Wednesday, 14/05/2014, 7pm
Avenue Campus, Building 65, Room 1175 (Lecture Theatre C), Highfield Rd, Southampton, Hampshire SO17 1BJ
History is rarely told by those who live and make it. Communication promoters created these documentaries as part of a collective video project in which the EZLN’s Autonomous Rebel Zapatista Municipalities document and tell their own stories.
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN), often referred to as the Zapatistas, is a revolutionary leftist group based in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico.
Since 1994, the group has been in a declared war “against the Mexican state”, although this war has been primarily defensive, against military, paramilitary and corporate incursions into Chiapas. In recent years, it has been focused on a strategy of civil resistance. The Zapatistas’ physical base is made up of mostly rural indigenous people but includes some supporters in urban areas and internationally.
“It is time for the poor of the countryside and the city to organize ourselves—time for the peoples of the countryside and the city to take their destiny into their own hands. That is, it is time for the people to govern themselves instead of being governed by a few individuals up there who are just trying to get rich. It is easy to see and easy to confirm in practice that this is the only reason they are there.
That is why the compañeras and compañeros of the Zapatista bases of support organized themselves and dreamed and worked together to determine their own destinies, and this destiny is now visible. Their manner of governing themselves as peoples and communities is totally different; they rule as a people and their representatives obey, that is, their government obeys. This is true change, not just a change of colors or logos. […]The compañeras and compañeros of the Zapatista communities have provided an example.”
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. Mexico, April 2014. Twentieth year of the war against oblivion.
6:00pm
THE RABBIT HOLE 