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CIDECI-Unitierra

The Centro Indígena de Capacitación Integral – Universidad de la Tierra (CIDECI-Unitierra) is an indigenous education and documentation centre based in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. It operates in close alignment with the Zapatista autonomous communities and serves as the primary hub for the Zapatista Escuelitas (Little Schools) — structured learning exchanges in which participants live with Zapatista families and study the autonomous governance system directly.

CIDECI-Unitierra is one of the few open points of contact between the Zapatista governance experiment and outside researchers, journalists, and solidarity visitors. It hosts seminars, publishes documentation on autonomous governance, and provides a space where the governance theory of mandar obedeciendo (governing by obeying) is articulated and debated with external interlocutors.

The governance model it documents

The Zapatista Juntas de Buen Gobierno (Good Government Councils, JBG) have operated since 2003 across five caracoles (autonomous community clusters) in Chiapas. Key features:

  • Mandar obedeciendo — authority flows upward from communities; leaders are mandated delegates, not representatives with independent authority
  • Rotation and recall — council membership rotates; communities can recall delegates
  • Gender parity — mandatory co-representation at all levels
  • Economic redistribution — councils administer community development funds with direct accountability to the base
  • Non-participation in state elections — the autonomous communities have rejected electoral participation as a form of state capture since the late 1990s

The model draws on Mayan community governance traditions and has been in continuous operation for over 20 years — one of the longest-running non-statist democratic governance experiments with longitudinal academic study. It directly influenced the development of democratic confederalism in Rojava; Abdullah Öcalan cited the Zapatistas in his prison writings.

See also