From Che to Marcos the Changing Grassroots Left in Latin America

From Che to Marcos The Changing Grassroots Left in Latin America

The guerrilla is the combat vanguard of the people . . . armed and willing to carry out a series of warlike actions for the one possible strategic end—the seizure of power. Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare (1961)

Questions and more questions fill up our nights . . . “Were these words the best ones to say what we wanted to say?” “Were they the right words at this time?” “Were they understandable?” Subcomandante Marcos, Shadows of Tender Fury (1994)

Jeffrey W. Rubin self very quickly into a nonviolent opposition engaged in national and international debate and negotiation. He is a postmodern spokes- person—joking, sly, literary, passionate, erotic, he Guevara spoke of small, dedi- philosophical; speaking out, like Che, against cated bands that would seize power exploitation and marginalization, and naming through guerrilla action, as did Fi- unfettered free trade and, implicitly, capital- Cdel Castro. The location of power was in the ism as the enemy. capitalist economy and the state, which served But Marcos and the Zapatistas speak also the wealthy few, and these two needed to be for a new kind of democracy, a democracy that overthrown by the working class. One of takes procedure and voting seriously, which Guevara’s contributions was to put the peas- Che’s focos and Castro’s Communist Party did antry into this equation, as well as to claim that not. Che and Castro emphasized the impor- guerrilla focos, or centers, rather than organized tance of a vanguard’s leading the pueblo to revo- workers, could begin the struggle. The goals lution, and then leading in the construction of were to set up a new, collectivized, a new society. Given this scenario, democracy noncapitalist economy, to establish universal didn’t matter, and political control and repres- education and health care, and to create a “new sion were permissible and necessary. man” in a new society. The model was Cuba, In contrast, in a language new for the radi- where the U.S-supported dictator was over- cal left in Latin America, Marcos has defended thrown, a new form of political authority es- a policy of alliances within a complex civil so- tablished, and living conditions greatly im- ciety, no longer broken down into Che’s bour- proved. geois and working classes. Marcos also speaks Che is a revolutionary icon to this day. about and with Indians—a category of people When the Brazilian newspaper Zero Hora re- that barely existed, politically, for revolution- ports that a mayor in the state of Rio Grande aries of Che’s era. Correspondingly, Marcos do Sul is a leader in the Movement of Land- calls for a dual Indian-Mexican nation, based less Rural Workers (MST), the mayor is shown on concepts of citizenship and culture, with in his office with a photo of Che on the wall. no revolution of the old sort, led by an armed Rural women in Rio Grande do Sul claim Che vanguard, in sight. Citizenship and culture, like as well, evoking his vision of “new men and democracy, need to be thought about and de- women” at their 2001 state assembly. veloped, and, Marcos argues, in this process Subcomandante Marcos is the masked, the left needs to engage with the reality of dif- non-Indian leader of the Zapatistas, a Mayan ference—in class and worldview and also in guerrilla army of sorts, one that converted it- race and gender. Today in Brazil, it is the ico-

DISSENT / Summer 2002 ■ 39 CHE TO MARCOS nography of Chiapas and Marcos that appears more recent decades of democratization. in the contemporary artwork of the Mercosul I will then compare the visions and strate- Biennial in Porto Alegre and in discussions at gies of the sixties and the nineties, asking what the World Social Forum (an alternative to the has been gained and what lost. Is the language World Economic Forum) in the same Brazil- of democracy, culture, and civil society a step ian city. (Che, however, dominated the T-shirt forward, or was the dream of organizing the market at the Social Forum.) masses to overthrow the state and capitalism Although separated by three decades, Che a better bet? Has Marcos trivialized revolution and Marcos faced similar societies, character- with his mask and his pipe, his humor and flir- ized by vast inequality and deprivation: hun- tations, his clever references to Radio Shack ger, malnutrition, disease, illiteracy, and under- and the stars of Mexican telenovelas? Have the employment. Latin American countries are Zapatistas, along with many activist groups among the most unequal in the world, and they elsewhere in Latin America, erred dramatically have remained so through the processes of in- in thinking that through alliance with some- dustrialization and urbanization that character- thing called civil society, or through changes ized much of the twentieth century. In the face in something called culture, a system of power of turbulent political conflicts over inclusion can be transformed? and equality, both Che and Marcos operated with the broad notion that to be on the left The Mexico City Student Movement means to oppose economic inequality and pov- Like its counterparts elsewhere, the student erty and to reject political rule at the service movement in Mexico City created new forms of business or political elites. of activism that shaped the lives of a genera- However, although both Che and Marcos tion and have influenced society to the present offer visions of exploitation and transformation, day. The movement began in city high schools the futures they describe, and the means of around issues of police intervention. It spread getting there, differ markedly. How can we to high schools and universities across the na- think about the path from Che to Marcos, from tion, as a campaign against the violence of the the 1960s to the 1990s, from clandestine guer- police forces known as granaderos, the laws rilla focos to the Zapatistas’ National Demo- supporting this violence, the taking of politi- cratic Convention—where, in front of the cal prisoners, and the structure of political au- Mexican flag, they literally handed over the thority generally. struggle from the foco to the representatives Nineteen-sixty-eight in Mexico City was a of civil society? And how should we evaluate time of expansiveness and the breaking down the results of this transformation in leftist ide- of barriers—a time for forging alliances among ology and strategy? students, workers, and the marginal urban poor and challenging the political regime. Later on s someone who has lived in and writ- came the questioning of middle-class conven- ten about Mexico (and, more recently, tions, of the official history, and of the estab- A Brazil), I believe that the place to start lished artistic and literary culture. It was a time thinking about the 1960s and all that came af- of great hope, seemingly on the verge of trans- ter is Mexico City in 1968, on the eve of the formation. Students were out in the streets, in Olympic Games. I will begin there, at a quint- the plazas, on the buses, forming brigades, “go- essential 1968 moment of euphoria and possi- ing to the people.” There were movement com- bility, and then look at what followed. I will mittees at each school and heady experiences trace the Mexican path from Che to Marcos of argument, exploration, and democratic prac- and then recast my story in a broader Latin tice. There was no central leader. Families were American framework—looking at the radical drawn in, whole apartment buildings and mobilizations of the 1960s, the establishment neighborhoods. A revolution was happening— of military dictatorships, and the forms of left- not Che’s revolution—but a revolution from ist organizing that emerged under the dictator- within the system, nonviolent, driven by eu- ships and developed and changed during the phoria, conviction, and the excitement of ex-

40 ■ DISSENT / Summer 2002 CHE TO MARCOS perimentation on the ground. in the United States at the same time. The The ferment in Mexico City culminated in U.S. movement represented a militant narrow- a massacre—one of the defining moments of ing and sharpening of identity; it gained po- political repression in twentieth-century Latin litical strength by rejecting a mainstream America—at a demonstration in the Plaza of American identity and claiming a Mexican the Three Cultures at Tlatelolco. The plaza is core, sometimes labeled Aztlán. The Mexican closed off on three sides by buildings. The army onda chicana, in contrast, rejected conventional closed off the fourth side and came in shoot- Mexican nationalism—the Mexican core—to ing, on the ground and with helicopters, kill- develop a Mexican rock and roll in English, ing at least three hundred people and arrest- with the innovators often being from the north ing more than a thousand. Families had to of Mexico who brought musical and cultural search the streets, hospitals, and prisons to find influences from across the border. their children. The onda Chicana culminated in a massive The massacre at Tlatelolco had an enor- rock festival—the Mexican Woodstock—in mous impact; it was the moment that revealed Avándaro. Again, this collective action, “cul- the regime for what it was, a government shoot- tural,” not “political,” brought a repressive re- ing at its own people. This sort of state vio- sponse: the Mexican government confiscated lence was particularly significant in Mexico, the film of the festival, literally erasing it from which had experienced a revolution in the history; banned rock concerts; and prohibited 1910s and dramatic progressive reforms in the radio stations from playing rock music. Inter- 1930s, and still had a government that claimed estingly, the Mexican government went on to to rule in the interests of all its people. Ever encourage middle-class student listeners to since, the legitimacy of the Mexican govern- turn to nuevo canto, a melodic folk music with ment has been in question. a different sort of radical content that expressed solidarity with the struggle of the Latin What Happened to Student Activism? American masses, but without the rock edge. The violence of Tlatelolco and the arrests that Where did rock go? Eventually, it went to followed destroyed the mass student move- a different, lower class, urban, disruptive set ment and its open, democratic politics. Now of locations and forms, to performances and activists from Mexico City went to the prov- performance spaces deep in the barrios and inces to make the revolution in a different fash- shantytowns. It became a music and an idiom ion. They became a clandestine left, very close seen by many today as both subversive and to the commitments and visions of Che, work- democratic. ing through small revolutionary focos, mostly nonviolently, to organize peasants, workers, and s the members of the sixties genera- city dwellers more generally into a radical tion got older, many of the ex-radical ac- movement. A tivists and the rock and rollers turned The old activism also took on popular cul- into nuevo canto folks. They moved into adult tural forms and was expressed, for example, in society, inside and outside the government— rock and roll, which had its own earlier his- from schoolteachers, artists, and heads of state tory. Rock in Mexico was seen at first (in the welfare programs to Zapatista advisers and gov- 1950s) as a threat to respectable mores, but it ernment negotiators with the Zapatistas. (This was domesticated, with Spanish lyrics and happened not only in Mexico, but all over Latin muted content, in the early 1960s. After America.) The most optimistic observers see Tlatelolco, it took a countercultural turn, la- connections, webs, networks of activists and beled la onda chicana, the Chicano wave, and sympathizers who speak both the language of attracted the jippies. This music represented the Mexican regime and the language of dis- simultaneously a withdrawal from the public sent and social justice. Perhaps, this genera- political sphere and a challenge to Mexican tional shift explains the calls for electoral de- society. It is interesting to compare the Chicano mocracy in the 1990s, as well as the massive wave to the Chicano movement that burgeoned public willingness to see the cause of the

DISSENT / Summer 2002 ■ 41 CHE TO MARCOS

Zapatistas as just. Perhaps, also, it explains the to gain some of their demands. election of Vicente Fox as president and his In a turn that has gotten particular atten- appointment of moderates and leftists to ne- tion, a group of activists from the north went gotiate with the Zapatistas in Chiapas—and to Chiapas in the early 1980s, at the invita- with the United States, too. tion of the archbishop of San Cristóbal, Samuel All along, though, there has been a radi- Ruiz. Ruiz had come to Chiapas as a relatively cal, clandestine, Che-inspired activism in the apolitical, conservative churchman. Traveling provinces, in rural and urban locations: land across the state and seeing the abysmal living takeovers and powerful squatter settlements in conditions of the Mayan Indians who made up Monterrey, called Tierra y Libertad (Land and the majority of its population led him to orga- Liberty); an urban popular movement in nize an Indigenous Congress in 1974. He went Durango that organized neighborhood by on to help the Mayans explore and build on neighborhood; campesino mobilizations in the their Indian identities and to challenge the northern Yaqui and Mayo valleys that led to poverty that made them the most marginal of successful collective agricultural enterprises; the Mexican poor. Ruiz became an adherent and a peasant-worker coalition in the south- of liberation theology, and he welcomed politi- ern Mexican city of Juchitán, where Zapotec cal organizing by outside activists. He met Indians revitalized their culture, fought to hold members of the clandestine left, from groups onto their land, and won municipal elections. like Línea Proletaria and Política Popular, and This activism was strong and impassioned, and invited them to come to Chiapas—a move that it eventually became public and threatening; eventually resulted in the armed Zapatistas. revolution, many thought, was on its way. In What we see today in Chiapas is a product Juchitán, for example, the Coalition of Work- of the coming together of those leftist activ- ers, Peasants, and Students of the Isthmus ists, the radical bishop and his organizational (COCEI) was Zapotec, militant, and militantly legacy, and Indian communities and cultures separate from what would come to be called in the Lacandón jungle. The Zapatistas began Mexican civil society. COCEI’s political ide- in part from Che, seizing world attention as ology was a blend of Che, Marxism, and fierce an armed guerrilla band. They borrowed sig- attachment to Zapotec culture. All these 1970s nificantly from the militant and vanguardist movements were inspired—and most of them Zapotec Indian movement COCEI in Juchitán, actively organized—by the clandestine left that placing culture at the heart of politics. Despite came out of 1968. And they in turn spawned a these similarities, however, the extraordinarily new generation of radical movements in the complex and rich history of political discussion 1980s: independent labor unions, a democratic and organizing in Chiapas from the 1970s to teachers’ movement, and a new phenomenon the 1990s produced something genuinely origi- called coordinadoras—the coordinating com- nal, a new leftist language and vision. This in- mittees of radical peasant movements or ur- cludes negotiation about what it means to be ban neighborhood organizations. Indian within a larger Mexican nation. It includes discussion about new forms of democ- he result was a transformation in what racy and an inventiveness regarding civil soci- was possible politically in Mexico. Mas- ety—exemplified by the convention in the T sive public battles in the 1970s and jungle; by the Zapatistas’ national consulta, in small, discernible regional and sectoral shifts which they asked people around the nation to in power relations in the 1980s culminated in comment and vote; by Marcos’s communiqués; President Carlos Salinas’s recognition of and and by the accords on Indian autonomy ham- readiness to negotiate with opposition popular mered out with government negotiators in 1996 movements in 1988. This was a new moment (though never implemented in that form). The in twentieth-century Mexico, where the gov- new leftist vision also includes a communica- ernment had always demanded that opposition and public debate deeply rooted in popu- tional groups forgo their independence and lar cultural idioms—indeed, in the language of become part of the ruling party if they wanted rock and roll and its progeny.

42 ■ DISSENT / Summer 2002 CHE TO MARCOS

The Left in Latin America was directly supported by the United States, This brings us again to the path from the 1960s provided a model for the military governments to the present, from Che to Marcos. I’ve sug- that came to predominate in most of the con- gested that the euphoric and unprecedented tinent within a decade. With some variation mobilizations of the 1960s in Mexico spawned in each case, this involved the closing down or a generational shift in public consciousness, a strict control of Congress, the banning or ma- more critical and subversive rock and roll, and nipulation of political parties, the imprison- a network of clandestine and then public ment of opposition leaders, and the arrest of grassroots movements. These ingredients to- anyone associated with anyone suspected of gether produced a new kind of radical project holding radical views or opposing the military in Chiapas. A broadly similar shift can be seen regimes. The years from the Brazilian coup in in the rest of Latin America. Despite the suc- 1964 until the Chilean transition to democ- cess of armed revolution in Cuba and admira- racy in 1989 were a time of torture and disap- tion for Cuba across the Latin American left, pearances. leftist politics from the 1950s to the early 1970s worked through electoral systems with s a result of this repression, the lan- some degree of democratic credibility or guage of guerrilla or revolutionary take- through grassroots movements that sought re- A over of the state played an increasing form—as in Mexico before 1968. Challenges role in oppositional discourse. Inspired by from the left sometimes brought great turbu- Cuba and Che, armed, militant, Marxist, ma- lence; many leftists lived at the border of le- terialist struggle became one of the prominent gality and violence. But with the exception of forms of activism in Latin America. The a handful of guerrilla movements—in Venezu- Sandinista Revolution in 1979 in Nicaragua ela, Colombia, and southern Mexico—oppo- was a kind of culmination, updating the Cu- sition politics engaged directly with existing ban model, adopting its one-party political institutions. Indeed, between the 1950s and structure, its large development projects, and 1970s, public, legal competition over basic is- its state-run agrarian reform, but also innovat- sues of labor, land, and economic development ing in the face of popular resistance. Had it characterized much of Latin American politics. not been opposed by violent U.S. intervention, Brazil was a paradigmatic case of urban and the Sandinista government might have found rural mobilization during these decades, with a path to greater socio-economic equality and agrarian leagues claiming land and labor rights more responsive political representation in and electorates voting for progressive change. Central America—an alternative path from In Argentina and Chile as well, there was a fer- Che to Marcos. ment of democratic activism—which led, in a But something else happened in the course non-Guevarist mode, to challenges to state of opposition to the dictatorships, something power, not through focos, but through public that parallels what occurred in Chiapas be- movements that mixed militancy and revolu- tween the Mayans and the urban radicals. tionary Marxism with strong appeals for reform. Throughout Latin America, new kinds of so- In this somewhat democratic mid-century mo- cial movements addressed a broad range of is- ment—democratic in the sense of formal po- sues, intertwined with but not limited to eco- litical systems and increasing public voice— nomic concerns, in increasingly democratic there was a clear move to the left among many fashion. These emerged out of and alongside voters. Communists and radicals of other the Marxist, Che-inspired movements, much stripes agreed that the time was not right for as the Zapatistas did. But, also like the focos and violence. However, as democratic re- Zapatistas, they engaged with the conditions formism was met with governmental repres- of daily life, with popular culture, and even sion, the left focused increasingly on armed with academic political theorizing in new ways, guerrilla action, reanimating the legend of Che. beginning to focus on questions of culture, citi- Brazil’s move to the left was curtailed by zenship, and civil society. military intervention in 1964. The coup, which This change involved a conceptual shift re-

DISSENT / Summer 2002 ■ 43 CHE TO MARCOS garding the nature of power. One source of the forms and substance and lacked important shift was feminist theory and activism, which kinds of cultural awareness. In contrast, the spread throughout Latin America, reaching more recent varieties of leftist organizing ex- rural and urban women, influencing activists hibit, in varied and uneven ways, greater con- and academics, and generating networks of in- cern for democratic procedures, for cultural terconnection nationally and globally. The tran- meaning, for multiple dimensions of power, sitions to democracy and the openings they and for gender, race, violence, and sexuality— appeared to offer were another source. Brazil- along with different ways of relating all these ian political scientist Evelina Dagnino at- concerns to material issues. tributes the conceptual change as well to the On the less economic end of the “new” engagement of leftist intellectuals and activ- spectrum, the leaders of the Afro-Reggae Cul- ists with the work of Antonio Gramsci, which tural Group teach young children and teenag- guided them to a serious consideration of the ers in Rio de Janeiro’s most violent and drug- political significance of culture. This shift in ridden favelas to play the drums. The group conceptualizations of power, democracy, and employs a language of culture and diversity opposition is typified and brought into sharp similar to that of Marcos and postmodern theo- relief by the Zapatistas, but it is shared in dif- rists. With this language, Afro-Reggae secures ferent degrees by the Pan-Mayan movement grants from international foundations and has in Guatemala, which focuses on the revitaliza- obtained government and private sector funds tion of Mayan history, language, and culture; to open a music school and build a commu- by the Organization of Black Communities of nity center. In addition, it has expanded rap- the Pacific Coast of Colombia, which chal- idly, running a young people’s theater group, a lenges development projects with alternative circus training program, a senior citizens’ cho- approaches to both race and biodiversity; and rus, and a spin-off band whose young mem- by the Participatory Budgeting Project in Porto bers drum on tin cans. Acting through culture, Alegre, the Movement of Rural Women Work- and largely accepting the economic status quo, ers in Rio Grande do Sul, and the Afro-Reggae Afro-Reggae activists change the lives of indi- Cultural Group in Rio de Janeiro. Each of these viduals in the poor and marginal favelas in Brazilian groups seeks social change through which they work, and they explicitly take on innovative cultural and political pathways: re- issues of racism and violence. Their leaders designing institutional arrangements for bud- know that the media and foundations like them get allocation; linking land struggles with gen- because their program appears unthreatening, der concerns and democratic organizational and they use that to negotiate—for funds, for practices; or fighting violence and racism by schools, for the ear of the mayor, the governor, training musicians and filling the streets of ur- and the drug traffickers—but not to create a ban shantytowns with music. black movement linked to electoral activity or to change the economic system. Evaluating Social Movements In contrast to Afro-Reggae’s focus on cul- From the perspective of these recent move- ture, Marcos’s early communiqués and inter- ments, the Che-inspired radicalism of the pre- views suggest a more multidimensional ap- vious left was a mistake. It produced terrible proach, with their intertwined emphasis on the repression on the part of military governments. Chiapas economy, Mayan culture, and new Activists put too much faith in the possibility imaginings of democratic politics. Here is a of transformation and scarcely imagined the great hope for the left and for Latin America— horrific brutality of these regimes. The newer a multifaceted radical politics that speaks for movements are more sensitive to the enduring democracy and economic well-being and rec- weight of the obstacles they face, in the form ognizes the cultural dimensions of people’s of state and army power and the ability of eco- lives. nomic elites to summon up this power. The Participatory Budgeting Project in Even more significantly, Che-inspired radi- Porto Alegre similarly combines concern for calism placed too little value on democratic economic issues with internal democracy and

44 ■ DISSENT / Summer 2002 CHE TO MARCOS rootedness in neighborhood cultures. Since gies in their municipalities. winning elections in 1988, the Workers Party in Porto Alegre has created and implemented hat can we learn from these Bra- a process by which people in neighborhoods zilian movements about the possi- decide exactly how to allocate the municipal W bilities of left activism? The pan- service budget, down to whether to pave streets orama of activism in Latin America shows a (and which streets) or build child care centers. marked shift from Che to Marcos, one that can As a result, through half-year cycles of com- be seen today in the panoply of movements and munity and regional meetings, large numbers NGOs seeking not to overthrow the state, of households in Porto Alegre have gotten sew- unionize workers, or transform economies, but age, and whole neighborhoods have literally rather to create cultural change, foster demo- been opened up to the city, so that buses, am- cratic citizenship, fight racism and gender in- bulances, and delivery trucks can get in and equality, and strengthen civil societies. In their out. In addition, the participatory budgeting attention to culture and democracy, these experience invites revisions of democratic newer, Marcos-type forms of activism repre- theory, arguing that in order to institute demo- sent the best hope for a moral and humane cratic policymaking and accountability, elected politics of transformation. But can they be suc- legislatures must sometimes be circumvented cessful? by unpaid, elected neighborhood councils. Par- At times, these Marcos-type movements fo- ticipatory Budgeting thus combines an eco- cus exclusively on issues of culture and civil nomic focus with Marcos’s call for democratic society, as with Afro-Reggae. It may be that innovation. such cultural efforts will in the long run pro- The trajectory of the Movement of Rural duce both large networks and new groups of Women Workers (MMTR) in Rio Grande do citizens, which together will promote reform Sul illustrates the potential and the difficulty through democratic politics. This is the con- of maintaining the new, Marcos-like political viction of many progressive nongovernmental forms. In the 1990s, poor rural women with- organizations and civil-society activists in drew from leading agricultural movements to Mexico and Brazil. Or it may be that the form their own movement, which addressed Marcos-type groups will need to grapple more economic and gender concerns simultaneously, directly with economic issues and with the delicately balancing the two. This resulted in need for mass-based mobilization, and, that as a politics that could envision distinct identi- they do so, the resulting innovations, rooted ties and strategies within a single movement, in concerns for democracy and culture, will in Marcos-like fashion. In the past two years, produce unprecedented successes. This is the though, the MMTR has shifted back to a more conviction and practice of movements such as Che-like framework. At the MMTR state as- Participatory Budgeting, the Zapatistas, and the sembly last November, a talk that promised a more gender-focused groups within the Bra- gender perspective argued that U.S. imperial- zilian rural women’s movement. ism, via Monsanto’s genetically altered crops, Alongside these Marcos-type “new” move- was killing the children of rural workers. The ments, the more Che-inspired model contin- subtlety and multiplicity of the mid-1990s lan- ues to claim some of the largest visible chal- guage of gender was replaced by a simplistic lenges to state power in Latin America. Em- materialist analysis and an emphasis on uni- ploying hierarchical authority structures to fied working class luta, or struggle. This was build mass movements focused on economic accompanied by a concern for nature and “pure issues, these movements raise compelling nor- seeds” that was entirely compatible with tra- mative and empirical questions. The Colom- ditional women’s roles. In response to this shift bian guerrillas, for example, have for several away from more nuanced economic and gen- decades controlled large expanses of territory, der analysis, some local women’s groups have kept out the state, and established cohesive distanced themselves from the class-based luta communities for rural Colombians to whom to continue pursuing multidimensional strate- the dignity and material benefits of national

DISSENT / Summer 2002 ■ 45 CHE TO MARCOS citizenship have long been denied. At the same democracy and cultural diversity as overriding time, the guerrillas’ political analysis has re- principles believe that the newer, Marcos-like mained stagnant since the 1960s. Their orga- approach is a better one, more likely to suc- nization is strictly hierarchical, and in recent ceed, more gradual, more humane, more cog- years they have engaged increasingly in the kid- nizant of the multifacetedness of people’s lives. napping and murder of civilians. However, others argue that the Marcos path In a compelling contemporary example of won’t result in significant change. It focuses the Che-like position, the nonviolent Move- too much on identity and civil society and too ment of Landless Rural Workers (MST) in Bra- little on economics and mass mobilization. The zil, with squatter settlements across the coun- Che-inspired ideal of class analysis, focos, and try, constitutes the single biggest public chal- mass unity is better, stronger somehow, and lenge to the neoliberal economic vision of the necessary in the face of the forces of economic Brazilian government. The MST has created globalization. Indeed, one could imagine a shift new forms of political protest and collective back, sometime in the future, by a new gen- agriculture, and it has transformed Brazilians’ eration of activists, to the older, more Guevarist beliefs about agrarian reform and social justice. forms of political action, which might in turn This past March, in a highly symbolic act, the prove more capable of challenging forms of MST invaded the fazenda of the family of Bra- domination in effective ways. But at what zilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, democratic and cultural cost? bringing the issue of property relations to the forefront of Brazilian politics. MST leaders in- hose committed to democracy, partici- sist that their success results from their ability pation, and dissent may choose to op- to mobilize with great efficiency; centralization T pose nondemocratic movements de- and discipline are essential for combating a spite, or even because of, their potential ef- repressive rural power structure. Thus, the fectiveness—because of the internal harms MST eschews internal democracy, imposes a wrought by vanguardism in people’s daily lives single squatter and cooperative model on vastly and the immeasurably greater harms that oc- different groups of rural supporters, rejects al- cur when such non-democratic practices liances with less radical rural movements, and shape the policies of leftist regimes. An alter- for the most part marginalizes women and re- native approach is to balance support and cri- produces conventional racial hierarchies. tique of Che-like activism, pressing for more In a similar fashion, the Zapotec movement attention to internal democracy and new ap- in Mexico, COCEI, has combined pathbreak- proaches to culture. In either case, it is es- ing strategies of cultural elaboration and par- sential for those who believe in democracy to ticipation in Mexican elections with a marked identify, not cover up, the non-democratic and lack of concern for democratic practices within some cases violent practices of vanguardist in the movement. Still, these Che-inspired social movements. This requires an ongoing movements are not uniformly undemocratic. critique—and active support for forces within Rather, they contain mixtures of voice and non- and outside the movements who undertake voice, accountability and non-accountability, such critiques. It means examining the chang- and electoral and non-electoral activity—mix- ing mix of democracy and non-democracy in tures that change over time and vary from hierarchical movements and speaking for movement to movement. democratic alternatives. Which forms of activism—those inspired This is indeed what many democratic Latin by Che or by Marcos—can succeed in promot- American activists and intellectuals are doing. ing significant changes in the vast inequalities, Some offer degrees of support to vanguardist, exclusions, and miseries that characterize Latin hierarchical movements such as the MST in America? And how are people who value de- Brazil and the Zapotec COCEI in Mexico be- mocracy to respond to these possibilities? This cause these movements exist and make head- issue lies at the heart of social movement ac- way. To oppose them would limit or squelch the tivism in Latin America today. Many who value possibilities they represent. (Before the 1990s,

46 ■ DISSENT / Summer 2002 CHE TO MARCOS when the Colombian guerrillas were less in- ment that promoted a single Chicano identity volved in drug trafficking and violence against north of the border from a fluid and creative civilians and suffered from paramilitary violence musical movement to the south. Within themselves, they too fell into this category.) Oth- Mexico, too, radical political activism devel- ers support vanguardist, hierarchical movements oped separately from cultural innovation. The because they value the strength of these move- experience of the Zapatistas erased this bor- ments, with their capacities to mobilize, to act der between culture and politics. A Zapatista- with speed and efficiency, and to threaten. Such like vision for a new social movement politics movements challenge powerful elites and gov- might mean a Chicano movement that prac- ernments against great odds, and they can be ticed the hybridity of the rock and roll onda valuable components of multifaceted activism. chicana—a movement that combined broad They may make reform more likely in demo- claims about class and discrimination with cratic arenas and through Marcos-like move- frank acknowledgments of cultural diversity, ments, because of pressures they generate. and combined that with the musical innova- Practical and critical support for nondemo- tion of Afro-Reggae and the internal democ- cratic movements should not, however, eclipse racy of Participatory Budgeting. Put another the hope of the Marcos vision or the impor- way, perhaps big claims against discernible tance of directing resources, commitment, and power can coexist, even if uneasily, with prac- creativity in this direction. Much of the experi- tices of internal democracy and recognition of mentation on the Latin American left over the difference. This is the most important lesson last twenty years has been about creating new of the Mexican and Latin American path from kinds of broad-based democratic movements. Che to Marcos. • These are movements that strive to maintain the separateness of different groups, demo- Jeffrey W. Rubin is professor of history and cratically develop and articulate common goals, research associate at the Institute for the Study of and bring together diverse networks for coor- Economic Culture at Boston University. He is dinated action. currently in Brazil doing research on democracy In the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S.-Mexi- and grassroots innovation with a grant from the can border separated a militant political move- John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Democratic Socialists of America

embers of the Democratic Socialists of Send me more information about DSA. M America work in immediate struggles Enclosed are my dues! for justice—as we build a movement for long- $50 sustainer $35 regular term social change. $15 low-income/student e bring to our work a strategy for Enclosed is a contribution of $_____ to building alliances among social help DSA’s activism. movementsW and a vision of a more just and equitable society. Name Address oin DSA and become a card-carrying J member of the largest and most exciting City/State/Zip democratic socialist organization in the U.S.! Phone DSA on the World Wide Web: http://www.dsausa.org (e-mail: [email protected]) Return to DSA, 180 Varick Street, New York, NY 10014 212/727-8610

DISSENT / Summer 2002 ■ 47