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Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona « Enlace Zapatista

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enlaceZapatista Palabra del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional Inicio (http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/) / Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona (http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/)

Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

Mexico.

Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona This is our simple word which seeks to touch the hearts of humble and simple people like ourselves, but people who are also, like ourselves, dignified and rebel. This is our simple word for recounting what our path has been and where we are now, in order to explain how we see the world and our country, in order to say what we are thinking of doing and how we are thinking of doing it, and in order to invite other persons to walk with us in something very great which is called Mexico and something greater which is called the world. This is our simple word in order to inform all honest and noble hearts what it is we want in Mexico and the world. This is our simple word, because it is our idea to call o n those who are like us and to join together with them, everywhere they are living and struggling.

I – What We Are We are the zapatistas of the EZLN, although we are also called “neo­zapatistas.” Now, we, the zapatistas of the EZLN, rose up in arms in January of 1994 because we saw how widespread had become the evil wrought by the powerful who o nly humiliated us, stole from us, imprisoned us and killed us, and no o ne was saying anything or doing anything. That is why we said “Ya Basta!,” that no longer were we going to allow them to make us inferior or to treat us worse than animals. And then we also said we wanted democracy, liberty and justice for all Mexicans although we were concentrated o n the Indian peoples. Because it so happened that we, the EZLN, were almost all o nly indigenous from here in Chiapas, but we did not want to struggle just for own good, or just for the good of the indigenous of Chiapas, or just for the good of the Indian peoples of Mexico. We wanted to fight along with everyone who was humble and simple like ourselves and who was in great need and who suffered from exploitation and thievery by the rich and their bad governments here, in our Mexico, and in other countries in the world.

And then our small history was that we grew tired of exploitation by the powerful, and then we organized in order to defend ourselves and to fight for justice. In the beginning there were not many of us, just a few, going this way and that, talking with and listening to other people like us. We did that for many years, and we did it in secret, without making a stir. In other words, we joined forces in silence. We remained like that for about 10 years, and then we had grown, and then we were many thousands. We trained ourselves quite well in politics and weapons, and, suddenly, when the rich were throwing their New Year’s Eve parties, we fell upon their cities and just took them over. And we left a message to everyone that here we are, that they have to take notice of us. And then the rich took off and sent their great armies to do away with us, just like they always do when the exploited rebel – they order them all to be done away with. But we were not done away with at all, because we had prepared ourselves quite well prior to the war, and we made ourselves strong in our mountains. And there were the armies, looking for us and throwing their bombs and bullets at us, and then they were making plans to kill off all the indigenous at o ne time, because they did not know who was a zapatista and who was not. And we were running and http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/

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fighting, fighting and running, just like our ancestors had done. Without giving up, without surrendering, without being defeated.

And then the people from the cities went out into the streets and began shouting for an end to the war. And then we stopped our war, and we listened to those brothers and sisters from the city who were telling us to try to reach an arrangement or an accord with the bad governments, so that the problem could be resolved without a massacre. And so we paid attention to them, because they were what we call “the people,” or the Mexican people. And so we set aside the fire and took up the word.

And it so happened that the governments said they would indeed be well­behaved, and they would engage in dialogue, and they would make accords, and they would fulfill them. And we said that was good, but we also thought it was good that we knew those people who went out into the streets in order to stop the war. Then, while we were engaging in dialogue with the bad governments, we were also talking with those persons, and we saw that most of them were humble and simple people like us, and both, they and we, understood quite well why we were fighting. And we called those people “civil society” because most of them did not belong to political parties, rather they were common, everyday people, like us, simple and humble people.

But it so happened that the bad governments did not want a good agreement, rather it was just their underhanded way of saying they were going to talk and to reach accords, while they were preparing their attacks in order to eliminate us o nce and for all. And so then they attacked us several times, but they did not defeat us, because we resisted quite well, and many people throughout the world mobilized. And then the bad governments thought that the problem was that many people saw what was happening with the EZLN, and they started their plan of acting as if nothing were going o n. Meanwhile they were quick to surround us, they laid siege to us in hopes that, since our mountains are indeed remote, the people would then forget, since zapatista lands were so far away. And every so often the bad governments tested us and tried to deceive us or to attack us, like in February of 1995 when they threw a huge number of armies at us, but they did not defeat us. Because, as they said then, we were not alone, and many people helped us, and we resisted well.

And then the bad governments had to make accords with the EZLN, and those accords were called the “San Andrés Accords” because the municipality where those accords were signed was called “San Andrés.” And we were not all alone in those dialogues, speaking with people from the bad governments. We invited many people and organizations who were, or are, engaged in the struggle for the Indian peoples of Mexico, and everyone spoke their word, and everyone reached agreement as to how we were going to speak with the bad governments. And that is how that dialogue was, not just the zapatistas o n o ne side and the governments o n the other. Instead, the Indian peoples of Mexico, and those who supported them, were with the zapatistas. And then the bad governments said in those accords that they were indeed going to recognize the rights of the Indian peoples of Mexico, and they were going to respect their culture, and they were going to make everything law in the Constitution. But then, o nce they had signed, the bad governments acted as if they had forgotten about them, and many years passed, and the accords were not fulfilled at all. Quite the opposite, the government attacked the indigenous, in order to make them back out of the struggle, as they did o n December 22, 1997, the date o n which Zedillo ordered the killing of 45 men, women, old o nes and children in the town in Chiapas called ACTEAL. This immense crime was not so easily forgotten, and it was a demonstration of how the bad governments color their hearts in order to attack and assassinate those who rebel against injustices. And, while all of that was going o n, we zapatistas were putting our all into the fulfillment of the accords and resisting in the mountains of the Mexican southeast.

And then we began speaking with other Indian peoples of Mexico and their organizations, and we made an agreement with them that we were going to struggle together for the same thing, for the recognition of indigenous rights and culture. Now we were also being helped by many people from all over the world and by persons who were well respected and whose word was quite great because they were great intellectuals, artists and scientists from Mexico and from all over the world. And we also held international encuentros. In other words, we joined together to talk with persons from America and from Asia and from Europe and from Africa and from Oceania, and we learned of their struggles and their ways, and we said they were “intergalactic” encuentros, just to be silly and because we had also invited those from other planets, but it appeared as if they had not come, or perhaps they did come, but they did not make it clear.

But the bad governments did not keep their word anyway, and then we made a plan to talk with many Mexicans so they http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/

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would help us. And then, first in 1997, we held a march to Mexico City which was called “of the 1,111″ because a compañero or compañera was going to go from each zapatista town, but the bad government did not pay any attention. And then, in 1999, we held a consulta throughout the country, and there it was seen that the majority were indeed in agreement with the demands of the Indian peoples, but again the bad governments did not pay any attention. And then, lastly, in 2001, we held what was called the “march for indigenous dignity” which had much support from millions of Mexicans and people from other countries, and it went to where the deputies and senators were, the Congress of the Union, in order to demand the recognition of the Mexican indigenous.

But it happened that no, the politicians from the PRI, the PAN and the PRD reached an agreement among themselves, and they simply did not recognize indigenous rights and culture. That was in April of 2001, and the politicians demonstrated quite clearly there that they had no decency whatsoever, and they were swine who thought o nly about making their good money as the bad politicians they were. This must be remembered, because you will now be seeing that they are going to say they will indeed recognize indigenous rights, but it is a lie they are telling so we will vote for them. But they already had their chance, and they did not keep their word.

And then we saw quite clearly that there was no point to dialogue and negotiation with the bad governments of Mexico. That it was a waste of time for us to be talking with the politicians, because neither their hearts nor their words were honest.

They were crooked, and they told lies that they would keep their word, but they did not. In other words, o n that day, when the politicians from the PRI, PAN and PRD approved a law that was no good, they killed dialogue o nce and for all, and they clearly stated that it did not matter what they had agreed to and signed, because they did not keep their word. And then we did not make any contacts with the federal branches. Because we understood that dialogue and negotiation had failed as a result of those political parties. We saw that blood did not matter to them, nor did death, suffering, mobilizations, consultas, efforts, national and international statements, encuentros, accords, signatures, commitments. And so the political class not o nly closed, o ne more time, the door to the Indian peoples, they also delivered a mortal blow to the peaceful resolution – through dialogue and negotiation – of the war. It can also no longer be believed that the accords will be fulfilled by someone who comes along with something or other. They should see that there so that they can learn from experience what happened to us.

And then we saw all of that, and we wondered in our hearts what we were going to do.

And the first thing we saw was that our heart was not the same as before, when we began our struggle. It was larger, because now we had touched the hearts of many good people. And we also saw that our heart was more hurt, it was more wounded. And it was not wounded by the deceits of the bad governments, but because, when we touched the hearts of others, we also touched their sorrows. It was as if we were seeing ourselves in a mirror.

II. – Where We Are Now Then, like the zapatistas we are, we thought that it was not enough to stop engaging in dialogue with the government, but it was necessary to continue o n ahead in the struggle, in spite of those lazy parasites of politicians. The EZLN then decided to carry out, alone and o n their side (“unilateral”, in other words, because just o ne side), the San Andrés Accords regarding indigenous rights and culture. For 4 years, since the middle of 2001 until the middle of 2005, we have devoted ourselves to this and to other things which we are going to tell you about.

Fine, we then began encouraging the autonomous rebel zapatista municipalities – which is how the peoples are organized in order to govern and to govern themselves – in order to make themselves stronger. This method of autonomous government was not simply invented by the EZLN, but rather it comes from several centuries of indigenous resistance and from the zapatistas’ own experience. It is the self­governance of the communities. In other words, no o ne from outside comes to govern, but the peoples themselves decide, among themselves, who governs and how, and, if they do not obey, they are removed. If the o ne who governs does not obey the people, they pursue them, they are removed from authority, and another comes in.

But then we saw that the Autonomous Municipalities were not level. There were some that were more advanced and which had more support from civil society, and others were more neglected. The organization was lacking to make them more o n a http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/

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par with each other. And we also saw that the EZLN, with its political­military component, was involving itself in decisions which belonged to the democratic authorities, “civilians” as they say. And here the problem is that the political­military component of the EZLN is not democratic, because it is an army. And we saw that the military being above, and the democratic below, was not good, because what is democratic should not be decided militarily, it should be the reverse: the democratic­political governing above, and the military obeying below. Or, perhaps, it would be better with nothing below, just completely level, without any military, and that is why the zapatistas are soldiers so that there will not be any soldiers. Fine, what we then did about this problem was to begin separating the political­military from the autonomous and democratic aspects of organization in the zapatista communities. And so, actions and decisions which had previously been made and taken by the EZLN were being passed, little by little, to the democratically elected authorities in the villages. It is easy to say, of course, but it was very difficult in practice, because many years have passed – first in the preparation for the war and then the war itself – and the political­military aspects have become customary. But, regardless, we did so because it is our way to do what we say, because, if not, why should we go around saying things if we do not then do them.

That was how the Good Government Juntas were born, in August of 2003, and, through them, self­learning and the exercise of “govern obeying” has continued. >From that time and until the middle of 2005, the EZLN leadership has no longer involved itself in giving orders in civil matters, but it has accompanied and helped the authorities who are democratically elected by the peoples. It has also kept watch that the peoples and national and international civil society are kept well informed concerning the aid that is received and how it is used. And now we are passing the work of safeguarding good government to the zapatista support bases, with temporary positions which are rotated, so that everyone learns and carries out this work. Because we believe that a people which does not watch over its leaders is condemned to be enslaved, and we fought to be free, not to change masters every six years.

The EZLN, during these 4 years, also handed over to the Good Government Juntas and the Autonomous Municipalities the aid and contacts which they had attained throughout Mexico and the world during these years of war and resistance. The EZLN had also, during that time, been building economic and political support which allowed the zapatista communities to make progress with fewer difficulties in the building of their autonomy and in improving their living conditions. It is not much, but it is far better than what they had prior to the beginning of the uprising in January of 1994. If you look at o ne of those studies the governments make, you will see that the o nly indigenous communities which have improved their living conditions – whether in health, education, food or housing – were those which are in zapatista territory, which is what we call where our villages are. And all of that has been possible because of the progress made by the zapatista villages and because of the very large support which has been received from good and noble persons, whom we call “civil societies,” and from their organizations throughout the world. As if all of these people have made “another world is possible” a reality, but through actions, not just words.

And the villages have made good progress. Now there are more compañeros and compañeras who are learning to govern.

And – even though little by little – there are more women going into this work, but there is still a lack of respect for the compañeras, and they need to participate more in the work of the struggle. And, also through the Good Government Juntas, coordination has been improved between the Autonomous Municipalities and the resolution of problems with other organizations and with the official authorities. There has also been much improvement in the projects in the communities, and the distribution of projects and aid given by civil society from all over the world has become more level. Health and education have improved, although there is still a good deal lacking for it to be what it should be. The same is true for housing and food, and in some areas there has been much improvement with the problem of land, because the lands recovered from the finqueros are being distributed. But there are areas which continue to suffer from a lack of lands to cultivate. And there has been great improvement in the support from national and international civil society, because previously everyone went wherever they wanted, and now the Good Government Juntas are directing them to where the greatest need exists. And, similarly, everywhere there are more compañeros and compañeras who are learning to relate to persons from other parts of Mexico and of the world,. They are learning to respect and to demand respect. They are learning that there are many worlds, and that everyone has their place, their time and their way, and therefore there must be mutual respect between everyone.

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We, the zapatistas of the EZLN, have devoted this time to our primary force, to the peoples who support us. And the situation has indeed improved some. No o ne can say that the zapatista organization and struggle has been without point, but rather, even if they were to do away with us completely, our struggle has indeed been of some use.

But it is not just the zapatista villages which have grown – the EZLN has also grown. Because what has happened during this time is that new generations have renewed our entire organization. They have added new strength. The comandantes and comandantas who were in their maturity at the beginning of the uprising in 1994 now have the wisdom they gained in the war and in the 12 years of dialogue with thousands of men and women from throughout the world. The members of the CCRI, the zapatista political­organizational leadership, is now counseling and directing the new o nes who are entering our struggle, as well as those who are holding leadership positions. For some time now the “committees” (which is what we call them) have been preparing an entire new generation of comandantes and comandantas who, following a period of instruction and testing, are beginning to learn the work of organizational leadership and to discharge their duties. And it also so happens that our insurgents, insurgentas, militants, local and regional responsables, as well as support bases, who were youngsters at the beginning of the uprising, are now mature men and women, combat veterans and natural leaders in their units and communities. And those who were children in that January of ‘94 are now young people who have grown up in the resistance, and they have been trained in the rebel dignity lifted up by their elders throughout these 12 years of war. These young people have a political, technical and cultural training that we who began the zapatista movement did not have. This youth is now, more and more, sustaining our troops as well as leadership positions in the organization. And, indeed, all of us have seen the deceits by the Mexican political class and the destruction which their actions have caused in our patria. And we have seen the great injustices and massacres that neoliberal globalization causes throughout the world. But we will speak to you of that later.

And so the EZLN has resisted 12 years of war, of military, political, ideological and economic attacks, of siege, of harassment, of persecution, and they have not vanquished us. We have not sold out nor surrendered, and we have made progress. More compañeros from many places have entered into the struggle so that, instead of making us weaker after so many years, we have become stronger. Of course there are problems which can be resolved by more separation of the political­military from the civil­democratic. But there are things, the most important o nes, such as our demands for which we struggle, which have not been fully achieved.

To our way of thinking, and what we see in our heart, we have reached a point where we cannot go any further, and, in addition, it is possible that we could lose everything we have if we remain as we are and do nothing more in order to move forward. The hour has come to take a risk o nce again and to take a step which is dangerous but which is worthwhile.

Because, perhaps united with other social sectors who suffer from the same wants as we do, it will be possible to achieve what we need and what we deserve. A new step forward in the indigenous struggle is o nly possible if the indigenous join together with workers, campesinos, students, teachers, employees…the workers of the city and the countryside.

(To be continued…)

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee – General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

Mexico, in the sixth month of the year 2005.

Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

Mexico.

(Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona) III – How We See the World Now we are going to explain to you how we, the zapatistas, see what is going o n in the world. We see that capitalism is the strongest right now. Capitalism is a social system, a way in which a society goes about organizing things and people, and who has and who has not, and who gives orders and who obeys. In capitalism, there are some people who have money, or http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/

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capital, and factories and stores and fields and many things, and there are others who have nothing but their strength and knowledge in order to work. In capitalism, those who have money and things give the orders, and those who o nly have their ability to work obey.

Then capitalism means that there a few who have great wealth, but they did not win a prize, or find a treasure, or inherited from a parent. They obtained that wealth, rather, by exploiting the work of the many. So capitalism is based o n the exploitation of the workers, which means they exploit the workers and take out all the profits they can. This is done unjustly, because they do not pay the worker what his work is worth. Instead they give him a salary that barely allows him to eat a little and to rest for a bit, and the next day he goes back to work in exploitation, whether in the countryside or in the city.

And capitalism also makes its wealth from plunder, or theft, because they take what they want from others, land, for example, and natural resources. So capitalism is a system where the robbers are free and they are admired and used as examples.

And, in addition to exploiting and plundering, capitalism represses because it imprisons and kills those who rebel against injustice.

Capitalism is most interested in merchandise, because when it is bought or sold, profits are made. And then capitalism turns everything into merchandise, it makes merchandise of people, of nature, of culture, of history, of conscience. According to capitalism, everything must be able to be bought and sold. And it hides everything behind the merchandise, so we don’t see the exploitation that exists. And then the merchandise is bought and sold in a market. And the market, in addition to being used for buying and selling, is also used to hide the exploitation of the workers. In the market, for example, we see coffee in its little package or its pretty little jar, but we do not see the campesino who suffered in order to harvest the coffee, and we do not see the coyote who paid him so cheaply for his work, and we do not see the workers in the large company working their hearts out to package the coffee. Or we see an appliance for listening to music like cumbias, rancheras or corridos, or whatever, and we see that it is very good because it has a good sound, but we do not see the worker in the maquiladora who struggled for many hours, putting the cables and the parts of the appliance together, and they barely paid her a pittance of money, and she lives far away from work and spends a lot o n the trip, and, in addition, she runs the risk of being kidnapped, raped and killed as happens in Ciudad Juárez in Mexico.

So we see merchandise in the market, but we do not see the exploitation with which it was made. And then capitalism needs many markets…or a very large market, a world market.

And so the capitalism of today is not the same as before, when the rich were content with exploiting the workers in their own countries, but now they are o n a path which is called Neoliberal Globalization. This globalization means that they no longer control the workers in o ne or several countries, but the capitalists are trying to dominate everything all over the world.

And the world, or Planet Earth, is also called the “globe”, and that is why they say “globalization,” or the entire world.

And neoliberalism is the idea that capitalism is free to dominate the entire world, and so tough, you have to resign yourself and conform and not make a fuss, in other words, not rebel. So neoliberalism is like the theory, the plan, of capitalist globalization. And neoliberalism has its economic, political, military and cultural plans. All of those plans have to do with dominating everyone, and they repress or separate anyone who doesn’t obey so that his rebellious ideas aren’t passed o n to others.

Then, in neoliberal globalization, the great capitalists who live in the countries which are powerful, like the United States, want the entire world to be made into a big business where merchandise is produced like a great market. A world market for buying and selling the entire world and for hiding all the exploitation from the world. Then the global capitalists insert themselves everywhere, in all the countries, in order to do their big business, their great exploitation. Then they respect nothing, and they meddle wherever they wish. As if they were conquering other countries. That is why we zapatistas say that neoliberal globalization is a war of conquest of the entire world, a world war, a war being waged by capitalism for global domination. Sometimes that conquest is by armies who invade a country and conquer it by force. But sometimes it is with the economy, in other words, the big capitalists put their money into another country or they lend it money, but o n the condition that they obey what they tell them to do. And they also insert their ideas, with the capitalist culture which is the http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/

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culture of merchandise, of profits, of the market.

Then the o ne which wages the conquest, capitalism, does as it wants, it destroys and changes what it does not like and eliminates what gets in its way. For example, those who do not produce nor buy nor sell modern merchandise get in their way, or those who rebel against that order. And they despise those who are of no use to them. That is why the indigenous get in the way of neoliberal capitalism, and that is why they despise them and want to eliminate them. And neoliberal capitalism also gets rid of the laws which do not allow them to exploit and to have a lot of profit. They demand that everything can be bought and sold, and, since capitalism has all the money, it buys everything. Capitalism destroys the countries it conquers with neoliberal globalization, but it also wants to adapt everything, to make it over again, but in its own way, a way which benefits capitalism and which doesn’t allow anything to get in its way. Then neoliberal globalization, capitalism, destroys what exists in these countries, it destroys their culture, their language, their economic system, their political system, and it also destroys the ways in which those who live in that country relate to each other. So everything that makes a country a country is left destroyed.

Then neoliberal globalization wants to destroy the nations of the world so that o nly o ne Nation or country remains, the country of money, of capital. And capitalism wants everything to be as it wants, in its own way, and it doesn’t like what is different, and it persecutes it and attacks it, or puts it off in a corner and acts as if it doesn’t exist.

Then, in short, the capitalism of global neoliberalism is based o n exploitation, plunder, contempt and repression of those who refuse. The same as before, but now globalized, worldwide.

But it is not so easy for neoliberal globalization, because the exploited of each country become discontented, and they will not say well, too bad, instead they rebel. And those who remain and who are in the way resist, and they don’t allow themselves to be eliminated. And that is why we see, all over the world, those who are being screwed over making resistances, not putting up with it, in other words, they rebel, and not just in o ne country but wherever they abound. And so, as there is a neoliberal globalization, there is a globalization of rebellion.

And it is not just the workers of the countryside and of the city who appear in this globalization of rebellion, but others also appear who are much persecuted and despised for the same reason, for not letting themselves be dominated, like women, young people, the indigenous, homosexuals, lesbians, transsexual persons, migrants and many other groups who exist all over the world but who we do not see until they shout ya basta of being despised, and they raise up, and then we see them, we hear them, and we learn from them.

And then we see that all those groups of people are fighting against neoliberalism, against the capitalist globalization plan, and they are struggling for humanity.

And we are astonished when we see the stupidity of the neoliberals who want to destroy all humanity with their wars and exploitations, but it also makes us quite happy to see resistances and rebellions appearing everywhere, such as ours, which is a bit small, but here we are. And we see this all over the world, and now our heart learns that we are not alone.

1V – How We See Our Country Which is Mexico Now we will talk to you about how we see what is going o n in our Mexico. What we see is our country being governed by neoliberals. So, as we already explained, our leaders are destroying our nation, our Mexican Patria. And the work of these bad leaders is not to look after the well­being of the people, instead they are o nly concerned with the well­being of the capitalists. For example, they make laws like the Free Trade Agreement, which end up leaving many Mexicans destitute, like campesinos and small producers, because they are “gobbled up” by the big agro­industrial companies. As well as workers and small businesspeople, because they cannot compete with the large transnationals who come in without anybody saying anything to them and even thanking them, and they set their low salaries and their high prices. So some of the economic foundations of our Mexico, which were the countryside and industry and national commerce, are being quite destroyed, and just a bit of rubble – which they are certainly going to sell off – remains.

And these are great disgraces for our Patria. Because food is no longer being produced in our countryside, just what the big capitalists sell, and the good lands are being stolen through trickery and with the help of the politicians. What is happening in http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/

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the countryside is the same as Porfirismo, but, instead of hacendados, now there are a few foreign businesses which have well and truly screwed the campesino. And, where before there were credits and price protections, now there is just charity…and sometimes not even that.

As for the worker in the city, the factories close, and they are left without work, or they open what are called maquiladoras, which are foreign and which pay a pittance for many hours of work. And then the price of the goods the people need doesn’t matter, whether they are expensive or cheap, since there is no money. And if someone was working in a small or midsize business, now they are not, because it was closed, and it was bought by a big transnational. And if someone had a small business, it disappeared as well, or they went to work clandestinely for big businesses which exploit them terribly, and which even put boys and girls to work. And if the worker belonged to his union in order to demand his legal rights, then no, now the same union tells him he will have to put up with his salary being lowered or his hours or his benefits being taken away, because, if not, the business will close and move to another country. And then there is the “microchangarro,” which is the government’s economic program for putting all the city’s workers o n street corners selling gum or telephone cards. In other words, absolute economic destruction in the cities as well.

And then what happens is that, with the people’s economy being totally screwed in the countryside as well as in the city, then many Mexican men and women have to leave their Patria, Mexican lands, and go to seek work in another country, the United States. And they do not treat them well there, instead they exploit them, persecute them and treat them with contempt and even kill them. Under neoliberalism which is being imposed by the bad governments, the economy has not improved. Quite the opposite, the countryside is in great need, and there is no work in the cities. What is happening is that Mexico is being turned into a place where people are working for the wealth of foreigners, mostly rich gringos, a place you are just born into for a little while, and in another little while you die. That is why we say that Mexico is dominated by the United States.

Now, it is not just that. Neoliberalism has also changed the Mexican political class, the politicians, because they made them into something like employees in a store, who have to do everything possible to sell everything and to sell it very cheap. You have already seen that they changed the laws in order to remove Article 27 from the Constitution so that ejidal and communal lands could be sold. That was Salinas de Gortari, and he and his gangs said that it was for the good of the countryside and the campesino, and that was how they would prosper and live better. Has it been like that? The Mexican countryside is worse than ever and the campesinos more screwed than under Porfirio Diaz. And they also say they are going to privatize – sell to foreigners – the companies held by the State to help the well­being of the people. Because the companies don’t work well and they need to be modernized, and it would be better to sell them. But, instead of improving, the social rights which were won in the revolution of 1910 now make o ne sad…and courageous. And they also said that the borders must be opened so all the foreign capital can enter, that way all the Mexican businesses will be fixed, and things will be made better. But now we see that there are not any national businesses, the foreigners gobbled them all up, and the things that are sold are worse than the those that were made in Mexico.

And now the Mexican politicians also want to sell PEMEX, the oil which belongs to all Mexicans, and the o nly difference is that some say everything should be sold and others that o nly a part of it should be sold. And they also want to privatize social security, and electricity and water and the forests and everything, until nothing of Mexico is left, and our country will be a wasteland or a place of entertainment for rich people from all over the world, and we Mexican men and women will be their servants, dependent o n what they offer, bad housing, without roots, without culture, without even a Patria.

So the neoliberals want to kill Mexico, our Mexican Patria. And the political parties not o nly do not defend it, they are the first to put themselves at the service of foreigners, especially those from the United States, and they are the o nes who are in charge of deceiving us, making us look the other way while everything is sold, and they are left with the money. All the political parties that exist right now, not just some of them. Think about whether anything has been done well, and you will see that no, nothing but theft and scams. And look how all the politicians always have their nice houses and their nice cars and luxuries. And they still want us to thank them and to vote for them again. And it is obvious, as they say, that they are without shame. And they are without it because they do not, in fact, have a Patria, they o nly have bank accounts.

And we also see that drug trafficking and crime has been increasing a lot. And sometimes we think that criminals are like they show them in the songs or movies, and maybe some are like that, but not the real chiefs. The real chiefs go around http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/

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very well dressed, they study outside the country, they are elegant, they do not go around in hiding, they eat in good restaurants and they appear in the papers, very pretty and well dressed at their parties. They are, as they say, “good people”, and some are even officials, deputies, senators, secretaries of state, prosperous businessmen, police chiefs, generals.

Are we saying that politics serves no purpose? No, what we mean is that THAT politics serves no purpose. And it is useless because it does not take the people into account. It does not listen to them, it does not pay any attention to them, it just approaches them when there are elections. And they do not even want votes anymore, the polls are enough to say who wins. And then just promises about what this o ne is going to do and what the other o ne is going to do, then it’s bye, I’ll see you, but you don’t see them again, except when they appear in the news when they’ve just stolen a lot of money and nothing is going to be done to them because the law – which those same politicians made – protects them.

Because that’s another problem, the Constitution is all warped and changed now. It’s no longer the o ne that had the rights and liberties of working people. Now there are the rights and liberties of the neoliberals so they can have their huge profits.

And the judges exist to serve those neoliberals, because they always rule in favor of them, and those who are not rich get injustice, jails and cemeteries.

Well, even with all this mess the neoliberals are making, there are Mexican men and women who are organizing and making a resistance struggle.

And so we found out that there are indigenous, that their lands are far away from us here in Chiapas, and they are making their autonomy and defending their culture and caring for their land, forests and water.

And there are workers in the countryside, campesinos, who are organizing and holding their marches and mobilizations in order to demand credits and aid for the countryside.

And there are workers in the city who do not let their rights be taken away or their jobs privatized. They protest and demonstrate so the little they have isn’t taken away from them and so they don’t take away from the country what is, in fact, its own, like electricity, oil, social security, education.

And there are students who don’t let education be privatized and who are fighting for it to be free and popular and scientific, so they don’t charge, so everyone can learn, and so they don’t teach stupid things in schools.

And there are women who do not let themselves be treated as an ornament or be humiliated and despised just for being women, but who are organizing and fighting for the respect they deserve as the women they are.

And there are young people who don’t accept their stultifying them with drugs or persecuting them for their way of being, but who make themselves aware with their music and their culture, their rebellion.

And there are homosexuals, lesbians, transsexuals and many ways who do not put up with being ridiculed, despised, mistreated and even killed for having another way which is different, with being treated like they are abnormal or criminals, but who make their own organizations in order to defend their right to be different.

And there are priests and nuns and those they call laypeople who are not with the rich and who are not resigned, but who are organizing to accompany the struggles of the people.

And there are those who are called social activists, who are men and women who have been fighting all their lives for exploited people, and they are the same o nes who participated in the great strikes and workers’ actions, in the great citizens’ mobilizations, in the great campesino movements, and who suffer great repression, and who, even though some are old now, continue o n without surrendering, and they go everywhere, looking for the struggle, seeking justice, and making leftist organizations, non­governmental organizations, human rights organizations, organizations in defense of political prisoners and for the disappeared, leftist publications, organizations of teachers or students, social struggle, and even political­military organizations, and they are just not quiet and they know a lot because they have seen a lot and lived and struggled. http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/

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And so we see in general that in our country, which is called Mexico, there are many people who do not put up with things, who do not surrender, who do not sell out. Who are dignified. And that makes us very pleased and happy, because with all those people it’s not going to be so easy for the neoliberals to win, and perhaps it will be possible to save our Patria from the great thefts and destruction they are doing. And we think that perhaps our “we” will include all those rebellions…

(To be continued…)

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee – General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation Mexico, in the sixth month of the year 2005.

Zapatista Army of National Liberation Mexico.

(Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona) V – What We Want To Do We are now going to tell you what we want to do in the world and in Mexico, because we cannot watch everything that is happening o n our planet and just remain quiet, as if it were o nly we were where we are.

What we want in the world is to tell all of those who are resisting and fighting in their own ways and in their own countries, that you are not alone, that we, the zapatistas, even though we are very small, are supporting you, and we are going to look at how to help you in your struggles and to speak to you in order to learn, because what we have, in fact, learned is to learn.

And we want to tell the Latin American peoples that we are proud to be a part of you, even if it is a small part. We remember quite well how the continent was also illuminated some years ago, and a light was called Che Guevara, as it had previously been called Bolivar, because sometimes the people take up a name in order to say they are taking up a flag.

And we want to tell the people of Cuba, who have now been o n their path of resistance for many years, that you are not alone, and we do not agree with the blockade they are imposing, and we are going to see how to send you something, even if it is maize, for your resistance. And we want to tell the North American people that we know that the bad governments which you have and which spread harm throughout the world is o ne thing – and those North Americans who struggle in their country, and who are in solidarity with the struggles of other countries, are a very different thing. And we want to tell the Mapuche brothers and sisters in Chile that we are watching and learning from your struggles. And to the Venezuelans, we see how well you are defending your sovereignty, your nation’s right to decide where it is going. And to the indigenous brothers and sisters of Ecuador and Bolivia, we say you are giving a good lesson in history to all of Latin America, because now you are indeed putting a halt to neoliberal globalization. And to the piqueteros and to the young people of Argentina, we want to tell you that, that we love you. And to those in Uruguay who want a better country, we admire you. And to those who are sin tierra in Brazil, that we respect you. And to all the young people of Latin America, that what you are doing is good, and you give us great hope.

And we want to tell the brothers and sisters of Social Europe, that which is dignified and rebel, that you are not alone. That your great movements against the neoliberal wars bring us joy. That we are attentively watching your forms of organization and your methods of struggle so that we can perhaps learn something. That we are considering how we can help you in your struggles, and we are not going to send euro because then they will be devalued because of the European Union mess. But perhaps we will send you crafts and coffee so you can market them and help you some in the tasks of your struggle. And perhaps we might also send you some pozol, which gives much strength in the resistance, but who knows if we will send it to you, because pozol is more our way, and what if it were to hurt your bellies and weaken your struggles and the neoliberals defeat you.

And we want to tell the brothers and sisters of Africa, Asia and Oceania that we know that you are fighting also, and we http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/

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want to learn more of your ideas and practices.

And we want to tell the world that we want to make you large, so large that all those worlds will fit, those worlds which are resisting because they want to destroy the neoliberals and because they simply cannot stop fighting for humanity.

Now then, what we want to do in Mexico is to make an agreement with persons and organizations just of the left, because we believe that it is in the political left where the idea of resisting neoliberal globalization is, and of making a country where there will be justice, democracy and liberty for everyone. Not as it is right now, where there is justice o nly for the rich, there is liberty o nly for their big businesses, and there is democracy o nly for painting walls with election propaganda. And because we believe that it is o nly from the left that a plan of struggle can emerge, so that our Patria, which is Mexico, does not die.

And, then, what we think is that, with these persons and organizations of the left, we will make a plan for going to all those parts of Mexico where there are humble and simple people like ourselves.

And we are not going to tell them what they should do or give them orders.

Nor are we going to ask them to vote for a candidate, since we already know that the o nes who exist are neoliberals.

Nor are we going to tell them to be like us, nor to rise up in arms.

What we are going to do is to ask them what their lives are like, their struggle, their thoughts about our country and what we should do so they do not defeat us.

What we are going to do is to take heed of the thoughts of the simple and humble people, and perhaps we will find there the same love which we feel for our Patria.

And perhaps we will find agreement between those of us who are simple and humble and, together, we will organize all over the country and reach agreement in our struggles, which are alone right now, separated from each other, and we will find something like a program that has what we all want, and a plan for how we are going to achieve the realization of that program, which is called the “national program of struggle.”

And, with the agreement of the majority of those people whom we are going to listen to, we will then engage in a struggle with everyone, with indigenous, workers, campesinos, students, teachers, employees, women, children, old o nes, men, and with all of those of good heart and who want to struggle so that our Patria called Mexico does not end up being destroyed and sold, and which still exists between the Rio Grande and the Rio Suchiate and which has the Pacific Ocean o n o ne side and the Atlantic o n the other.

VI – How We Are Going To Do It And so this is our simple word that goes out to the humble and simple people of Mexico and of the world, and we are calling our word of today: Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona And we are here to say, with our simple word, that…

The EZLN maintains its commitment to an offensive ceasefire, and it will not make any attack against government forces or any offensive military movements.

The EZLN still maintains its commitment to insisting o n the path of political struggle through this peaceful initiative which we are now undertaking. The EZLN continues, therefore, in its resolve to not establish any kind of secret relations with either national political­military organizations or those from other countries.

The EZLN reaffirms its commitment to defend, support and obey the zapatista indigenous communities of which it is composed, and which are its supreme command, and – without interfering in their internal democratic processes – will, to the best of its abilities, contribute to the strengthening of their autonomy, good government and improvement in their living http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/

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conditions. In other words, what we are going to do in Mexico and in the world, we are going to do without arms, with a civil and peaceful movement, and without neglecting nor ceasing to support our communities.

Therefore…

In the World…

1 – We will forge new relationships of mutual respect and support with persons and organizations who are resisting and struggling against neoliberalism and for humanity.

2 – As far as we are able, we will send material aid such as food and handicrafts for those brothers and sisters who are struggling all over the world.

In order to begin, we are going to ask the Good Government Junta of La Realidad to loan their truck, which is called “Chompiras,” and which appears to hold 8 tons, and we are going to fill it with maize and perhaps two 200 liter cans with oil or petrol, as they prefer, and we are going to deliver it to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico for them to send to the Cuban people as aid from the zapatistas for their resistance against the North American blockade. Or perhaps there might be a place closer to here where it could be delivered, because it’s always such a long distance to Mexico City, and what if “Chompiras” were to break down and we’d end up in bad shape. And that will happen when the harvest comes in, which is turning green right now in the fields, and if they don’t attack us, because if we were to send it during these next few months, it would be nothing but corncobs, and they don’t turn out well even in tamales, better in November or December, it depends.

And we are also going to make an agreement with the women’s crafts cooperatives in order to send a good number of bordados, embroidered pieces, to the Europes which are perhaps not yet Union, and perhaps we’ll also send some organic coffee from the zapatista cooperatives, so that they can sell it and get a little money for their struggle. And, if it isn’t sold, then they can always have a little cup of coffee and talk about the anti­neoliberal struggle, and if it’s a bit cold then they can cover themselves up with the zapatista bordados, which do indeed resist quite well being laundered by hand and by rocks, and, besides, they don’t run in the wash.

And we are also going to send the indigenous brothers and sisters of Bolivia and Ecuador some non­transgenic maize, and we just don’t know where to send them so they arrive complete, but we are indeed willing to give this little bit of aid.

3 – And to all of those who are resisting throughout the world, we say there must be other intercontinental encuentros held, even if just o ne other. Perhaps December of this year or next January, we’ll have to think about it. We don’t want to say just when, because this is about our agreeing equally o n everything, o n where, o n when, o n how, o n who. But not with a stage where just a few speak and all the rest listen, but without a stage, just level and everyone speaking, but orderly, otherwise it will just be a hubbub and the words won’t be understood, and with good organization everyone will hear and jot down in their notebooks the words of resistance from others, so then everyone can go and talk with their compañeros and compañeras in their worlds. And we think it might be in a place that has a very large jail, because what if they were to repress us and incarcerate us, and so that way we wouldn’t be all piled up, prisoners, yes, but well organized, and there in the jail we could continue the intercontinental encuentros for humanity and against neoliberalism. Later o n we’ll tell you what we shall do in order to reach agreement as to how we’re going to come to agreement. Now that is how we’re thinking of doing what we want to do in the world. Now follows…

In Mexico…

1 – We are going to continue fighting for the Indian peoples of Mexico, but now not just for them and not with o nly them, but for all the exploited and dispossessed of Mexico, with all of them and all over the country. And when we say all the exploited of Mexico, we are also talking about the brothers and sisters who have had to go to the United States in search of work in order to survive.

2 – We are going to go to listen to, and talk directly with, without intermediaries or mediation, the simple and humble of the Mexican people, and, according to what we hear and learn, we are going to go about building, along with those people who, like us, are humble and simple, a national program of struggle, but a program which will be clearly of the left, or anti­ http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/

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capitalist, or anti­neoliberal, or for justice, democracy and liberty for the Mexican people.

3 – We are going to try to build, or rebuild, another way of doing politics, o ne which o nce again has the spirit of serving others, without material interests, with sacrifice, with dedication, with honesty, which keeps its word, whose o nly payment is the satisfaction of duty performed, or like the militants of the left did before, when they were not stopped by blows, jail or death, let alone by dollar bills.

4 – We are also going to go about raising a struggle in order to demand that we make a new Constitution, new laws which take into account the demands of the Mexican people, which are: housing, land, work, food, health, education, information, culture, independence, democracy, justice, liberty and peace. A new Constitution which recognizes the rights and liberties of the people, and which defends the weak in the face of the powerful.

TO THESE ENDS… The EZLN will send a delegation of its leadership in order to do this work throughout the national territory and for an indefinite period of time. This zapatista delegation, along with those organizations and persons of the left who join in this Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona, will go to those places where they are expressly invited.

We are also letting you know that the EZLN will establish a policy of alliances with non­electoral organizations and movements which define themselves, in theory and practice, as being of the left, in accordance with the following conditions: Not to make agreements from above to be imposed below, but to make accords to go together to listen and to organize outrage. Not to raise movements which are later negotiated behind the backs of those who made them, but to always take into account the opinions of those participating. Not to seek gifts, positions, advantages, public positions, from the Power or those who aspire to it, but to go beyond the election calendar. Not to try to resolve from above the problems of our Nation, but to build FROM BELOW AND FOR BELOW an alternative to neoliberal destruction, an alternative of the left for Mexico.

Yes to reciprocal respect for the autonomy and independence of organizations, for their methods of struggle, for their ways of organizing, for their internal decision making processes, for their legitimate representations. And yes to a clear commitment for joint and coordinated defense of national sovereignty, with intransigent opposition to privatization attempts of electricity, oil, water and natural resources.

In other words, we are inviting the unregistered political and social organizations of the left, and those persons who lay claim to the left and who do not belong to registered political parties, to meet with us, at the time, place and manner in which we shall propose at the proper time, to organize a national campaign, visiting all possible corners of our Patria, in order to listen to and organize the word of our people. It is like a campaign, then, but very otherly, because it is not electoral.

Brothers and sisters: This is our word which we declare: In the world, we are going to join together more with the resistance struggles against neoliberalism and for humanity.

And we are going to support, even if it’s but little, those struggles.

And we are going to exchange, with mutual respect, experiences, histories, ideas, dreams.

In Mexico, we are going to travel all over the country, through the ruins left by the neoliberal wars and through those resistances which, entrenched, are flourishing in those ruins.

We are going to seek, and to find, those who love these lands and these skies even as much as we do.

We are going to seek, from La Realidad to Tijuana, those who want to organize, struggle and build what may perhaps be the last hope this Nation – which has been going o n at least since the time when an eagle alighted o n a nopal in order to devour a snake – has of not dying. http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/

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We are going for democracy, liberty and justice for those of us who have been denied it.

We are going with another politics, for a program of the left and for a new Constitution.

We are inviting all indigenous, workers, campesinos, teachers, students, housewives, neighbors, small businesspersons, small shop owners, micro­businesspersons, pensioners, handicapped persons, religious men and women, scientists, artists, intellectuals, young persons, women, old persons, homosexuals and lesbians, boys and girls – to participate, whether individually or collectively, directly with the zapatistas in this NATIONAL CAMPAIGN for building another way of doing politics, for a program of national struggle of the left, and for a new Constitution.

And so this is our word as to what we are going to do and how we are going to do it. You will see whether you want to join.

And we are telling those men and women who are of good heart and intent, who are in agreement with this word we are bringing out, and who are not afraid, or who are afraid but who control it, to then state publicly whether they are in agreement with this idea we are presenting, and in that way we will see o nce and for all who and how and where and when this new step in the struggle is to be made.

While you are thinking about it, we say to you that today, in the sixth month of the year 2005, the men, women, children and old o nes of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation have now decided, and we have now subscribed to, this Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona, and those who know how to sign, signed, and those who did not left their mark, but there are fewer now who do not know how, because education has advanced here in this territory in rebellion for humanity and against neoliberalism, that is in zapatista skies and land.

And this was our simple word sent out to the noble hearts of those simple and humble people who resist and rebel against injustices all over the world.

Democracy!

Liberty!

Justice!

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee – General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

Mexico, in the sixth month, or June, of the year 2005.

8 Comentarios » (#postcomment) 1. I will share this declaration with everyone I know!

La lucha sigue sigue!

Zapata vive vive!

Comentario de matt hanson — enero 19, 2011 @ 4:48 pm (#comment­611986) 2. […] effects on the ground? There are references in these texts to collaboration with adherents to the Sixth Declaration, but it seemed in recent years as though that network had languished […]

Pingback de “We Will Win One Hundred Times Over”: Translating the Zapatista Resurgence « dorset chiapas solidarity (http://dorsetchiapassolidarity.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/we­will­win­one­hundred­times­over­translating­ the­zapatista­resurgence/) — enero 31, 2013 @ 2:09 am (#comment­690187) 3. […] effects on the ground? There are references in these texts to collaboration with adherents to the Sixth Declaration, but it seemed in recent years as though that network had languished […]

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Pingback de “We Will Win One Hundred Times Over”: Translating the Zapatista Resurgence « Moorbey'z Blog (http://moorbey.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/we­will­win­one­hundred­times­over­translating­the­zapatista­resurgence/)

— enero 31, 2013 @ 11:25 am (#comment­690347) 4. […] Almost two months since the attack, Kuy is still hospitalized and fighting for his life, now forgotten by the cameras and reflectors that that December 1st condemned the protests in order to legitimize, voluntarily or involuntarily, the ignorance, banality, and violence of the recently named president. Kuy is still alive thanks to the strength and conviction and camaraderie of those who collectively work with Otra Cultura ["Other Culture"] and other collectives, organizations, groups, and individuals who are adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle. […]

Pingback de Call for Solidarity: For Kuy, in Coma Following Mexican Presidential Inauguration Protest « dorset chiapas solidarity (http://dorsetchiapassolidarity.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/call­for­solidarity­for­kuy­in­coma­ following­mexican­presidential­inauguration­protest/) — febrero 2, 2013 @ 2:19 am (#comment­691115) 5. […] Patishtán was framed on preposterous charges because he is an activist. He is an adherent of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle, a sympathizer of the Zapatista movement. The 1994 rebellion of mostly Maya indigenous, poor […]

Pingback de Latin American Directions in Popular Struggle | Mobilizing Ideas (http://mobilizingideas.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/latin­american­directions­in­popular­struggle/) — agosto 8, 2013 @

11:25 am (#comment­785130) 6. […] was framed on preposterous charges because he is an activist. He is an adherent of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle, a sympathizer of the Zapatista movement. The 1994 rebellion of mostly Maya indigenous, poor […]

Pingback de Latin American Directions in Popular Struggle | OccuWorld (http://www.occuworld.org/news/294896) — agosto 8, 2013 @ 12:30 pm (#comment­785174) 7. […] EZLN. Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle. June 2005. http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/ (http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/). Higgins, Nicholas. “The Zapatista Uprising and the Poetics of Cultural Resistance.” […]

Pingback de Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatista Movement: Land, Nationhood, and Autonomy « Attack the System (http://attackthesystem.com/2013/10/06/subcomandante­marcos­and­the­zapatista­movement­land­ nationhood­and­autonomy/) — octubre 6, 2013 @ 9:56 pm (#comment­820546) 8. […] ‘the other campaign’ that Alejandro Reyes explained in his audio on ’2006.‘ Sixth Declaration: This is our simple word which seeks to touch the heart of simple people like ours… […]

Pingback de Poetic Words and Shared Truths: The EZLN | Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research (http://www.transculturalwriting.com/?p=2289) — noviembre 9, 2013 @ 9:47 am (#comment­847198) RSS para comentarios de este artículo. (http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/feed/) TrackBack URL (http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/sdsl­en/trackback/)

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Political Economy from the Perspective of the Zapatista Communities I – El Kilombo Intergaláctico

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El Kilombo Intergaláctico EZLN, EZLN COMMUNIQUES

Political Economy from the Perspective of the Zapatista Communities I

by El Kilombo • May 24, 2015 • 0 Comments

Words of Subcomandante Insurgente Moises at the Seminar: “Critical Thinking Versus the Capitalist Hydra,” San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico, in May of 2015.

May 4, 2015 Good afternoon compañeros, compañeras.

What I’m going to talk to you about—not read to you—has to do with what the economy was like and is like in the communities, that is, I’m going to talk to you about capitalism. I’m going to talk to you about how it was 30 years ago, 20 years ago, and in these past few years. I’m going to speak to you about this in three parts: how the communities lived before, 30 years ago; how those who are not organized as Zapatistas live today; and then about how we live, we the Zapatistas of today.

This isn’t to say that we don’t know how it was centuries ago; we do know. But we want to demarcate things from here because we are 30 years old—starting from ’83, the year 1983 when the group of compañeros arrived, and so from that date to now, we are 30 years old.

Before the Zapatista Army for National Liberation was created, we indigenous from Chiapas didn’t exist for the capitalist system; we weren’t people to it; we weren’t human. We didn’t even exist as trash for it. And we imagine that’s how it was for the other indigenous brothers and sisters in the rest of our country. And that’s how we imagine it is in any country where indigenous people exist.

Where we live, that is, in the mountainous regions, in the hills, they had it designated as a reserve. They didn’t know that indigenous people lived there, in what they call the Montes Azules Biosphere. So nobody counted how many little boys and girls were born there. That is, capitalism didn’t know anything about us; nobody was counting us because we didn’t exist for them.

So then how did we survive there? Well, with Mother Earth. Mother Earth is what gave us life even though there wasn’t any government, any governors or mayors taking us into account. We were forgotten. They only thing thought to be of importance there were the very good lands surrounding our communities, and so there were a few men (with their wives of course) living there, the land owners, the finqueros, or the owners of large estates.

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They are the ones who had thousands of hectares of good land, good water, good rivers. That’s why they expelled us from that area; they pushed us into the mountains because for them, those hills were useless— they didn’t provide anything for them, so that’s where they left us.

Why do they need thousands and thousands of hectares of good land for themselves? It’s so that they can have thousands and thousands of heads of livestock, cows. How was it that they were able to stay there for such a long time? Because they had great gunmen, who we call the guardias blancas [white guards], who kept us from coming onto their lands, onto the lands that they said were theirs.

So then, what economy in the communities could we talk then if we were forgotten? The only thing these plantations did was exploit our grandparents and great­grandparents. What happened with us was that we had to become inventive; we had to imagine how we had to live, survive on our Mother Earth, resisting all of the evil that the landowners and estate owners sent our way.

No one knew about highways, no one knew that there were things called clinics and hospitals, much less schools, or classrooms for education. There were never any health campaigns, programs, grants, nothing. We were forgotten.

So then, like we’re saying—because I speak for all of the brothers and sisters, compañeros who are organized today, I don’t speak just for myself—in these last 20 years, we now see the capitalist economy inside the communities because now those above have started to take an interest in the communities. Not so much an interest in the communities themselves, but an interest in where they live, where we live—well and where we once lived because there are brothers and sisters, compañeros and compañeras who have died.

First it wasn’t enough that they had the best lands, which had already served them for many years. Now they started taking an interest in the hills, in the mountains; this is another commodity for them, as it’s been said many times over here—it is nature’s wealth. So then they started to organize themselves so they could evict us from the very place they had pushed us into, the very place they had ordered us into. Now they want to push us out of there. That is, they want to dispossess and evict us because now they want that wealth.

The wealth that exists there, well, we together with our great­great­grandparents, as we say, have taken good care of it. And that’s what they want to take, to extract—that capitalist who, in only a few years, will destroy what it took Mother Earth billions of years to make.

How is that? Well, just remember the trick of the capitalist system, the trap that it set when they changed Article 27 so that the ejidos could be privatized. Because what they’re trying to do now is make Mother Earth sellable and rentable.

I will have to invite you to use a little imagination, because we’re talking about 20 years ago—when we came out publicly.

When the government saw all of this, then it did start coming to these areas, disguising itself in many different ways. One way is for the bad government to go around saying that it is fulfilling our demands by building highways. But that’s not why they’re building them—it’s because of the change of Article 27 that allowed the privatization of the ejidos. So the government takes advantage of the situation in two ways: it saw that we rose up and now it acts like it’s fulfilling our demands by putting in highways and funding projects. But then, while http://www.elkilombo.org/ezln­political­economy­from­the­perspective­of­the­communities/

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they say that with these projects they are contributing one or two million pesos, when this sum is divided into a hundred, two hundred, three hundred projects, what’s left for each is a pittance, and even then it doesn’t go to the communities—it just goes back into the pockets of the various levels of government. But they declare it success anyway; this is what they tell us.

If you only knew how the compas and the brothers and sisters talk about these projects. They say there are projects called “pececito,”[i] whatever that means. That’s why I’m saying they take a little money and make a bunch of projects.

Also, a few schools and clinics have now started popping up. There are students who don’t even know how to read but they’ve been awarded scholarships. And they say that if you provide your new popular health insurance identification card in the clinics, they will take good care of you. But when you actually visit the clinic they say that there are no doctors available; and if there is a doctor available, then they say that they don’t have any medicine; and if there is a doctor available and if they do have medicine, then its expired medicine.

But because we can’t read, the doctor gives it to you anyway but it doesn’t cure whatever you have. The point is just to make it look as if they’re giving you your medication; you don’t even know if it’s the medicine you need for your illness.

So just like I’m describing to you, new projects like this started popping up over the years. Since the bad government has implemented these projects that distribute a little money, what has happened is that they are used to help the government control those who would become Zapatistas. I think they call it a counter­ insurgency campaign, or a low­intensity war, I don’t know what they call it but it’s to control you so that you no longer struggle, like “Here you go, now we’re fulfilling your demands. And if you’re even thinking about joining the Zapatistas, just take a look at my military, they are much better prepared, and all you’re doing is sending yourself to your death.” So this is all a campaign to control them.

I tell you this because those communities that allowed their ejidos to be privatized—because there were some that did allow it—now are like the cities with vagabonds walking around, homeless, drug addicted to [paint] thinner and those kinds of things. Now it’s the same in those communities because they sold off their land, received the property deeds as if they were ranch owners—in their case, small ranch owners, petty proprietors —and once they own it they then go and sell it off and now they are left out on the streets. Now they don’t have anywhere to cultivate their maize, their beans.

Others, those who have received a project of some kind, are now having to pay back interest according to what capitalism dictates. Just to give a few examples, over by the Caracol of La Realidad, there is a community named Agua Perla, where the Jataté River runs. That community received these government projects and now there’s a group of caxlanes [non­indigenous people] or mestizos that arrives telling them: you know what gentlemen, this is what you owe. This land is no longer yours and just so that we don’t have any problems, why don’t you move on over to Escarcega—that is, to Campeche, I think that Escarcega is in Campeche—or why don’t you move to Oaxaca—where there’s fighting with the Chiapas government and the Oaxaca government, Las Chimalapas.

That’s where they’re asking those inhabitants who are partidistas [party members or followers] to go. I have to call them partidistas because before, it was just the PRI followers, the PRIistas who were fucking with us, and http://www.elkilombo.org/ezln­political­economy­from­the­perspective­of­the­communities/

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now all of the political parties are, so that’s why we now call them partidistas.

Another community in Roberto Barrios, named Chulum Juarez, has also received projects. It’s the same thing: they offered to build them a highway, and the community accepted it because it would be paved and they started building it really quickly. It only took a few months to build but it was really well made. Now that there’s a highway, now that they’ve received their domo (that’s what they call corrugated tin roofing and other things), now that they’ve put down gravel on the community’s roads, now that all that is in place, with the highway in place, now they come and they tell them, “You know what gentlemen, you’re going to have to leave because there is uranium in this hill and the government is going to extract it. So if you want to live then you will need to leave. Go to Oaxaca if you want, and if you don’t leave on your own, you will be forced to do so.”

So that’s what they began preparing to do 20 years ago, and now they’re carrying it out. And even more so now that they have changed laws for the capitalist system, it’s a done deal, it’s on paper. So what we say to that is, “It’s down on paper that this is all authorized, but what remains to be seen is when it runs up against the people, if they will stand for it, and it also remains to be seen if when it runs up against us, the Zapatistas, if we will stand for it.”

So in light of all these things I am telling you about, the question for us—because we study our own history— is: why do they, under capitalism, change the way that they dominate us in order to keep getting more than what they already have? Why do we, the exploited, continue on the same?”

That’s what we ask ourselves, because with the partidista brothers and sisters—this is how we refer to them, because we also make a distinction between partidistas who do not harm us, who we call ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters.’ But we’re not going to call the fucking paramilitaries ‘brothers and sisters’—those guys, well, those guys are real sons of bitches.

Anyway, this is what happens with the partidista brothers and sisters. Once we came into the public eye, like the compañera Vilma says, we Zapatistas recovered our Mother Earth. It’s as if they had taken our mother away from us and we had to go find where she was, and once you find her you have to get her back. We can say this in a lot of different ways, but the point is to get her back, not fight amongst ourselves.

Something like that happened; they had taken our mother away from us so we began to organize ourselves, because that is the first thing. You have to organize first and that’s what we did. We had to organize ourselves as women and men to go get her back. There isn’t another way to say it.

Everything arises from Mother Earth so we had to go recuperate her, and so we began to organize ourselves to see how we would work Mother Earth. As the years passed, the bad government and the bosses, the landowners, started to say that because of us, the Zapatistas, those lands, those thousands of hectares were now unproductive. And we Zapatistas accept this—they are not productive for the landowners or for capitalism; they are productive for us, because what they make now are not the thousands of heads of livestock that the landowners used to produce. What they produce now are thousands and thousands of cobs of corn, just like this one.

Mother Earth first gave us tiny corncobs like this one on the lands that the landowners had taken away from us. And they did take them away from us—it’s not true that we are taking them away from anyone. They were http://www.elkilombo.org/ezln­political­economy­from­the­perspective­of­the­communities/

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ours, and they had so mistreated Mother Earth that our first harvests were tiny just like this. Our grandfathers already knew how to work the land, and little by little we were able to find our way all over again, once again, with our Mother Earth.

We work these recuperated lands collectively. We say “collectively,” but one needs a lot of practice in order to figure out how to do that. For example, we first began working the land collectively, all of us. That is, nobody had their own milpa [cornfield]. Rather, we were completely together, all of us. Then, we would have the problem of too much rain, or of drought, or a storm, and so we started to suffer losses. The compañeros started to say that no, we shouldn’t do things this way. Why don’t we organize ourselves and come to an agreement on how many days we will contribute to collective work, and how many days to our own plot.

More than anything it was the compañeras who came up with this idea because they are the ones who cultivate the food’s flavorings—we call them cebollín, the onions, and other flavorings that the compañeras use for cooking. So because they worked collectively, when one compañera would send her son or daughter to the milpa to bring back something, everyone would go and everything would get picked, because it belonged to everyone but there wasn’t an agreement about it yet.

They start seeing this as a problem and the compas begin to discover various ways to do things. Like what to do if others want to take some corn, because since the milpa is collective, if one person takes some corn, then it all goes quickly, like a violation of the collective form because there was no agreement on how to use it. So the compas made an agreement—x number of days we will all work collectively, and x number of days we will work for ourselves.

The collective work is done at the level of the village, that is, the local level, the community; it is also done at the regional level, as we call it, where the region is a group of 40, 50, or 60 villages; and collective work is also done at the municipal level, by which we mean a group of 3, 4, or 5 regions—this here is the Autonomous Zapatista Municipalities in Rebellion. And when we say “collective work of the zone,” this means the work of all of the municipalities that exist in a zone like Realidad, or Morelia, or Garrucha—the five zones.

So when we talk about zones, we’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of villages, and when we talk about municipalities, we’re talking about dozens of villages. So that’s how collective work is done, and collective work is done not only on Mother Earth.

I’ll just remind you, as the now defunct Sup Marcos had said, in those days when they said to us, weren’t we supposed to be anti­capitalists and we’re over here drinking Coca Cola? I don’t know if anybody here might remember that. How can I explain this; what happens is that they idealize us, they think that everything that we say we magically accomplish. No compañeros and compañeras, brothers and sisters. The truth is that what we are is organized.

I’ll give you a clearer example. I remember that a compañera from the city was really angry because she witnessed a Zapatista compa yelling at his compañera, and he was wasted, intoxicated, drunk. So we told the compañera, be calm compañera, because that compañera is going to report it to the authorities, and tomorrow or the day after that compa will have to face punishment. You shouldn’t think that because we say the word “clean” that magically everything will be clean; that if we say the word “black” then magically everything will be black. No, that’s idealizing the situation. But yes, the compañera is going to report it and then http://www.elkilombo.org/ezln­political­economy­from­the­perspective­of­the­communities/

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punishment will come.

The point is to be organized. Because before, when there were women being mistreated, there was no trustee, there was no councilman, there was no mayor to resolve the compañeras’ problems. And what’s more, the trustee, the councilman, and the mayor were often worse; how could they possibly resolve anything?

Well then, we are talking about collective work. So we have other types of collective work, such as the sale of that thing that I just mentioned. And it’s not because we like it, because for us Zapatistas, in order to do away with capitalism we have to destroy it. And one way to destroy it is to take the means of production into our hands and administrate them ourselves. So then, if we sell things—like for example, here we have dirt, but what about that over there? The thing those flower are in? Is it produced by capitalism or not? And those eyeglasses you’re wearing? What about that? Everything that you have on?

But yes, we understand it as a way to scratch at capitalism. Yes, it is true that we will lower its profits a little.

That’s not a lie, we understand it. But when we do something it is because we have come to an agreement through communication amongst all of us, and it is one thing to say something and another to do it. For example, I remember that a lot of NGOs around here were saying, “We won’t allow it” when [the supermarket chain] Chedrahui came here [San Cristóbal de las Casas]. They said, “We won’t buy from there.” That promise didn’t last two weeks. So it’s one thing to say something and another thing to do it.

Well then, now I will discuss with you some things that we started to discover as we were doing collective work, and this work was varied, not only work that had to do with Mother Earth. We started to see things about our resistance, we started to discover things.

We began the resistance with our compañeros and compañeras from our communities, and I want to tell you how the idea to resist was born. In those days when we rose up against the bad government, it began to use or utilize people to spy on us, “ears” we call them, people who listen to what the Zapatistas do and how they move. So then the compañeras and the compañeros realized that the teachers were serving as these spies, these ears, so they fired them.

Then we had a problem—we no longer had any teachers. So then we had to invent, we had to imagine, we had to create. And then, as I was mentioning earlier, the government started to tell everyone that it was going to give out a lot of projects. It was like others started to envy us, because it became clear to us that they’re giving out what they’re giving out because the government doesn’t want them to be Zapatistas. And so they’re giving away these things because of us. “Ah, well then,” we said.

And that’s when the compañeras start to say “No,” because compañeros who were insurgents and milicianos[ii] had died in ’94. Those compañeras are the ones who started to say, “If we armed ourselves and went out there and our compañeros died out there, why would we now accept the leftovers, the handouts, the crumbs that the bad government gives out? What it wants is to buy us off like it’s buying off those who are not already Zapatistas, just so that they don’t become Zapatistas.”

So then the idea started to grow and multiply, that refusing to accept things from the bad government was the same as being a combatant. And then we began to discover that it had to be more than just not accepting http://www.elkilombo.org/ezln­political­economy­from­the­perspective­of­the­communities/

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things. I tell you this because it was when we started to see that they were giving out a lot of projects to the partidistas that we started to say that we have to work the Mother Earth. And when we started to talk like this, the compañeros and compañeras said, “Yes, of course, because when our great­grandparents and great­ great­grandparents were alive, did they get beans, rice, oil, and milk as handouts? No, on the contrary, all of the efforts of their work went straight to the boss. And why is the government now going to give you a kilo of Minsa [corn flour], Maseca [corn flour], beans, etc.? And not only is it genetically modified, and chemical, it’s not even real milk.

So that’s when we said that we have to work the Mother Earth. And so we started to really strengthen the resistance. Those of us compas who understood this quickly now have beans, maize, coffee, pigs, turkeys, and other animals. Those who are partidistas receive corrugated tin roofing, cement, and other cheaply made construction material. Since they don’t work the land and because the compas do have resources, when the compas need something and offer to buy the wheelbarrows and corrugated roofing from the partidistas, they immediately sell. The compas buy this stuff from them because they have the resources to do so since they work the land.

So the compas realized what was happening, we figured it out. It’s because we indigenous are very practical.

If we see that something works then we say, “ha, now we’ve screwed them,” so then we all start doing it and keep at it because it works. So then the compas put in even more effort to work the land.

And that’s when the government started to say that it was giving out a lot of projects. “Look at all the red corrugated roofing,” they tell everyone, because the roofing they give out is always red. But the compas install this roofing on their houses too. So the government says, “Look—those come from our projects,” but it’s not true because those are the compas’ houses with the corrugated roofing that they bought. Then the government realized what was going on and now they try to control the people, they force them to show that they have built their houses with the material the government gave them. That’s what the partidistas started to do as well, because they also have these housing projects, and they force the people to show that they’re using the building material for themselves, because otherwise the material will end up with the Zapatistas, they say.

For us, in the Zapatista communities, we see the conditions of the partidista brothers, and honestly, compañeros and compañeras, it makes you really sad to see how they live. It makes you feel a bitter sorrow to see it because many of the youth that we used to know are no longer there. They left seeking the American Dream, to find that green money, dollars. And many never returned, and some who have returned have very little left of their former selves, and they’ve returned and are in a bad way, now addicted to drugs, they smoke marijuana. And those who don’t smoke marijuana come back with a different culture. They say that they no longer want to drink pozol,[iii] and worse, that they don’t even recognize it.

So the son or daughter returns home and they arrive at their father’s house, their mother’s house, and their father and their mother are also not doing so well because the government has them accustomed to sitting around with their arms crossed. It has their brains programmed to when they will receive their Oportunidades [government program], which I think they now call Prospera. That is, the partidista brothers have been made useless because they no longer work the land. I think that the word to describe them is “submissive.”

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At least in the era of slavery, you knew very well that the boss was enslaving you. But in this case no, because now he’s gotten you used to things, he’s programmed your chip, that is, your head, he’s programmed your brain. So now you don’t understand what’s going on and you don’t see their faces behind it, whether Peña Nieto or Velasco or the other one, or any of the rest who will deceive you.

Why do they do that? Because it’s the other face they use to get what they want; and what they want is the Mother Earth so that they can extract all her riches. Force isn’t the only way to take Mother Earth. What they don’t want is to have a situation where the army and police have to kill, but the day will come when they clash with the people who aren’t going to allow what they’re doing. For now, what all those projects to do is get people used to them, programming them so that they become accustomed to no longer working the land. And from there, people get used to it and its even worse if the people have applied for the land title because then they can sell it.

The result is that their land can be taken away, this is what is happening to the partidistas brothers. That’s what capitalism is trying to get—what Mother Earth has.

When we say that in the partidista communities the situation is really sad, I can give you an example. And hopefully those brothers and sisters are here right now so that they can confirm all that we say. There is a community over near La Realidad, I think it’s called Miguel Hidalgo, near the village of Nuevo Momón. Up until a few months ago, the brothers there used to be CIOAC­Histórica—they supported what was done to our compañero teacher Galeano. Weeks after what happened to compa teacher Galeano, something happened with those brothers who are now ex­CIOAC. They no longer want to be CIOAC, but they used to be, and because of different party politics, different political ideologies with the projects, they decided, “It’s better to step aside so we don’t end up killing each other.” So when their community violently kicked them out, they went to land that was recuperated [by the Zapatistas] in ’94 to take refuge.

There’s no respect there. The leaders of the social organizations have a lot to do with this because they don’t stick up for themselves, they sell out and the men and women of that organization haven’t organized themselves.

That’s why we say that the way that things are is a disaster. The government has those partidistacommunities used to things the way they are, but now I’ll tell you something that happened maybe a month or month and a half ago. You’ve seen how the government has said that it’s going to have to cut back social programs, and that in the communities they receive scholarships even though the students don’t know how to read or write.

Each student receives 1,000 or 1,200 pesos, and so parents who have four children in school get their 5,000 pesos. The mothers and fathers got used to this.

Maybe a month or a month and a half ago, those families with four children in school who are receiving scholarships are now only receiving 800 pesos for all four. And what they’re saying is, “Now they have fucked us over.” Well yes, now they have fucked you over, brothers. What can we tell you? And because this is our way as indigenous people—as if we were cellular phones—the word spreads very quickly. If someone is lost, the community quickly finds out that someone is lost. If someone is sick, the community quickly finds that out.

It’s like a telephone that lets you know.

So we, together with the compas from the communities, the bases of support, held a meeting where we http://www.elkilombo.org/ezln­political­economy­from­the­perspective­of­the­communities/

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explained how much worse the situation is going to become, and not only for us the indigenous, but for all of Mexico, the country and city—and not even just Mexico. So as Zapatistas, we have family members who are not Zapatistas–there are some families who are good, and others that want nothing to do with us. We can recognize the ones who will understand, which ones aren’t against us, we talk with them about the situation.

And that’s how word gets around that the situation is about to get bad, and then accounts begin to emerge that it’s true, that such­and­such official came by and left us with an invoice. That’s how information starts coming out.

That’s the part we were reading out loud yesterday, that they were asking us what they could do about it. And what we tell them is, “Organize yourselves, brothers and sisters.”

“But what are we going to do when we organize?”

“Think it through.”

“But how are we going to think it through?”

“How you live, start from there.”

And another thing that we see in the lives of the partidistas is that it is not the fault of the children that they live how they live. On top of the bad government’s bad guidance, the children are also abandoned. Who knows what will end up happening to them? Or maybe they will wake up when they realize what’s going to happen, but for that we think that a lot of things will need to take place first. They will go become pickpockets, bandits, thieves of maize, beans, everything, and worse if they are addicted to drugs. There are communities who smoke a lot of marijuana, and that’s the truth. That’s what I mean when I say that the children there are like abandoned baby chicks.

All this that we’re telling you about is how we live. You all know what the living is like where you live. The only thing that we’re saying is that it is time to put ideas into practice, because if not it’s just going to be talk, talk, talk. What I am about to tell you might be a bad example. It’s about the believers, the ones who have (inaudible) by the hand, from the Bible, however they call it, for always just reading, reading, reading, and he died. And they said justice, freedom, and no to injustice. But those are just words. It’s the same thing with the politicians.

So then, compañeros, compañeras, brothers, and sisters, we are not telling you to rise up in arms. And we’re also not telling you to take our example and copy it. No. All of us have to study our own terrain and see what is possible for us to do there. But what we all do need to do is to put things into practice.

For example, it’s like when we say that what we want to build is for centuries and centuries, and forever. And so we ask, “How are we going to do this? If the older Zapatistas fighters don’t prepare their children, that is, if they don’t prepare the new generation, those who are 19 and 20 years old now, then we will see that 50 or 60 years from now the grandson of Ex­General Absalón Castellanos Dominguez, the former governor of Chiapas will be back and he will be the one giving orders in the communities all over again if that new generation isn’t prepared. And that new generation has to prepare another, and so on so that what we create can last for centuries and centuries, forever. But if this doesn’t happen, it won’t last. http://www.elkilombo.org/ezln­political­economy­from­the­perspective­of­the­communities/

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Political Economy from the Perspective of the Zapatista Communities I – El Kilombo Intergaláctico

One of the bases of our Zapatista economic resistance is Mother Earth. We don’t have those houses that the bad government builds, with cinder block and all that. But we do have our health and education, and we live by the people ruling and the government obeying.

When I pause awhile to think about what I want to say to you, what I’m thinking is how it’s one thing to talk about our economic situation and another about how we are governing. It’s difficult for me to explain this because the compas don’t do it the same everywhere.

An example: With some of the compas’ collectives, when it’s time to sell, whether it’s maize, beans, or livestock, what the compas do is organize themselves collectively and act as a kind of coyote [middleman] in order to compete with the coyote. For example, I’m a Zapatista and the compa is selling coffee, or livestock, or maize wholesale, and he’s asking 23 pesos for a kilo of coffee (I think what it’s at now). I, as a Zapatista, investigate how much the coyotes are selling the coffee for at retail, and I see that it’s selling for 40 pesos over there. But the coyote is only paying 23 pesos for it over here, so how much is he making off of it? What I do then is calculate how much transportation costs are going to be for me if I go sell retail like the coyote, and how much more I can afford to pay the compa than what the coyote is paying him. If the coyote is paying 23 pesos for the kilo, then I buy it for 24 pesos. And then the compa Zapatistas come, as do the partidistas, and now the coyote doesn’t have his clients anymore. So then the coyote hears that I’ve been paying 24 pesos and he’s only been paying 23 pesos, then he tries to compete with me and begins to pay 24 pesos. Then what the Zapatista will do is to calculate again, sees that he can still raise his buying price, and offers 25 pesos for the kilo. So it’s like pitting two coyotes against each other in competition, you understand? That’s how the struggle goes.

At the same time, the partidistas go around saying, “You see how the Zapatistas pay us more? By one peso.”

That’s how life is in the communities That’s why I say that there’s not just one way to do things, you have to figure out a way. This has to do also with the economy for autonomous authorities.

For example, under autonomy, everything was going well in health, education, and in agro­ecology, as well as in the three areas: bone­setters, midwifery, and herbal medicine as the compas call them. But when the projects started coming, when the donations from our compañeros and compañeras in solidarity starting coming, then when those donations and NGO projects dwindled, the organization of our construction of autonomy weakened—that is, education and health.

So we realized then and there that we failed because, how else to say it, that all we wanted to do was spend and that was it, that it wasn’t coming from our sweat, as the compas say. Because when it comes from your own sweat then you will take good care of it, you won’t go around spending it however you want. So we realized that what we were doing wasn’t right and that we had to remedy it.

When we tried to fix the situation, we came across another problem. A lot of the things that we do, the way that we go about organizing ourselves, don’t think that it’s because we are really imaginative, that we have superpowers or whatever else. No, compañeros, compañeras, brothers, sisters. We go about inventing, creating things. We go about resolving problems as they come, and what really happens is that we just don’t stop trying. We don’t ignore the problem, we have to resolve it and the advantage is that we ourselves are the ones to do it. We don’t depend on any government body to do it. If we’re not doing well, then none of us are http://www.elkilombo.org/ezln­political­economy­from­the­perspective­of­the­communities/

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Political Economy from the Perspective of the Zapatista Communities I – El Kilombo Intergaláctico

doing well. If we are doing well, then we are all doing well.

So as I was saying about the projects and the donations, we have to correct this situation ourselves, and when we figured out how to correct it, then that’s when those people seeking projects started getting unhappy.

Because we said, “We need to be able to reproduce this. We can’t just be spending. We need to think about how to reproduce this when the day comes that there’s no more project, when there’s no more donations from our brothers and sisters, compañeros and compañeras in solidarity. So in this way, we do know how to resist like before.

So that mistake we made, that failure with the economic situation made us remember the old days of clandestinity, because back then we were able to construct clinics while we were still clandestine, and we didn’t know back then that we would one day see compañeros and compañeras from the Asian continent, from the five continents. We didn’t even dream it but nevertheless, we were able to do it, not through solidarity, but through sweat. So then we started to talk to the compañeros about that, and we recovered that practice and began to work and that’s how we’re doing it now.

That’s why we say that we are re­educating and re­organizing ourselves in the face of the looming storm. In reality, compañeros and compañeras, we could say a lot more. Things really aren’t that easy, but so that you get an idea. The point is that we don’t just sit there and take it and we don’t give up.

I’ll tell you something else about collective work that took place about two or three months ago. So we are reorganizing ourselves, as we say, reeducating ourselves, so we have to give collective work everything we’ve got so that we understand how we are going to move, or how we are going to struggle.

So it turns out that as the compas in the communities, regions, municipalities and zones were meeting in their assemblies, a Zapatista compa says, compañeros, compañeras, I’m not going to join you in collective work because I don’t see anything there for me. Nothing from there buys my salt, or my soap. But it’s not to say that I’m not going to continue on in the struggle. I am going to continue being a Zapatista, and if we need to contribute [money] to the struggle then I am in agreement.

So then the compa say, “Compa, you’re wrong in what you’re saying. You have to remember what you are, you’re a Zapatista, and right now we’re not just discussing collective work, we’re also discussing what it means to be a Zapatista. The Zapatista has to confront everything. So if you say that you don’t want to be part of collective work because it takes us four, three, five days, then what you’ll have to do instead is work on in the Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities in Rebellion, and that service is three years long, while with collective work all we’re talking about is three, four days. Think about what you’re saying.”

And they’re in an assembly, just like how all of us are gathered right now. Then the son of the compa stands up and says, “It’s true, this is my dad’s bad habit.” The son is a health promotor [promoter/advocate], and he says, “My dad says that I am just a health promotor by name only because I don’t even know how to give someone an aspirin. That’s what he tells me because what he wants me to do is leave my cargo as health promoter so I can go away to study”—that is, not at the autonomous school, that the compa go who knows where to study—“But every time my dad gets sick, he comes and asks me to give him a pill.”

I tell you this story, compas¸ so that you can see that the point is for you to not just sit and take it, or just talk http://www.elkilombo.org/ezln­political­economy­from­the­perspective­of­the­communities/

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Political Economy from the Perspective of the Zapatista Communities I – El Kilombo Intergaláctico

about it. Confront it, do it, find it, invent it, create it. That’s what this is about.

So think about that. You’ve seen that we work the land, your guardianes and guardianas[iv] have taken you there. Is it not true that the Zapatistas work the land? Is it not true that the Zapatistas do not emigrate?” Just remember that story that I told you about that compa base of support, that he said that he didn’t want to do collective work because that is what causes problems. In that case you oust yourself, you expel yourself.

Because around here, being Zapatista means confronting it all, and there are some who no longer want to, and that’s how they in effect leave. Those who do this have really already left, they straight up don’t want to struggle anymore. That is, they have abandoned the organization.

That’s why, given the little that we do economically, we don’t pay for electricity, water, land ownership, nothing.

But we don’t receive anything from the system either. And as it’s already been said, but to affirm it here, part of the reason we do our collective work at the zone, region, municipality, and community level is because we always have within our sight the possibility that we may need to mobilize to support the brothers, sisters, compañeros, compañeras. We don’t mobilize to demand that the government fulfill its promises, we don’t generate resources for that.

So then, what we will be talking more about is that in this process of evaluating how we are doing, what we want to do, and what we are thinking about doing, it is the compas, the communities, who authorize action, who rule, who decide. We don’t depend on the government. And since this is our way of being, we’re going to keep on working, struggling, and dying if necessary in order to defend the way we are doing things now. [i] It seems Subcomandante Moises is pointing to the irony that the name of this government program (“pececito” or little fish) serves as a homonym to “pesesito” which might be also be a joking way of referring to a single lonely peso. [ii] Member of the EZLN’s civilian militia or reserves. [iii] A drink made from ground maize mixed with water and often consumed in the Mexican countryside as a midmorning or midday meal. [iv] The Zapatista “guardians” or “votanes” that accompanied each student of the Zapatista Little School during their stay in Zapatista territory.

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Political Economy from the Perspective of the Zapatista Communities I – El Kilombo Intergaláctico

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VIEW SLIDESHOW: THE BEGINNING OF THE END? OR THE END OF THE BEGINNING?

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The Beginning of the End? Or the End of the

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The Beginning of The End? Or, The End of The Beginning?

Slideshow: The Beginning of the End? Or, the End of the Beginning? ¿El Principio del Fin? o ¿el Fin del Principio?

Denunciation of attacks against Zapatista Communities

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Political Economy from the Perspective of the Zapatista Communities I – El Kilombo Intergaláctico

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The Humility of Love: A Lesson from Chiapas | Dissident Voice

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The Humility of Love: A Lesson from Chiapas

by Frank Coughlin / October 10th, 2014 Humility. An important word you rarely hear in our culture anymore. Our culture seems to be going in the opposite direction, everything with a superlative. Everything bigger, faster, better, stronger. Everything new, shiny, pretty, expensive. But never humble. “Dude, love that car. It’s so humble.” Yeah, you never hear that.

Politically on the left, in the “fight” as we call it, we’re just as guilty. We have a tendency towards ego, self­ righteousness, hyper­individualism. We want our movements to be better, stronger, bigger. We want the big social “pop­off”, the “sexy” revolution, perhaps our face on the next generation’s t­shirts. But we never ask for humility.

As we near what most scientists predict to be “climate catastrophe”, I’ve been thinking a lot about humility. I recently was able to travel to Chiapas, Mexico to learn about the Zapatista movement. I was there for a month, working with various groups in a human rights capacity. While I was there to provide some type of service, I left with a profound respect for a true revolutionary humility. This essay is not designed to be a complete history of the Zapatista movement, but perhaps it can provide some context.

The Zapatistas are an indigenous movement based in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico. The name is derived from Emiliano Zapata, who led the Liberation Army of the South during the Mexican Revolution, which lasted approximately from 1910­1920. Zapata’s main rallying cry was “land and liberty”, exemplifying the sentiments of the many indigenous populations who supported and formed his army. The modern­day Zapatistas declare themselves the ideological heirs to these struggles, again representing many indigenous struggles in southern Mexico. While the Zapatistas became public in 1994, as their name implies, their struggle is the culmination of decades of struggle. Many of the mestizos (non­indigenous) organizers came from the revolutionary student struggles of the 60s and 70s in Mexico’s larger cities. In 1983, many of these organizers, along with their indigenous counterparts, who represented decades of indigenous organizing in the jungles of Mexico, formed the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). From 1983 to their dramatic declaration of war against the http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/10/the­humility­of­love­a­lesson­from­chiapas/

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Mexican government in 1994, the EZLN formed and trained a secret army under the cover of the Lacandon Jungle. After a decade of organizing and training in the context of extreme poverty, an army of indigenous peasants, led by a mix of mestizos and indigenous leaders, surprised the world by storming five major towns in Chiapas. They chose the early morning hours of January 1st, 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect. The connection with NAFTA was intentional because the destructive neoliberal policies inherent in the agreement were viewed as a death sentence to indigenous livelihoods. They used old guns, machetes, and sticks to take over government buildings, release prisoners from the San Cristobal jail, and make their first announcement, The First Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle. With most wearing the now signature pasamontañas over their faces, they declared war on the Mexican government, saying: We are a product of 500 years of struggle: first against slavery, then during the War of Independence against Spain led by insurgents, then to avoid being absorbed by North American imperialism, then to promulgate our constitution and expel the French empire from our soil, and later the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz denied us the just application of the Reform laws and the people rebelled and leaders like Villa and Zapata emerged, poor men just like us. We have been denied the most elemental preparation so they can use us as cannon fodder and pillage the wealth of our country. They don’t care that we have nothing, absolutely nothing, not even a roof over our heads, no land, no work, no health care, no food nor education. Nor are we able to freely and democratically elect our political representatives, nor is there independence from foreigners, nor is there peace nor justice for ourselves and our children.

But today, we say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH… We, the men and women, full and free, are conscious that the war that we have declared is our last resort, but also a just one. The dictators are applying an undeclared genocidal war against our people for many years. Therefore we ask for your participation, your decision to support this plan that struggles for work, land, housing, food, health care, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice and peace. We declare that we will not stop fighting until the basic demands of our people have been met by forming a government of our country that is free and democratic.

Very true to the words of Zapata, that it is “better to die on your feet than live on your knees”, the EZLN fighters engaged in a self­described suicide against the Mexican government. As Subcommandante Marcos, now known as Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano, the public face of the EZLN, stated, “If I am living on borrowed time, it is because we thought that we would go to the world above on the first of January. When I arrived at the second day, and the following, it was all extra.”1

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The Humility of Love: A Lesson from Chiapas | Dissident Voice

What followed was a war of government repression. The quiet mountain towns of Chiapas were flooded with advanced military equipment and troops. A twelve­day battle ensued, with rebel retreats and civilian massacres, finally ending with a cease­fire. Following this “peace agreement”, the EZLN no longer offensively attacked, but refused to lay down their arms. The government engaged in raids, attacks on civilian populations, as well as initiating a paramilitary war. A formal peace accords, known as the San Andres Accords, was signed between the government and the EZLN leadership in February of 1996. It addressed some of the root causes of the rebellion, such as indigenous autonomy and legal protections for indigenous rights. While signed in 1996, the law did not make it to the Mexican congress until 2000. There it was gutted, removing key principles as signed by the EZLN, such as the right of indigenous autonomy. Much has been written on the history of the EZLN after the failure of the peace accords, including the march to Mexico City, as well as the EZLN’s attempts at fostering a larger social movement force. The EZLN released their “Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle”, which highlights their call to the Mexican and international populations to work to ”find agreement between those of us who are simple and humble and, together, we will organize all over the country and reach agreement in our struggles, which are alone right now, separated from each other, and we will find something like a program that has what we all want, and a plan for how we are going to achieve the realization of that program…”

In 2003, the EZLN released a statement that began the process of radically restructuring the Zapatista communities with the development of autonomous municipalities, called caracoles (conch shell). The name caracole was picked because as Marcos once explained, the conch shell was used to “summon the community” as well as an “aid to hear the most distant words”. The caracoles and their respective “councils of good government” (as opposed to the “bad government” of Mexico) were designed to organize the rebel municipalities as well as to push forward the original mandate of indigenous autonomy. With the failure of the San Andres accords, the Zapatista’s openly decided that they would follow the word of the accords that they had signed, regardless of the Mexican government’s policy. In line with their mandate to “lead by obeying”, the EZLN, the armed aspect of the Zapatista’s, separated themselves from the work of the civil society and abdicated control of the Zapatista movement to the caracoles. The objective was “to create — with, by, and for the communities — organizations of resistance that are at once connected, coordinated and self­governing, which enable them to improve their capacity to make a different world possible. At the same time, the project postulates that, as far as possible, the communities and the peoples should immediately put into practice the alternative life that they seek, in order to gain experience. They should not wait until they have more power to do this. “What has occurred in the past decade is that the Zapatistas have put the original demand for indigenous autonomy into practice by creating autonomous governments, health systems, economic systems, and educational systems. In doing so, they have stayed true to the ideals of “leading from below” and a rejection of the ideal to overtake state power. They have “constructed a world in which they have realized their own vision of freedom and autonomy, and continue to fight for a world in which other worlds are possible.”

http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/10/the­humility­of­love­a­lesson­from­chiapas/

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Their fight is very much alive today, more than twenty years after its first public appearance. My recent visit was to the Oventik caracole, located in the Zona Alta region. Myself and three others were sent as human rights observers with El Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas (Fray Bartolome de Las Casa Human Rights Center) to the small community of Huitepec, immediately north of the mountain town of San Cristobal de Las Casas. Here the community is placed in charge of protecting the large Zapatista reserve of Huitepec from loggers, poachers, and government forces. As observers, our task was to accompany the Zapatista families on their daily walks through the 100+ acre reserve, keep track of any intrusions on the autonomous land, and document any infractions. We lived in a simple house, with a fire to cook on and wood panels for sleeping. There was no running water, minimal electricity, and no forms of electronic communication, even with the close proximity to the town of San Cristobal.

Through these eyes we learned of the daily struggle of the Zapatistas. The community consisted of eight Zapatista families. Originally fifteen families, many of them had left Zapatismo to suffer against poverty with the “bad” government. The families who stayed as Zapatistas were indigenous to the area, having struggled to protect the land long before the Zapatista’s uprising in 1994. The families lived in poverty, dividing their time between protecting the reserve, growing flowers for sale in San Cristobal, and working their rented fields two hours away.

Their days started with the sunrise and often ended long after the sun had set. Their hands were strong and their walk through the mountains fast, evidence of a lifetime of hard labor. They told us of life before the uprising, coming to Zapatismo, their struggles with inner council decisions, and their hopes for the future. We bombarded them with questions, testing the theories of the Zapatistas we had read in books and working to understand the structure of their autonomy. Most spoke Spanish fluently, but outside of our conversations, they spoke their indigenous language. Often times, long questions were answered with a pause and then a “Si!,” only to find out later that much had been lost in translation. The Zapatistas taught us to recognize medicinal plants on our walks, how to cut firewood, helped our dying cooking fires, and shared tea and sweet bread with us. For much of our time together we sat in silence, staring at the fire, each unsure of what to say to people from such different cultures. We, the foreigners, sat in silence in the reserve, lost in our thoughts, struggling to understand the lessons in front of us.

Fortunately, there was little work to be done in our role as human rights observers. As the families stated, most of the repressive tactics of the “bad” government in that area have been rare in recent years. Paramilitary and military forces still effect Zapatista communities, as evidenced by the assassination of José Luis López, known as “Galeano” to the community, a prominent teacher in the caracole of La Realidad in May of 2014. In addition, a week prior to our arrival, paramilitary forces had forcibly displaced 72 Zapatista families from the San Manuel community.

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The Humility of Love: A Lesson from Chiapas | Dissident Voice

As I look back on my experience, I am forced to place it in the context of what we on the left are doing here in the US and I think back to the humility of the experience. The backdrop of the experience was always in the context of the severe poverty the community struggled against. The families cleaned their ripped clothes as best they could, walked for hours in the jungle in plastic, tired shoes, and spoke of their struggle to place food in their stomachs.

They told us of the newborn who had died a few weeks prior to our arrival. They softly commented on the lack of rain in their fields, which meant that no crops had grown. When asked what they would do, they shrugged their shoulders, stared off into the horizon, and quietly said “I don’t know.”

One of the elders (names intentionally left out for security reasons) told us of what he felt for the future. He told us that little by little, more and more Zapatistas are asking the EZLN to take up arms again. He felt they were at a similar social situation as they were in 1993, prior to the uprising. And then he said something that truly humbled me. He said, “we love this land, and if we’re going to die anyway, it would be better to die fighting.” His face was filled with a distant look, touched by sadness, but also of determination. And then there was silence. No theories, no Che t­shirts, no rhyming slogans. No quotes, no chest thumping, no sectarianism. Just the honesty of someone who has nothing left to lose and everything to gain. In that moment, I was gifted the glimpse of the true humility of revolutionary thought. Here was a man who has struggled to survive his entire life. He fights in the way he knows how. He has a simple house and wears the same tucked in dirty dress shirt. He works in the fields as well as the communal government. He knows that the fight he and his community face are against massive transnational corporations who wish to extract the precious resources underneath his ancestral land. He knows that they will hire the government, paramilitary forces, and the police to intimidate and coerce him into submission, likely killing him and his family if he refuses. He lives in an area of the world that has been described as one of the most affected by climate change. And because of this climate change, a force that he did not cause, his children will not have food for the winter. He does not talk of Facebook posts, of petitioning politicians, of symbolic protests. There is no mention of hashtags, things going “viral”, “working with the police”, buying organic, fad diets, or identity politics.

There are no self­congratulatory emails after symbolic protests. He doesn’t say anything about “being the change,” “finding himself,” or engaging in a never­ending debate on the use of violence versus non­violence. He simply states “we are part of this land and we will die to protect it,” and then continues walking.

I find myself thinking about that community as I re­enter the world of activism here in New York City. We are bombarded with the temptations of an insane and immoral culture of consumption. As I write this, young black men are being assassinated by police officers, inequality is at an all­time high, the newspapers are filled with “Fashion Week” events, and people are camping out in front of the Apple store for their new Iphones. On the left, communities are organizing around every type of campaign, with a growing focus on climate change. While there is some great grassroots work being done, even in the insanity of New York City, I can’t help but see the lack of humility that exists in our progressive communities. I include myself in this critique, and write as a member of the Left.

Our conversations are dominated with rhetoric and sectarianism. We talk in the language of books and posts, not in material experiences. We speak of “developing” the third world, as though our complicity in a globally destructive system of capitalism is somehow as invisible as we would like to believe. We use our politically correct language and speak of our “individual oppression”. We wait for perfection, for the “revolution”, wearing our “radical” clothes, speaking our “radical” talk in our “radical” spaces that are devoid of any connection to the material world. And at the end of the day, the destruction around us, the destruction that we are complicit in, continues. Something that has embedded itself in my thoughts this past year is exemplified by two quotes. One is a quote by Che Guevara, in which he says, “At the risk of sounding ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.” The second is a lyric by the group “The Last Poets”, where they proclaim, “Speak http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/10/the­humility­of­love­a­lesson­from­chiapas/

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The Humility of Love: A Lesson from Chiapas | Dissident Voice

not of revolution until you are willing to eat rats to survive, come the Revolution.” Quite different ideas, and yet, as I return to the craziness of New York City, I see how similar they are. Revolution is a term often thrown about without a clear definition. Some people see revolution in the context of an armed uprising of oppressed peoples, others, like the CEOs of Chevrolet, see revolution in terms of their new car line. Others see a “revolution of ideas” transforming the world. For the Zapatistas, it is based in the “radical” idea that the poor of the world should be allowed to live, and to live in a way that fits their needs. They fight for their right to healthy food, clean water, and a life in commune with their land. It is an ideal filled with love, but a specific love of their land, of themselves, and of their larger community. They fight for their land not based in some abstract rejection of destruction of beautiful places, but from a sense of connectedness. They are part of the land they live on, and to allow its destruction is to concede their destruction. They have shown that they are willing to sacrifice, be it the little comforts of life they have, their liberty, or their life itself.

We here in the Left in the US talk about the issues of the world ad nauseaum. We pontificate from afar on theories of oppression, revolutionary histories, and daily incidences of state violence. We speak of climate change as something in the future. But so often we are removed from the materiality of the oppression. Climate change is not something in the future, but rather it is something that is killing 1,000 children per day, roughly 400,000 people per year. Scientists are now saying that the species extinction rate is 1,000 times the natural background extinction rate, with some estimates at 200 species a day, because of climate change. Black men are being killed at a rate of one every 28 hours in the US. One in three women globally will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. There are more global slaves than ever in human history, with the average cost of a slave being $90. It is estimated that there is dioxin, one of the most horrific chemicals we have created and a known carcinogen, in every mother’s breast milk. We read about “solidarity” with the oppressed and work for “justice”. We speak of “loving the land” and wanting to “protect” nature. But how can we say we “love” these people/places/things when the actions we take to protect them have been proven to be wholly ineffective and stand no chance of doing so?

We are told to focus on small lifestyle reforms, petitioning politicians who have shown that they do not listen to us, and relying on a regulatory system that is fundamentally corrupt. We are bombarded with baseless utopian visions of a “sustainable world”, complete with solar panels, wind turbines, abundance, and peace. But these are false visions, meant to distract us. Our entire world infrastructure is based in an extractive, destructive process, without which our first world way of life is entirely impossible. Everything from the global wars, increasing poverty, the police state, and climate change are built around this foundational injustice. These injustices are inherent and are not “reformable”. If it were our child who being slaughtered to mine the rare earth minerals necessary for our technology, would we perhaps have a different view of our smartphone? If our land were being irradiated by runoff from solar panel factories, would we think differently about green energy? If our brother was murdered by a police officer to protect a system of racial oppression, would we be ok with just posting articles on facebook about police brutality? If paramilitaries were going to murder our family to gain access to timber, would we engage in discussions on the justifications for pacifism?

In the face of the horrific statistics of our dying planet, we need a radically different tactic. We need a radical humility. As an example, just to temper the slaughter of the 400,000 human beings being killed by climate change would require a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. That means no more industrial food production, no more travel, no more development of green energy, no electricity, no internet, no police state, and I’m sorry to say, no fucking Iphone 6. Tell me how our movements even touch on the reality of our current situation? I think that for the majority of the Left in the “developed world”, if we truly had love as our foundation, our actions would have much more humility.

For me, this is what Che is speaking to. Those who truly want to change the world need to base their reality in a http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/10/the­humility­of­love­a­lesson­from­chiapas/

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The Humility of Love: A Lesson from Chiapas | Dissident Voice

reality of love. It is love, with all its beauty and romanticism, but also with its inherent responsibility, that powers those who are willing to sacrifice. With that love comes a loss of self and the beginning of humility. Most of us here in the global north who fight for global justice must learn this humility. We, as a whole, are more privileged than any other population has ever been in human history. History has shown that we will not give up this privilege. We will not “eat rats” voluntarily, no matter how radical we may think we are. These things can only be taken from us.

If we truly want a world of justice, we must understand this fact and accept the humility to forget ourselves.

The Zapatistas, as almost all indigenous movements, have at the base of their revolution a love of the land. By losing themselves into the larger struggle of the land, they allow the land to teach them how to struggle. But their fight is not our fight. They demand us to return to our cultures and fight. Because what will ultimately kill the Zapatistas will not be the Mexican government. It will be the Mexican government, hired by transnational corporations coming from the US and Canada, who will build dams, extract mineral resources, and create “free­ trade zones” so that we can continue to enjoy our material comforts. Until we lose our identity­based politics, and allow ourselves to learn from those who are being oppressed by our lifestyle, we will never achieve the justice we think we desire. Author Drew Dellinger writes in a poem entitled “Angels and Ancestors”: “I pray to be a conduit.

An angel once told me, ‘The only way to walk through fire…become fire.’”

If we work for justice, let us embrace this humility and allow ourselves to be led by those who know. Let us become fire. And perhaps in that way, we will be ready to eat rats.

1. Interview: Subcomandante Marcos,” El Proceso, 21 February 1994. [

]

Frank Coughlin is an emergency medicine resident at a public hospital in New York City. He has worked abroad in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and most recently Chiapas, Mexico. He is an organizer with the radical environmental group Deep Green Resistance, working on issues ranging from anti­police brutality, anti­extraction infrastructure, and building a true culture of resistance. Read other articles by Frank.

This article was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2014 at 8:49am and is filed under Climate Change, Mexico, Revolution.

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Quick Thoughts: Moe Ali Nayel on Lebanon’s Garbage Crisis and Protest Movement

The Human Right to Dominate with Nicola Perugini Interviewed by Noura Erakat

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by Moe Ali Nayel

Aug 28 2015

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[On 22 August 2015, what had in previous weeks been a small protest against the breakdown in garbage collection in Beirut turned into a major anti­corruption demonstration calling for fundamental political and economic change in Lebanon. The protesters have been met with escalating repressive violence, and the movement has thus far caught both coalitions of the severely polarized political establishment by surprise.

Jadaliyya asked Moe Ali Nayel, a Beirut­based journalist, to explain the background and current dynamics of the protest movement and the reactions of various groups.]

Jadaliyya (J): How and why did Lebanon's "garbage crisis" develop, and why has it not yet been resolved?

[Graffiti on the wall erected by Lebanese government around the Office of the Prime Minister to prevent protesters from Moe Ali Nayel (MAN): On 17 July 2015, the Lebanese reaching it. Artists took to spraying, drawing, and painting government’s contract with the Sukleen company, various artwork critiquing the status quo. In this mural, which gave it exclusive rights for garbage collection in various political parties are represented as silencing the the country, expired. As a consequence trash collection people. Photo by Joelle Boutros]

services ceased. The Sukleen contract with the Lebanese government has its origins during the 1990s, in what many consider a non­competitive bidding process. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/22501/quick­thoughts_moe­ali­nayel­on­lebanon%E2%80%99s­garbage­

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Quick Thoughts: Moe Ali Nayel on Lebanon’s Garbage Crisis and Protest Movement

Nevertheless, this contract has since been renewed several times, each time at a higher cost. This summer the government did not renew the contract on the grounds of excessive pricing. While the government has “considered” alternatives to Sukleen, it has yet to decide on one. There is an ongoing struggle between Lebanon’s various political blocs to promote business interests affiliated to them. Political maneuvering over whose company is going to win this lucrative contract is sustaining government inaction.

The above notwithstanding, business interests and political corruption are not the only roots of the crisis. Alongside the absence of a new government contract for garbage collection is the problem of waste management and disposal.

Since 1997 garbage from Lebanon’s two most populous regions, Beirut and Mount Lebanon, has been dumped in an area known as Na‘ameh—a coastal town about twenty minutes south of Beirut. Since last year, area residents have been demanding the closure of this dumpsite on account of the ecological damage and health hazards it poses.

Despite official promises to find an alternative to Na‘ameh, and its original designation as a temporary site, the government has not really done anything in this respect. So this summer residents of the Na‘ameh and surrounding villages blocked the road to the dumpsite.

In the wake of the crisis, Beirut’s trash is currently being dumped near the city's harbor right next to the country’s wheat silos, and near the airport. Since these newly created garbage mountains attract flocks of birds, the flight paths used by airplanes to approach Beirut airport have had to be changed for safety reasons. Outside Beirut, trash still sits in piles on sidewalks and streets, or is being surreptitiously dumped in some of the country’s most marginalized areas.

The most recent suggestion, by Interior Minister Nuhad Mashnuq, to dump Beirut’s garbage in the Akkar region of northern Lebanon in exchange for one hundred million dollars in development funds, backfired. It galvanized Akkar’s youth to stage a protest under the slogan, “Akkar is not a dumpster.”

J: What is the "You Stink" campaign, who leads it, and what is it seeking to achieve?

MAN: The “You Stink” campaign started out as a reaction to the most recent manifestation of the trash problem, when garbage piled up on the streets of Beirut in particular and Lebanon more generally. The movement was organized by civil society activists who have a stronger presence on social media than on the street. Nevertheless, their call for a protest campaign resonated with the public at large, and people responded by taking to the streets to denounce government paralysis and corruption. Up until 22 August, the campaign focused on a meaningful solution to the trash epidemic. But on 22 August people took to the streets of downtown Beirut in much larger numbers than before. The impetus for this was videos that went viral, showing scenes of police brutality against a demonstration on 19 August.

That footage mobilized a new set of protesters, some of them part of the original protesters’ social milieu but others part of a very different milieu—one that was all too familiar with state violence in Lebanon. Protestors found strength in unity and spontaneously raised demands beyond garbage collection. They began to call for the resignation of specific ministers, the entire cabinet, and even the toppling of the entire political class. The “You Stink” framework was superseded by people calling for the removal of the government, but by default this campaign remained the public mainstream representation of the protests.

On 23 August, the “You Stink” campaign effectively abandoned the Beirut protests. It did so just as demonstrations were reaching their peak in terms of numbers and demands. The broader context of this was the escalation in government violence and the ensuing confrontations between some protesters and both the riot police and army. Once the government further escalated its repression of protesters on 23 August, the “You Stink” campaign announced via its Facebook page that it was withdrawing to Martyrs Square. Instead of taking responsibility for a protest movement that had turned from a peaceful gathering into a mass of people standing up to state authority, some of the organizers announced their withdrawal and called upon the authorities to crack down on the protesters and “clean the streets of agent provocateurs, hooligans and thugs.” Various individuals affiliated with the campaign began to claim that there we thugs sent by the Amal movement who were armed, had infiltrated the protesters’ ranks, and were planning to sabotage the nonviolent nature of the demonstration. In the face of escalating government violence and attempts by some protesters to defend themselves, the move by “You Stink” was basically abdicating its responsibility. The following day, on Monday 24 August, the “You Stink” campaign officially called off the protest scheduled for the next day, Tuesday 25 August, citing concerns of infiltration and violence by protesters. However, protesters continued to turn out in large numbers on Tuesday further proving that the “You Stink” campaign no longer represented the reality of protesters and dynamics of the demonstration. That day, protesters held signs that read, “I’m a thug” and “I’m an agent provocateur,” basically denouncing the “You Stink” campaign’s opprobrious move. It was then that the “You Stink” campaign organizers began apologizing for demonizing the protesters and called for “forgetting the past” and “moving forward.” Yet the campaign had stigmatized itself and, despite a continuous presence on the street by protesters, the campaign cannot claim the same any more. The “You Stink” campaign has lost significant support, because it exposed http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/22501/quick­thoughts_moe­ali­nayel­on­lebanon%E2%80%99s­garbage­

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Quick Thoughts: Moe Ali Nayel on Lebanon’s Garbage Crisis and Protest Movement

and indeed represents a real rift within Lebanese society.

J: What is the relationship between the “You Stink” campaign and those protesting in the streets over the past few weeks? Has that relationship changed over time?

MAN: The “You Stink” campaign’s calls for protests, which began in late July 2015, created space for those from a different social class than those who created the campaign. Since the first protest, youths from marginalized and poverty­stricken areas continued what they had previously been doing alone, without any social media campaigns.

These youths do not generally function in the orbit of so­called civil society organizations but have been protesting on their own initiative since last summer’s severe water and power cuts. This summer, their protests escalated in reaction to the garbage crisis, and their proximity to the downtown area made it possible for them to join the demonstration called for by the “You Stink” campaign. While burning trash and blocking the streets leading to downtown Beirut during the first protest, these youths exclaimed, “We are with you, but this is our way of protesting.” It was then and there that they simultaneously expressed their anger toward the government’s security measures, power cuts, and water shortages.

J: How has the government responded to this campaign and to the protests?

MAN: The Lebanese government has responded to the campaign with its usual stalling tactics. It is trying to sweep the rubbish under the rug, literally taking trash from the streets of the capital and dumping it in obscure locations around the country. As the protest movement’s demands expanded beyond resolution of the garbage crisis, and thus exceeded those of the “You Stink” campaign, the government gradually escalated its repressive tactics, and even erected a concrete wall between the protesters and the Grand Serail where the Prime Ministry is located. The protestors dubbed it “the wall of shame” and remarked on its similarity to the Baghdad Green Zone.

During protests on 22, 23, and 25 August, the government deployed personnel from the various security apparatuses, who conducted themselves with severe brutality. On the night of 25 August, protesters were chased out of the downtown area by waves of riot police followed by the military. They pulled people out of taxis and ambulances, and proceeded to beat them in the streets. They kidnapped young men from the streets of Hamra, Gemayzeh, and other areas surrounding downtown, carrying them off to different police stations across Beirut. One of those arrested was severely beaten up; his face was fractured. There were many more instances of repressive government measures, and this produced a snowball effect. Since then, dozens of lawyers have volunteered to defend the arrested protesters, and many have taken protesting at police stations.

To put it simply, the protest that sparked violence against state violence was not an act of “thuggery” by “saboteurs” who were told to do so by Amal movement leader and Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri. People who allege such dynamics do not recognize the daily economic abuse the majority of Lebanese have been enduring for years. It was a whole bouquet of angry Lebanese who found unity and struck back against a state that has been failing them in all aspects, and a state security apparatus that has been particularly brutal in the year since Mashnuq became interior minister. The most marginalized youth, those from Dawra, Burj Hammoud, Khandaqal­Ghami’, Sabra, Tariq Jdideh, and Shiyyah, were those who struck back with all the vengeance accumulated in their bitter souls against state authority. These are the victims of the same social order that has their brothers languishing in jails without trial for simply smoking a joint, or being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Two young men I spoke with told me, “We are on the street, jobless, and with no place to go. We pop pills to forget the shit we live in.” The scooter they had purchased on credit was confiscated by the government because they could not afford to register it, yet they needed it to work and earn money. These disenfranchised young men see the law being used to punish them for being poor. All this while a small ruling class cruises around town in its fifty­thousand­dollar SUVs, drives in convoys with tinted windows, running over, beating up, and sometimes killing anyone who stands in its way. This latter group is given state security protection and legal immunity. One group of angry teenage boys were rounded up two weeks ago and brutally beaten up by the Internal Security Forces (ISF), only to be told the next day that it was a case of mistaken identity. They weren’t even given an apology.

Thus, on the night of 22 August, and as a response to this violence and neglect, an unusual sense of solidarity exploded and a revolutionary spirit reached a climax that manifested itself in the large numbers on the street the next day. The trajectory of the protest thus far is one of inclusion. It is bringing together different strata of Lebanese society in an unusual way to confront an exploitative economic and political system.

J: How have Lebanon's various political forces responded to this campaign? http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/22501/quick­thoughts_moe­ali­nayel­on­lebanon%E2%80%99s­garbage­

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Quick Thoughts: Moe Ali Nayel on Lebanon’s Garbage Crisis and Protest Movement

MAN: They have responded to this campaign in one of two ways. Some have tried to co­opt it to serve their own agendas or ride the wave of angry protests to benefit from it. Others have sought to criminalize and sectarianize the protest movement, and denounced the campaign as a premeditated conspiracy against Lebanon. Some in the latter camp have gone so far to claim that the protesters where trained by foreign intelligence agencies. This is of course a preposterous claim that reflects the fears the protest movement has created among some of the political elite.

However, the protesters and youth have been vigilant thus far. It is really important to recognize that the demonstration now represents a fusing of the garbage crisis, dilapidated public services, and socioeconomic marginalization, all under the banner of a corrupt and ineffective political class. They have pushed back and ejected every politician who went to the protest hoping to take advantage of popular sentiment.

J: What is your sense of the different trajectories this campaign might take, and what do these trajectories hinge on?

MAN: Since we are affected by the region, we must realize that this movement could fail and could even open a path to military rule. However, there seems to be a consensus building among grassroots protesters that the street will be occupied until this corrupt ruling class falls. All that seems to matter on the street right now is to shatter the status quo that has long held Lebanon and its people prisoner.

If we can call this an uprising, then it is important to look at the dynamics on the ground: the street and the forces that reclaimed it. Many Lebanese at this particular moment are breaking away from the confines of their social­sectarian boxes. To understand the core of this protest movement, one ought to be where the leading sentiment of this rebellion exists. It is a mix of anger and vengeance by jobless, impoverished, socially alienated youth from different sects; LGBT individuals and activists who have been subject to violence and harassment by a patriarchal state; a variety of grassroots leftist movements; feminist activists and networks that have become increasingly active and visible in recent years; young mothers and fathers who struggle to provide an adequate life for their children.

Lebanon’s youth has followed one uprising after another in other Arab countries, recognized its possibilities, and yearned for real change. So far, this campaign appears to be the one and only opportunity that has—thus far— managed to unite us outside the political straightjacket of the March 14 versus March 8 political blocks, demanding the downfall of their politics. It is precisely this sentiment, this sort of anger, that we need to focus so as to further develop, and thus deliver a blow to the status quo.

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The Modernity of Sectarianism in Lebanon | Middle East Research and Information Project

Middle East Research and Information Project The Modernity of Sectarianism in Lebanon Reconstructing the Nation­State

by Ussama Makdisi (/author/ussama­makdisi) published in MER200 (/mer/mer200) On February 15, 1996, 13 squatters were killed in Beirut when the building they were living in was brought down by demolition workers for Solidere, Lebanon’s reconstruction and development company. Solidere, a brainchild of Prime Minister Rafiq al­Hariri, claimed it was a mistake; the dead were carted off, destitute migrants with no place in the government’s vision of the revitalized cosmopolitan city center. Brushing off criticism that reconstruction is proceeding too fast, the prime minister insisted that Lebanon today is the site of “a struggle between good and evil.” The alternatives facing the nation, he insisted, are clear: either the “will to progress” or “the will to despair.”

Despite such forward­sounding proclamations, Lebanese politics in the post­war period mark the resurrection of the confessional state in Lebanon, the same kind of political divisions along sectarian lines that led to the civil war. [1] (#[1]) But Hariri’s government claims it is determined to forge a new era of “national unity.” Perhaps its most ambitious project of all is a new national history textbook, redirecting the citizen towards a common national past and displacing sectarian narratives that thrived during the recent war. The ostensible goal is to urge the Lebanese to abandon their “premodern” loyalties of religion that are said to have inhibited the growth of a democratic, civil and secular society.

Central to this effort is the dichotomy between nationalist development and progress on the one hand, and allegedly pre­modern religious loyalties on the other. Ta’ifiyya or sectarianism refers to this allegedly atavistic tendency among Lebanon’s various religious communities that undermines wataniyya or patriotism; thus the intercommunal massacres of 1860 and, of course, those that occurred between 1975 and 1990 are often cited as prominent examples of sectarianism. [2] (#[2]) Thus while the nation is projected as inclusive, stable and democratic, sectarianism is depicted as exclusionary, undemocratic and disordered. Above all else, the post­war state claims to be part of a modernity which ascends from an ancient lineage; the downtown excavations in the rebuilding of Beirut proudly display Phoenician and Roman artifacts. The layers of civilization each form part of a nationalist narrative that inevitably concludes with modem Beirut, “an ancient city for the future,” as the reconstruction slogan has it. In the modern reconstructed nation, sectarianism serves as a metaphor for the unwanted past.

“Sectarianism,” however, is a neologism born in the age of nationalism to signify the antithesis of nation; its meaning is predicated on and constructed against a territorially bounded liberal nation­state. In Lebanon, sectarianism is as modem and authentic as the nation­ state. In fact, the two cannot be dissociated. In India, scholars such as Gyan Pandey and Partha Chatterjee have persuasively argued that contemporary communalism is rooted not in ancient history but in the governing politics and discourses of the British colonial regime which were appropriated by the nationalists to legitimate specific paths of elitist development. Sectarianism in Lebanon can be interpreted similarly. [3] (#[3]) At the same time, however, the case of Lebanon differs from the Indian example in that the modem state was established as liberal and (putatively) democratic, but not secular. From the outset, the nationalist project has been intertwined with what historian Ahmad Beydoun calls the “innommable,” the unutterable contradiction that has haunted Lebanon: the paradox of a national unity in a multi­ religious society wherein religion is inscribed as the citizen’s most important public attribute ­­ stamped prominently on his or her identification and voter registration card. [4] (#[4]) A second difference from the Indian example lies in the nature of decolonization. The Lebanese state was created as a result of a series of compromises between the French mandatory power and the indigenous elites, and not as the result of popular anti­colonial mobilization. An ethos of national unity was never forged in a collective struggle.

Religion and the Colonial Encounter The drive to create a territorially unified Lebanese nation­state was in part the result of European (primarily but not exclusively French) colonial myth­making. Henri Lammens, whose 1921 La Syrie: precis historique imagined Lebanon as a Phoenician refuge, [5] (#[5]) invoked a pre­Islamic and pre­Arab “integrity” that, with “French aid,” could fulfill “its legitimate desire to evolve in a national framework that its historical traditions have created.” [6] (#[6]) Even before Lammens, European travelers, missionaries and consuls saw Mount Lebanon as a non­Muslim enclave from which the movement to civilize and reform the “fanatical” and “Mohemmedan” Ottoman Empire could be launched. [7] (#[7]) The technological and military superiority of the European powers, which deployed religion as a metaphor for the boundaries between modem civilization and pre­modern barbarism, legitimated European interference in the affairs of a “backward” Muslim and Asiatic region. More importantly, colonialism transformed the social, political and economic significance of religion into a reified order wherein decontextualized religious identities alone defined individuals. [8] (#[8]) The European powers singled out the Christian communities of the Ottoman Empire for special protection from the Muslim population.

Missionaries were sent to proselytize among and educate the Christians, including females. Christian traders were favored by European merchants, and Christian work forces, in Mount Lebanon at least, were actively recruited by French silk merchants. The irony of this European intervention is that it coincided with Ottoman efforts to reform the Empire. The Tanzimat movement which began in 1839 abolished legal distinctions between the different communities of the Empire in the hopes of fostering an Ottoman nationality (Osmanlilik) and with it a sense of Ottoman compatriotship.

Ta’ifa as Nation Prior to the nineteenth century, communities in Mount Lebanon were predicated not so much on religious distinctions as on hierarchical politics of notability that cut across religious lines. Villages were often religiously mixed. Notables, known as the a‘yan, dominated the self­representation of their communities. Great families controlled different regions of Mount Lebanon and formed an interdependent trans­sectarian elite. They were separated from the ahali, or common people, by an almost impermeable barrier which was reinforced by customs of clothing, language, title, land holdings and marriage alliances. The notion of a unified, territorially demarcated nationalism of adherents of a particular religion that transcended kin, village or region was absent.

During the course of the nineteenth century, demographic changes in favor of the Christian population, increasing European penetration and economic incorporation into European markets inspired local elites to make appeals to the European powers along religious lines to

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The Modernity of Sectarianism in Lebanon | Middle East Research and Information Project legitimate their position in rapidly changing circumstances. Both the Maronite and Druze elites sought to cohere an exclusively religious definition of community, where loyalties of kinship, region and village were subsumed by an overarching religious solidarity. The sect or ta’ifa became the quasi­nation defined against other ta’ifas.

The deployment of religion­based politics by the elites inadvertently opened the possibility of popular mobilization along communal lines. Unlike the old regime where one’s social rank was determinate in local society, sectarian discourse lent itself to a variety of often contradictory uses. The elites tried to project a stable and ordered vision of the religious nation, while popular elements sought to appropriate religious discourse for social liberation, as in an 1858 peasant uprising in Mount Lebanon led by Maronite peasants against Maronite landlords. The resulting religious mobilizations and politics on both elite and popular levels illustrated the incompleteness and fragility of the ta’ifa as nation. Precisely because the meaning of religion as an exclusive base of identity was new, its coherence was constantly undermined by continuities of old regime definitions of identity that stressed region or family. As a result, despite the appearance of two sides during the 1840­1860 period, one Maronite and one Druze, there were in fact intra­communal contestations over what a “true” Maronite or Druze was. These generated violent, complex and protracted struggles among peasants, landlords and clergy.

Labeling the period between 1840­1860 as “sectarian,” the current Lebanese state has sought to limit discussion of this era due to the obvious burden it places on the narrative of national history. In the process, ironically, it has ignored the truly distinctive feature of that era: the violent entrance of the ahali into the politics of a socially hierarchical and extremely unrepresentative society, and the desperate desire of the feuding elites to maintain their power in the social order by trying to develop a viable narrative of ta’ifa as nation that at once excluded rival elites of different ta’ifas and sustained communal hierarchies.

State as Nation The tensions between the popular and elitist understanding of the ta’ifa as nation persisted until World War I. Then a new and broader discourse of liberation and freedom emerged, partly in response to educational and socio­economic changes, the rise of an Arab print media, and Wilsonian principles of national “self­determination,” and partly in reaction to the Turkification policies pursued by the Young Turks. [9] (#[9]) In the context of the more direct massive European intervention, the Ottoman Levant was forced into the era of nation­ states. Like the nineteenth­century discourse of ta’ifa as nation, however, the nationalist impetus, while originally foreign and European, took on regional permutations and was transformed by local elites. European insistence on essential differences between Christianity and Islam provided one of the key legitimating factors to their intervention in the Middle East. The French had an obvious interest in separating Lebanon from Syria; Henri Lammens’ vision was a poignant example of French colonial ideology that used invented cultural and historical narratives of the Lebanese “nation” to justify the imposition of the mandate system in the Middle East generally, and the creation of Grand Liban in 1920 specifically. [10] (#[10]) The creation of Lebanon, however, could not have succeeded without the support of the Lebanese elites, particularly the Maronites who stressed their pro­French character. After 1920, the issue was no longer enshrining the ta’ifa as a nation but forging a Lebanese nation­ state composed of many ta’ifas. The Maronites used their historical ties to the French and their alleged numerical superiority to present themselves as the natural leaders of an independent Lebanon ­­ one that had existed for centuries as a refuge for persecuted minorities. By then the Druze had been eclipsed politically and demographically by the Sunnis, who formed the largest Muslim community in Grand Liban; Sunnis, for the most part, rejected the idea of Lebanon and favored a pan­Arab nation, specifically a Greater Syria.

Despite the contradictions between Lebanese and Arab nationalist discourses, both were self­avowedly modern in their use of the language of liberation, freedom and natural rights. While the “people” formed the basis of nationalist ideology, in reality the popular participation did not fundamentally impinge upon the continuity of elite politics and rivalries. [11] (#[11])

Sectarianism as the Nation The creation of the Lebanese republic in 1926, which gave the Maronite elites of Lebanon the lion’s share of the power, was supplemented in 1943 by a “National Pact” which began the era of formal independence. Presented to the people as a fait accompli, the National Pact, itself a result of elite compromises, essentially legitimated a system of patronage and a division of spoils among the elites of the new nation­state, thus betraying the inability to locate a genuinely national base. The Maronite elites were guaranteed the presidency, the Sunnis the prime ministership and the Shi‘a the speakership of Parliament. [12] (#[12]) The molding of nationalist politics onto an Ottoman social order created a sectarian nationalism and the politics of nationalist elitism.

[13] (#[13]) The problem of how to integrate the masses into the new nation without opening the realm of backroom politics became the central concern of the elites. Electoral and personal status laws were regulated by the religious affiliation such that to be Lebanese meant to be defined according to religious affiliation. There could be no Lebanese citizen who was not at the same time a member of a particular religious community.

Given the failure of state officials to extend their reach to predominantly Shi‘a areas in southern Lebanon and northern regions like ‘Akkar, the nationalist project of Lebanon remained inseparably linked to state­affiliated elites, who dispensed jobs, paved roads and brought electricity to their own regions. The “sectarian balance,” based on the 1932 population census, paralyzed the government and reinforced the system of patronage. Corruption served as the effective social security system of the Lebanese. Benefits could not be obtained simply on the basis of citizenship rights because jobs, housing, telephones and education were guaranteed not by the state but through appeals to deputies and ministers and presidents who were themselves appointed or elected according to sectarian laws. [14] (#[14]) In this sense, sectarianism, which undermines the secular national ideal and creates subversive religious loyalties, is umbilically tied to the 1943 National Pact which institutionalized the modern, independent Lebanese state.

As a result of the creation of an elite­dominated sectarian Lebanon, popular mobilization occurred on two fronts, often simultaneously.

On the one hand there has been intellectual and working­class dissent. A rash of strikes and political unrest, which cut across religious lines, culminated in the early 1970s in massive worker and student demonstrations seeking to break the domination and vested interests of the national elites. The issues at stake in the Ghandour strike in 1972, for example, were basic enough: Workers demanded wage increases to keep up with inflation, the reduction of shifts from ten to eight hours and the right to unionize. The government’s response was to call in the internal security forces, which promptly crushed the strike. The government licensing of the Protein Company in 1975, which threatened to give it a monopoly of the fishing industry, unleashed more violent protest by poor fishermen.

Another form of popular unrest soon came to the fore, organized along sectarian lines and exacerbated by the presence of the PLO. The militia politics which gripped Lebanon between 1975 and 1990 were, at least in part, another manifestation of popular mobilization against the elite­dominated Lebanese state. This popular sectarianism accentuated the untenable contradictions upon which the nation was anchored. Whereas compromises between the elites were meant to divide power among different communities, they in fact divided power among the elites of various communities at the expense of the divided and disenfranchised majority. Whereas the elites compromised in the hope of containing sectarian conflicts, many of the citizens used sectarianism to express their discontent with the

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The militias took sectarian politics to their logical and destructive conclusion. Wartime sectarianism was popular and sect­transcending; transgressions were simultaneously directed against their own elites as much as against other communities. Both the violence and the positions taken against it loosened social boundaries. The bomb shelters became wartime parliaments, where the great and the small were finally forced to rub shoulders. [15] (#[15]) The state’s total collapse was evidenced by the inability to provide electricity and water, not to mention voting or security. The nation, however, survived. If nothing else, militia rule empowered some non­elites. That the target of most of the militias’ fury resulted in the suffering of other ordinary citizens, and that the wealthy emigrated with most of their wealth intact, should not obscure the fact that militia politics were, in part, popular gratification at the expense of national elitism.

Sectarianism was as much a repudiation of the social hierarchy as it was a collapse of the Lebanese state that had been created by the National Pact.

The war, to be sure, forced changes among various leaderships, but this did not ultimately change the style of leadership. The war ended with a new National Pact called the Ta’if agreement ­­ another mysterious backroom deal without popular participation through referendum and, like the 1943 pact, imposed as another fait accompli. In the post­war period, the new elites epitomize the politics of the past. In many cases they are the same individuals or from the same families. While a discourse of democracy and national unity has reemerged, the dynamics of a democratic society have faltered. The Lebanese state has been resurrected, but as in the pre­war period it is again paralyzed by elite feuds and the neglect of the ordinary citizens, nearly a third of whom are estimated to live in poverty. [16] (#[16])

Conclusion Capitalizing on public revulsion of the war, there has been a disingenuous call by certain government leaders to “abolish” sectarianism and to efface all traces of the war. The government has declared a return of “legitimacy” (shar‘iyya) over all of Lebanon. It has also reinscribed the confessionally based hierarchical social order while reconstructing the nation­state.

Instead of educating citizens, the director of the government­mandated history project recently stated that the approved history of Lebanon “must eliminate everything that creates conflict between Lebanese” in order to facilitate the healing process. Only later, he said, “can we raise the truth dosage.” [17] (#[17]) Sectarianism, however, is a problem not of the past but of the present. Although it is constructed as the dark, deviant underside of the nationalist narrative, sectarianism is a nationalist creation that dates back no further than the beginnings of the modern era when European powers and local elites forged a politics of religion amid the emerging nation­ state system. Its remedy comes not in setting up the executioner’s scaffold, as the Lebanese president said recently, but in reflecting on the meaning of sectarianism in a country where the citizen is given little choice between the exclusionary politics of the elites or a self­destructive gratification born of rebellion against the resurrected confessional social order.

Endnotes [1] As witnessed by its use to describe developments in the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia, “Lebanonization” has come to refer to any process of national disintegration and failed modernization throughout the world.

[2] See Leila Fawaz, An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1994); Theodor Hanf, Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon: Decline of a State and Rise of a Nation (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993).

[3] Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992).

[4] Ahmad Beydoun, Le Liban: ltineraire dans une guerre incivile (Paris: Karthala, 1993), p. 22.

[5] See Kamal Salibiin, A House of Many Mansions: History of Lebanon Reconsidered (London: I. B. Tauris, 1988), p. 134.

[6] Henri Lammens, La Syria: precis historique (Beirut: Dar Lahad Khater, 1994 (1921)), p. 365.

[7] This is part of a wider study of sectarianism that is the subject of my unpublished doctoral thesis, “Fantasies of the Possible: Colonialism and the Construction of Communalism in Nineteenth­Century Ottoman Lebanon.”

[8] Partba Chatteljee dealt with the subject of how the colonial government in India tirelessly sought to “unambignously” classify the Indian population into coherent castes that defied the complex and often “uncolonizable” voices of actually existing Indian people. See Partba Chatteljee, The Nation and lts Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 220.

[9] The ideologies of the Young Turks are very well described by Sukru Hanioglu in The Young Turks in Opposition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). See also Rashid Khalidi, “Ottomanism and Arabism in Syria Before 1914: A Reassessment” in Rashid Khalidi, Lisa Anderson, Muhammad Muslih and Reeva S. Simon, eds., The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).

[10] An independent Lebanon, wrote Lammens, was the only guarantee “to allow full liberty” for the Lebanese, whose Christianity required a separate republic that could be protected from Muslim domination. The declaration of Grand Liban signified France’s sacred duty to help Syria and Lebanon “develop” independently. Lammens, p. 300.

[11] James L. Gelvin has written an important essay on the populist dimension to the rise of Arab nationalism in Damascus that moves away from elite­based analyses to stress what he calls a “populist political sociability” that explains the emergence of Arab nationalism as a mass­based ideology. “Social Origins of Popular Nationalism in Syria: Evidence for a New Framework” International Journal of Middle East Studies 26 (1994).

[12] Farid el­Khazen, The Communal Pact of National Identities: The Making and Polities of the 1943 National Pact, Papers on Lebanon 12 (Oxford: Center for Lebanese Studies, 1991), p. 5. A significant amount of work has been done on the persistence of “feudalism” in post­1943 Lebanon. Set forth in Michael Hudson, The Precarious Republic (New York: Random House, 1968), the topic has continued to generate interest by scholars such as Samir Khalaf, Lebanon’s Predicament (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987) and Tabitha Petran, The Struggle Over Lebanon (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1987). The most recent contribution to this is Michael Gilsenan’s study of power in twentieth­century northern Lebanon, Lords of the Lebanese Marches: Violence and Narrative in an Arab Society (London: I. B. Tauris, 1996).

[13] Ahmed Beydoun has written an excellent book on the subject of the creation and manipulation of historical narratives in modem Lebanon, Le Liban, une histoire disputee: identite et temps dans l’historographie lihanese contemporaine (Beirut: Publications de l’Universite Libanaise, 1984).

[14] Gilsenen’s Lords of the Lebanese Marches vividly exhibits the contours of sectarianism and patronage politics by local landlords who subvert state institutions while at the same time run for office and are appointed ministers in the Lebanese government. See also Petran, pp. 35­37.

[15] Hashim Sarkis has discussed the “territorialization” of identities during the war by pointing out that the violence provided new “spatial opportunities” to redefine identities that emerged after and because of the onset of physical destruction. See Rasim Sarkis, “Territorial Claims: Architecture and Post­War Attitudes Toward the Built Environment,” in Samir Khalaf and Philip S. Khoury, eds., Recovering Beirut: Urban Design and Post­War Reconstruction (Leiden: Brill, 1993), pp. 100­127.

[16] “Lebanese National Report for the UN Summit on Social Development,” Copenhagen, March 1995.

[17] Quoted in Time International, January 15, 1996.

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May 12, 2015

Then and Now: Lebanese State Institutions During the Early Years of Independence Number 11 Dec 2012Jan 2013

Number 10 Oct-Nov 2012

Number 09 Aug-Sept

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Q&A with Ziad Abu-Rish, Assistant Professor of Middle East History at Ohio University.

The Lebanese Center for Policy Studies spoke with Dr. Ziad Abu-Rish to discuss the history of state institutions in early independence Lebanon and some of the legacies they left behind. Dr. Abu-Rish is an Assistant Professor of Middle East History at Ohio University who is currently working on a book project entitled “Making the Economy, Producing the State: Conflict and Institution Building in Lebanon, 1946-1955.” He earned his doctorate from the University of California Los Angeles, where he completed a dissertation on the same topic. We asked Dr. Abu-Rish to consider his historical interests in light of current debates, and whether Lebanese citizens then had similar views about the state as they do today.

There have been discussions over the last few years concerning the Lebanese state, or lack thereof, in terms of public policy, public interest, and national development. As a historian of state formation and institution building in early independence Lebanon, what are some of the ways you believe a historical perspective on this topic can help shed light on contemporary debates?

Reading primary sources from the early independence period, whether they are local newspapers, personal memoirs, or foreign reports, I am always taken aback by how invested elites and the broader population of Lebanon were in the process of post-colonial state building. In the first decade of independence, various social actors held a very different set of expectations and motivations. Most of these were anchored in a belief in the normative and transformative role Lebanese state institutions should and could play in terms of political representation, economic development, and social peace. Such expectations and motivations pre-date the political polarization, social fragmentation, and militia mobilization that characterized the Lebanese Civil War period and the years immediately preceding

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it. By pre-date, I do not mean foreshadow. Rather, they represent a divergence, an alternative possibility, even if that alternative was eventually foreclosed by certain events, dynamics, and choices.

I think it is important to understand that Lebanese citizens living in the first decade of independence could not have predicted the civil war was coming.

Therefore, for those of us dealing with the present, it is important to understand the relevance of the civil war beyond destroying infrastructure and/or restructuring social and institutional relations. We need to appreciate that the experience of the war itself has cast a long shadow on how people in Lebanon as well as those who study Lebanon view the period (or periods) before the war, and with it the efficacy and meaning of what people term “the state in Lebanon.” We need to be wary of taking our present understandings of political, social, institutional, and sectarian dynamics as being fixed, and thus casting a retrospective view across Lebanon’s history. For example, the dominant (or common sense) meaning of sectarianism of the everyday Lebanese person was something very different before 1958 than it was after 1958, to say nothing of the post-1975 period. Each of these periods represented a very different set of assumptions and expectations, to say nothing of the configuration of political forces. Similarly, our current set of assumptions about the workings of “the state” in Lebanon is not one that was necessarily shared by contemporaries of the early independence period. Put differently, the meaning of “the state” in Lebanon, not to mention state building, sectarianism, and a plethora of other processes, is historically contingent and subject to competing frames.

Therefore, I would argue that a historical perspective helps highlight the contingent nature of political identities, social polarization, and levels of investment in the state, nation, and other forms of organizing a political community. It helps us break out of deterministic claims about the so-called failure of state building, the endemic nature of corruption, and the futility of inclusive economic development. There was a time when community activists, political groups, and certain state elites fundamentally believed in a project of state building; one that was responsive to the needs of a majority of the population. This was not because of the absence of corrupt, rent-seeking, and politically exploitative state officials and local elites—far from it. After all, those dynamics were not that different from any other early post-colonial state. So the question is really one of the necessary conditions and choices concerning successful state building, rather than an outright impossibility of such a project by mere virtue of the fact that we are talking about Lebanon.

What are some of the specific state institutions that were created in the period you study and what does the timing and context of the establishment of those institutions tell us about why they were created?

Social scientists and other scholars who study institutions have frequently pointed to the ways in which institutional engineering is typically a contextual process that responds to specific moments, interests, and mobilizations, while at the same time drawing on particular legacies. In the case of commentary and scholarship on Lebanon, there is a prevalent (yet problematic) assumption that “the state” has not been a meaningful concept or force within Lebanese society. This assumption has led most scholars to neglect the variety of institutions that make up “the state,” their roles vis-à-vis various communities, and their particular histories.

Nevertheless, there are important and notable exceptions among scholars working http://www.lcps­lebanon.org/agendaArticle.php?id=49

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on Lebanon—and increasingly so.

Some institutions like the Parliament, the Office of the Prime Minister, and the Office of the President, not to mention others like the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Interior, predate independence. Nevertheless, these institutions themselves featured significant (if uneven) change in the wake of independence.

Furthermore, the first ten years or so of post-colonialism in Lebanon were characterized by the creation of a number of new institutions that represented new (or expanded) arenas for state policy. These include, but are not limited to, new ministries such as those of defense, information, social affairs, and planning.

They also included a number of other smaller-scale public institutions such as the Lebanese University or the Department of Electricity and Public Transportation.

This latter institution was created in 1954 and formed one of several institutional origins of the present-day Ministry of Energy and Water. Why, for example, was this department created in 1954? Where are the institutional origins of its water component? Why was the Ministry of Energy and Water not created until several decades later? The answers to all of these questions have to do with very specific contexts and developments in each of the electricity, water, and transportation sectors. Thus, we can see how questions about state institutions can serve as windows into the history of spheres of life that are also much less historicized than they should be. As a counter example, one can wonder: Why was it that a ministry exclusively devoted to industry does not appear until much further along in the trajectory of institution building? Yet at the same time, one can then also wonder about the ways in which questions of industry (i.e., manufacturing) were dealt with in the absence such a ministry.

All of these newly created institutions certainly drew on particular legacies of the French mandate. However, they also responded to the immediate context of independence, and the prevailing political, economic, and social conditions in Lebanon at the time. For example, one cannot understand the timing of the creation of the Ministry of Information without properly appreciating the attempt of the Lebanese bureaucracy to consolidate the country’s independence and of the ruling coalition to consolidate its incumbency. The contexts for these attempts was a mushrooming of newspaper and book publications, the growing influence of radio as a communication technology, and a variety of politically-sensitive developments such as labor mobilization, foreign journalists, and so forth.

Looking at the strongest state institutions in early independence Lebanon, were they mostly a product of French mandate Lebanon or was the Lebanese state at that time capable of singlehandedly establishing and sustaining strong and reliable institutions that adequately delivered services to citizens?

In other words, is the failure/weakness of Lebanese institutions today mostly a result of the civil war, or have government institutions never had strong roles/adequate capacities in independent Lebanon?

This is a really important question that would require more space than this present exercise permits. From what I can tell, there is not a pattern of Frenchcreated institutions performing more efficiently or effectively than those created after independence. One need only consider the roles of the Ministry of Information, the Ministry of Social Affairs, and the Ministry of Planning to appreciate the “strength” of institutions created in the aftermath of French evacuations. These three institutions played an important role in shaping the http://www.lcps­lebanon.org/agendaArticle.php?id=49

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political field and its attendant social mobilizations. In terms of the question of causality, it really depends on what level of analysis we want to engage in. For example, I would argue—drawing on the work of some key scholars (e.g., Reinoud Leenders)—that the “weakness” of state institutions today has much more to do with the dynamics of the civil war and the post-war settlement than any inherent institutional capacity in Lebanon. On another level, Lebanon’s state institutions never played the role that state institutions in countries such as Syria, Egypt, and Iraq did during the latter’s statist periods. Yet, that specific (and relative) “failure” has more to do with the contingency of authoritarian state formation and attending populist economic development that took place, than any inherent “problem” with state institutions in Lebanon. This is not to idealize the Lebanese past, as it is certainly rife with its own specificities and problematic elements. Yet, if we compare Lebanon in the early independence period with Syria, Egypt, and Iraq during their authoritarian state building period, we are comparing apples and oranges. If, however, we compare Lebanon in the late 1940s and early 1950s with Syria, Egypt, and Iraq during that same time, we are likely to see far more similarities in state capacities, policies, and discourses than many have cared to admit. This is once again, of course, notwithstanding the legacies, contingencies, and social conflicts specific to each country. The question therefore highlights the elephant in the room when discussing Lebanon. Are our notions of “failure/weakness” relative to Lebanon’s own history, or that of other countries with radically different trajectories? It is time we devote the necessary attention to researching and analyzing Lebanon’s early independence period in its own right.

Much of popular memory and historical analysis of Lebanon claims that the state has played a minimal role in economic development throughout the country’s modern history. In what ways does your research confirm or challenge such views of state-market relations?

Lebanese state institutions have played a central role in economic development. I should be clear that I do not mean to say that Lebanon experienced a phase of state-led economic development. What I mean to say is that the idea of Lebanon as an open, laissez-faire, service-based economy is deeply implicated in the history of state institutions, and was itself a product of debates, struggles, and policies that defined the early independence period. I mean this in two ways. First, it was specific state policies that made possible many of the economic dynamics that observers consider to be features of market- or private sector-led development. For example, the role Lebanon has played as an entrepôt trade center would not have been possible without the role of state institutions in managing the Lebanese currency exchange and money supply, expanding the country’s road network, constructing the Beirut airport, and continuously upgrading ports—all of which experienced critical turning points in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Even more so, government-negotiated trade agreements were a central component of Lebanon’s emerging post-World War Two regional and global trade role. Trade does not simply happen as a default relationship. It requires partners, legal infrastructure, exchanges, and facilities. It was during the early independence period that key trade agreements were established with a number of Arab and nonArab states. The histories of these agreements are yet to be narrated and analyzed beyond the simplistic notion that they were foregone conclusions. We thus need to move away from exclusively equating state intervention in the economy with state-led economic development a la Egypt and Syria, and instead explore the specific ways in which state institutions were implicated in the making of the very economy that we have come to assume is defined by the “absence” of the state. http://www.lcps­lebanon.org/agendaArticle.php?id=49

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There are specific moments in which state institutions played a very direct and interventionist role in the economy, broadly defined. These include the subsidization of certain basic goods, the nationalization of certain sectors, and the monopolization of certain activities. In Lebanon, one can consider the role of the state in subsidizing the price of wheat and fuel, or even shifts in the tax base of the Lebanese budget (i.e., transformations in the types and amounts of taxes the government collected).

In the time period that your research focuses on, to what extent were there popular calls for better state services and service delivery? How might one compare the level of public engagement or interest in state services between that time period and the present day?

This question brings us back to my earlier point about the level of elite and popular investment in the project of state building and economic development during the early independence period. Turning to the primary sources available from the period, one regularly comes across a broad array of political groups, social movements, public events, and all sorts of publications that directly address the issue of state-funded and state-operated services—or the lack thereof. If anything, the early independence period can be described as one in which formal and informal politics focused on one main question: “Now that we have our independence, what are we going to do with it?” A central axis around which responses to that question pivoted was that of the role of the state in providing certain services, whether they be public utilities such as water and electricity or other services such as education, healthcare, and consumer protection. As for comparing the level of public engagement, I am not sure how productive that would be given a variety of theoretical and methodological factors. That being said, it is clear that today there is a significant degree of pessimism and cynicism vis-à-vis the government and the role of state institutions in bringing about meaningful change in the lives of everyday citizens. In this regard, I would simply refer back to my earlier point about retrospective claims. Public engagement in Lebanon during the early independence period was premised on a belief in both the potential transformative role of state institutions as well as the normativity of such a role when it came to questions of public services and economic development. One need only look at the example of the public campaign against the Beirut Electricity Company in the early 1950s. The campaign called on the government to further regulate consumer prices—let alone nationalize the electricity sector—as the best means of protecting both the national interests of the Lebanese state and the everyday wellbeing of its citizens.

What geographic/spatial logic did service delivery/development follow during the time period you studied? Was it more concentrated on the capital city (or more broadly speaking key cities), or did it tend to be more balanced regionally? How would you qualify the role of municipalities during this period in terms of development?

These are really excellent questions that demonstrate the need to move beyond traditional political and economic narratives of history in Lebanon. There is no doubt that state-sponsored service delivery in Lebanon during early independence was organized around an urban-biased and Beirut-centric logic. Yet, even such an assessment is in need of further qualification and specificity. Beirut, for instance, was subjected to a very stratified provisioning of public utilities such as water, electricity, and tramway service. Similarly, not all rural areas were equally http://www.lcps­lebanon.org/agendaArticle.php?id=49

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neglected, whether we analyze such neglect in qualitative or quantitative terms.

Akkar, the Beqaa, and Jabal Amil represent three very different rural areas, which received very different forms of state intervention, patronage, and planning, examples of which include irrigation, electrification, and road construction—to say nothing of health and educational services as well as military recruitment.

Even the cadastral survey and land registry took on very different trajectories in these areas. So while we might be on the right track in our general understanding of the rural neglect, urban bias, and Beirut centrism, we have much to account for as scholars and policy analysts. The same can be said of the role of municipalities during early independence. One of the most frequently reformed set of laws during that period pertains to the establishment, governing, and funding of municipalities, along with the overall web of relations in which they were embedded. Central to this was the relationship between municipalities, the offices of the mukhtar and muhafiz, as well as nationally-elected and appointed offices to one another and to various ministries. However, despite a few studies in Arabic, we are yet to fully understand how they called for what we today call “centralization” or “decentralization” manifested in the early independence period, despite repeated references to those very terms—even if they meant different things then.

What about sectarianism? How does sectarianism play a role in the early independence period?

The early independence period has important insights regarding these dynamics.

Particularly important, as mentioned above, is to recognize that the meaning of sectarianism in this period is really different than what we think of today. While there certainly was the memory of sectarian violence from the nineteenth century, very few people seem to have had in mind an idea of sectarianism parallel to what manifested during the 1975-1990 civil war or thereafter. This is important for several reasons. First of all, we should note that the principle of confessional representation was openly discussed by politicians, lawyers, and several other interest groups as a temporary (rather than permanent) measure. However one views the honesty of such claims, it is important to realize that, at least in so far as the level of formal speech is concerned, sectarian allotment was not necessarily viewed as the raison d’etre of the state. More so, there were frequent calls for ending sectarian practices, either at the level of the state bureaucracy or that of personal status courts. Newspaper coverage from the period highlights important strikes and protest campaigns seeking to directly challenge sect-based hiring practices and sectarian differences in the management of personal status issues such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, and so forth.

Also important is the fact that sectarian-based political parties were not necessarily as dominant during this time, to say nothing of being sectarian in the same way. For example, it was the Constitutional Bloc and the National Party that represented the dominant elite-based political groupings, into which we saw the entrance of several reformist coalitions and parties that periodically disrupted this binarization of politics. Even the Kataib Party, which was out of power prior to 1958, was both more populist in its demands and frequently sought temporary strategic alliances with Sunni-identified groups such as al-Najada and al-Nida’ alWatani. This is of course to say nothing of the Communist Party or the Progressive Socialist Party, before the defection from the latter group to the ranks of the Ba‘th Party and others.

My purpose in highlighting these dynamics is not to create a utopic vision of the http://www.lcps­lebanon.org/agendaArticle.php?id=49

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past. Rather, it is to point to historical developments that do not fit the received wisdom about the early independence period and thus are not even subject to inquiry. The early independence period was very much one in which primary political mobilizations featured cross-sectarian coalitions that fundamentally challenge our assumptions of how Lebanese citizens identified themselves, their interests, and their allies and adversaries—irrespective of whether these experiments ultimately failed, were derailed, or carried through to their alleged logical conclusions. This is not to say that sectarianism was non-existent. It is simply to argue that its manifestations were different. In fact, I believe that one of the more lacking areas of inquiries in the history of Lebanon is the workings of sectarianism during the early independence period. Similar to the question relating to the nature and functioning of state institutions, much of what we allegedly know about this period vis-à-vis sectarianism is either assumed or projected backward from the post 1958 or 1975 periods.

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Society Against the

State

P ri m i t i ve s o c i e t i e s a r e s o c i e t i e s w i th o u t a S t a t e . T h i s f�1C t u a l j udgm e n t , accurate i n i t s e l f, actual l y h i d e s an o p i n i o n , a val u e j u dg m e n t that i m m e d iate l y throws d o u b t on t h e p o s s i b i l i ty o f cons t i t u t i ng p o l i ti c a l anthropology as a stri c t s c i e n c e . What t h e s t a t e m e n t s ay s , i n fac t , i s t h a t p r i m i t i v e s o c i e t i e s are m i s s i ng s o m e t h i ng - the State - that i s essential to the m , as i t i s to any o t h e r s o c i et y : o u r own , fo r instan c e . Conseq u e n t l y, those soci e­ ties are

civilized

incomplete ; -

ence o f a

t h ey arc n o t q u i t e t r u e s o c i e t i e s - t h e y a r c n o t

t h e i r e x i stence c o n t i n u e s to s u ffer the p a i n fu l e x peri­

lack

- the lack of a State - which, try a s they may, they

w i l l nevcr make u p . W h e ther c l earl y stated or n o t , that i s w h a t comes through in the e x p lorers' chronicles and the work of research­ ers a l i k e : s o c i e t y is i nconceivab l e w i th o u t the State ; the State i s t h e d e s t i ny o f every socie ty. One detects an e t h n o c e n tric b i a s i n t h i s a p p roach ; m o re o ften than not i t i s u n c o n sc i o u s , and s o t h e more firml y anchore d . I ts immediate, spontaneous reference , whil e perhaps n o t the best know n , is i n any case the m o s t fam i l i ar. I n e ffe c t , each one o f u s carries vv i thin h i m s e l f, i n tern a l i z ed l i k e t h e beli ever's fait h , the certitude that society e x i s t s fix the State . How, the n , c a n o n e c o n c e i ve o f the very e x i stence o f p r i m i tive s o c i e­ t i e s i f n o t as the rej ects o f universal h i story, anachro n i s t i c rel i c s o f

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a r e m o t e s t age that everyw h e re e l s e has been tran s c e n d ed ? H ere one recogn i z e s e t h n o c e n tri s m 's other fac e , the c o m p l e m e n tarv c o n v i c t i o n that h i s to r y is a o n e - way progressi o n , that every s o c i ­ e t y i s c o n d e m n e d to e n t e r i n t o t h a t h i story and p a s s through t h e stages w h i c h l e a d fro m savagery to c i v i l i zati o n . "Al l c i v i l i ze d p e o ­ p l e s w e r e o n c e savage s , " w ro t e Raynal . B u t t h e asserti o n o f an obv i o u s evo l u tion can n o t j u s t i fy a doctrine which , arh i trari l y tying the state o f c i v i l i za t i o n t o t h e c i v i l i z a t i o n of the State , d e signates the latter as t h e n e c e s sary end res u l t assigned to all s o c i e t i e s . O n e m a y ask what has kept t h e l a s t o f the pri m i tive peop l e s as they are .

I n rea l i t y, t h e s a m e o l d evo l u t i on i s m remains i n tact beneath

t h e Dl o d e rn formulati o n s . 1\1 o rc subtle \-vhen coucheJ i n t h e l d l l gu age o f a n t h ro p o l og y i n stead o f p h i l o s o phy, i t i s o n a h�\'cl w i t h o t h e r categori e s w h i c h clai m t o b e s c i e n t i fi c . I t has al read y b e e n re m a r k e d t h a t a rc h a i c s oc i e t i e s are a l m ost al ways c l assed n ega­ t i ve l y, u n d e r the h e a d i n g o f l ack : soc i e t i es w i t h o u t a S t a t e , soc i e­ t i e s w i t h o u t w ri t i ng , s o c i e t i e s w i th o u t h i sto ry. T h e c l a s s i ng o f t h e s e s oc i e t i e s o n t h e e c o n o m i c p l a n e a p pears to b e o f t h e s a m e o rd e r : s oc i e t i e s w i t h a s u b s i s t e n c e e c o n o my. I f o n e m e a n s by t h i s t h a t p ri m i tive soci e t i e s are u nacqua i n te d w i t h a market e c o n o m y to w h i c h s u r p l u s p ro d u c t s fl ow, s t ri c t l y s p ea k i ng o n e s a y s n o t h ­ i ng . O n e i s c o n t e n t to o b s e rve a n a d d i t i o n a l l a c k and c o n t i n u e s to u s e o u r own worl d as t h e rc fl' r e n c e po i n t : t h o s e soc i e t i es w i t h o u t a S t a t e , w i t h o u t w ri t i ng , w i t h o u t h i s t o ry a rc a l so w i th o u t a m a r­ ket. But - c o m m o n sense m ay object - what good is a market when n o s u rpl u s e x i s t s ? Now, t h e n o t i o n ofa s u h s i stence e c o n o m y con­ ceals w i t h i n i t the i m p l i c i t assu m p t i o n t h a t i f pri m i t ive s o c i e t i e s d o n o t p ro d u c e a s u rpl u s , t h i s i s because t h ey arc i n c a p a b l e o f d o i ng s o , e n t i re l y a b s o rb e d a s t h ey a re i n prod u c i ng t h e m i n i m u m n e c e s sa r y tt) r s u r v i val , It)r s u b s i s t e n c e . The ti me-tested and ever serviceabl e i m age o f the d e s ti t u t i o n o f the Savages . And , to e x pl a i n that i nabi l i t y o f p r i m i t i ve s o c i et i e s to t e a r t h e m selves away fro m

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t h e s t ag n a t i o n o f l i v i ng hand to mouth , fro m p e r p e t u a l ali enati o n i n the search for foo d , i t i s said they a r e technically u n d e r-e q u i p ped , t e c h n o l ogical! y i n feri o r.

What i s the real i t y ? I f one u n d e rstand s by t e c h n i c s the set o f proce d u res men acquire not to ensure the absolute mastery of nature ( that o b tains only for our worl d and its i n sane Cart e s i an p roj e c t , w h o s e ecological consequences are just b eginning to b e measure d ) , b u t t o e n s ure a mastery of the natural environ m e n t

tive to their needs,

suited and rela­

then there i s no l o nger any reason whatever to

i m p u t e a technical i n feriority to pri m i t i ve soc i e ti e s : they d e m on­ s t rate a n abi l i ty to satisfy t h e i r needs which i s a t l east e q u al t o that o f which industrial and technological society i s s o proud . What t h i s m eans i s that every human gro u p manages , p e r fo r c e , t o e x e r­ c i se t h e n e cessary m i n i m u m of d o m i nati on over the e n v i r o n m e n t i t i n hab i t s . Up to the present w e k n o w o f no soci ety t h a t h a s o c c u ­ p i ed a n atural space i mpossi b l e to master, e x c e p t for reaso n s o f fo r c e o r v i o l e n c e : e i ther i t d i sappears , or i t changes territori e s .

T h e a s t o n i shing thi ng about t h e Eski m o , or the A u stral i an s , i s pre­ c i s e l y t h e d i versi ty, i magi n a t i o n , and fine quali ty of t h e i r t e c h n i ­ c a l a c t i v i ty, t h e p o w e r of i nvention and e ffi c i ency evi d e n t i n the t o o l s u s ed by those p e o p l e s . F u rthermo r e , o n e o n l y has to spend a l i tt l e t i m e i n an ethnograp h i c muse u m : the q u al i ty o f work m an ­ s h i p d i s p l ayed in manufac t u r i ng the i m p l e m e n t s o f everyday l i fe m a k e s n earl y every h u m b l e tool i n t o a work of art. H e n c e there i s n o h i e rarchy i n t h e technical d o m ai n ; there i s n o s u p eri o r o r i n fe­ rior technology. The only measure of how well a society is eCjui pped in t e c h n o l ogy is its ab i l i ty to meet its n e e d s in a g i v e n e n v i r o n ­ m e n t . A n d from thi s p o i n t o f v i ew, i t d o e s n o t appear i n the l east that p r i m i ti ve societies prove i ncapab l e of prov i d i ng them s e l v e s w i th t h e m e a n s t o ach i eve that end . Of cours e , the power o f tech­ nical i n novati on shown by p r i m i tive societies spreads over a p e r­ i o d o f t i m e . Nothing is i m me d i at e l y g iven ; there i s al ways the

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T H E ST A T E

ductive ac tivities. Take the case of the South American tribes who prac ticed agric u l tu r e , the Tupi-Guarani , for example , whose i d l e­ ness was such a source o f i rritati on to the French and the Portu­ guese. The economic l i fe o f those I ndians was p r i m aril y based on agriculture, secondari l y o n hunting, fishing, and gatheri ng. The same garden plot was used for from fou r to six consecu tive years , a fter which i t was aband oned , owing either to the depletion o f the so i l , or, more likely, to an invasion of the cul tivated space by a parasitic vegetati on that was d i ffi c u l t to eliminate . The b iggest part o f the work , pe rformed by the men, consi sted of c l earing the necessary arca by the slash and burn techn i q u e , u s i ng stonc axes.

T h i s j ob , accom pl i shed

at

t h e end of the rainy seas o n , would keep

the men busy for a m o n th or two. Nearly all the rest o f the agri c u l ­ tural process - p l a n t i ng , weeding , harvesting - was t h e respon s i ­ b i l i ty o f the wo m e n , i n kee p i ng w i th t h e sexual d i v i s i o n o f l abor.

T h i s happy con c l u s i o n fo l l ows: the men ( i . e . , one-hal f the popu­ lati o n ) worked about two months every fo u r years ! As fo r the rest o f the t i m e , they rese rved i t for occupati ons e x peri enced not as pain b u t as p l easure : h u n t i ng and fi s h i ng; enterta i n m e nts and d ri n k i ng sess i o n s ; and final l y fo r sat i s fy i ng the i r pass ionate l i k i ng fo r warfare .

Now, these q u a l i tative and i m press i onistic p i eces of i n f()rma­ tion find a stri k i ng confi rmation i n recent research - some o f i t sti l l i n progress - o f a rigorously conclusive natu re, since i t i nvolves measu ri ng the t i m e spent work i ng i n soc i e t i es w i th a subsi stence economy. The figures obtai ned , whether they concern nomad hunt­ ers o f the K a l ahari Desert, o r A m e r i ndian sedentary agri c u l t u r­ ists, reveal a mean apport i o n m e nt o f l es s than fo ur hours dai l y for ord i nary wo rk t i m e . J . L i zo t , who has been l i v i ng fiJr several years am ong the Ya n o m a m i I n d ians of the Venezu e l an A mazon reg i o n , h a s c h ro n o m etri c a l l y estab l i shed t h a t t h e average length of t i m e s p e n t work i ng each d ay b y ad u l t s , includin8 all activities, bare l y 1 94

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e x c e e d s three ho u rs . Although I d i d n o t carry o u t s i m i lar mea­ s u re m e n t s among the G uayak i , who are n o m ad h u n t e rs o f the Paraguayan forest, I can afll r m that those I n d ians, women and men, spent a t l east half the day in a lmost total i d l en e s s since hunting and c o l lecting took p lace ( b u t not every d ay ) between six a n d e l even o ' clock i n the morning, o r thereabo u t s . It is p r o b a b l e that s i m i lar studies conducted among the remai n i ng p r i m i tive peoples would produ c e anal ogous results, taking e c o l ogical d i f� ferences i nto accoun t .

T h u s we find ourselves at a tar remove from the wretchedness that s urrounds the i d ea of subsistence economy. Not only i s man i n p ri m i t ive societies not bound to the animal existence that woul d d erivc hoom a continual search for the means of s u rvival , b u t t h i s res u l t i s even bought a t th e p r i c e o f a remarkabl y s h o r t p e r i o d o f acti' ity. This means that primiti,"c societies have at their d isposal , i f t h ey s o desire, all the time necessary to i n c rease the p ro d u c t i o n 0 1 material goo d s . Common sense asks then : why woul d the men

l i v i ng i n those societies want to work and produce more, given that t h rc e or fou r h ou rs o f peacefu l activity suflke to meet the n e e d s of the gro u p ? \Vhat good would it d o thc m ? \V h a t p u rp o s e ,vou l d be served by the surp l u s t h u s accum u l at e d? \Nhat would it b e u s e d f()r? Men work more than their need s req u i re o n l y w h e n f()rced t o . A n d i t i s j us t that k i nd o f force w h i c h i s absent fi'o m t h e p ri m i t i ve worl d ; t h e absence o f that external force even d efin e s the n atu re of primitive soci ety. The term , subsistence cconom y, i s acc e p table f()f describing the economic o rganization o f those societie s , provided it is taken to mean not the necessi ty that d erives from a jack, an i ncapaci ty inherent i n that type o f society and i t s technology; b u t t h e contrary: the refusal o f a u s e l e s s excess, t h e d eterm i nation to make productive activity agree w i th the satis­ fac t i o n o f need s . A n d nothing more. Moreover, a closer l ook at th i ngs w i l l show there i s actually the prod uction o f a s u r p l u s i n

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pri m i ti v e s o c i e t i e s : t h e q u a n t i t y of c u l tivated p l a n t s produced ( manioc , maize, tobac c o , a n d so o n ) alway s e xceeds what i s nec­ essary for t h e gro u p 's c o n s u m p t i o n , i t b e i ng u nderstood that th i s production over and ahove i s i n c luded i n the usual time spent work­ ing. That s u rp l u s , obtained w i th o u t surp l u s l abor, is consumed , consum m a t e d , for p o l i ti ca l p u rposes properly so c a l l e d , on ks­ ti ve occas i o n s , when i n v i tations are e xtend e d , duri ng v i s i ts by out­ siders, and s o forth .

The advantage of a m e tal ax over a s t o n e ax is too obvi o u s to requ i re much d i sc u ss i o n : o n e can do perhaps ten t i m e s a s m u c h work w i t h t h e fi rst in t h e s a m e a m o u n t o f t i m e as w i th the sec­ o n d ; or e l s e , c o m p l ete the sam e am o u n t o f work i n one-tenth the t i m e . And when the I nd i a n s d i s c overed the produc t i ve s u perior­ i ty of the w h i t e m e n's a x e s , they wanted them n o t i n order to prod uce more i n the same amount of time, b u t to produce as much i n a peri od o f ti m e ten times shorter. E xactl y th e opposi te occurred . fo r, with t h e m e t a l a x c s , the v i o l e n c e , t h e fo rc e , the power w h i c h the c i v i l i ze d n ew c o m e rs broug h t t o bear o n t h e Savages c reated havoc in t h e p ri m i t i ve I n d i a n worl d .

P ri m i t i v e s o c i e t i e s are , a s L i zot w r i t e s w i t h regard t o t h e Yan o ma m i , soc i e t i es c ha racterized by t h e rej e c t i o n o f work : "The Yanomam i s ' c o n t e m p t f() r work and t h e i r d i s i nt ere s t i n t e c h n o ­ l ogi cal progress p e r s e a re beyo n d q u e s t i o n ." I The fI rst l e i s ur e soc i ­ e t i e s , the fi rst a m u e n t s o c i e t i e s , accord i ng t o M . Sa h l i n's a p t and p l ay fu l e x press i o n .

I f the proj ect of estab l i s h i ng an eco n o m i c a n t h ropo l ogy of pri m i ­ t i v e soc i e t i e s as a n i n d e p e n d e n t d i sc i pl i n e i s t o have a n y mean i ng . the latter c a n n o t d e r i v e m e re l y fro m a scru t i n y o f t h e e c o n o m i c l i fe o f t h o s e s oc i e t i e s : o n e wo u l d re m a i n w i t h i n t h e c o n fi n es of

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an ethnology o f description, the description of a non-a utonomous d imension of primi tive social l i fe . Rather, it i s when that d imen­ sion of the "total social fact" i s constituted as an autonomous sphere that the notion of an economic anthropology appears j ustified : when the refusal of work d isappears , when the taste for acc u mu­ lati o n replaces the sense of 1 eisure; i n a word , when the e xternal force m entioned above makes i ts appearance i n the social body.

That force without which the Savages would never surrender their leisure , that force which destroys society insofar as i t i s primitive societ y, is the power to compel ; i t is the power o f coerc i o n ; i t i s political power. B u t economic anthropology i s invalidated i n any case ; in a sense, it loses its obj ect at the very moment it thinks it has grasped it: the economy becomes a political economy .

For man in primitive societies, the activity o f production is m ea­ sured p recisely, delim ited by the needs to be satisfied , it being understood that what is essentially i nvolved i s energy need s : pro­ duction is restricted to replenishing the stock of energy expended.

I n other words, i t i s l i fe as nature that - excepting the production of good s socially consumed o n festive occasi ons - establishes and determines the quantity of time devoted to reproductio n . This means that once its needs are ful l y satisfied nothing could induce pri mitive society to produce more, that i s , to ali enate its time by working for no good reason when that time is avail able for idleness, pl ay, warfare , or festivities. What are the conditions under which this relationship between prim i tive man and the activity of produc­ tion can change? Under what conditions can that activity be assigned a goal o ther than the satisfaction of energy n ee d s ? This amounts to rais i ng the question of the origin of work as alienated labor.

I n p ri m i tive society - an essentially egali tarian society - men control their activity, control the circulation o f the products of that activity: they act only o n their own behal f, even though the l aw o f exchange mediates the d i rect relation o f man to his prod1 97

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u c t . Every t h i ng i s thrown i n t o confu s i o n , therefore , when the activity o f production i s diverted from its initial goal , when , instead of p roducing only for himself, p ri m i tive man also produces for o thers , without exchange and without reciprocity. That i s the point at which it becomes possible to s peak of labor: when the egali tarian rule of exchange ceases to constitute the "civil code" of the soci­ ety, when the activ i ty of production i s aimed at satisfying the needs o f others , when the order of exchange gives way to the terror of debt . It is there , in fac t, that the d i fference between the Amazonian Savage and the I ndian of the I nca empire i s to be placed. All things consi d ered , the first produces in order to live, whereas the sec­ ond works i n ad di ti on so that others can l i ve , those who do not work , the masters who tell him: you must pay what you owe u s , you must perpetually repay you r debt to u s .

When , i n pri m i t i ve soc i e ty, the econom i c d ynam i c l ends i tsel f to d e fi n i t i o n as a d i s t i n c t and a u t o n o m o u s dom a i n , when th e acti v i ty o f prod u c t i o n b e c om e s ali enate d , accou n tab le labor, l ev­ i ed by men who will enj oy the fru its of that labor, what has come to pass is that s oc i e ty has been d i v i ded i n to ru lers and ruled , mas­ ters and s ubj ec t s - it has ceased to e x o rc i se the t h i ng that w i l l be i ts ru i n : powe r and the respect for power. Soc iety's maj o r d i v i ­ s i o n , the d i v i s i o n t h a t i s the bas i s for a l l th e others, i n c l u d i ng no d o u b t the d i v i s i o n of labor, is the new vertical ord e ring o f things between a base and a s u m m i t ; i t i s the great pol i t i cal c l eavage between those w h o h o l d the f() rce , be it m i l i tary

or

re l ig i o u s , a n d

those subj ect to t h a t force . The p o l i tical re lation o f power pre­ cedes and fo u n d s the econo m i c re lation o f e x p l o i t a t i o n . A l i e n­ atio n is p o l i t i c a l b c f()re it is econo m i c ; power prec e d e s l abor; the econom i c d e rives fro m th e po l i t i ca l ; the e m e rge n c e o f the State d e term i n e s t h e advent o f c l asse s .

I ncom p l e t i o n , u n fu l fi l l ment, lack : the natu re of pri m i tive soc i­ eties i s n o t to b e s ou gh t i n that d i recti o n . Rather, i t asserts i tse l f

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as p o s i tivity, as a mastery of the natural mil ieu and the social project; as the sovereign w i l l to let noth i ng s l i p outs i d e its b e i ng that might alter, c o rrupt, and destroy it. This is what needs to be fi rm l y graspe d : p r i m i tive soci e t i e s a r e not overdue embryos o f s u b s e q u e n t s o c i e 足 t i e s , s o c i a l bod i e s whose "normal " deve l o p m e n t was arre sted by s o m e s t range malady; they a r e n o t s i tuated at the c o m m e n c e m e n t o f a h i s to r ical l o g i c l e ad i ng straight to an e n d given ahead of t i m e , b u t recognized o n l y a posteriori as our own s o c i al syste m . ( I f hi s足 tory i s that l og i c , how is i t that pri m i t i ve s o c i e t i e s sti l l e x i s t ? ) A l l t h e fo regoing i s e xpressed , a t the level o f e c o n o m i c l i fe , b y the refu s a l o f pri m i tive s o c i e t i e s to a l l ow work and p ro d u c t i o n t o eng u l f t h e m ; by the d e c i s i o n to restric t suppl i e s to s o c i o - po l i ti c a l n e e d s ; b y t h e intrinsic i m p o s si b i l i ty o f c o m p e t i t i o n ( i n a p ri m i 足 t i v e s o c i ety what wou l d b e t h e u s e o f being a ric h m a n i n t h e m i d s t o f poor m e n ? ) ; i n short, by the proh i b i ti o n - u n s tated b u t s a i d n o n etheless - o f i n eq u a l i ty.

W h y i s t h e e c o n o m y i n a p r i m i t i ve s o c i e ty n o t a p o l i t i c a l e c o n o m y ? T h i s i s d u e t o t h e evident fact that i n p ri m i ti v e s o c i e 足 t i e s the economy i s n o t autonomou s . I t might be s a i d that i n t h i s s e n s e p ri m i tive societies are societies w i thout an economy,

thev refuse an economy.

beca use

B u t , i n t h a t case , m u s t o n e aga i n d e fi n e the

p o l i ti ca l i n these societies i n terms o f an absence ? M u s t i t b e s u p pp o s e d that , since w e a r e d e a l i ng w i t h " l aw l e s s a n d k i ng l e s s " s o c i e t i e s , they l ack a fi eld o f p o l i tical acti v i t y ? And woul d w e n o t , i n that w ay, fal l i n to the c l a s s i c rut o f an ethnocen tri s m for w h i c h "l ack" i s the salient feature at a l l l evels of societies that are d i ffe rent?

Let us d iscu s s , then , the q u e s t i o n of the p o l i t i c a l d i m e n s i o n i n p r i m i t i v e soci e t i e s . I t i s n o t s i m p l y a m atter o f an " i n teresting" p ro b l e m , a subj ect to be pond ered by spec i a l i sts a l on e . For, i n t h i s i n s ta n c e , eth n o l ogy woul d have to b e b r o a d e nough i n s c o p e to meet the requirements o f a general theory ( yet to be constructe d ) of society and h istory. The e xtraordi nary diversity of types of social 199

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organizati o n , t h e profusion, i n time and space , o f dissimilar soci­ eties, d o n o t , h owever, prevent the possibility of discovering an order within the discontinuou s , the possibility of a reduction of that infinite mul tiplicity ofdiflerences. A massive reduction, seeing that history aflc>rCls us in fact only two types o f society utterly irre­ ducible to one another, two macro-classes , each one o f which encompasses societies that have something basic i n common, not­ wi thstand i ng their differences. On the one hand, there are primitive

societies, or societies without a State; on the other hand, there are societies with a State. I t is the presence or absence of the State apparatus ( capah l e of assuming many forms ) that assigns every society its logical place, and lays down an irreversi ble line of d i scontinuity between the two types of society. The em ergence of the State brought about the great typological division between Savage and Civil ized man ; it c reated the u nbri dgeable gulf whereby every­ thing was changed , for, on the other side, Ti me became H i story.

I t has often heen remarked , and righ tly s o , that the movement 01 world history was radically aflccted by two accelerations in its rhyth m . The impetus o f the first was furnished hy what i s termed the Neoli thic Revolution ( the domestication of animals, agri cul­ ture, the d i scovery of the arts o f weaving and pottery, the subse­ quent sed e n tarizati o n o f human groups, and so fo rth ) . We are still liv ing, and increasi ngly so , i f one may put i t that way, within the pro l ongation of the second accelerati o n , the I ndustrial Revolu­ tion of the nin eteenth century.

Obvi o u s l y, there is no doubt that the Neolithic break drasti­ cally al tered the conditions of material existence of the formerly Pal eol ithic peopl es. Rut was that transformation profound enough to have affected the very being of the societies concerned ? I s i t possible to say that societies fu nction d i ffe rently accord i ng t o whether they are pre-Neolithic o r post-Neolithic? There is eth­ nographic evidence that poi nts, rather, to the contrary. The tran2 00

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s i ti o n fro m nomadi s m to sedentarization i s held to be the most sign i fi c an t consequence o f the Neoli th i c Revolu t i o n , i n that i t m a d e possible - through the concentration of a stabilized popula­ t i o n - c ities and , beyond that, t h e formation o f state mach i n e s .

Rut that hypothes i s carries with i t the assumption that every tech­ nolog i c al "complex" without agriculture is of necessity consigned to n o m a d i s m . The i n ference i s ethnographically i nc o rrect : a n economy of hunting, fishing, a n d gathering does not necessaril y d em a n d a nomadi c way o f l i fe . There a r e several e x a m p l e s , i n Americ a and elsewhere, attesting that the absence o f agriculture is c ompatible with sedentariness. This j ustifies the assumption that if some peoples d id not acqu i re agriculture even though i t was e c o l ogical l y feasible, i t was not because they were i ncompe­ tent, technologically backward , or cul turall y i n ferior, b u t , m o r e s i m p l y, because they had no need of i t .

T h e post-Columbian h istory of America offers cases o f p o pu l a­ ti on s comprised of sedentary agriculturists who , experiencing the dkcts o f a technical revolution ( the acqu i s i t ion o f the horse and , secondaril y, fi rearms ) elected to abandon agriculture and devote themselves almost exclusively to hunting, whose yield was mul­ t i p l i ed by the tenfo l d increase in mob i l i ty that came from u s i ng the h o r s e. O n ce they were mounted , the t r i b e s of the P l a i n s o f North America and those of the Chaco intensified and extended their m ovements; but thei r nomadism bore l i ttle resemblance to the d e scriptions generally given of bands of hunters and gatherers such a s t h e Guayak i of Paraguay, a nd their abandonment o f agri­ c u l ture d i d n o t result i n either a demographi c scattering or a trans­ form at i on of their previous social organizati o n .

What i s t o be l earned from t h e movement o f t h e greatest num­ b e r o f societies from hunting to agriculture, and the reverse move­ m e n t , of a few others , from agriculture to hunting? I t appears t o have been aflected w ithout changing the nature o f those societies 201

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i n any way. I t wou l d appear that where their conditi ons of mate­ rial existence were all that changed , they remained as they were ; that the N e o l i t h i c Revo l u ti on - w hi l e i t d i d have a considerable effect on the material l i fe o f the human groups then existing, doubt­ less making l i fe easier for them - did not mechanically bring about an overturn i ng o f the social order. I n other words , as regards primi­ tive soci e t i e s , a transformation a t the l evel o f what Marxists term the econ o m i c i n frastructure is not necessari l y "reflected" in i t s coro l lary, the p o l i tical s uperstructure, s i n c e t h e l atter appears t o be independent o f i ts material base. T h e American continent clearly i l l u strates t h e i n d ependence o f the economy and s o c i e ty w i t h respect to one anoth er. Some groups o f hun ters-fishers-gatherers . be they nomads o r n o t , present the same soci o-poli tical charac­ teri s t i c s as t h e i r s e d e n tary agr i c u l t u r i s t n e i g h b o r s : d i ffe rent "infrastructures ," the sa m e "superstruc ture ." Converse ly, the meso­ American s o c i e t i e s - i m perial soc i et i e s , soc i e t i e s w i th a State ­ de pended on an agri c u l tu re that, although more in tens ive than el sewhere , n evertheless was very s i m i l ar, from the stand point o f i ts technical l eve l , t o t h e agri c u l ture o f t h e "savage" tribes of the Trop i cal Forest; the same " i n frastructure , " d i fferent " s u perstruc­ tures , " s i n c e in the one case it was a matter o f soc ieties w i thout a State, in t h e o t h e r case fu l l -fl edged States.

Hence, it i s the Pol i t i cal break [coupurc] that i s d e c i s i ve , and not the e c o n o m i c tran sformati o n . The true revo l u t i o n i n man's proto hi story is not the Neol i t h i c , s i nce it may very w ell l eave the prev i o u s l y e x i s t i ng soc ial organization i n tac t; it is the poli tical revolution, that mysterious emergence - irreversible, fatal to pri m i ­ tive soc i et ies - o f the t h i ng we k n o w b y the name o f the State .

And i f one wants to preserve the Marxist c oncepts o f i n frastruc­ ture and superstructure, then perhaps one must acknow l edge that the i n frastru c t u re is the pol i tical , and the su perstru c t u re i s the econom i c . Only one structural , cataclysm i c u p heaval i s capable 20 2

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of transforming pri m i tive society, d estroying i t in the proce s s : the m u tation that causes to ri se up within that society, or from out­ side it, the thing whose very absence defines pri m i tive society, h i erarchical a u t h o ri ty, the power relati o n , the subj ugation of men - in a word , the State. I t would be quite fu tile to search f()r the cause o f the event in a hypothetical modification o f the rel a­ tions o f production i n primitive society, a modification that, divid­ ing society gradually into rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, wou l d mechanical l y l ead to the establishment of an organ enabling the former to exerc i se power over the latter; leading, that is, to the b i rth o f the State.

Not only is such a modi fication of the economic base hypo­ thetical , i t is also i mpossible. For the system o f p roduction o f a given soci ety to c hange in the direction of an intensificat i o n o f work w i th a view t o producing a greater quantity of good s , either the m e n l iving in that society must desire the trans formation o f their mode ofl ife , or else, not desiring it, they must have i t i mposed on them by e xternal violence. I n the second insta nce, nothing originates in the society i tself; i t suffers the aggression o fa n e x ter­ nal p ower for whose benefi t the productive system w i l l b e modi­ fie d : m o re work and more production to sati sfy the needs o f the new masters of power. Pol i tical oppression determines, begets , a l l ow s exploitatio n . But i t serves no purpose to evoke such a " sce­ nari o , " since i t posits an e xternal , contingent, immediate origin o f State violence, and not the slow frui tion o f the internal , socio­ economic cond itions of i ts rise.

It i s said that the State i s the instrument that allows the rul ing class t o bring its violent domi nation to bear o n the dominated classes. Let u s assume that to be true. For the State to appear, then , there would have to exist a prior division of societies into antagonistic social classes, tied to one another by relations o f exploi­ tatio n . Hence the structure o f society - the division into classes 203

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wou l d have to precede the emergence of the State machine. ' Let me point out, i n passing, the extreme fragility of that purely i nstru­ mentali s t theory of the Stat e . I f society is organized by oppressors who are able t o exploit the oppressed, this i s because that abil i ty to impose ali enation rests on the use of a certain force , that i s , on the thing that constitutes the very substance of the State, "the monopol y o f legitimate physical violence." That being granted, wh at necessity woul d b e met by the existence of a State , since its essence - v i o lence - i s inherent i n the division of society, and, i n that sens e , i t i s a l ready given i n t h e oppression that o n e group inflicts o n the others? It wou l d b e no more than the useless organ of a function that is fi l l e d b e forehand and elsewhere.

Tyi ng the emergence of the State machine to a transformation o f the social structure resul ts merely i n deferring the problem of that emergence. For then one must ask why the new d i v i sion of men into ru l ers and ru led within a primi tive society, that i s , an undivided society, occurred . What motive force was behind that transformation that c u l m i nated in the formation o f the State? One might reply that its emergence gave legal sanction to a private property that had come into e x i stence previ ou sly. Very good . But why woul d private property spring up in a type of society i n which i t i s unk nown because i t i s rej ected ? Why wou l d

a

few members

want to proclaim one d ay : this is mine, and how could the others a l l ow th e s e e d s o f the t h i ng p ri m i t i ve society knows n o th i ng about - authori ty, oppression, the State - to take hold? The know l ­ edge of p ri m i tive societies that w e n o w have no longer perm i ts u s to l o o k for t h e o rigi n o f the poli ti cal at the level of t h e econo m i c .

That is no t t h e soil i n w h i c h t h e genealogy of t h e State h a s i t s roots. There i s nothing i n the econom i c work i ng of a pri m i tive society, a society w i thout a State, that enables a d i flcrence to be i ntrod uced m ak ing some ri cher or poorer than others , because no one in such a society feels the quaint desire to do more , own more , 2 04

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or appear to be more than his neighbor. The abi l ity, held by all cultures alike, to satisfy their material needs , and the exchange o f goods a n d services , which continually prevents the private accu­ mulation ofgoods, quite simply make i t impossible for such a desire ­ the desire f()r possession that is actually the desire for power - to develo p . P rimitive society, the first society of abundance, l eaves no roo m for the desire for overabundance.

Primitive societies are societies without a State because for them the State i s impossible. And yet all civilized peoples were first primitives: what made it so that the State ceased to b e impossi­ ble? Why did some peoples cease to be primi tive s ? What tremen­ dous e vent, what revolution, allowed the figure o f the Despot, of he who gives orders to those who obey, to emerge ? Where does politi­ caJ power come from? Such is the mystery ( perhaps a temporary one ) of the origin.

While i t sti l l does not appear possible to d etermine the condi­ tions in which the S tate emerged , it i s possible to specify the con­ ditions of its non-emergence; and the texts assembled in this volume attempt to delineate the space o f the poli tical in societies w i th­ out a State. Faithless, lawless, and kingless : these terms used by the s i xteenth-century West to describe the I nd ians can easily be ex tended to cover all primitive societi es. They can serve as the distinguishing criteria: a society is primitive i f i t i s without a k i ng , a s t h e l egitimate source of the law, that is, the State machine. Con­ versely, every non-primi tive society is a society w i th a State : no matter what socio-political regime is in effect. That is what per­ mits one to consolidate all the great despotisms - k i ngs, emperors of China or the Andes, pharaoh s - into a single class, along with the more recent monarchies - "I am the State" - and the contem­ porary social system s , whether they possess a liberal capitali s m as in Western Europe, or a State capitalism such as exists elsewhere . . .

Hence there is no king i n the tribe, but a chief who i s not a 205

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chief of State . What does that imply? Simply that the chief has no authority at his d isposal , n o power o f coercion, no means of giv­ i ng an order. The chief i s n o t a commander; the people o f the tribe are under n o obi igation to obey. The space of the chieftainship is not the locus of power, and the "profile" of the primitive chief in no way foreshadows that o f a future despot. There is nothing about the chieftainship that s uggests the State apparatus derived from it.

How i s it that the tribal chief does not prefigure the chief of State? W hy i s such an anticipation not possible in the world of Savages? That radical discontinuity - which makes a gradual tran­ s i t i o n fro m t h e primi tive c h i e ftai n s h i p to the State machine unthinkabl e - i s l ogically based in the relation o f exclusion that places political power outside the chieftainship. What we are deal­ ing with is a chief vyithout power, and an institution , the chief� tai n sh i p , that i s a stranger to its essence, which is authori ty. The function s o f the chief, as they have been analyzed above , are con­ vincing proof that the chieftainship does not i nvolve functions of authori ty. Mai n l y responsihle fllr resolving the confl i cts that can su rface between i ndividuals, fami l i e s , l i n eages , and so forth , the chief has to re l y on nothing more than the prestige accorded h i m b y the society to restore order a n d harmony. B u t prestige does n o t sign i fy power, certainly, a n d t h e means the chief possesses for per­ form i ng his task of peacemaker are limited to the usc of speec h : not even to arbitrate between t h e contending parties, because the chief is not a j udge ; but, armed only with his eloquen c e , to try to persuade the people that i t i s best to calm dow n , stop i n sulting one anothe r, and e m ul at e the ancestors who a l ways lived together in harmony. The success of the end eavor i s never guaran teed , flJr the ch ief 's word carries no force of la w. [ f the effort to persuade shou ld fai l , the confl ict then risks having a violent outcome, and the chief's prestige m ay very well be a casualty, since he will have proved h i s inabil i ty to accom pl i sh what was expected o f h i m .

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In the estimation of the tri b e , what qual ifi e s such a man to b e chief? I n the end , i t i s his " technical" competence alo n e : h i s o ra­ torical talent, h i s expertise as a hunter, his abi l i ty to coordinate martial activities, b o th offensive and defensive. And i n n o c i rcum­ stance does the tri b e all ow the chief to go b eyond that technical limit; i t never allows a techn ical superiority to change into a politi­ cal authority. The chief i s there to serve society; it i s society as such - the real locus of power - that exerc ises i ts authority over the chief. That is why i t i s impossible for the chief to reverse that relationship for his own ends, to put society in h i s service, to exer­ cise what is termed p ower over the tribe: pri m i t i ve society would n ever tolerate having a chief transform himself i n to a despot.

I n a sense , the trib e keeps the chief under a close watch ; h e i s a kind o f prisoner i n a space which the tribe does n ot l e t h i m l eave .

But does he have any desire to get out of that spac e ? Does i t ever happen that a chief desires to b e chief? That he wants to substi­ tute the realization o f his own desire for the serv ice and the i nter­ est of the group? That the satisfaction of his personal i nterest takes precedence over his obedience to the collective proj ect? B y v i r­ tue of the close supervision to which the l eader's practice, like

tha t of all the others, i s subj ected by society - this supervision result­ i ng fro m the nature o f pri m itive societies, and not, of cours e , from a c o n s c i o us a n d d e l iberate preoccupati o n w i t h surve i l l a n c e ­ instances of chiefs transgressing primitive law are rare : you are worth

no more than the others. Rare , to be sure, but not unheard o f: i t occa­ s ional l y happens that a chief tries to play the chief, and not out of Machi avell ian motives, but rather because he has n o choice; he cannot do otherw i s e . Let me explain . As a rule , a chief does not attempt ( the thought d oe s not even enter h i s m i n d ) to subvert the normal relationship ( i . e . , i n keeping with the norm s ) he main­ tains w i th respect to his group, a subversion that would make him the master of the tribe instead of i ts servant . The great cacique 2 07

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Alayk i n , the war c h i e f o f a tribe inhabiting the Argentin ian Chaco, gave a vcry good d e fi n i t i o n o f that normal re l ations h i p i n h i s repl y to a Spanish o Hlc e r w h o w a s tryi ng t o c om ince h i m t o d rag h i s tribe into a war it did not wan t: "The Abipones, by a custom handed down by their ancestors, f() l l ow thei r own b i d d i ng and not that of their cac i q u e . I am their l eader, but I could not bring harm to any o f my p e o p l e without bringing harm to myse l f; i f I were to use orders or force w i th my c o m rades, they wou l d turn the i r backs o n m e a t onc e . I prefer to be l oved and not feared by them ." And , let there b e no doubt, most I n d i an chiefs wou l d have spoken s i m i lar \\'ords.

T here are e x c e p t i o n s , h owt'\Tr, n earl y al ways connected \v i th warbre .

\Ve

knO\v, i n fac t , that the preparation and conduct of a

m i l i tary e x pe d i t i o n are the only c i rc u m stances i n which the c h i c f has t h e opport u n i ty to e x e rc i s e a m i n i m u m o f au thori ty, d e r i v i ng solely tt'om h i s technical competence as a warrior. As soon as thing'i h ave been c o n c l u d e d , and w ha tcver the outcome of t h e fighting, the "oar chief agai n bec o m e s a c h i e f w i t h o u t power; i n no case is the prestige that comes \\Oith \Oictory converted into authori ty. Every­ t h i ng h i nges o n j u s t that separat i o n m a i ntai n e d bv the society bet ween pO\\Oer a n d prestige , behH'C n the fam e of a v i ctorious warrior and t h e c o m mand that h e i s f(J rb i d d e n to e x c rc i s e . The I()l] ntain most s u i ted to q u e nc h i ng a warrior's th i rst I() r prest ige is war. /\t t h e s a m e t i m e , a c h i e f whose prestige i s l i nked with war­ fare can p reserve a n d bolster it o n l y in warfa re : it is a k i nd of com­ pu l s i o n , a k i nd o f escape i n t o t h e fray, that h a s h i m c o n t i nual l y \\Oan t i ng to o rga n i z e martial e x pedi tions from w h i c h h e hopes to obtai n the ( sy m b o l i c ) b e n e fi ts attac h i ng to v i ctory. /\ s long as h i s d e s i re f<lr war c o rre s p o n d s to the general w i l l of the tribe, par­ t i c u l arly that of the you ng m e n , filr whom war i s a l so t h e p r i n c i ­ p a l means o f acq u i ri ng prestige , as l ong as the w i l l o f the c h i e f d o c s not go beyond t h a t o f t h e tri b e , t h e c u s to marv r e l a t i o n s

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between the chief and the tribe remain unchanged . B u t the risk o f a n excessive desire o n t h e part o f t h e c h i e f w i th respect to that o f t h e tribe a s a whol e , t h e danger to h i m o f going t o o far, o f exceed­ i ng the strict l i m i ts allotted to h i s office, i s ever present . Occa­ sional l y a chief accepts run n i ng that risk and attempts to put h i s pers o n al i nterest ahead o f t h e coll ective i nterest. Reversing the normal relationship that determines the leader as a means in the serv i c e of a social l y defined e n d , he tri e s t o make soci e ty i n to the means for achieving a purely private end: the tribe in the service of the

chief and no longer the chief in the service of the tribe. I f i t " wo rked , " then w e wou l d have fou n d the birthplace o f poli tical p ower, as force and violence; we wou l d have the fi rst i ncarnatio n , the mini­ mal fc)rm of the State . But it never work s .

I n the very fine acc o u n t o f t h e twenty years she s p e n t among the Yanomam i , 2 Elena Val e ro talks at l e ngth about her fi rst hus­ ban d , t h e war leader Fousiwe. H i s story illustrates quite well the fate o f the primitive chief when, by the force o f circumstances, h e i s l e d to transgress t h e l a,,, of primitive society; being the tru e l o c u s o f power, society refuses to let g o of i t , refuses t o d e l egate it. So Fousiwe i s ackn owledged by his tribe as "chief, " owi ng to the prestige he has obtained for himself as the organizer and l eader o f victorious raids against enemy group s . As a resu l t , h e p l a n s and d i rects wars that his tribe undertakes willingly ; he places h i s tech­ n ical c o mpetence as a man o f war, his courage , and h i s dynamism in the service of the gro u p : h e is the effective instru m e n t o f his society. But the u n fortunate thing about a primi tive warri or's l i fe i s that the prestige h e acq uires i n warfare is soon lost i f i t i s not constantly renewed b y fresh successes . The tribe, for w h o m the chief i s nothing more than the appropriate tool for i m p l e m e n ting 2.

' E t t o rc B i occa a n d I le l e n a Valero , Ya naam a , D e n n i s R h o d e s , trans . , New Yo rk . D u t t o n ,

1 970.

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i ts w i l l , eas i l y forgets the c h i e f's past victori es. For h i m , noth i ng is permanently acquired, and i f he intends to remind people, whose memory i s apt to fail , o f his fame and prestige, it will not be enough merely to exalt h i s o l d e x p l o i ts : he will have to create the occa­ sion fo r new feats of anns. A warri or has no choice: he i s obliged to desi re war. It is h e re that the consensus by which he is recog­ nized as c h i e f draws i t � boundary l i n e . I f h i s desire for war coin­ cides w i th society's desire for war, the society continues to follow h i m . But i f the c h i e f's desire fo r war attempts to fal l back on a society motivated by the desire for peace - no society allVays wants to wage war - then the relationsh i p between the c h i e f and the trihe is reversed ; the leader tries to use society for his individual a i m , as a means to h i s personal end . Now, it shou ld be kept i n m i n d t h a t a pri m i tive c h i e f i s a c h i e f wi thou t powe r : h o w cou ld he i m pose the d i c tates o f h i s desire on a soc i e t y that refused t o b e d rawn i n ? H e i s a prisoner o f b o t h h i s desire lo r prestige and h i s powerl essness t o fu l fi l l that desire. What may happen in such sit­ uations? The warri o r w i l l be left to go i t a l o n e , to engage in a dubious batt l e that \\ i l l on l y l ead h i m t o h i s death . T h a t was t h e fa te o f the S o u t h A m e r i c a n warr i o r F o u s i w e . He s a w h i m s e l f deserted b y h i s tri b e fo r hav i ng tried t o t h rust on h i s people a war they d i d n o t want. I t o n l y re mained te) r h i m to wage that war on h i s ow n , a n d h e d i ed ri d d l ed w i t h arrows . Death is the warri or's d e s t i ny, f(J r, pri m i tive society is such that it does not pcrmit the desire

F)[ presli[/e to hc replaccd

h I'

the IYill to po wer. Or, in other words, i n

primi tive soc i e t y t h e c h i d', who embodies t h e poss i b i l i ty o f a w i l l t o powe r, i s con d e m ned t o death in advance. Separate political power i s i m po ss i b l e i n pri m i ti ve soc i e t y ; there is no roo m , no vacuum fe)r t h e State to fi l l .

Less trag i c i n i t s con c l u s i on, but very s i m i l ar i n i ts deve l o p­ ment, i s the story o f another I nd i an l eader, fiu more renowned than the obscure A m azonian warri or: I refer to the famous Apache 2 10

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c h i e f Geron i m o . A read i ng of h i s memo i rs 3 proves very i nstruc足 t i v e , d e s p i te the rather whi m s i cal fas h i o n i n w h i c h they were s e t down i n writing . Geronimo was only a young warrio r l ike t h e o thers w h e n the Mex i c an s o l d i ers attacked his tri b e 's camp and massa足 c r e d the women and c h i l d re n , k i l l i ng Gero n i mo's whole fami l y.

T h e vario u s Apache tribes banded togethe r to avenge t h e m u r足 d e r s , a n d Geron i m o was com m i ssioned to conduct the battl e . The r e s u l t was complete success for the Apach e s , w h o w i ped o u t t h e M e x i ca n garrison . As the mai n arc h i t e c t of the v i c t o ry, G e ro n i m o e x p e r i e n c e d an i m m ense i n c rease i n his p r e s ti g e as a w a r r i or.

A n d , fro m that m o m e n t , thi ngs changed ; somethi ng o c c u rred i n Geroni m o ; som e t h i ng was goi ng o n . For, w h i l e the a ffa i r was m o re or l e s s l a i d to rest by the other Apac h e s , who were c o n t e n t w i th a v i c t o ry that ful l y sati s fi ed th e i r hunger for vengeanc e , G e r o n i m o , o n t h e other han d , d i d not s e e i t that way. He wanted more revenge on the M e x i cans ; he did not b el i eve that the blood y d e feat o f the s o l d i ers was suffi c i e n t . But o f course he could n o t go attac k i ng M e x i c a n v i llages a l l by h i m s e l f, so he tried to persuade h i s p e o p l e t o s e t o u t agai n o n t h e w a r path . I n v a i n . I t s c o l l e c t i v e goal revenge - hav i ng b e e n reached , the Apache soc i e ty year n e d for res t . G er o n i mo's goal , the n , was a p e rsonal obj ec t i ve w h i c h h e h o p e d to acco m p l i sh b y draw i ng i n the trib e . H e attempted t o turn the tribe i n to the instru m e n t o f h i s d e s i r e , wh ereas b e f() r e , by v i rtue of his c o m petence as a warr i o r, he was the tribe's i n stru足 m e n t . N a turall y, the Apaches chose n o t to fo l l ow G eron i m o , j u s t as t h e Yan omami refused to fol l ow F o u s i w e . A t best, the A pache c h i e f managed to convince ( oc c a s i o n al l y, at the cost o f l i e s ) a few yo u ng m e n w i th a cravi ng for glory and spo i l s . For one o f these e x p e d i t i o n s , G e ro n i m o 's hero i c and absurd army c o n s i sted of two m e n ! The Apac h e s who, owi ng t o the c i rc u m stan c e s , a c c e p t e d 3.

Geronimo: His O ll' n Srorf', S. M. Barre tt,

cd . ,

2J I

New Yo rk, B a l l a n t i n e ,

1 9 70.

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Geroni m o 's l eadership because of h i s figh t i ng s k il l , wou l d regu­ l ar l y turn their backs o n him whenever h e wanted to wage his persona l war. G eron i m o , the l a s t of the great North American war c h i e fs , who s p e n t thirty years of his l i fe trying to " p l ay the chief, " a n d never succeeded . . . .

The e s s e n t i a l feature ( that is, relating to the essence ) o f pri m i ­ t i ve soc i e ty i s i t s e x ercise o f absolute a n d compl ete power over a l l the e l e m e n t s o f w h i c h i t i s c o m p o s e d ; t h e fac t that i t prevents any one of the sub-groups that c o n s ti tute it fro m becomi ng autono­ mous; that it holds all the i nternal movements - conscious and unconsci o u s - that m a i n ta i n social l i fe to t h e l i m i ts a n d d i rection

prescribf:'d hy th f' s o c i e t y. One o f the ways ( vi o l e n c e . i f n ecessary, i s anoth e r ) i n w h i c h s o c i e t y m a n i fe s t s i ts w i l l to preserve that pri m i tive s o c i a l order is by refusing to a l l ow an i n d i v idual , cen­ tral , separate power to ari se . Primi tive society, th e n , is a society fro m which nothing escapes, which lets nothing get outside itsel f, fo r all the e x i ts are b l ocked . I t is a society, therefore , that ough t to repro d u c e i ts e l f perpe t u a l l y w i t h o u t anyth i ng a ffe c t i ng i t through o u t ti m e .

There i s , however, o n e area that see m s t o escape , a t l east i n part , soci ety's c ontro l ; the d e m ographic doma i n , a d o m a i n gov ­ erned by c u l tural r u l e s , but a l s o by natural l a w s ; a space w h e re a l i fe that i s gro u nded in both the social and the b i o l ogical unfol d s , where there i s a "machine" that operates according t o i t s own m echan i c s , perhaps , w hich would place i t beyond the social grasp .

There i s no q u e s t i o n o f replacing a n economic determ i n i s m with a d e mog ra p h i c d e term i n i s m , of tl tting causes ( de m ograph i c grow th ) t o n e c e s sary e Hects ( transformat i o n of t h e s o c i a l organ i ­ zati on ) , a n d yet o n e cannot fa i l t o remark , espec i a l l y a s regard s A m e r i c a , the s o c i o l ogical co nsequence o f popu l a t i o n s i z e , t h e abil i ty t h e increase in densities has t o unsettle ( I do not say destroy ) pri mitive s o c i e ty. In tact it is very probab le that a basic condition 212

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for the e x i stence of p ri m i t i ve societies is their relatively small d emographic size. Thi ngs can function on the p ri m i tive model o n l y i f t h e people are few i n number. Or, i n other words , i n order for a s o c iety to be prim i t i ve , i t must be numerical l y smal l . And , i n e ffe c t , what one ob serves in the Savage world is a n e x traord i 足 nary patchwork o f "nations , " tribes, a n d societies made u p o f local groups that take great care to preserve their autonomy w i t h i n the l a rger group of which they are a part , although they may c o n c l u d e temporary alliances w i th the i r nearby "fellow-countryme n , " i f the c i rc u m s t a n c e s - e s p e c i al l y those having to do w i th warfa r e 足 d e mand it. This atomization of the tribal universe is unquestionably an effective means of preventing the establishment of socio-poli tical gro u p i ng s that wou l d i ncorporate the local groups and , beyond that, a means o f preventing the emergence of the S tate , which is a u n i fi e r b y nature .

Now, it is disturbing to find that the Tupi-Guaran i , as they existed a t the t i m e o f their d i scovery by Europe, represent a c o n s i derab l e d e parture from the u sual p ri m i tive world , and on two essential points:

the demographic denSity ratio

o f t h e i r tribes or l o c a l group s

c l early e xceeds t h a t o f t h e n e ighboring populati o n s ; m o re over,

the size of the local groups is out of all proportion to the socio-political u n i ts o f the Trop ical Fore s t . Of course , the Tupinamba v i l l ag e s , for i n s tanc e , which n u mbered several thousand i n h ab i tants, were n o t c i t i e s ; but they d i d cease to belong to the " s tandard " d e m o 足 graphi c range of t h e neighboring societies. Against this background o f d e m ographic expansion and concentration o f the populati o n , there stands o u t - this too i s an unusual phenomenon for p r i m i 足 t i ve A merica, i f not for imperial America - t h e manifest tendency of the c h i e ftainshi ps to acqu i re a power u nknown e lsewhere . The Tup i - G u arani chiefs were n o t despots, to be sure; b u t t h ey were n o t altogether powerl ess c h i e fs ei ther. This i s n o t the place to u n dertake the long and compl ex task of analyzing the chieftainship 213

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among t h e Tu p i - G u aran i . Let me c o n fi n e myse l f to p o i n t i ng o u t , at one e n d o f s o c i et y, as i t were , a demographi c , growth , and , at the other end, the s l ow e m e rgence o f p o l i tical power. It does n o t r e s t w i t h e t h n o l og y ( or at l east not i t alone ) to answer the ques­ t i o n o f t h e c a u s e s o f d e m ograp h i c e x p a n s i o n i n a pri m i t i ve soci­ e t y. B u t i t does fal l to that d i s c i p l i n e to l i n k the demograp h i c a n d the pol i ti c a l , to a n a l y z e the force e x erted by the former on the l atter, b y means o f the s o c i o l og i cal .

Throug h o u t t h i s te x t . I have consi stently argued that a separate power is n o t possi b l e in a pri m i t i ve socie ty, fo r reasons deri\' i ng Iro m t h e i r i n ternal o rgani zati o n ; t h a t it i s not possi b l e for the State

to ari se fro m w i th i n pri m i ti ve s oc i e ty. And h e re it seems that I have j u s t c o n trad i c ted myself by speak i ng of the Tu pi-Gu aran i as an e x a m p l e ofa pri m i ti v e s o c i e t y i n w h i c h someth i n g w a s b egin­ n i ng to surface that could have become the State . It i s u n d e n i a b l e t h a t a pro c e s s was d eve l o p i ng i n t h o s e soc i e t i e s , i n progre ss f(J r q u i t e a l o ng t i m e no d o u b t - a process that a i m e d at estab l i s h i ng a c h i e ft a i n s h i p w h o s e po l i t i c a l power was n o t i n c o n s i d erab l e .

T h i ngs h a d e v e n rea c h e d a po i n t w h e re t h e f re n c h a n d Po rtuguese c h ro n i c l ers d i d n o t h e s i t a t e t o bestow o n t h e great c h i e f s o t' t ri b a l kd e ra t i o n s the t i t l e s " p rov i n c i a l k i ng s " o r " k i ng l e t s ." T h a t p ro ­ c e s s of p ro i(l lll1 d tra n s t(mn a t i o n o f t h e Tu pi-G uara n i soc i e t y \\'as bru ta l l y i n te rr u p t e d by the arri v a l o f t h e E ur o p e a n s . D o e s t h a t mean that i f the d i s c overy o f t h e N e w Wo rl d h a d taken p l a c e a c e n t u ry l a t e r, i( )r e x a m p l e , a State i(Hm a t i o n wo u l d have b e e n i m posed o n t h e I n d i a n tribes o f t h e Bra z i l ian c o astal reg i o n s ? I t i s a h\'ays easy, and ri s k y, to rec o n s t r u c t a h y p o t h e t i c a l h i story t h a t n o e v i d e n c e c a n c o n trad i c t . B u t i n t h i s i n stan c e , I t h i n k i t i s pos­ s i b l e to a n s w e r fi r m l y in the nega t i v e : i t was n o t t h e arri v a l o ft h e We stern ers that p u t a stop to the eventual e m e rgence o f t h e State a m o ng t h e Tu p i - G u a ra n i , b u t rat h e r an awak e n i ng o f soc i c t y i t s e l f t o i ts own n a t u re a s pri m i t i ve soc i e ty. a n awak e n i ng , an upri s i n g .

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that was d i rected against the chieftai nship in a s e n s e , i f n o t e x p l ic­ i t l y ; for, i n any case , it had d e s tructive e ffects o n the power o f the c h i e fs . I have i n mind that strange phen o m e n o n that, begi n n i ng i n the l ast decades o f the fi fteenth century, s t i rred up the Tu p i ­ Guaran i tri b e s , the fi e ry preaching of certain men w h o went fro m group to group inciting the I ndians t o forsake everything and launch o u t in s e arch o f the Land Wi thout Evi l , the earth l y parad i s e .

I n p r i m i tive s o c i e t y, the c h i e fta i n s h i p a n d l anguage a r e i n tr i n ­ s i cal l y l i n ke d ; speech i s the o n l y power with w h i c h the c h i e f i s vested ; more t h a n that s p e e c h i s an obligation fo r h i m . B u t t h e re i s another sort of speech , another d i scourse , u t tered not by the c h i e fs , but by those men who, in the fi fteenth and s i x te e n t h c e n ­ turies, carried thousands of I ndians along behind t h e m i n mad migra­ t i o n s q ue s t i ng for th � homeland o f the god s : i t i s the d i scourse o f t h e karai, a prophetic speech , a v i ru l ent speec h , h i g h l y subversive i n its a ppeal to the I nd ians to undertake what m u s t be ack n mv l ­ edged a s the destru c t i o n o f society. The proph e t s ' c a l l t o aban d o n the evil land ( that i s , s o c i e t y as i t e x i sted ) i n o r d e r to inherit the Land Without Ev i l , t h e society o f divine happi n e s s , i m p l i e d the d eath of society's structure and system o f norm s . Now that s o c i ­ e t y w a s i ncreasi ngl y c o m i ng u n d e r t h e authority o f th e c h i efs , t h e weight of their nasce n t po l i ti cal power. It i s reasonab l e , then , to suppose that if the proph e t s , ri sen up from the core o f s o c i et y, proc l a i m e d the wor l d in which men were l i v i n g to be evi l , t h i s w a s b e c ause they s u r m i se d that the m i s fortu n e , the evi l , l ay i n that slow death to which the e m e rgence o f power wo u l d s o o n e r o r l a t e r c o n d e m n Tup i - G uarani s o c i e ty, insofar as it was a pri m i ­ t i ve s o c i ety, a soc i e ty without a State. Tro u b l e d by the k e l i ng that the anc i e n t pri m i t i ve world was tre m b l i ng at i ts fo undati o n s , a n d h a u nted by the premonition of a soci o-econo m i c catastrop h e , the prophets d e c i d e d that t h e world h a d to be changed , t h a t o n e must change worl d s , aband on the world o f m e n for that o f t h e god s .

2 II,

SOC I E T Y

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A proph e t i c speech that i s s t i ll l iving, as the texts " P rophets i n the Jungl e " a n d " O f the O n e Wi thout t h e Many" s h o u l d show.

The fou r or five thousand remaining Guarani Indians l ead a wretched e x i s tence i n t h e fo rests o f Paraguay, but they are s t i l l i n possession o f the i n c o mparab l e weal th afforded them by the komi. To be sure , t h e l a t t e r n o l onger s e rve as g u i d e s to w h o l e trib e s , l i ke their s i x teenth-century ancestors ; the searc h for the l.and Wi thout Fvil is n o l o nger p o s s i b l e . But t h e l ack o f ac t i o n s e e m s to have encour­ aged a frenzy of thought, an ever deepening reflection on the unhap­ p i ness of the h u m a n c o n d i t i o n . And that savage though t , born o f t h e dazz l i ng light o f t h e Su n , tel l s the

s o u rc e

LI S

that the b i rthp l a c e o f E v i l ,

o f m i � fortu n e , i s t h e O n e .

Perhaps a l i t t l e m o re n e e d s to be said a b o u t t h e G u a rani sage's concept o f the O n e . \Vhat does the term embrace ? The favo r i te themes o f c o n t emporary G uaran i thought arc the same ones that d i sturbed , m ore than fo u r c e n t u r i e s ago , those who were cal l ed

korai, pro p h e t s . W h y i s the wo rld ev i l ? W hat can we d o to escape the ev i l ? T h e s e a r e q u e s t i o n s t h a t generat i ons o f those I n d i ans have asked the m s e l ves ove r and over aga i n : the korai of today c l i ng patheti­ c a l l y to t h e d i sc o u rse o f the prophets o f t i m e s pa s t . T h e latter k n ew that t h e One was e v i l ; that is what they preac hed , from v i l ­ l age t o v i l l ag e , a n d t h e p e o p l e f() l l owed a fter them in search j()r the G o o d , t h e q u e s t f(J r t h e not-O n e . l l e n c e we hav e , a m ong the Tu p i - G u a ra n i a t t h e t i m e o f t h e D i sc ove ry, o n th e o n e h a n d , a prac t i c e - t h e re l ig i o u s m ig ra t i o n - w h i c h i s i n e x p l i c a b l e u n l e s s i t i s s e e n as t h e refu sa l o f t h e course to w h i c h the c h i e fta i n s h i p was c o m m i t t i ng the soc i e ty, the refusal o f separate pol i t i cal power. the refu s a l o f the S t a t e ; a n d , on the o t h e r hand ,

a

p ro p h e t i c d i s­

c o u rse t h a t i d e n t i fi e s the O n e as the ro o t of E v i l . a n d asserts the poss i b i l i t y o f break i ng i ts h o l d . W h at makes i t poss i b l e t o con­ c e i ve o f t h e O n e ? In o n e way or another, i t s presen c e , whether hated o r d e s i red , m u s t be v i s i b l e . And that is why I bel i eve one can 2 16

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make out, beneath the metaphysical proposition that equates Evil with the One, another, more secret equation, o f a political nature, which says that the One i s the State. Tupi-Guarani prophetism i s the heroic attempt of a pri m itive society t o p u t a n end t o u n h ap­ piness by means o f a radical refusal of the O ne , as the u n i versal essence of the Stat e . This "political" rea d i ng o f a metaphysical intuition should prompt a somewhat sacrilegi ou s q u e s ti o n : c o u l d not every metaphysi c s of t h e O n e be subj ected to a s i m i l ar read­ i ng? What about the One as the Good, as the preferential obj ect that dawning Wes tern metaphysics assigned to man's desire? Let me go no further than thi s tro u b lesome piece of evi d e n c e : the mind of the savage prophets and that of the ancient Greeks con­ ceive of the same thing , Oneness; b u t the Guarani I nd i a n says that the One i s Evi l , w hereas Herac l i t u s says that it i s the G o o d . Wha t

conditions m ust obtain i n order to conceive of the One a s the Good?

In conclusion, let us return to the exemplary world of the Tupi­ Guaran i . H ere i s a soc i e ty that was encroached upon, threatened , by the i rresistible rise of the c hi e fs ; i t responded by cal l i ng u p from within itself and releas i ng forces capable , albeit a t t h e price o f collective near suicide, o f thwarting the dynam i c o f the chief­ tainsh i p , of cutting short the movement that might have caused i t t o transform the chi e fs i n to law-giving k i ngs. O n one s i d e , the chiefs , on the other, and standing against them, the prophet s : these were the essential l i n e s o f Tu p i - G u arani society at the end of the fifteenth century. And the prophetic "machine" worked perfectly well , since the karai were able to sweep astonishing masses o f I ndi­ ans along b eh in d them , so sp e l l b ou nd ( as one wou l d sa y today ) by the language of those men that they wou l d accompany them to the point of death .

W hat i s the signifi cance of all that? Armed only with thei r Word , the prophets were able to bring about a "mob i l ization" of the I n d i ­ ans; they were abl e to accomplish t h a t i m p o s s i b l e t h i ng i n primi2 17

S O C I E T Y

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STAT E

tive soci ety: to u n i fy, i n the religious migration , the multifarious variety o f the tribes. They managed to carry out the whole "pro­ gram" o f the chiefs with a single stroke . Was this the ruse of h i s­ tory? A fatal flaw that, i n s p i t e o f everything, dooms primi tive society to d ependency? There is no way o f knowing. B u t , in any case, the insurrectional act of the prophets agai nst the chiefs con­ ferred on the former, through a strange reversal of things , infinitely more power than was held by the l atter. So perhaps the idea of the spoken word being opposed to violence needs to be amended .

While the primitive chie f i s under the obligation ofinnocen t speech, primitive society can also , given quite specific co nditions, lend i ts ear to another sort o f speech , forgetting that i t is u ttered like a commandment: prophecy is that other speech. In the di scourse of the prophets there may I ie the seed s of the d i scourse of power, and beneath the e xal ted features of the mover of men , the one who tells them o f t h e i r d e s i re , the silent figure o f the Despot may be h i ding .

Proph etic speech , the power o f that speech: m ight this be the place where pmver l o u l co urt origi nated , the beginning o f the State in the Wo rd ? Pro phets who were sou l-w inners before they were the masters o r men? Perhaps. But even in the e x trem e e x perience of prophetism ( e x trem e in that the lupi-Guarani society had doubt­ l ess reached , w h e ther f()f demograph i c reasons or o thers , the fu r­ thest l i m i ts that d e fi n e a s oc i e t y as pri m i tive ) , w h at t h e Savages e x h i b i t i s the c o n t i n u a l e H<lrt t o preve nt chids from being chiefs , the re fusal o f u n i fication, t h e end eavor to e x orc i se the O n e , t h e State. I t i s said that t h e h i story o f peopl es who have a hi story i s the hi story of class strugg l e . I t m ight b e sai d , w i th a t least a s much truthfu l ness, that the hi story o f peoples w i thout history i s the his­ tory of the i r s t rugg l e against the State .

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

The Untimely, Again

Savages want the multiplication of the multiple.

---

Pierre <:lastres

Relearning to read Pierre <:lastres

Archeology of Violence, published in French in 1980 under the title of Recherches danthropologie politique, gathers texts that were written, in their majority, shortly before the death of their author three years earlier. It forms a pair with a collection of articles published in 1974, Society Against the State.1 If the latter has a greater internal consistency, and has a larger number of articles based on first-hand ethnographic experience, Archeology of Violence documents the phase of feverish creativity in which its author found himself in the months that preceded his fatal accident, at 43-years-old, on a road in the <:evennes.

Among other important texts, the last two chapters stand out: the essay whose name is given to the collection in its present form (ch. 11) and the following article, which was the last that was l. Clastres

1 974/1 987.

9

published in his lifetime. They present a substantial reworking of the concept that made its author famous, that of primitive society as a "society against the State." Revisiting the classical problem of the relations between violence and the constitution of the sovereign political body, Clastres advances a functionally positive relation between "war" (or rather the meta-stable state of latent hostility between local autonomous communities) and the collective inten­ tionality that defines what constitutes primitive societies-the spirit of their laws, to evoke Montesquieu.2 The death of Clastres was the second tragic and untimely loss suffered by the generation of French anthropologists trained in the passing of the '50s to the '60s . This period of intense intellectual ferment, in France as in other parts of the world brought about the major shifts in the politico-cultural sensibilities of the West and marked the '60s-'70s with a unique quality-perhaps "hope" would be the best word to define it. The neutralization of these changes was precisely one of the foremost objectives of the concerted "revolution of the Right" that assailed the planet, imposing its physiognomy-at once arrogant and anxious, greedy and disen­ chanted-upon the following decades of world history.

The first of the generation to leave was I W-if'" Sebag, 'Nho

com­

mitted suicide in 1965, to the immense consternation of his friends (among them Felix Guattari) , his teacher Claude Levi-Strauss and his psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. The twelve years that separate the deaths of these two ethnologists born in 1934, philosophers by training, who both broke with the Communist Party after 1956, and converted to anthropology under the powerful intellectual 2. L'Esprit des lois sauvages (Abensour ed. 1 987) is the title of a collection of essays commemorating the tenth year of Clastres's death.

influence of Levi-Strauss (then approaching its zenith), perhap s explains something of the difference that their respective oeuvres have with structuralism. Sebag, a member of the vibrant Francophone community of Tunisian Jews, was very close to the founder o f structural anthropology, who considered the young man his likely successor. Sebag's book-length study of the cosmogonic myths of the Pueblo, published posthumously in 1971, was one of the preparatory materials for the extensive mythological investigations of Levi-Strauss, which would finally awaken anthropology to the originality of Amerindian thought. Sebag maintained, beyond that, an intense involvement with psychoanalysis; one of the few ethno­ graphic papers published during his lifetime analyzed the dreams of Baipurangi, a young woman of the Ache people, whom Sebag visited during periods which overlapped with Clastres's time among them, before settling among the Ayoreo of the Chaco for fieldwork, which his death left unfinished.

What Clastres had in common with his friend was the ambition to re-read modern social philosophy in light of the teachings of Levi-Strauss's anthropology; but the similarities between their respective inclinations stopped more or less there. Sebag was attracted mostly to myths and dreams, the discourses of human fabulation; the preferred themes of his colleague were rituals and power, the vehicles of the "institution" of the social, which o ffered apparen tly less analytical purchase to structural anthropology. Moreover, Clastres dedicated himself from early on to articulating a respectful but firm critique of structuralism, refusing to adhere to the positivist

doxa that began to accumulate around the work of Levi-Strauss, and that threatened to transform it, in the hands of its epigones, into "a kind of Last Judgement of reason, capable of neutralizing all of the ambiguities of history and thought" (Prado Jr, 2003: 8). At the same

Introduction / 11

time, Clastres showed throughout his entire career an even more relentless hostility-which was not exactly respectful (see ch. 10)­ to what he called "ethnomarxism," that is, to the group of French anthropologists who aimed to square non-centralized polities (in particular the lineage societies of West Africa) with the conceptual dogmas of historical materialism.

While Sebag wrote a book entitled Marxism and Structuralism, 3 Clastres left us, in contrast, with Society Against the State and

Archeology o/Violence, the chapters of a virtual book that could be named Neither Marxism nor Structuralism. He saw in both posi­ tions the same fundamental flaw: both privileged economic rationality and suppressed political intentionality. The metaphysical grounding of the socius in production with Marxism and with exchange in structuralism, rendered both incapable of grasping the s ingular nature of primitive sociality, summarized by Clastres in the formula: " Society against the State." The expression referred to a modality of collective life based on the symbolic neutralization of political authority and the structural inhibition of ever-present tendencies to convert power, wealth and prestige into coercion, i nequality and exploitation. It also designated a politics of inter­ group alliance guided bv the strategic imr"rative of local, community-centered autonomy.

The non-Marxism of Clastres was different from his non­ structuralism. For him, historical materialism was ethnocentric: it considered production the truth of society and labor the essence of the human condition. This type of economy-driven evolutionism found in primitive society its absolute epistemological limit.

3. Sebag 1964, published before he started his fieldwork.

1 2 ! !\rc!lecicgy

Vio�erlce

Clast res was fond of saying that "in its being" primit ive cultures wer e an "anti-pr oduction m achine." In place of the polit ical economy of cont rol-control of the productive labor of t h e young b y the o l d , of the r eproduct ive labor of women by men­ that the ethnomarxists, following E ngels, saw at work i n the societ ies t hey named, with impeccable logic, "pre-capit alist ," Clastres discer ned, in his "primitive societies," both the polit ical control of the economy and the social control of the polit ical.

The first manifest ed itself in the pr inciple of under -product ive suffi ciency and the inhibition of accumulat ion by forced redis­ tribution or rit ual dilapidat ion; the second, in the separ at i o n between chiefly offi ce a n d coercive power and i n the submission of the warrior to the suicidal pursuit of ever greater glory. Primit iv e society worked a s a n immunological system: perpet ual war was a mode o f cont rolling b oth the t emptation to control and the r isk of being controlled. War keeps opposing the State, but the cr ucial difference for Clast res is that sociality is on the side o f war, n ot of the sover eign (Richir 1987). Archeology o/Violence is an anti­

Hobbes book (Abensour 1987). It might be even more anti­ En gels, a manifesto against the forced continuism of Wor l d History (Pr ado Jr. 2003). Clastres is a thinker o f rupt ure, d i s ­ continuity, accident. In t h i s respect he remained, per haps , close to Levi-Strauss.

Clastres's work is more a radicalization than a rej ection of struct ur alism. The idea of "cold societies," societies organized in s uch a way that their empir i cal historicity is not int ernalized as a transcendent al condit ion, finds in Clast res a polit ical expression: his primit ive societ ies are Levi-Strauss' cold societies; they are against the State for exactly the same reasons that they are against hist o ry. In both cases, incidentally, what they are seeking

i

13

to conjure keeps threatening to invade them from the o utside or erupt from the inside; this was a p roblem that Clastres, and Levi足 Strauss in his own way, never ceased to confront. And if Clastrean war preempts structuralist exchange, it must be emphasized that it does not abolish it. On the contrary, it rein足 fo rces (in its prototypical incarnation as "incest prohibition") its em inent status as the generic vector of hominization. For this reason the prohibition of incest is incapable to acco unt for the singular form of human life that Clastres calls "primitive society" -which is for him, the true object of anthropology or ethnology, a word that he o ften prefers to describe h i s profession. For Clastres, and this point merits emphasis in the present intellec足 tual conjuncture, anthropology or ethnology is "a science of man, but not of any man" (Clastres 1968: 77). An art of dis足 tances, a paradoxical science, anthropology's mission is to establish a dialogue with those peoples whose silencing was the condition of its own possibility as a science-the Others of the West, the "savages" o r "pri m itives," collectives that escaped the Great Attractor of the State .

Anthropology incarnates, for Clastres, a consideration of the human phenomenon

as

defined by

a

maximum intensive aIredty,

:l:l

internal dispersion whose limits are a priori indeterminable. " [ W] hen the mirror does not reflect our own likeness, it does not prove there is nothing to perceive," writes the author in "Copernicus and the savages."4 This characteristically curt remark finds an echo in a recent formulation of Patrice Maniglier (2005: 773-74) concerning what this philosopher calls the "highest promise" of anthropology, n amely, that o f " Returning us an i m age in which we do n o t 4. Republished a s Chapter 1 o f Society Against the State.

recognize ourselves."s The purpose of such a consideration, the spirit of this promise, is not then to reduce alterity, for this is the stuff humanity is made of, but, on the contrary, to multiply its images.

Alterity and multiplicity define both how anthropology constitutes its relation with its object and this object constitutes itself. "Primitive society" is the name that Clastres gave to that object, and to his own encounter with multiplicity. And if the State has always existed, as Deleuze and Guattari ( 1 98 1 / 1 987: 397) argue in their insightful commentary of Clastres, then primitive society also will always exist: as the immanent exterior of the State, as the force of anti-production permanently haunting the productive forces, and as a multiplicity that is non-interiorizable by the planetary mega-machines. "Primi­ tive society," in short, is one of the conceptual embodiments of the thesis that another world is possible: that there is life beyond capi­ talism, as there is society outside of the State. There always was, and-for this we struggle-there always will be.

"In Clastres there is a way of affirming that I prefer to all of the academic precautions." The person who says this is Nicole Loraux ( 1 987: 1 5 8-59), the distinguished Hellenist scholar, who did not hesitate, however, to counter a number of Clastrean assertions with critical considerations that are as judicious as they are serene. A serenity, it should be said, that is quite rare when one is dealing with the reception of Clastres's work, whose "way of affirming" is strongly polarizing. On one side, it awakens a hatred of astonishing intensity among the zealots of reason and order; it is not uncommon that his anthropological anarchism should be the target of verdicts that seem 5.

Maniglier's point is that this promise is achieved by the structuralism of Uvi­

Strauss, something with which Clastres would not, at least in his early days, disagree.

irltO(;dctOIl

/

15

to belong more to criminal psychopathology than to the history of ideas.6 Even in the specific field of South American ethnology, where his influence was formative (don't mistake this for normative) for an entire generation, one witnesses today a re-intensification of the effort to nullify his work, in a badly-disguised ideological move where "academic caution" seems to work as an instrument for the conceptual defanging of Amerindian thought, reducing it to the blandest banality, so as to submit it to that regime of "harmony" that Clastres saw menacing the indigenous way of life in general.

Among the more generous and restless spirits, on the other hand, the work of Clastres provokes an adhesion that can be a little too impetuous, thanks to the spellbinding power of his language, with its quasi-formulaic, insistent concision, with the deceiving directness of his argumentation, and, above all, with the authentic passion that transpires from almost every page he has written.

Clastres transmits to the reader the sensation that he or she is a witness to a privileged experience; he shares with him or her his own admiration for the existential nobility of the absolutely Other-those "images of ourselves" in which we do not recognize ourselves, and which thus retain their disquieting autonomy.

A difficult author. then. It is prf'risdy his best readers v,-ho Heed to (re)learn to read him, after so many years of being convi nced to forget and forsake him. They must remain attentive as much to his virtues as to his defects: to appreciate his anthropological insights and his sensitivity as a field ethnographer-Chronicle of the Guayaki 6.

See, for example, the diagnostic in Moyn

2004:

"exaggerated and monomaniacal

hatred of the State"; "vociferous hatred of capitalism"; "fanatical suspicion of the State"; "paranoid obsession," among others. The author is not far from blaming Clastres for the Unabomber attacks.

Indians? is a masterwork of the ethnographic genre-but also to resist his sometimes excessive finality, rather than timidly averting one's eyes before his hyperboles and hesitations, his hastinesses and imprecisions. Resisting Clastres, but not stopping to read him; and resisting with Clastres, too: confronting with and in his thought what remains alive and unsettling.

Maurice Luciani, in a eulogy published in the magazine Libre, mentioned the "indifference to the spirit of the times" as one of the most characteristic features of the ironic and solitary personality of his friend. It is a curious assessment, seeing that the spirit of the pre­ sent times tends to connect Clastres with another Zeitgeist, in order to discount his work as, of all things, anachronistic: romantic, prim­ itivist, exoticist and other assorted sins that the "neo-neo" criticism (neo-liberal and neo-conservative) associates with the annus horribilis of 1 968.8 But precisely, Luciani wrote in 1 978, when the silence or opprobrium that would surround the oeuvre of Clastres and of so many of his contemporaries had already begun. A re-reading of

Archeology of Violence at thirty years's distance is, therefore, both a disorienting and an illuminating experience. If it is worth doing, it is because something of the era in which these texts were written, or better, against which they were written-and it

was

in this exact

measure that they helped to define it-something of this era remains in ours, something of the problems of then continue with us today.

Or maybe not: the problems have changed radically, some will say.

7. Clames 1 972/ 1 998.

8. One should add to this unholy anti-68 rightwing alliance the recent return, in the left extremity of the intellectual spectrum, to a certain authoritarian universalism that seems to have learned little and forgotten even less.

!rotroducton / 1 7

So much the better: what happens when we reintroduce in another context concepts elaborated in very specific circumstances? What effects do they produce when they resurface?9 The effect of anachronism caused by the reading of Clastres is real.

Take the first three chapters of Archeology o/Violence, for example. The author speaks of the Yanomami as "the dream of every ethnographer"; he unleashes a furious sarcasm against missionaries and tourists without sneaking in any "reflexive" identification of the anthropologist with these pathetic figures; he shows a frank fascination for a mode of life that he does not hesitate to call primitive and to qualifY as happy; he falls prey to immediatist and "phalloculocentric" illu­ sions, as displayed in his praise of the story of Elena Valero; and he wallows in the sentimental pessimism (Sahlins 2000) of the "final frontier," of the "ultimate freedom," of "the last free primitive society in South America and no doubt the world." All of this has become properly unsayable nowadays, in the polite society of contemporary Academe (the BBC or the Discovery Channel being now in charge of the enterprising up and dumbing down of such concerns). We live in an era in which prurient puritanism, guilty hypocrisy and intellectual impotence converge to foreclose whatever possibility of seriously imagining (rather th�n merely f:u:t:lsizing)

au

aiL"lnalivt:

LU

our own cultural inferno, or even of recognizing it as such.

The brief but devastating analysis that Clastres makes of the anthropological project10 today seems uncomfortably aristocratic, in the Nietzschean sense. But it simultaneously anticipates the essence of the post-colonial reflexivity that would plunge the 9. F. Chatelet cited in Barbosa 2004: 532.

10. See "Copernicus and the Savages" ( 1969, ch. 1 of Clastres 1987), and "Between Silence and Dialogue" (Clastres 1968).

1 8 / /Vcheoi8gy OT Violonce

discipline in the following decades, into an acute "crisis of con­ science" -the worst possible way to introduce a creative discontinuity within any political or intellectual project. This edge of Clastres's thought has become almost incomprehensible today, with the rising tide of good feelings and bad faith that colors the cultural apperception of the neo-Western globalized citizen.

And nevertheless, it is easy to see that the scornful prophecy con­ cerning the Yanomami was substantially correct: They are the last of the besieged. A mortal shadow is being cast on all sides .... And afterwards? Perhaps we will feel better once the final frontier of this ultimate freedom has been broken.

Perhaps we will sleep without waking a single time .... Some day, then, oil derricks around the chabunos, diamond mines in the hillsides, police on the paths, boutiques on the river­ banks .... Harmony everywhere. (p. 80) This "some day" seems pretty close: mining is already there, wreaking mortal havoc; oil derricks are not that far, neither are the boutiques; the policing of public thoroughfares might still take some time (let's see how the ecotourism economy performs). The great and unexpected difference from Clastres's prophecy, however, is that now the Yanomami have taken upon themselves the task of articulating a cosmopolitical critique of Western civilization, refusing to contribute to the "harmony everywhere" with the silence of the defeated. The detailed and unforgiving reflections of the shaman-philosopher Davi Kopenawa, in a joint effort of over thirty years with the anthropologist Bruce Albert materialized, at last in a book, La chute du del, which is bound to change the terms of anthropological interlocution with indigenous Amazonia (Kopenawa & Albert 20 1 0). With this

Introouction / 19

exceptional work we are perhaps really beginning to move "from silence to dialogue" ; even if the conversation cannot be anything more than dark and ominous, for we live in somber times. The light is entirely on the side of the Yanomami, with their innumer足 able brilliant crystals and their resplendent legions of infinitesimal spirits that populate the visions of their shamans. II Rather than anachronistic, Clastres's work gives off an impression of untimeliness. One sometimes has the feeling that it is necessary to read him as if he were an obscure pre-Socratic thinker, someone who speaks not only of another world, but from another world, in a language that is ancestral to ours, and which, not being capable any longer of understanding it perfectly, we need to interpret: changing the distribution of its implicit and explicit aspects, lit足 eralizing what is figurative and vice versa, proceeding to a re-abstraction of its vocabulary in view of the mutations of our philosophic and political rhetoric; reinventing, in sum, the mean足 ing of this discourse that strikes us as fundamentally strange. 12 1 1. See Viveiros de Castro 2007. Kopenawa and Albert's book is an eloquent proof (there are others) that anthropology has something better to show with respect to the Yanomami than the heinous record of abominarion<, brg.. "1<1 5m2!!, in

....hkh .

it has been implicated since its arrival among this people.

12. The analogy with the pre-Socrarics is more than poetic license; it is justified by the fact that Clastres approximated and opposed, on more than one occasion, the thought of Guarani shamans to the philosophy of Heraclitus and Parmenides, reformulating the traditional problem of the "passage" from myth to philosophy足 rigorously parallel, for him, to the problem of the emergence of the State-in terms of a contrast between the fate of the opposition of the One and the Multiple among the Guarani and the Greeks (Loraux 1987; Prado Jr 2003). One notes, incidentally, that C1astres did

not see

the passage of myth to philosophy as marking a transition

from a theocratic "Oriental" despotism to a "proto-European" rational democracy.

20 / Archeology of Vb8nce

Primitive society; from lack to endo-consistency Clastres's project was to transform "social" or "cultural" anthro足 pology into a political anthropology, in the double sense of an anthropology that takes political power (not domination or "con足 flict") as immanent to social life, and that should be able to take seriously the radical otherness of the experience of those peoples called primitive; this would include, before anything else, the recognition of the latter's full capacity for self-reflection. To facil足 itate this,

however, it was necessary firstly to break the

teleological relation-or rather, the theological relation足 between the political dimension of public life and the State-form, affirmed and justified by practically all of Western philosophy.

Deleuze wrote, in a famous passage, that "The Left [ . J really . .

needs people to think" because "the job of the Left, whether in or out of power, is to uncover the sort of problem that the Right wants at all costs to hide" (199011995: 128, 127). The problem that Clastres discovered, that of the non-necessary character of the association of power with coercion, is one of those problems that the Right needs to hide. Anthropology will necessarily be political, Clastres affirms, once it is able to prove that the State and all that to which it gave rise (in particular, social classes) is a historical contingency, "misfortune" rather than "destiny."

To make people think is to make them take thought seriously, beginning with the thought of other peoples, since thinking, in itself, always summons up the powers of otherness. T he theme of "how to finally take seriously" the philosophical choices expressed in primitive social formations returns insistently in Clastres. In chapter 6 of the present book, after affirming that the ethnology of the last decades had done much to liberate these societies from the exoticising

intr"oduciion / 21

gaze of the West,13 the author writes: "we no longer cast upon primitive societies the curious or amused look of the somewhat enlightened, somewhat humanistic amateur; we take them seriously.

The question is how far does taking them seriously go?" (p. 163) .

How tar, indeed? That is the question that anthropology has decidedly not resolved, because that is the question that defines it: to resolve it would be for Clastres, equivalent to dissolving an indispensable and irreducible difference; it would be going farther than the discipline could aim.14 Maybe this is why the author always associated the project of the discipline with the notion of paradox. The paradox is a crucial operator in the anthropology of Clastres : there is a paradox of ethnology (knowledge not as appropriation but as dispossession) ; a paradox intrinsic to each one of the two major social forms (in primitive society, chiefship without power; in ours, voluntary servi­ tude) ; and a paradox of war and of prophetism (institutional devices for non-division that become the germs of a separated power) . It would even be possible to imagine the first great conceptual persona (or perhaps "psycho-social type" ; see Deleuze & Guattari 1991/ 1996) of Clastrean theory, the chief without power, as a kind of

paradoxical element of the politk,:>l,

Sl!pern!lGlcra;.-y t.::t1n auJ empty

case at the same time, a floating signifier that sign ifies nothing in particular (its discourse is empty and redundant) , existing merely to 13. The fact that his own work would later be rebuked as exoticizing is proof both that Clastres was more correct that he suspected and that he underestimated his pre­ sent and future enemies.

14. See the melancholy last words of chapter rwo-"Things remaining what they are ... "-to which the already mentioned book of Kopenawa and Albert perhaps constitutes the beginning of a welcome negation.

22 ! .ArcI18o'J[jY of Violence

oppose itself to the absence of signification (this empty discourse institutes the plenum of society). This would make the Clastrean chief, needless to say, an emblematic figure of the structuralist uni­ verse (Levi-Strauss 1950/1987; Deleuze 1%712003).

Be that as it may; the fact is that today the paradox has become generalized; it is not only ethnologists who find themselves before the intellectual and political challenge of alterity. The question of "how far" is now posed to the West as a whole, and the stakes are nothing less than the cosmopolitical fate of that which we are pleased to call our Civilization. The problem of "how to take others seriously" became, itself, a problem that is imperative to take seriously. In La sorcellerie capitaliste, one of the few books published in present-day France that pursues the spirit of Clastrean anthro­ pology (mediated by the voice of Deleuze and Guattari), Pignarre and Stengers observe: [W]e are used to deploring the misdeeds of colonization and confessions of guilt have become routine. But we lack a sense of dread when faced with the idea that not only do we take ourselves to be the thinking head of humanity but that, with the best intentions in the world, we do not cease to continue doing it. [ J The dread only begins when we realize that despite our tolerance, our remorse and our guilt, we have not changed that much (Pignarre & Stengers 2005: 88). .

.

.

And the question with which the authors conclude this reflection is a version of the one posed by Clastres: "how to make space for others?" (ibid.: 89).

To make space for others certainly does not mean to take them as models, make them change from being our victims (ibid.) to

((fl{O(lucton / 23

being our redeemers. Clastres's project belongs to those who believe the proper object of anthropology is to elucidate the ontological conditions of the self-determination of the Other, which means first of all to recognize the Other's own socio-political consistency, which, as such, is not transferable to our world as if it were the long­ lost recipe of eternal universal happiness. Clastrean "primitivism" was not a political platform for the West. In his reply to Birnbaum (ch. 9), he writes: No more than the astronomer who invites others to envy the fate of stars do I militate in favor of the Savage world. [ .. J As .

analyst of a certain type of society, I attempt to unveil the modes of functioning and not to construct programs ... (p. 210) The comparison with the astronomer calls to mind the "view from afar" of Levi-Strauss, but gives it an ironic-political twist, putting us in our due place, as if the voyage that was both desirable and impos­ sible to make fell upon us and not the primitives. In any case, Clastres did not pretend to possess the plans of the vehicle that would have permitted us to make that trip. He believed that an absolute limit would prevent �oder!1 sccic�ieS frum rC:ddling this "other sociological planet" (Richir 1 9 87: 62): the population barri­ er. While rejecting the accusation of demographic determinism (here, p. 2 1 6), Clastres always maintained that the small demo­ graphic and territorial dimensions of primitive societies was a fundamental condition for the non-emergence of a separate power: "all States are natalists" ( 1 975: 22). Primitive multiplicities are more subtractive than additive, more molecular than molar, and minor both in quantity and in quality: the multiple is only made with few and with little.

24 / Arcil8ology of Violence

It is without doubt that the analysis of power in primitive soci­ eties can nourish reflection on the politics of our own societies (Clastres 1975), but in a way that is mainly comparative and specu­ lative, one would say. Why did the State-an anthropological contingency, after all-become a historical necessity for so many peoples, and especially for our cultural tradition? In what conditions do the supple lines of primitive segmentarity, with its codes and ter­ ritorialities, give way to the rigid lines of generalized overcodification, that is, to the setting up of the apparatus of capture of the State, which separates society from itself? And moreover, how to think the new face of the State in the world of "societies of con­ trol" (Deleuze 1995: 177- 182) in which transcendence becomes, as it were, immanent and molecular, the individual interiorizing the State and being perpetually modulated by it? What are the new forms of resistance that impose themselves, in other words, those which inevitably emerge? (And we say "inevitably" because here too it is a question of unveiling modes of functioning, not of construct­ ing programs. Or in order better to construct them, rather.)

There are two very different ways in which anthropology "univer­ salizes," that is, establishes an exchange of images between the Self and the Other. On the one hand, anthropology can make the image of the "others" function in such a way that it reveals something about "us," certain aspects of our own humanity that we are not able to recognize as our own. This is the anthropological project that, initiated in the Golden Age of Boas, Malinowski and Mauss, con­ solidated itself during the period when Clastres was writing and has continued to the present, from Claude Levi-Strauss to Marshall Sahlins, from Roy Wagner to Marilyn Strathern: the passage from an image of the O ther defined by a state of lack or need, by a

illtroductior / 25

negative distance in relation to the Self, to an alterity endowed with endo-consistency, autonomy or independence in relation to the image of ourselves (and in this measure, having a critical and heuris­ tic value for us). What Levi-Strauss did for classificatory reason, with his notion of savage thought, what Sahlins did for economic rationality, with his original affluent society (see ch. 8 here), what Wagner did for the concept of culture (and nature), with his meta­ semiotics of invention and convention, and what Strathern did for the notion of society (and individual), with the elucidation of the Melanesian practices of social analysis and relational knowledge, Clastres did for power and authority, with his society against the State-the consttuction, by way of the image of the other, of another image of the object (an image of the object that incorporates the image that the other makes of this object): another image of thought, of economy, of culture, of sociality, of politics.

In none of these cases was it ever about raising a Great Anthro­ pological Wall, but, rather, to indicate a bifurcation that, even if decisive, is no less contingent. Another cosmo-semiotic distribution berween figure and ground; the "partial integration" of a series of small differences in the manner of making a difference. It is neces­ sary to insist as much as possible

on

th� c8ntinger..cy of tllt::;C

meta-differences, or many other "States" will recreate themselves in the sphere of thought, tracing a Great Divide, a rigid or "major" line on the plane of the concept. And that would result in some­ thing that Deleuze and Guattari ( 1 987: 36 1 -74) called "State science," the theorematic science that extracts constants out of variables, as opposed to bolstering a "minor science," a nomadic and problematic science of continuous variations, which is associated with the war machine rather than with the State; and anthropology is a minor science by vocation (the paradoxical science of Clastres).

26 / ArchsoloDY of V'r>81;cs

This contingent difference between Self and Other does not pre­ vent, on the contrary it facilitates, the perception o f elements of alterity at the heart of our "proper" identity. Thus, savage thought is not the thought of savages, but the savage potential of all thought as long as it isn't "domesticated for the purpose of yield­ ing a return" (Levi-Strauss 1966: 219). The p rinciple o f sub productive sufficiency and the propensity t o creative dilapida­ tion pulsates underneath all the moralism of the economy and the supposed post-Iapsarian insatiability of desire (Sahlins 1972, 1996). Our society is also capable of generating moments-in our case, always exceptional and "revolutionary"-in which life is lived as an "inventive sequence" (Wagner 1981), and shares with all others (even if in a paradoxical, half-denialist way) the relational interpenetration of people that we call "kinship" (Edwards & Strathern 2000; Strathern 2005). And finally, in Clastres's case, the realization of our constitutive dependence, in the realm of thought itself, before the State-form, does not prevent the percep­ tion (and conception) of all the contrary intensities, fissures, cracks and lines of flight through which our society is constantly resisting its capture and control by the over-codifying transcen­ dence of the State. It is in this sense that the Society against the State remains valid as a "universal" concept-not as an ideal type, or as a rigid designator of a sociological species, but as an analyzer of any experience of collective, relational life.

The second mode by which anthropology universalizes itself, on the other hand, aims to demonstrate that the primitives are more like us than we are like them: they also are genetic maximizers and possessive individualists; they also optimize cost-benefits and make rational choices (which include being conveniently irrational when it comes to their relationship with "nature"-they exterminated the

Imro:juoliOrl ! 27

mega-fauna in America! They burned Australia down!); they are pragmatic and common-sensical fellows like us, not mistaking British sea-captains for native gods (Obeyesekere against Sahlins) nor experiencing their inner, substantive selves as relational "divid­ ual" entities (liPuma against Strathern); they also institute social inequalities at the smallest opportunity; they crave power and admire those who are stronger; they aspire to the three blessings of Modern Man: the holy trinity of State (the Father), Market (the Son) and Reason (the Holy Spirit). The proof that they are human is that they now share all of our defects, which got transformed little by little into qualities during the decades that gave us Thatcher, Reagan, the Patriot Act, the new Fortress Europe, neo-liberalism­ and evolutionary psychology as a bonus. Primitive society is now seen as an illusion, an "invention" of modern society (Kuper 1 9 88); the latter, apparently, is not an illusion and was never invented by any one; perhaps because only Capitalism is real, natural and spontaneous.

(Now we know where the real core of the God delusion is hiding.)

It is against this second mode of universalization-reactionary, unimaginative and, above all, reproductive of the model and figure of the State as the true Universal-that the work of Clastres was written, preemptively one could say. For hI' kneuJ very ,.,.Tll that the StdlC: wuld not tolerate, would never tolerate, primitive societies. Immanence and multiplicity are always scandalous in the eyes of the One. Individuals versus singularities

The thesis of the society against the State is sometimes confused with the doctrine of libertarianism in the ''American'' sense of the term, as if its entire logic amounted to an opposition to the inter­ ference of the central government in the life of individuals, a praise

of the so-called "free" market, a defense of citizens militias and so on.

But to take the theoretical dismantling of the concept of the State as telos of collective human life for a rejection of political organization as such, or to convert it into a hymn to "rugged individualism," is a grotesque mistake. Chapter 9 of the present book is instructive in this respect, as it discusses a symmetric misreading. Pierre Birnbaum, whose criticisms the author refutes here, does a Durkheimian read­ ing of the Society Against the State thesis, identifying it as "a society of total constraint." Clastres thus summarizes the criticism: In

other words, if primitive society is unaware of social division, it is at the price of a much more frightful alienation, that which subjects the community to an oppressive system of norms that no one can change. "Social control" is absolute: it is no longer society against the State, it is the society against the individual.

Clastres's response consists in saying that "social control," or rather, political power, does not exert itself on the individual but on an individual, the chief, who is individualized so that the social body can continue undivided, "in relation to itself." The author then sketches the thesis that primitive society inhibits the State by means of the metaphysical extrusion of its own cause and origin, attributing both to the mythical sphere of the primordial Given, that which is totally beyond human control and, as such, cannot be appropriated by a part of society so as to conventionalize mundane inequalities.

In putting its bases outside of "itself," society becomes nature, that is, it becomes what Wagner ( 1 986) would call a "symbol that stands for itself," blocking the projection of a totalizing Convention that would symbolize it, as it were, from above. The heteronomic tran­ scendence of the origin serves then as a guarantee of the immanence

'ntroduction ! 29

and autonomy of social power. Clastres attributes this political mini­ theory of primitive religion to Marcel Gauchet, who years later was to develop it along lines that Clastres perhaps could not have pre­ dicted. Gauchet attributed the origin of the State to this very exteriorization of the origin-by means of a human takeover of the place of transcendence-and went from there (to make a long story short) to a reflection on the virtues of the liberal constitutional State,

a

regime in which society approached an ideal situation of

autonomy through an ingenious interiorization of the symbolic source of society that would not destroy its "institutive" exteriority as such. The State against the State, as it were, in a sublation of Clastrean anarchism, which would finally see itself transformed into a defensible political programY It seems to me that the response to Birnbaum could go farther.

The society against the State is effectively against the individual, because the individual is a product and a correlate of the State. The State creates the individual and the individual requires the State; the self-separation of the social body that creates the State equally

cre­

ates-separates the subjects or individuals (singular or plural), at the same time that the State offers itself as a model for these: l'Etat c'est

Ie Moi. And

so

it is imrort:!nt to distirrgui.>ll Cla:.uean society from

its Durkheimian homonym, a source of equivocations that was not always clarified by Clastres, who occasionally tended to hypostasize 15.

In Moyn

2005 can be found an evaluation of Gauchet's trajectory,

to whom the

commentator seems to forgive everything except his original sin, namely, his "juve­ nile" adhesion to Clastres's malignant vision . See also, but in an entirely different direction, the cutting passage where Lefort

(1987: 202-03)

counters, without men­

tioning names, Gauchet's rationale concerning the "condensation" in the State of primitive external alterity.

primitive society, that is, to conceive of it as a collective subject, a Super-Individual which would be really, and not only formally, exte­ rior and anterior to the State (Deleuze & Guattari 1 987: 359) , and therefore ontologically homogeneous with it. Durkheimian society is the State-form in its "sociological" guise: think of the constitutive coerciveness of the social fact, the absolute transcendence of the Whole in relation to the Pans, its function of universal Understand­ ing, its intelligible and moral power to unify the sensorial and sensual manifold. Hence the strategic relevance, for Durkheim, of the "opposition" between individual and society: one is a version of the other, the "members" of Society as a collective spiritual body are like miniscule individual sub-States subsumed by the State as the Super­ Individual. Leviathan. The primitive society of Clastres, on the contrary, is against the State, and so therefore against "society" con­ ceived in its image; it has the form of an asubjective multiplicity. By the same token, its components or "associates" are not individualities or subjectivities, but singularities. Primitive societies do not recog­ nize the "abstract machine of faciality" (Deleuze & Guattari op.cit.: 1 68) , producer of subjects, of faces that express a subjective interiority.

An interpretation of Clastres's anarchism in individualist or

"liberal" terms would therefore be an error symmetrical to the kind of reading that would imagine his primitive society as a totalitarian­ totalizing order of a " Durkheimian" type. In the felicitous formula of Bento Prado Jr. (2003) , his thought was, rather than anarchist,

"anarchontic"-a portmanteau word which includes not only the reference to the Athenian archontic (ruler) role, but also the string I-ontiel, as if to epitomize the metaphyisical or ontological content of Clastres's anarchism, his opposition to what he saw as the founding principle of the Western doctrine of the State, to wit, the idea that Being is One and that the One is the Good.

introdliction i 31

Between philosophy and anthropolo gy It is customary to consider Clast res as an author of the hedgehog type ("one idea only, but a BIG idea"), a proponent of a monolithic thesis, the "Society against the State," a mode of organization of collective life defined by a doubly inhibiting relation: one internal, the chief­ tainship without power, the other external, the centrifugal apparatus of war. It is in this very duality that one can glimpse the possibility of alternative philosophical readings of the Clastrean thesis.

The first reading places the emphasis on Clastres's role in deter­ mining a universal "political function" in charge of constituting "a place where society appears to itself" (Richir 1987: 69). The society against the State is defined, in these terms, by a certain mode of

political representation, while politics itself is conceived of as being a mode of representation, a proj ective device that creates a molar double of the social body in which it sees itself reflected. The figure of the chief without power stands out here as being Clastres's major discovery: a new transcendental illusion (ibid.: 66), a new mode of institution (necessarily "imaginary") of the social. This mode would consist in the projection of an outside, a Nature that must be negated in order for Culture or 'odet)' to imtittite itself, bUl which must at the same time be represented within the culture through a simulacrum, the powerless chief.

This take on Clastres's work effects what can be called a "phe­ nomenological reduction" of the concept of society against the State. It originates in the approximation between Clastres and the intellectuals that gathered around Claude Lefort in the magazine

Textures and, following that, in Libre, where the three last chapters of Archeology of Violence were published. Lefort, a former student of Merleau Ponty, was co-founder with Cornelius Castoriadis of

32;'

01

the group "Socialism or Barbarism," an important actor in the history of leftist libertarian politics in France. The trademark of this phenomenologico-socialist assemblage (which included Marcel Gauchet until his realignment in the ' 80s) was the combination of a resolute anti-totalitarianism with a no less staunch metaphysical humanism that reveals itself, for example, in the "anti-exchangist" position that was assumed early on by Lefort. Lefort's critique of the structuralist search for formal rules subtending practice, and his preference for understanding "the shaping of the lived relations between men" ( 1 987: 1 87) , might have been one of the influences on Clastres, alongside the more explicit Nietzschean-derived theory of debt (see ch. 8, for example) that connects Clastres's work to the different anti-exchangism of Deleuze and Guattari.

This phenomenological reading gives Clastres's "political anthropology" a decidedly metaphysical slant. From that angle it is through politics that man, the "political animal," ceases being "merely" an animal and is rescued from the immediacy of nature and turned into a divided being, having both the need and the capa­ bility to represent in order to be. The extra-human, even when it is recognized as essential to the constitution of humanity, belongs to the realm of belief; it is a division that is internal to the human, for exteriority is a transcendental illusion. Politics is the proper mirror for the animal turned Subject: "Only man can reveal to man that he is man" (Lefort in Abensour 1 987: 1 4) .

The second and, to my mind, more consequential appropriation of Clastres's ethnology places emphasis on the inscription of fluxes rather than on the institution of doubles, on semiotic-material codes rather than on symbolic Law, on supple and molecular segmentarity rather than on the binary macropolitics of the inside and the outside,

introduction / 33

on the centrifugal war machine rather than on the centripetal chiefship. J am referring, of course, to the reading of Clastres by Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus ( 1 9721 1 983) and A Thousand

Plateaus ( 9 8 1 1 1 987), where Clastres's ideas are used as one of the building blocks for the construction of a "universal history of contingency" and of a radically materialist anthropology, which is quite at odds with the political spiritualism that transpires from their phenomenological interpretation

Anti-Oedipus was an essential book for Clastres himself, who attended the courses where the book was rehearsed, while A Thou­ sand Plateaus, published after his death, criticized and developed his intuitions in an entirely new direction. In a certain sense, Deleuze and Guattari completed Clastres's work, fleshing our the philosophical richness that lay in potential form therein. The embarrassed and embarrassing silence with which anthropology as a discipline received the two books of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, in which take place one of the most exciting and disconcerting dialogues that philosophy and anthropology have ever had, is not without wnnection to the similar malaise that Clastres's work provoked in an always prudent and always prudish academic environment. " It seems to me that ethnolo gists sholl 1 d f<"pl

at home i I;. Aiitf-

Oedipus . . . " (Clastres in Guattari 2009: 8 5 ) . Well, the vast majority of them didn't. 1 6 In Anti-Oedipus, society against the State becomes a "primitive territorial machine," losing its residual connotations of a collective Subject and transforming itself in a pure "mode of functioning" 16. The silence of the anthropological community vis it vis Deleuze and Guattari is addressed in Viveiros de Castro 2009 and 20 1 0. For an insightful assessment of the anthropological component of Anti-Oedipus, see Vianna 1 990.

whose objective is the integral codification of material and semiotic flows that constitute human desiring production. That territorial machine codes the flows, invests the organs, marks the bodies: it is a machine of inscription. Its working presupposes the immanent unity of desire and of production that is the Earth. The issue of the powerless chiefship is thereby resituated in a wider geophilosophical context: the will to non-division that Clastres saw in the primitive socius becomes an impulse to the absolute codification of all material and semiotic flows and to the preservation of the coextensivity of the social body and the body of the Earth. The "anticipatory" conj uration of a separate power is the resistance of primitive codes to despotic overcodification, the struggle of the Earth against the deterritorializing Despot. The collective intentionality that is expressed in the refusal to unify under an over-codifying entity loses its anthropomorphic mask, becoming-and here we are using the language of A Thousand Plateaus-an effect of a certain regime of signs (the presignifying semiotic) and the dominance of a primitive segmentarity, marked by a "relatively supple line of interlaced codes and territorialities." 1 7 The main connection between Anti-Oedipus an d Clastres's work is a common, although not exactly identical, rejection of exchange as a founding principle of sociality. Anti-Oedipus maintained that the notion of debt should take the place occupied by reciprocity in Mauss and Levi-Strauss. Clastres, in his first article on the philosophy of indigenous chiefship-a convoluted critique of an early article of his teacher, where the chiefly role was thought of in terms of a reciprocal exchange between the leader and the grou�had already suggested that the indigenous concept of power simultaneously implied an 1 7. Deleuze & Guattari 1 987: 222. On presignifying semiotics, cf op.cit.: 1 1 7- 1 8 .

affirmation of reciprocity as the essence of the social and its negation, in placing the role of the chief outside of its sphere, in the position of a perpetual debtor to the group. Without taking from exchange its anthropological value, Clastres introduced the sociopolitical necessity of a non-exchange. In his last essays on war, the disj unction between exchange and power transforms into a strange resonance.

In dislocating itself from the intracommunitary relation to the inter­ communitary relation, the negation of exchange converted itself into the essence of the primitive socius. Primitive society is "against exchange" (p. 269) for the same reasons that it is against the State: because it desires autarchy and autonomy-because it knows that all exchange is a form of debt, that is, dependence, even if reciprocal.

A Thousand Plateaux takes up Clastres's theses in two long chap ters : one on the "war machine" as a form of pure exteriority (in terms of which organized violence or war "proper" has a very minor role) in opposition to the State as a form of pure interiority (in terms of which administrative centralization has an equally secondary role); and another chapter on the "apparatus of capture," which develops a theory of the State as a mode of functioning that is contemporaneous to the war machines and the mechanisms of inhibition of primitive societies. These developments not only modi£}' elemen�s of Cld3Lre,,'� propositions, but also some of Anti-Oedipus' central categories .

The Savage-Barbarian-Civilized scheme opens up laterally to include the pivotal figure of the Nomad, to which the war machine now sees itself constitutively associated. A new tripartition, derived from the concept of segmentarity, or quantified multiplicity, makes its appearance: the supple and polyvocal line of primitive codes and territorialities; the rigid line of overcoding resonance (the State apparatus); and the line(s) of flight traced by decoding and deter­ ritorialization (the war machine) . Clastres's primitive society (the

36 / l\rcheciugy

ViolencE

"Savages" of Anti-Oedipus) loses its privileged connection to the war machine. In A Thousand Plateaux, it is seen

as

simply recruiting it

as

a form of exteriority, in order to conjure the tendencies towards over­ coding and resonance that are constantly threatening to subsume the primitive codes and territorialities. In similar fashion, the State can capture the war machine (that is, nonetheless, its absolute exteri­ or) and put it at its service, not without running the risk of being destroyed by it. And finally, contemporary societies remain in full contact with their "primitive" or molecular infrastructure, "suf­ fused by a supple fabric without which their rigid segments would not hold." 1 8 With this, the exhaustive and mutually exclusive dichotomy between the two macro-types of society ("with" and "against" the State) gets diversified and complexified: the lines coexist, intertwine and transform into each other; the State, the war machine, and primitive segmentarity all lose their typological connotations and become abstract forms or models, which manifest themselves in multiple material procedures and substrates: in scientific styles, technological phyla, aesthetic attitudes and philosophical systems as much

as

in macro-political forms of organization or modes of the

representation-institution of the socius.

Finally, at the same time that they take on board one of Clas­ tres's fundamental theses, when they affirm that the State, rather than supposing a mode of production, is the very entity that makes production a "mode" (op.cit . : 429) , Deleuze and Guattari blur the overdrawn distinction made by Clastres between the political and the economic. As is known, the attitude of Capitalism and Schizo­

phrenia towards historical materialism, including towards French ethno-Marxism, is quite different from that of the author of 1 8 . Deleuze & Guattari 1 987: 213.

"Marxists and their anthropology" (ch. 10). Above all, the issue of the origin of the State ceases being the mystery that it always was for Clastres. The State stops having a historical or chronological origin, as time itself is made the vehicle of non-evolutionary reverse causalities (op. cit.: 335, 431). There is not only a very old actual presence of the State "outside" of primitive societies, but also its perpetual virtual presence "within" these societies, in the form of the bad desires that it is necessary to conjure and the foci of segmentary resonance that are always developing. 1 9 Deterritorialization is not historically secondary to territory, the codes are not separable from the movement of decodification (op. cit.: 222).

Critiqued and requalified, the theses expounded in the shorr texts of Pierre Clastres therefore have decisive weight in the concep­ tual dynamic of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. In particular, the Clastrean theory of "war" as an abstract machine for the generation of multiplicity, opposed, in its essence, to the overcoding State monster-war as enemy number one of the One-plays a key role in one of the major philosophical systems of the 20th century.

Between anthropology and ethnology The p resent excitement surrounding archeological discoveries, in Amazonia, of vestiges of social formations that were similar to Circum-Caribbean chiefdoms, as well as the advance of historical studies on the contact zones between the Andean polities and the 19.

See Clastres's approving comments on the notion of " Urstaat" in Guattari

2009: 86.

On "without" and "within," see the strategic observation of Deleuze and

Guattari: "The law of the State is not the law of All or Nothing (State societies counter-State societies) but that of interior and exterior"

( 1 987: 360).

or

societies of the Lowlands, have brought scholars to dismiss the concept of "society against the State" as a doubly European artifact: it mistakes as an original given what is really the result of a dramatic involution of Amerindian societies beginning in the 1 6th century; and it would be an ideological projection of some old Western utopias that attained new currency duting the fateful decade of 1 960.

The fact that these two different invalidating arguments were mobilized together against Clastres by certain currents of contempo足 rary ethnology suggests that the latter is not free of its own ideological baggage. The focus on the centrifugal tendencies that inhibited the emergence of the State-form never stopped Clastres from identifYing "the slow work of unifying forces" in the multi足 community organizations of the Lowlands or the presence of social stratification and centralized power in the region (especially i n northern Amazonia) . 2 0 With regards t o "anarchontic" European utopias, we know about how much they owe to the encounter with the New World, at the beginning of the Modern era. The misun足 derstandings were plenty, without a doubt, but they were not arbitrary. Finally and most importantly it should be noted that the post-Columbian demographic regression, catastrophic as it effectively was , cannot explain the alpha and omega of the latter足 day sociopolitical landscape of indigenous America; j ust as any other evolutionary traj ectory, "involution" expresses far more than adaptive constraints. It is on this crucial surplus of meaning-of structure, of culture, of history, as you will-that the ethnological

20. Not to mention his fascination with the ptoblem of the supposed crisis of

Tupi-Guarani societies, which would be on the verge of giving birth to "the deadliest of innovations"-the State and social inequality. For this, see chapters 2, 3 and 4 in Society Against the State and chapter 5 of the present book.

Introd'Jction / 39

relevance of the "society against the State" thesis rests, and in function of which it should be evaluated. 2 1 Primitive society perhaps was, for Clastres, something like an essence; but it wasn't a static essence. The author always conceived of it as a profoundly unstable mode of functioning in its very pursuit of ahistorical stability. Be that as it may, there indeed exists a quite characteristic "way of being" of what he called primitive society, one that n o ethnographer who has lived with an Amazo nian cul­ ture, even one which has well-defined features of hierarchy and centralization, can fail to experience in all of its evidence, as perva­ sive as it is elusive. This way of being is "essentially" a politics of multiplicity; Clastres may only have been mistaken to interpret it as if it should always express itself in terms of a "political" multiplicity, an institutional form of collective self-representation. The politics of multiplicity is a mode of becoming rather than a way of being (hence its elusiveness) ; it is effectively instituted or institutionalized in certain ethno-historical contexts , but does not depend on such transition to a molar state to function-quite the opposite. That

mude precedes its own institution, and remains in or returns to its default molecular state in many other, non-primitive contexts .

"Society against the state," in brief, is

an

intensive concep t: it designates

an intensive mode or an omnipresent virtual form, whose variable conditions of extensivization and actualization it is incumbent upon anthropology to determine.

Clastres's posterity in South American ethnology followed two main axes. The first consisted in the elaboration of a model of Amazonian social organization-a "symbolic economy of alterity" or a "metaphysics 2 1 . And this in spite of the demographic determinist leanings of Clastres himself

of predation" 22-which extended his theses on primitive warfare.

The second was the description of the cosmological background of counter-state societies, the so-called Amerindian "perspec­ tivism."23 The two axes explore the fertile hesitation between structuralist and post -structuralist tendencies that characterizes Clastres's work; both p rivilege a Deleuzo-Guattarian reading over a phenomenological reading. 24 Together, they define an indige­ nous cosmopraxis of immanent alterity, which is tantamount to a counter-anthropology, a "reverse anthropology" of sorts, which is located in the precarious space between silence and dialogue .

Clastres's theory of war, although at first glance it seems to reinforce a binary opposition between inside and outside, the human Us and the less-than-human Other, in fact ends up by differentiating and relativizing alterity-and, by the same token, any position of identity-undermining the narcissistic or "ethno­ centric" subtext (see chapter 4) that sometimes accompanies the author's characterization of primitive society.

22. Viveiros de Castro 1 996; Levi-Strauss 2000: 720.

23. Lima 1 996/ 1 999; Viveiros de Castro 1 9961 1 998.

24. In Brazilian ethnology, which is responsible for a good part of these developments, Clastres never stopped being a primary interlocutor (see Lima & Goldman 200 1 ) ; the still unpublished thesis of Sztutman (2005) deserves special mention a s a thorough and perceptive attempt to update his ideas in light of current theoretical developments. In the Anglophone world, an ethnological current led by Joanna Overing was equally inspired by Clastres's work, adopting a broadly phenomenological stance, which emphasized the gemeinschaftlich aspects of Amazonian societies rather than their "being-for-war." Among French Amazonianists, Clastres's influence is systemic, but often self-repressed and at times denied (if for no other reason than that ontological anarchy is not exactly the order of the day in local academia).

Let us imagine Clastrean ethnology as a conceptual drama in which a small number of personae or types come face to face: the

chief,' the enemy, the prophet, the warrior. All are vectors of alterity, paradoxical devices that define the socius by means of some form of negation. The chief incarnates the negation of society's exchangist foundations, and represents the group inasmuch as this exteriority is interiorized: in becoming "the prisoner of the group," he counter­ produces the latter's unity and indivision. The enemy negates the collective Us, allowing the group to affirm itself against him, by his violent exclusion; the enemy dies to secure the persistence of the multiple, the logic of separation. The prophet, in turn, is the enemy of the chief, he affirms society against chiefship when its incumbent threatens to escape the control of the group by affirming a transcen­ dent power; at the same time, the prophet drags society towards an impossible goal, self-dissolution. The warrior, finally, is the enemy of himself, destroying himself in the pursuit of glorious immortality, impeded by the society that he defends from transforming his prestigious deeds in instituted power. The chief is a kind of enemy, the prophet a kind of warrior, and so forth, and back again.

These four characters therefore form a circle of alterity that counter-effectuates or counter-invents pri m i tive socit>ty

Hi l t

,,1-

thl::'

center of this circle is not the Subject, the reflexive form of Identity.

The fifth element, which can be considered the central dynamic element precisely due to its excentricity, is the character upon which the politics of multiplicity rests: the political ally, the "associate" who lives elsewhere, halfway between the local, co-resident group and the enemy groups. Never have there been merely two positions in the primitive socius . Everything turns around the ally, the third term that permits the conversion of an internal indivision into an external fragmentation, modulating indigenous warfare

and transfo rming it into a full social relation, or more, as Clastres maintains, into the fundamental relation of the primitive socius.

Political allies, those local groups that form a band of security (and uncertainty) around each local group, are always conceived, in Amazonia, under the guise of potential affinity, that is, as a qualified form of alterity (matrimonial affinity) but that nevertheless remains alterity (potential affinity) , and which is marked by aggressive and predatory connotations that are much more ritually productive­ that is, really productive-than mere undetermined, anonymous enmity (or than the depotentializing reiteration of matrimonial exchanges that creates a social interiority) .25 It is the unstable and indispensable figure of the political ally that so impedes a "generalized reciprocity" (a fusion of communities and a superior sociological unity) as much as generalized warfare (the suicidal atomization of 2 5 . It i s known that the Clastrean theory o f war was strongly influenced b y its direct and indirect contact with the Yanomami. The most authoritative reference here is unquestionably Bruce Albert's still-unpublished thesis ( 1 985). Albert shows how, in Yanomami sociocosmology, it is death as a biocosmic event that produces violence as a sociopolitical event, rather than the contrary. Albert inscribes war in a concentric gradient of aggression (natural as well as supernatural) , which is directly projectable on social space. This space structures itself both inwardly and outwardly around the ambivalent relation between non-eo-resident allies. Recall also an observation of Bento Prado Jr (2003) : ''According to Clastres, the coefficient of violence entailed in [Yanomamil war was almost equal to zero . . . Violence emerged, so to speak, outside of war. And it occurred during parties-above all when the guests were distant allies-in which one tribe received another, its ally, for a celebratory feast. As if the

most distant ally were, more than the enemy, the true object ofsocial violence" (emphasis mine) . Ternarism and cromatism of the Other (hence of the Self) , rather than a massive binarism of the I and the not-I.

the socius) . The true center of primitive society, this loose network of local groups jealous of their reciprocal independence, is always extra-local, being situated at each point where the conversion between interior and exterior can be effected. For this reason, the "totality" and the "indivision" of the primitive community do not contradict the dispersion and the multiplicity of primitive society.

The character of totality signifies that the community is not part of any other hierarchically superior Whole; the character of indivision signifies that it isn't internally hierarchized either, divided in parts that form an interior Whole. Subtractive totality, negative indivision.

Lack of a locatable distinction between an inside and an outside.

Multiplication of the multiple.

The society against the State is a human-only project; politics is an affair that is strictly intra-specific. It is with regards to this aspect that Amerindian ethnology advanced most in recent years, extracting the intuitions of Clastres fro m their anthropocentric shell and showing how his decision to take indigenous thought seriously Iey uireďż˝

a

shift fro m the description of a (different) form of insti­

tution of the (similarly conceived) social to another notion of anthropology-another practice of humanity-and to another notion of politics-another experience of sociality.

Chapter 5 of this book is a fundamental text in this respect. The author writes there: Any amount of time spent among an Amazonian society, for example, allows one to observe not only the piety of the Savages but the investment of religious concerns into social life to a point that seems to dissolve the distinction between the secular and the religious, to blur the boundaries between the domain of

44 /

the profane and the sphere of the sacred: nature, in short, like society, is traversed through and through with the supernatural.

Animals or plants can thus at once be natural beings and super­ natural agents: if a falling tree injures someone, or a wild beast attacks someone, or a shooting star crosses the sky; they will be interpreted not as accidents, but as effects of the deliberate aggression of supernatural powers, such as spirits of the forest, souls of the dead, indeed, enemy shamans. The decided refusal of chance and of the discontinuity between the profane and the sacred would logically lead to abolishing the autonomy of the religious sphere, which would then be located in all the indi­ vidual and collective events of the tribe's daily life. In reality, though, never completely absent from the multiple aspects of a primitive culture, the religious dimension manages to assert itself as such in certain specific ritual circumstances.

The decision

to

determine a religious dimension "as such" -the refusal,

therefore , to draw the consequences from what was suggested by the general cosmo-logic of Amazonian societies-perhaps indicates the influence of Gauchet. 26 This made Clastres less sensitive to the fact that the common "supernaturalization" of nature and society made any distinction between these two domains utterly problematic. Under certain crucial conditions-religious conditions, precisely-nature revealed itself as social and society, as natural. It is the cosmological non-separation of nature and society, rather than the exteriorization by "society" of power as "nature," which should be connected to the political non-separation that defines the society against the State.

26. But it is also the result of the "obsession" of the author with Tupi-Guarani prophetism, which would testifY to the autonomization of religious discourse.

i 'Til Dciuctior:

45

And still , Clastres puts us on the right track. In that chapter he outlines a comparison between the cosmologies of peoples from the Andes and the Lowlands, which contrast diacritically in terms of their respective modes of dealing with the dead. In the agrarian Highlands, dominated by the imperial machine of the Inca, religion relies on a funerary complex (tombs, sacrifices, etc.) that links the living to the original mythical world (populated by what the author called somewhat inappropriately "ancestors") by means of the dead; in the Lowlands, all the ritual effort consists, on the contrary, of maxi mally disj oining the dead and the livi ng. The relation of society with its immemorial foundation is made, so to speak, over the dead body of the deceased, which should be dememorialized, that is, forgotten and annihilated (eaten, for example) as if they were mortal enemies of the living. Yvonne Verdier ( 1 987: 3 1 ) in her beautiful commentary of Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians, noted that the maj o r division between the living and the dead was a guarantee of the indivision among the living. The society against the State is a society against memory; the first and most constant war of the "society for war" is waged agamst its dead defectors. " Every time they eat a dead man , they can say: one more the State won't get" (Deleuze & Guattari 1 987: 1 1 8) . 27 But there is an additional step to be made. The contrast between the Andes and Lowlands suggests that the variable distinction between the living and the dead has a variable relation with another variable distinction, that between humans and n on-humans (animals, plants, artifacts, celestial bodies and other furniture of the cosmos) . In Andean worlds, the diachronic continuity between the 27. See the paradigmatic monograph of Carneiro da Cunha ( 1 978) on the disjunc­ tive relationship between the living and the dead in a Lowlands society.

46 /

of

living and the dead j ointly oppose these as humans to the non足 humans (which are thereby potentially conceived as a single encompassing cat egory) , submitting the cosmos to the "law of the State," the anthropological law of the interior and exterior, at the same time that it allows for the institution of synchronic disconti足 nuities among the living, which were blocked in societies against the state thanks to the annihilat ion of the dead (no ancestrality

=

no

hierarchy). In the Lowlands, the extreme alterity between the living and the dead brings dead humans close to non-humans-to animals in particular, since it is common in Amazonia that the souls of the dead turn into animals, whereas one of the main causes of deat h is the revenge of "spirits of the game" and other animal souls o n humans (animals a s both the cause and outcome o f human deat h).

At the same time, however, this approximation makes of non足 humanity a mode or modulation of humanity-all of the non-humans possess a similar anthropomorphic essence or power, a soul, hidden beneath their varied species-specific bodily clothing.

Relations with "nat ure" are "social" relations, hunting as well as shamanism pertain to bio-cosmopolitics; "productive forces" coincide with "relations of production." All of the inhabitants of the cosmos are people in their own department , potential occupants of the deictical "first person" position in cosmological discourse: inter足 species relations are marked by a perpetual dispute surrounding this position, which is schematized in terms ofthe predator/prey polar ity, agency or subjecthood being above all a capacity for predation. 2 8 This makes humanity a position marked by relativity, uncertainty and alterity. Everything can be human, because nothing is only one 28. But of course, if what we eat becomes part of what we are, we also become what

we eat. Predation is rarely non-ambivalent.

thing, every being is human for itself: all denizens of the cosmos perceive their own species in human form as humans and see all other species, including us "real" humans (I mean, real to "us") as non-humans. The molecular dissemination of "subj ective" agency throughout the universe, in testifying to the inexistence of a tran­ scendent cosmological point of view, obviously correlates with the inexistence of a unifying political point of view, occupied by an Agent (the agent of the One) that would gather unto itself the principle of humanity and sociality. 29 It is that which ethnologists of Amazonia call "perspectivism," the indigenous theory according to which the way humans perceive animals and other agencies that inhabit the world differs profoundly from the way in which these beings see humans and see themselves.

Perspectivism is "cosmology against the State." Its ultimate basis lies in the peculiar ontological composition of the mythical world, that origi nary "exteriority" to where the foundations of society would be projected. The mythical world, however, is neither interior nor exterior, neither present nor past, because it is both, j ust like its inhabitants are neither humans nor non-humans, because they are

both. The world of origins is, p recisely, everything: it is the Ama­ zonian plane of immanence. A n cl it i � i n Th i s viotud sphere of the "religious"-the religious as immanence-that the concept of society against the State obtains its true ethnographic endo-consistence, or difference.

It is of the utmost importance to observe, then, that the mode of exteriorization of the origin which is specific to societies against the State does not signify an "instituting" exteriorization of the 29. Jose Antonio Kelly, another ethnographer of the Yanomami, has been working

precisely on this connection. I thank him for the discussions.

One, or a "projective" unification of the Exterior either.30 We must take note of all the consequences of the fact that primitive exteriority is inseparable from the figures of the Enemy and the Animal as transcendental determinations of (savage) thought. Exteriorization serves a dispersion. Humanity being everywhere, "humanism"

IS

nowhere. The savages want the multiplication of the multiple.

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