</image> <image source="map"></image> <label>Type</label> <label>Level</label> <label>Location</label> <label>Inhabitants</label> </infobox>The Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities or Municipios Autónomos Rebel des Zapatistas (MAREZ) are an autonomous society within the Mexican state that emerged as a result of the Zapatista Revolution in 1994 inspired by the indigenist ideology of Neo-Zapatismo. They control roughly a third of the Mexican state of Chiapas with a population of around 360,000 people.[1]
Decision-Making
At a local level, people attend a popular assembly of around 300 families where anyone over the age of 12 can participate in decision-making, these assemblies strive to reach a consensus but are willing to fall back to a majority vote.
Each community has 3 main administrative structures: (1) the commissariat, in charge of day-to day administration; (2) the council for land control, which deals with forestry and disputes with neighboring communities; and (3) the agencia, a community police agency.
The communities form a confederation with other communities to create an autonomous municipalities, which form further confederations with other municipalities to create a region. The Zapatistas are composed of five regions, who in turn form the whole of MAREZ.[2]
Crime
Each community has an autonomous police agency (agencia), more akin to a neighborhood watch, and a judicial council. There is almost no crime and prison population, due to an emphasis on restorative and transformative justice over punitive justice and due to common ownership of land preventing hunger, the control of work and education.
The only two people in jail (in a society of 360,000, which means they have the lowest prisoner population per capita in the world) are in jail for being admitted foreign agents planting marijuana crops to justify military incursions into their communities using the war on drugs as a pretext.[3]
Public Services
The Zapatistas run hundreds of schools with thousands of teachers modeled around the principles of democratic education where students and communities collectively decide on school curriculum and students are not subjects to grading. On average, the Zapatistas have more schools than the surrounding indigenous communities governed by the right-wing PRI.[4]
The Zapatistas maintain a high-quality universal healthcare service which has been praised by the World Health Organization for reducing infant mortality and providing strong primary care to residents.[5] Residents of the Zapatista communities believe their health services are better staffed, equipped and less racist towards indigenous people than most services in Chiapas. It also works with surrounding hospitals and freely takes in patients from other communities who need to use the medical facilities that only the Zapatistas have.[6] Since 1994, the Zapatistas have built 2 new hospitals and 18 health clinics in the region to increase the well-being of communities.[4]
See Also
References
- ↑ Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Zapatista_Autonomous_Municipalities
- ↑ Niels Barmeyer (2009) Developing Zapatista Autonomy: Conflict and NGO involvement in Rebel Chiapas - Chapter Three: Who is Running the Show? The Workings of Zapatista Government.
- ↑ Gustavo Esteva - Liberty According to the Zapatistas
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Raúl Zibechi (2012) Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements
- ↑ J.H. Cuevas (2007) Health and Autonomy: The Case of Chiapas
- ↑ Resistencia Autónoma: Cuaderno de texto de primer grado del curso de “La Libertad según l@s Zapatistas