Raúl Zibechi: The Revolution of 1968 ... When the Basement Said Enough!
[Raúl Zibechi is Brecha de Montevideo journal's international analyst, social movements lecturer, and researcher at the Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina, and consultant to several social groups. He is a monthly contributor to the Americas Policy Program (www.americaspolicy.org).]
The four decades that have passed since the "Worldwide Revolution of 68"—a concept coined by Immanuel Wallerstein—seems like sufficient time to attempt to understand the direction taken from that moment on by the anti-systemic struggle in Latin America. In order to do that we must divert our attention from large epic events such as the Tet Offensive of the Vietnamese fighters, the May manifestations in Paris, and the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City, just to recall three events that had an impact throughout the whole world.
The truth is that these three events do not account for all of the social and political energy that was circulating during those years. Thinking only about our continent, what must be added are the workers' uprising in Córdoba—The Cordobazo of 1969—which forced the withdrawal of Juan Carlos Onganía's military dictatorship; the onslaught of the urban struggles in Chile, which modified the structure of cities and brought Salvador Allende to the presidency in 1970; the farmers' struggles in the Peruvian mountains, which forced out the military government of Juan Velasco Alvaro, starting in 1968, to carry out the largest agrarian reform of that time period after the Cuban agrarian reform; the impressive rise of workers and miners in 1970 in Bolivia who built a Popular Assembly, an organ with which they were able to contest the power of the dominant classes. In each country it is possible to include events and processes which can easily be linked to what has generically been merely referred to as "68."
Nevertheless, one must dig deeper in order to get to the bottom of the long-term changes that allow us to speak of a before and an after of those years. What remains if we take from '68 the multitudinous protests on main avenues? If we leave the colossal although fleeting events of that period? Responding deeply involves us in a way of seeing the world differently than the hegemony, similar indeed to that which the Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos practices. He maintains that, "The large transformations do not start from the top nor with monumental and epic events, but rather with movements that are small in form and that appear irrelevant for the politician and analyst at the top."1
These changes were not immediately made visible, but rather are spread out almost imperceptibly or through a progressive and ascending manner, from the periphery to the center, from remote rural areas to the cities, from daily life to recognized cultural forms. But they do not do it following European and North American sociology of analytical logic regarding "social movements." That is, analyzing the "characteristics of the organizations" that develop "cycles of protest" that start when "social actors" take advantage of "the structure of political opportunities" to deploy "repertoires of social action" that allow them to reach their "objectives and ends" in an "interaction with the state" and its allies. It is difficult for us to understand what is occurring in the basements of our societies by following this conceptual road.
One of the most notable results of the events of '68 is the revelation of those from below, or rather their differentiation and visibility, to later rehearse the uprising or insurrection from the lowliest depths to proclaim "that's enough!" Over time this evolved into the creation of another world, different from the hegemonic world. To see that, it is necessary to take a view similar to the one Marcos attributes to anthropologist Andrés Aubry, which implies going beyond the exterior and what is visible in order to understand the side of the people "that is closed off to the outside."2...
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The four decades that have passed since the "Worldwide Revolution of 68"—a concept coined by Immanuel Wallerstein—seems like sufficient time to attempt to understand the direction taken from that moment on by the anti-systemic struggle in Latin America. In order to do that we must divert our attention from large epic events such as the Tet Offensive of the Vietnamese fighters, the May manifestations in Paris, and the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City, just to recall three events that had an impact throughout the whole world.
The truth is that these three events do not account for all of the social and political energy that was circulating during those years. Thinking only about our continent, what must be added are the workers' uprising in Córdoba—The Cordobazo of 1969—which forced the withdrawal of Juan Carlos Onganía's military dictatorship; the onslaught of the urban struggles in Chile, which modified the structure of cities and brought Salvador Allende to the presidency in 1970; the farmers' struggles in the Peruvian mountains, which forced out the military government of Juan Velasco Alvaro, starting in 1968, to carry out the largest agrarian reform of that time period after the Cuban agrarian reform; the impressive rise of workers and miners in 1970 in Bolivia who built a Popular Assembly, an organ with which they were able to contest the power of the dominant classes. In each country it is possible to include events and processes which can easily be linked to what has generically been merely referred to as "68."
Nevertheless, one must dig deeper in order to get to the bottom of the long-term changes that allow us to speak of a before and an after of those years. What remains if we take from '68 the multitudinous protests on main avenues? If we leave the colossal although fleeting events of that period? Responding deeply involves us in a way of seeing the world differently than the hegemony, similar indeed to that which the Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos practices. He maintains that, "The large transformations do not start from the top nor with monumental and epic events, but rather with movements that are small in form and that appear irrelevant for the politician and analyst at the top."1
These changes were not immediately made visible, but rather are spread out almost imperceptibly or through a progressive and ascending manner, from the periphery to the center, from remote rural areas to the cities, from daily life to recognized cultural forms. But they do not do it following European and North American sociology of analytical logic regarding "social movements." That is, analyzing the "characteristics of the organizations" that develop "cycles of protest" that start when "social actors" take advantage of "the structure of political opportunities" to deploy "repertoires of social action" that allow them to reach their "objectives and ends" in an "interaction with the state" and its allies. It is difficult for us to understand what is occurring in the basements of our societies by following this conceptual road.
One of the most notable results of the events of '68 is the revelation of those from below, or rather their differentiation and visibility, to later rehearse the uprising or insurrection from the lowliest depths to proclaim "that's enough!" Over time this evolved into the creation of another world, different from the hegemonic world. To see that, it is necessary to take a view similar to the one Marcos attributes to anthropologist Andrés Aubry, which implies going beyond the exterior and what is visible in order to understand the side of the people "that is closed off to the outside."2...