Written by Uruguayan journalist Raúl Zibechi, Territórios em rebeldia was published in Brazil in 2022 and features a collection of articles on the struggles led by Latin American communities that resist the violent onslaught of capital in the twenty-first century and seek to build new worlds. The articles were written at different times and address a variety of themes, including the state of exception as a form of domination in contemporary capitalism, the search for new societal models, characteristics of anti-systemic struggles and lifestyles, and the political contradictions faced by progressive governments in Latin America.
The book opens with an interview with the author. This is followed by both shorter and more extensive articles structured with clearly defined hypotheses. As an observer and analyst of wide-ranging topics, Zibechi upholds a particular set of propositions about the contemporary world. He observes that the extreme right has no defined project, and only exists to preserve its political power. He argues that the protection of popular territories is necessary for the growth of popular power. He states that the internet has become a drug and that the spread of consumerism has led to a social mutation in human beings. He rejects the idea of a single type of society, through which a new concept of totality must be sought, and emphasizes that the constant search for a single type of dominant society is an excessively Eurocentric characteristic, which is still very present in political discourses.
The interview that begins the book is an excellent introduction to Zibechi’s thematic universe, as it presents the three principal intellectual turning points in his professional life. The first turning point took place in Spain in the 1970s, when he came into contact for the first time with the first wave of the feminist movement. The second turning point took place in Latin America in the 1980s and was marked by his encounter with Zapatismo. Finally, in 2013, his third turning point was linked to the crisis of progressive movements in Brazil. These decisive moments of rupture made the author rethink the role of the left and the role that should be played by a white male writer, academic and activist. He comes to the conclusion that critical thinking is widespread among the working classes, and that members of the dominant classes in solidarity with popular struggles should adopt the social critiques constructed by those whose daily lives are marked by these struggles.
In the longer articles that possess a more organized structure, Zibechi highlights a repertoire of references from decolonial studies and European and North American critical thought. These articles include a selection of texts that highlight the dynamics of the rise and decline of progressive governments and the emergence of the state of exception. In ‘Social policies, progressive governments and anti-systemic movements’ from 2010, Zibechi argues that modern social movements should be understood in the light of the processes of accumulation by dispossession, and the struggle for reparatory social policies. In this way, the economic results of the current extractivist model of accumulation by dispossession are different from those generated by the former import substitution model, as they intensify unemployment and income inequality. Consequently, given the greater need for social policies, this model can only be successfully managed by progressive governments, which have a greater ability to dialogue with the popular classes.
These governments brought together the state apparatus and social movements in order to ensure governability. In this way, protests were no longer seen as a problem, but as an opportunity. Two consequences can be quickly observed in this arrangement. On the one hand, the social movements received financial benefits and access to specialized professionals who could help organize their cooperatives. On the other hand, these movements have become less autonomous, as they have become an integral part of state institutions. According to Zibechi, this arrangement was seen as a success for the state, which legitimized itself by solving acute social problems and, at the same time, managed to use this process to its advantage in order to maintain governability.
In ‘Autonomies and self-government after progressivism’ from 2019, Zibechi traces the transformations that have taken place in autonomous movements in Latin America. He presents the nuances in their criticisms of the extractivist model of accumulation. While in the 1990s, the focus of their criticism was on overturning this mode of production, during the progressive governments, their critiques were not systemic, but only critical of certain social and environmental practices. The author also points out that autonomous practices in Latin America are diverse. They do tend to be bottom-up, focused on ecological concerns, and create networks in order to carry out concrete actions. Finally, he points out that left-wing intellectuals, for the most part, support progressive governments and do not fully understand the workings of the current hegemonic model based on commodities exports.
In ‘State of exception as extractivism’s political paradigm’, originally published in 2020, Zibechi uses Ramón Grosfoguel’s (2012) concepts of the zone of being and the zone of non-being to examine the forms of social oppression and regulation that exist in different societal models. In the zone of being, the liberal democratic framework exists to ameliorate oppression and to provide spaces for mediating social conflicts. In the zone of non-being, the majority of the population cannot effectively claim their human, civil and labor rights. In the absence of peaceful conflict resolution, conflicts are resolved through violence. Due to this striking difference, the critical theory produced in the zone of being has no claim to universality, since in the zones where extractivism operates there is a permanent state of exception so that the working classes are isolated or, even more incisively, kept in concentration camps.
In polemical articles, such as ‘Genocide in Haiti: The Responsibility of Latin America’, published in 2007, Zibechi states that the peacekeeping forces sent by Latin American countries to Haiti carried out a war against the poor and had no intention of helping Haiti out of its crisis of abject poverty (43). In the 2019 article ‘Quinoa of a hundred colors’, the author describes the destructive actions carried out by the mining industry in Peru and proclaims that such practices are clearly neo-colonial. Finally, in the 2018 article ‘Strategies are not eternal’, he argues that the electoral route was used as part of a broader strategy adopted by Latin American social movements. However, with the failure of this strategy, he postulates that the transition to a new world today must go beyond the occupation of state structures.
With respect to the construction of new worlds, in the prologue to his book Los arroyos cuando bajan [When the streams diminish], published in 1995, Zibechi reviews the reasons why he became enthusiastic about the Zapatista movement. According to the Uruguayan journalist, this movement epitomized the constant search for political autonomy. Poor and indigenous women gained a prominent role in the movement and differentiated themselves from the Eurocentric feminism of the academic middle classes. They truly sought to build another world, through constantly questioning and reworking their strategies and ideologies, sought to overcome the elitism and racism prevalent on the left and, perhaps most importantly, they understood politics as a form of warfare.
The struggle to build a new world coexists with the ongoing, multifaceted contemporary crises. Alongside the concentration and centralization of wealth, there are wars, famines, political polarization, unemployment created by technological upgrading and climate change. There is an immense amount of literature on these different topics. On the other hand, there are other fields of research that seek to understand the movements that struggle every day to build a new world. Of course, this process is highly improvised, and it couldn’t be otherwise, since the transformation of a working-class community involves immense struggles and contradictions. As such, this type of participatory research is distinct from the creation of theoretically well-founded academic theses that are generally of little use to the working classes.
In light of these statements, Raúl Zibechi’s Territórios em rebeldia is an important contribution to the dissemination of the practices and knowledge of the popular movements which fight to maintain the possibility of building new worlds. This work is the product of a reflection that stretches beyond the confines of the limited transformations undertaken by progressive Latin American governments, and the critical paralysis linked to the supposed theoretical impossibility of overcoming the dictates of capital.
Reviewed by Leonardo Dias Nunes