Commentary No. 59, Mar. 1, 2001
"Marcos, Mandela, and Gandhi"
The Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee, the General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), is leading a march on Mexico City at this very moment. It is an historic event, mobilizing tens of thousands of "indigenous" Mexicans, followed by the world press, accompanied by sympathizers from around the world, with speeches, rallies, and press communiqués en route. The government of President Vicente Fox, against whom the march is directed, is treating the march with great care, officially encouraging it, ordering 1600 police to guarantee the safety of the marchers and their leaders (who have been receiving anonymous threats), and saying that they are ready to meet with and negotiate with the EZLN. The EZLN is treating the government with much suspicion and a good deal of scorn, and insisting that the preconditions for negotiations on fulfilling the San Andrés agreements (that the previous government signed but never implemented) are the release of all political prisoners and the withdrawal of the Mexican army from Chiapas. So far, Fox has released some prisoners and withdrawn part of the army.
In the last 200 years, there have been many different kinds of revolutionary or antisystemic movements. When we look back on their history, we see that some of these movements engaged in military activity against the forces in power, and that such movements sometimes succeeded and sometimes did not. But military action, even of a guerilla nature, is not always really possible, for many different kinds of reasons.
There have been three notable instances in which these movements fought very difficult campaigns against formidable opposition and were successful without real military action. They substituted for military action, by necessity or by preference, a political campaign that mobilized what might be called moral hegemony. The three campaigns of which I am thinking are that of the Indian National Congress (INC) and Gandhi, that of the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC) and Mandela, and that of the EZLN and its most famous spokesperson, Subcommandant Marcos.
Gandhi too led a march, the famous Salt March. In 1930, Gandhi started out with 78 people to march 241 miles to the sea in order to violate the law by picking up salt without paying the tax. The object was to obtain complete independence from British rule. He wrote the Viceroy in advance telling him of his plans and saying "Whilst, therefore, I hold British rule to be a curse, I do not intend harm to a single Englishman...." After Gandhi violated the law, everywhere in India others did the same, and the jails were full. The British were feeling the impact of civil disobedience, the use of symbolic manipulation as a weapon.
Some thirty years after the Salt March in South Africa, the ANC found the apartheid government mentally prepared for civil disobedience and impervious to this manipulation. The ANC turned to guerilla warfare. But it was not so easy, and at a very early point, many of the key leaders of the ANC were arrested, tried, and sentenced to long terms in a prison on Robben Island. There they stayed for some 20 years. But the ANC turned first the trial and then precisely the Robben Island prison into their symbols of resistance. They mobilized world public opinion and, despite their military weakness, the ANC finally was able to force an fiercely antagonistic regime into liberating the imprisoned leaders, negotiating with them, and holding free elections in which the ANC came to power and Nelson Mandela was elected President.
Some thirty years after the launching of the ANC guerilla campaign, in 1994, a hitherto unknown movement of indigenous peoples in the remote province of Chiapas in Mexico announced a guerilla campaign, calling itself the EZLN, seeking autonomy and rights for the indigenous peoples. The actual violence was very small and quite brief. But the potential was great. And the Mexican government was forced to negotiate a truce, which they then spent six years seeking to abrogate. The EZLN spent the same six years mobilizing world public opinion, now via such advanced instruments as the internet. And in 2000, the government that sought to undo the truce was itself overthrown in the national elections, and the new President says that it is his priority to resolve the issues raised by the EZLN.
There is little question that, seen from the perspective of the world-system as a whole, these three campaigns - that of the INC in India, the ANC in South Africa, and the EZLN in Mexico - are the three that have been able to gain the widest support from world public opinion, thereby achieving what might be called moral hegemony, and consciously sought to use this moral hegemony as their strongest mode of pressuring the powers against whom they were struggling. Gandhi, Mandela, and now Marcos have taken on the flavor of world moral heroes, and this fact alone served their causes well.
One should in addition note one key element in this acquisition of moral hegemony. The three movements, the three heroes, laid enormous emphasis on their universalism, on the fact that they were not the spokespersons of some narrow group interest. Gandhi and the INC insisted that they stood for a secular India, not a Hindu India, and struggled to maintain Muslims within their vision of a free India. Gandhi was killed by a Hindu fanatic precisely because of this. The ANC and Mandela insisted that they stood for a non-racial society, and not for a Black South Africa. The ANC had, and has, not only White members but White members of their inner councils. And the EZLN and Marcos have insisted that they fight for the rights not only of indigenous peoples but of all Mexicans, that they are indigenous Mexicans. Marcos himself is not an indigenous Mexican, which is why he is the Subcommandant, there being multiple indigenous Commandants. Moral hegemony is not accorded to ethnic particularists.
All three movements have insisted on large social visions, and the content has expanded over time. Today, we have Commandant Esther of the EZLN emphasizing the centrality of indigenous women to the struggle because, says she, they suffer from "the triple exploitation of being indigenous persons, women, and poor." The communiqué of the EZLN tells us that this is the "march of indigenous dignity, the march of the people of the color of the earth." Marcos, in an interview, tells us that "the EZLN has arms...but does not practice terrorism, and has never committed a murderous attack." Furthermore, he says, the EZLN is not seeking state power, because the center of power is no longer in the states. "It achieves nothing to conquer power." What the EZLN wants is a "citizen-ization" of politics, at which point the EZLN will disappear, as will, he says, the "figure of Marcos."
When asked at a meeting en route by a local leader what are the orders of the organizers of the march, the answer that was given by Marcos is quite remarkable: "We are going to Mexico City with you and with many other peoples. ...We are going in order to obtain constitutional recognition of the rights of the indigenous peoples. And never again shall we take orders from anyone." He insisted that "the indigenous peoples are the guardians of history."
Gandhi and the Indian National Congress asserted the rights of Indians to freedom from external colonial rule. Mandela and the ANC asserted the rights of the non-White 80% of the population to freedom from internal colonial rule by the European settlers. And Marcos and the EZLN are asserting the rights of the "indigenous populations" to freedom from the hidden colonial rule of those who have considered themselves socially superior. When India gained its independence in 1948, it established a model that was felt throughout Asia and Africa and thereby speeded up the end of colonialism everywhere. When the EZLN obtains recognition of the dignity of indigenous peoples in Mexico, this will have the same impact throughout the Americas and elsewhere.
Immanuel Wallerstein
Source: http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/59en.htm
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