Nov. 20, 2006
El Kilombo Intergalactico
Durham, NC
"...be careful with that dry branch that hangs over your head and pretends, disingenuously, to shelter you with its shade." --Don Durito of the Lacandon Jungle, on the rotten State
To all those struggling for dignity and a better future,
While the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca, APPO) as an organizational body was only formally established during the last six months of the movement in Oaxaca, the infrastructure for such an assembly-based decision-making model has long been in existence. The APPO was born out of various struggles that sought alternatives to the current unjust political structure and has struck at the heart of the ruling class' fear: the widespread realization and exposure of the State's irrelevance as a legitimate governing body, and the active organization of alternatives to its systematic abuses. Goaded on by global capitalism, the Mexican State has responded to declarations of its own illegitimacy with escalating violence and repression in Chiapas, Atenco, and now Oaxaca in a delusional attempt to restore its political power. But the refusal of movements like the APPO to seek State power or engage in armed struggle-both of which would legitimize the illegitimate-only further frustrates and nullifies the current ruling class.
This crisis of government might have translated into a crisis of governability[CCC1], had these communities continued to wait for a political party to institute change while the political system waged war on its own citizens. Instead, the people of Oaxaca, as the people of Chiapas and Atenco before them, drew from their own historical experiences with autonomous self-government, which have been accumulating since long before the current moment of confrontation. Their model is the assembly, a democratic space where different communities can establish a new set of social relations and learn to collectively articulate their desires for the construction of a new world. While the fading political power in Mexico will certainly escalate its use of violence in the future, Oaxacans have begun the very process that will, as Gustavo Esteva puts it, "serve both as a protective shield against institutional violence and a democratic tool for a much needed transformation."
Meanwhile, those of us living in the United States are experiencing a parallel assault on our institutions of education, health, and welfare, similar to the crisis that spurred the formation of the APPO. When the Zapatista Other Campaign met with the Others from north of the US-Mexican border, it was made clear once again that the border is of little importance: in the US, too, people of color and working class communities have been fighting a war that is getting worse every day, bearing the brunt of the neoliberal crisis that is already upon us. Faced with this situation, how will we respond? Will we recognize our situation as a crisis of government and political representation itself, or wait in vain for the newly elected Democratic Party to change what they have no power, let alone desire, to affect?
Make no mistake-the current agenda of the Democratic Party will be equally neoliberal to that of their predecessors, even if couched in more soothing and deceptive language. The new Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has already announced that, "one of the first acts of the new Democratic Congress will be a $75 billion boost to the military budget." As the PRD's Lopez Obrador has made clear with his refusal to affirm or defend the people's movement in Oaxaca (see Adolfo Gilly's "Oaxaca in Solitude" below), opposition parties such as the PRD and the US Democrats have more in common with their PANista and Republican counterparts than with the masses of common people they claim to represent.
Let it be known to Americans of every race, age, gender and legal status: Oaxaca is coming soon to a neighborhood near you! For now, here, north of the Rio Grande, the only real question that remains is whether we will take action. Will we once again turn our heads to those above, begging for concessions or bits of leftovers? Or will we confront the neoliberal spectacle of shared prosperity, as the Indigenous people of this land have done for years, through resistance and autonomous self-organization? We must recognize that our only hope lies here, below, with our own collective self-organization. To meet our own needs and fulfill our own desires, we must begin to create, as the Zapatistas, Atencingos, and Oaxacans have already done, grassroots, assembly-based, extra-parliamentary political alternatives to the existing electoral system. These communities have shown us the power of self-defense and self-organization in the face of institutional brutality; they have shown us another way of doing politics. In our call for the struggle for democracy from below, we affirm and support all the self-articulated demands of the APPO, including the immediate removal of Ulises Ruiz, withdrawal of federal forces from Oaxaca, and freedom for all detainees! We say NO to the imposition of power from above, YES to the direct democracy that comes from below!
El Kilombo Intergalactico
Durham, North Carolina, USA
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