CHAPTER 10 THE MAYAN ZAPATISTA MOVEMENT 399a peasant without land,
a gang member in the slums,
an unemployed worker,
an unhappy student and, of course,
a Zapatista in the mountains.
(Subcomandante Marcos 1998, in Voces Unidas, Vol 7[4]:12)Zapatista Community Organization
From here we proceed to offer a sketch of what is known about the grassroots polit-
ical organization and leadership of the autonomous Zaptatista communities in Chi-
apas. Several caveats are appropriate from the outset, for we are relying on secondary,
not primary, data. For example, the Zapatistas’ own published statements claim ef-
fective power in thirty to thirty-eight autonomous municipalities of more than 100
municipios that make up Chiapas. Other sources state forty.
Perhaps this discrepancy results from the fact that Zapatista municipios autónomos
do not necessarily correspond to the boundaries of existing official municipios. In
some cases, several autonomous municipios are found in a single official municipio.
Of the municipios where the Zapatistas hold power, most are found in the south-
eastern lowlands and in the central and eastern highlands. Even in these areas, Za-
patista governments do not constitute the sole authority in the municipio.
Although Zapatista autonomous muncipios are always found in areas where there
is a substantial contiguous area of hamlets that are committed to the movement, the
reality is usually a scenario of parallel authority systems, such that some parts of the
population participate in government-prescribed administrative structures that are
like those that exist throughout Mexico; other parts of the population in the same
municipio—usually living in separate hamlets or settlements and sometimes follow-
ing religious and ethnic markers—make up the Zapatista constituency. In these cases
of parallel authority structures, Zapatistas do not pay church, municipal, state, or
federal taxes; nor do they participate in government-sponsored elections; nor do
they accept government-sponsored social services such as schools, clinics, utilities, and
road construction and maintenance. These services, such as they exist, are privately
funded through revenue sources that come through Zapatista self-taxation, volunteer
nongovernment services from outside, and funding from sympathetic nongovern-
ment organizations in Chiapas, Mexico, and abroad.
Further complicating the picture is the fact that there are at least four levels of
affiliation with the Zapatistas. First, turning to the EZLN itself, this was initially a well-
disciplined small army. Now, by their own designation, beginning in 2003, it has be-
come a clandestine militia that consists of several thousand people who make up the
core of the movement. For strategic and security reasons, they do not have a perma-
nent, publicly known headquarters. Second, many tens of thousands of people, in-
cluding EZLN members, live in insular Zapatista hamlets and villages where everyone
shares a public allegiance to the movement. Third, other tens of thousands of Zapatista
sympathizers live in noncontiguous hamlets that function rather like independent
cells where there is unstated (i.e., not public) but solid support for the movement.