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The Politics of Justice: ZapatistaAutonomy at the Margins of theNeoliberal Mexican StateMariana MoraPublished online: 03 Jul 2015.

To cite this article: Mariana Mora (2015) The Politics of Justice: Zapatista Autonomy at the Marginsof the Neoliberal Mexican State, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 10:1, 87-106, DOI:10.1080/17442222.2015.1034439

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The Politics of Justice: ZapatistaAutonomy at the Margins of theNeoliberal Mexican StateMariana Mora

This article focuses on the interplay between shifting regulatory practices of theMexican neoliberal state and attempts to destabilize them by Zapatista civilian supportbases, as they enact practices of autonomy, particularly through the sphere of conflictresolution. In doing so, the article suggests that the cultural practices of justice unsettlerelevant regulatory forces during a particular moment in Chiapas state formation andare hence central to disrupting the continued legacies of colonial power – knowledge.Similarly, the argument offers a framework of analysis that allows us to trace thepossibilities and challenges of indigenous and afro-descendent struggles in subvertinghegemonic state processes.

Keywords: Decolonial struggles; indigenous autonomy; legal anthropology; neoliberalgovernance; state formation; Zapatismo

Introduction: Situating Struggles for Zapatista Autonomy and Decolonizationthrough the Subversion of State Margins

In this article, I situate the practices of Zapatista indigenous autonomy inMexico’s southeastern state of Chiapas within broader continental decolonizationstruggles by indigenous and afro-descendent peoples. Specifically, I focus on theinterplay between shifting regulatory practices of the Mexican neoliberal state andattempts to unsettle them by Zapatista civilian support bases, as they enactpractices of autonomy, particularly through the sphere of conflict resolution. Indoing so, my interest is twofold: first, to suggest that cultural practices of justicedestabilize relevant regulatory forces during a particular moment in Chiapas stateformation and are hence central to disrupting the continued legacies of coloniality

The ethnographic data in this chapter was collected during doctoral fieldwork with the support ofthe Wenner-Gren foundation. Research was conducted between 2005 and 2008 in the autonomousTseltal and Tojolobal Zapatista autonomous municipality, 17 de Noviembre, which geographicallyoverlaps with the official municipalities of Altamirano and Chanal. An earlier version of this articlewas published in 2013; see ‘La politización de la justicia zapatista frente a los efectos de la guerra debaja intensidad en Chiapas,’ In, Justicias indígenas y Estado: Violencias contemporáneas, edited byMaría Teresa Sierra, Rachel Sieder, Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo, 195–228. Mexico: CIESAS,FLACSO.

Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 2015Vol. 10, No. 1, 87–106, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17442222.2015.1034439

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

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(Quijano 1998); second, to offer a framework of analysis that allows us to tracethe possibilities and challenges of indigenous and afro-descendent struggles insubverting hegemonic state processes.I would like to begin by highlighting the particularities of the political project of

Zapatista indigenous autonomy in Chiapas, as one distinctive feature is that itspolitical–administrative jurisdictions, referred to as autonomous municipalities,exist outside state formal legal recognition. Since the end of 1994 (but more so inthe context of the Dialogues for Peace in San Andrés Sakam’chen de los Pobres in1996), the support bases of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) beganto exercise their rights to indigenous self-determination in approximately 38 auton-omous municipalities in the Highland and Lacandon Jungle regions of Chiapas.Rather than seeking recognition and vying for greater redistribution of Mexicanstate resources, EZLN support bases enacted a politics of refusal by impeding thepresence of functionaries and rejecting government development projects, whilesimultaneously exercising self-government through diverse social programs, such aseducation, health, and agricultural production (González 2011; Juntas de BuenGobierno 2007; Moisés Gandhi Relatores 1997). In doing so, Tsotsil, Tseltal,Tojolabal, and Cho’l indigenous Zapatistas implement their right to autonomy atthe fringes of the state. They explicitly claim a marginal sociopolitical location as partof their own political project in ways that parallel what James Scott has referred to asthe ‘art of not being governed’ (2009).Such a reversal of the political relevance of state margins, however, does not

signify that Zapatista autonomous regions are exempt from state regulatory prac-tices. State forces constantly manifest their materiality through a quasi-permanentmilitarization of Zapatista territory, diverse mechanisms of surveillance, the imple-mentation of competing social economic development projects, and through thesocial effects of 20 years of neoliberal reforms. By engaging with such state forma-tion practices, the sphere of justice takes on heightened political relevance, offeringa particular vantage point to locate the ways in which Zapatista autonomy poten-tially destabilizes regulatory forces in three political arenas: firstly, at the level ofinstitutional jurisdictions, as the Zapatista political-administrative bodies exist andcompete with official institutions over the same geographical-political terrains.Secondly, through the production of alternative significations posited onto theimplementation of conflict resolution. And thirdly, the articulated effects of bothof these spheres transforms relations of power between local indigenous people andthe state, as part of broader decolonizing processes.In contrast to all other arenas of Zapatista autonomy, justice authorities maintain

direct contact with representatives of governmental institutions, either by monitor-ing the activities of Public Ministry officials or, in exceptional situations, throughdirect negotiations over which jurisdiction prevails. Similarly, justice is the onlyarena of autonomy that systematically provides services to non-Zapatista indivi-duals. In fact, during the three years of my fieldwork, the majority of the individualsseeking redress through the autonomous justice system were not themselvesZapatistas; to the contrary, many maintained starkly different political stances.

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Although these characteristics are relevant in themselves, they acquired greaterpolitical significance during the period of so-called democratic transition under theadministration of Vicente Fox (2000–2006) and the Chiapas government of PabloSalazar (elected as part of an oppositional coalition, made up of the National ActionParty (PAN), the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), and the Worker’s Party(PT)). The elections of 2000 not only represented the end of the more than 70-yearInstitutional Revolutionary Party regime (PRI), but also an alteration of stategoverning logics. In this period, I argue that, due to changes in the ambiguouslocation the autonomous municipalities sustain as part of the production of statemargins, the cultural political effects of Zapatista justice subvert state governingtechniques.Mapping such interactions takes discussions on decolonization to a fundamental,

yet underexplored dimension of analysis. In recent years, important scholarship hasfocused on the ways in which subaltern knowledge production, novel culturalpolitics, and the production of political subjectivities, as well as the constructionof a sense of place in articulating territorial claims, are all central to struggles forautonomy and decolonization (Escobar 2009; Nahuelpán 2013; Rivera Cusicanqui2010). However, if we are to understand indigenous and afro-descendent claims toautonomy as that which seeks to alter the correlation of forces and to establish newterrains on which to engage the state then, as social scientists, we have the task ofrendering visible their potential effects. Of particular relevance are the ways inwhich constructed margins of the state become sites, not only for normativeforms of regulation, but where cultural practices might redirect governance techni-ques in ways that fuel subaltern political projects.This article seeks to contribute to recent literature on social political movements by

situating the practices of Zapatista conflict resolution within the broader continentalactions that are engendered by indigenous and afro-descendent organizations inplaces such as the Pacific Coast of Colombia and the San Pedro de Totora providenceof Bolivia, as well as in Guerrero, Mexico, through organizations such as the RegionalCoordinator of Community Authorities-Community Police (CRAC-PC) (Arteaga,forthcoming; Sierra 2013). I divide this article into four sections. The first and secondsections analyze the autonomous municipalities from the vantage point of Chiapasstate formation and describe the shifts from authoritarian rule to an apparent‘transition to democracy’ after 2000. In the third and fourth sections, I describehow the practices of Zapatista justice respond to the effects of these regulatorypractices, particularly through the resolution of conflicts involving non-Zapatistaactors––with a focus on agrarian conflicts –as one of the central arenas of justice. Iconclude with a series of reflections on the effects of these Zapatista cultural practices.

The Shifting Hegemonic Positioning of EZLN Autonomous Municipalities

In order to discuss the location that the Zapatista autonomous municipalitieshold in relation to state regulatory effects, I take to the task of what James Scottrefers to as ‘Seeing like a State’ (1998). Let me begin by clarifying what I meanby the state, not as an agglomeration of institutions, but rather a series of

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discourses and techniques of governance that administrate populations. Statesrepresent hegemonic discourses and techniques that, although concentrated ingovernmental institutions, are not reducible to them (Hall 1988). Through theterm ‘state-effect,’ Timothy Mitchell (1999) argues that in order to locate thestate we must look to the series of spatial organization effects of supervision andsurveillance that generate the apparent division between the state and society. Ifocus on two effects highlighted by Mitchell: the hegemonic production ofsubjectivities and the construction of the state’s margins (ibid.). In,Anthropology at the Margins of the State, Das and Poole (2004) focus on thelatter, constructing an analytical framework of the ways in which state formationengenders differing notions of its margins, including concrete geographic spacesand populations, as well as arbitrary and ‘illegible’ spaces. Constructions ofmarginality, as limits that legitimate the normalization of conducts in the arenasthey enclose, generate the regulatory and disciplinary techniques that disjoint-edly constitute the state in their articulation. In doing so, state margins play afundamental role in dividing those populations whose social life is facilitatedfrom those excluded through socially constructed markers of ethnic, racializedand gendered differences.Aihwa Ong refers to the ways in which state margins potentially fuse with logics of

neoliberal governability, understood as exceptional forms of governance that ‘articu-late a constellation of mutually constitutive relations that cannot be reduced to one orthe other’ (2006, 9). In other words, ‘the neoliberal exception, in the process ofgoverning, constructs political spaces that regulate in different ways and articulatethemselves in global circuits’ (ibid.). In this sense, the current logics of governabilityarticulate with regimes of sovereignty and citizenship in order to reconfigure newrelations between the governed and governments, between power and knowledge,resulting in a re-engineering of political spaces and populations. Such techniquesdifferentiate and regulate diverse populations, both in relation to new capital interestsand in accordance with the varied kinds of investment of cultural and/or social capitalof these populations. According to Ong, even those political spaces external toneoliberal logics – or those that are positioned as so – potentially articulate withhegemonic circuits (ibid.).Using this framework as a starting point, we can begin to locate the ways in which

shifts in processes of state formation alter the location that counter-hegemonicautonomous municipalities hold in relation to dominant forces. I locate twomoments: the period from 1994 to 2000, characterized by techniques of low-intensitywarfare (LIW), in which the autonomous municipalities were constructed as apotential threat to the political cohesion of the sovereign; and the period from 2000to 2008, marked by an apparent transition to multicultural democracy, in which thepresence of the autonomous municipalities symbolized the political opening andincreased tolerance of the Chiapas and federal governments. In both periods, Ianalyze state making in order to subsequently locate the destabilizing effects engen-dered by Zapatista autonomy cultural politics, particularly the implementation ofjustice.

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The Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities on the Margins of Authoritarian Rule and ItsProlonged War of Attrition

Sub-comandante Marcos first declared the existence of 38 rebel municipalities 20years ago in an EZLN communiqué dated 19 December 1994. While initially themunicipalities formed part of a political and military strategy for establishingterritorial control, by 1996, in the context of the peace talks of San Andrés, thelabels autonomous and indigenous supplemented that of rebel. Immediately after the16 February 1996 signing of the San Andrés Accords on Indigenous Rights andCulture the support bases began to implement their right to autonomy, regardless ofthe possible future implementation of constitutional reforms.1 Since then, theZapatista support bases have combined a strategy proper to the rebel logics of apolitical-military structure with those that correspond to civilian concerns overgenerating democratic organizational practices – the fusion of both creates aninseparable link between rebelliousness and autonomy.Autonomous municipalities exist in highly politicized terrains with unequal, con-

tradictory processes that operate on multiple levels.2 In terms of the Zapatistaautonomous municipality 17 de Noviembre, located between the jungle and highlandregions of Chiapas, the political project first prioritized the distribution of landsseized in 1994 and the foundation of new population centers. In 1996, Zapatistaauthorities drafted their first document outlining the rules, regulations, and respon-sibilities of its political-administrative commissions, primarily the Commissions ofLand and Territory, Works and Services, Agricultural Production, Honor and Justice,Education, Health, and the Commissions of the Elders and of the Women. Not until2003 did the sphere of justice and conflict resolution, under the Commission ofHonor and Justice, acquire the same level of importance. Such a shift in prioritiesreflects, in part, the result of the autonomous municipalities’ continuing process ofdevelopment, guided by their own internal logics, as well as the social conditionsproduced by multiple and changing state strategies, particularly mechanisms ofsurveillance and repression.From 1994 to 2001, Tojolabal and Tseltal Zapatista indigenous men and women

dedicated their daily activities to strengthening their autonomous project, whilestate-governing techniques located them as external entities threatening the integrityof the state itself. At the time, public debates initiated by state officials emphasizedthat indigenous autonomy would lead to the ‘balkanization’ of the nation-state.State formation engendered the margins of the state in Chiapas as that whichnormalized and regulated a civilizing project against potentially rebellious indigen-ous actors.3 During those first years of the conflict, particularly between 1997 and1998, state response centered on a classic model of LIW or, to use the term coinedby non-governmental organizations in Chiapas, as an ‘integral war of attrition’(Santiago Vera 2011).4 Testimonies and journalistic reports during those yearssignaled the effects of repressive logics involving a combination of military threats,a flood of social programs, and the selective use of violence (Hernández de Castillo1998; Olivera Bustamante 1998).

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State-sponsored violence reached a level of extremity two days before Christmasin 1997, when paramilitaries from the Highlands region murdered 45 Tsotsiles,the majority of which were women and children, in the community of Acteal.Subsequently, the military entered into more than 50 Zapatista communities,incursions that culminated in a military operative in the Highland town ofChavajeval en June 1998, where the Mexican army assassinated eight Tsostilpeasants (La Jornada, 10 February 1998). However, a changing national politicalcontext marked by the end of the 70-year rule of the PRI in 2000 altered stateregulatory forces directed at the autonomous municipalities. As I shall detail inthe following sections, this modified the location that autonomous municipalitiesheld within the production of the margins of the state in Chiapas, within whichthe support bases of 17 de Noviembre politicized the implementation of justice andconflict resolution.

‘The Government of Change:’ State Ambiguities and the Marginality of Tolerance

After the acts of state repression in 1998, the EZLN political-military leadershipretreated in a period of silence, refusing to publish public communiqués or organizepublic events. The autonomous project turned inward, as Zapatista civilian supportbases prioritized activities in their municipalities. Men and women continued todefend their land, and support bases strengthened health services, developed inter-cultural education and autonomous policies, and improved food security. Two yearslater, Mexico underwent a moment of so-called ‘democratic transition,’ when theelection of the PAN candidate Vicente Fox marked the end of seven decades of PRIrule. At the state level, the ‘Government of Change,’ under the leadership of PabloSalazar, took power through a coalition of what had been, until that time, oppositionpolitical parties: the PRD, PAN, and the PT. This supposed democratic transitionincluded limited juridical reforms on indigenous peoples’ cultural rights and anapparent expansion of civil liberties, both of which entered into contradiction withthe permanence of repressive policies in several states, particularly Chiapas.The articulated effects of both greater democratic inclusion and continued repres-

sion modified the location of autonomous municipalities as part of state formation. If,during the Albores administration, the state established its limits by regulating thespaces of the autonomous municipalities as potential threats external to sovereignpower, during the Salazar administration, the Zapatista municipalities figured as partof the production of new margins based on political tolerance and plurality. Recallthat federal and state constitutions have failed to legally recognize indigenous rightsto autonomy and self-determination, hence positioning the Zapatista autonomousmunicipalities as outside the law. However, during the Salazar administration theirpresence as a rebel political project appeared, at a superficial level, to reflect expandedgovernment tolerance, albeit existing in an ambiguous relationship to new regulatoryexpressions of surveillance and contention directed at Zapatista municipalities andaligned political actors. I would like to remind the reader that in these sections I amfocusing solely on the ways in which hegemonic forces articulated the autonomousmunicipalities – as zones of exception, to use Ong’s framework – within new

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processes of state making. In subsequent sections, I will analyze how the culturalpractices of Zapatista justice manipulate and redirect these toward alternative ends.As I will illustrate below, the articulated effects of these ambiguous state forces

splintered the Zapatista support base alliances to local peasant organizations, henceattempting to contain and isolate the autonomous municipalities. The Salazar admin-istration implemented public policies that were based on state-level juridical reformsconcerning indigenous rights and culture that were passed at the end of the Alboresadministration, specifically the Law of Indigenous Rights and Culture and theRemunicipalization Act. In contrast to other state-level reforms, such as those inOaxaca, the new juridical framework in Chiapas offers extremely limited recognitionof indigenous rights, sustained by tutelage relations, with a decidedly developmental-ist focus that promotes indigenous culture as part of the state’s new economicmarkets, primarily through ethno- and eco-tourism. State reforms similarly focusedon the right of indigenous peoples to be consulted prior to the implementation ofdevelopment projects that affect their communities, as well as the inclusion ofindigenous participation in the design and execution of public policies, primarilythrough the Office of the Secretary of Indigenous Peoples. At the same time, theRemunicipalization Act created new municipalities in highland and jungle regions,the primary areas under EZLN rebel influence, generating political spaces in directcompetition with autonomous municipalities, hence limiting the scope of Zapatistapolitical initiatives (Burguete 2004).Rather than directing these new juridical frameworks toward continued actions of

overt antagonism against the Zapatista autonomous municipalities, or as initial plat-forms through which to promote more substantive reforms, the Salazar governmentopted instead to play an apparently passive role that neither promoted nor facilitatedthe exercise of indigenous self-determination beyond a certain degree of symbolicpolitical ‘tolerance,’ as illustrated in the following examples. In 2003, state policearrested EZLN support bases from the autonomous municipality of Miguel Hidalgofor felling trees in violation of the state’s ecological laws. However, the judge freed thedetainees in exchange for accepting as evidence a permit to cut down a specificnumber of trees signed and stamped by the Good Government Councils (Juntas deBuen Gobierno, JBG by their Spanish acronym), Zapatista governing bodies thatcoordinate efforts between various municipalities forming a Zapatista region, orCaracol. In the Caracol region of La Garrucha, state police accepted circulationpermits issued by respective JBGs in decal form to taxis and other public transporta-tion vehicles. Members of the JBG in Morelia also explained that state officials fromthe Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) and theSecretary for Agricultural Reform (SRA) visited autonomous government offices torequest permits for entering the communities as part of various surveys, a permissionemphatically denied.Official municipal functionaries similarly tacitly recognized Zapatista jurisdiction.

From 2005 to 2008, the Public Works and Services office of the AltamiranoMunicipality sustained constant interactions with autonomous government authori-ties of the Caracol IV, of which 17 de Noviembre forms part. During an interview, thedirector explained to me that the Municipal government respected the Zapatistas’

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decisions to refuse state programs. However, the activities of the Public Works andServices office operated under a different set of premises – infrastructure developmentbenefits all communities in the municipality, regardless of their political affiliation.Therefore, the state office agreed to abide by the Zapatistas’ government terms:

If we’re going to do a job that’s goes through their land, the recovered lands, we have topay them a fee for permission to pass through. In general, they demand ten per cent ofthe project’s budget…But that’s impossible. It’s too much money. We have to negotiateuntil it’s feasible. In general we agree on about three to five per cent of the budget,depending on the size of the job. (Alfredo Solis, personal communication, May 2006)

Parallel to limited cultural recognition, state entities increased repressive actsdirected at numerous social movements, many of them Zapatista sympathizers,including mobilizations of teachers and rural university and a movement againstrising electricity costs on the coast. The legislative branch approved legal modifica-tions, primarily the definition of the crime of defamation, in order to censor anyjournalists taking a critical stance against the government.5 In Zapatista-controlledregions – particularly in 17 de Noviembre and in the Taniperla canyon – theparamilitary group Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Peasants’Rights (OPPDIC in Spanish), under the leadership of Tseltal Pedro Chulín, disputedland rights with Zapatista support bases, exacerbating local conflicts (Cerda 2011).Scholars of Chiapas generally take two differing positions to analyze the relation-

ship between these repressive actions and the political tolerance forming part of self-referenced transitions to democracy. The first considers these politics of ‘tolerance’ aspart of the symbolic discourses that mask its true counterinsurgency intentions. Thesecond explanation establishes a binary framework of cooptation and repression:social programs are used to ‘win hearts and minds,’ thus maintaining loyalty to thegovernment rather than subversives’ interests, while those that betray such loyaltiessuffer punitive measure (Collier 1994). Both explanations divide the spheres ofpolitics from that of violence, hence limiting our ability to render visible state effects.Instead, I concur with Foucault’s (2003) argument that spaces of democratic libertiesand apparent political participation themselves encompass regulatory effects articu-lated to the practices and discourses of state forms of surveillance.In the case of the Salazar administration, despite the implementation of watered-down

reforms and the shift in actions taken by the government toward greater apparenttolerance, state forces continued enacting particular regulatory techniques that fomentedthe production of specific types of indigenous subject categories. I suggest that thecombination of legal reforms and practices of state surveillance created a new divisionbetween the ‘good’ indigenous subject and the ‘bad’ indigenous subject. During theZedillo administration (1995–2000), the ‘good’ indigenous subject represented the figureof the indigenous leader linked to the PRI’s corporatist and clientelist project, just as ithad been for decades as part of Mexico’s populist era. The ‘bad’ indigenous subject,therefore, failed to accept the conditions of obligatory loyalty and the prerequisite of astate ‘client.’ However, local state formations in the context of ‘democratic’ transitions inChiapas modified this dichotomy. The new ‘good’ indigenous subject became one whodemonstrated a willingness to participate in forging social change through governmental

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institutions, particularly by expanding their representative pluralism. The ex-leader of theRural Association of Collective Interests (ARIC by its Spanish acronym), Porfirio Encino,perhaps best symbolizes this ‘good’ indigenous subject category in his role as director ofthe Chiapas Secretariat of Indigenous Affairs from 2000 until his tragic death in anairplane accident in 2004. In contrast, the ‘bad’ indigenous subject became one whomaintained a political position at the margins of state institutions, hence obstructing‘democratic’ processes of government pluralization. Similarly, this second subjectdemanded not only the recognition of indigenous peoples’ cultural rights but also theenactment of redistributive political-economic reforms and the configuration of newstate–indigenous relations founded on the rights to autonomy, territory, and self-determination (Hale 2002).The fragmentation of alliances between numerous indigenous peasant organiza-

tions and Zapatista civilian support bases represents the most concrete effect of suchregulatory techniques. In previous years, differing opinions over armed self-defenseagainst the state marked the division between those indigenous and peasant organiza-tions who agreed with the EZLN’s decision to declare war against the Mexicangovernment, and those who rejected political-military organization strategies.However, in the era of ‘democratic transition,’ political divisions hinged on how tobest strengthen pluralist participation in public spheres. For many social organiza-tions and political actors, the response was to accept institutional participation withinthe ‘Government of Change.’ In Chiapas, key indigenous organizations such as theARIC and the Ocosingo Coffee-Growers’ Organization (ORCAO) integrated them-selves into the Salazar administration’s project, hence unraveling political alliancespreviously held with the Zapatista municipalities, who in turn continued to enact apolitics of refusal by not engaging or negotiating with government institutions. Theresulting shift in ‘good–bad’ indigenous subject categories fragmented importantpolitical sympathies that the Zapatistas had so carefully managed to preserve, despitenumerous military operations and persecution of previous years.State regulatory effects, concentrated on marked divisions between emerging

‘good’ and ‘bad’ indigenous subject categories, occurred parallel to the constructedlimits of political tolerance during a supposed democratic transition. The autono-mous municipalities held a new location within emerging processes of ‘democratic’state formation. Rather than representing an external threat to the political com-munity, they symbolized expressions of an expanded pluralistic internal limit of thestate. This shift, however, subjected the autonomous municipalities both to expres-sions of inclusive tolerance and to actions of surveillance, including acts of outrightrepression. Hence, fragmentary political relationships with indigenous and peasantorganizations, as an effect of the new demarcations between the acceptable andunacceptable political indigenous subject, limited the possibilities of Zapatista indi-genous authorities to harness state tolerance toward furthering their own politicalobjectives of radical decolonizing social change, autonomy, and self-determination.It was precisely between the ambiguities of state regulatory techniques during theperiod of the Salazar administration, including the resulting strained alliances withother social actors, that the Zapatista justice system acquired greater politicalrelevance.

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The Politics of Justice and Conflict Resolution in the Caracol IV

In 2006, a group of men from diverse political affiliations successfully organized toassault and rob a vehicle transporting the monthly salaries of Altamirano municipalemployees, the approximate equivalent of $40,000. Zapatista witnesses of the crimenotified the autonomous government, who then traveled to the scene, arrested thosesupposedly responsible for the act, and presented them to the Municipal Presidency,the affected party. Both official and autonomous government representatives met todefine how and who was to investigate the crime. During an interview, Mauricio, thenmember of the Zapatista autonomous council, explained, ‘The Municipal Presidencytold us to go ahead, if you as Zapatistas want to resolve the case, go ahead. The PublicMinister’s office told us the same thing, solve the case yourselves’ (personal commu-nication, January 2008).Members of the Zapatista government then effectively arrested those guilty, recup-

erated almost all of the stolen funds, returned them to the Municipal Presidency, andreached an agreement for the culprits to return the remaining money. After hours ofdiscussion, representatives of the autonomous government decided on a sentencebased on a year’s worth of community service work. As Mauricio continued narrat-ing, ‘We thought that if we simply put them in jail, those who really suffer are thefamily members. The guilty just rest all day in jail and gain weight, but their familiesare the ones who have to work the cornfield and figure out how to survive’ (personalcommunication, January 2008). Zapatista government representatives decided thatthe accused would alternate one week of community service with a week devoted totheir families’ cornfields, so as to avoid that their wives and children share the burdenof the punishment.As argued in this section, the case solved by the Zapatista Autonomous Council

and the Honor and Justice Commission in 17 de Noviembre, among others, allowsthem to insert themselves within the ambiguities of state regularization and yetmanage to partially revert the effects of political isolation and the fragmentation ofpolitical alliances at the local level. I focus on the autonomous realm of conflictresolution as it is this sphere that increased in political significance during the so-called period of democratic transition of the Salazar administration. Activities enactedby the Honor and Justice Commission became a key service offered primarily to non-Zapatista indigenous and mestizo inhabitants of the region of Altamirano, sometimeseven official institutions themselves, as the above example illustrates. In this section, Ifocus on agrarian disputes as one of the three main types of cases, including acts ofcorruption by state institutions and domestic disputes, resolved by the Honor andJustice Commission within a context of inter-legality (Santos 1998).The Zapatista justice system is situated within a range of local options for conflict

resolutions. Apart from the standard court system and Public Minister’s office, theChiapas government created the Indigenous Peace and Conciliation Courts in 1999,as part of broader reforms outlined in the Indigenous Rights and Culture Law,designed to promote ‘a culture of peace expressed in the new ways for resolvingdiverse social, religious, political, cultural, ethnic, and gender necessities and intereststhrough a governmental exercise based on ethics, equity, justice, and democracy’

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(GECH 2001). In accordance with the law, governmental authorities established thesecourts in municipalities with a majority Tseltal and Tojolabal indigenous population,such as the municipality of Altamirano. Article 6 of the Indigenous Rights andCulture Law states that the courts act as ‘auxiliaries in the administration of justice’within the established limits of indigenous communities’ ‘habitat,’ and with a jur-isdiction reduced to cases in which both affected parties are indigenous. Although theIndigenous Peace and Conciliation Court in Altamirano is the official space for theresolution of cases involving indigenous individuals, the local population seldommakes use of it. In the years I worked in the region, I never heard anyone refer tocases resolved in their offices. Giovanna Gasparello’s (2010) research also points tothe lack of relevance of the Peace Courts in the jungle region of Chiapas, in contrastto studies carried out in other states, such as Puebla, where these institutions play animportant role (Chávez and Terven 2013; Sierra 2004).According to a 2003 study conducted by lawyer Marta Figueroa, rather than

responding to the collective rights of the indigenous peoples, these peace courtsrepresent ‘second-class courts,’ which lack resources and trained personnel (Figueroa2003). Similarly, Figueroa highlights the secondary effects of the criminalization ofpublic and community defenders, as Article 56 of the Chiapas State Constitution limitsthese functions exclusively to those who have been named by the state’s justice tribunal(ibid.).6 Based on this legal framework, the activities of the Honor and JusticeCommission, as well as organizations such as the Human Rights Defenders Network,are denied any kind of formal recognition (Navarro Smith 2007; Speed 2008).7

In a context of legal pluralism, the autonomous municipalities originally delegatedonly a minor level of importance to the activities of the Commission of Honor andJustice. However, at least from 2003 to 2010, the implementation of justice becameone of the central functions incorporated into the daily activities of the AutonomousCouncils and the work of the JBG in 17 de Noviembre. The majority of cases resolvedpertain to the common jurisdiction. The first level of conflict resolution is that of thecommunity, particularly if the issue in question occurs within a Zapatista community,where the elders, who traditionally take on the responsibility of conflict mediation,resolve cases dealing with robbery, drunkenness (drinking is prohibited in Zapatistacommunities), or domestic conflicts. Those cases unresolved at the community levelthen reach the municipal level, under the jurisdiction of the Honor and JusticeCommission, which resolves cases through mediation, and nearly all of the sentencesinvolve some kind of collective service work at the community, municipal, or Caracollevel as part of the reeducation of the offenders.Few cases ascend to the next level (that of the JBG), primarily only those that

involve other local political organizations or local public functionaries. The rotatingJBG representatives investigate and take an active role in resolving these cases.However, if the dispute or conflict involved a level of complexity or represents keydelicate political matters, the zone’s assembly made up representatives from all themunicipalities forming part of the Caracol (at that point seven municipalities madeup the Caracol IV), act as the maximum authority, and thus implemented the finaldecisions. During the years of fieldwork in 17 de Noviembre, I only registered one casethat reached the Caracol level assembly, a case involving a former landowner whose

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lands were ‘recovered’ by Zapatista support bases and who demanded the return ofseveral hectares of his original property.In 2005, the Honor and Justice Commission published their annual activities

as part of the autonomous government report of the tasks undertaken during a12-month period, beginning September 2004. The reports, some written byhand, others printed on computer paper, hung on the wooden boards on thewalls in the main auditorium. The documents of the Commission centered on a5-month period, in which the representatives registered 29 cases, 11 of whichwere presented on 25 January 2005 alone. Given that throughout my fieldwork Iverified that on average 20 cases arrived to the Honor and Justice offices perweek, the published report must be understood as a sample of the kinds of casespresented, rather than an exhaustive list. In this 2005 registry, 17 cases involvedindividuals belonging to non-Zapatista communities or to political parties, whilethose involving Zapatista support bases represented 12 cases. The figures coin-cide with personal observations, as each time I sat outside the autonomousgovernment’s offices on the days when the representatives resolve cases(Mondays and Tuesdays) more than half of the cases involved non-Zapatista,including individuals and organizations who maintained significant politicaldifferences with the rebel movement. Of the total number of cases, 10 referredto disputes or common crimes internal to the community, including the theft oflivestock, gossip, and outstanding debts. Nine cases were related to domesticdisputes, including cases of separation, infidelity, child support, the nonpaymentof alimony, as well as a case in which the man accused his wife of witchcraft. Ofthese, only one case involved the accusation of rape, later confirmed to befactual. Additionally, the report registers five cases related to violations of themunicipality’s regulation prohibiting timber felling. Two cases registered do notfall under the Honor and Justice Commission’s jurisdiction. One of these isrelated to a consultation, in which the authorities of a non-Zapatista communityvisited the offices to seek advice on how to organize women’s collectives with agovernment project start-up fund of 25,000 pesos (about $2500 at the time). Theother relates to a request for a permit to fell trees. It is unclear as to why thesecases were registered as part of the activities of the Honor and JusticeCommissions, perhaps because the authorities’ functions oftentimes convergewith those of the Land and Territory Commission and the Autonomous Council.Finally, the report registers one case of extortion in the offices of the Public

Ministry. The individual who suffered the offense sought out the Honor and JusticeCommission and requested that the Zapatista authorities accompany him to thePublic Ministry in order to obtain information regarding a criminal investigationthat had supposedly been initiated against him and which served as a pretext forextorting the accused. The report lacks details of the case beyond the fact that ‘theHonor and Justice representatives went to the Public Ministry and were able toresolve the situation.’ In terms of this last case, it reflects activities I often observed,when the Honor and Justice Commission responded to abuses of authority com-mitted by local public functionaries, primarily in the offices of the Public Ministry. Inthese cases, autonomous government representatives monitored and scrutinized the

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actions of the Minister’s offices, and defended victims of the abuses, primarilyextortion, corruption, and excessive fines. This is not a task that the autonomousauthorities seek out in any systematic or explicit way; they accompany individuals tothe Public Ministry’s offices when their intervention or mediation is requested.Authorities hear the facts of the case and decide whether to defend the accused inthe offices of government authorities.Overall, the more than 20 cases provide a snapshot of disputes and conflicts

resolved at the municipal level. The following tier, the JBG, only resolves threekinds of cases: agrarian conflicts associated with one of the region’s formerlandowners; issues involving multiple peasant organizations; and those that werenot able to be resolved at the municipal level. In their 2005 report (also posted onthe wall of the auditorium in Morelia), the JBG representatives detailed some,though not all, of the cases presented in their offices. During that year, the JBGmediated 10 cases, 8 of which related to agrarian conflicts. Seven of the entriesdetailed in the papers hung on the auditorium walls correspond to disputesbetween support bases and non-Zapatista organizations or communities.According to the public report, the only case exclusively involving Zapatistamembers was brought before the JBG because it involved an agrarian disputebetween communities that belong to two different JBG, the Caracol of la Garruchaand of Morelia. As for the remaining two, one was related to an automobileaccident in the municipality of Oxchuc, and the other registered the payment of a10 per cent tax charged by the Caracol to a road-building company, whosecontract for improving public roads required entry into the Zapatistacommunities.To summarize, the public document serves to identify the types of cases most

frequently resolved: agrarian disputes; cases involving corruption, acts of racism, ordiscrimination in the offices of the Public Ministry; and those cases involvingviolations of women’s rights. In the introduction to this article, I established myinterest in detailing how the Honor and Justice Commission challenges the powerof the official justice system in two dimensions, the first being by usurping stateobligations and directly competing with state institutions. Through the abovedescription, we observe that despite the existence of the peace courts created aspart of the 1999 Indigenous Law, they are virtually unused by the local population.In contrast, the Zapatista Honor and Justice Commission resolves a wide range ofdisputes and conflicts, thus demonstrating a concentration of political-ethical powervis-à-vis the local court systems and the Public Ministry’s office. As part of a seconddimension, this political-ethical expression of legitimating power is reflected in thecultural practices associated with conflict resolution and the implementation ofjustice by the Tojolabal and Tseltal autonomous government authorities. Of parti-cular importance are the following: the cultural practices centered on mediationsthat redress the harm done, rather than simply finding one party guilty and theother innocent, as would be a state-centered standard approach; resolving cases inthe population’s native languages; the focus on reeducation through the role ofelders or of members of the commissions who offer advice and counseling so as to

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avoid the repetition of such acts; as well as the emphasis placed on social repara-tions through community work, rather than an economic fine or incarceration.These cultural practices effectively called the attention of non-Zapatista individuals and

organizations, including those who maintained severe political differences with theZapatista movement. In doing so, the actions of the Commission of Honor and Justice,oftentimes in conjunctionwith the AutonomousCouncil and the Commission of Land andTerritory, effectively reestablished social, if not political, ties with those sectors of thepopulation that had distanced themselves from the Zapatistas. Of particular importanceare the cases involving those peasant and indigenous organizations situated within the new‘good’ indigenous subject category. In doing so, these daily practices of autonomy forgedlinks beyond the Zapatista communities and partially transcended the divisions establishedthrough the regulatory practices of state forces in Chiapas during the Salazar era.While thisargument holds for cases involving domestic issues and domestic violence, as well as forcases where the Autonomous Government defends victims from acts of corruption andracism by local officials, in the following section I will focus on cases involving agrariandisputes.

Transcending Local Social Fragmentations and the Resolution of Agrarian Disputes

In 2006, Trinitario and Antonio, members of the Commissions of Honor and Justiceand Land and Territory, described the main types of cases they mediate during aninterview:

The issues that most often come to the offices are agrarian conflicts. Sometimes it’s aproblem in the new population centers because some people don’t want to work in thecollectives or in the community communal projects. Then we have to guide them andoffer advice. Sometimes it’s problems between communities. Right now we have a verydifficult problem between two communities that are fighting over a plot of land next tothe river; they want it for their livestock and they don’t want to be reasonable and shareit or split it equally between them. Sometimes the problems come from other organiza-tions, like when the people from Independent Center of Agricultural Workers andPeasants (CIOAC by its Spanish acronym) came to ask for our help in resolving aland conflict between their own members. And sometimes they come from the ejidosasking to join the new population centers. (Personal communication, July 2006)

In the description of their activities, Trinitario and Antonio highlight two aspects:the first refers to the moral and political power they exert in resolving agrarianmatters throughout the region; the second refers to their ability to intervene onmultiple levels and in diverse aspects of agrarian conflicts. In the community level,the Honor and Justice Commission intervenes when Zapatista support bases fail tocomply with the regulations in the new population centers. Similarly, they respond tonon-Zapatista families’ requests to join a community that forms part of 17 deNoviembre, in which case the Land and Territory Commission offers to relocatethem to one of the more than 20 new settlements.At the same time, Trinitario and Antonio identified conflicts between communities

as a second tier of mediation, as the main agrarian disputes. An elevated percentageare the result of unclear demarcations of villages’ territorial boundaries, partially the

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result of the historical inefficacies of the Secretary of Agricultural Reform and theAgricultural Attorney’s office in Chiapas. At a third tier, Zapatista authorities’attempt to mediate between different peasant organizations in the resolution ofland disputes, as was the case between members of the CIOAC, and thus representsa political role in light of the historical tensions with different local actors. Thetypology of cases reflects the ways in which the Zapatista justice system replacesfunctions of the Secretary of Agricultural Reform and the Agricultural Attorney’sOffice. In contrast to the 1992 constitutional reforms to Article 27, which ended state-led agrarian reform, Zapatista authorities primarily focus on redistributing lands. Atthe same time, they ensure that the agrarian communities’ internal agreements arerespected, they delimit properties, and, when necessary, mediate between disputedparties in order to reach agreements as to the boundaries of adjacent villages. Lastly,they incorporate an additional component to their activities – mediation betweenpeasant organizations in cases involving land disputes.The total sum of such conflict resolutions activities partially reflects the historic

agrarian backlog in Chiapas and the lack of effective responses on behalf of the SRAand the Agricultural Attorney’s Office (Procuraduría Agraria, PA by its Spanishacronym). Chiapas has the most elevated percentages of agrarian disputes inMexico (Reyes Ramos 2001). According to Marta Cecilia Diaz Gordillo, SRA’s specialrepresentative in Chiapas during the Salazar administration, this situation was due tothe state’s drawn-out agrarian conflict, the organizational force of numerous peasantorganizations, and repeated errors made by officials that over decades overlappedmultiple ownership rights onto the same plots of land (personal communication, June2005). However, rather than focusing their energies on resolving the hundreds ofconflicts, the SRA turned its attention to a few major conflicts, considered political‘hot spots,’ such as the Biosphere reserve of Montes Azules.8

At the same time, the PA shifted priorities to the implementation of the EjidalRights Certification and Land Titling Program (Procede), a program that operatedbetween 1992 and 2010 with the objective of ‘providing juridical certainty to landtenancy, regularize agricultural rights, resolve boundary conflicts and grant propertycertificates’ (Procuraduría Agraria 2006). In essence, Procede served as the impetusfor resolving boundary conflicts by demarcating lands as part of a series of phasesleading to the individual titling and eventual privatization. As a reflection of theimportance that resolving agrarian disputes and clarifying land demarcations hadfor the indigenous peasants in Chiapas, by 2006, 72.3 per cent of the ejidos inChiapas had begun the certification process. Ejidos are collective land holdings,which under Article 27 of the 1910 Constitution could neither be bought nor sold.However, the 1992 reforms to Article 27 opened the path to their privatization andincorporation into economic markets. This initial phase involved simply the demar-cation of the collective land. However, less than a third of those ejidos who initiatedthe process proceeded to the subsequent phases culminating in full individualtitling. Studies at the time argued that ejidatarios in general agreed to begin theprocess of certification in order to strengthen ties with others in the ejido, avoidconflicts, clarify boundaries, and increase participative processes, yet few opted forfull ownership (de Ita 2005).

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In light of these state policies, local Tseltal and Tojolabal individuals, ejidos andorganizations turned to the Zapatista autonomous governmental authorities toresolve disputes. In these cases, the activities of the autonomous commissions essen-tially operate at the margin of legal frameworks, precisely in response to the vacuumleft by the promises of legal reforms. Similarly, Zapatista justice resolves disputes overlands seized by the Zapatistas in 1994, which, to date, lack any legal foundation. Suchlands represent historical tensions between the EZLN and regional peasant organiza-tions. Since 1996, in what forms part of the Caracol IV, organizations such asORCAO, ARIC, and the Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organization have claimed therights to lands currently under Zapatista control (although some received landsthrough the Agricultural Accords of 1996). Their members accuse the EZLN ofmonopolizing the natural resources that were the principal demand of the agrarianmovements for more than three decades, thus the lands belong to all indigenouspeasants, independent of political differences. In light of these historic tensions,Zapatista support bases politically prioritize resolving cases that involve land disputesso as to improve relations with indigenous peasant organizations. In an interview,Armando, representative of the Honor and Justice Commission, explained that thispriority heightened in importance during the latter half of the Salazar administration,particularly between 2005 and 2006, when conflicts over lands intensified (personalcommunication, January 2007). Land dispute cases presented to the offices of theautonomous government played a central role in easing old tensions, preventing theemergence of new antagonisms and reestablishing alliances with those same organi-zations that tended to distance themselves from the Zapatistas.Such strategic goals are evident in the Zapatista authorities’ 2005 report. The first

case described refers to a land dispute between EZLN support base communities andORCAO, an organization previously sympathetic to the Zapatistas’ political agenda.By 1999, both organizations had fractured their political ties, which was later reflectedin the attacks in the community of Cuxulja. In 2004, a problem surfaced betweenORCAO and the new Zapatista population center 1 de Enero, when members ofORCAO enclosed the ‘recovered lands’ with barbed wire. In a context in which thefrictions between the organizations increased, JBG representatives considered itpolitically relevant to resolve, or at least contain the conflict, rather than continuefighting over two hectares of land. The report states, ‘we reasoned with thecompañeros so that they would hand the land over to our brothers from ORCAOand not fight over two hectares.’ The same concern for improving social and politicalrelations was manifested in a second case in the community of Santa Rosalia, part ofthe municipality Miguel Hidalgo, which had suffered a conflict between variouspolitical actors since 2004. A third case involved an agrarian dispute between twoCIOAC factions that, at one point, had so many political problems with Zapatistasupport bases that one of their members went so far as to kidnap a member of thesupport base.

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Concluding Reflections: The Politics of Justice, Decolonization Struggles, and theInversion of Marginality

The cases described above illustrate how Zapatista justice challenges the authorityof official institutions by replacing the administrative functions of the localgovernment, without reducing their political effects to these. Such limited implica-tions could more easily articulate to modes of neoliberal governability, as has beendiscussed in the contexts of other regions of Mexico and in Guatemala (Sierra2004; Sieder 2002). Rather, I detailed the multidimensionality of the activitiescarried out by the Honor and Justice Commission and the effects that they havein modifying power relations with the local state. Through the resolution ofagrarian cases, the autonomous government filled the vacuums left by the with-drawal of neoliberal state functions and employed a moral force that attempted toresolve old antagonisms with peasant organizations while avoiding new tensions,particularly in the 2006 electoral year. The cultural political practices concentratedin the autonomous realm of justice by Zapatista authorities further substantiateswhat Boaventura de Sousa Santos has observed in Latin America indigenousjustice practices, which he suggests act as fundamental spheres of radical decolo-nial anticapitalist political projects (Santos and Exeni Rodriguéz 2012). In thecases of Bolivia and Ecuador, indigenous justice practices most effectively revealthe contradictions and limits of pluri-nationalism found in the political transitionsof such countries (ibid.), while Zapatista practices of justice highlight the limits ofneoliberal regulatory techniques, reversing their effects in order to fuel theirautonomous decolonial political endeavor.In this article, I have provided brief outlines of the different cultural practices

that form part of the purveyance of justice, particularly the ways in whichreparation and mediation form central aspects of Zapatista justice, in sharpcontrast to the government’s system. I have noted that reparation is largelybased on community service rather than fines or imprisonment, as is the casein other political movements such as the CRAC-PC in Guerrero (Sierra 2013).Though these practices are not new, nor are they exclusive to Zapatista indigenouscommunities, the processes of autonomy have led to the politicization of suchpractices and their incorporation into a unique normative system that transcendsthe community, forming a parallel government that positions itself within thefissures of the neoliberal Mexican state. Similarly, I have suggested that theresolution of cases has permitted the Zapatistas to transcend the divisions regu-lated through the production of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ indigenous subject categoriesduring the Salazar administration, and thus partially subvert the resulting frag-mentation of social political alliances between indigenous organizations. In doingso, they have redirected the hegemonic production of the margins of the state toadvance their own subaltern political project.The Zapatistas’ organizational and political capacity to politicize and invert the

productive effects of the margins of the state is something that I believe has not beensufficiently theorized. Though scholars offer significant contributions for understand-ing the nature of the state as an object of study, less emphasis has been placed on

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shifting relations of power when collective political actors manipulate these dominantconstructions of marginality, particularly as part of decolonial struggles. TheZapatistas’ practices of justice and their broader processes of autonomy require usto think about the state margins as not only a construction of inclusions andexclusions, along with the production of spaces of exceptions, but also as creativespaces that attempt to transform power relations and the exercise of something sobasic and essential as justice.

Notes

[1] See Hernández Navarro and Vera (1998).[2] For recent detailed research of the autonomy processes in distinct Zapatista autonomous

municipalities, see Baronett, Mora and Stahler-Stolk (2011), Forbis 2006), Millán 1996) andNúñez Rodríguez (2004).

[3] See, for example, the EZLN’s communiqué from 12 January 1997 and their response to thearguments presented by the government representatives regarding the possible ‘balkanization’of the Mexican nation.

[4] Low-intensity war refers to the control and administration of the actions of subversive groupsvis-à-vis diverse civilian/military activities, with an emphasis on nontraditional forms ofeconomic, psychological, and paramilitary coercion.

[5] The so-called ‘Mordaza Law’ was a reform of the Penal Code of 17 February 2004, penalizingdefamation and calumny with up to 9 years in prison.

[6] The modifications to Article 56 of the Chiapas State Constitution establish that ‘the judges ofpeace and conciliation and the municipal judges will be named by the state’s supreme justicetribunal, which will take into consideration the proposals made by the respective municipalgovernments, who will have previously consulted with the community, when these proposalsmeet the requirements of probity and ability established by the plenary of the tribunal.’

[7] Although the Indigenous Peace and Conciliation Court in Altamirano is the official space forthe resolution of cases among the indigenous population, the local population seldom makesuse of it. In the years I have been working in the region, I have never heard anyone speak ofthe court’s functions, nor have I heard of any case that was resolved in their offices.Gasparello’s (2010) research also points to the lack of relevance of the Peace Courts in thejungle region of Chiapas, in contrast to studies carried out in other states, such as Puebla (seeChávez and Terven 2013; Sierra 2004).

[8] The conflict in the Biosphere reserve of Montes Azules was between indigenous communitiesthat began during the Echeverría administration, when 614,000 hectares of land was granted tothe Lacandón indigenous community, despite the fact that 4000 Tsotsil, Cho’l, and Tseltalfamilies had already migrated to the jungle and occupied the same territory, giving rise tosocial antagonisms between different indigenous communities.

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Mariana Mora is at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en AntropologíaSocial, Juárez 87, Col. Tlalpan, Delegación Tlalpan, Distrito Federal C.P. 14000, México(Email: mariana_mora@yahoo.com).

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