosemary He is a Sociologist, academic technician at UNAM.
