[July/Aug 2013] Territories in Resistance - Zibechi

[Tinea]

For the next few months we will be reading and discussing Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements by Raul Zibechi. This came highly recommended by a few group members in this thread, and looks to be a thought-provoking look at social movements in Latin America.

* a short excerpt
* Foreward and a video
* A Book review from Cascadia Solidaria

If anybody finds free versions of the book or more summaries & articles, please post em. Otherwise, bring on the insights, discussion, and debate!

[Mark E.]

This book's publisher, AK Press, has the book on sale half price now until the end of this month (August 2013).

http://www.akpress.org/territoriesinr...

Half price come to $9.98 for the paperback (plus shipping, I think) or $7.50 for the e-book.

I was lucky enough to snag a used copy and I'm now on page 286 (of 334), enjoying it, and learning a lot. I've got many passages bookmarked so that I can refer to them in the future.

[Mark E.]

Some thoughts:

The description of schools that produce whole people instead of cannon fodder, prison labor, and wage slaves, gave me a lot to think about. I wish such schools were everywhere. (p. 28)

Zibechi's description of traditional unions and the left as having, “....the state as the point of reference, object, and target of their action,” explains why they never produce good results. (p. 63)

Having spoken and written at length about why state certification of organic foods is unreliable and basically worthless, I enjoyed Zibechi's recounting of how such a system failed in Brazil. (p. 124)

Living in the US, a capitalist system where land is a commodity, with a legal system where money buys results and justice is irrelevant, I liked Zibechi's dexcription of La Victoria where, “Legitimacy takes the place of legality, and the land's use value prevails over its exchange value.” (p. 213)

It is inspirational to think of a “...new kind of movement...” [where] “self-construction and self-determination take the place of demands and representation.” (p. 214)

The ways in which women and youth are essential to social movements, and how a transition from dictatorship to democracy and an electoral system can be a disaster for both groups (as I had predicted in Egypt's “revolution”) is important. (p. 230-233)

Zibechii explains the Obama phenomenon well when he writes, “In essence, left parties accomplish tasks that the right could not achieve through repression: a historic defeat of popular forces, without massive bloodshed but every bit as effectively as authoritarian states of yesteryear.” (p. 291)

The recognition of state equalling bureaucracy is also essential to change. (p. 308)

Unfortunately my Spanish isn't good enough, but I would very much like to read Clastres, whom Zibechi describes as, “an anthropologist-philosopher of people without a state," should a translation become available. (p. 319)

Rather than simply exchanging one state for another, I like Zibechi's statement that, “This new era is that of the self-construction of another world, without the need to go through the seizure of the state.” As a state is a bureaucracy, and bureaucracies are based on a hierarchical power structure, it seems inevitable to me that the unequal distribution of power inherent in any new state will eventually corrupt it. (p. 332)

Zibechi's closing paragraph gives me hope that we can replace capitalism with love for life, however he does seem to think that this might only be accomplished through “fear of self-annihilation.” Given the way in which capitalism has irreversibly polluted the planet, such fear should already be pervasive, and seems only to be held at bay by the distraction of technology.

Like Zibechi and people in social movements, I too believe that "...education is life itself or that life itself should be an act of education, this means recovering life in its integral character--overcoming division and fragmentation." To this end I find this book club to be what life itself should always be, both integrating and educational.