Blackwell Reference Online

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The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) is a Mexican political-military organization founded on November 17, 1983 in Chiapas, southeast Mexico. In 1994 the EZLN started an armed rebellion against the Mexican government that soon had wide resonance and support in Mexico and among a wide network of anti-capitalist movements worldwide. The EZLN is the military wing of a civil movement that is organized around 40 autonomous councils in the State of Chiapas. The EZLN's discourses and practices have resonance in a wide national and international network of anti-capitalist political organizations. The origins of the EZLN can be traced to the cycle of guerilla insurgency that started after the repression of the students’ movement of 1968 and lasted until the second half of the 1980s. Its original organization was the National Liberation Forces (FLN), an armed group founded in the industrial city of Monterrey on August 6, 1969, by the brothers Cesar German and Fernando Yañez Muñoz and Alfredo Zarate Mota, among others. The FLN was a political-military organization that aimed at national insurrection and the implantation of a socialist government in Mexico. It worked from a strictly clandestine structure that had a national organization. Its local sections performed clandestine activity and gathered resources mostly from legal work and voluntary contributions. Its political references ... log in or subscribe to read full text