Zapatista Army Calls for New Civil Party
In 1992 there was a split in the Revolutionary Workers' Party (PRT), Mexican section of the Fourth Inter-national. A minority of the Central Committee, which claimed to represent the majority of the membership, decided to form a public faction. Following its statutes, the International recognised the majority of the Central Committee as representing the continuity of the section, but decided to maintain the presence of 'the faction' within the International, including in its decision-making bodies. The political views of the two organi-sations, their reaction to the Chiapas rebellion, and their attitude towards the 'cardenist PRD were fairly similar. But each developed a different conception of the tasks involved in building the revolutionary movement in Mexico today. Their divergent reaction to the appeal of the EZLN for the creation of a Zapatista' political front is the clearest expression yet of this diver-gence. The official section, which, in September 1995 adopted the name Radical Democracy (DR), recently decided to dissolve itself and formally leave the International, and join the FZLN, where a number of DR members are already present in the leadership. A minority of DR members are opposed to this decision. The Central Committee minority from 1992 and their supporters are now the only organisation using the name PRT. This group has chosen to engage the comrades of the EZLN in a public discussion on their conception of the new front, and the political This debate is of obvious interest to all those who are concerned with the problems of organising the fight against capitalism, not just in Mexico, but in many other countries where there are perspectives for regroupment. In recognition of this, we publish here an article presenting the views of the PRT, by Edgard Sanchez, a member of the PRT Political Committee, as well as extracts from the letter in which the formerDR comrades explain their decision to the leadership of the Fourth International. The Fourth International's attitude towards questions of regroupment is presented in the Building the International resolution adopted at the 1995 World Congress, and recently published as a special issue of International Viewpoint and our sister publications in French and Spanish.
by Edgard Sánchez
On January 1st 1996, on the second anniversary of its armed uprising, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) released the Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, calling for the formation of a new political force, the Zapatista National Liberation Front. [See last month's issue of IV]
For months we were expecting this call, which was the logical result of the National Consultation which the EZLN carried out in August-September 1995. One of the six questions of the consultation was precisely whether the EZLN should become a new political force and how to do it. More than a million answered the question positively.
But independently of this, the call for the formation of a new political force was completely necessary given the national situation. The armed EZLN uprising of January, 1994 triggered a crisis in Mexico's political system. This crisis has not been solved. It is continuing itself, in a context of social decay and decomposition of the political system. All of this is un-
Mexico * questionably causing a reshuffling of all political forces. They are all in crisis.
Since 1994 the EZLN has enjoyed broad popular sympathy, including within the rank and file of many political forces and parties. It enjoys great moral and political authority. But the EZLN is basically a politico-military organisation. The possibilities of having influence in the political terrain and among the masses is diminished by the a lack of a national organisation of its own, beyond its military structure. Many EZLN initiatives have not lived up to their expectations due to the lack of an organised force of its own to carry them out. For all these reasons the call for the formation of a new political force is of unquestionable importance. It should have an influence in the restructuring of political forces and in this way advance the possibilities of a solution to the crisis which is shaking the country. It should advance the possibilities of an outcome which is democratic, popular, and revolutionary in its dynamic. Given such high stakes in the call for a new political force, the initiative itself should provoke great debate. This is normal, because even among the sympathisers of Zapatismo who are in agreement with the creation of a new force, defining its principal characteristics requires broad reflection and debate. Some
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* Mexico
To command while obeying, as the Zapatistas say, does not mean obeying the leadership without discussion. It means that the leadership must obey the results of the discussion and the consensus among the rank and file. It does not mean arbitrary command. The proposal seeks direct control over the leadership, not despotic control over the rank and file.
Of course, in the discussion motivated by the call for the creation of a Zapatista
Front we distinguish two levels. On the one hand, there is a debate with those who are not in agreement with the Zapatista Front, who oppose the Zapatistas, or those from within the system who mock them and fight against them. But there is another debate which must also be clarified, even for the purpose of better responding to the enemies of Zapatismo. This is the debate within the sympathising movement, among those who are in solidarity with the Zapatistas. We place ourselves within this terrain to discuss some Zapatista points expressed in the Fourth Declaration, which it is necessary to clarify in order to reach agreement or to know, eventually, the magnitude of the differences. Our discussion takes as a point of departure the need and the support for the existence of a Zapatista Front, but touches on several polemical aspects of the Fourth Declaration. Broad debate has, finally, taken place, and the Zapatistas themselves have had to make clear their concepts, particularly with the videotaped message which Sub Comandante Marcos sent on March 2 to a meeting of civilian committees in the city of Poza Rica. FRONT AND PARTY
The first subject of debate has been the very conception of a Zapatista Front. Why a front? Why not a party? Why a front, made up not of organisations, but of individuals?
Before the National Consultation, the PRT and other socialist organisations raised the point that, as we see it, the best thing was for the EZLN to call for the formation of a new alternative party and to invite other interested forces to do it jointly, even on the terrain set by the EZLN.
Certainly the sympathy for the EZLN has been very broad. The EZLN has insisted correctly on organising "civil society," those without a party. The National Democratic Convention was an example of that. But the scope of the movement in solidarity with Zapatismo also implied such political heterogeneity that it diminished the force and efficiency of the CND. That is why we think that the new 20 International Viewpoint April 1996 political force should surpass the heterogeneity of the CND in terms of political coherence. Such greater political coherence, we think, can be achieved with a party-type organisation with individual membership and definition around a political program.
Since the days of preparation for the consultation we knew that this proposal about a party-type organisation was not very popular in the movement in solidarity with Zapatismo. It is not popular, in the first place, because of the discredit of the present party system. There is also a prevalent identification between the party and the party as an electoral instrument. This identification occurs frequently in the statements of the EZLN. That is, there is an identification between the party and the party with legal register for electoral participation, with all the consequences of such an identification.
We do not identify the idea of a party simply with an electoral party. The political struggle which a revolutionary party must carry out is not limited to electoral struggle. Evidently this idea is based on our own experience and conception, and on the conviction that a Zapatista call for a new alternative party would accelerate political regroupments.
We also disagree with the criticism of Sub Comandante Marcos, contained in his message of March 4, in which he says that a political party has only two levels of participation for its militants: participation in elections and internal election of leaders. Once again, one is thinking here of the experience of electoral parties and particularly bourgeois parties. Obviously, this is not the conception of a party which we put forward, but rather the conception of a party which organises effectively to participate in the daily class struggle and which does not reduce its participation to the electoral terrain. The EZLN rejects, as a consequence, the call for the formation of a political party. It calls, in the Fourth Declaration, for a Zapatista Front. This proposal apparently constitutes a solution, one which deals with the breadth and heterogeneity of the movement in solidarity with Zapatismo, forming a decidedly Zapatista force, which is at the same time a plural solution which implies a political front. The PRT put forward its willingness to participate in a political front in this context.
Nevertheless, in the message of March 4 Sub Comandante Marcos has pointed out explicitly that this is not a "front of organisations" and therefore, whoever wants to participate in the Zapatista Front must join it individually and renounce his/her organisation, or else organisations must dissolve as such to leave their members at liberty to join the Zapatista Front.
The result is that the Zapatista proposal stays halfway between a party which one joins individually, with a structure in many ways similar to a party, with organisational structures of local, municipal, regional and state committees, proposed by Marcos in his message, on the one hand, and on the other, the proposal of a Zapatista Front which other political currents may join openly on the same grounds as the EZLN, which is not dissolving. On the contrary, Sub Comandante Marcos says in this message that affiliation is on an individual basis. Since the EZLN is not dissolving and obviously it cannot do so after having declared war on the government) its General Command will review the applications for admission to the Zapatista Front for final accreditation and acceptance. Even though Marcos states that the front will not be made up of organisations, but is rather a front of diverse currents of thought in which "communists, trotskyists, and people without a particular ideological affiliation" can coexist, at the same time this precludes the presence of organised political currents as such in the new political front. This decision impedes the integration of those of us who have openly stated our political militancy and affiliation. One cannot say, as some have irresponsibly said, that one is not a party militant, that one is dissolved into civil society, and function nevertheless as an organised group, although in a veiled fashion.
The foregoing does not necessarily mean a total political break between the EZLN and the forces that have been in solidarity with the EZLN. At the same time that the EZLN insists in defending the idea of a broad opposition front which will constitute a front for national liberation composed of a very broad and plural spectrum of forces, it is now proposing a new meeting space: a left front which will in turn be part of a broad opposition front. The PRT will have to decide formally about the new Zapatista proposal but will surely be in favour of continuing the struggle in solidarity with Zapatismo and the demands for which it took up arms while participating and promoting the left front. The criticisms which Marcos himself launched against sectarianism and those "political methods which we fight against," which have been used to promote the broad opposition front by some currents, facilitated the participation of the PRT and a whole sector of the left in the CND, also in opposition to sectarianism, and will now facilitate the participation in the efforts to build a broad opposition front.