X Peasant Resistance and Protest
 Zapata by Diego Rivera |
The global expansion of the culture of capitalism has benefited many; but it has also brought suffering to others. Perhaps the greatest loss was borne by peasant farmers who, with the expansion of large-scale agriculture, were transformed from relatively self-sufficient food producers to dependent laborers. The transformation was sometimes accomplished slowly as large-scale producers either bought up or pushed out small farmers; or it was accomplished rapidly, as colonial powers expropriated land to redistribute to settlers from the colonizer's nation-state. More recently, economic globalization and the withdrawal of government support has made it difficult, if not impossible, for small-scale farmers to compete with multinational agribusiness. In any case, the transformation was marked by resistance that was sometimes passive, and other times violent. The following readings provide some historical perspective on the phenomenon of peasant revolt and resistance and two recent cases, one in Colombia and the other in Mexico. |
| A. The History and Nature of Peasant Revolts | |
| Revolts and protests by peasants against
those who demand tribute or taxes, and/or who control the land on which peasants depend,
go back for centuries. There are thousands of such protests recorded in Russia and
England, for example, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. One question we
need to ask is how such protests compare to more recent ones, such as in Chiapas, or those
discussed in Global Issues and the Culture of Capitalism in Malaysia and Kenya? The
readings in this section address past and present peasant protests and their relationship
to religious, political, and economic revolution. |
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| Reading 1. The Twelve Articles of
the Peasants http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850-pwg/pwg0e.htm |
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You can get a good idea of the
traditional concerns of peasants by examining this declaration prepared by peasant farmers
in Germany in 1525. The early sixteenth century was a period of widespread peasant
revolt in Germany. Frederick Engels suggested there was a parallel between those
uprisings and the revolutions that shook Europe in 1848, prompting him to write The
Peasant War in Germany. His major point was that the protest was class-based,
rather than a result of religious upheaval. The Twelve Articles seem to substantiate
that point of view; while religious issues are present, clearly demands of the peasants
have to do with the level of exploitation by both religious and secular leaders.
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| Reading 2. The Peasant War in China
and the Proletariat http://home.mira.net/~andy/bs/1932lt.htm |
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| This letter written in 1932 by Leon
Trotsky, one of the leaders of the communist revolution in Russia, addresses his concerns
about the role of the peasant revolutionary in the Chinese revolution. The letter
expresses some longstanding concerns, largely articulated by Vladimir Lenin, that the
goals of peasant revolts were often incompatible with the goals of worker revolts.
More specifically, he address the question of what happens when peasant movements come
face-to-face with the working class? In Russia, he points out, there was often
conflict, some of it violent. The peasant, he says, generally has limited
goals, and rather than socializing property, seeks only to divide it up.
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| Reading 3. Deep Roots in Cocoa
Country http://www.newint.org/issue304/village.html and Reading 4 The Race to Stand
Still |
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| Being a peasant or small-scale farmer is very different
in today's global economy than it has ever been. The traditional peasant's fate was
determined by his or her farming skills, by the weather, and by the occasional natural
(hurricane, flood, earthquake) or social (war, revolution) disaster. But today, in
addition to these dangers, the grower must also adjust to the vagaries of the global
market, the price and demand for what is produced, and, most importantly, the competition
from large-scale, corporate agriculture and its allies in the nation-state. These
selections from the New
Internationalist introduces you to the life of the cocoa grower in Ghana.
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| Reading 5. The New
Revolutionary Peasantry http://www.rebelion.org/petras/english/newpeasantry170102.htm |
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| In this review James Petras explains
how the free trade and neoliberal economic regimes adopted by Latin American governments
have stimulated protest in Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Mexico.
He describes the forms these protests have taken, and answering Trotsky's concerns
about peasants in the previous selection, describes the common agendas shared by peasant
agriculturists, the urban poor, and the urban worker. He also discusses the often
harmful role played by cultural "spokespersons" and by Western NGOs, who, he
says, often have their own agendas that differ significantly from that of the protesters.
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| B. The Revolt in Colombia | |
| There are few Latin American countries that
have not, in the past thirty years, experienced protest by workers, peasants, and the
poor. In many cases the protest was met with violent repression by the state, or by
paramilitary forces operating with the tacit consent of the state. Colombia has been
no exception. It has experienced a civil war since the early 1960s, a war that
followed other instances of violent repression, including the massacre of hundreds of
strikers by the United Fruit Company in 1928. The following articles provide an
anatomy of peasant protest in Colombia, protest that continues today. You can find
additional information at Dirty
War in Colombia. |
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| Reading 6. A History of
the Guerrilla Movement in Colombia http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7078/g.txt |
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| A good brief summary of peasant and
worker protest in Colombia, and the violent reaction by the state and its representatives.
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| Reading
7. Colombia's Dirty War:
The Clash Between State and Society http://www.is.rhodes.edu/modus/97/3.html |
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| This article by
Allan Dossey traces the history of the conflict in Colombia and examines
some of its economic roots. |
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| C. The Rebellion in Chiapas | |
| On January 1, 1994, the same day that the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, the Zapatista Revolutionary
Army briefly occupied the city of San Cristobal de las Casas in the Mexican state of
Chiapas. The timing was not coincidental. The agreement would further
undermine the livelihood of peasant farmers by permitting the free import of cheap corn
from the United States. In fact, everything about the Zapatista peasant revolt
concerns the expansion of the global economy, as we discuss in Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism. The
following articles describe the revolt, the social and economic state of peasant
farmers in Chiapas, and the reasons behind it. |
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| Reading 8. Chiapas Uprising and
Trade http://gurukul.ucc.american.edu/ted/CHIAPAS.HTM |
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| An excellent background piece on the
Chiapas rebellion by Kimberly L. Mott and Allison L. Housman. The review focuses on
the economic factors in the protest, particularly as it relates to NAFTA. The
authors also evaluate the level of harm done to peasant farmers by Mexican legislative
action (e.g. the Repeal of Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution), economic activities in
Chiapas and state intervention.
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| Reading 9. "From the
Mountains of the Southeast": A Review of Recent Writings on the Zapatistas of Chiapas http://www.latrobe.edu.au/history/news/digital/carr2.htm |
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| An excellent review by Barry Carr of
writings on the Zapatista uprising. He manages to convey the different perspectives
that social scientists and journalists have taken of the conflict. You might want to
contrast and compare these views with the analysis of the rebellion in Chapter 10 of Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism.
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| Reading 10.
1998 Genocide in Chiapas http://www.nonviolentways.org/chiaconflict.html |
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| This is a comprehensive report and
analysis edited by Eileen Robertson-Rehberg of the Chiapas rebellion and the reaction to
it by the Mexican government. The article also contains descriptions of visits to
various indigenous communities and settlements, and the state of life in them.
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Additional Internet Resources on Peasant Revolt and Resistance |
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