Zapatista ConSciences Declaration | Inauguration of Zapatista ConCiencias por la Humanidad
Below there are women and men who study science, who study scientifically, who do good science. But the wicked capitalists come along and use this science to do harm to the very people who discovered that science. What kind of harm?
They use science to make the rich richer.
The rich use it as they choose, for a destiny other than that for which it was created.
They use it to kill and destroy.
- Zapatista Plenary Declaration on ConSciences
Moderator’s Note: In a recent conversation with
a close friend, the issue of how different people conceptualize “nature” came
up in the context of a discussion of the March for Science. First of all, I
suggested that this does not involve a “binary” problem (e.g., pro- or
anti-nature; pro- or anti-science); instead this is a spectrum with a spectral cast. There are several paradigms operating in different cultural communities (with distinct political projects) and these differ markedly in how they define “nature”
or the “environment”— be mindful, all of these involve constructs of a physical
reality that remains stubbornly autonomous of continued arrogant meddling by snobbish human communities and the tyrannical states of economic exception and exceptionalism spawned by extremist neoliberal capitalism. Most scientists fail to recognize how this involves complicity via conformity with the dictates of what is essentially a religious-like belief system, free market fundamentalism. This religion of individualism and greed is tearing our planet apart with your objectifying complicity.
Three of these paradigms were
discussed during our conversation: The first is the so-called conservation
model in which nature is viewed as a “natural resource” or “commodity” to be
exploited and “scientifically managed” for the benefit of humans as was first championed
by Gifford Pinchot during the Progressive Era; the second is the “wilderness” model
of John Muir who founded the Sierra Club and believed humans should only be
temporary visitors allowing the protected areas to evolve free of human
interference; and the third involves the principles of (home)land ethics and
the original instruction care ethics evident in Native
American concepts of long-inhabited ancestral homelands. Commodity, wilderness, home.
Three competing paradigms with very different ideas not just about nature but
about the relationship between nature and humans. (See, Devon G. Peña, Mexicans and the Environment: Tierra y vida,
especially Chapter 5, 2005).
The conservation and wilderness
preservation models are both examples of a worldview that imposes a dichotomy
between humans and the environment: The conservationists wish to manage nature
as a resource for humans, a thing separated from us and subject to the principle
that the Earth exists to be exploited for economic growth (or self-aggrandizement per the neoliberal variant). Wilderness
advocates want to keep humans and nature separate, ignoring and erasing the
indigenous peoples who have co-inhabited wild places through mindful respect for the limits of their ecological niche (see Peña, The hummingbird and
the red cap. In: Wildness: Relations of People and Place, edited by Gavin Van Horn and John Haufsdoerfer, 2017).
It was only after our conversation ended that I
remembered the Zapatista declaration for an indigenous vision of
the role of science in human liberation or what they prefer to call “ConScience” (double entendre intended). The Zapatistas offered the following statement:
A handful of some so-called “neoliberal capitalists” has decided to savagely destroy everything, caring nothing at all for this house
that we live in.
Earth as home; as house. This goes back to the original meaning of ecology posed by Haeckel, sure, but it is also a clear statement of a worldview that rejects the very binary opposition between subject and object that is the underpinning of most Western scientific paradigms.
This enunciation was made during the Encuentro Los Zapatistas y las ConCiencias por la Humanidad held in
San Cristobal de las Casas (26 Dec 2016-4 Jan 2017). These words exemplify the
indigenous (home)land ethics referenced above. This is important because these
distinctions lay at the core of how science is defined by indigenous peoples in
sharp contrast to many (but not all) ‘Western’ scientists. I am posting a translation of the
opening plenary remarks by Subcomandante Moisés at this important gathering.
Many thousands of people joined the Earth Day 2017 “March
for Science.” Despite last ditch efforts to “diversify” the public face of the
march, meaning, skin color and gender but
not epistemology, the event was largely led and attended by white scientists
and their white allies, all of whom fail to recognize what the Zapatistas know
well: If science is to serve the people, then it cannot serve the state or capitalist
corporations. This is an established political, economic and environmental
FACT.
I invite scientists who do not yet have a factual understanding of the history and politics of the destructive role of science to read this declaration. It will help you better understand how your work as scientists serves the aims of capitalist, settler colonial empires,
flowing for 500+ years now from Europe to the USA and now, with neoliberal globalism, across the many would-be protégés, including, yes, “communist”
China. Read the Zapatista ConScience Declaration and learn more about how indigenous peoples understand,
practice, and criticize scientific institutions and their ever-shifting fields of power/knowledge. Have courage and suspend disbelief in the enunciations of the Other.
Is this not a possible principle of scientific inquiry, even for Western scientists? - Devon G. Peña
Words of the General Command of the
EZLN
IN THE NAME OF THE ZAPATISTA WOMEN, MEN, CHILDREN
AND ELDERS AT THE OPENING OF THE GATHERING
Good
morning.
Compañeras,
compañeras of Mexico and of the
world:
Brothers
and sisters of Mexico and of the world:
First
and foremost, in the name of the compañeras and compañeros who are Bases of Support
of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation, we thank all of the compañer@s of
CIDECI who once again have provided us with these spaces so that we, Zapatista
originary peoples and scientists, can gather here as a way to begin to look and
walk toward what must be done in this world we live in, which capitalism is
destroying.
We also
thank the compañeros who have worked on registration and
coordination for this event.
We also
thank the compañer@s from the transport support team.
We thank
you in advance, compañeras and compañeros of
the various teams and collectives for the shitload of work that you have done
to make this gathering happen. Many thanks.
For we
as Zapatista men and women, today begins our long walk in search of others with
whom we think share the great responsibility to defend and save the world we
live in – with the art of artists, the science of scientists, and the originary
peoples alongside those below from across the entire world.
A
handful of some so-called “neoliberal capitalists” have decided to savagely
destroy everything, caring nothing at all for this house that we live in.
This
makes us Zapatistas think and ask ourselves:
Where are
we poor people of the world going to live, because they, the rich, might just
go and live on another planet?
What
should we do now, as we see that they are destroying our house?
Or what
happens if they take us to another planet to be their slaves?
After
turning this over many times in our heads, we conclude that:
Below
there are women and men who study science, who study scientifically, who do
good science. But the wicked capitalists come along and use this science to do
harm to the very people who discovered that science. What kind of harm?
They use
science to make the rich richer.
The rich
use it as they choose, for a destiny other than that for which it was created.
They use it to kill and destroy.
Now it
is getting worse for them up there, and that will be used even more harshly
against us living beings and our mother earth.
That is
how all of these bad things began and how they continue, bringing us to a very
dire point today.
This is
how things happened, and in the same way they use the artists who make art –
capitalism uses everything to the detriment of society and for the good of
capitalism. What was natural, nature and those who live within it, which is to
say the originary peoples, will be destroyed along with mother nature.
Therefore, we believe, think, and
imagine.
We can organize ourselves, work,
struggle, and defend who we are – the foundation of this world – so that this
world, the house in which we live, can’t be disappeared by the capitalists. Now
is the time, brothers and sisters, compañer@s; no one is going to bring us salvation. It is up to us.
 |
Muxeres Zapatistas share lived experiences with ethno-science; “a knowing how; not a knowing that.” |
Begin to dream and you will see
that we can only fight capitalism with good science, the art of the artist, and
the guardians of mother nature together with those below from across the world.
This is our responsibility.
I don’t mean to say that we are the
only ones who should struggle, not at all. But when we look around at how
things are, we realize that all of the useful things that we have in our houses
are a matter of science, in terms of where they came from, and all of the
figures and figurines in our houses and rooms are the art of artists, and all
of the materials for these things come from mother nature, where the originary
peoples live.
Who figured out how to make today’s
most modern cellphone? It’s the same for thousands of other products – they are
used to benefit the rich, and not for the use science intended, nor for the
people.
Who figured out how to make the
images that are held within cellphones which are now manipulated on any whim?
Where did the materials that
cellphones are made of come from? The same question goes for thousands of other
goods.
Capitalism has converted science into
something used for harm: something to feed its massive accumulation of wealth;
something to manipulate at its every whim. It takes no responsibility for the
destruction it has wrought with these actions.
We know what will happen.
One more point of clarity.
We are the lifeblood of the rich;
we are the flesh and bone that make their lives possible, and the rest of the
organs (in this body) are made up of the consumers; meanwhile, they live to do
us harm in this capitalist system.
The origin of the evil the
capitalist system wreaks on us is revealed.
Our survival, and the other
construction of a new world, is in our hands.
Today we are here not to tell each
other what to do, but to understand what our function is to capitalism in this
world, and to see if what capitalism has us doing is any good for this world
that we live in, human and living beings.
And if we discover that it is
entirely bad, that the use capitalism makes of our sciences is harmful, then we
have to take responsibility and decide what to do.
Before I finish compañeras and compañeros, sisters and
brothers, today December 26, we do not forget that there are lives missing from
our midst, the life of the 46 missing young people from Ayotzinapa, Guerrero.
Together with their families and
friends who continue to search for them and who do not give up or sell out, we
Zapatista men and women also demand truth and justice. To these mothers,
fathers, sisters and brothers of the missing, we give our largest collective
embrace.
So, welcome to this gathering, to
this long walk of the other sciences during which there is no rest, because
rest would mean that the other, new world is already built, and until it is
built there will be no rest.
 |
| Subcomandante Moisés at Zapatista ConScience Gathering |
May your wisdom, scientists,
encounter and embrace our desire to learn and to know about the worlds.
Many thanks.
From CIDECI-Unitierra, San
Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas.
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.
Mexico, December 26, 2016
Source:
Translated
by Dorset Chiapas Solidarity and originally posted here:
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