Zapatista Army of National Liberation

because it also teaches you about history.

You learn about groups like the Zapatistas, and you learn about how terrible things are for Puerto Ricans, and about how... much better they should be treated um so it's it's it's very comparable to um it gives me the same vibe as pachinko you learn you like you learn a lot and it's like inter-family dynamics but i think i actually recommended pachinko to somebody based off of reading this book

interesting

yeah okay it's political

McCallum, 2013.

Beyond a focus on labor, the alter-globalization movement is understood to have begun from the transnational solidarity for the Zapatista uprising in 1994, protesting the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.

Revere, 2019.

The massive protests at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999 brought alter globalization into the spotlight around the world.

So if there is an emergency somewhere in Malaysia, the ability to deploy resources, whether it's the police, the army, all of that within a 24-hour period or to respond to disasters, those are all kind of... examples of state reach, right? So there is nowhere within Malaysia's borders that the state cannot reach, right? not just for geographic reasons, but even for military reasons.

So an example is in Mexico, I think it's Chiapas, the Zapatistas control that region.

So the army might not be able to fully go in because they are self-governing.

So that is maybe not the best example, but it's a kind of example of that lack of reach.

In Cuba, for all my idealization of Castro as a younger woman, I found too much ego, too much hierarchy.

No, it was when I traveled to the Zapatistas that I found our answers, a society led by community need, unbeholden or dependent on government, completely without hierarchy.

But they still have a leader.

You are still a leader.

there

are

actually really interesting conversations to be had about, right? How do we think about some of our revolutionary future and like what those look like? But I feel like this conversation just kind of throws in these names, throws in these like tiny bit of like thinking about like Cuba, the Zapatistas, and sort of throws out these like sort of like things that maybe we sort of know, right? In terms of like being an American audience, but don't know much about.

And so I just felt like it sort of short, short shift, is that a word? What is it?

But basically there was a massive movement against the stripping of resources from the developing world by the developed world.

There was basically an, a, an, a massive attempt by people all over the world kind of spurred on by the Zapatistas in Chiapas-

Yeah

... to get everyone together to say, "Stop using free trade agreements to take all of the wealth of the Global South and give it to the Global North." It's a really important idea to wrap your head around, but complicated right now in this era where tariffs are the bad thing and free s- trade is the, the lesser evil, right?

Another rebellion, that of the Zapata brothers, was inspired by the opposite motives.

The Zapatistas wanted more radical and more immediate land redistribution than Madero was likely to grant.

The Yaqui tribe of Indians likewise lost patience and revolted.

Moreover, a nephew of President Diaz made an unsuccessful attempt to seize power by force, was imprisoned by Madero, was liberated by rebellious military cadets.

We enjoy a brew and a biscuit as we do it.

We take inspiration from the Luddites, Diggers, Zapatistas, Animal Liberation Front, and the Little People, those mischievous elves of lore.

Authorities can't see us because they don't believe in elves.

We're practically invisible.

Still, it's hard for me to imagine life without governments.

I mean, where else are nerds like me supposed to spend their prom nights if not their local public libraries? But seriously, apart from some small-scale experiments by groups like the Paris Commune or the Zapatistas in Mexico, we can literally only imagine it.

Because it's not exactly easy to poof governments away for the sake of experiment.

Except in rare moments, like after natural disasters or during a pandemic, when a bunch of our systems fall apart.

Meaning, life is full of people who help each other.

Which makes me wonder… What would the world look like if we nurtured these seeds of anarchism with simple, everyday gestures of mutual aid? Although stateless societies have rarely existed in the modern world, anarchist ideas live on.

They exist in autonomous communities like the Zapatistas in Mexico, in social movements like the Arab Spring, and in pockets within communities in response to both global disasters and local needs.

Meanwhile, anarchists continue to debate the best way forward.