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We’re Going Slowly Because We’re Going Far. Building an Autonomous Education System in Chiapas.

Since the armed Zapatista uprising in 1994, the Zapatista communities in the south-east of Mexico have endeavoured to govern themselves, and to do so autonomously. When the Mexican state decided to ignore the demands of millions of indigenous people by failing to approve the Indigenous Law – a product of the 1996 dialogue between the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and the government – the Zapatista communities decided to put their dreams into practice and make autonomy a reality in their territories. From a position of resistance, the region’s indigenous peoples began to implement health, education and marketing
systems and to organise their own autonomous authorities. They decided to do this, and turn their back on the
state’s so-called social development programmes, until the collective rights of indigenous peoples were recognised.
The autonomous education system that is described below is the concrete result of the organisational process, and the importance of having an autonomous education system that increasingly trains members of the Zapatista communities to face up to the enormous tasks of self-government is obvious. In this regard, it is the
objective of the education system that it strengthens autonomy at all levels and recovers languages and cultural values and customs. It would be impossible to relate here the wealth of experience that the last ten years of work on autonomous education in the three zones has provided. Instead, we will focus on analysing the relationship between education and buildind autonomy.