Their power as a movement—aside from their creativity, mischief and moral high ground—also derives from their demonstrated flexibility on how their communities exercise autonomy, keeping their autonomous network for the most part intact. This flexibility, I guess, is the nature of the beast.

And on a related note, creating the juntas de buen gobierno seemed like a good decision to me. If I understand it correctly, their function is to create a somewhat centralized process adminnistered by the juntas for NGOs that want to work with the communities, rather than an NGO barging in where it wants and giving "[shoes when we need schools]," I think went the quote by Marcos. And to make sure their communities get a fair distribution of the benefits provided by these NGOs.

Does it matter that they are—arguably, out of necessity—in a sense, taking on traditional functions of the state: taxation, regulation, distribution, etc.? Or am I missing the point?

Here's a great excerpt of an article John Ross wrote (Dec. 2003) for the magazine I work for. I was reminded of it by Al's post.

The last few grafs:

For a few years, the EZLN was the new Holy Grail of many internationalists, and Marcos’ florid, acid-dipped prose achieved sacred screed status in several languages. But the Zapatistas had not really set out to save the world—or the left—from itself. From their first public moment, they rejected taking state power—although they did promise to “advance on the capital, defeating the federal army along the way.” The EZLN was not the vanguard the left wanted them to be. “We just want to take part in the democratic change,” their comandantes often protested.

Mostly, the Zapatistas seem to want to grow their own corn and coffee and their communities in the way that they see fit. The rebels are, after all, Mayans, “the People of the Corn,” and corn is rooted in this rebellion. It was only when the three NAFTA nations began discussing corn quotas, which the EZLN feared would displace Indian farmers from the internal market, that they got around to declaring war. NAFTA and Salinas’ revision of constitutional Article 27 to permit the privatization of the ejido, “left us no alternative but to declare war,” Marcos has often explained.

The brief show war the Indians fought, armed political theater really, was in fact a strategy for survival, as agribusiness giants like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland closed in on the People of the Corn. Ten years later, the guns are out of sight (although last New Year’s Eve, in the pine-scented Oventic auditorium, the militia men and women danced with them slung over their shoulders), but the Zapatista communities are themselves armed and loaded with resolve to resist and to survive the global monster. Perhaps the EZLN has not saved the world, but it has saved itself.

And was not their survival what the Zapatista rebellion was about in the first place?