| Tilman Baumgaertel on Thu, 12 Mar 1998 00:09:41 +0100 (MET) |
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| <nettime> zapatista & internet |
from:
http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/10769.html
A Rebel Movement's Life on the Web
Wired News Report
6:22pm 6.Mar.98.PST
On 1 January 1994, the day the North American
Free Trade Agreement went into force, an armed
group of Mayan Indians calling itself the EZLN
(Zapatista Army of National Liberation) appeared in
Mexico's Chiapas state.
Calling the treaty "a death sentence against
indigenous people" and vowing war not only on the
Mexican government but the entire international
economic world order, the Zapatistas won a
publicity victory far greater than its brief
seizure of
several towns.
In the ensuing four years, the movement has
continued to have a presence that goes beyond its
raw numbers. As it tries to fends off paramilitary
attacks - last December, 45 unarmed Chiapas
peasants were killed by irregulars with ties to the
federal police and army - the Zapatistas'
collective
voice carries far beyond their home ground in
southern Mexico.
How?
Since shortly after its beginning, the Zapatistas
have enjoyed perhaps the best-organized and
most dynamic Internet presences of any political
group anywhere. Tamara Ford, Harry Cleaver, and
Heather Garza work with Accion Zapatista and
ZapNet Collective, Texas groups that jointly
facilitate some of the Zapatistas' major electronic
archives, Web sites, and email lists.
The three, who spoke last month at the 1998
Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference,
talk to Wired News about the Net's role in the
movement.
Wired News : Why was there such a strong Web
response to the Zapatistas in the first place?
Tamara Ford: It was the Zap communiqu=E9s. They
didn't only outline their specific situation and
strategies, they identified a common global enemy
- which in its simplest form they have termed
Power (with a capital P). Also, their communiqu=E9s
are often issued through the voice of
spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos, who uses
poetry, humor, scholarship, and storytelling to
engage people in dialogues about issues of power
and autonomy.
WN: So couldn't this just be the latest in left
intellectual romances with Third World
revolutionaries, combined with an attraction to the
charismatic persona of Subcomandante Marcos?
Harry Cleaver: Marcos' charisma is a media
invention, which prompted a spate of soap opera
enthusiasm among some. But it's the freshness
and originality of his writing and his ability to
translate the indigenous vision into words that
others can grasp that explains his popularity
among activists. It has been a while since any
movement has struck the world with such
"newness" and with the power to both stir hope
and to prompt debate over long-neglected themes
such as democracy, freedom, and justice.
Ford: Public space has been commodified and
mainstream news has been reduced to
info-tainment. The Zapatistas have been able to
rupture that space, in part via Marcos' skill as a
performance artist. But there is a larger Zapatista
discourse - reflecting a very profound commitment
from the indigenous communities willing to put
their lives on the line - that most people don't
get
to see. It's not printed in our newspapers. That's
why the Net's been so important in distributing
information that allows people to go beyond any
romantic limitations of the left. Moreover, most of
the Zapatista supporters are engaged in their own
local struggles, which they see as very connected
to what the EZLN is fighting for. Thus, the idea of
the "other" is collapsing. We are one.
WN: Is the Zapatista leadership itself highly
conscious of the Internet? Were they originally?
Cleaver: There's no evidence that the Zapatistas
were thinking in terms of the Internet from the
beginning. But they caught on quickly, as
feedback from friends and allies made clear to
them the importance of this unexpected vehicle for
rapid communication and mobilization.
Ford: At this point, the Zapatistas are very
conscious of the Net and have initiated and
participated in countless dialogues. Yet, they're
not seduced by the technology. They're
sometimes able to subvert it. When they were
photographed for 24 Hours in Cyberspace, Marcos
wrote a communiqu=E9 about taking the cameras
away from the photographers and reversed the role
of Zapatistas as subjects. He even touched on the
copyright issue, saying the photos of the
Zapatistas belonged to the people they were taken
of, not to the image-maker. The Zaps have also
called for the creation of RICA, an
intercontinental
Network of alternative communication to interlink
the various electronic and community media
Networks that exist.
WN: It's been suggested that the Zapatistas'
Internet presence might have prevented the
Mexican government from wiping out the
Zapatistas.
Heather Garza: The Net has provided a focus on
the actions of the Mexican government. It's made
it extremely difficult for them to undertake a
military offensive.
Cleaver: The Mexican government is very
sensitive to its public image because it worries
about sudden capital flight like what occurred in
December 1994, causing the collapse of the peso
and the "Tequila Effect," which rippled through
emerging markets throughout the world. More
specifically, in February-March 1995 when the
state unilaterally violated the cease-fire and
attacked, a massive mobilization in dozens of
cities and countries put pressure on the Mexican
government to stop its offensive and negotiate. The
Internet provided the means for this rapid
mobilization
WN:: We were actually thinking about the report
sent out by Chase Manhattan about eliminating
the Zapatistas [a four-page report by a consultant
that suggested that to maintain investor
confidence, the Mexican government would have
to annihilate the rebel movement].
Cleaver: The Chase Manhattan report to
emerging investors, written by Riordan Roett, got
on the Net when Ken Silverstein called me up and
told me about it. He faxed me a copy which I
typed into e-text and posted. The extremely rapid
circulation of that report resulted in widespread
mobilization in the US against Chase. It was one
of those rare moments of frankness that just
happened to fall into the hands of those for whom
"investment" in Mexico means support for
democracy and indigenous rights, not
profit-making. We made good use of it to illustrate
the forces behind the government's military
actions.
WN: How have networked Zapatista supporters
responded to the recent crisis in Chiapas, where a
number of apparent Zap sympathizers and
ordinary people were killed by paramilitaries?
Garza: Accounts and testimonies by witnesses
were circulated. The response to that has been
overwhelming.
Ford: There have been letter-writing campaigns
and forms of virtual protest. Chiapas95 has
distributed hundreds of reports from
demonstrations in dozens of countries in recent
weeks. There were various proposals for
coordinated Net action, including a Net-strike
targeted at the servers of Mexican Financial
Centers. Another proposal that circulated on the
Net was a project to provide indigenous
communities with video equipment and training to
document human rights abuses. This project
actually got under way in Chiapas within weeks,
but its director was promptly and illegally
deported
by the Mexican government. News of this
development also circulated with great speed.
This Wired News interview was conducted by
correspondent R.U. Sirius.
Zapatista Net of Autonomy & Liberation
http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/~zapatistas/index.html
EZLN
http://www.ezln.org/
Accion Zapatista
http://www.utexas.edu/students/nave/
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