Newswires: Zapatistas | WOMBLES - News, Information for anarchist direct action

Boca En Boca/Word of Mouth No.3 Chiapas Newsletter

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:22:50 +0000

Corrected version: BoCa En BoCa num 3 en ingles(2) Thanks to the J.D. and the Wellington Zapatista Support Group for translation. http://floweroftheword.wordpress.com/

Defending Mother Earth at Bolon Ajaw

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:15:00 +0000

I have just returned from the Zapatista village of Bolon Ajaw, Chiapas, where on 6th February 230 civilian Zapatistas took part in an action to retake control of their “reclaimed lands” which had been invaded and taken over since 20 January by the paramilitary group OPDDIC. For the state and business interests, the Zapatistas and their determination to defend Mother Earth are “a problem” standing in the way of the realisation of multi-million tourist investments.

Boca En Boca/Word of Mouth No.3 Chiapas Newsletter

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:36:30 +0000

BoCa En BoCa num 3 en ingles Thanks to the J.D. and the Wellington Zapatista Support Group for translation. http://floweroftheword.wordpress.com/

Bolon Ajaw Update

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:21:45 +0000

10th March A member of Edinburgh Chiapas Solidarity Group writes: I have just returned from the Zapatista village of Bolon Ajaw, Chiapas, where on 6th February 230 civilian Zapatistas took part in an action to retake control of their reclaimed lands which had been invaded and taken over since 20 January by the paramilitary group OPDDIC. Thanks to inspiring solidarity from [...]

Boca En Boca/Word of Mouth No.3 Chiapas Newsletter

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:16:46 +0000

BoCa En BoCa num 3 en ingles Thanks to the J.D. and the Wellington Zapatista Support Group for translation. http://floweroftheword.wordpress.com/

New Chiapas Monthly Newsletter

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 18:28:00 +0000

Boca En Boca (Word of Mouth) is a new monthly Chiapas magazine, now on it's third edition. It aims to diseminate what happens in the organised indigenous communities such as those of the Zapatistas and Other Campaign adherents. A pdf of an English translation is available from:

Anarchism and Its Aspirations — Book Excerpt

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:44:13 +0000

From Revolution by the Book Cindy Milstein’s new book, Anarchism and Its Aspirations, has been printed and is on its way to our warehouse. It’ll be available at the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair this weekend (where Cindy will be giving two talks). For those of you who can’t make the bookfair, you can order it now (at a 25% discount!). Wherever you are, here’s a taste of what’s in store: two brief excerpts lifted from the book’s title essay. Enjoy! ♦♦♦ The aim of anarchism is to stimulate forces that propel society in a libertarian direction. —Sam Dolgoff, The Relevance of Anarchism to Modern Society, 1970 Classical anarchism’s aims were no bulwark against the brutal transformations that swept the globe with the rise of actually existing communism and fascism. Historical forces drove society in a murderous direction. Anarchism did not disappear during this time. Yet its ranks were decimated. Touchstone figures were killed, including Gustav Landauer by protofascists following the Bavarian Revolution in 1919 and Erich Mühsam by Nazis in the Oranienburg concentration camp in 1934. Others died in prison, like Ricardo Flores Magón in 1922, and some committed suicide, such as Alexander Berkman in 1936. Anarchists were increasingly isolated. Kropotkin’s death in 1921 marked the last mass gathering of anarchists—for his funeral procession, and then only with Vladimir Lenin’s permission—in Russia until 1987. Thousands of anarchists worldwide were incarcerated, exiled, or slaughtered. They were victims of repressions like the Red Scare in the United States and purges of radical opposition by numerous Communist parties. As a result, anarchism became far less vibrant, a ghost of itself. This made it difficult for people to discover the politics, further reducing the number of anarchists and anarchistic efforts. It was as if the antiauthoritarian Left skipped a generation or two. At the same time, the world itself was transformed—but in a polar opposite way from anything that anarchists had advocated. Fascism, Bolshevism, and Maoism; the rise of the United States as a world superpower; the birth of multinational financial institutions along with the “advancement” of capitalism; the cold war with its nuclear threat: these and other emergent phenomena dramatically expanded the forms of domination that any liberatory politics needed to address. Attempts to rebuild anarchism were slow going, but never truly disappeared. In the postwar era, through the 1960s and beyond, anarchism struggled to tailor itself for the late twentieth century. It gained insight from other overlapping or like-minded movements, such as radical feminism and queer liberation, or the Autonomen in Germany and Zapatistas in Mexico. It inspired, both explicitly and in less obvious ways, everything from the playful urban politics of Amsterdam’s Provos to new forms of radical ecology like the antinuclear movement and Earth First! to the British poll tax rebellion.28 While anarchism seemed behind the curve on some issues—the collapse of Communism and the subsequent rise of unipolar neoliberalism, for instance—it continued to grow and develop.

Mexico: The Lacandona Rainforest is being cleared of its People

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:07:12 +0000

The Mexican government is moving ahead with an ambititous new plan to surround the Lacandona Forest in Chiapas, Mexico, with oil palm plantations; while disguising the forest around the plantations with various eco-tourism sites. In preparing for the two-faced project, the government—still in line with the old amibitous plan—and with the help of various corporations, [...]

Zapatista-Inspired Rally Held in New York City; Aims to Fight Gentrification

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:17:31 +0000

by Paola Reyes, Latin America News Dispatch NEW YORK – Over 120 people and 40 organizations participated in the Third Encounter for Dignity and Against Gentrification hosted by the Movement for Justice in el Barrio this past Sunday in East Harlem, New York. The meeting, referred to by the Spanish term encuentro, brought together activists from [...]