Zapatista feminism?

One year after the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Elena Poniatowska (Reference Poniatowska1995) published an enthusiastic assessment of the effects of Zapatismo on Mexican politics. In the final lines of “Voices of the Jungle: Subcomandante Marcos and Culture,” Poniatowska recalls an unfortunate experience that Rosario Castellanos had many years before the 1994 insurrection. Traveling around Chiapas, Castellanos saw an Indigenous man returning from the forest carrying a bundle of firewood as he rode on a burro. His wife followed him, on foot, with a bulky load of stove lengths on her back. Indignant, Castellanos asks the man, “Why do you travel comfortably seated, while your wife follows behind you, on foot?” (Poniatowska Reference Poniatowska1995, 381) He bluntly replies that she was walking only because she did not have a burro. Through personal communications with elders in Tsotsil territories, I came to understand an additional layer through which one can interpret this episode. In the Maya Tsotsil epistemology, carrying firewood on one’s back is a task performed both by the individual and by their ch’ulel (spirit, soul, spiritual guardian). Consequently, it can be argued that such inequality burdens a woman in her physical, emotional, and spiritual spheres.

Poniatowska (Reference Poniatowska1995, 381) concludes by stating that “thanks to the Zapatistas,” Indigenous women in Chiapas “finally have a burro.” Logically, Poniatowska does not reduce her analysis to property possession as a form of equality. Rather, she describes how Zapatismo allows for new gender paradigms in Mexico, transcending the territorial limits of EZLN. In 1997, Poniatowska reiterated her prognosis through an essay in which she parallels the appearance of Zapatismo with new policies against domestic and sexual violence across Mexico. Simply put, Poniatowska sees Zapatismo as a form of feminist reconstruction.

Naomi Klein (Reference Klein2001) is another notable intellectual who has shown optimism about Zapatismo, specifically concerning its democratic principles. For her, Subcomandante Marcos projected inspirational leadership examples into world statecraft. Instead of seeing him as another caudillo in Latin American insurgencies, she distanced Zapatismo from traditional guerrilla enclaves because of its participatory democracy. To this point, she asks, “What other guerrilla force asks its bases of support about what to do before doing it?” (Klein Reference Klein2001, 118).

Pushing back against these and other such prominent enthusiasts, several feminist commentators ushered Zapatismo into a heated debate. Some scholars suggest that Zapatismo replicates patriarchal hierarchies and the Votán Marcos exerts a self-imposed form of authoritative and charismatic leadership that often eclipses local demands (Bedregal Reference Bedregal1995; Belausteguigoitia Reference Belausteguigoitia2000; di Piramo Reference di Piramo2010). While not offering a direct criticism, Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo (Reference Hernández Castillo2002) interprets the Zapatista Women’s Revolutionary Law with caution. Although she acknowledges its positive impacts, she highlights its limitations amid highly patriarchal structures. Márgara Millán Moncayo (Reference Millán Moncayo2006) pointed out that while Zapatismo has significantly increased the visibility of Indigenous women in Chiapas, women’s emancipatory projects in the state predated the EZLN. The author believes that men’s domination “begins with their control over land and extends into the family” (81), a matter that the Zapatista Women’s Revolutionary Law did not address in its original charter. Furthermore, Millán Moncayo (Reference Millán Moncayo2006, 91) notices that rather than focusing on reproductive rights or gender equality as a horizon, Indigenous women often associate women’s rights “with the right not to be battered,” signaling repressive paradigms.

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos (2004) also asserted that there was little change in gender relations inside Zapatista communities. In “Reading a Video: Second Part: Two Failures,” he offers a self-critical statement emphasizing the need to address gender relations more directly beyond the military branch. Reaching a similar conclusion, Alejandra Araiza Díaz (Reference Araiza Díaz2004, 139), interviewed Tseltal Zapatista women in Roberto Barrios and noted “a marked sexual division of labor” in which women worked twice or thrice as much as men. In addition to shouldering the burden of social reproduction (housework and maternal duties), women are engaged farmers, artisans, and sellers of their cooking goods to enhance household income. Araiza Díaz concludes her essay by signposting the contradiction between what Zapatismo says and what it does when it comes to gender dynamics.

Regarding capitalism and gender, Hillary Klein (Reference Klein2015) challenges the notion that capitalism introduced patriarchy to Indigenous societies. Rather than dismissing the effects of capitalism, she believes that gender hierarchies were already present in precapitalist societies. In also identifying gender oppression as a precapitalist matter, Mary Louisa Cappelli (Reference Cappelli2018) raises the tone. She argues that gender hierarchies persist in the Zapatista movement because the EZLN and the National Indigenous Congress of Mexico fail to critique Indigenous patriarchy, instead attributing gender violence solely to capitalism and neoliberalism. Taking aim at Sylvia Marcos, Cappelli questions the credibility of her conclusions, given Sylvia Marcos’s close relationship with the comandancia. While Subcomandante Marcos calls her a “serious researcher” (Capelli Reference Cappelli2018, 5), compañeras vocalize their experience of patriarchal subordination. Cappelli (Reference Cappelli2018, 5) challenges Sylvia Marcos’s assertion that “under the aegis of Zapatista autonomy,” “women’s sexual and reproductive rights” have been transformed due to the “collective identity, interdependence, and inter-relatedness” that are part and parcel of Zapatismo. Capelli holds that, on the one hand, Subcomandante Marcos reduces gender hierarchy to the effects of capitalism; on the other, the “female Marcos appears to be rearticulating the male Marcos’s interpretation” (Cappelli Reference Cappelli2018, 5).

For Mary Louisa Capelli, this presents a “postmodern rhetoric” that functions as a “trap to ensnare Indigenous women at the precarious precipice” that negativizes the meaning of the Zapatista maxim “We are equal because we are different” (quoted in Cappelli Reference Cappelli2018, 05). The critic also notes gender dynamics at the Juntas de Buen Gobierno. Those serving on the councils are temporarily excused from farming and domestic obligations during their weeks of communal duty. However, Cappelli notes that women have a second shift at home, straining themselves to participate in civil governance. Additionally, she criticizes the activities of the National Indigenous Congress. For her, the EZLN discourse accuses capitalism of the social maladies affecting women, but she finds Zapatista events rife with child labor, women’s subordination, and sales of Coca-Cola and Zapatista merchandising. In short, Cappelli argues that Zapatismo reifies the oppression it seeks to condemn.

It is hard to deny that women’s emancipation within Zapatismo is a complex subject. It is equally hard to overlook the impact that the revolutionary Indigenous movement has had on gender equality in Mexico. For example, Juana María Ruiz Ortiz’s (Reference Ruiz Ortiz2022) Trecientas hormigas/Sba’ slikebal jun a’yej (Three Hundred Ants/The Prologue of a Story), the first autobiographical novel known to be written by a Maya Tsotsil woman, documents how the emergence of the EZLN shifted the ground on gender politics in Chiapas. On the other hand, the Zapatista Army’s ruling, which penalizes rape with death, has not ceased domestic abuse or gender hierarchies within EZLN civil bases. Perhaps Cappelli’s (Reference Cappelli2018) criticism deserves some attention.

First, the point Cappelli (Reference Cappelli2018) makes regarding the sales of merchandise reflects the frustration that must come to anyone assessing actual political conditions using a communist fairy tale. Cappelli suggests that rebels in Chiapas have failed to break all relations with capital—as if the EZLN could develop its autonomous projects without any access to money. Her anticapitalist critique risks veering into antiorganization politics, embracing a fantastic idealization that demands the overthrow of capitalism by romanticized revolutionary subjects pristinely unaffected by market-driven dynamics. Contrary to this conception, combating capitalism necessitates a structured approach that relies on economic resources; after all, the Indigenous organizers require supplies currently available only as commodities under capitalism.

Second, Cappelli’s critique of Coca-Cola is valid, but we should be surprised by her unwillingness to investigate how Coca-Cola became integrated into Maya culture, even making its way inside Indigenous healing rituals. This is particularly surprising given her resistance to the idea that capitalism had deeply altered gender relations in Indigenous societies. The reality is that this integration coincided with the deterioration of drinkable water quality, a drastic decline that coincides with the opening of a Coca-Cola bottling factory in the region (Nash Reference Nash2007).Footnote ⁸ Again, she accuses Indigenous practices instead of targeting capitalism. Last, regarding her comments on Indigenous children working at events, I wonder to what extent Cappelli recognizes how their labor is the direct product of the harsh reality that envelops and necessitates the existence of the National Indigenous Congress. Certainly, those privileged enough to circulate inside the republic’s Congreso de la Unión will not see children working inside it, but while the privileged there project the image of a well-functioning society, the surroundings of the Congreso de la Unión are replete with children engaged in precarious labor. Not only does Cappelli criticize the heroic achievement of an Indigenous organization that endeavors to articulate solutions amid precarious conditions, her criticism fails to acknowledge the state absenteeism that results in an insufficient number of childcare facilities for Indigenous mothers, the need for which Zapatista women explicitly voiced in my conversations with them.

Another problem with Cappelli’s essay is the unspoken alternative at the basis of her comparisons. What is she contrasting Zapatismo with? Is she implying that mestizo women in Mexico experience a feminist utopia? She does not specify the demographic example that Zapatista women are expected to take as a model. I am certain that she is not implying that Mexico is the reference point, given its alarming rates of femicide that challenge even the fictional creativity of Roberto Bolaño (Reference Bolaño2009) in his novel 2666. The Zapatistas precisely criticized Mexican culture to the point that they broke with it, establishing an autonomous order that Indigenous communities view as far superior in terms of social justice. In terms of policy implementation, EZLN has never enjoyed the necessary political stability to implement its projects, owing to the never-ending escalation of violence in Chiapas. Even when conditions are favorable for improvement, policy implementation requires time, and the challenges of establishing governance are exacerbated by paramilitary violence and cartel conflict, as well as by the road-mobility hazards and snarled interregional communication of rural Chiapas.

Intriguingly, Cappelli’s arguments seem to place responsibility for the conditions affecting even non-Zapatista Indigenous women squarely on the backs of the Zapatistas. Cappelli ignores that, according to the Zapatista Women’s Revolutionary Law (1993), members of the EZLN are free to marry whomever they choose, including non-Zapatista men. This clause requires that the civil and military leaders of the organization navigate a range of social complexities, as Zapatista communities exhibit political dissonance. There are several forms of social fusion with nonmembers that present both opportunities—such as recruitment and partnerships—and challenges, including leadership disputes. Accordingly, Cappelli’s criticism overlooks the fact that there is little clear division between the civil bases of Zapatistas and non-Zapatistas, making the implementation of policies within the resulting incoherent polity nearly impossible to achieve without political compromise and eclecticism.

In response to such accusations against the organization, Zapatistas affirm that women commanders spearheaded historically crucial public acts. At the end of 1997, peace negotiations were suspended and the future of the EZLN became unknown when the Mexican Army threatened to arrest its members and supporters (Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos 2001). Armed aggressions spiked. In this moment of escalated tensions, Comandanta Ramona broke through the barricades surrounding Zapatista villages as she departed to Mexico City, where she delivered a memorable speech at the Zócalo, as depicted in the documentary A Place Called Chiapas (Wild Reference Wild1998). Comandanta Esther is another Zapatista leader and the first Indigenous person ever to speak at the Mexican Congress. Nearly three years after the signing of the Zapatista Women’s Revolutionary Law (1993), a proposal submitted by Zapatista women to amend the law was accepted even as the effects of the low-intensity war escalated.Footnote ⁹ After the law’s passage, several other events centered discussions on gender justice (Marcos Reference Marcos and Aurora2011; Leyva Solano Reference Leyva Solano2020), including the widely attended meeting Mujeres Que Luchan (Women Who Fight).

In the anthropological work of Mariana Mora (Reference Mora Bayo2017) in Tojolabal territories, she argues that, before Zapatismo, women felt they had two masters. Besides the farm owners, women recognized their fathers, brothers, and husbands as overbearing figures. Women could be traded. Comandanta Miriam (EZLN 2017) contends that women had to deal with the patrones (landowners) and patroncitos (husbands or male family members), indicating a colonial circuit of violence in the way that husbands emulated in their homes the mistreatment they endured in the workplace. But instead of a double oppression, Comandanta Miriam speaks of a triple one. Indigenous women are often despised by state institutions (mal gobierno), such as when denouncing physical abuse or seeking medical care. President Felipe Calderón’s (2006–2012) War on Drugs policy caused the number of femicides to skyrocket (Staudt and Méndez Reference Staudt and Méndez2015); even so, Comandanta Rosalinda (2017) argues that the policies of Zapatismo promoted equality. Mariana Mora (Reference Mora Bayo2017) has offered evidence of the resistance some Zapatista men have shown concerning women’s leadership, but she also articulates how Zapatismo allows for those contradictions to be debated within assemblies, public hearings, and trials at the Juntas de Buen Gobierno.Footnote ¹⁰ Additionally, regardless of their fluency in Spanish—women have managed to occupy every organizational level inside Zapatismo (Padierna Jiménez Reference Padierna Jiménez2013).

On Zapatista fiction

Literary scholarship on the Zapatista has also highlighted gender tensions. Kristine Vanden Berghe (Reference Vanden Berghe2001) identified contradictions in comparing fiction with communiques, observing that Subcomandante Marcos repeatedly centers gender justice as an urgent political theme in nonfiction texts. In contrast to such convictions, his representation of women in fiction confines them to their relationship with male characters. In Zapafiction such as El Viejo Antonio (2020), for example, Doña Juanita appears as Antonio’s wife and Mariana as a potential girlfriend to Marcos. These literary depictions, written by Marcos, either reinforce gender roles by limiting women to positions of unpaid domestic and affective labor (e.g., setting up the fire, making coffee, preparing corn or sugar) or situating them as secondary characters who accidentally surface in the narrative as accessory supporters of pivotal guerrilleros or community leaders.

Beyond examining how the texts written by Subcomandante Marcos reinforce gender stereotypes, Vanden Berghe (Reference Vanden Berghe2001) also notices that only one woman combatant appears in El Viejo Antonio—Major Ana María—and even she endures misogynist reactions from her compañeros. When she asks what women should do about the fact that their hair reveals them as female even if they wear balaclavas, male combatants display a vexing attitude concerning women’s attire and hair. At no point do they ask for Ana María’s opinion or for that of any other Zapatista women. In spite of her military rank, guerrilleros shut down Major Ana María’s attempt to voice matters pertinent to insurgent women. Following Vanden Berghe’s argument, fiction is the magnifying glass through which contradictions in gender politics become evident. Additionally, Marcos remains as the sole outwardly known writer of Zapafiction, adding another layer of gender favoritism, as women’s representation is filtered exclusively through the imagination of a male author.Footnote ¹¹ That does not mean that Zapafiction in the future will be restricted solely to his compositions; for the time being, Zapafiction remains a literary category that documents the fictional universe envisioned by the most prominent spokesperson of the organization. Although Marcos is the sole author so far known outside EZLN communities, there are certainly other aspiring writers within the communities. Indeed, Marcos does not exist as person (he is a political persona through the body of Rafael Guillén) but as an ideologist author and political disguise to advance the ideals of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Zapafiction is a distinct literary category because beyond the possible encounters between mestizo and Maya cosmovisions, it articulates diverse political purposes of the organization, including, but not limited to, propaganda, pedagogy, and military statements.

Not until the appearance of Magdalena, a transwoman character, in Muertos incómodos (The Uncomfortable Dead) did Zapatista literature deploy a different approach concerning representation of queer individuals and women.Footnote ¹² In his segments of the coauthored novel with Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Marcos (2005) depicts Magdalena as a non-Indigenous ally who wants to marry her Zapatista lover after her gender affirmation surgery.Footnote ¹³ Despite discrepancies regarding the medical procedure, as though her womanhood were solely defined by the medical intervention, Magdalena is highly esteemed by Zapatista villagers throughout the narrative and bravely leads an operation in which Zapatistas manage to arrest Morales, a paramilitary aggressor.Footnote ¹⁴

In the wake of Muertos incómodos, Zapatista literature experiences two major shifts. Through the publication of children’s books, narratives begin to include characters such as Defensa Zapatista (a schoolgirl), Loa Otroa (a queer person), a disabled horse, and Gato-Perro (a nonbinary cat-dog), drawn in watercolor-like shades. The fact that these characters are originally represented through drawing dialogues with Sebastián Martí I Puig’s (Reference Puig2022) remarks on how Zapatismo has aesthetically addressed its revolutionary agenda. These new characters indicate that Zapatista activist iconography is under constructive and expansive dispute. Defensa Zapatista inhabits the organization’s cultural imagery as a reminder that the Zapatista future must consider the feminist demands of the militant child.

Second, unlike the first phase of Zapatista fiction that was primarily public facing, what I am calling as the second phase of Zapafiction follows a more inward-looking approach (Figure 1). Post-2014, Marcos “became” Galeano and became less visible outside Zapatista villages, focusing on more internal communications. This shift is also reflected in the endogenous circulation of the newer characters. The precariousness of Defensa Zapatista, Loa Otroa, and the representation of nonhuman animals sets forth a distinct narrative order from previous male characters. For example, the character of Viejo Antonio interpreted Maya epistemologies for non-Indigenous militia fighters, solidifying the encounter between Maya and Marxist concepts of liberation from 1983 onward (before and after the 1994 uprising). This elderly community leader appears as a character at the onset of the 1994 uprising and goes on to become a tactful political translator. Viejo Antonio explains the emergence of a form of Mayan Marxism through traditional cosmogony, illustrating the unorthodox transformation of the armed resistance that came to ground formulations of power and sovereignty in Maya-Indigenous decelerated temporality (k’unk’un). Conversely, Don Durito—the scholarly beetle—adds the perspective of nature to EZLN’s dialectical materialism. As the pundit in political economy, he compels militia fighters to understand how left-leaning guerrilleros’ boots may crush tiny creatures like himself. The beetle proposes more environmental debates inside revolutionary circles. Also serving as Marcos’s alter ego and a reference to Don Quijote, Durito voices the importance of understanding historical materialist conditions that characterize neoliberalism in order to halt its destructive progress. Of relevant note is that Don Durito also appears in 1994, symbolizing that the two male-presenting characters represented and mediated the political tone of Zapatismo (Vanden Berghe Reference Vanden Berghe2005).

Figure 1.

Nuestra mirada hacia dentro, by Zeltzin Nahual [Background: Our look inward (EZLN 2017)]

In the 2015 seminar “Critical Thought in the Face of the Capitalist Hydra,” Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano (2017) delivered a paper titled “La visión de los vencidos” (Vision of the Vanquished), a direct reference to Miguel León-Portilla’s eponymous archival work. In the paper, Galeano describes the emergence of Defensa Zapatista. First, he conveys a self-critical assessment by stating that he “represent[s] better than anyone else the Zapatista machismo and sexism,” a statement that is also problematic, as if ultramasculine performance granted him a privileged position to explain gender hierarchy to men and women (133).Footnote ¹⁵ He also takes the opportunity to depict Defensa as an unpredictable character because he cannot foresee her sexual orientation or the fights of her generation. The only prediction that Galeano/Marcos makes is that for Zapatismo to continue to exist as a political project, Defensa’s position must be majoritarian. In essence, Defensa represents the feminist victory over the vanquished men in the organization, allowing Zapatismo to be better because of her claims.

Beyond interpreting or situating the organization as notable male characters, I suggest that Defensa epitomizes the ch’ulel (spirit), or the Geist, of Zapatista autonomous governance. In contrast with characters who bridged internal and external issues, Galeano’s Defensa represents the immanent aspirations and shortcomings of the organization. Unlike Viejo Antonio, who spells out EZLN’s rationale to non-Zapatista observers, Defensa’s duty is to lead the EZLN to provide explanations to her, taking disagreement as the vector of political action (Rancière Reference Rancière1998).

In conversation with Vanden Berghe’s contributions, I refuse to simplify recent Zapatista characters as a less problematic and renovated iteration of women’s representation, moving from sexist to pro-feminist representations. Instead, I observe a continuum that symbolically underscores the contradictions at the heart of the social movement. My contention is that Zapafiction has documented the difficulties of advancing political ideals in the face of counterinsurgency. While contradictions in gender representation showcase the legacies of highly patriarchal structures, they also shed light on the material difficulties of Zapatismo in advancing a political agenda as instability grows in Chiapas (Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, Frayba, 2024). Still, any critique of gender within Zapatismo must remember how Indigenous women drafted the women’s legislation, how they participated in the construction of the different Lacandón Declarations, how assemblies ceased to be masculine spaces, and how women’s leadership is evident within Zapatista villages.Footnote ¹⁶ Besides, it is important to consider the difference between people who joined Zapatismo and those who grew up in it, as they came into adulthood under new conceptual paradigms.

Another reason I resist framing Defensa Zapatista simply as a pro-feminist evolution of Zapatista fiction stems from the continued prominence of Viejo Antonio and Don Durito in Zapatista public writings. Beginning in 1994, Viejo Antonio and Don Durito are repeatedly conjured in EZLN’s communiqués in references and direct speech. Don Durito, for instance, maintains his controversial male gaze (Vanden Berghe Reference Vanden Berghe2001) from the early stages of the uprising as he continues to influence the aesthetic landscape throughout EZLN’s different political configurations: aguascalientes, caracoles, rebel municipalities, Juntas de Buen Gobierno. The more recent appearance of Defensa Zapatista does not substitute these previous male characters but complicates their centrality. In the first phase of Zapafiction, the outward-facing literary propaganda that reflects masculine posture also seems to highlight the armed resistance’s readiness to resist military aggression. Through a more inward-looking literary production, the second phase of Zapafiction reveals the organizations’ revolutionary sensitivity regarding internal dilemmas as the actual unmasking of Zapatismo.

Habrá una vez (2016)

In the children’s book Habrá una vez (2016), Defensa Zapatista epitomizes the quest for emancipatory dreams rooted in political contradiction. That is to say, Defensa is a rebellious figure not only because she despises capitalism but also because she is a free-spirited child who is willing to achieve her definitions of justice even if her choices may disregard the doctrines of the organization. The schoolgirl claims to be a radical revolutionary while she attempts to fool her teachers (promotoras de educación) when she does not finish her homework; she tries to find ways to retaliate against Pedrito, her Zapatista nemesis; and she thinks that only Pedrito should be punished—because he is a boy. In contending that punishment be gendered, she affirms a problematic logic. Notwithstanding its many contradictions, Defensa believes that by pointing out the flaws of the organization she can propose shifts that could benefit vulnerable members. This belief is performed in numerous instances in which the character voices disagreement with the leadership structure, its decision-making processes, and even plots against Pedrito. Despite her somewhat crooked ways to attain gender justice, Defensa sees the organization as the space where she can enact her political and intellectual battles.

Habrá una vez works simultaneously as a novel and a collection of short stories—with that, in the chapter “Loa Otroa,” Defensa doubles down on her rebellious nature as she disquiets the Zapatista principle of leading by obeying (mandar obedeciendo), one of the hallmarks of EZLN’s democracy. In a conversation with Loa Otroa, she rants about male privilege in the organization: “Politics, as they say, is the fight but in thought. Well, that’s the reason why in our politics, we are not fighting to replace a Bossy Man (Mandón) who annoys us with another who does the same, but [we want] something bolder; there should be no one who is in charge, because if there is one who is in charge, then there are those who obey” (28).Footnote ¹⁷

Defensa critiques the logic of leading by obeying because she imagines a world with no authority, even if this authority rule comes with reciprocated accountability to the people. Defensa wants power to penalize her frenemy. Instead of rejecting power, the character wants to exert authority over Pedrito as a form of obtaining feminist reparation. While leading by obeying is not a hierarchical structure—for example, in Tojolabal, governance means “collective service” (Lenkersdorf Reference Lenkersdorf2002)—the fact that Defensa identifies different Mandones as masculine tyrannical figures questions the extent to which governance and leadership have materialized through masculinizing behaviors and figures inside the EZLN. A similar mode of self-criticism is voiced in “Novena parte” (The Ninth Part; 2023), the document explaining the Zapatistas’ revised autonomous structure. In fact, the fictional character seems to anticipate the extinction of the Juntas de Buen Gobierno.

In the sequence, she interrupts her conversation with Loa Otroa, saying, “I have to go or else my mom will get upset and when a woman gets upset, even if she is your mother, you should run fast because they will eat you alive” (Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano 2016, 28).Footnote ¹⁸ Even as she aspires for politics beyond authority, the character contradictorily recognizes the ruling of her mother.Footnote ¹⁹ Her remark unveils layers of authoritarianism as a behavior potentially exerted by women upon other women. The statement also plays with gender favoritism in gesturing to the type of leadership she prefers—in the current state of things—while she subtly criticizes it. Defensa makes evident not only the contraposition between men and women; she also suggests her own political interpretation of future politics, illustrating how women’s inputs are relevant to the making of the Chiapas revolution. In a word, Defensa suggests that in Zapatista politics, ideally no Mandón would exist, either male or female, but as the horizon is still under construction, she contradictorily supports gendered leadership even if authoritarianism of sorts is employed.

Defensa Zapatista is the first female protagonist in Zapatista literature but not the first feminist protagonist in Zapatista cultural productions, broadly construed. In the film Corazón del tiempo (Heart of Time), Sonia fights to enforce the legal accomplishments of the Zapatista Women’s Revolutionary Law.Footnote ²⁰ Written by Hermann Bellinghausen and directed by Alberto Cortés (Reference Cortés and Bellinghausen2008), the film was recorded and distributed in Zapatista communities, with actors from EZLN municipalities interpreting themselves. In the story, Sonia falls in love with the guerrilla fighter Julio even though her parents have promised her to Miguel. The narrative depicts her right to romantically exert self-determination. In opting for the liberating alternatives within Zapatismo, she has to face family dynamics, even as her family has adopted the revolutionary lifestyle. In addition, Sonia will have to choose between civil and military life because of her relationship with the insurgent fighter. The protagonist’s struggle is a symbol for other Zapatista women who still have to remind EZLN communities that gender equality is proclaimed within Zapatismo, breaking with existing traditions. Beyond the similar aspirations shared by Sonia and Defensa regarding abandoning the rebel autonomous municipality to join the armed branch of Zapatismo, these women characters denounce internal gender discrepancies while they have no illusions about finding liberation against sexism and capitalism outside the organization.

Still, in the book Habrá una vez (2016), the episode “El muro y la grieta” (The wall and the crack) begins: “As Zapatistas, our memory also adheres to what is to come. [Our memory] highlights dates and places” (Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano 2016, 7).Footnote ²¹ As a child, Defensa Zapatista is not simply a girl more or less eight years old; she is a child born in 1492 who is capable of fighting for imagined futures that should safeguard gender justice. The narrative follows a discussion about the wall built by capitalism, raising the significance of trying to tear down the metaphoric wall. However, since the wall seems undefeatable, Defensa throws little rocks to create cracks before the daydreamed demolition.

Eduardo Galeano appears in the story. The Uruguayan writer comes to the narrative when Defensa organizes a soccer team to train against the neoliberal wall. She tries to recruit the writer by saying he looks like a “striker” (14), and Eduardo Galeano engages in conversation through which he mostly hears her monologue, which effectively silences the prominent scholar. Defensa quickly proves that she understands the stakes of the struggle for Zapatista women, retaking the double-master logic (mestizo bosses and Indigenous males). Eduardo Galeano could not join her team because he was waiting to be seen at the Junta de Buen Gobierno. When a Zapatista militiaman asked the writer what his profession was (“¿y usted a qué se dedica?”—literally, “what do you dedicate yourself to?”), he replies, “I am the ball picker” (16), implying that Eduardo Galeano had been recruited by Defensa’s game and that, in soccer politics, he decided to support her team.

In the subsequent episode, “Apuntes solo para mujeres” (Notes only for women), Defensa Zapatista follows her daily devotion to creating a crack in the wall. One day she notices a crack in a very high part of the wall. She cannot see what is on the other side. She then builds a pile of stones to take a peek, but the crack is too high for her reach. Unexpectedly, she stretches out her hand so that her male doll (muñequito) can see through the crack and tell her what is on the other side (Figure 2). As a result of her interaction with her doll, Defensa visualizes her victory. In the narrative sequence, she lets Pedrito know that she has access to information that might overthrow the capitalist system.

Figure 2.

“Defensa and the doll looking through the crack in the wall” anonymous illustrator

As a response to Defensa’s teasing, Pedrito says: “Who cares, when I grow up, I will be a watchman by the wall and I will be able to see the other side through the hole. As for you, it will take a while” (Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano 2016, 21),Footnote ²² bragging on his advantage because of Defensa’s age. In questioning the essence of his advantage, Defensa “smilingly tastes her victory as she argues: I already know what is on the other side” (21).Footnote ²³ Pedrito challenges the truth of her statement because she is little; this information is “only for the grown-ups. And they will never allow a little girl to join [the insurgent band], not even as a trick” (21).Footnote ²⁴ In the sequence, he laughs at her story. Calmly, Defensa states: “I know [what is on the other side]” (21).Footnote ²⁵ She indicates that the doll is her informant. Pedrito takes the doll from her, placing it by his ear. Unable to hear, he says, “It says nothing” (21).Footnote ²⁶ Defensa retorts: “It says, but you do not understand it” (21).Footnote ²⁷ Pedrito says that he can know things because he goes to the Zapatista autonomous school, and Defensa derides him because some forms of knowledge are restricted to little girls. Pedrito is upset not only because Defensa may have more information about neoliberalism than him; he is also disquieted by being unable to learn what she knows. Defensa’s advantage stems from the coalition she established with those deemed unimportant combatants (the doll, the ghost of Eduardo Galeano, the disabled horse). The story ends without Defensa sharing what she heard, showing that girls have the right to preserve their tactics.

This narrative certainly draws inspiration from the Maya concept snail ch’en that could be translated as “cave,” “crack,” or “shelter.”Footnote ²⁸ In the Tsotsil epistemology, this physical or emotional cave provides protection through which one can find clarity to respond in the face of extenuating circumstances. Those oppressed frequently attempt to find solace in this shelter or find the crack in a wall, trying to muster strength to deal with life’s difficulties. Considering that for Zapatistas, capitalism is the system of oppression, a sentence such as li vinik-antsetike ta Chiapas laxa yilik bu oy snail ch’en li capitalismoe means more than its literal translation (the people in Chiapas will see where the capitalist den (or crack) is located). Seeing hence means construing a strategy against the system of oppression. Connecting this notion with the narrative, the fact that Defensa and the male doll are the ones seeing through the crack (Defensa seeing or hearing through the doll) suggests that anticapitalist hope can exist only if mediated through queer-feminist worldviews, themselves mediated by the male doll and the schoolgirl. For Defensa, seeing through allows her to dismantle the secret of the capitalist system, even as she visualizes imperfections inside her organization.

The queer worldview this story presents and champions is further revealed through the story’s narrator. In contrast to El Viejo Antonio or En algún lugar de la Selva Lacandona: Aventuras y desventuras de Don Durito (2020) (Somewhere in the Lacandon Jungle: The adventures and misfortunes of Don Durito), in this text Subcomandante Marcos/Galeano neither holds nor shares the narrating voice with another male-presenting character. Gato-Perro, the nonbinary animal, is the narrator. In this episode with Pedrito, Gato-Perro does not externalize to the reader what Defensa Zapatista potentially knows regarding the neoliberal wall. As Figure 3 illustrates, Gato-Perro is fully biased in supporting the schoolgirl.

Figure 3.

“Defensa, Gato-Perro, and the male doll against Pedrito” anonymous illustrator

Despite Defensa’s assertion that “knowing, knowing, it is only for women” (Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano 2016, 22),Footnote ²⁹ the text does not propose a direct competition among men, women, queer, and nonhuman Zapatistas. On the contrary, the story situates women as co-central figures in the cultural imagination of the Chiapas revolution. These characters avoid any political margins and sketch out their contributions at the center of their collective political utopia. Even if Defensa feels triumphant in relation to her rival, she knows that Pedrito is an essential comrade. Conversely, Pedrito’s statement or temporal advantage due to his age does not prohibit Defensa from becoming a soldier in the future. Zapatismo wants children to flourish as children for as long as possible before performing military service in an attempt to secure dignified forms of life (jch’uleltik) in the face of warfare. Pedrito’s advantage can be justified not by gender differences but by age, because the military branch of the EZLN prevents children from acting as soldiers. Deepening the queer-feminist environment of the story, Defensa and her male frenemy will achieve the equality of fellow soldiers once Defensa reaches military age. Through Defensa’s account, it is evident how Zapatista fiction is a vehicle in which the organization actively self-criticizes and reimagines its governing structures.

Hablar colores (2018)

In Hablar colores (2018), Defensa Zapatista tries to trick her teacher (promotora de educación) and doctor (promotora de salud). In the chapter called “Depende” (It depends), the Zapatista child attempts to get away with not finishing her homework. As a response to her teacher, she explains that her tasks as a child revolutionary have kept her away from her academic assignments. In her mischievousness, she sifts apart two forms of labor: She dedicates time to her revolutionary labor to the detriment of her scholastic responsibilities. In these scenes, Defensa does not understand how through Zapatismo, women’s education is itself a form of radical politics, considering the stark literacy inequality in Chiapas.

In this same passage, Defensa Zapatista remembers a conversation with the doctor when she also wanted to trick the professional. At the Zapatista autonomous clinic, she says, “I then told the doctor that we have to support each other as women and that we should cause no harm to other women. The doctor made a face as if she understood what I said, but I clearly saw in her eye that she did not get anything at all” (Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano 2018, 8).Footnote ³⁰ In her confabulations, Defensa analyzes how receiving a vaccination can be positive and negative (Figure 4). She argues: “For example, they [injections] are bad if you apply them in a girl … do you think she will be able to shoot the ball if my leg hurts [sic] because of the shot? Certainly not, right?” (8–9).Footnote ³¹

Figure 4.

“Defensa plotting against Pedrito.” Illustrated by Andrea [Background: Only for boys (injection and unsavory medicine), only for girls (candies and tasty pills)]

By contrast, injections are positive for Pedrito “because he is very mean and he is always making fun of me by saying that women can’t play soccer and the we are “flimsy” (endeble) (9).Footnote ³² Defensa feels offended even though she does not know the meaning of the word endeble. Her solution is that only Pedrito should receive injections as a form of punishment. The doctor ignores Defensa’s “argumentation” by showing her that women have a right to free health care in Zapatismo. Even if the individual’s argument is defeated, the doctor demonstrates how the organization tries to advance the collective good. Defensa cries after the injection. As an attempt to put on a brave face, Defensa says that she cried out of “anger” (coraje) (10) because women were not fully united, and the doctor gave her the injection. Back at school and at the end of the chapter, Defensa seems victorious after a day of adventures, and she whispers to Gato-Perro, “It looks like we got away with this” (15), meaning she managed to escape her homework obligations.Footnote ³³ However, while observing her mother talking to the teacher, Defensa overhears, “Well, it depends” (15), as though the women who exerted authority over her were ready to discipline the protagonist.Footnote ³⁴

Regarding health and education, Comandanta Miriam (2017) points out how Indigenous women in Chiapas constantly die from fully treatable diseases because of the inferior attention given to them in contrast to economically privileged women. Language is another element that prevents Indigenous women from receiving adequate medical service, indicating layers of exclusion and medical violence. Miriam also criticizes how the right to education has been traditionally taken from Maya women because their fathers tended to associate going to school with sexual freedom (buscar marido; Comandanta Miriam 2017, 120). Defensa’s tension with Pedrito prevents her from seeing how some of her complaints are over exactly what Maya women have fought to attain. In summary, the child character was still incapable of noticing what Mora (Reference Mora Bayo2017) terms poder ser, or “the power and ability to be” (151), since everyday life in the revolutionary struggle is inseparable from politics.

Whereas it could be said that Defensa is mainly trying to deceive women professionals working in areas of care labor, it is also striking that she inhabits a world in which women are accomplished professionals, to the point that she seeks alliances to return inequalities to some men. Through this strategy, Defensa Zapatista demonstrates contradictions in her inclusive aspirations at the same time that the text evinces that women still have unattended demands. On the other hand, women’s leadership and the freedom of these conversations demonstrate how tensions are verbalized so that alternatives can be offered as the meaning of justice is constantly reassessed. In Tsotsil, several expressions inform the rationale of the Zapatista autonomous government. Unlike the term Western societies tend to understand as democracy, the Tsotsil equivalents would be ich’bail ta muk or ich’bail ta k’ux, which means to mutually recognize the greatness (muk) or the suffering (k’ux) of one another (Ruiz Reference Ruiz Gómez2014). Defensa learns that Zapatismo enforces a system in which the greatness and suffering of diversely disenfranchised peoples are deemed legitimate. Defensa does not necessarily follow the Maya perspective on democratic assemblies (tsobail xchi’uk jun o’onil) in which social matters are debated until participants come to unanimous agreement (tsobail, assembly; xchi’uk, with; jun, one; o’onil, heart). Instead, she wants to make her voice heard as a representative of other women. In other words, Defensa unofficially lowers the voting age and enlarges the Zapatista constituency, troubling community traditions.

Furthermore, she questions the extent that the greatness or suffering of women, queer, and non-human animals are being taken into account inside—and not outside—of Zapatismo as a statement that the organization is the hope for liberation in contrast with Mexican congressional politics. Defensa asserts a mode of gender-conscious Indigenous epistemology that stirs localized Zapatista debates that simultaneously offers universalizing approaches to liberation, moving beyond her endogenous criticism. Defensa’s critical method seeks to radicalize even Western conceptualizations of democracy, gender justice, and sovereignty. Put another way, despite the criticisms that Zapatismo has received for its policies on gender equality, the emergence of Defensa Zapatista offers another theorization that proposes women’s liberation from the perspective of a child. The importance of having her childlike criticism is that it allegorizes honest self-criticism, welcoming inputs from historically silenced Indigenous villagers.

Still, some of Defensa Zapatista’s pro-feminist proposals are immediately rejected by other Zapatista women. For example, the meeting of the mothers and teacher illustrates how Zapatista women do not condone emancipatory projects that reproduce forms of inequity. However, Defensa’s concerns remain valid. Pedrito demonstrates patronizing behavior by trying to silo soccer as a masculine sport. Yet Pedrito knows that when Defensa plays, she can play against him instead of in a separate league for girls. Zapafiction makes use of internal contradictions to challenge concepts of governance within the organization. Defensa is an equipped soldier when it comes to contaminating masculine conceptions concerning sports and politics. In shedding light on existing tensions, these characters document social disagreements and imagine alternatives from points of friction.

Beyond the fallacy of perfect politics

In Hablar colores (2018) and Habrá una vez (2016), Defensa Zapatista envisions an autonomous reality for women. Even in its title, Habrá una vez inverts the temporality in narration. The future is taken as if told with and against érase una vez (once upon a time). Zapafiction does not idealize the Maya epic past but contests and organizes present and future orders. A child comes to represent military defense as Chiapas experiences overmilitarization and heightened paramilitary tensions (Frayba 2024). In response to militarization, Defensa provides accounts that outgrow the generalized violence around the state. Instead of guns, Defensa wants to organize a soccer team to tear down the capitalist wall and she throws little rocks against a structure protected by high-tech tanks. While the Tren Maya project aims to elevate profits from the Indigenous past, Defensa Zapatista fights for the urgency of the Mayan present and prospective survival. Fiction hence proposes a character prohibited from being a soldier because she is a child and a disabled horse as proof that even the military structure of Zapatismo is advancing not violence but inclusion. As the Mexican government invests in military bases, recent Zapafiction documents how autonomous self-defense has promoted sports, health, and education across rebel municipalities.

While Mary Louisa Cappelli (Reference Cappelli2018) criticizes the dissonance that leads the EZLN—an anticapitalist movement—to hold events at which they sell pro-guerrilla merchandise, Ximena Bedregal’s (Reference Bedregal1995) comments on EZLN’s military structure offers a type of liberal criticism that narrows the ways oppressed peoples are allowed to resist. Together, these conclusions seem, at best, to grant scholars the ability to assess the quality of liberation movements’ organizing amid adverse conditions. In Bedregal’s case, the problem with zeroing in on EZLN’s military structure is that such positions overlook the conditions that make armed self-defense a socially acceptable, and necessary, alternative. Several Zapatista commanders—men and women—have reiterated that the dissolution of the armed faction of EZLN is on the horizon (Rovira Reference Rovira1997; EZLN 2005, 2019). Arrayed against the possibility of Zapatismo becoming a fully civil organization is the growing presence of cartel violence, paramilitarism, and state overmilitarization, leading to agrarian disputes affecting campesino and Indigenous communities entrapped amid highly weaponized aggressors (EZLN 2023).

In focusing on how Zapatismo has failed to attain feminist ideals, such arguments lose sight of how warlike conditions have prevented Zapatismo from fully advancing its commitment to women’s liberation as well as how living dignity has been continuously endangered. It follows from such a detached, academic thread that armed territorial encroachment, forced displacement, and soil contamination are irrelevant contextual factors when Zapatista villagers attempt to promote gender justice. According to this flawed reasoning, the imperfections of women’s liberation can be blamed on a deliberate and insidious internal lack of political will rather than on armed hostility coming from outside of Zapatismo. The fulfillment of EZLN’s mission is possible only when liberation can be extended to everyone, inside and outside the organization, that is, once capitalism becomes inoperative. Before that goal is achieved, feminism is an ongoing construction instead of an event (pas k’op). Zapafiction, which has primarily centered on male protagonism, has nonetheless documented the nuanced reality of living in a conflict zone that makes the revolution’s conditions imperfect.