¡YA! YOUTH ACTIVISM Estación Libre
Zheng, Craig
THE WORLD HAS HAD MORE THAN ten years to ponder the significance of the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico. While the Zapatista rebellion helped reframe the debate around neoliberal...
...Upon returning from Chiapas, she said, "our mission is to inspire organizing here in the U.S...
...Foremost, it maintains a house-a living and working space for U.S...
...Facilitating the workshop were four members of the collective's local contingent...
...The project was born, according to the letter, out of the need "to create an organization for people of color interested in working in solidarity with the Zapatista communities...
...money is being spent to wage war in Mexico while our communities are being deprived of vital services...
...In the workshop ten stories above Manhattan, Lisie, a young Mexican-American member of the collective, talks about common oppressive structures faced by people of color around the world...
...More importantly, the Zapatistas are an inspiring example of possibilities for moving forward at a time when we seem to be so desperately defending gains of the past...
...This house is the estaci6n libre (free station) of the group's name, considered by the collective to be a "liberated space" where arrivals from the United States are able to work and study These individuals will then return to their communities and apply some of the lessons learned, through "observation and participation," from the Zapatista experience...
...U.S...
...This deprivation is also a kind of war, according to the group-a low-intensity war...
...That struggle is one that has been clear to Estaci6n Libre since that first letter...
...Racist national policies within the U.S...
...activists of color-in San Crist6bal...
...The group's goal was straightforward: strengthen connections between communities of color in the United States and the Zapatista movement...
...But if you have come because your liberation is bound with mine, then let us work together...
...The letter concluded by quoting Aboriginal activist Lilla Watson: "If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time...
...To accomplish this, the organization employs several interrelated strategies...
...Six years after the letter's first appearance, that struggle continues...
...The facilitators had visited Chiapas through Estaci6n Libre and had since returned to live and work in New York City One of them, a soft-spoken young woman named Pandora, explained their role in the collective...
...Estaci6n Libre's mission, according to its Web site, "is to assist both the indigenous struggles in Mexico and the struggle of communities of color in the United States by facilitating a fruitful interchange of experiences between these struggles...
...are directly related to racist policies abroad," says the group's literature...
...Last July, dozens of teachers, activists and others gathered in an intimate tenth floor space in New York City for a workshop entitled "Envisioning Revolution, Practicing Autonomy: Reflections on Zapatismo from Inside the Belly of the Beast...
...For us," she gestures toward the other members of Estaci6n Libre, "Zapatismo is a really active and practical way of producing and building alternatives to those structures...
...based on the principles of Zapatismo...
...While the Zapatista rebellion helped reframe the debate around neoliberal globalization, it also challenged those inspired by it to explore the meanings of solidarity and the relevance of 7n nirr +h iL;,r r ln~ LapaL 0IIt LO Lr OWn UWII ugLL es.C On January 9, 1998, a letter began circulating in San Crist6bal de las Casas, Chiapas announcing a new project in solidarity with the Zapatistas...
...From the beginning, members of the Estaci6n Libre collective have insisted that the Zapatista struggle is essentially the same as their own...
...With this house as a base, the collective also sponsors official delegations of people of 1 -1 co or to meet an uiilogue with Zapatista communities throughout Chiapas...
...To date, they have led five official delegations of students, teachers and community organizers, and have helped and hosted other groups organizing their own delegations...
...We perceive an absence of people of color here in the solidarity movement...
...The scale and breadth of this oppression is such that it is often difficult to resist...
...Estaci6n Libre takes these to include direct democracy, alliance-building, autonomy, inclusion, dialogue and accountability Applying lessons learned in a foreign context is difficult, she acknowledged, "but it's part of the struggle...
...A third channel of Estaci6n Libre's work emerged from those efforts...
...It is our belief that the only way to begin to destroy a system that has always been based on the exploitation and exclusion from power of peoples of Indigenous, African, Latino, and Asian descent is by developing links between peoples of color worldwide...
...In solidarity," the letter was signed, "Estaci6n Libre...
...But this is only one of many reasons, they say, that the Zapatista struggle is of particular importance for people of color in the United States...
Vol. 38 • September 2004 • No. 2
