Occasionally, albeit rarely, we find echoes in how we view the world, and in particular, our own worlds. A recent interview on the website comune-info.net, conducted by Gianluca Carmosino with the Italian anthropologist Stefania Consigliere, is particularly inspiring. Titled “Why Is it Difficult to Recognize New Worlds?” it presents an interesting perspective (https://comune-info.net/perche-e-difficile-riconoscere-mondi-nuovi/).
The anthropologist argues that other or new worlds already exist, even if they appear disorganized and imperfect. She identifies two reasons that prevent us from seeing them, recognizing them, and giving them the importance they deserve. The first is “the colonial gaze.” In her opinion, “if a world is not as technologically advanced, for example, or does not have a social structure like ours, it is a somewhat savage, less desirable, primitive world.”
This is a “colonial arrogance” that is by no means exclusive to Europe or the Global North, as it is the usual attitude among Latin American leftists and academics, who tend to view initiatives from below and to the left with distance and disdain. A reflection we share.
The second issue she addresses is the “heroic approach to the idea of change,” inherited from the traditional notion of “revolution as a seizure of power, with that magical and eschatological moment when we finally take the reins and direct the machinery as we please.” She manages to link the seizure of state power with “the temptation of domination,” which, according to the author, turns out to be the least explored facet of anti-systemic movements.
I believe both reflections are very important, provided we can embrace them as our own problem and not as someone else’s far away. Those of us who support Zapatismo have experienced people on the left and in social movements shrugging their shoulders when we tell them we attended a gathering to listen to our compañeros, or that we’re supporting the construction of a hospital, a school, or the distribution of organic coffee. The heroic image of Bolshevik workers entering the Winter Palace sounds truly important, while attending an event to listen and learn seems minor, almost insignificant.
A quote from the writer Simone Weil in the interview mentioned above summarizes this avant-garde attitude of not listening: “…attention is the highest and rarest of virtues. Therefore, pay attention, listen, feel, instead of acting.” These are the necessary preliminary steps for undertaking profound and, therefore, long-term actions. The image of seizing power as entering the palace has become a postcard, a picture that encapsulates the simplistic ideas of revolution that have so deeply permeated the imagination of leftists worldwide. Anything that doesn’t match that is almost like wasting time.
A major problem with this left is that it decontextualizes the before and after of the blessed binomial “revolution = seizure of power,” isolating that event and turning it into a paradigm of what is desirable, of the only thing that truly has value. But that step was always preceded, in every case, by thousands of small actions that didn’t seem important, nor were they known to be capable of leading to major actions. A Catalan pro-independence baker wrote about the hundreds of bread ovens in Barcelona, which processed tons of flour daily by the hands of thousands of people, as an important antecedent to the Barcelona revolution of 1936, following Franco’s coup.
But there is also a break with what came after, so no one wants to talk about the horrors, sweeping them under the rug even though they are repeated time and again in each and every resolution. We don’t usually talk about the horrors of Stalinism in the Soviet Union, and some are even surprised when they’re told that the regime that killed the most communists in the world—far more than the right wing and fascism—was Stalin’s regime.
I’ve just returned from Peru, where I had a long conversation with one of the most veteran advisors to the Amazonian organization AIDESEP (Intrethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest), which brings together nearly 2,500 communities in nine federations. We talked at length about the 15 autonomous governments that as many communities have created due to the impossibility of dialogue and negotiation with the government in Lima. When I asked him why the indigenous peoples of the Andes, the Quechua and Aymara, haven’t taken a similar path, his account surprised me.
CONACAMI (National Confederation of Communities of Peru Affected by Mining), which represented more than half of the country’s six Andean communities, began to discuss the possibility of adopting an Indigenous identity, since until then the organizations only identified as peasant. Adopting an Indigenous orientation meant a break with the tradition of mobilizing to make demands of the State, as they conceived of no other option than negotiating to obtain resources.
The Indigenous position was championed by Hugo Blanco, among others. However, the Peruvian left-wing parties refused to allow this step, because they felt they would lose control of “their” base, which was rigorously controlled from the party hierarchy and movements like the CCP (Peasant Confederation of Peru). They used the threat of cutting off funding to the movement through the NGOs they controlled as blackmail, thus managing to block this historic step that would have led the Andean peoples in directions closer to building autonomy.
I bring up this issue because I feel that, in addition to the colonial perspective and the heroic vision of the changes that Consigliere analyzes, there are the petty personal and political interests of those who live off the efforts of the people and use their influence to obtain some kind of advantage.
Original article by Raúl Zibechi, Desinformémonos, November 10th, 2025.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.