abstract

The Zapatista maxim “for a world of many worlds” resonates among movements and academics, especially those involved in the defense of autonomies, climate justice and the pluriverse. In this article, we try to think about this maxim based on ethnography carried out with tzotzil zapatista educators in Caracol de Oventic, articulating the “many worlds” in zapatismo. The Zapatista Declarations call for the composition of differences, uniting local autonomy with anti-capitalist criticism and opening up possibilities for a metaphysical reinvention of the practices that enabled the Anthropocene. There is a displacement of some key terms – such as words, world, truth – and others that are dear to western political philosophies – such as work, capitalism, human. The world of the powerful is a false world, which weakens and takes the place of other worlds and true words. The world of many worlds is not meant to be a property or resource, but a place where true beings (human and other than human) belong.

keywords
Zapatismo; Pluralism; Anthropocene; Ethnography; Chiapas