Paper short abstract:

This study analyzes tensions between EZLN's demands for autonomy and its relations with international solidarity networks, focusing on the efforts to legitimize commercial exchanges within movements who characterize their identity through demonizing "market economy" and its dehumanizing powers.

Paper long abstract:

Since long before their public uprising in 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army has been progressively building an alternative social, economical and political organisation through the reappropriation of the land directly by rural communities. Their fight for autonomy sets an example for many Transformation Initiatives that criticize current capitalist society ruled by market values.

Solidarity demonstrations towards EZLN has been constantly present, guaranteeing visibility to the cause, shaping its identity and influencing its hopes of impact. Most of the coffee produced by cooperatives from Chiapas is exported, making coffee trade the main income from international solidarity networks. The question arises about strategies adopted to conciliate demands for autonomy and economical asymmetries between Zapatista cooperatives producing coffee and European collectives who hold purchasing power, differentiating themselves from development organizations and labeled as Fair Trade economy.

This paper analyzes, from an engaged anthropological perspective, how international solidarity activities are narrated in order to build opportunities for action within a highly politicized economic sphere in which commercial exchanges are continuously legitimized through the attribution of ethical criteria to transactions. The meaning conveyed by coffee is constructed on a symbolic level, making imaginary one of the main contents of exchange. The social, cultural and political spheres are invested by ethics, which penetrates all aspects of militant action. The notions of "trust", "dignity" and "reciprocity" are repeatedly mobilized to negotiate discontinuous and multidirectional flows in the attempt to justify commercial relations in a politicized context that characterizes its own identity through demonizing "market economy" and its dehumanizing powers.