Amtel Good Governance Councils in Zapatista Territories
Source
* Book: Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater. Autonomy Is in Our Hearts. PM Press, 2019
Discussion
Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater:
"After 1994 that situation obviously changed, because these large landed estates were reclaimed by the indigenous communities. In many ways, the development of the struggle since then has been the development of collective forms of labor (or A’mtel) in those reclaimed lands. And A’mtel also has a contextual, expansive definition. It is also the word for good government in Tsotsil. It refers to what the good government councils do and what people do in assemblies. So, it is both the activity of doing the collective work and the activity of making the decisions together that allow that work to function. I think this is important because it emphasizes that when the Zapatistas talk about good government, they are not talking of separate authority telling people what to do. They are talking about the work of coordinating collective labor among themselves.
This relates directly to the structure of the autonomous government. There are three levels to it – the community, the municipality, and the caracole. These are levels of coordination rather than of authority. A caracole can’t tell a community how to do things. Each community has complete control over what’s going on in it – for example, over a collective store or the work in their collective corn fields. Things of that nature.
What happens in those other levels – the municipality and the caracole – is the coordination of projects that require multiple communities coming together. For example, the schools and the autonomous education system, hospitals, electrical lines, etc. All of these things are done through a very lengthy process of coming into agreement through assemblies. Any project that is decided upon in a municipal assembly or a caracole has to be taken back to the communities and reapproved by the assembly in each community. So, this is what A’mtel looks like in practice – a constant moving backwards and forwards to ensure that everyone who participates in something is agreeing on how things are done.
I want to highlight two things about the importance of this. First is its importance for the woman’s struggle. Historically, due to colonialism and patriarchy, women were denied title to land in Chiapas, even within indigenous communities. This made women economically dependent on men and their families and creates unequal power dynamics and hierarchy. And one way that women are struggling against this is through the creation of women’s A’mtel (or women’s cooperatives) that allowed them to have their own forms of economic survival and independence from men. This is important both for women emancipation within the movement but also it is the motor force that drives the creation A’mtel. So many of the new forms of A’mtel have been created through women’s struggle.
The second thing I want to highlight is how A’mtel is a form of resistance in itself against the government’s counter-insurgency strategy. Essential part of this strategy has been to create dependency in the communities through poverty alleviation programs. And part of what it means to be a Zapatista is to refuse all forms of government aid. This is the case because that government aid is the latest manifestation of Kanal, the latest form of dependency that is being imposed on the communities. A’mtel is a form of resistance to this: it prevents the divisions that are being made through government aid within the communities and it allows them to survive independently from any outside aid from the government.
I hope this gives some kind of window into how they organize and how they are talking about what that organization is. Finally, I would like to emphasize that it’s this system of collective work and the organization on multiple levels that allows them to do things like travelling across the ocean to Europe. They rely very little on money but their own force of organization and these collective work projects they are able to get enough funds and do these amazing initiatives we are seeing." (https://www.aftoleksi.gr/2021/07/02/the-zapatista-institutions-of-autonomy-and-their-social-implications/)