As subversões do tempo nos comunicados zapatistas

Abstract

The present article aims to problematize notions of time and history based on an ethnographic case that imposes itself on a singular manner. Here, I deal with world constructions immersed in communiqués from the Zapatista Movement. These constructions hold the resistance as vocative and are therefore powerful symbolic instruments. I use three elements to clarify this reflection: worldviews, that is, creation stories that incorporate classifications about the present; symbols referring to the Mexican Revolution; and the memory and construction of collectives that hold notions of death and pain as their joining link. These elements are analyzed around a helicoidal model of thinking time whose main characteristic is blurring the distinction between beginning and end. This model is employed to conceive the coexistence between mythical and symbolic aspects that are interspersed in the resistance’s living experience.