Neo-Zapatista Network Politics

Abstract

As Zapatista support-base communities consolidate their autonomy, a variety of organizations have taken up lessons from the Zapatistas. Neo-Zapatista organizations—grassroots and nongovernmental organizations that support the Zapatistas’ demands—are developing alternative practices of participatory democracy and autonomous development. These practices include “rule by obeying,” resisting government programs, strengthening cooperatives, diversifying production, and building food security. By implementing these practices, neoZapatista networks transform hegemonic meanings and practices of procedural democracy and neoliberal development by reembedding economic and political decision making in social values. A case study of three such organizations documents the learning processes by which they generate constructive meanings and practices that reconfigure social power.