Food for thought, after yesterday’s celebration of our American revolution:
“The Chiapas rebellion was distinctive among guerrilla struggles in that it did not seek to seize state power. Instead, it aimed to win the right of people to govern themselves within their own communities. It did not call upon other Mexicans to take up arms for a new national social agenda, but for the space and means to elect popular, democratic movements tied to particular locales. One commentator, Gustavo Esteva, called it a ‘new kind of movement’ and the ‘first revolution of the twenty-first century.’ By that he meant the feisty manifestation of a growing struggle of people around the world for economic and political survival and sovereignty within their own communities. [...] It wasn’t a Marxist guerrilla group, for example. It had no clear-cut socialist ideology or political platform and no one leader. Nor was it a fundamentalist or messianic group. Its members came from different Indian groups, professed different religions, spoke different languages, and were explicitly ecumenical. [...] As mentioned, its goal was not to seize power to govern the country but rather to reclaim the community. It did not eschew, but used, modern means of communication and a strategy of networking varied coalitions of dissent. Perhaps most strikingly, it did not call upon the government for cheaper food, more jobs, more health care, and more education. Rather than trying to find its niche in Mexico’s efforts to solve its problems by strengthening its role in a global economy organized around the needs and wants of a consumer society, it sought to order its own world around the organic needs of community. In Esteva’s words, it was not a revolt in response to a lack of development but a response that Chiapas was being ‘developed to death.’ People ‘opted for a more dignified way of dying.’ This more dignified way consists of a ‘commons’ the community carves out for itself in response ‘to the crisis of development’; ‘ways of living together that limit the economic damage and give room for new forms of social life’; ‘life-support systems based on self-reliance and mutual help, informal networks for the direct exchange of goods, services, and information’; and ‘an administration of justice which calls for compensation more than punishment.’”
–Larry L. Rasmussen, Earth Community Earth Ethics [Orbis 1996], pp. 128-129.