Midnight Notes Goes to School: Report from the Zapatista Escuelita

Out of the Mexican southeast, a new society is emerging, one based on communal lands, recuperation of indigenous culture, gender equality, cooperative self-defense, organic agriculture, and food, shelter, health and education for all. This historic project to build Zapatista Autonomous Good Governance – separate from the Mexican state and the capitalist market – has engaged hundreds of indigenous communities across Mexico’s Chiapas province, which stretches across terrain the size of Rhode Island, from mountain rain forests to pastoral valleys to lowland jungle. This Zapatista model of Autonomous Governance has slowly emerged as a beacon of hope across the hemisphere, and stands in stark contrast to the horrors offered by low-waged maquiladora development, the narco-economy, the brutalism of Latin American urban life and the US/UN neoliberal model exemplified by the military occupation of Haiti.