Sowing Indigenous Autonomy: Building a Common Political-Ethical Territory of Struggle with Zapatista Seed Pedagogics

• Published in: Latin American perspectives Vol. 51; no. 5; pp. 61 - 80
• Main Author: Sáenz, Charlotte María
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.09.2024; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Activism; Autonomy; Collective memory; Colonies & territories; Common lands; Decolonization; Ethics; Habits; Internalization; Nation states; National identity; Subjectivity; Decolonizing processes; Pedagogies of social movements; Liberation pedagogics; Zapatista epistemology; Zapatismo
• ISSN: 0094-582X; 1552-678X
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X241288861

This article inquires into the workings of Zapatista Seed Pedagogics’ (ZSP) building of a political-ethical commons outside the movement’s autonomous territories. Parting from a previous theorization of ZSP as a decolonizing educational process, this writing draws on interviews with external activists of neozapatista networks who have encountered and/or accompanied the movement in the last three decades. These evolving conversations reflect on their learnings in what is a life-long pedagogical process. These include: 1) an ongoing struggle for dismantling internalized hierarchies and vanguards in habits of thinking, being, and doing; 2) the recuperation of historical ancestral memory that builds collective subjectivity; and 3) the organization of collectivities that participate in a common political-ethical territory of struggle transcending nation-state identities. This exploration of ZSP reveals reflexive conscientization in subjects willing to learn and listen differently, suggesting the emergence of a transgeographic political-ethical subject immersed in a co-construction of knowledge with Zapatismo itself.