6.2: Story of Visionary Leadership

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN)

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) controls a substantial amount of territory in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. The Zapatistas' main body is made up of mostly rural indigenous people, but it includes some supporters in urban areas and internationally. The group takes its name from Emiliano Zapata, the agrarian revolutionary and commander of the Liberation Army of the South during the Mexican Revolution, and sees itself as his ideological heir.

The EZLN aligns itself with the wider alter-globalization, anti-neoliberal social movement, seeking indigenous control over local resources, especially land. Since their 1994 uprising was countered by the Mexican Armed Forces, the EZLN has abstained from military offensives and adopted a new strategy that attempts to garner Mexican and international support.

The Zapatistas describe themselves as a decentralized organization. Political decisions are deliberated and decided in community assemblies. Military and organizational matters are decided by the Zapatista area elders who compose the General Command (Revolutionary Indigenous Clandestine Committee – General Command, or CCRI-CG).

In 1974 an indigenous conference brought indigenous peoples from across Chiapas together to discuss their conditions. Promoted and organized by the Catholic church, this event helped foster an indigenous political identity in the region. In the 1980s, they joined with the Rural Collective Interest Association – "Unión de Uniones" (ARIC-UU).

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): This sign is located at the entrance of Zapatista rebel territory. It reads, "You are in Zapatista territory in rebellion. Here the people command and the government obeys." It is part of their vision of how they operate as a self-sustaining and governing community. (CC BY-SA 2.0; Paolo Massa via flickr)

The Zapatista Army went public on January 1, 1994, releasing their declaration on the day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect. On that day, they issued their First Declaration and Revolutionary Laws from the Lacandon Jungle. The declaration amounted to a declaration of war on the Mexican government, which they considered illegitimate. The EZLN stressed that it opted for armed struggle due to the lack of results that had been achieved through peaceful means of protest (such as sit-ins and marches). Until recently, the EZLN's main spokesperson was Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano, previously known as Subcomandante Marcos.

Note

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States that created a trilateral trade agreement across North America with few restrictions. The EZLN was in opposition because they believed it would destroy indigenous livelihoods and rights, privatize communal lands, and affect poor Mexican's the most.

They used their uprising as a platform to call attention to their movement to protest the signing of the NAFTA, which the EZLN believed would increase inequality in Chiapas. Prior to the signing of NAFTA, however, dissent amongst indigenous workers was already on the rise in 1992 with the amendment of Article 27 of the Constitution. The amendment called for the end of land reform and the regularizing of all landholdings, which ended land redistribution in Mexico. The end of land distribution heralded the end of many communities that had been growing of the past decade, as they had been waiting for further distribution that was on an agrarian backlog according to the government.

The Zapatistas hosted the Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism to help initiate a united platform for other anti-neoliberal groups. The EZLN also called for greater democratization of the Mexican government, which had been controlled by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party, also known as PRI) for 65 years, and for land reform mandated by the 1917 Constitution of Mexico, which had been repealed in 1991. It also advocated for protection from violence and political inclusion of Chiapas's indigenous communities.

On January 1, 1994, an estimated 3,000 armed Zapatista insurgents seized six towns and cities in the Chiapas highlands. The Zapatistas soon retreated to the forest to avoid a federal military offensive. "The EZLN listed a series of other demands that were a compendium of long-standing grievances of the indigenous communities of Chiapas, but also found echo in broad sectors of Mexican society outside of Chiapas: work, land, housing, food, healthcare, education, independence, liberty, democracy, justice, and peace."

On June 28, 2005, the Zapatistas presented the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, declaring their principles and vision for Mexico and the world. This declaration reiterated the support for the indigenous peoples, who make up roughly one-third of the population of Chiapas, and extended the cause to include "all the exploited and dispossessed of Mexico". It also expressed the movement's sympathy to the international alter-globalization movement and supported leftist governments in Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, and elsewhere, with whom they felt there was common cause.

In late 2006 and early 2007, the Zapatistas, along with other indigenous peoples of the Americas, announced the Intercontinental Indigenous Encounter. They invited indigenous people from throughout the Americas and the rest of the world to gather on October 11–14, 2007, near Guaymas, Sonora. The declaration for the conference designated this date because of "515 years since the invasion of ancient Indigenous territories and the onslaught of the war of conquest, spoils and capitalist exploitation". Comandante David said in an interview, "The object of this meeting is to meet one another and to come to know one another's pains and sufferings. It is to share our experiences, because each tribe is different."

On December 21, 2012, tens of thousands of EZLN supporters marched silently through five cities in the state of Chiapas: Ocosingo, Las Margaritas, Palenque, Altamirano and San Cristóbal. Hours after the march, a communiqué from the CCRI-CG was released in the form of a poem, signed by the Subcomandante Marcos. This mobilization, which included the participation of around 40,000 Zapatistas, was the largest since the 1994 uprising. Of this number, La Jornada estimated that half would have marched through the streets of San Cristóbal de las Casas, 7,000 in Las Margaritas and 8,000 in Palenque; for its part, El País calculated that San Cristóbal would have seen the concentration of some 10,000 participants.

Beyond the number of people, the silence with which they marched and the lack of an opening or closing speech were the elements that marked this action. The poet and journalist Hermann Bellinghausen, specialist in coverage of the movement, ended his chronicle in this way:

Able to "appear" suddenly, the rebellious indigenous "disappeared" as neatly and silently as they had arrived in this city at dawn that, two decades after the EZLN's traumatic uprising here on the new year of 1994, received them with care and curiosity, without any expression of rejection. Under the arches of the mayor's office, which today suspended its activities, dozens of Ocosinguenses gathered to photograph with cell phones and cameras the spectacular concentration of hooded people who filled the park like a game of Tetris, advancing between the planters with an order that seemed choreographed, to get the platform installed quickly from early on, raise their fist and say, quietly, "here we are, once again".

The Zapatistas invited the world to a three-day fiesta to celebrate ten years of Zapatista autonomy in August 2013 in the five caracoles of Chiapas. They expected 1,500 international activists to attend the event, titled the Little School of Liberty.

At the end of August 2019, Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano announced the expansion of EZLN into 11 more districts. In response, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador stated that this expansion was welcome, provided it was done without violence.

In November 2023, the EZLN announced the reorganisation of the MAREZ into thousands of "Local Autonomous Governments" (GAL) which form area-wide "Zapatista Autonomous Government Collectives" (CGAZ) and zone-wide "Assemblies of Collectives of Zapatista Autonomous Governments" (ACGAZ).

On August 4, 2025, during the Meeting of Resistances and Rebellions "Some Parts of the Whole", held at the Caracol IV of Morelia, in the municipality of Altamirano, the EZLN condemned the genocide in Gaza, calling for international solidarity, defining it as a "systematic aggression against the Palestinian people", and tying it directly to the capitalist system.

The ideology of the Zapatista movement, Neozapatismo, synthesizes Mayan tradition with elements of libertarian socialism, anarchism, Catholic liberation theology, and Marxism. The historical influence of Mexican anarchists and various Latin American socialists is apparent in Neozapatismo. A Zapatista slogan is in harmony with the concept of mutual aid: "Everything for everyone. Nothing for us" (Para todos todo, para nosotros nada).

The EZLN opposes economic globalization, arguing that it severely and negatively affects the lives of its indigenous support base and oppresses people worldwide. The signing of NAFTA also resulted in the removal of Article 27, Section VII, from the Mexican Constitution, which had guaranteed land reparations to indigenous groups throughout Mexico through collective land tenure.

The Zapatistas have used organizations like the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to raise awareness for their rebellion and indigenous rights, and what they claim is the Mexican government's lack of respect for the country's impoverished and marginalized populations. Appealing to the ECOSOC and other non-governmental bodies may have allowed the Zapatistas to establish a sense of autonomy by redefining their identities both as indigenous people and as citizens of Mexico.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Zapatista children show the intergenerational participation of the Movement (CC By-NC-ND 3.0 via Common Dreams)

The Zapatistas' communication strategy evolved to incorporate mythopoetic techniques, blending Indigenous storytelling traditions with political messaging and magical realism. This approach allowed the Zapatistas to transcend the constraints of standard Spanish prose, which they viewed as embedded with colonial and hegemonic biases. By employing mythopoetics—a style characterized by metaphorical narratives, allegories, and cultural symbolism—they effectively communicated Mesoamerican philosophical tenets while broadening their appeal to both local and international audiences.

Zapatista communities build and maintain their own health, education, and sustainable agro-ecological systems, promote equitable gender relations via Women's Revolutionary Law, and build international solidarity through outreach and political communication, in addition to their focus on building "a world where many worlds fit". 

The Zapatistas continue to control the Chiapas area with around 300,000 people across 55 municipalities. These poor communities run and train their own civic programs (education, health, government, justice) autonomously, with little interference from the Mexican government.

Activity \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Reading Response Questions

Please reflect on this reading by writing a short response to these questions. Your answer can include personal experience, and the writing does not need to be formal or polished. You are welcome to write as little as a sentence and as much as a paragraph. Think of it like journaling. 

1. What do you think about the Zapatistas' approach to organizing?
2. In what ways do they show visionary leadership?
3. What do you think of their vision?
4. What is their critique of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and what do you think of global trade agreements? 

Attribution

• Adapted from “Zapatista Army of National Liberation” by Wikipedia is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA.