San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas—“The only way we can escape the trap of war is through the mobilization of Indigenous peoples and women’s movements,” stated writer Raúl Zibechi.
“We will not find a way out other than through dialogue with these collective actors,” he emphasized, noting that “the revolutionary war in which I have participated is a destructive war that strengthens states, patriarchy, paramilitary groups, and all kinds of anti-emancipatory forces.”
During the presentation of his book titled, Esquivar la Guerra. Construir Nuevos Mundos, he added that “the logic of war—not with weapons but with politics—ends up being a logic of predation against the very countryside, against the popular movement itself,” while noting that “weapons have been laid down, but not the logic behind the weapons, and that is harder to detect.”
Pedro Faro, of the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba), stated that “the war that peoples face today is unlike the wars of the past. It is not heralded by a single army, nor is it marked by a battlefront. It arrives in waves, like a shadow spreading over the land and over life. Sometimes it fires bullets; other times, it signs decrees, distributes aid programs, buys consciences, manipulates discourse, or lets neglect do its work. It is a war that disguises itself as development, security, progress, and modernity. But its objective is always the same: to disrupt communities in order to strip them of their territories and destroy their ways of life.”
The book was presented at the Frayba offices to an audience of more than 30 people, before whom Marina Pagés, of the International Service for Peace (Sipaz), who also commented on the book, stated that “capitalism has also learned from its own mistakes and is now applying different lessons: a war of dispossession, of extermination; it is the Fourth World War, a permanent, genocidal, counterinsurgency, low-intensity war that is becoming less so because the waters are heating up in many ways, and the whole aspect of militarization and militarism—which are not the same thing—and which is already present in every sphere of our lives and minds.”
She added: “Another point I want to highlight is the importance, in the face of constant conflict, of ongoing analysis. In that sense, this book continues to encourage us to reflect on our where we have gone awry in light of current events, and to engage in constant analysis—not only of the other side but also of the process through which we are working on critical and self-critical reflection.”
Francesca Di Saint Pierre, a member of the team at La Cosecha bookstore, where Zibechi’s books are sold, said that “independent publishers share a common commitment to creating and distributing critical thought. And there lies the authors’ decision to publish independently, which is a purely political choice. Publishing with these presses goes against economic and monetary logic.” She recalled that Raúl, who “has had a warm, friendly, and supportive relationship with La Cosecha from the very beginning,” has published “with more than 35 independent publishers in Latin America and other parts of Europe. There is a network, a map of autonomous, alternative independent presses—or whatever we want to call them—and they are interconnected.”
He reiterated that, like many other books, *Esquivar la guerra. Construir mundos nuevos* “is part of a joint effort by authors, publishers, booksellers, and readers to create publishing networks that are also human, collective, and political.”
In turn, Zibechi addressed the audience: “I’m going to hand the floor over to you because I think it’s important to listen to you, to listen to you all, since you don’t learn by talking—you learn by listening. What I think is in the book; we’re not going to talk about something that’s already written there. My hypothesis is very simple; it is a self-critique: The revolutionary war in which I have participated is a destructive war that strengthens states, patriarchy, paramilitary groups, and all kinds of anti-emancipatory forces.”
He continued: “I like to say that (President Nayib) Bukele is a child of El Salvador’s war—a war that I don’t know if it could have been avoided, but one that was waged with sadistic intensity by both factions, one in a tremendous, extraordinary way and the other in a more subdued manner, but that’s ultimately how it played out. And I think that trap of the revolutionary war into which the leftist movements, the guerrillas, and critical thinking justifying the revolutionary war fell had a horrific result, which is the destruction of the popular movements: students, peasants, women, youth, workers, and so on.” The columnist for La Jornada also stated that “the key to unlocking this impasse lies in the most important movements in Latin America, which serve as a global reference: Indigenous peoples in motion and women’s movements. This dual dynamic is our only chance to escape the trap of war. We will not emerge from it in any way other than through dialogue with these collective actors.”
Pedro Faro insisted that “there is no longer a traditional war as defined by international treaties. The universal system that sets the rules of war has collapsed, so ‘it is necessary to build actions that confront a system that is killing us. There is a capitalist system of death. There are no possibilities for other world systems; rather, there is only one system that is imposing ways of life and extermination
Pedro Faro insisted that “there is no longer a traditional war as defined by international treaties. The universal system that sets the rules of war has collapsed, so ‘it is necessary to build actions that confront a system that is killing us. There is a capitalist system of death. There are no possibilities for other world systems; rather, there is only one system that is imposing ways of life and extermination, depending on each place.” The wars waged against the peoples, he added, “are part of an approach to Raúl Zibechi’s book, which calls on us to build new worlds.”
He stated that “we must evade the war that has landed on our territory,” since “in Chiapas, war was never officially declared, but its presence was always palpable. It changed form, actors, and pretexts, but it continued and continues to advance like an underground current that flows through mountains, jungles, and communities.” Since 1994, when the Zapatista uprising shook the country and forced it to acknowledge the indigenous dignity that had been denied for centuries, the state has become a laboratory for strategies of territorial control. What began as a military response to the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) has transformed over the years into a broader, more diffuse, and more dangerous war: a war against the peoples.” Faced with this total war, he said, “The EZLN describes it as the Fourth World War; the peoples are not merely resisting: They are building new worlds. They are reaffirming assembly, autonomy, care, memory, and the defense of territory as a defense of life. Amid the violence, they continue to sow the seeds of the future.”
Original text by Elio Henríquez published in La Jornada on May 24th, 2026.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.