Zapatismo as a Resonant Public Pedagogy

• Author: James K. Anderson,Noah J. Springer
• Published date: 01 May 2018
• Date: 01 May 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X18766903
• Subject Matter: Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 220, Vol. 45 No. 3, May 2018, 151–170

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18766903

© 2018 Latin American Perspectives

151

Zapatismo as a Resonant Public Pedagogy

by

James K. Anderson and Noah J. Springer

As a critical pedagogy similar to the type described by the philosopher-educator Paulo

Freire, Zapatismo expresses resistance to the power-over relationships institutionalized in

capitalism and the state through open-ended questioning. Previous analyses have argued

that the Zapatista struggle has been incommunicable, that it can be defined in terms of

new media, that Zapatismo advances a Leninist ideology, and that its resonance is rhizo-

matic. A challenge to these assumptions drawing on negative dialectics suggests that, as

prefiguration of other worlds beyond the neoliberal reality, Zapatismo resonates because

it teaches the recovery of democracy by direct collective decision making and horizontal

organization and communication. Philosophical inquiry shows that Zapatismo has recol-

lected the radical imaginary and resonated through the Independent Media Center net-

work and Occupy Wall Street and continues to be borrowed and adapted by Occupy

offshoots, anticapitalist collectives, and ongoing initiatives.

Como una pedagogía crítica similar a aquella descrita por el filósofo y educador Paulo

Freire, el Zapatismo expresa resistencia a las relaciones de poder institucionalizadas en el

capitalismo y el Estado a través de preguntas abiertas. Análisis previos argumentan que

la lucha zapatista no ha sido comunicable, que puede definirse en términos de nuevos

medios, que promueve una ideología leninista, y que cuenta con resonancia rizomática.

Un desafío a todas estas suposiciones basadas en una dialéctica negativa sugiere que, como

prefiguración de otros mundos más allá de la realidad neoliberal, el Zapatismo resuena

porque enseña cómo recuperar la democracia mediante la toma de decisiones colectivas

directas y la organización y comunicación horizontal. Una investigación filosófica da

muestra de que el Zapatismo ha recobrado el imaginario radical y resonado a través de la

red del Centro de Medios Independientes y Occupy Wall Street. También, que aún es

tomado en préstamo y adaptado por Occupy, grupos anticapitalistas, y otras iniciativas

en curso.

Keywords: Zapatista, Public pedagogy, Problematization, Prefigurative politics,

Negative dialectics

This essay argues for an understanding of Zapatismo—the outlook and

praxis of the Zapatista movement—as a resonant public pedagogy. Our

approach relies on extensive reading of materials produced by and about the

Zapatistas, including communiqués, news articles, published ethnographic

James Anderson is an adjunct professor working in Southern California. Like other contingent

faculty, he has taught and tries to pick up classes each term at multiple colleges and universities.

He earned a Ph.D. in mass communication and media arts from Southern Illinois University,

Carbondale, and has worked as a freelance journalist for several online news outlets. Noah J.

Springer is assistant acquisitions editor at the MIT Press. He works in the fields of education,

digital humanities, new media, and human computer interaction design.

766903LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X18766903Latin American PerspectivesAnderson and Springer / ZAPATISMO AS A RESONANT PEDAGOGY

research-article2018

152 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

research, activist e-communications, and relevant writings. It also draws on

genetic criticism and our experiences in social movements. This is not an anal-

ysis of Zapatismo as such but a contribution to the philosophy of Zapatismo,

differentiating it from conventional doctrines and conceptualizing it using

negative dialectics as a problem-posing pedagogy for humanization. The aim

here is to show how mediation facilitates Zapatismo as a democratic practice—

one that is taught, learned, and questioned. We will show that, although not

reducible to network technology, with the aid of new communications systems

it increasingly resonates beyond borders.

What resonates can be conceptualized differently, and, as Adorno (1966)

averred, no conceptualization is ever complete. Posing the resonance of

Zapatismo as a problem, we challenge previous conceptions. We aim for new

partial knowledge of the way the anti-instrumental public pedagogy of the

Zapatistas represents another possible reality denied by the dominant order’s

constant negation of human dignity. Zapatista politics, we submit, prefigures

that other reality. To prefigure is to communicate without domination and cre-

ate social relations reflecting the arrangements that revolutionaries want to see

replace established structures of domination. The movement’s ends are thus

immanent in the means, and the revolution is now. We demonstrate that, by

posing the prevailing wrong world and human relations both to and within it

as problems, Zapatismo resonates as a critical pedagogical process inextricable

from a different form of politics. The negative dialectical movement of

Zapatismo as a problem-posing and prefigurative pedagogy is expressed in

Chiapas but learned through praxis elsewhere, from the Independent Media

Center network to Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots.

Zapatismo thus encompasses the inseparability of action and reflection

(together: praxis). It is expressed through the worldview of the Zapatista rebels

based in Chiapas, Mexico. The uprising of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación

Nacional (Zapatista National Liberation Army— EZLN) on January 1, 1994,

was aligned with the implementation of the North American Free Trade

Agreement (NAFTA), which the Zapatistas called a death sentence for their

people. The Zapatista clarion call of ¡Ya Basta! (Enough!) coincided with the

advent of the Internet, and the movement utilized nascent communication net-

works to mobilize “global civil society” as part of its praxis.

More than mobilization, however, teaching and learning have undergirded

Zapatista praxis. Paramilitary forces, including elements of or support from the

Central Independiente de Obreros Agrícolas–Histórica, the Partido Acción

Nacional, and the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), ransacked a

Zapatista freedom school in May 2014 and killed the teacher, José Luis Solís

López, also known as Galeano. His death led to the publicly declared disap-

pearance of Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, the media spokesperson for

the Zapatistas since the 1994 rebellion. In a final communiqué, Marcos (2014)

explained that his persona had been a “changing and moldable hologram” that

was made to disappear following the death of Galeano, which marked the

appropriate moment on the Zapatista calendar. In the same message, a new

teacher embodying the collective spirit of Zapatismo, Subcomandante

Insurgente Galeano, emerged. The end of Marcos and the rebirth of Galeano

exemplifies Zapatismo as a public pedagogy with a resonance attentive but not