Zapata by Diego Rivera
The global expansion of the culture of capitalism has benefited many; but it has also brought suffering to others. Perhaps the greatest loss was borne by peasant farmers who, with the expansion of large-scale agriculture, were transformed from relatively self-sufficient food producers to dependent laborers. The transformation was sometimes accomplished slowly as large-scale producers either bought up or pushed out small farmers; or it was accomplished rapidly, as colonial powers expropriated land to redistribute to settlers from the colonizer’s nation-state. More recently, economic globalization and the withdrawal of government support has made it difficult, if not impossible, for small-scale farmers to compete with multinational agribusiness. In any case, the transformation was marked by resistance that was sometimes passive, and other times violent. The following readings provide some historical perspective on the phenomenon of peasant revolt and resistance and two recent cases, one in Colombia and the other in Mexico
A. The History and Nature of Peasant Revolts
Revolts and protests by peasants against those who demand tribute or taxes, and/or who control the land on which peasants depend, go back for centuries. There are thousands of such protests recorded in Russia and England, for example, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. One question we need to ask is how such protests compare to more recent ones, such as in Chiapas, or those discussed in Global Issues and the Culture of Capitalism in Malaysia and Kenya? The readings in this section address past and present peasant protests and their relationship to religious, political, and economic revolution
Reading 1. The Twelve Articles of the Peasants
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=4323
You can get a good idea of the traditional concerns of peasants by examining this declaration prepared by peasant farmers in Germany in 1525. The early sixteenth century was a period of widespread peasant revolt in Germany. Frederick Engels suggested there was a parallel between those uprisings and the revolutions that shook Europe in 1848, prompting him to write The Peasant War in Germany. His major point was that the protest was class-based, rather than a result of religious upheaval. The Twelve Articles seem to substantiate that point of view; while religious issues are present, clearly demands of the peasants have to do with the level of exploitation by both religious and secular leaders.
Reading 2. The Peasant War in China and the Proletariat
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/09/china.htm
This letter written in 1932 by Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the communist revolution in Russia, addresses his concerns about the role of the peasant revolutionary in the Chinese revolution. The letter expresses some longstanding concerns, largely articulated by Vladimir Lenin, that the goals of peasant revolts were often incompatible with the goals of worker revolts. More specifically, he address the question of what happens when peasant movements come face-to-face with the working class? In Russia, he points out, there was often conflict, some of it violent. The peasant, he says, generally has limited goals, and rather than socializing property, seeks only to divide it up
Reading 3. Deep Roots in Cocoa Country
https://newint.org/features/1998/08/05/village
and
Reading 4 The Race to Stand Still
https://newint.org/features/1998/08/05/adjustment
Being a peasant or small-scale farmer is very different in today’s global economy than it has ever been. The traditional peasant’s fate was determined by his or her farming skills, by the weather, and by the occasional natural (hurricane, flood, earthquake) or social (war, revolution) disaster. But today, in addition to these dangers, the grower must also adjust to the vagaries of the global market, the price and demand for what is produced, and, most importantly, the competition from large-scale, corporate agriculture and its allies in the nation-state. These selections from the New Internationalist introduces you to the life of the cocoa grower in Ghana.
B. The Revolt in Colombia
There are few Latin American countries that have not, in the past thirty years, experienced protest by workers, peasants, and the poor. In many cases the protest was met with violent repression by the state, or by paramilitary forces operating with the tacit consent of the state. Colombia has been no exception. It has experienced a civil war since the early 1960s, a war that followed other instances of violent repression, including the massacre of hundreds of strikers by the United Fruit Company in 1928. The following articles provide an anatomy of peasant protest in Colombia.
Reading 6. A History of the Guerrilla Movement in Colombia
https://nacla.org/article/evolution-farc-guerrilla-groups-long-history
A good brief summary of peasant and worker protest in Colombia, and the violent reaction by the state and its representatives.
Reading 7. Colombia’s Dirty War: The Clash Between State and Society
https://nacla.org/article/farc-war-and-crisis-state
C. The Rebellion in Chiapas
On January 1, 1994, the same day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, the Zapatista Revolutionary Army briefly occupied the city of San Cristobal de las Casas in the Mexican state of Chiapas. The timing was not coincidental. The agreement would further undermine the livelihood of peasant farmers by permitting the free import of cheap corn from the United States. In fact, everything about the Zapatista peasant revolt concerns the expansion of the global economy, as we discuss in Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism. The following articles describe the revolt, the social and economic state of peasant farmers in Chiapas, and the reasons behind it.
Reading 8. Chiapas Uprising and Trade
http://teaching.quotidiana.org/our/2006/chiapas/nafta.html
An excellent background piece on the Chiapas rebellion. The review focuses on the economic factors in the protest, particularly as it relates to NAFTA.
Reading 9. “From the Mountains of the Southeast”: A Review of Recent Writings on the Zapatistas of Chiapas
http://www.ainfos.ca/98/mar/ainfos00200.html
An excellent review by Barry Carr of writings on the Zapatista uprising. He manages to convey the different perspectives that social scientists and journalists have taken of the conflict. You might want to contrast and compare these views with the analysis of the rebellion in Chapter 10 of Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism.
Reading 10. Acteal Massacre in Chiapas https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/first-anniversary-acteal-massacre-chiapas
And
Reading 11: The Chase Bank Memo https://www.realhistoryarchives.com/collections/hidden/chase-memo.htm
This is a comprehensive report and analysis by Lynn Steven of the Chiapas rebellion and the reaction to it by the Mexican government. The second reading is the memo which is said to have been at the root of the action taken
