1. Introduction
2. Civil Resistance: What should we look towards?
3. Civil Resistance and Autonomy
2. Civil Resistance: What should we look towards?
3. Civil Resistance and Autonomy
Glossary
Bibliography
Biographical Sketch
Bibliography
Biographical Sketch
Summary
This chapter studies some central points in civil resistance and nonviolent themes, and its relationships. Every human being must develop a culture and action of the "ability to resist the inhumane" in his personal and social life, struggling or being in solidarity with those who are in struggle. Even if these two concepts are interdependent they are not the same. In order to resist well one must reflect about it. In the same way, civil resistance and nonviolence are very close concepts but have different forms and gradations that we try to describe here, according to the space and the time. The article analyzes some characteristics of civil resistance actions for offensive nonviolent strategies, specially those that increase the command and basic task of nonviolence: "disobey all inhumane orders that authority gives us".
In the final part of the text we establish that a constructive and alternative –in many ways nonviolent- new social order is being developed very slowly in Chiapas autonomy zones, with a "duality of power".
1. Introduction
Civil resistance and active nonviolence are two concepts which are central to the building of our species, which is even younger than we would like to accept. According to Konrad Lorenz, a German ethologist, we current humans could still consider ourselves as the missing link – that is, our species’ humanity is still a work in progress, a desire more than a reality. If one pays attention to the number of genocides- the highest degree of inhumane action- which have occurred in recent decades on all continents, and to the fact that a third of the world’s population does not know if it will be able to eat the next day, then perhaps this statement does not sound so far-fetched.
All beings who pride themselves as being human should have the fundamental value of the ability to resist the inhumane; he who is alive, resists. And he who resists either participates in the struggle or shows solidarity; although both of these concepts are associated with each other and interdependent, they are not identical. It is not the same thing to participate in the struggle as it is to be supportive of it, as far as a direct relationship or one mediated by an opposing adversary. Another basic relationship between active nonviolence and civil resistance is found in different forms and gradations. Various social sectors are currently planting the need to intensify, update and practice civil resistance, from the different spaces in which organizations and individuals establish their terrain of social struggle. They do this faced with the sudden attacks of current capitalist expansion that must constantly create conditions of war, militarization and extreme violence in order to hold relevance. This resistance to inhumanity has historically allowed substantial steps to be taken toward humanity. It is thus important to carry out a reversible evaluation exercise of what has been done up to now, and the possible need for a greater conceptualization of the subject, as well as of creative and effective proposals of action. It is important to remember that reflection is the first weapon that an individual can count on.
2. Civil Resistance: What should we look towards?
Civil resistance develops a method of collective struggle that does not first resort to the use of violence in a sense of impunity, unilateralism or destruction of adversary bodies. It is often associated or united with forms of active nonviolent struggle –frequently it is situated within this wider framework- although this does not necessarily imply that it accepts a pacifist or nonviolent ethic (which are also not one and the same). Going into a little more depth on the concept of resistance, it is essential to make a clarification -there is no better element to become conscious than clearly knowing what is done and how it is done- "in passive resistance an inverse equilibrium is being established with the identity of the other that seeks continuity, it deals with a relation of opposing forces, but they do not seek to arrive at a rupture; in active resistance this equilibrium is broken" (J.C.Marín). Gandhi himself transformed traditional Hindu passive resistance into satyagraha ("the force of truth") or active nonviolence. This is important to consider, because of the border that is created in the legal sphere, and furthermore because at times the idea of civil resistance has tended to be mechanically and indiscriminately associated rather lightly with civil disobedience. On the other hand, the concept of civil resistance has been used to refer to a rather wide spectrum of social struggle actions that run from marches to blockades, occupations and armed confrontations.
Within the nonviolent tradition, civil disobedience constitutes the most intense degree of action, in which the principle of legitimacy is openly and consciously placed over legality and obedience to one’s conscience over authority. These types of actions are reached only after a process of having attempted many others of a lesser degree. In general, it would never be the first stage of a struggle, because of previous preparation that demands that public opinion is necessarily conscious of the graduality and legitimacy of the process of this social struggle. Our analysis will thus be made from this nonviolent perspective.
According to Gene Sharp, an important theorist on nonviolent struggle, methods of nonviolent civil resistance can be divided into the following: a) social protest (demonstrations, declarations, petitions…), persuasion and the distribution of information; b) social, economic and political noncooperation (strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience…); and c) nonviolent intervention (sit-ins, occupations, blockades, the creation of parallel government institutions…). These actions cover everything from the territory of solidarity with those who struggle to the territory of social struggle along with those who participate in it. We should not necessarily view it as positive or negative hierarchizations, but rather as levels of possible compromise for the one who acts, which is important to distinguish in order to know where one’s body is and what one should do consequently.
We will now analyze a series of central elements regarding certain characteristics of civil resistance actions, which allow struggles to be clearly established on the plane of offensive nonviolent strategy:
1- this form of nonviolent struggle is based on the principle that governments socially depend on collaboration and anticipated blind obedience to authority, to be able to execute all orders of punishment that it demands of us, as well as the loyalty of the Armed Forces and police, without questioning the inhumanity of its orders on several occasions. David Thoreau and Gandhi, were two of the greatest teachers of this art. Thoreau developing above all acts of individual civil disobedience, and Gandhi doing massive actions which he justifies with his principle about the dependence that governments have with the real power of the people (Hind Swaraj). Accordingly, in this form of above all socio-political struggle there is an attempt to mobilize the civil population- and if possible the military population, as for example in the Philippines, Denmark and Russia- so that they withdraw their forms of aprioristic consensus towards authority, and they thus begin undermining sources of adversary power. Thus arises the command and basic task of civil resistance and nonviolent action: to disobey all inhumane orders that authority gives us. This intellectual and moral slogan, driven for some time by Dr. Marín, was approved in one of the last Conferences of the Latin American Sociology Society. Along the same lines, there are those that also have proposed "civil disobedience", "refused obedience" (Günther Grass and Kenzaburo Oé) or "holy disobedience" (Fathers Donald Hessler and Leonardo Boff). It is one of the most difficult endeavors for our species, as we are domesticated from the beginning of our family, school and spiritual lives to regard anticipated and blind obedience to authority as a central value. Stanley Milgram helps us to understand this: "Disobedience is the last of the means to put an end to a tension…it reshapes the relationship between subject and authority…(it creates a) character that is completely unknown from the relationship that is sought through the rupture…(it is) a difficult path that only a minority is capable of following to its conclusion".
2- Another key element associated with the idea of resistance lies in the concept of force, in its material, psychological and moral character. As Gandhi said in the Hind Swaraj: "a demand without the support of force is useless". In civil resistance and in nonviolent struggle, this force is born of moral accumulation, and acquires relevance upon collectively articulating itself with other similar material forces in noncooperation or civil disobedience. Gandhi spoke of the "force of the truth" and Luther King of the "force of love". In this way we can confirm that before presenting itself on the corporeal plane, struggle presents itself on the plane of confrontation and moral impugnation. In this situation, the ability to demostrate the injustice of an adversary’s actions before the masses and the adversary’s forces is determinately central. For this reason, it is fundamental to stress the need for these actions to gain moral strength and gain more people, and emphasize its relationship with social legitimacy and legal order, and the use made of a mobilized society’s "moral arms" and "moral reserve"(J.C.Marín) , more and more in the field of struggle and not just in the field of solidarity.
3- Thus, struggle initially plants itself in the terrain of moral legitimacy and also the accumulation therein of material strength: bodies and physical spaces that disobey inhumanity and carry out very different forms of nonviolent interposition and objection, in the most open way possible, and winning more and more solidarity. Moral pressure is married with physical pressure. Morality, in its double character, affects moral pressure and has to do with moral themes. The central argument is almost always enunciated in moral terms and it is fundamental to win this argument, which also has a great deal to do with the methods and strategy of struggle. Therefore, the first construction and reflection should go towards the moral arms that will be used.
4- In the same vein, in nonviolent civil resistance, the relationship between the end and the means, constitutes a main principle, something very opposed to the Machiavellian culture that surrounds us. The means are already an end in themselves and as much as one is totally convinced of his or her arguments, he or she does not have the right to impose them by force on others. Gandhi said that "the means are like the seed and the ends the tree…(between them) there is an undeniable relationship". Often what we criticize about our adversary we reproduce in our own group. The adversary’s greatest triumph can thus be registered without our consciousness: participating in the struggle using the adversary’s violent logic and arms, which guarantees a certain defeat of our own group. This is one of the first forms of penetration of the other, which in general moves within war logic.
5- Moving now to the plan of action, within a great variety it is important to highlight a basic feature: different levels of action exist, a fact that is not always obvious at first. The tactical selection of actions occurs through open reflection and explication, with the aim of having the necessary adhesions and open consciousness regarding: a) the risks in the relationship of force with the adversary; b) the value of its legality or social and historical legitimacy; c) the possibility of reaching proposed objectives. The conjunction of these aspects, or the forced preeminence of one at times, is fundamental to analyze in the building of any civil resistance process.
Specifically, we know that the civil disobedience of masses to achieve political, economic and social objectives has been an important element in western history, especially since the 19th century. This is evident in the struggles of workers and struggles for political, civil and social rights. We can thus affirm without a doubt that this type of action has been one of the principal methods of advancing towards the complete humanity of our species. Without that capacity to individually or massively confront a legal order that expropriates the humanity of many, we would still be culturally very close to the Stone Age. In principle, furthermore, this type of social struggle, by calling itself "civil", brings us to the area of the struggle for citizenship or citizenization of great masses of individuals who are excluded from many of the rights of the dominant social capitalist order.
6- In civil resistance the first coordinates of actions will always be space and time: the analysis of the situation, from short time periods to long, the places where protests are most publicly evident and the adversary body has a more direct and/or fragile interest, the relationship of one’s own material and moral forces as opposed to one’s adversary’s. It will be the basic principle of reality from which to depart. In this context of reflecting on the current identity of the other, and in a self-reflection of our objectives and forces, is where civil resistance strategies and tactics should be inserted, starting by differentiating the levels of planning: distinguishing the time, space and actors to whom actions will be addressed. In the temporal variable there exists an interaction between one’s own personal-group times, social times and those of the direct adversary. The decision of the place to carry out the tactical action is fundamental, and generally is one of the most neglected aspects, abandoned to the routine. It always ends up being the same place: town squares, and not instead to places where subjects and their families live, dispatch and act to pressure or touch on their identity. It is therefore very difficult for them to see or hear us, since they do not feel a true social pressure. Thus, the spatial variable is very much linked to that of the subjects (or objects) to which actions are addressed, since in the geographical logic that we noted earlier the place chosen to seek the relation of force depends on this decision.
7- In this sense, an important aspect is in the capacity to touch on (pressure) the adversary on a moral and material point of interest or weakness that is central to his social identity. This continues to be united with an attempt at a dialogue with the adversary’s most positive parts. There is an attempt to make the adversary place the struggle not only on the plane of material violence, trusting that he can also change his incorrect positions. Thus it is attempted to humanize the struggle and the adversary, and to break the stage of hate and pre-judice. A descriptive and analytic knowledge of who one must confront is therefore very important, and knowing him in all his complexity and in the process of building his different identities, not by stereotypes, with different forms of measuring and comparing his actions. That is, having a clear principle of reality in the struggle, be it of one’s own group or of the group that confronts us.
8- In the relationship with the adversary, a basic principle that the logic of nonviolent action entails is that of political judo and jujitsu (G.Sharp). The adversary’s apparent force and errors are used against him, which demands a public construction and in the medias of some epistemic ruptures in people (and if possible in authority), where the adversary’s illegalities and abuses are discovered through their own words or in documents they themselves have wielded. Thus another central element of the nonviolent struggle is advanced: disarming the adversary.
9- Thus, appears another key actor for civil resistance: how to raise bodies and public support for the cause, how to translate it into the language and common needs of many more, and how to break the ring or enclosure in which power often puts us as a first tactic, since the owner of the situation is the one who encloses, not the enclosed. The strategic importance of winning allies is also on the exterior of our struggle: on the part of the adversary, on the neutral parties or parties not directly interested in the problem, as well as clearly and strongly maintaining those of one’s own group.
10- Nonetheless, the above is only a first moment that should be complemented with another more difficult one: the population must somehow install that abuse in its own identity and feel at least morally affected, such that it causes them to mobilize. Often aspects of reflection on the incorporation of one’s own identity with the identity of others enter into the picture here, from a wider and more complex view of what one’s own personal and family interests are, the manipulation of fear and preventing this from becoming terror.
Today, great numbers of citizens have been placed in conditions of helplessness because they are terrified thanks to an entire complex social construction stemming from the apparatus in power and its articulation with the militarized and crime world. This fact brings majorities to paradoxically request more security to whom in turn spreads more insecurity: the forces of order (military and the police) become Great Authorities-Father Protectors, who in exchange for their actions ask for the blind obedience of the population and the corresponding surrender of many of their human rights achieved through centuries of social struggles. Thus the government and auxiliary forces of power are in charge, by all means and forms of concealment, of spreading and provoking the idea that any demonstration of protest or dissent is an attempt against individual and collective security, making it illegal and illegitimate. In this way, public scapegoats are constructed along with the imperious citizen demand to exterminate them. The criminalization of social activism is advanced in this way, and social strugglers who resist are presented as a threat to public peace. At the global level more and more of us are being placed in the irreparability of the Armed Peace and the need for more bombs, police, military, dogs, bars or superstores that look after and enclose us. It is the culture of security with fear and terror.
This enclosure derives precisely in a process of soldiering the civil population, resigned then to a permanent "wait for orders" on the part of authority, as the soldier, as Canetti said. For this reason, currently many civil resistance struggles are against the dominant culture, in which the ideal citizen is a soldier who blindly obeys the orders and punishments that authority demands of him and insecurity is combated with armed peace. It is easy to forget that since the 19th century the building of the social identity of the citizen and the soldier have operated jointly; according to war conditions or not – the citizen is a disarmed soldier and the soldier is an armed citizen (J.C.Marín).
In this sphere, one of the methods of disarming the adversary is to publicly pose questions that bring about a collective reflection regarding the great incoherence between the end and the means existing in these actions. It also brings about a reflection on how our personal and social humanity is mutilated when we delegate our corporeal, moral and intellectual identity to those who monopolize the use of material force and violence. A recuperation of knowledge of history and episteme is basic in this struggle of resistance, and does not situate it amidst the forgetting of history or the atomization of knowledge.
3. Civil Resistance and Autonomy
Gandhi concludes his Constructive Program for India (1945, CP) by confirming that "civil disobedience (CD) is a stimulus for combatants and a challenge for the adversary. It should be clear for the reader that civil disobedience in terms of Independence, without the cooperation of the masses by means of a constructive effort, is a pure and simple boast and worse than useless." We see then that nonviolent civil resistance in its most radical stage should be accompanied by a proposal of a new social order in equal terms, allowing a real alternative to come to light. If not it would fall in a simple provocation and crash, where he who holds the greatest material force will always win. Alternative social order also constitutes a way of accumulating moral as well as material force, which counteracts the adversary’s violent material supremacy.
Today, even if there are increasingly great spaces of social protest, there are not many examples of social order alternative to the neo-liberal capitalism that pervades our surroundings. This is one of the greatest restrictions that world protests against globalization run into. These demonstrations have successfully fulfilled many of the stages of social struggle: they have been able to strip the truth of injustice and social oppression of neo-liberal politics. They have also gained moral force for the legitimacy of their demands, to the degree that the WTO accepts dialogue in parallel forums with representatives of these protests. Furthermore, these demonstrations have cornered those of world economic power in specific places with astonishing creative, organizational and courageous capacity, among many other things. However, local experiences and specific struggles do not mechanically construct a new social order by themselves, although at times they are the seed of it.
Where then do we turn to explore these alternatives and to thus have more force in protests and proposals? We think that for many aspects we can turn towards Zapatismo in Chiapas. With all its weaknesses and shortcomings, from its own historical and recent and ancestral cosmovision, we can consider that in those regions of the Mexican Southeast, a constructive and alternative social order called "autonomy" is truly developing. This order proposes a scheme of social and production relations with neo-liberal capitalism in many different aspects, and seeks to construct spaces of social equalization and greater humanization in great measure. It has been an action between non-cooperation and civil disobedience, carried out from a central nonviolent strategy: to exert authority in a territory, paying attention to the fact that it is already liberated. That is, making something a reality that even official legal order does not yet authorize, exerting their own power and corporeal and social autonomy without asking permission.
It does not deal, however, with one State within another, as the government has tried so often to confuse the population by claiming, but rather with one principle of social order within another. Neither does it deal with a new order which excludes the previous one, nor does it contradict public laws, but rather complements them. In a recent press release regarding their Videos, they state: "If the country collapses, autonomy collapses with it."
This autonomy breaks the dominant heteronomy in the social order, and has real points of reference at least in the political field with Good Government Councils, in the educational and health fields with specific Boards, and also in the nutritional and productive fields. Cultural construction runs from the individual to the social. For example, in the Good Government Councils every month the authorities change, in something that could seem at the least chaotic, but in reality obliges a great individual and collective flexibility, avoiding situations of abuse of power or situations in which the doctrine of "leading by obeying" is not respected. This horizontal rotation allows anyone who knows how to listen and reach agreements to temporarily exert public and political power, acquire experience and develop organizational and community authority capacities.
In Chiapas a duality of power or parallel power has been created like this. The Zapatistas teach us with their practice, just as the Gandhian model did, that autonomy, non- cooperation and civil disobedience are united as a single body, although they are not the same. Human history does not provide many examples of this type of alternative experience to the dominant social order, and even less in such vast territories and populations. In the recent past, Gandhi, Mandela and Rugova (Kosovo) have carried out some experiments and centered much of their struggle on the construction of bodies, minds and social structures with autonomy and self dignity, faced with which their adversaries could no longer dominate.
This chapter studies some central points in civil resistance and nonviolent themes, and its relationships. Every human being must develop a culture and action of the "ability to resist the inhumane" in his personal and social life, struggling or being in solidarity with those who are in struggle. Even if these two concepts are interdependent they are not the same. In order to resist well one must reflect about it. In the same way, civil resistance and nonviolence are very close concepts but have different forms and gradations that we try to describe here, according to the space and the time. The article analyzes some characteristics of civil resistance actions for offensive nonviolent strategies, specially those that increase the command and basic task of nonviolence: "disobey all inhumane orders that authority gives us".
In the final part of the text we establish that a constructive and alternative –in many ways nonviolent- new social order is being developed very slowly in Chiapas autonomy zones, with a "duality of power".
1. Introduction
Civil resistance and active nonviolence are two concepts which are central to the building of our species, which is even younger than we would like to accept. According to Konrad Lorenz, a German ethologist, we current humans could still consider ourselves as the missing link – that is, our species’ humanity is still a work in progress, a desire more than a reality. If one pays attention to the number of genocides- the highest degree of inhumane action- which have occurred in recent decades on all continents, and to the fact that a third of the world’s population does not know if it will be able to eat the next day, then perhaps this statement does not sound so far-fetched.
All beings who pride themselves as being human should have the fundamental value of the ability to resist the inhumane; he who is alive, resists. And he who resists either participates in the struggle or shows solidarity; although both of these concepts are associated with each other and interdependent, they are not identical. It is not the same thing to participate in the struggle as it is to be supportive of it, as far as a direct relationship or one mediated by an opposing adversary. Another basic relationship between active nonviolence and civil resistance is found in different forms and gradations. Various social sectors are currently planting the need to intensify, update and practice civil resistance, from the different spaces in which organizations and individuals establish their terrain of social struggle. They do this faced with the sudden attacks of current capitalist expansion that must constantly create conditions of war, militarization and extreme violence in order to hold relevance. This resistance to inhumanity has historically allowed substantial steps to be taken toward humanity. It is thus important to carry out a reversible evaluation exercise of what has been done up to now, and the possible need for a greater conceptualization of the subject, as well as of creative and effective proposals of action. It is important to remember that reflection is the first weapon that an individual can count on.
2. Civil Resistance: What should we look towards?
Civil resistance develops a method of collective struggle that does not first resort to the use of violence in a sense of impunity, unilateralism or destruction of adversary bodies. It is often associated or united with forms of active nonviolent struggle –frequently it is situated within this wider framework- although this does not necessarily imply that it accepts a pacifist or nonviolent ethic (which are also not one and the same). Going into a little more depth on the concept of resistance, it is essential to make a clarification -there is no better element to become conscious than clearly knowing what is done and how it is done- "in passive resistance an inverse equilibrium is being established with the identity of the other that seeks continuity, it deals with a relation of opposing forces, but they do not seek to arrive at a rupture; in active resistance this equilibrium is broken" (J.C.Marín). Gandhi himself transformed traditional Hindu passive resistance into satyagraha ("the force of truth") or active nonviolence. This is important to consider, because of the border that is created in the legal sphere, and furthermore because at times the idea of civil resistance has tended to be mechanically and indiscriminately associated rather lightly with civil disobedience. On the other hand, the concept of civil resistance has been used to refer to a rather wide spectrum of social struggle actions that run from marches to blockades, occupations and armed confrontations.
Within the nonviolent tradition, civil disobedience constitutes the most intense degree of action, in which the principle of legitimacy is openly and consciously placed over legality and obedience to one’s conscience over authority. These types of actions are reached only after a process of having attempted many others of a lesser degree. In general, it would never be the first stage of a struggle, because of previous preparation that demands that public opinion is necessarily conscious of the graduality and legitimacy of the process of this social struggle. Our analysis will thus be made from this nonviolent perspective.
According to Gene Sharp, an important theorist on nonviolent struggle, methods of nonviolent civil resistance can be divided into the following: a) social protest (demonstrations, declarations, petitions…), persuasion and the distribution of information; b) social, economic and political noncooperation (strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience…); and c) nonviolent intervention (sit-ins, occupations, blockades, the creation of parallel government institutions…). These actions cover everything from the territory of solidarity with those who struggle to the territory of social struggle along with those who participate in it. We should not necessarily view it as positive or negative hierarchizations, but rather as levels of possible compromise for the one who acts, which is important to distinguish in order to know where one’s body is and what one should do consequently.
We will now analyze a series of central elements regarding certain characteristics of civil resistance actions, which allow struggles to be clearly established on the plane of offensive nonviolent strategy:
1- this form of nonviolent struggle is based on the principle that governments socially depend on collaboration and anticipated blind obedience to authority, to be able to execute all orders of punishment that it demands of us, as well as the loyalty of the Armed Forces and police, without questioning the inhumanity of its orders on several occasions. David Thoreau and Gandhi, were two of the greatest teachers of this art. Thoreau developing above all acts of individual civil disobedience, and Gandhi doing massive actions which he justifies with his principle about the dependence that governments have with the real power of the people (Hind Swaraj). Accordingly, in this form of above all socio-political struggle there is an attempt to mobilize the civil population- and if possible the military population, as for example in the Philippines, Denmark and Russia- so that they withdraw their forms of aprioristic consensus towards authority, and they thus begin undermining sources of adversary power. Thus arises the command and basic task of civil resistance and nonviolent action: to disobey all inhumane orders that authority gives us. This intellectual and moral slogan, driven for some time by Dr. Marín, was approved in one of the last Conferences of the Latin American Sociology Society. Along the same lines, there are those that also have proposed "civil disobedience", "refused obedience" (Günther Grass and Kenzaburo Oé) or "holy disobedience" (Fathers Donald Hessler and Leonardo Boff). It is one of the most difficult endeavors for our species, as we are domesticated from the beginning of our family, school and spiritual lives to regard anticipated and blind obedience to authority as a central value. Stanley Milgram helps us to understand this: "Disobedience is the last of the means to put an end to a tension…it reshapes the relationship between subject and authority…(it creates a) character that is completely unknown from the relationship that is sought through the rupture…(it is) a difficult path that only a minority is capable of following to its conclusion".
2- Another key element associated with the idea of resistance lies in the concept of force, in its material, psychological and moral character. As Gandhi said in the Hind Swaraj: "a demand without the support of force is useless". In civil resistance and in nonviolent struggle, this force is born of moral accumulation, and acquires relevance upon collectively articulating itself with other similar material forces in noncooperation or civil disobedience. Gandhi spoke of the "force of the truth" and Luther King of the "force of love". In this way we can confirm that before presenting itself on the corporeal plane, struggle presents itself on the plane of confrontation and moral impugnation. In this situation, the ability to demostrate the injustice of an adversary’s actions before the masses and the adversary’s forces is determinately central. For this reason, it is fundamental to stress the need for these actions to gain moral strength and gain more people, and emphasize its relationship with social legitimacy and legal order, and the use made of a mobilized society’s "moral arms" and "moral reserve"(J.C.Marín) , more and more in the field of struggle and not just in the field of solidarity.
3- Thus, struggle initially plants itself in the terrain of moral legitimacy and also the accumulation therein of material strength: bodies and physical spaces that disobey inhumanity and carry out very different forms of nonviolent interposition and objection, in the most open way possible, and winning more and more solidarity. Moral pressure is married with physical pressure. Morality, in its double character, affects moral pressure and has to do with moral themes. The central argument is almost always enunciated in moral terms and it is fundamental to win this argument, which also has a great deal to do with the methods and strategy of struggle. Therefore, the first construction and reflection should go towards the moral arms that will be used.
4- In the same vein, in nonviolent civil resistance, the relationship between the end and the means, constitutes a main principle, something very opposed to the Machiavellian culture that surrounds us. The means are already an end in themselves and as much as one is totally convinced of his or her arguments, he or she does not have the right to impose them by force on others. Gandhi said that "the means are like the seed and the ends the tree…(between them) there is an undeniable relationship". Often what we criticize about our adversary we reproduce in our own group. The adversary’s greatest triumph can thus be registered without our consciousness: participating in the struggle using the adversary’s violent logic and arms, which guarantees a certain defeat of our own group. This is one of the first forms of penetration of the other, which in general moves within war logic.
5- Moving now to the plan of action, within a great variety it is important to highlight a basic feature: different levels of action exist, a fact that is not always obvious at first. The tactical selection of actions occurs through open reflection and explication, with the aim of having the necessary adhesions and open consciousness regarding: a) the risks in the relationship of force with the adversary; b) the value of its legality or social and historical legitimacy; c) the possibility of reaching proposed objectives. The conjunction of these aspects, or the forced preeminence of one at times, is fundamental to analyze in the building of any civil resistance process.
Specifically, we know that the civil disobedience of masses to achieve political, economic and social objectives has been an important element in western history, especially since the 19th century. This is evident in the struggles of workers and struggles for political, civil and social rights. We can thus affirm without a doubt that this type of action has been one of the principal methods of advancing towards the complete humanity of our species. Without that capacity to individually or massively confront a legal order that expropriates the humanity of many, we would still be culturally very close to the Stone Age. In principle, furthermore, this type of social struggle, by calling itself "civil", brings us to the area of the struggle for citizenship or citizenization of great masses of individuals who are excluded from many of the rights of the dominant social capitalist order.
6- In civil resistance the first coordinates of actions will always be space and time: the analysis of the situation, from short time periods to long, the places where protests are most publicly evident and the adversary body has a more direct and/or fragile interest, the relationship of one’s own material and moral forces as opposed to one’s adversary’s. It will be the basic principle of reality from which to depart. In this context of reflecting on the current identity of the other, and in a self-reflection of our objectives and forces, is where civil resistance strategies and tactics should be inserted, starting by differentiating the levels of planning: distinguishing the time, space and actors to whom actions will be addressed. In the temporal variable there exists an interaction between one’s own personal-group times, social times and those of the direct adversary. The decision of the place to carry out the tactical action is fundamental, and generally is one of the most neglected aspects, abandoned to the routine. It always ends up being the same place: town squares, and not instead to places where subjects and their families live, dispatch and act to pressure or touch on their identity. It is therefore very difficult for them to see or hear us, since they do not feel a true social pressure. Thus, the spatial variable is very much linked to that of the subjects (or objects) to which actions are addressed, since in the geographical logic that we noted earlier the place chosen to seek the relation of force depends on this decision.
7- In this sense, an important aspect is in the capacity to touch on (pressure) the adversary on a moral and material point of interest or weakness that is central to his social identity. This continues to be united with an attempt at a dialogue with the adversary’s most positive parts. There is an attempt to make the adversary place the struggle not only on the plane of material violence, trusting that he can also change his incorrect positions. Thus it is attempted to humanize the struggle and the adversary, and to break the stage of hate and pre-judice. A descriptive and analytic knowledge of who one must confront is therefore very important, and knowing him in all his complexity and in the process of building his different identities, not by stereotypes, with different forms of measuring and comparing his actions. That is, having a clear principle of reality in the struggle, be it of one’s own group or of the group that confronts us.
8- In the relationship with the adversary, a basic principle that the logic of nonviolent action entails is that of political judo and jujitsu (G.Sharp). The adversary’s apparent force and errors are used against him, which demands a public construction and in the medias of some epistemic ruptures in people (and if possible in authority), where the adversary’s illegalities and abuses are discovered through their own words or in documents they themselves have wielded. Thus another central element of the nonviolent struggle is advanced: disarming the adversary.
9- Thus, appears another key actor for civil resistance: how to raise bodies and public support for the cause, how to translate it into the language and common needs of many more, and how to break the ring or enclosure in which power often puts us as a first tactic, since the owner of the situation is the one who encloses, not the enclosed. The strategic importance of winning allies is also on the exterior of our struggle: on the part of the adversary, on the neutral parties or parties not directly interested in the problem, as well as clearly and strongly maintaining those of one’s own group.
10- Nonetheless, the above is only a first moment that should be complemented with another more difficult one: the population must somehow install that abuse in its own identity and feel at least morally affected, such that it causes them to mobilize. Often aspects of reflection on the incorporation of one’s own identity with the identity of others enter into the picture here, from a wider and more complex view of what one’s own personal and family interests are, the manipulation of fear and preventing this from becoming terror.
Today, great numbers of citizens have been placed in conditions of helplessness because they are terrified thanks to an entire complex social construction stemming from the apparatus in power and its articulation with the militarized and crime world. This fact brings majorities to paradoxically request more security to whom in turn spreads more insecurity: the forces of order (military and the police) become Great Authorities-Father Protectors, who in exchange for their actions ask for the blind obedience of the population and the corresponding surrender of many of their human rights achieved through centuries of social struggles. Thus the government and auxiliary forces of power are in charge, by all means and forms of concealment, of spreading and provoking the idea that any demonstration of protest or dissent is an attempt against individual and collective security, making it illegal and illegitimate. In this way, public scapegoats are constructed along with the imperious citizen demand to exterminate them. The criminalization of social activism is advanced in this way, and social strugglers who resist are presented as a threat to public peace. At the global level more and more of us are being placed in the irreparability of the Armed Peace and the need for more bombs, police, military, dogs, bars or superstores that look after and enclose us. It is the culture of security with fear and terror.
This enclosure derives precisely in a process of soldiering the civil population, resigned then to a permanent "wait for orders" on the part of authority, as the soldier, as Canetti said. For this reason, currently many civil resistance struggles are against the dominant culture, in which the ideal citizen is a soldier who blindly obeys the orders and punishments that authority demands of him and insecurity is combated with armed peace. It is easy to forget that since the 19th century the building of the social identity of the citizen and the soldier have operated jointly; according to war conditions or not – the citizen is a disarmed soldier and the soldier is an armed citizen (J.C.Marín).
In this sphere, one of the methods of disarming the adversary is to publicly pose questions that bring about a collective reflection regarding the great incoherence between the end and the means existing in these actions. It also brings about a reflection on how our personal and social humanity is mutilated when we delegate our corporeal, moral and intellectual identity to those who monopolize the use of material force and violence. A recuperation of knowledge of history and episteme is basic in this struggle of resistance, and does not situate it amidst the forgetting of history or the atomization of knowledge.
3. Civil Resistance and Autonomy
Gandhi concludes his Constructive Program for India (1945, CP) by confirming that "civil disobedience (CD) is a stimulus for combatants and a challenge for the adversary. It should be clear for the reader that civil disobedience in terms of Independence, without the cooperation of the masses by means of a constructive effort, is a pure and simple boast and worse than useless." We see then that nonviolent civil resistance in its most radical stage should be accompanied by a proposal of a new social order in equal terms, allowing a real alternative to come to light. If not it would fall in a simple provocation and crash, where he who holds the greatest material force will always win. Alternative social order also constitutes a way of accumulating moral as well as material force, which counteracts the adversary’s violent material supremacy.
Today, even if there are increasingly great spaces of social protest, there are not many examples of social order alternative to the neo-liberal capitalism that pervades our surroundings. This is one of the greatest restrictions that world protests against globalization run into. These demonstrations have successfully fulfilled many of the stages of social struggle: they have been able to strip the truth of injustice and social oppression of neo-liberal politics. They have also gained moral force for the legitimacy of their demands, to the degree that the WTO accepts dialogue in parallel forums with representatives of these protests. Furthermore, these demonstrations have cornered those of world economic power in specific places with astonishing creative, organizational and courageous capacity, among many other things. However, local experiences and specific struggles do not mechanically construct a new social order by themselves, although at times they are the seed of it.
Where then do we turn to explore these alternatives and to thus have more force in protests and proposals? We think that for many aspects we can turn towards Zapatismo in Chiapas. With all its weaknesses and shortcomings, from its own historical and recent and ancestral cosmovision, we can consider that in those regions of the Mexican Southeast, a constructive and alternative social order called "autonomy" is truly developing. This order proposes a scheme of social and production relations with neo-liberal capitalism in many different aspects, and seeks to construct spaces of social equalization and greater humanization in great measure. It has been an action between non-cooperation and civil disobedience, carried out from a central nonviolent strategy: to exert authority in a territory, paying attention to the fact that it is already liberated. That is, making something a reality that even official legal order does not yet authorize, exerting their own power and corporeal and social autonomy without asking permission.
It does not deal, however, with one State within another, as the government has tried so often to confuse the population by claiming, but rather with one principle of social order within another. Neither does it deal with a new order which excludes the previous one, nor does it contradict public laws, but rather complements them. In a recent press release regarding their Videos, they state: "If the country collapses, autonomy collapses with it."
This autonomy breaks the dominant heteronomy in the social order, and has real points of reference at least in the political field with Good Government Councils, in the educational and health fields with specific Boards, and also in the nutritional and productive fields. Cultural construction runs from the individual to the social. For example, in the Good Government Councils every month the authorities change, in something that could seem at the least chaotic, but in reality obliges a great individual and collective flexibility, avoiding situations of abuse of power or situations in which the doctrine of "leading by obeying" is not respected. This horizontal rotation allows anyone who knows how to listen and reach agreements to temporarily exert public and political power, acquire experience and develop organizational and community authority capacities.
In Chiapas a duality of power or parallel power has been created like this. The Zapatistas teach us with their practice, just as the Gandhian model did, that autonomy, non- cooperation and civil disobedience are united as a single body, although they are not the same. Human history does not provide many examples of this type of alternative experience to the dominant social order, and even less in such vast territories and populations. In the recent past, Gandhi, Mandela and Rugova (Kosovo) have carried out some experiments and centered much of their struggle on the construction of bodies, minds and social structures with autonomy and self dignity, faced with which their adversaries could no longer dominate.
Glossary
Zapatismo: Mayan Indian social movement in Chiapas, Mexico, which emerged with an armed uprising on the first of January 1994. Its strength, to this day, has been its capacity for civil resistance, indigenous community organisation, mutual solidarity with wider civil societies and the accumulation of a permanent moral strength.
Autonomy: name that the Zapatista communities of Chiapas give to their system of political, economic, cultural and social organization.
Chiapas: state of south-eastern Mexico, with an area of 75635 square kilometres, a population of 3,211,000 persons, of whom 76% speak indigenous Mayan languages. Most of the population live in conditions of extreme poverty within a territory highly rich in natural resources such as water and oil.
Moral reserve: is a material and moral strength constituted by many people from a range of social classes, who decide to make public their expression of protest in the face of an inhuman act which they are not prepared to tolerate.
Nonviolence: a tradition of social struggle and a way of life which embodies a culture, in the words of Gandhi "as old as the hills", which is in search of social justice, not through the use of violence to destroy an adversary, but through seeking to positively transform him by exerting social, moral and material pressures, expressed through bodies that search "truth".
Civil resistance: form of struggle, nonviolent or otherwise, by civil society against an inhuman order from an authority.
Moral arms: according to Dr. Juan Carlos Marin "moral arms provide material strength…they act above all on human bodies".
Political judo and jujitsu: analytical term of nonviolent struggle used by Gene Sharp, to demonstrate the possibility of using the force manifest in the actions of an adversary, against him.
Armed peace: the conception perhaps most frequently present throughout human history, based on the idea that to achieve peace, it is necessary to be "prepared for war", or that the price of peace is the permanent use of material violence against actual or potential adversaries.
Duality of power: this social organization is present when there exist in a territory two different political authorities at the same time.
Bibliography
Ameglio, Pietro (2002). Gandhi y la desobediencia civil. México hoy. 342 pp. México: Plaza y Valdés. [This is a study of Gandhi’s philosophy and strategy on civil disobedience]
Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología (1999). Final Statement of the 22nd Conference of the Latin American Sociology Society. Concepción, Chile. [A document that speaks of the call to "disobey all inhumane orders"]
Canetti, Elías (1997). Masa y poder. 496 pp. Madrid, España: Alianza. [This studies the mechanisms which drive mass populations and persons to obey orders]
Espacio de Reflexión y Acción Conjunta sobre Militarización (1999). El proceso de guerra en México 1994-1999: militarización y costo humano. 120 pp. México. [This is a study of social conflicts in México]
Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (1994). La palabra de los armados de verdad y fuego. 280 pp. México: Fuenteovejuna. [Documents of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional-EZLN]
Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (2003). Chiapas: la treceava estela. México: La Jornada. [Document of the EZLN about their autonomy process]
Gandhi, Mohandas (1985). En lo que yo creo. 216 pp. Mérida, México: Dante. [A compilation of Gandhi’s philosophy]
Gandhi, Mohandas (2002). Hind Swaraj. And other writings. (ed. Anthony Parel), 208 pp. New York, USA: Cambridge University Press. (A document by Gandhi about how to organize a Hindu independent way of life]
Lorenz, Konrad (1994). La agresividad: ese pretendido mal. 342 pp. México: Siglo XXI Editores. [This is a study of aggression and violence in our human species]
Marín, Juan Carlos (1995). Conversaciones sobre el poder. (Una experiencia colectiva). 200 pp. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Universidad de Buenos Aires- PICASO. [This long conversation of PICASO with Dr. Marín presents approaches to the study of power and moral "weapons"]
Marín, Juan Carlos (2000). Conversaciones colectivas. Cuernavaca, México. [This conversation with Dr. Marín speaks of the history of the relationship between being a soldier and a citizen]
Milgram, Stanley (1980). Obediencia a la autoridad. Un punto de vista experimental. 208 pp. Bilbao, España: Desclée de Brouwer. [This is a research on the blind obedience to authority, as an attempt to understand the mechanisms for the genocide conducted by the Nazi regime]
Randle, Michael (1994). Resistencia civil. La ciudadanía ante las arbitrariedades de los gobiernos. 262 pp. Barcelona, España: Paidós, [This presents studies and theories about a variety of current experiences of civil resistance]
Sharp, Gene (1984). The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Vol. 1-3, Boston, USA: Porter Sargent Publisher. [This three volumes series is a study of nonviolent mechanisms and principles for social struggle, and describes 198 different historical nonviolent ways of action]
Biographical Sketch
Pietro Ameglio Patella was born in Uruguay in 1957, and became a Mexican citizen in 1997. He completed his studies in History at the National Autonomous University of México (UNAM) and a Masters in Contemporary History in the Autonomous University of Morelos (UAEM). In 1987 he was one of the founders, with base ecclesial and ecumenical communities as well as Gandhian groups, of the Peace and Justice Service (SERPAJ) in México, a Latin American organization present in ten countries that works principally with poor communities to promote nonviolent culture and struggle, human rights and peace education. He is the founder and member of the Gandhian Collective "Thinking in a Loud Voice" (SERPAJ-PICASO), that combines nonviolent direct action and research with data bases about social conflicts and militarization processes in México (developed by Dr. Juan Carlos Marín of the University of Buenos Aires, Argentine). He is also founder of the alternatve peace education school and workshop "Walking Together: Father Donald Hessler and Ann Choi Wolmar" (1991) in Cuernavaca, where children who live or work in the streets build community solidarity and study to create more human alternatives for their future lives.
He has had a broad range of experience in practicing active nonviolence that include direct actions in Bosnia with "Mir Sada" (1993) and in Chiapas war zones (1994-2006) with human rights denunciations, peace camps, peace belts, solidarity caravans, and other direct actions. He participated in the national ecological civil resistance struggle for saving the Casino de la Selva in Cuernavaca against Costco (2001-2004), and as a result was arrested and incarcerated as a "prisoner of conscience". He works in peace with the autonomous territories of Chiapas, collaborating with the local indigenous educational promoters to develop a curriculum to include subjects about their cultural and artistic expressions as well as their history of social struggle to be taught within the autonomous school system. He also has been a popular educator in poor neighborhoods of Cuernavaca with adults, young people and children.
Currently he serves as Director of the Humanities Department in the Christian Brothers University of Cuernavaca, coordinating academic, cultural and social volunteer activities. He is the author of several articles on history, peace, conflict resolution and non-violence published in various books. He also often writes for local and national newspapers and reviews. In 1991 he was one of the founders and continues to write for the ecumenical and nonviolent review, "Ixtus. Spirit and culture". He frequently public lectures, courses and workshops in México and other countries (Equator, Guatemala and Spain) on nonviolence, peace education and pedagogical constructivism. He is the author the book "Gandhi and civil disobedience. México today", published in 2002.
Bibliography
Ameglio, Pietro (2002). Gandhi y la desobediencia civil. México hoy. 342 pp. México: Plaza y Valdés. [This is a study of Gandhi’s philosophy and strategy on civil disobedience]
Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología (1999). Final Statement of the 22nd Conference of the Latin American Sociology Society. Concepción, Chile. [A document that speaks of the call to "disobey all inhumane orders"]
Canetti, Elías (1997). Masa y poder. 496 pp. Madrid, España: Alianza. [This studies the mechanisms which drive mass populations and persons to obey orders]
Espacio de Reflexión y Acción Conjunta sobre Militarización (1999). El proceso de guerra en México 1994-1999: militarización y costo humano. 120 pp. México. [This is a study of social conflicts in México]
Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (1994). La palabra de los armados de verdad y fuego. 280 pp. México: Fuenteovejuna. [Documents of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional-EZLN]
Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (2003). Chiapas: la treceava estela. México: La Jornada. [Document of the EZLN about their autonomy process]
Gandhi, Mohandas (1985). En lo que yo creo. 216 pp. Mérida, México: Dante. [A compilation of Gandhi’s philosophy]
Gandhi, Mohandas (2002). Hind Swaraj. And other writings. (ed. Anthony Parel), 208 pp. New York, USA: Cambridge University Press. (A document by Gandhi about how to organize a Hindu independent way of life]
Lorenz, Konrad (1994). La agresividad: ese pretendido mal. 342 pp. México: Siglo XXI Editores. [This is a study of aggression and violence in our human species]
Marín, Juan Carlos (1995). Conversaciones sobre el poder. (Una experiencia colectiva). 200 pp. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Universidad de Buenos Aires- PICASO. [This long conversation of PICASO with Dr. Marín presents approaches to the study of power and moral "weapons"]
Marín, Juan Carlos (2000). Conversaciones colectivas. Cuernavaca, México. [This conversation with Dr. Marín speaks of the history of the relationship between being a soldier and a citizen]
Milgram, Stanley (1980). Obediencia a la autoridad. Un punto de vista experimental. 208 pp. Bilbao, España: Desclée de Brouwer. [This is a research on the blind obedience to authority, as an attempt to understand the mechanisms for the genocide conducted by the Nazi regime]
Randle, Michael (1994). Resistencia civil. La ciudadanía ante las arbitrariedades de los gobiernos. 262 pp. Barcelona, España: Paidós, [This presents studies and theories about a variety of current experiences of civil resistance]
Sharp, Gene (1984). The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Vol. 1-3, Boston, USA: Porter Sargent Publisher. [This three volumes series is a study of nonviolent mechanisms and principles for social struggle, and describes 198 different historical nonviolent ways of action]
Biographical Sketch
Pietro Ameglio Patella was born in Uruguay in 1957, and became a Mexican citizen in 1997. He completed his studies in History at the National Autonomous University of México (UNAM) and a Masters in Contemporary History in the Autonomous University of Morelos (UAEM). In 1987 he was one of the founders, with base ecclesial and ecumenical communities as well as Gandhian groups, of the Peace and Justice Service (SERPAJ) in México, a Latin American organization present in ten countries that works principally with poor communities to promote nonviolent culture and struggle, human rights and peace education. He is the founder and member of the Gandhian Collective "Thinking in a Loud Voice" (SERPAJ-PICASO), that combines nonviolent direct action and research with data bases about social conflicts and militarization processes in México (developed by Dr. Juan Carlos Marín of the University of Buenos Aires, Argentine). He is also founder of the alternatve peace education school and workshop "Walking Together: Father Donald Hessler and Ann Choi Wolmar" (1991) in Cuernavaca, where children who live or work in the streets build community solidarity and study to create more human alternatives for their future lives.
He has had a broad range of experience in practicing active nonviolence that include direct actions in Bosnia with "Mir Sada" (1993) and in Chiapas war zones (1994-2006) with human rights denunciations, peace camps, peace belts, solidarity caravans, and other direct actions. He participated in the national ecological civil resistance struggle for saving the Casino de la Selva in Cuernavaca against Costco (2001-2004), and as a result was arrested and incarcerated as a "prisoner of conscience". He works in peace with the autonomous territories of Chiapas, collaborating with the local indigenous educational promoters to develop a curriculum to include subjects about their cultural and artistic expressions as well as their history of social struggle to be taught within the autonomous school system. He also has been a popular educator in poor neighborhoods of Cuernavaca with adults, young people and children.
Currently he serves as Director of the Humanities Department in the Christian Brothers University of Cuernavaca, coordinating academic, cultural and social volunteer activities. He is the author of several articles on history, peace, conflict resolution and non-violence published in various books. He also often writes for local and national newspapers and reviews. In 1991 he was one of the founders and continues to write for the ecumenical and nonviolent review, "Ixtus. Spirit and culture". He frequently public lectures, courses and workshops in México and other countries (Equator, Guatemala and Spain) on nonviolence, peace education and pedagogical constructivism. He is the author the book "Gandhi and civil disobedience. México today", published in 2002.
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario