ABSTRACT
The Zapatista movement is amongst the most significant political expressions of the anti- capitalist movement in the world today. In fact, it might, in many ways, be the most significant one. Its timing took us by surprise: no one in their right minds expected that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peace talks – particularly between guerrillas and governments at war in Central American countries – a guerrilla movement could suddenly emerge in Mexico, challenging both the implementation of the North-American Free Trade Agreement, a spearhead of neoliberal politics, and the traditional approach of classic guerrilla warfare. In their own style, the Zapatistas said they were an “absurd” guerrilla, for they went against the current of a world globalized by capital. That is, they went against a hegemonic temporality that apparently had no significant fissures and could not be challenged.
