Category Archives: Raúl Zibechi

Mexico: Challenges & Difficulties of Urban Territories in Resitance

by Raul Zibechi

Autonomy is the political form that communities in resistance have adopted in order to change the world. To illustrate these hypotheses I propose to reconstruct a small segment of the vast urban popular movement in Mexico since 1968, with the understanding that autonomy is a never-ending process: one of comings and goings that are visible not in declarations or programs, but in the traces left by daily life. The Comunidad Habitacional Acapatzingo is one of the most important urban autonomous experiences in Latin America, for the depth of its construction of community, for its duration, for its vocation of transforming the whole of society, and for its fierce resistance to state power at all levels. I will highlight some aspects that contribute to an understanding of this singular experience—how it came to be what it is, and the paths taken and not taken. In short, I will examine the exhausting uphill climb involved in any autonomous process that seeks to avoid subordination by existing institutions.

Attachments


Raul Zibechi on the politics of urban land struggles in Mexico

Padkos: Raúl Zibechi on Popular Struggles in Latin American Shack Settlements

Raúl Zibechi on Popular Struggles in Latin American Shack Settlements

Raúl Zibechi is an Uruguayan writer and militant who has, perhaps more than anyone else,brought a bottomup understanding of popular struggles in contemporary Latin America to an international audience. Two of his books have recently been translated into English: Dispersing Powers: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces (2010) and Territories in Resistance (2012. In this serving of Padkos we are dishing up an essay from his latest book that examines struggles in Latin American shack settlements. It is titled: The Urban Peripheries: Counter-Powers from Below? Continue reading →

The Urban Peripheries: Counter-Powers from Below?

The Urban Peripheries: Counter-Powers from Below?

– Chapter 15, from Territories in Resistance

If a specter is haunting Latin American elites at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is for sure living in the peripheries of the large cities. The main challenges to the dominant system in the last two decades have emerged from the heart of the poor urban peripheries.

Click here to download this chapter in pdf.

Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements

by Raul Zibechi (Author); Dawn Paley (Foreword); Ramor Ryan (Translation)

“Emancipation,” argues Raúl Zibechi, “is not an objective but a way of life.” For the last half century, new and emancipatory social formations have worked to carve out their own territories in Latin America, experimenting in rural and urban settings with new forms of liberatory politics that challenge neocolonialism, neoliberalism, and the very basis of the state itself. Not limited to a single path, these “societies in movement” have adopted forms of communitarian relations that allow experimentation and innovation to flourish at a riveting pace. Blending case studies and history with social theory and analysis, Zibechi opens our eyes to the new world being born just outside our gaze. With a foreword by Dawn Paley, and an epilogue that brings Zibechi into conversation with Michael Hardt and Alvaro Reyes on the continuing revolution of everyday life in Latin America.

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Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces

by Raúl Zibechi, 2010

"Zibechi goes to Bolivia to learn. Like us, he goes with questions, questions that stretch far beyond the borders of Bolivia. How do we change the world and create a different one? How do we get rid of capitalism? How do we create a society based on dignity? What is the role of the state and what are the possibilities of changing society through anti-state movements?… the most important practical and theoretical questions that have risen from the struggles in Latin America and the world in the last fifteen years or so…. The book is beautiful, exciting, stimulating…. Do read it and also give it your friends."—John Holloway, from the Foreword

"Raúl Zibechi recounts in wonderful detail how dynamic and innovative Bolivian social movements succeeded in transforming the country. Even more inspiring than the practical exploits, though, are the theoretical innovations of the movements, which Zibechi highlights, giving us new understandings of community, political organization, institution, and a series of other concepts vital to contemporary political thought." Michael Hardt, co-author of Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth.

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Attachments


Raul Zibechi: Dispersing Power Social Movements as Anti-State Forces 2010 (2)

Territorien des Widerstands

http://www.anarkismo.net/article/21361

Territorien des Widerstands

Raúl Zibechis Blick aus dem Inneren des „Planeten der Slums“

Mit dem Ende des Kalten Kriegs erlebte die Geopolitik ein regelrechtes Revival, weil die Frage des Raums wieder offen war. Die durch den „Systemgegensatz“ stabilisierte Abgrenzung von Ost und West, die auch das Verhältnis von Nord und Süd geprägt hatte, war weggefallen und die Frage wurde wieder drängender, wie die Entwicklung und Stabilität des globalen Kapitalismus mit der räumlichen Konfiguration von Verwertungsketten und Rebellionszyklen verbunden sind. Diese Öffnung des Blicks trug dazu bei, eine gigantische Verschiebung in der räumlichen Zusammensetzung des globalen Proletariats wahrzunehmen, die sich seit dem Ende des Nachkriegsbooms in den 1970er Jahren beschleunigt hatte. Obwohl Eric Hobsbawm in seiner Weltgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts – vielleicht etwas voreilig – bereits das Ende der Bauernschaft verkündet hatte, blieben die explosionsartig angeschwollenen Slums, Vorstädte, Hüttensiedlungen, oder wie immer wir diese neuartigen Siedlungsformen der Megacities nennen wollen, doch mehr oder weniger eine Restgröße im vertrauten marxistischen Koordinatensystem von „Arbeitern und Bauern“ – die Frage des Raums und der Geografie beschränkte sich auf den Gegensatz von „Stadt und Land“. Continue reading →