Bridges that bind worlds: The emergence of diplomacy from below between Chiapas and Italy (1996–2001)

Abstract

AbstractFollowing the 2021 Zapatista tour in Europe, this article offers a reconstruction of the genealogy of the practice of diplomacy from below, based on the meeting between the Italian post‐autonomous collectives and the Zapatista rebel communities of the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico, and sets out its continuity after more than two decades. The research hypothesis is that this practice was born as a joint political construction thanks to the collaboration between two collective political subjects, organized and structured in their respective territories as constituent expressions of counterpower and in opposition to the hegemonic neoliberal model. How these collective actors relate to each other demonstrates the existence of two different political identities and cultures that, in the reciprocal encounter, recognize and feed each other—changing, hybridizing and, finally, strengthening each other.