Exercising rights and reconfiguring resistance in the Zapatista Juntas de Buen Gobierno

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511819193.007

4 - Exercising rights and reconfiguring resistance in the Zapatista Juntas de Buen Gobierno

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 March 2011

Shannon Speed

Edited by

Mark Goodale and

Sally Engle Merry

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Shannon Speed: Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin
Mark Goodale: Affiliation:
George Mason University, Virginia
Sally Engle Merry: Affiliation:
New York University

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Summary

What was lost in the promulgation of human rights theory in the 1990s was the connection between rights and subjects who can exercise those rights.

Chandler 2002: 114

Now, we have to exercise our rights ourselves. We don't need anyone's permission, especially that of politicians … Forming our own autonomous municipalities, that's what we are doing in practice and we don't ask anyone's permission.

Comandanta Esther August 2003

FROM GUNS TO SHELLS

Introduction

On an August day in 2003, I huddled beneath a plastic tarp through a typical afternoon downpour in the highlands community of Oventic, Chiapas. While the weather was not unusual, the day itself was far from typical: I stood, accompanied by several thousand others – indigenous people from throughout the state and activists from throughout the country and the world – listening to the speeches of Zapatista leaders. They spoke of the birth of the five “caracoles” (literally, shells, but indicating meeting points) and the formation of the five Juntas de Buen Gobierno (“Good Governance Councils,” herein referred to as Juntas) to be seated in them. It was a major turning point for Zapatismo, signaling a transition from military to civilian governance and the formal end to their petition for state recognition of their collective right to autonomy. In the words of Rosalinda, “The government didn't pay attention to us. Que se queden con sus pendejadas. We know how to make our municipalities work.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Practice of Human Rights
Tracking Law between the Global and the Local
, pp. 163 - 192

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819193.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2007

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