Manifesto from GIAZ — Gruppo Informale di Acquisto Zapatista
Zapatista Informal Purchasing Group

Who are we?

We are a Zapatista informal purchasing group: we order products collectively, but we are not one of those Ethical Purchasing Groups.

The dissatisfaction for what’s already there pushes us toward something different, we want to bring our choices beyond the limits given by the ordinary, because “searching for the impossible, human beings have always manifested and discovered what was possible, the ones who wisely limited themselves to what seemed possible never advanced one single step”.

The right to healthy and organic food for everybody is a project to put into practice, not a mere statement of principle. We are open, anti-capitalist, aware that the conflict exists in this society and that so far conflict has been mostly exercised by the dominant classes. We chose to include zapatismo in our name to bring back in the discourse those practices that in Chiapas have proven that capitalism can be eluded through the creation of a Community in resistance, one that decides collectively, self-determines itself and self-governs itself. GIAZ refuses the masses that negate the existence of any conflict, we refuse habit! We are not looking for reassurances in conformism, we fight against anybody protecting the status quo and we are not afraid of change. We look for a new language, a plastic one, one that is in constant evolution cause the market can steal words from us, but the principles are and will always be Ours. We know that our goal is not a “good” capitalism, a system of domination sweetened through an economy, be that “green” or “ethical”, that is essentially fake. We refuse hierarchies and the pursuit of power, we hold assemblies, formal and informal, in which we take decisions in a horizontal way, the need for an awareness and a knowledge shared by everybody is a foundational and necessary element.

Why do we this?

Ours is a big bet: we want to support and plant more seeds of small post-capitalist communities. We love opening “cracks” in which to sow the seed of solidarity and mutual aid, while contributing to the collapse of the exploiters’ fortress. The utopia we cultivate is that ofa model that is “other” (capitalism is not the only possible economic system) and the attempt is that of throwing seeds for a future harvest. After one harvest, another one will come.

We strongly believe that the zapatistas are an example of a people that is oppressed but full of dignity, the evidence that a different world is just as possible in Chiapas as in Italy. Sure, we are not building schools or hospitals, but we are running the people’s emporium at the anarchist center Berneri, distributing, without additional costs, coffee chosen and imported following real criterias of solidarity and support to the producing communities, roasted and distributed by an anarchist cooperative, sugar coming from the Landless’ Workers Movement of Brazil, rice grown in a family-run farm from fields nearby, oranges coming from collectives in struggle in the South of Italy that respect land and workers while refusing dynamics of “criminal exploitation”, self-produced tomato sauce, pasta and soaps produced in bankrupt factories that have been occupied and restarted by the workers themselves, and so much more. We stand behind the protests of the food delivery riders, the revolts of the (migrant and Italian) land workers, the resistance of those squatting for the right to housing. In solidarity with the oppressed and accomplice with those in riot. In solidarity with the youth, to whom this society is leaving no future. Dancing, laughing and mocking power but carrying always in us the joyful rage of the wretched of this world. We want to get our hands dirty, participating and proposing actively, without any delegation. Because it’s the right thing to do and it’s necessary to try it.