Lessons From Across the Border

By Jack Mahoney "When we are together we are stronger, because alone we are easier to exploit." Not what you'd expect to hear from a 16-year-old middle-schooler. We were sitting in the grass beneath the green mountains of southern Mexico discussing the worker-run cooperatives that sustain her community. Seventeen students from the United States were visiting Oventic, an indigenous community that has become a political and cultural center where the Zapatistas run a school for indigenous youth, a hospital that serves nearby communities, a few cooperatives of women artisans and the Good Government Junta. Again and again during our six weeks with the Zapatistas, we were struck by this emphasis on community-oriented politics by the rebel group who take their name from Emiliano Zapata, indigenous leader of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. As my young friend shared her thoughts on the problems of US-style individualism, I tried to imagine a middle-schooler in the United States with such a firm grasp on the meaning of solidarity and of the real possibility for workers to wrest control from bosses and take it back for their community. The Zapatistas operate their schools, hospitals and cooperatives with no government assistance, to ensure that the communities have complete control, unlike the Mexican government's schools, hospitals and municipal offices, which allow their communities little, if any, say.  In Oventic, we observed first-hand the Zapatistas' grassroots organizing style, a highly democratic approach reminiscent of basic union organizing. Rooted in long-standing tight-knit communities, Zapatistas emphasize a radical democracy in which entire communities meet to talk for hours or days until everyone agrees on major decisions. The communities met for many months in 1993, for example, before deciding to carry out the armed uprising that attracted worldwide attention. Taking this much time to educate each other and debate an issue ensures that a few leaders can't impose their ideas.  We spent weekends in San Cristóbal, a city occupied by the Zapatista army during their uprising on New Year's Day 1994, the same day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect.  In the wake of NAFTA Mexican wage-earners saw their pay drop, nearly two million farmworkers lost their jobs and indigenous groups like the Zapatistas were forced to fight corporations' attempts to buy up their communal land.  Increasingly, the Zapatistas are building alliances with other groups in Mexico including factory workers, peasants, women's organizations, sex workers and various indigenous groups, united by their opposition to the capitalist system.  This broad-based movement in Mexico is an inspiration and a challenge to us in the US labor movement to find more ways to connect with and support other unions and organizations struggling in our communities for a fairer, better world. Mahoney is a Georgetown University student, member of Georgetown Solidarity Committee and a Solidarity Intern at DC Jobs with Justice.