1. Chess is composed of four elements; one or more chess boards, two sets of pieces, a set of rules, and at least two players. These elements can vary greatly but are always present.
There are various stories of the origin of the game, but the most accepted theory is that it was born in India in the 6th century B.C. with the name Chaturanga. The first written reference to chess comes from Persia as Shatranj, a derivative of Chaturanga. Another possibility is that chess originated in China during the 2nd century B.C. with the name Xiangq. In any case, however it happened, all the hypotheses that contemplate the origin of chess agree in the aspect most important for my argument: it was unquestionably born in the breast of a patriarchal society, and thus can be studied as an allegorical model, a (recreational) representation of one of the central preoccupations of this model of inequity and social oppression in its purest form: Domination.

2. According to popular legend, Chaturanga was a war game invented by the Brahmin Sissa at the request of the Rajah Balhait. Sissa was asked to create a game that required the intellectual abilities of observation and action, as opposed to games of dice and cards, which are fundamentally games of chance. The Rajah also requested that the game should develop prudence, foresight, courage, judgement, resolve, and cautiousness. In this sense, this ancestral form of chess is also a cultural manifestation, avant la letre, of the secular politics popularized by Machiavelli in the 15th century, which challenged the politics of revelation validated and sustained by the Catholic Church.

3. The four components of chess vary with the passage of time and according to the style or derivation that is played. The board can be smaller or larger than 8x8 squares as with Hexagonal Chess, Multi-board chess, Alicia Chess, or Anticlerical chess, which is played with a small board of 6x6 spaces. The pieces also vary depending on the board and the rules of the game. Capablanca Chess, for example, is played on a 10x8 board and incorporates two extra pieces, the Chancellor (a mixture of rook and knight) and the Archbishop (a mixture of bishop and knight). The rules themselves can vary, which affects the rest of the game, the size and number of boards, the type and quantity of pieces, the movements of the pieces, etc. In Circe chess, for example, the captured pieces are reborn in their starting positions, whereas in Madrasi chess pieces attacked by the same piece of the opposite color are paralyzed, remaining where they are. The possible variations are infinite, including styles invented in more recent years, such as Atomic chess. In Atomic chess the capture of a piece represents an atomic explosion, and consequently all the pieces in the surrounding eight spaces are destroyed.

4. Chess is a simulacrum of the principal contradiction of patriarchal society--the oppression necessary to maintain a society divided between oppressors and oppressed. It also provides a window through which we can observe and analyze the connections between war, politics, and strategy. The chessboard, rules, and pieces are the structure of the game. The players represent the active component. They are the strategists: politicians, CEO’s, and generals. The players plan, decide, and execute. They represent power at work in a crisis situation, where political/military strategy decides history, the future of one group over another. A fundamental point of the battle is that the players share a system of rules, a rationale, symmetrical armies, and a “culture” that implies the implicit/explicit acceptance of an axiology and a certain behavior within the game.

5. As a social allegory (the rules of the game, the equality of the armies, the shared meaning, etc.) chess helps us understand (literally and symbolically) the society we live in, in terms of its expectations and horizons of signification. Along this line of thinking, chess allows us to observe the way in which the game itself is a representation of the universality of the parameters of patriarchal culture that both players accept implicitly by the very act of participating in the game. Chess is an allegory of one of the grand narratives or ideologies that inform the most profound workings of the patriarchal system. It is an extension of the idea that one set of rules is adequate to describe reality: The rules of the patriarchal game.

6. If we examine the elements more closely, we see that the chessboard represents the disputed space (a city, a country, an objective). The pieces represent the subjects (and objects) that participate materially in the conflict. The rules represent the ideology and accepted ways of fighting. The winner of the combat only defeats the opponent within the accepted horizon, without producing a structural change in the game. This simply represents success within a vertical system where each piece will maintain its original position, ready to begin a new game. The concept of war (“traditional”, not “low intensity”) remains immersed within the dominant structure (its ontology, epistemology, and axiology) and regardless of the winner, the value and the situation of the pieces on the board will not change. This has been the history of domination since the advent of a hierarchical, patriarchal society that implies divisions of class, race, gender, sexual preference, etc.

Double Standard

7. In a patriarchal society, war can be divided into two fundamental levels: the political and the military. On an ideological/cultural level we can make the division allegorically between the ten commandments of the Old Testament and Machiavelli’s theory that “the end justifies the means” which is to say between the ethics and the practice of patriarchal society. Ethics reflect this double standard, as a system of prescribed values sanctioned by custom and law, unavoidable for the oppressed, and secondly as a praxis outside of the system of ethics (denied in public rhetoric) that informs the practices (hidden by hegemonic historiography) of the oppressors. The law reflects this double standard as well, as a result of the totalitarian conception of the elites, who by any means necessary defend their structural position and the resulting benefits and quality of life. In the U.S. for example, with all the talk of diversity and multiculturalism there are more African Americans in prison than in Universities, making up almost half of the prison population in a country where they are only 10% of the total population. To illustrate the double standard we can use the fourth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” which is put into practice by means of an enormous system of mechanisms; the courts, the police, the schools, television, movies, etc., all of which condemn murder. Look no further than the U.S., where hundreds of people accused of murder await execution. While society is scandalized by these cases and seriously debates the rights of the State regarding the lives of its citizens, this same country has the largest military budget on the planet. These arms, with the possible exception of the most apocalyptic nuclear weapons, are not intended as a method of political pressure. They are produced to destroy human lives and at the same time to enrich the so-called “Military Industrial Complex”, a term coined by president Dwight Eisenhower in 1961. This systematic elimination of people is very similar, although on a much greater scale, to the actions of a psychopath. Those that propel and sustain the system and pass the death sentences walk the streets with a clear conscience because they have respected the letter of the law and God, and they wear a U.S. flag pin on their lapel.

8. The application of the seventh commandment “Thou shalt not steal” is clearly dubious for those who commit white-collar crime. The tenth commandment, “Thou shalt not covet the possessions of thy neighbor” does not differentiate between stealing because one has nothing to eat and nowhere to live, and one country invading another country and expropriating all public and private property. In this way the ruling elites, for “reasons of state” in modern times or in the sacred system of the traditional patriarchal monarchy, manipulate the ethics of civil society using a system of coercive norms while at the same time they operate implicitly under the slogan “The end justifies the means.” In other words, they play the game with a group of rules defined by the oppressor group (to the detriment of the oppressed majority), and other de facto rules (to the benefit of the oppressive minority).

9. If in fact, in the game of chess, the board, the rules, the pieces, and at least the possibilities of the players are the same, and do not reflect the extra “sporting” aspect (as in the Dirty Wars) which occurs in daily life as constructed by patriarchal society. These types of situations are relevant to our analysis in that chess is not capable of informing us about the totality of the political/military practices of the ruling class (and of course the dominant society which controls the planet to a great extent). It can only inform us about the external/public aspect, the rules of the game which it pretends to respect.

Chess and the Zapatista Movement

10. The three “axes” of the Zapatista movement are: fire, word, and organization. According to Sub-commander Marcos:
The axis of fire refers to military actions, preparation, combat, and other military movements. The axis of the word refers to meetings, dialogues, communications where words or silence (the absence of words) are present. The third axis is the spinal column and refers to the organizing process or the way in which the organization of Zapatista peoples is developing.
(20 y 10 el fuego y la palabra, 263-264)

11. Thus, fire is the armed struggle, military training, and the vertical military organization. The word represents all expression (oral, written, and symbolic/semiotic in general) towards the inside or outside of the movement that helps to construct and fortify it. The word should be understood as the recovery of the word in at least two senses: 1. as the intention to “give voice” to the traditionally voiceless. 2. as the will to speak the truth, the elimination of euphemisms, uniting word and deed. Organization is the engine and the heart of the Zapatista movement, where meaning is decided, the reason for its strength, when agreements are made and the courses of action of the rebels are decided.

12. In contrast with traditional chess, where each player accepts the three elements (rules, board, pieces) in order to play the game, Zapatista “players” strive to expand, modify, eliminate, and create new ways to penetrate the legitimacy of the elements that compose the game imposed as a means of oppression.

13. The Zapatista movement, in contrast with other projects of social change (reformist and even those called revolutionary, such as the social revolutions of the twentieth century) participates in the patriarchal game by inventing it over again in order to create space for itself and recover the human rights of the indigenous and of the people in general. The fundamental difference between traditional revolutions and the Zapatista rebellion is that socialist revolutions have concentrated on taking and controlling the state, maintaining vertical structure of state power, as in the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Traditional socialism plays on a fundamentally urban chessboard (Maoism reinvented this struggle without changing the objective) and brings with it a substitution of the Party for the King. It also alters the rules of political legitimacy, taking into consideration that the rationality of the setting provided by “civilization” has as its base the ideology of progress in the form of historical materialism.

14. The Zapatista “game” is radically different. Zapatista chess must be played on multiple chessboards simultaneously, a matter that greatly complicates things for the powers that be, accustomed to directing things on their own turf and to their own benefit. The Zapatista movement tries to redefine the role of the pieces, not only their value but the movements and consequences of each move. As redefined by the Zapatistas, the pawns have as much value as the king, but with the mobility of the queen. They are no longer cannon fodder, and as long as one exists the game is still in play (whereas before the game was decided by the check mate of the king). Zapatista chess requires a complete reinvention of the common sense that makes the rules created by the oppressor acceptable, and thus requires a certain consensus within civil society (bishops, rooks, knights), in terms of the perception of the game.

15. Fire, the word, and the organization provide a good route to understanding the aforementioned concepts. The three elements of Zapatista strategy (the concrete actions of playing the game) signify that Zapatista chess departs from the established rules of the game of the oppressor. Each of the elements of the game is used on multiple chessboards that sometimes coincide with the chessboard of the oppressor and sometimes do not. The Zapatistas play on the oppressor’s chessboard when they use the Mexican flag, sing the national anthem, and proclaim that they are Mexicans (instead of an autonomous and independent Mayan people). They do not play on the same table when they rise up in armed struggle, declare themselves autonomous, and fight against the repressive forces of the Mexican state, or when they declare that there is “a time to ask, a time to demand, and a time to act” (El fuego y la palabra, 257). They play on the oppressor’s chessboard and those of others when they use the word as a weapon and organize a march on Mexico City called the “March of the Color of the Earth” (February 2001) that mobilizes more than 200,000 people. It doesn’t fit on the oppressor’s chessboard when the Zapatista communities (the pawns) develop systems of health and education independent from the state. Asking for changes has not worked (for example, the lack of compliance with the San Andrés Accords signed by Zedillo in 1996). Demanding changes has not been more productive in terms of government action, and even the solidarity of the citizenry has not seriously changed the conduct of the government. Thus, action is the only remaining path for the Zapatistas, and is the one currently being utilized. This path is the result of the Zapatistas ability to strategically use the three axes and the place that they have gained in the national and international media, capturing the imagination of civil society.

16. The concepts of visibility and civil society are central to the Zapatista struggle. To advance on the chessboard while being systematically denied by the powers that be, the word is one of the most philosophical strategies of the movement. Let’s listen to Durito:

Then Durito places a glass of water on the table made of sticks tied together with vines, and says: “Power tells us, for example, that we must choose between being optimists or pessimists. The pessimist sees the glass half empty, whereas the optimist sees the glass half full. But the rebel notices that neither the glass nor the water it contains belong to him. It is the other, the Powerful, who fills or empties the glass at his fancy. The rebel on the one hand sees the trap, but he also sees the spring where the water comes from”.
(Revista Rebeldia, Marzo 2003)

17. Through the beetle Durito, the Zapatista movement proposes its vision of the struggle and its position regarding the chessboard offered by the oppressor. Durito indicates that there exists an alternate logic, outside of the power of the state, which can be used to achieve “Democracy, Liberty, and Justice” (the slogan written on the red and black Zapatista flag). This strategy has to do partly with the path itself, and partly with making their struggle and their logic as public as possible, thus generating a direct message to civil society, which cannot be silenced or manipulated by the power of the state. This is the reason that the Zapatista movement has developed a media campaign, creating web pages, magazines, marches throughout Mexico, international relations with movements in every corner of the globe, dialogues with the government, periods of silence, etc.

18. Organization, as Marcos says, is the spine of the movement. The Zapatista culture is constructed through organization, a culture that is catalyzed through the practices of the other two axes; fire, and the word. The organization is the long-term cohesive force within the Zapatista movement. Within the organization the horizontal institutions are created that can respond to the logic of “command by obeying”. An example of this is the disappearance of the Aguas Calientes (which were gateways linking Zapatista communities with the outside world) and the creation of the Zapatista Caracoles (which group together different Zapatista peoples-Choles, Tojolabales, Zoques, Tsotsiles, Zeltales, etc). These Caracoles are directed by Councils of Good Government, which are democratic, horizontal, and reversible. Through the creation of the Caracoles, the EZLN has attempted to separate itself from the Zapatista communities in order to facilitate more freedom in their decision-making. All the members of the EZLN are members of different communities, but the EZLN has a military structure, which is by necessity vertical. This vertical structure does not correspond with the horizontal structure necessary for shared power, which is the Zapatista style of wielding power. The communities themselves are now in charge of decision-making and the construction of the Zapatista topia. In this way, Zapatista power is now exercised directly and democratically in a large part of the state of Chiapas.

19. The Zapatistas know that the government, the State, cannot recognize them as distinct peoples. In 1997 the government denied approval of the Law of Indigenous Rights and Culture articulated by the COCOPA (Committee for Peace and Reconciliation), a committee that had worked to dialogue with the government. This law, signed by both sides, was “an initiative that, despite leaving out important aspects of the accords signed in February 1996, was accepted by the rebels” (Op. Ct. 131). Thus, the Zapatistas had already experienced the double standard of the government: talking to buy time. Part of this same phenomenon, the governmental agenda of elimination of the indigenous cultures of the region, is the specter of the Plan Puebla Panama. Signed by Vicente Fox and all the presidents of Central America in 2001, the PPP implies the transformation of Central America into a factory for the U.S. It celebrates the “progress” and “globalization” destined to devour the region with frenzied futurism of Marinetti.

20. The Zapatista movement is creating the infrastructure that will enable the Mayan peoples to defend themselves from disappearance. They are confronting, by means of the three axes, an enemy that attempts to obligate them to accept the chessboard, the rules, the pieces and the movements as a natural thing. None of these are natural for the Zapatista movement and the peoples engaged in the struggle. It is seen as a stratagem of domination that has functioned relatively well, with some highs and lows, for 500 years. The significance of the indigenous rebellion is this: It uses all possible spaces, including the oppressor’s chessboard. It changes the rules through use of the word and the mobilization of civil society. It changes the value and function of the pieces, liberating them and giving them the dignity and understanding to liberate the indigenous and all peoples from oppression. This oppression has its genealogy in the long history of patriarchal society in general, and since 1492 in modern history in particular, and it is up to us to confront it.