The practical applications of all this

The practical application of I and B.

I am going to focus on a few issues that I and B bring-up and how the Zapatistas are caught up with them.

According to I and B, the following is to be done:

1) "...critical engagements may help inform efforts to creatively imagine the future not as a simple unfolding of the logic of the present, but as a process of rediscovery and reimagination...re-imagining the future requires entering much more perilous terrains in the contact zone."(217)

2) Engaging this broader interest rest on the oppressed self (219)

I think the Zapatistas are approaching this....

I am going to start this by asserting a caveat; I don't think that the Zapatistas are exactly the answer that I and B are gesturing at. I would assume that they are aware of the existence of the Zapatistas and had they thought that the Zaps had the answers to the problems that they outline, they would have titled their epilogue something like "look toward the Zaps," but I do think that the Zaps come close to an approach that I and B outline.

Zapatistas

In 1994, after the passage of the NAFTA agreement, the Zapatista Army, the EZLN, staged an uprising in the south of Mexico. They declared war on both the Mexican Army and the emerging neoliberal world order. The Zapatistas conceptualize this neoliberal order as an extension of the "indainizing" ideology that Naeem and David sketch.

After some military engagement, the Zapatistas put down their arms and sought justice through dialogue. In this away the "opressed" Mayan Indians of Mexico brought themselves into the consciousness of, at least a sliver, of the newspaper reading, intelligentsia in the global north. They have sought to maintain this dialogue through, marches, the internet, the passage of legislation and other modes of communication with the global north.

The stated goal of the EZLN is to create "a world in which many worlds fit"

How do they seek to do this? the answer is taken from their 1996 declaration, which was prepared at the end of an international conference staged in Chiapas Mexico.

This intercontinental network of resistance, recognizing differences and acknowledging similarities, will search to find itself with other resistance’s around the world. This intercontinental network of resistance will be the medium in which distinct resistance’s may support one another. This intercontinental network of resistance is not an organizing structure; it doesn’t have a central head or decision maker; it has no
central command or hierarchies. We are the network, all of us who resist."[21]

In other words, the Zapatistas seek to work together with the worlds struggling to create a world safe for differing identities. For an international relations of acceptance, instead of negation. They do not seek power, mearly space. This is why the New York Times has referred to them as the first post-modern revolution.

I can hear everyone thinking, well that’s great, but how are they doing.

Well, I don't know how to measure that. The Zapatistas have given their mission no definite time line. From the report backs of colleges I have heard that the material lives and self confidence of the individuals with in the communities has improved, but as to solving the problem of difference and International Relations, they obviously still have much more to go.