Our Word is Our Weapon: Redefining Rebellion With the New Paradigm of Hegemony - Book Report/Review Example

The Zapatista National Liberation Army was born out of this humiliating deportation of the indigenous people from their own land (Marcos). The book has been described by the editor as a “testimony to the power of the word” (de Leon, p.23 of editor’s note). The struggle was made necessary because the Mexican government was a party to the vested private interests who were lured by the “vast oil reserves, exotic wood and uranium on the autonomous, indigenous lands of Chiapas” (de Leon, p.

25 of editor’s note). The book is equally eloquent about the existing political machinery that oppresses the indigenous people and about the greatness of the indigenous social life and culture (Marcos). History has been depicted as the resource from which the revolution satiates its thirst (Marcos, 19) and women have been depicted as those who “knit(…) that history” (Marcos, 12). . All political power emanates from the people and its purpose is to help the people. The people have, at all times, the inalienable right to alter or modify their form of government” (qtd.

in Marcos, 14). It is in exercise of this right that the Zapatistas envisage their form of revolution and it is the nationalistic spirit that they evoke in order to further their cause (Marcos, 14). By stressing that armed rebellion was accepted as a last resort, by respecting the Geneva Convention, by inviting international organizations and International Red Cross to “regulate” the war involved, and by declaring that till the basic needs of each Mexican is met with, the war will continue, the insurgent army has established itself as a political entity rather than a terrorist group.

Though it is the Mexican government, the nation state, that is the visible enemy to the Zapatistas, actually it is the corporate capitalism and its greatest patron, the US, that have controlled that nation state through agreement like, North American Free Trade Agreement (Marcos, 65). And hence, the political struggle of Zapatista rebels has an international relevance whereby the third world countries’ aspirations for freedom, democracy and liberty are reflected. And the anti-colonial, anti-imperialistic spirit is evoked.

It is not just hegemony, but the “hegemonic masculinity” that is being addressed by the political struggle depicted in this book (Howson, 20; Marcos). Hegemony is considered as the “highest level” of a spectrum of political consciousness involving three levels, where one socio-economic group having common economic interest realize that their “own ‘corporate’ interests go beyond the corporate concerns” and a “combination” of