We All Must Become Zapatistas

The movement's shift from violence to non-violent civil disobedience was evidenced during the memorial. Zapatista leaders said they knew the identities of the vigilantes who had carried out the attacks. But those in the crowd were cautioned not to turn their vengeance against the killers, who, they were told, had been manipulated to murder in the service of the state. The focus had to remain on dismantling the system of global capitalism itself. The shift from violence to nonviolence, one also adopted half a world away by the African National Congress (ANC), is what has given the Zapatistas their resiliency and strength. Marcos stressed this point:

"Small justice looks so much like revenge. Small justice is what distributes impunity; as it punishes one, it absolves others.

"What we want, what we fight for, does not end with finding Galeano's murderers and seeing that they receive their punishment (make no mistake this is what will happen).

"The patient and obstinate search seeks truth, not the relief of resignation.

"True justice has to do with the buried companero Galeano.

"Because we ask ourselves not what do we do with his death, but what do we do with his life."

This transformation by the EZLN, chronicled in some astute reporting by the Mexican novelist Alejandro Reyes, is one that is crucial to remember as we search for mechanisms to sever ourselves from the corporate state and build self-governing communities. The goal is not to destroy but to transform. And this is why violence is counter-productive. We too must work to create a radical shift in consciousness. And this will take time, drawing larger and larger numbers of people into acts of civil disobedience. We too must work to make citizens aware of the mechanisms of power. An adherence to nonviolence will not save us from the violence of the state and the state's hired goons and vigilantes. But non-violence makes conversion, even among our oppressors, possible. And it is conversion that is our goal. As Marcos said:

"Maybe it's true. Maybe we were wrong in choosing to cultivate life instead of worshipping death.

"But we made the choice without listening to those on the outside. Without listening to those who always demand and insist on a fight to the death, as long as others will be the ones to do the dying.

"We made the choice while looking and listening inward, as the collective Votan that we are.

"We chose rebellion, that is to say, life."