Toward La Otra Comunidad: Zapatismo and Grassroots
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TOWARD LA OTRA COMUNIDAD: ZAPATISMO AND GRASSROOTS COMMUNITY FORMATION IN HUMBOLDT COUNTY, CA By Victor C. Espinosa A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Humboldt State University In Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in Social Science: Environment and Community Committee Membership J. Mark Baker, Ph.D., Committee Chair Marlon Sherman, Ph.D., Committee Member Joseph Giovannetti, Ph.D., Committee Member J. Mark Baker, Ph.D., Graduate Coordinator December, 2014 ABSTRACT TOWARD LA OTRA COMMUNIDAD: ZAPATISMO AND GRASSROOTS COMMUNITY FORMATION IN HUMBOLDT COUNTY, CA Victor C. Espinosa This thesis interrogates grassroots community formation in Humboldt County, California by examining overlapping political, cultural, and knowledge practices pursued by a local activist community. Specifically, I examine three inter-related collective projects: Acción Zapatista de Humboldt, Peoples’ Action for Rights and Community, and Día de los Muertos, as well as their related affinity projects. I expose how these projects pursued the political and cultural practice of Zapatismo as a grassroots strategy to subvert the criminalization of Humboldt’s migrant and poor constituents, to produce situated knowledge about its collective struggles through popular education, and to convene intercultural dialog through ritual celebration. I use an activist ethnographic research technique involving participation in community spaces, examining community memory though archives and interviews, and coyuntura analysis of the relations of social forces in the community’s recent history. The claiming of Zapatismo informed the production of a community identity rooted in indigenous, anti-neoliberal social struggles that move beyond the confines of formal community organizations and the non-profit industrial complex. This research enters into academic dialog surrounding the contested concept of “grassroots community,” understanding it as a collective identity formed through practiced autonomous spaces of democratic, intercultural encounter. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Primeramente dios. I wish to acknowledge my parents Victor and Laura Espinosa for their instilling in me a sense of justice and responsibility to community, as well as the patience, love, and sacrifice that it took to make my education possible. Thanks to Manuel Callahan for his political and intellectual mentorship. Thanks to the Environment and Community Program faculty and staff, especially my thesis committee members, Mark Baker, Marlon Sherman, and Joseph Giovanetti, for their support of my educational goals. Thanks to Jack Surmani and Suzanne Guerra for opening their home and believing in me when I couldn’t believe in myself. I am also grateful to the Acción Zapatista collective for showing me a politics of generosity. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... iv LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 A Note on Key Terms ..................................................................................................... 7 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................. 10 Chicano Communities ................................................................................................... 11 Beyond Multiculturalism............................................................................................... 13 Migration and Militarization ......................................................................................... 15 The Non-profit Industrial Complex............................................................................... 18 Zapatismo, Resistance, and Autonomous Community Formation ................................ 19 Community as Practiced Space ..................................................................................... 24 Community Formation as Social Movement Practice .................................................. 26 METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................................... 31 Activist Research........................................................................................................... 31 Method .......................................................................................................................... 34 ETHNOGRAPHY OF COMMUNITY FORMATION ................................................... 37 Sun Valley and the War on the Poor ............................................................................. 38 iv Humboldt Zapatistas: Resisting Locally, Engaging Polyculturally .............................. 47 Mitote......................................................................................................................... 52 Tertulia....................................................................................................................... 56 Coyuntura .................................................................................................................. 58 Death and Community Regeneration ............................................................................ 64 Teatro Rasquache ...................................................................................................... 67 Danza Azteca ............................................................................................................. 69 Claiming the Word .................................................................................................... 75 Community Assembly ............................................................................................... 75 The Politics of Hosting .............................................................................................. 77 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 79 Community as Overlapping Spaces of Knowledge, Culture, and Politics .................... 79 “Las Zapatistas no Estan Solas!” .................................................................................. 81 Full Circle ...................................................................................................................... 82 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................. 88 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Social Forces and Community Space in Humboldt County 2004-2009…..…. 62 Figure 2: Aztec Atekokoli.……………………………………………………………… 76 Figure 3: Zapatista Caracol……………………………………………………………... 77 vi 1 INTRODUCTION On May 1st 2006, in what would later be called “The ‘Si se Puede’ Insurrections,” millions of multi-ethnic communities, including ethnic Mexicans, marched in cities across the United States to protest the Sensenbrenner Bill (HR 4437), which immigration reform advocacy groups argued would criminalize undocumented migrants if signed into law.1 Locally, the nation-wide immigrants’ rights mobilizations of 2006 marked a critical moment for an emergent activist community pursuing a “politics of Zapatismo” in the cities of Arcata and Eureka, located in Humboldt County, Northern California.2 Acción Zapatista de Humboldt (AZ), a local solidarity collective inspired by the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico, and comprised of local area activists and university students of color, organized a direct action that would intervene in the local immigration reform demonstration taking place at the Humboldt Court House in the City of Eureka. In the early morning of “la gran marcha (the great march)” AZ convened at Humboldt State University in Arcata before marching south along a Highway 101 safety corridor towards the neighboring city of Eureka. Police helicopters hovered above while a multi-agency law enforcement response stood in the marchers’ path as they entered the highway. When attempts to dissuade the protestors from entering the highway failed, 1 George Caffentzis, “The ‘Si se Puede’ Insurrection: A Class Analysis,” Mute Magazine (June, 2006). Accessed online, January, 2014, at http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/si-se-puede-insurrection- class-analysis. 2 Zapatismo is the political and cultural practices associated with the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas Mexico and includes an indigenous Mayan autonomy and resisting the Mexican political class, neoliberalism, and militarization. The Zapatista movement includes the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), and autonomous Zapatista communities, bases of support, and international solidarity communities. See Manuel Callahan, “Why not Share a Dream?: Zapatismo as Political and Cultural Practice,” Humboldt Journal of Social Relations Vol. 29 (2005): 6-36. 2 officers from the Humboldt County Sheriff, California Highway Patrol, and Arcata Police Department tried to identify individual “leaders,” whom they could arrest. Later, at a second “road block,” police attempted to bargain with the protestors to give up three comrades for arrest in exchange for allowing