Photo: Francisco De Parres Gómez.
What does AMLO’s six-year term tell us about the limits of progressivism in the face of autonomous movements?
We can consider, as Raúl Zibechi has analyzed in other Latin American contexts, that Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) six-year term once again demonstrated that so-called progressive governments do not necessarily represent a more favorable environment for social movements. We see cases like those of Gabriel Boric in Chile or Rafael Correa in Ecuador, to mention a few; in many cases, they even confront them more harshly than openly conservative governments. MORENA (National Regeneration Movement, the ruling political party) was not established as a pluralistic space that could accommodate the country’s political, territorial, and cultural differences, but rather as a project that reduced diversity to an abstract notion of citizenship, functional to the existing colonial order. Although Mexico officially recognizes the existence of 68 indigenous peoples, during this period, no differentiated public policies were developed to address the specific realities of indigenous communities or the Afro-descendant population in their different territories and with their specific needs.
Throughout his administration, a form of relationship with the people was consolidated based on making spectacles of and folklorization of their struggles, exemplified by the presentation of the presidential staff of office at his inauguration. Historical demands were transformed into symbols emptied of political content, leading to a discursive appropriation of Zapatista slogans such as “Leading by Obeying” and a return to classic practices of state-sponsored indigenism. While a narrative of closeness to “the people” was constructed, in practice, Zapatismo was discredited and minimized, as were other inconvenient actors: the feminist movement, the mothers and fathers searching for their disappeared children, critical journalists, university students seeking their rights, and migrant populations denouncing structural violence.
In structural terms, the legacy of Obradorism did not signify a break with neoliberalism, but rather its deepening through new adaptive forms of the state in response to global dynamics. The corporatization of multiple social movements was promoted, and the community fabric was weakened through programs that individualized access to public resources, as was the case, for example, with Lula da Silva’s government in Brazil. Initiatives like Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life) were ironically renamed in many communities as “sowing envy” or “sowing cans,” because the aid was not redistributed collectively, generated internal conflicts, and, in some cases, was more closely linked to environmental devastation than to reforestation. Something similar occurred with Jóvenes Construyendo el Futuro (Youth Building the Future), which in certain areas was associated with processes of precarious employment, alcoholism, and drug use, without addressing the root causes of social exclusion.
Despite having promised the return of the Army to the barracks, even as one of his campaign promises, AMLO’s six-year term was characterized by an unprecedented expansion of the military budget and the normalization of a militarized police force deployed throughout the country. While the president attempted to modify some dynamics of the political regime, it became clear that fundamental transformations cannot originate from the presidency when the state itself operates as a neocolonial structure. Real change, as the peoples in resistance have insisted, can only be built from the ground up: from organized communities, neighborhoods, and territories. Examples of this include the Zapatista communities, the Kurdish people—constantly attacked and the largest stateless people in the world—and the Mapuche communities fighting to defend Patagonia against Zionist real estate interests or those of families like Benetton, which controls approximately one million hectares in the region.
Added to this is a governance model based on the management of social conflict. Instead of engaging in horizontal dialogue with organizations, the government opted for unequal negotiation mechanisms, processes of co-opting leadership, and welfare policies that fragmented long-standing collective struggles. Under the guise of the so-called “Fourth Transformation,” the structures inherited from neoliberalism were not dismantled; on the contrary, they were reinforced and legitimized through progressive rhetoric that ultimately reproduced the very order it claimed to question. Despite a redistribution of public spending, the accumulation model inherent to capitalism remained.
In this context, Zapatismo has remained, for at least seven presidential terms, one of the most uncomfortable voices for those in power. Its insistence on autonomy, self-management, and direct criticism of the state exposed the limitations of the Obradorist project. Faced with this, AMLO chose to caricature the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), accusing it of hindering progress or rendering its contributions invisible, rather than acknowledge that in the Caracoles, as autonomous territories, concrete experiences of community life, dignity, and collective organization have been built. The final outcome of his term is not the overcoming of neoliberalism, but rather the confirmation that even a self-proclaimed progressive state continues to function as a colonial apparatus that stifles movements when they exceed the limits of institutional control and propose alternative ways of life.
Photo: Francisco De Parres Gómez.
How do you interpret the beginning of Claudia Sheinbaum’s government in relation to the Zapatistas, considering her declared relationship of “respect,” but also her commitment to the MORENA project? Are we simply witnessing a continuation of Obradorism?
Unfortunately, everything indicates that the scenario may be even more adverse. For the first time in Mexican history, the executive branch is headed by a woman with a scientific background and an enlightened discourse, but this change of face does not imply a break with the deep structures of power. Although Sheinbaum presents herself as a progressive president, her project does not question the capitalist accumulation model or the notion of “development” that sustains it. In reality, her administration aims at a deepening of militarism and neoliberalism, with no intention whatsoever of dismantling the economic and political foundations that produce inequality and dispossession.
The official discourse insists on inclusion and respect, but in practice, the militarization of the country and the structural coexistence between the State, corruption (despite claims of combating it), and organized crime are being consolidated. The appropriation of Zapatista slogans and phrases can create the impression that social movements have achieved power, when in reality, what is observed is a continuity of extractivism, territorial control, and the subordination of communities. Instead of strengthening public health and education systems, state control mechanisms are prioritized, such as the Unique Population Registry Code with biometric data, which operate more as surveillance tools than as effective guarantees of rights, thus signifying a further advance toward control societies.
As with the previous government, it is necessary to situate Sheinbaum within a broader historical and geopolitical context. The world is undergoing a profound reconfiguration marked by multiple crises—climate, financial, and military—to which the imperial order responds by intensifying violence and managing death to sustain capitalist accumulation. The most recent examples of this are US interventionism that led to the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, the threats against Petro, and neocolonial interests in Greenland. Sub-commander Galeano (formerly Marcos) expressed it with brutal clarity: the war currently ravaging Gaza is not a distant phenomenon, but a harbinger of what could spread to other territories if the course of civilization is not altered. The message is that it is only a matter of time before missiles fall on our homes.
Faced with this scenario, Zapatismo proposes a radically different alternative. Not an internationalism of states and borders, or one based on the figure of the worker as the driving force of the class struggle, but an internationalism woven from below, among diverse peoples and resistance movements that defend life against necropolitics. The 2021 “Journey for Life” is a compelling example: traveling through 19 European countries, the Zapatistas encountered the Sami people, squatters’ collectives, anarchists, unions, sex workers, and migrants, demonstrating that their struggle is neither local nor folkloric, but a proposal that can be universalized in terms of dignity and autonomy.
The most worrying aspect of Sheinbaum’s project is that, under a rhetoric of change and with a progressive female face, it may reinforce the illusion that profound transformations are possible from within the state apparatus. However, historical experience shows that no colonial structure can become a tool for emancipation. Everything points to a management of the crisis that does not address its root causes: more megaprojects, greater ecological debt, and an expansion of the military apparatus as a guarantee of “order” and “progress.” The trap is twofold: while invoking feminism or human rights, social control is intensified, and dissent that overflows the margins of power is repressed.
Therefore, faced with neocolonial continuity disguised with a female face, Zapatismo once again offers a fundamental lesson: real alternatives will not emerge from above, nor from electoral processes or ballot boxes, but from below and to the left, from the territories that refuse to be governed by the logic of capital. Therein lies the decisive contrast: while the State perfects its mechanisms of surveillance and militarization, the people continue to build, silently and persistently, paths of autonomy and life.
When analyzing the political project of MORENA and the government of Claudia Sheinbaum, it is impossible to avoid discussing megaprojects, particularly the Maya Train. How do these projects impact Zapatista communities?
The misnamed Maya Train cannot be understood as an isolated project or as a simple tourism infrastructure project. It is part of a long-term territorial transformation that has been reshaping the country for years. Pablo González Casanova warned that Mexico could fragment as happened with the former Yugoslavia, and today that warning is materializing in a regional development model aimed at integrating territories into the circuits of transnational capital. Financial accumulation is concentrated in the north; in the center, the Morelos Integral Project guarantees energy for industry; and in the southeast, the Interoceanic Corridor connects Oaxaca and Veracruz as a hub for the circulation of goods, a function similar to that now performed by the Panama Canal. In this scheme, the Maya Train functions as the tourist cog in a larger operation: a kind of theme park where Indigenous communities are exhibited as folklore, like Xcaret, while their control over their territories and ways of life is being taken away.
As Sub-commander Marcos pointed out, the expansion of capital does not occur neutrally, but rather through cycles of destruction, depopulation, reconstruction, and repopulation. We have the AI-generated videos showing Donald Trump and Elon Musk with their world-class hotel and resort project in the Gaza Strip. First, territories are devastated in their material and cultural dimensions; then, communities are displaced or made precarious in a form of ethnocide, and in their place, corporations arrive, accompanied by the legal apparatus, the military presence, and organized crime. In Mexico, we have historical examples of this, such as in Acapulco, Los Cabos, and Baja California. This offensive is compounded by dynamics of social control such as human trafficking and sexual slavery, drug trafficking, and alcoholism, which deliberately erode the social fabric. Only then does capital impose its model: mass tourism, resorts, factories, golf courses.
The Maya Train is merely the visible vanguard of this process of devastation, a policy that commodifies life and transforms culture into spectacle, or what they euphemistically insist on calling “Development Hubs.” It is no coincidence that Claudia Sheinbaum herself has stated that this is just the beginning and that many similar projects, including trains, will follow.
From this perspective, the Zapatista communities, although not all are located directly along the train’s route, know they are at the center of the risk due to their proximity. What is at stake is not only a railway line, but the imposition of a civilizational model incompatible with Indigenous autonomy. Zapatismo, by defending the land as mother and not as a commodity, becomes a central obstacle for those seeking to transform the southeast into a platform for global business. Therefore, opposition to the Maya Train goes beyond criticism of a specific project or the current government: it is a direct confrontation with the necropolitics that turns entire regions into territories of sacrifice in service to capital.
Can we now focus on the security situation in Chiapas? Have we witnessed direct attacks by the State on Zapatista territory during the administrations of Obrador and Sheinbaum?
In recent months, a violent land grab against the Zapatista Autonomous Community of Belén, in the region of Caracol 8 “The Light that Shines on the World” (Dolores Hidalgo, Ocosingo), has been documented. The Assembly of Collectives of Zapatista Autonomous Governments (ACGAZ) denounced that, since April 2025, incursions have been carried out by civilian groups accompanied by the Federal Army, the National Guard, the Ocosingo Municipal Police, and the State Attorney General’s Office, under the guise of an “agrarian conflict.” The operations resulted in the burning of houses, robberies, and the dispossession documented on official social media. This is key: the lands had already been compensated by the State after 1994 and are now worked collectively by Zapatista and non-Zapatista communities; a self-managed, community-access operating room has even been built nearby. Subsequently, there was another repressive incursion with a military presence during Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration (the first, in April 2025, involved the illegal detention of two support base members, who were released due to social pressure). All of this confirms a de facto state siege of the autonomous territory.
At the same time, the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Center for Human Rights (Frayba) denounced strategies of enclosure and dispossession in Belén: at least 13 support bases forcibly displaced and harm to non-Zapatista farmers participating in the Común Milpa (Communal Milpa). Frayba stated that the aim is to convert recovered territory into “private land,” in a context of militarization (including the Pakal Immediate Reaction Forces – FRIP or “Pakales,” a state elite unit with numerous accusations of abuse). This adds to a scenario of overlapping violence (clashes, trafficking, displacement, disappearances). This is not an isolated incident: it is counterinsurgency that seeks to dismantle the commons and autonomous communities.
We know, for example, that the government has conducted aerial photogrammetry for the recognition of autonomous communities in Chiapas, which constitutes a practice of territorial control disguised as technical monitoring. The leaks revealed by Guacamaya Leaks also show that certain police training groups maintain ties with the Israeli Mossad, demonstrating that counterinsurgency is not only local but part of a transnational operation, as evidenced by the US warplane that recently landed in Mexico to train state forces under the direction of García Harfuch. Last April, during the Zapatista art festival Rebel y Revel (Arte), the state sent National Guard trucks to patrol the area around the Indigenous Center for Integral Training. Thousands of people from autonomous communities and international solidarity groups were present: a clear act of intimidation. Even more serious, local, federal, and military police detained and disappeared two Zapatista support bases. They were only released thanks to immediate pressure from national and international civil society.
The war is also fought with ideological, communicative, and cultural bullets. We have witnessed media counterinsurgency campaigns that seek to stigmatize Zapatismo, spreading absurd rumors such as that the Zapatistas “don’t allow entry to their territory because they want to keep the uranium in Chiapas.” These narratives aim to isolate them, denigrate their resistance, and justify a climate of persecution. Chiapas has been the most militarized state in Mexico on several occasions, but the situation is even more complex: it is not just about the presence of the State, but a scenario where multiple forms of violence converge. The Zapatistas themselves have described it starkly: Chiapas is “on the verge of civil war.” The social fabric is increasingly fracturing, as repeatedly documented in reports by the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Center for Human Rights.
Chiapas today is a territory traversed by migrant caravans, human trafficking and exploitation networks, and the open conflict between the two most powerful cartels in the country: the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel. Caught in the middle of this web, the Zapatista communities are exposed to multiple fires: criminal violence, state militarization, and the community breakdown caused by these dynamics—what we might call a “triangle of dispossession.” The state may claim that “there is no war” against the EZLN, but in practice, the siege is constant.
Photo: Francisco De Parres Gómez.
In the current context, where the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) has gained control over the southern border and the conflict with the Sinaloa Cartel is intensifying, what are the implications for Chiapas and the Zapatista communities?
The advance of organized crime into autonomous territories, already warned against by Sub-commander Moisés, has entered a new phase in which it combines with state actions, whether legal or through the incitement of local conflicts, with formally legalized processes of dispossession such as megaprojects. Organized crime is not an anomaly; it is yet another arm of contemporary capitalism that ensures the accumulation by dispossession described by David Harvey. The confrontation between the CJNG and the Sinaloa Cartel has transformed the southern border into a strategic zone for drug, arms, and human trafficking, as well as for extortion networks, while the state increases surveillance, deploys armed forces, and intervenes in Zapatista territories under the pretext of agrarian conflicts. The result is not pacification, but a complex siege where criminal violence, institutional militarization, and an accelerated erosion of the community fabric converge.
This siege does not operate solely on the armed front. It also manifests itself in the symbolic and cultural spheres. The aesthetics of narco-trafficking, such as the corridos that glorify violence, material ostentation, and the extreme sexualization of bodies, infiltrate daily life as a form of subjective colonization that seeks to replace the logic of the commons with an economy of fear and consumption. The recent case of the autonomous community of Belén clearly demonstrates how this convergence of criminal and state interests exerts pressure to privatize collectively recovered and worked lands, directly attacking the material pillars of autonomy. Faced with this scenario, the Zapatista defense of life and the commons takes on an even more urgent and radical character, in the sense of going to the root of the problem.
The gravity of the situation is further deepened by the emergence of phenomena such as the so-called Chamula Cartel, considered the first indigenous cartel in Mexico. Composed of Tsotsil people, this group has been denounced for extreme practices such as so-called “ethnoporn,” in which Indigenous women are sexually enslaved and filmed. These acts demonstrate not only the cruelty of organized crime but also its capacity to appropriate historical colonial and patriarchal violence, reconfiguring it as a commodity within illicit economies. We can witness similar audiovisual phenomena with the emergence of music production companies that create music videos promoting stereotypes fostered by organized crime, as well as with homemade films like “Campesinos a la Mafia” (Peasants, Mafia style).
From this perspective, organized crime cannot be understood as a marginal actor or an anomaly of the system. Rather, it functions as one of the most efficient corporations of contemporary capitalism, embedded in processes of accumulation by dispossession that combine militarization and criminal violence, as William Robinson and Gilberto López y Rivas have pointed out. Cartels fight over territories, establish regimes of control and social terror, and integrate themselves into global circuits of illicit capital that are ultimately laundered through the international financial system. Under these conditions, the southern border becomes a key space: a migration corridor, a route for illegal economies, an enclave for human trafficking, and a laboratory for social control.
Amid this multifaceted encirclement, Zapatista autonomy asserts itself as a form of radical resistance and defense of territory. While necrocapitalism offers swift or prolonged death as the horizon, the people insist on dignified life as their organizing principle. Defending the land, memory, and community thus becomes a frontal rejection of a logic that reduces everything to a commodity, including bodies, and a concrete commitment to sustaining other possible worlds under extreme conditions.
Francisco, given this scenario marked by militarization and the presence of multiple armed groups, are there direct armed confrontations between the Zapatistas and these actors?
There are no records of open armed clashes between the EZLN and other groups, but a series of systematic attacks aimed at eroding the material foundations of autonomy have been documented. These actions include burning homes, looting crops, and destroying collective projects, and in recent years they have intensified with the direct or indirect participation of state forces and paramilitary structures. Historically, groups like Máscara Roja, Los Chinchulines, and the perversely named Paz y Justicia (Peace and Justice) operated in Chiapas; today, this network is being reconfigured with local actors and elite state forces like the FRIP, known as “Pakales,” who operate in a climate of impunity. This is a mechanism of externalized violence: while the State maintains a discourse of legality, it delegates repressive work to civilian or armed intermediaries who facilitate dispossession and pave the way for larger economic interests. The recent case of Belén marks a turning point that confirms the persistence of this counterinsurgency logic, even as the Zapatistas strive to establish a “Surgical Center in the Lacandon Jungle.”
In this context, the ORCAO (Regional Organization of Coffee Growers of Ocosingo -Historical) has increased its attacks against Zapatista support bases through threats, harassment, and the use of firearms with the aim of seizing land. These aggressions seek not only the physical displacement of communities but also the deliberate destruction of the productive projects that sustain their autonomous way of life. There are documented reports of practices such as the poisoning of fishponds, the killing of livestock, and the devastation of crops. These are not isolated outbreaks of violence but a prolonged strategy of attrition designed to undermine community self-sufficiency and force populations into dependent relationships with the State or local powers.
This scenario confirms that paramilitarism does not operate autonomously nor is it marginal to the State. It forms part of a broader network where regional strongmen, the interests of transnational extractive corporations, organized crime dynamics, and the complicity—through action or omission—of various state entities converge. The attacks against Zapatismo serve the expansion of megaprojects and the territorial control of southeastern Mexico. By weakening autonomous communities, the path is cleared for militarization, predatory tourism, and large-scale investments. What is often presented as a local conflict is, in reality, a strategic component of capitalist necropolitics that seeks to eliminate any experience that places life and autonomy above the logic of profit.
Is there a link between paramilitary groups and state institutions?
Yes, there is a structural link. Since the 1990s, counterinsurgency policy in Mexico has operated by promoting, tolerating, or covering up armed groups presented as “civilians,” while land seizures are carried out with the support or cover of military, police, and prosecutorial agencies. The recent case of Belén clearly documents this: reported incursions with the presence of the Federal Army, the National Guard, the Ocosingo Municipal Police, and personnel from the Attorney General’s Office; expedited resolutions; and land seizure operations publicized even through official channels. In this way, the state shifts the burden of violence onto third parties, guarantees impunity, and spreads the idea that autonomy is illegal and that common goods can be converted into private property.
In practice, these armed groups operate with weapons for the exclusive use of the Army, under the protection of local authorities, and in coordination with federal security forces. This is not merely a matter of passive tolerance: in numerous cases, paramilitaries function as informal extensions of state policy, carrying out tasks that the government cannot openly assume without incurring political or legal costs.
This relationship is functional because it allows those in power to manage violence without appearing directly responsible. The outsourcing of the use of force is a central feature of contemporary necropolitics: the state decides who can remain in the territory and who must be expelled, who has the right to cultivate crops and who is condemned to displacement or death, but it does so indirectly, through intermediaries who operate under the cloak of impunity.
Photo: Francisco De Parres Gómez.
So far we have mainly discussed the enemies of Zapatismo. Apart from the National Indigenous Congress, are there any key allies in Mexican society, especially in urban contexts?
Besides the National Indigenous Congress, there are urban allies in the country who have been directly inspired by the Zapatista experience. A key example is the Francisco Villa Popular Organization of the Independent Left (OPFVII), which from its inception saw itself reflected in Zapatismo. This organization signed the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle and, more recently, the Declaration for Life. Its autonomous communities can be considered urban Caracoles, spaces where self-governance, collective organization, and the construction of autonomy are practiced in metropolitan contexts. Zibechi has described them as the largest experience of urban autonomy in Latin America.
The OPFVII has several settlements in Mexico City. One of the most significant is Acapatzingo, in the Iztapalapa borough, a true oasis within one of the poorest and most violent areas of the capital. There, behind closed doors, the members have built a distinct daily life: they have their own educational system, a community radio station, autonomous health services, and a rich symbolic and ritual life centered around the figure of Los Panchos or Las Panchas, who serve as points of reference for collective identity. All of this is not a simple “social program,” but a logic for reproducing life that rejects private property and places dignity at its core.
The experience of OPFVII shows that Zapatista autonomy is not only rural or indigenous: it can adapt to urban spaces and become a concrete alternative to the marginalization and violence of cities. In times of accelerated gentrification, Acapatzingo and other settlements of the organization propose a different horizon: the defense of urban territory as a place of life, not as real estate commodities. It is a proposal that engages directly with the anti-gentrification movements emerging in Mexico City, offering an example that it is possible to inhabit the city without surrendering it to the market. In this sense, Zapatismo is not isolated in the mountains of Chiapas. Its echoes resonate in working-class neighborhoods and communities that, like OPFVII, are organizing to live differently. These urban allies are key because they demonstrate that autonomy is not a distant utopia, but a concrete practice exercised daily in hostile contexts.
Jérôme Baschet has pointed out that the recent reorganization of the Zapatista autonomous institutions involved inverting the pyramid of power and strengthening local communities. How do you assess this process?
The changes announced in the context of the 30th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising in 2024 constitute one of the most significant movements in the recent history of autonomy. It was a deeply reflective exercise in which the communities themselves critically evaluated their forms of organization and decided to transform them. One of the most relevant changes was the elimination of the Zapatista Rebel Autonomous Municipalities (MAREZ). For years, the organizational structure was articulated in a hierarchical manner: villages that formed communities, communities that comprised autonomous municipalities, and municipalities that, in turn, formed the Caracoles. Over time, the communities recognized that this system did not always guarantee the principle of “Leading by Obeying,” as at certain times it generated a tendency toward the concentration of power, particularly within the Good Government Councils.
Based on this diagnosis, a process of profound decentralization was chosen. Decision-making returned to the grassroots, and the community level was reinforced as the core of political life. From this rethinking emerged the Local Autonomous Governments (GALs), spaces where decisions are made more directly and in close relation to the specific needs of each territory. This was not an improvised break, but rather the result of years of accumulated experience and an explicit will to correct what was no longer working.
In my interpretation, this reorganization represents a radicalization of autonomy, not its weakening. The Zapatista territory has never been uniform: there are towns completely organized around the EZLN with a very broad presence, and others where the Zapatista presence is limited to a single family. The Local Autonomous Governments (GALs) allow for a response to this heterogeneity, adapting forms of governance to the specific realities of each context. Self-determination remains anchored in Zapatista principles, but is now expressed in a more situated way, more embodied in the daily lives of collective subjects, without depending on a central structure that could become rigid or distant.
With this transformation, coordination no longer rests exclusively with the former twelve Good Government Councils, but is articulated through collectives linked to the GALs. This does not imply a fragmentation of autonomy, but rather a redistribution of power and an expansion of its territorial reach in effective and direct terms. The reorganization can also be interpreted as a comprehensive strategy for defending the territory, diversifying community economies, and strengthening the commons. The land can be worked by individuals or collectives as long as they are not linked to organized crime or paramilitary structures, which opens the possibility of extending community practices of care and resistance beyond the formal boundaries of Zapatismo itself.
In this sense, the GALs do not embody a logic of closure or exclusion, but rather one of openness. It is not about erecting identity borders, but about weaving networks of collective protection in the face of a context marked by multiple threats. After more than three decades of building autonomy, the EZLN has demonstrated something uncommon in politics: the capacity to critically examine its own structures, acknowledge errors, and reinvent itself. This willingness to change without abandoning its principles is, in itself, a profoundly revolutionary practice. While states tend to reproduce colonial hierarchies and cling to rigid forms of power, the Zapatista communities’ experiment, correct, and experiment again, keeping autonomy alive as a process in constant development.
Foto: Francisco De Parres Gómez.
Before we delve into the specifics of your topic, could you briefly discuss the situation of the LGBT community in Zapatista territory?
I would recommend reading, above all, the work of Sylvia Marcos, who discusses the fluidity of Zapatista gender. In the autonomous communities, the gender perspective is central to collective life. It is no coincidence that we are talking about the only territory in the country where there are no femicides or sex trafficking: a radical difference compared to the rest of Mexico, which experiences a daily emergency of violence against women and gender minorities. This shows that when power is transformed from below, sex-affective and gender relations can also be modified.
Regarding the LGBT+ community, a very significant example is that of Marijose, a compañeroa otroa, that is, a trans identity from a Western perspective, but recognized in her own terms within the Zapatista community. In 2021, Marijose was part of Squadron 421, which traveled to Europe 500 years after the so-called “fall” of Tenochtitlán, reversing the colonial voyage to “conquer Europe.” The squadron was composed of four women, two men, and one ‘other’ woman, and it was Marijose who disembarked first, symbolically breaking with Western, colonial, and heteropatriarchal modernity. This gesture was profoundly political: it placed sexual and gender difference at the center of a global critique of coloniality.
Photo: Francisco De Parres Gómez.
Of course, machismo and homophobia remain present in community practices, as in all of Mexican society; however, in Zapatista territory, profound and concrete transformations have taken place. It is not a finished or perfect process, but it marks a different horizon: that of communities that recognize that there can be no autonomy without gender justice.
These changes should also be interpreted as a broader political contribution. Faced with a society where sexual dissidence is criminalized, exploited, or rendered invisible, Zapatismo offers an example of how autonomous territories can become a refuge for new forms of coexistence. It is not about idealizing or denying internal tensions, but about showing that, even in contexts marked by war and precarity, it is possible to build freer, more diverse, and more respectful relationships.
Now we come to your topic. When Zapatismo is discussed, its organization or political philosophy is almost always mentioned, but you focus on aesthetics. In one of your books, you state that in Zapatismo there is an indissoluble relationship between art and politics. Could you clarify how this is indissoluble?
First, we must clarify that talking about art and politics does not mean talking about propaganda. If politics permeates daily life, it is also present in symbolic practices. Art is the production of meaning, of symbols, but it is also a form of production, circulation, consumption, and communication. It is not limited to explicitly political content: even deciding where a work is exhibited, who has access to it, and under what conditions, is a political act. Similarly, exalting the Eurocentric figure of the artist as a “genius enlightened by God” or affirming that every human being possesses creative potential are political choices that define how we understand creation.
This thinking has its roots in the Zapatista territory, dating back to its clandestine existence. As early as the 1980s, cultural cells existed that practiced theater, music, and poetry, not only as a means of ideological reproduction, but also as a strategy for social cohesion and community building among Indigenous peoples, peasants, and Marxist urban guerrillas. Community cinema, for example, was very formative: screenings of films about other international struggles, such as the Vietnamese conflict, often without subtitles, which the communities themselves reinterpreted by inventing dialogues. In this gesture, there was poetry, performativity, and politics all at once: a collective reappropriation of global narratives from the perspective of local experience.
I am interested in focusing on this symbolic and poetic power that arises from the communities themselves. Phrases like “We covered our faces so they would see us” are not just slogans, but symbols that encapsulate a worldview and are embodied in daily life. What we see in Zapatismo is how Indigenous artistic practices, which have existed for millennia, become more complex and are given new meaning as they intertwine with contemporary political ideology. Thus, cultural expression is not merely an embellishment of the struggle: it is part of its strongest core. Zapatismo has had an immense cultural impact nationally and internationally, producing a symbolic, poetic, and political shift within the global left and igniting a creative explosion that inspired new generations of Indigenous artists. Without the 1994 uprising, this cultural explosion would likely have taken much longer to emerge.
In this sense, Zapatismo demonstrates that art and politics are inseparable because both share the task of producing worlds. Art is not limited to representing reality: it transforms, rearranges, and reimagines it. Politics, for its part, is not limited to managing institutions: it also operates in the symbolic, epistemic, and aesthetic realms. That is why, in Chiapas, we see murals, songs, dances, poetry, and even clothing that not only express resistance but also generate community, transmit memory, and create the future.
Furthermore, the Zapatista cultural impact does not stop at Mexico’s borders. Phrases, images, and aesthetics originating in the autonomous communities have traveled the world, inspiring everyone from autonomous artistic collectives in Europe to Indigenous movements in the Southern Cone of Abya Yala, or projects like Zapatera Negra, which unites the graphic design and political ideals of the Zapatistas with those of the Black Panthers, who are currently experiencing a resurgence in the United States. This kind of aesthetic internationalism—made up of symbols, words, colors, and gestures—has strengthened the idea that art is not secondary in the political struggle, but rather one of its most powerful forms of expansion and reproduction, connecting the symbolic with material reproduction. That is why I say that the relationship between art and politics in Zapatismo is indissoluble: because both are ways of making other possible worlds exist.
Photo: Francisco De Parres Gómez.
In your other book, Poetics of Resistance, you talk a lot about epistemology and decoloniality. Is art in Zapatismo an “instrument” for expressing non-Western worldviews and connecting urban and Indigenous elements?
This dialectic between the poetic, the political, and concrete reality is interesting. In organizational processes, classic concepts of critical theory—like class struggle or surplus value—often don’t easily connect with the social base. However, through art, literature, and other cultural expressions, other forms of political communication and even cadre training become possible. A clear example is the stories of Old Antonio, written by Sub-commander Marcos, which recover fragments of the Maya worldview. There, narratives about the birth of the gods or the world are interwoven with libertarian pedagogies and political critique. This interweaving produces a particular power: it is not always effective to speak from abstract and alien categories, but rather from symbols and narratives that engage with the memory of the people, while simultaneously building bridges with other urban and global social sectors.
In this sense, art in Zapatismo does not function as an “instrument” subordinated to a pre-existing ideology, but as a space for epistemological and heuristic encounter. It allows for the articulation of the indigenous and the urban, the communal and the global, the local and the transnational. Through art, bridges of sensitivity are built that generate closeness and allow different actors to recognize themselves in the same struggle. Poetry, music, graphic arts, and performance are not only vehicles, they are also forms of thought that expand politics beyond Eurocentric rationality.
I would also like to ask about Mexico’s rich tradition of revolutionary art. Is there any connection between the Zapatistas and this tradition, with figures like the painter Diego Rivera or the graphic designer Leopoldo Méndez?
Now, regarding Mexico’s tradition of revolutionary art, Mexico undoubtedly has a very strong legacy, but I don’t see a direct correlation between that tradition and the art of the Zapatista communities. The muralism promoted by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco was a project sponsored by the post-revolutionary state, under the direction of José Vasconcelos (who was Germanophile and pro-Nazi) and the Ministry of Public Education. Its function was the top-down reproduction of cultural ideology: institutions determined the discourses, symbols, themes, and spaces where they should be displayed. At the same time, they reinforced oppositions between “high” and “low” culture, between art, crafts, and folklore, functioning as mechanisms for the cultural inferiorization of the other, even though the murals were intended for the popular classes. It was a hierarchical project that consolidated what we might call an aesthetic coloniality, a system that regulates what can be felt and expressed, and which also served to strengthen the consolidation of the nation-state.
That is why it is so important that liberation processes be accompanied by their own artistic and symbolic practices. It is a restitution, at the ontological level, of the values and subjectivities of the social majority. Within this framework, the Zapatista communities profoundly expand the notion of art. In their communiqué, “The Arts, the Sciences, Indigenous Peoples, and the Basements of the World,” they define the artist as one who creates, regardless of imposed canons or classifications. In my opinion, although they don’t use Marxist terminology, this idea breaks with the historical division between manual and intellectual labor characteristic of capitalist societies.
In capitalism, only a privileged few have the right to be recognized as scientists or artists. In contrast, after 40 years of struggle, in Zapatista territories anyone can freely exercise both dimensions: being a farmer in the morning, a painter in the afternoon, spending time with family at night, and studying mathematics the next day. In this context, art and science are not separate spheres of social life: they are inscribed within life itself. This is why the Zapatistas speak of the art of the milpa, the art of collective work, or even the art of resistance.
In my analysis, what they do is recover the original meaning of aísthēsĭs: the forms of sensibility from which we know and construct the world. Hence, their proposal can be understood radically as decolonizing: they do not conceive of art as an autonomous field controlled by museums or markets, but as a vital practice that is part of the reproduction of community life. It is a redefinition of art as collective knowledge, as an epistemology that challenges aesthetic coloniality and proposes an insurgent aesthesis from below.
Photo: Francisco De Parres Gómez.
To conclude, what lesson do you think urban or Western movements should learn from this topic of art, aesthetics, and politics?
Considering that art, aesthetics, and politics are intertwined, it’s important to emphasize that they are not the same. Aesthetics is not simply about enjoyment or cultural consumption; rather, it involves the recovery of other epistemes: the metaphysical, the divine, the ontological, the systems of concrete relationships that organize life, but also the ways of healing colonial histories that still weigh on bodies and territories. From this perspective, aesthetics is a broader way of life, not limited to artistic production in a narrow sense, but linked to the understanding of otherness and the recognition that we are all bearers of sensitivity and creative power, understood even as poiesis.
Zapatismo teaches that art is not reduced to propaganda or spectacle, but becomes a vital tool for producing community, memory, and a future. From the stories of Old Antonio to the murals, the music, and the dances, the aesthetic merges with the political as a practice of dignity. And this should challenge urban and Western movements that often conceive of art as something separate from life, as an ornamental practice, a time for “leisure,” or confined to galleries or cultural institutions. The challenge is to reclaim art as a collective practice, as an aísthesis that transforms not only what we see, but what we feel and what we are capable of imagining.
Considering that Indigenous peoples have been subjected to colonization for more than five centuries and yet continue to resist, I am left with a political, artistic, and poetic message: that, on a broad level, hope does not die. That hope is present in Zapatismo, but also in the searching mothers who represent the dignity of this country, in the various women’s movements that struggle, in the communities that defend their rivers and mountains, in those who confront necropolitics with creativity and care. Hope here is not an abstract concept nor a religious refuge, but a daily political practice: the material and symbolic construction of different futures.
The Empire of Death seeks to be total, global, and permanent. But the lesson Zapatismo teaches us is that even in the midst of war, new worlds can be imagined and brought into being. What is at stake in Chiapas today is not only the destiny of a people, but the possibility of collectively imagining that there is life beyond capital and global wars, where it seems we are facing transitions toward a multipolar world outside of a single hegemony. That is the lesson of those who make every act of resistance a work of dignity, of those who transform memory into strength, and of those who insist that, even if power says otherwise, another world is already being built in the cracks of the present.
Original article by Jan Blazek, Avispa, January 21st, 2026.
Photos by Francisco De Pares Gómez.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.