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A partir des pratiques éducatives des paysans zapatistes du Chiapas, l’autonomie se conceptualise comme la construction collective d’un projet des peuples indiens dans un champ de domination et de résistance sociale. Au cœur de la dispute avec l’Etat nation, le contrôle des communautés sur les éducateurs qu’elles désignent et évaluent est mis en perspective avec d’autres contextes, discours et actions d’organisations politiques autochtones en Amérique latine. Avant 1994, des programmes indiens d’éducation, d’abord clandestins, comme dans le Quiché guatémaltèque et le Cauca colombien, constituent des antécédents à l’expérience zapatiste d’autonomie radicale. En tant que politiques endogènes, sui generis, et historiquement situés dans des territoires ou des refuges multiculturels, ils remettent en question la capacité et la légitimité de l’Etat nation dans la gestion administrative et pédagogique des écoles. Avec l’autorité de l’assemblée des familles et de nouvelles charges communautaires [notamment les « promoteurs d’éducation »], les relations de pouvoir et les positions d’intermédiation sociale se reconfigurent entre les acteurs de l’Etat et des territoires rebelles. La participation active des militants Tzeltal contribue à l’appropriation sociale de l’école, en étant un frein à la différenciation sociale et à l’assimilation culturelle. Elle est un moteur de la dignité et de la légitimité de gérer l’espace et le temps scolaire, mais aussi les méthodes et les contenus. Les changements liés à l’autonomie bousculent ainsi les continuités de l’organisation de l’école, du rôle politique et du travail des enseignants, et des choix pédagogiques pertinents du point de vue des Indiens zapatistes. / Based on the educational practices of the Zapatista peasants of Chiapas, autonomy is conceptualized as the collective construction of a project of Indian peoples in a field of domination and social resistance. At the center of the dispute with the nation state, control over educators by the communities who designate and evaluate them is put into perspective with other contexts, discourses and actions of indigenous political organizations in Latin America. Before 1994, Indian education programs, primarily clandestine, as in the Quiché [Guatemala] and Cauca [Colombia], were antecedents to the Zapatista experience of radical autonomy. As endogenous policies, sui generis, and historically located in multicultural territories or refuges, they call into question the capacity and legitimacy of the nation state in the administrative and pedagogical management of schools. With the authority of the assembly of families and of new communitarian roles! [including the “promoters of education”], the power relations and the social positions of intermediation are being reconfigured between State actors and rebel territories. The active participation of Tzeltal activists contributes to the social appropriation of the school, thus becoming a barrier against social differentiation and cultural assimilation. This participation is an engine for dignity and legitimacy in managing space and time at school, as well as methods and contents. Changes related to autonomy destabilize the status quo in terms of the organization of the school, the political role and work of teachers, and the educational choices relevant for Zapatistas indigenous people.

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Seeds have become one of the most contested resources in our society. Control over seeds has intensified under neoliberalism, and today four large multinational corporations control approximately 70 percent of the global seed market. In response to this concentration of corporate power, an international social movement has emerged around the concept of seed sovereignty, which reclaims seeds and biodiversity as commons and public goods. This study examines the relationship between the global dynamics of commodification and enclosure of seeds, and the seed sovereignty countermovement for decommodification. I approach this analysis through an ethnographic case study of one local seed sovereignty movement, in the indigenous central region of Chiapas, in southern Mexico. I spent eight months between 2015 and 2016 conducting field research and documenting the development of the Guardians of Mother Earth and Seeds project, a local initiative focused on seed and food sovereignty that was initiated in 2015 by DESMI, the most established NGO working in this region. It encompasses 25 peasant communities--22 indigenous and 3 mestizo--from the Los Altos, Norte-Tulijá, and Los Llanos regions of Chiapas. I also collected data from 31 other communities in the region involved to varying degrees with this agenda of seed and food sovereignty. This study incorporates both communities affiliated with the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and non-Zapatista communities. Three research questions guide this dissertation: (1) How do the increasing industrialization and commodification of seed systems and agriculture affect peasant communities in Chiapas?; (2) How is the local seed and food sovereignty countermovement responding to those processes of commodification?; and (3) How does this case study contribute to understanding the relationship between capital's tendency to enclose the commons and the protective countermovements that attempt to resist such market encroachments? This study found that the development of industrial agriculture and the commodification of seeds at the global and national scales have implied neither the displacement of these communities' native seeds by commercial seeds, nor their privatization--two of the most frequent potential risks denounced by representatives of the national and international seed sovereignty movement. Instead, the main impact of industrial agriculture and Green Revolution policies in the study region has been the chemicalization of peasant agriculture, with attendant negative impacts on the environment and human health. I also found that subsistence agriculture--the main mechanism through which native seeds are reproduced within communities--is undergoing a process of severe deterioration, which partially responds to the neoliberal dismantling of governmental institutions and programs supporting peasant agriculture. A key finding of this research is that the deterioration of subsistence agriculture is the main risk that the neoliberal restructuring of agriculture poses to native seeds. In response to these developments, communities in this study have embraced a project of decommodification focused on enhancing and expanding their subsistence agriculture. This project encompasses agroecology, food production collectives, and initiatives for agro-biodiversity conservation and ecological restoration. I argue that this project contributes to the decommodification of subsistence agriculture in the region, primarily by strengthening the non-commodified structures that are essential for these communities social reproduction.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2007. Graduate Programme in Political Science. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 374-397). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR39058

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis studies the rhetoric of the Zapatista Revolution and social movement through the analysis of Zapatista messages using the method of cluster criticism. It explores changes in the rhetoric of confrontation and the rhetoric of peace used by the Zapatistas to further their cause during the last ten years of the revolution.

(in English): In this thesis I present the Zapatista movement and its media strategy. Further I describe its visual communication by means of a case study. After evaluating the significance of media strategies of the zapatista movement, I will prove that Zapatistas' media communication played a crucial role in the transformation of Mexican society in the late 90s and directly influenced the process of transition to democracy in Mexico. In the introduction I will explain how news photographs can be a source of exploration of the Zapatistas and I will introduce the basic hypotheses of my research. In the historical part of my introduction I will put the movement in the context with the political, social and historical development of Mexico and the state of Chiapas, where the uprising broke out in 1994 and I will explain the causes of the rebellion and introduce its goals. Before I describe the aspects of Zapatistas' communication, I will focus on the Mexican media environment so that I can link it with the media outlets of the Zapatista movement. I will describe in general terms media strategies and myths created by the movement. In the case study I will examine photographs of EZLN published in the magazine Proceso in the years 1994 and 2001, I will compare the Zapatistas' visual communication with...

This dissertation aims to enrich the discussion about the role of social movements in the process of democratisation, ie. to assess their role in the transformation from authoritarian to democratic regime. In particular, it tries to find the way how to assess the impact of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) and related movement on the Mexican transition to democracy in 1990s. The analysis tries to identify possible impacts on three different levels -- political (which means regime transition), social (which is related with the change of the nature of the relations between state and society, once described as corporatist) and economical (which means the end of neoliberal policy promoted by recent Mexican governments and the introduction of more equal, "more democratic" policy in zapatista logic). It looks both at the formal (direct through bargaining) and informal (influence) impact of the zapatista movement. From the methodological point of view, the study is case analysis, in some parts it uses historical analysis. The text is structured into five chapters. The first chapter shows main theoretical and methodological approaches to the social movements with special focus on Latin American context. It is followed by explaining the principles of methods used to assessment of the zapatista impacts. The second chapter presents main approaches to social change and process of democratic transition. The third chapter contains the historical analysis of transformation of relation between state and society during 20th century, from the introduction of (state) corporatist model in 1930s to its gradual dismantling in the late 20th century. The fourth chapter analysis the evolution of EZLN from its beginning in Lacandon jungle in southern Mexican state of Chiapas. In relation with the emphasis of movement's goals, the period from 1994, when zapatista uprising in Chiapas started, to 2010 is divided into four stages. In the fifth chapter, theoretical findings are applied on EZLN and zapatista movement and formulated hypotheses are tested.

Grounded in the geographies of Chiapas, Mexico, the dissertation maps a cartography of Zapatista indigenous resistance practices and charts the production of decolonial political subjectivities in an era of neoliberal governance and low intensity conflict. It analyzes the relationship between local cultural political expressions of indigenous autonomy, global capitalist interests and neoliberal rationalities of government after more than decade of Zapatista struggle. Since 1996, Zapatista indigenous Mayan communities have engaged in the creation of alternative education, health, agricultural production, justice, and governing bodies as part of the daily practices of autonomy. The dissertation demonstrates that the practices of Zapatista indigenous autonomy reflect current shifts in neoliberal state governing logics, yet it is in this very terrain where key ruptures and destabilizing practices emerge. The dissertation focuses on the recolonization aspects of neoliberal rationalities of government in their particular Latin American post Cold War, post populist manifestations. I argue that in Mexico's indigenous regions, the shift towards the privatization of state social services, the decentralization of state governing techniques and the transformation of state social programs towards an emphasis on greater self-management occurs in a complex relationship to mechanisms of low intensity conflict. Their multiple articulations effect the reproduction of social and biological life in sites, which are themselves terrains of bio-political contention: racialized women's bodies and feminized domestic reproductive and care taking roles; the relationship between governing bodies and that governed; land reform as linked to governability and democracy; and the production of the indigenous subject in a multicultural era. In each of these arenas, the dissertation charts a decolonial cartography drawn by the following cultural political practices: the construction of genealogies of social memories of struggle, a governing relationship established through mandar obedeciendo, land redistribution through zapatista agrarian reform, pedagogical collective selfreflection in women’s collective work, and the formation of political identities of transformation. Finally, the dissertation discusses the possibilities and challenges for engaging in feminist decolonizing dialogic research, specifically by analyzing how Zapatista members critiqued the politics of fieldwork and adopted the genres of the testimony and the popular education inspired workshop as potential decolonizing methodologies. / text