Puneet Dhaliwal, 2009 Lord Rootes Memorial Fund award holder, will be giving a talk named "The Zapatistas: Autonomy and Emancipation" based on his project with recent Warwick graduate Sarah Reader. The talk will take place at 7pm on Thursday 4 February in room S0.21, Social Sciences building.

About the Talk

Puneet and Sarah spent the summer of 2009 in Chiapas, Mexico examining the autonomous organisation of the Zapatista movement. This movement first appeared on the world stage on January 1 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect.

Indigenous people in Mexico are deeply marginalised and the NAFTA spelled ruin for many of them by weakening their collective land claims. This prompted the Zapatistas to rise up, declaring war on the Mexican state and issuing demands for work, land, housing, food, healthcare, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice and peace.

Since the uprising, the Zapatistas have been meeting their demands through an autonomous community-based form of social and political organisation. The Zapatista experience forms part of the broader "Pink Tide" of the Latin American left, in which the new autonomous social movements are seen by many theorists as the bearers of an emancipatory democratic politics.

For more information email Puneet Dhaliwal on P.Dhaliwal@warwick.ac.uk