Chapter 11 - The Zapatista Struggle for the Right to Land: Background, Context and Strategies

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Land rights are crucial factors in realising social rights. Their violation is a pre-requisite for the capital accumulation which precedes the expansion of capitalism and the emergence of new capitalist formations. According to Karl Marx, money and commodities can be only transformed into capital when the peasant is expropriated from his land, separated from the factors of production, and left with nothing but his labour power to sell freely. In consequence, he is reduced to pauperism. This process is marked by expropriation, robbery and colonisation, all of which involve the integration of local, national or regional actors and areas into the global structures of domination. Such integration transforms the spectrum of the struggle for the right to land: if resistance to the commodification of a particular territory is simultaneously an opposition to transboundary powers, then each peasant movement is part of a global process of critical meaning-making. Not only does this allow for the said movements to develop collective action connected to transnational networks, it also re-interprets the struggle for social rights as a struggle for transnational social rights.

Under these circumstances, the pressure on land is increasing dramatically. As rural populations grow, cultivated plots are becoming smaller per capita and per household. The decline of the average farm size is combined with landlessness and compounded by erosion and soil depletion. In recent years, export-driven agricultural policies have further increased the pressure on land. In many regions, large-scale plantations have developed for the production of food, energy or cash crops. The switch to biofuels in transport has increased both the competition among the various uses of farmland and the risk that poorer groups will lose access to the very land upon which they depend. Under the heading “ land grabbing”, large-scale land acquisitions have become a contentious topic.

These trends are linked with the food crises and threaten the right to adequate alimentation, as recognised by Article 25 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, and Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 1966. In addition, they exacerbate conflicts over land and lead to the criminalisation of social movements that defend agrarian reforms from below. As a result, serious human rights violations occur, including the murders of the peasants connected to such activities.