Toward La Otra Comunidad: Zapatismo and grassroots community formation in Humboldt County, CA

Thesis (M.A.)--Humboldt State University, Social Science: Environment and Community, 2014This thesis interrogates grassroots community formation in Humboldt County, California by examining overlapping political, cultural, and knowledge practices pursued by a local activist community. Specifically, I examine three inter-related collective projects: Acci??n Zapatista de Humboldt, Peoples??? Action for Rights and Community, and D??a de los Muertos, as well as their related affinity projects. I expose how these projects pursued the political and cultural practice of Zapatismo as a grassroots strategy to subvert the criminalization of Humboldt???s migrant and poor constituents, to produce situated knowledge about its collective struggles through popular education, and to convene intercultural dialog through ritual celebration. I use an activist ethnographic research technique involving participation in community spaces, examining community memory though archives and interviews, and coyuntura analysis of the relations of social forces in the community???s recent history. The claiming of Zapatismo informed the production of a community identity rooted in indigenous, anti-neoliberal social struggles that move beyond the confines of formal community organizations and the non-profit industrial complex. This research enters into academic dialog surrounding the contested concept of ???grassroots community,??? understanding it as a collective identity formed through practiced autonomous spaces of democratic, intercultural encounter