To Lead by Obeying

This book presents the main political lessons of the Mexican movement of
Neozapatismo. The book presents also how the Neozapatismo embodies a
real project of an alternative modernity, in front of the decadent and destructive
capitalist modernity, still dominant all over the world.

This book develops the main political lessons that the Mexican Neozapatismo movement brings us, in its almost 30 years of public life. Thus, beginning by defining the singular concept of Autonomy that the Neozapatista movement proposes, different from legal, anthropological or political definitions, and conceived as real global autonomy. Then the content of the Neozapatista oxymoron 'Mandar Obedeciendo', 'To Lead by Obeying' is explained as identical to the idea of popular self-government. A new concept of autonomy is linked necessarily with the idea of 'Other Politics' and 'Other Democracy'. The book also presents how Neozapatismo embodies a project of modernity that, having been constructed as a modernity of resistance for five centuries to the dominant modernity imposed by the Spaniards in Mexico, has now been transformed into a project of a real alternative modernity to capitalism.

Autorentext

Carlos Antonio Aguirre Rojas is a full-time researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He specializes in the theory of history in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries and in the new antisystemic movements in Latin America. He is the author of The Combatant: A Che Guevara Enigma, 2023.

Inhalt

Preface to the English Edition - By Way of Introduction: When the Imagination Takes Power - Leading by Obeying: Popular Self- Government, Political Autonomy, and Integral Global Autonomy -The Death of the Human Activity of Politics: The Other Politics and the Other Democracy - Mexican Neo- Zapatismo, Heir to the World Cultural Revolution of 1968 - The Mexican Neo- Zapatista Movement and the Transition from a Modernity of Resistance to an Alternative Modernity - A Conclusion That Questions Instead of Concluding - Appendix 1 Building Counter- Power from Below and to the Left (or, How to Change the World by Revolutionizing Power from Below Power) - Appendix 2 The Zapatista Gaze: Looking (to and from) Below and to the Left - Appendix 3 The New Stage of Mexican Neo- Zapatismo - Appendix 4 The Little Zapatista School: Living the Struggle for Autonomy from Within - Appendix 5 The (Symbolic) Death of Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos and the Collective Neo- Zapatista 'we' - Appendix 6 Mexican Neo- Zapatismo and Its Impact within Contemporary Social Sciences: Six Theses to Develop - Appendix 7 Mexican Neo- Zapatismo's Contribution to the Development of Contemporary Critical Thought - Appendix 8 Neo- Zapatista Discoveries: Birthing the New World from Below, Knowing Arts, Creating Sciences - Appendix 9 Mexico and Mexican Neo- Zapatismo in Times of COVID- 19 - Works Cited - Glossary - Translator's Note.