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Below there are women and men who study science, who study scientifically, who do good science. But the wicked capitalists come along and use this science to do harm to the very people who discovered that science. What kind of harm? They use science to make the rich richer. The rich use it as they choose, for a destiny other than that for which it was created. They use it to kill and destroy. - Zapatista Plenary Declaration on ConSciences Moderator’s Note: In a recent conversation with a close friend, the issue of how different people conceptualize “nature” came up in the context of a discussion of the March for Science. First of all, I suggested that this does not involve a “binary” problem (e.g., pro- or anti-nature; pro- or anti-science); instead this is a spectrum with a spectral cast. There are several paradigms operating in different cultural communities (with distinct political projects) and these differ markedly in how they define “nature” or the “environment”— be mindful, all...

Maíz resistente. School for Chiapas . Moderator’s Note: As part of a series on the 20 th anniversary of the Zapatista movement for Indigenous autonomy, we offer this first and original unauthorized translation of a report by Gallo Téenek. The report originally appeared in Spanish on Regeneración Radio in October 2013 and offers a “social perspective” on the meaning of direct democracy as constituted by Zapatista communities in the form of caracoles – which literally translates as “Snails” and figuratively alludes to the spiral shape of the snail shell. Don Durito and other Others might explain this as a symbol for the organizational form of Indigenous nurturing of deep place-based knowledge and also a nest or nido offering protective harbor for the social, biological, and cultural life of the organism and community.   Téenek desribes Zapatista grassroots institutions of collective action through a lengthy depiction of the Oventic Junta de Buen Gobierno or Good Government Coun...