The transnational Zapatista solidarity network: an infrastructure analysis

In this article I present a descriptive and qualitative analysis of the infrastructure of the global Zapatista solidarity network that has emerged since the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico in January 1994. Most studies dealing with this network have looked at it from the outside without specifying what it means to speak about a network with regard to global Zapatista solidarity. I address this lacuna by examining the network from the inside. The analysis focuses on how the infrastructure of the network serves as a computer-mediated circuit for the circulation of information and identifies five levels of actors according to their roles as either information gatherers, information processors, information distributors or information recipients. I argue that the infrastructure of the networks is not only computer mediated but that it also has a significant physical dimension that stands in a reciprocal relationship with the computer-mediated dimension. When the indigenous Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), popularly known as the Zapatistas, staged its uprising in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas on 1 January 1994 it immediately caught the imagination of people both in Mexico and abroad. The first efforts of this nascent solidarity network called for a peaceful solution to the armed confrontations that ensued between the Mexican Army and the Zapatistas in the weeks following the uprising. These activities mainly sought to put pressure on the Mexican government and to inform the public, especially in Europe and the USA, about events in Chiapas. They were undoubtedly part of the reason why the Mexican government decided to sign a ceasefire and start negotiations with the Zapatistas after 12 days of fighting. Rather than disappearing after this apparent success the transnational solidarity network surrounding the Zapatistas has remained active and engaged in a wide variety of activities aimed at supporting the Zapatistas and the indigenous people of Chiapas. The Zapatistas acknowledge the importance of the solidarity network as a kind of protection against repressive measures from local and national authorities and they have entered into an intimate relationship with it. Communiqués are almost always addressed to (among others) international civil society; the Zapatistas have staged a number of public events in which solidarity activists have been invited to participate and, to this day, solidarity activists stay in Zapatista communities as peace observers. It is possible to identify a number of different phases in the development of the transnational Zapatista solidarity network in the period from 1994 to 2001. Phase 1