A flower in the hands of the people: Gustavo Esteva explains what lies at the heart of indigenous politics in Mexico - The Nation-State

New Internationalist, Sept, 2003 by Gustavo Esteva

We walk at a slower pace

The old regime is dead but another has not taken its place. The political classes would like to reduce the transition to the simple transfer of state power from one political party to another and the perfection of the representative system, in order to consolidate a 'neoliberal republic' tied like a caboose to the US engine. Meanwhile we are rebuilding everything from below. Against the spirit of old-style vanguards, we walk at a slower pace. What counts isn't to arrive sooner or first, but to arrive all together and on time. What they call 'democracy' can only be where the people are. Instead of representation, we want presentation, presence. Prod that can only exist in political bodies where we can all take part, in our own communities.

Political activists and market boosters take turns trying to co-opt us. They pressure us to participate in broader political initiatives, in elections, in struggles to occupy the seats of power, or at least to have a piece of them. They recognize the value of what we do, but say that we won't get anywhere this way. They consider our struggle to be sterile and they warn us that we'll just keep wearing ourselves down under police repression and mercantile colonization, until global forces wipe us from the map or turn us into their servants ... Some within our own ranks share that concern. They observe that in our own communities we might win, but on the outside we lose battles as threats and repression escalate, while the schools and the media conquer the hearts of our young people. These people form political groupings, accept positions in the Government or candidacies in the parties--both conceded in order to seduce us--and they hector us to take part in elections. (Our absence could be dangerous, they say; they see the risk of the triumph of the despotic and the far-Right.) Others seek to complement the representative regime with popular initiatives, call for votes and referendums, to make government more participatory.

We don't close our ears to those voices, but we continue learning from experience. Every time some of our people win political office, even as the result of a collective struggle, they get lost in the logic of the governmental and party system. We don't understand the obsession with political office which is accentuated among our friends on the Left, who are still convinced that if they win office it will help the common good. Thanks to the challenge posed by the Zapatistas in Chiapas, in the neighbouring state of Oaxaca we won legal recognition for our political autonomy in 1995 and 1998. Since then, graffiti appears regularly in our towns: 'No political parties allowed, least of all the PRI'. Parties split us, they dissolve our communal bonds--our way of living in community--they divide us and subordinate us to forces beyond our control.

In Mexico we have had a reasonably effective formal democracy for only a few years. But here, as in the countries that have been working on this for many years, what they call democracy is a regime in which a minority reproduces itself in order to control and dominate everyone else. A minority of the people decide which party will take office and a tiny minority write the laws and make all the important decisions.