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It has been said that the Zapatistas had a revolution within a revolution in terms of the
role of women and unique gender dynamics. Three activists from Mexico explain why
they believe, as a movement, Zapatismo has more than just symbolic feminine qualities.
Zapatismo:
a feminine movement
Nicole Blanc, Gustavo Esteva and Beatriz Ramírez
In this article we present the conjecture that Zapatismo is a feminine movement. It is not
feminist: it was not organised mainly, exclusively or expressly for the defence of
women's rights, nor was it based on the conventional claims of many feminist traditions.
In describing it as feminine we want to suggest not only that women had and have a
decisive role in its conception and realisation, but also that they gave it colour and
meaning. The orientation and practices of Zapatismo openly struggle against all forms of
patriarchy, including those of modern Western sexism, and also reflect a feminine style
of leadership and action.
According to the Zapatistas, its army is the heart of its movement, not the movement
itself. For them, to follow your heart is to find the path towards dignity. Both notions, of
feminine inspiration, contribute to explain why the Zapatistas put their weapons to
silence, 12 days after using them; and why they became models of nonviolence, opposed
to all forms of militarism and clearly separated from all guerrilla tradition.
Beyond symbolism
Women have been prominent in all the public events of the Zapatistas. Comandanta
Ramona, known since the Dialogue of the Cathedral two months after the uprising,
received special notoriety as the only representative of the Zapatistas at the First National
Indian Congress, held in Mexico City in 1995. Comandanta Ana María pronounced the
main speech of the Zapatistas in the First Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and
Against Neoliberalism, held in 1996 in La Realidad, Chiapas. Comandanta Ester was the
main speaker of the Zapatista delegation in the Federal Congress in 2001.
All of them, and many others, revealed on a number of occasions both their personal
talent and the prominent role of women in the Zapatista movement. They also showed
how much the movement appreciated the historical and symbolic importance of
presenting its main proposals, in critical moments, through the voice of a woman.
Beyond symbolism, it is significant that women have had significant participation in all
Zapatista delegations, and that its largest delegation, when 5000 Zapatistas travelled all
over the country, was made up of couples of men and women.
In the Zapatista communities, daily exposed to the pressure of the military siege, women
have directly confronted the troops with no other weapon but their dignity, in the best
tradition of civil resistance. When the aggressions increased, and the army were killing
the men before their eyes and forcing them to escape to the mountains, many women
decided to stay in the communities and confront the troops—to protect the community,
the children ... and the men. "What else could we do?", commented Comandanta
Margarita, of Morelia.
The Revolutionary Law of Women
Due to all these entirely visible facts, it is said that Zapatismo could not exist or be
understood without the participation of women. That is true but insufficient. The same
can be said about almost everything happening in the world. We still need to ask
ourselves: To what extent is or is not such participation an additional burden imposed on
women? Does Zapatismo really include, in its orientation and practices, the struggle
against the oppression of women?
Hard facts offer an answer to these questions. The new burden on women was not
imposed: they courageously and responsibly assumed it, as part and the expression of
their own struggle. And this struggle, the women's struggle, publicly appeared with
Zapatismo itself and within it, on 1 January 1994, through its Revolutionary Law of
Women. Women's claims were also included in the national and international
consultation on the destiny of the movement in 1996. They were also included in all the
negotiations with the government, as one of the issues or themes requiring specific
treatment. The march of the International Day of Women, in San Cristóbal, in 1996, was
probably the first march of indigenous women in history.
Women's claims are not just prominently included in the Zapatistas proposals. They also
define a pattern of internal changes in the Zapatista communities. Within them there is
increasing participation and influence of women in the decision processes and
community affairs. There is a continual correction of the patriarchal bias of rooted
customs or the sexist bias of new behaviour; the communities advance every day towards
the elimination of all traditional or modern forms of masculine violence.
This is not idealisation or romanticism. Women's oppression in indigenous communities,
Zapatista or not, is still there. The comandantas celebrate women's advances, but
denounce at the same time the problems that persist and the resistance of men to their
solution. Before the Federal Congress, Comandanta Ester exposed a lucid account of such
oppression. On that occasion, María de Jesús Patricio, speaking in the name of the
National Indian Congress, talked about the subject at great length. She celebrated valued
indigenous customs or recent changes, but at the same time identified many customs in
relation to women that should be modified, observing that this applies not only to
indigenous communities but to the whole of society.
A feminine character
Communiques, documents and facts associated with the Zapatistas clearly demonstrate
their full acknowledgement of the gender question and their decision to approach it in
depth. As Comandanta Ramona said, Zapatismo implied "an awakening to a struggle
against a present and a past that threaten the women as a probable future". The Zapatista
women have concentrated in one struggle the many facets of their oppression. Azucena
Santys, a young Zapatista from Morelia, synthesised it in the following terms: "We were
used to having two governments, that of our men and that of the State. We are now
organising ourselves to learn more about our rights, educate our men and govern
ourselves."
All this has begun to be acknowledged and is awakening increasing interest. But we
would like to go a little farther. We believe that women's participation in Zapatismo has
not only implied an inclusion of their claims, as women, and a stimulation of profound
transformations of gender relations in the communities. It has also given to the movement
an original and distinctive character. Some of its peculiarities that attract a lot of attention
come from the mark made on it by the women, to the point of giving to it what we
describe as a feminine character.
Gender is not broken in the indigenous communities. Areas and functions still subsist and
are reserved for each gender, and an asymetric and complementary relation between
genders that does not necessarily imply oppression of one by the other. This situation
gives women a decisive weight in the life of the community, comparatively higher than
that of women in the modern society, where they have been reduced, together with the
men, to genderless economic individuals, and where women tend to be treated as the
second sex. Such conditions may produce the worst of all possible worlds in the
communities, when patriarchal oppression is combined with sexist discrimination, but it
also has vigorous liberating elements.
In the communities, the women struggle for equality as justice, which requires treating
the different differently, rather than equality as sameness—which requires treating
everyone in the same way. This attitude that women were adopting in their struggle
against patriarchal oppression in the communities, was extended to their indigenous
condition, within national society. It clearly marked Zapatismo in its defence of
indigenous rights, which never fell to the temptation of homogenising egalitarianism.
Shaping the movement
This situation helps to explain the great importance of the women since the beginning of
the movement: without their full acceptance and courageous participation, the movement
could not have taken place. This also helps to explain what happened later, when the
feminine form of perceiving the world, the basic attitudes of the women, their
conceptions of politics and power, got an increasing influence in the shape of the
movement.
Some of the main principles of Zapatismo, like "commanding by obeying", "to walk at
the pace of the slowest one", and "to listen as you walk", are not theoretical statements or
abstract values of a new utopia, but concrete shapes and styles of the movement as it is
formed and reformed. For us, these are expressions of women's practices, rather than
men's. It has been their inspiration and influence that determined this specific character
of Zapatismo.
It is well known that a small guerrilla group, made up of of indigenous and non-
indigenous "ideologised" men, attempted in 1983 to start a revolutionary action in Selva
Lacandona in the Latin America guerrilla tradition, following the steps of Che Guevara.
This group lost in its confrontation with the communities, as they themselves confessed
later. But they learned to listen to the other, and Zapatismo was born after this interaction.
We can speculate that the women helped to produce the defeat of the ideologised group
and the new spirit that created the movement. And that it was also their influence which
determined the movement's lack of interest in "seizing power", the power up there, the
power that in time attempts to impose from the top down, in a very masculine way, the
project of society proposed as revolutionary goal.
Gender reaffirmation
In the indigenous world, there is the trend—and in many cases the real possibility—that
women contribute the content of political action, its substance and orientation, while the
practical exercise of this action and particularly the mediation with the external world
remains in the hands of men. Even today, many indigenous women refuse to accept
"political" functions, which until now have been exclusive to men but which they are
now willing to share with women. This attitude, considered by some feminists as an
expression of the ideological backwardness of women, may be seen instead as a gender
reaffirmation, when they protect their own areas and functions in a way that far from
marginalising them from political action, put them in its centre. It is our conjecture that
the Zapatista women have defined the main content and orientation of the movement.
In any case, given the importance of women in Zapatismo, its reduction to the figure of
the now famous subcomandante Marcos, whose great qualities we fully recognise, seems
to us a racist and macho prejudice. It attributes all the capacities and virtues of the
movement to its only white man, as if the indigenous people could not conceive and
promote it and the women have no importance in it. This prejudice has been disseminated
by the media and the government, not by the Zapatistas. It is time to dissolve it.
We can not, in this brief text, elaborate more on our conjecture of the feminine character
of Zapatismo or on the more fundamental question of the importance of women in any
project of social transformation. In our view, such question should occupy a central place
in the debate about the political agenda in the current conditions of the world. To include
women in the army or the police does not change the character of militarism. Perhaps we
can only leave it behind and pave the way for nonviolence when the organisation of the
society become inspired by the feminine ethos.
Nicole Blanc runs her organic farm in a small indigenous village in Oaxaca, Mexico, and
participates in a number of grassroots organisations. Gustavo Esteva is a grassroots
activist and deprofessionalised intellectual, former advisor to the Zapatistas.
Beatriz Ramírez is the Director of Centro de Encuentros y Diálogos Interculturales and
participates in many grassroots organisations.
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