The Rise and Fall of Diplomacy from Below: The Rebel Cooperation of Ya Basta!

ABSTRACT

Under what conditions are radical alternatives to state-led diplomacy feasible? Diplomatic studies have so far denied attention to those diplomatic practices taking place without national mediation. Building on the concept of diplomacy from below (DFB), the article aims to understand under what conditions this newly theorised form of alternative diplomacy is possible in contexts of armed violence. To do so, we present the case of the diplomatic action of the (post)autonomist Association Ya Basta! between 1997 and 2004. The study adopts an interpretivist approach, reconstructing activists’ stories along four conflict scenarios (Mexico, Palestine, Colombia, and Iraq). The empirical analysis allowed for formulating a “working hypothesis” according to which DFB is feasible only among groups sharing an ideological background and under minimum-security conditions for freedom of movement and physical integrity. The paper innovates debates on (para)diplomacy and opens a new research agenda on diplomatic interactions between subaltern groups in (post)conflict scenarios.

KEYWORDS:

• Diplomacy from below
• subaltern
• international cooperation
• peace-making
• social movements

Acknowledgements

A previous version of this paper was presented at the SISP (Italian Political Science Association) annual convention in September 2022. We are grateful for the support received from the staff of the Sistema Nacional de Investigación of the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia of Mexico and the Universidad Autónoma of the State of Quintana Roo in the development of this research. Moreover, we would like to thank Fabrizio Coticchia and Emidio Diodato for their valuable guidance in the drafting of the manuscript. Finally, we are especially thankful to the editor, and the anonymous peer reviewers for their very useful comments and suggestions, which contributed to substantially improving the paper. All errors and omissions remain our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 References to the websites have been reduced using the URLShortner extention of the Firefox web browser.

2 The full name is Ya Basta! Per la Dignità dei Popoli e contro il neoliberismo (Ya Basta! For the Dignity of Peoples and against Neo-Liberalism).

3 The concept of theoretical practice was borrowed from the political and philosophical tradition of the so-called Italian Theory and circulated among activists and intellectuals of the Italian antagonistic movements without ever being adequately defined. The expression “Italian Theory” or “Italian Thought”, refers to classical political philosophers such as Machiavelli, Vico and Bruno, and a more recent group of activists and scholars from the 1970s. (Esposito 2010, 12; Marchesi 2017, 510–511).

4 See Montville (1991), Lederach (1997), Mapendere (2000), Wehrenfennig (2008); Sharp (2009), Diamond and McDonald (2013). Some relevant exceptions can be found in the study of diplomatic activities by individuals and private groups outside the governmental umbrella (eg the case of the Community of Sant’Egidio), see Haynes (2009) and Bonini (2008).

5 For a definition and classification of the types of violence, see Galtung (1969).

6 For a detailed definition of “conflict”, please refer to Wallensteen and Karin (1993); Sambanis (2004).

7 “A form of resistance capable of producing an attack against the established order” (D’Avossa 2002, 156).

8 Opondo (2012) expands on Constantinou’s concept by breaking it down into two dimensions: moralising/consensual and ethological/dissensual.

9 See also Díaz Martínez and Chacón Cancino (2010).

10 In this regard, for example, see the studies by Keck and Sikkink (1999) and Carpenter (2007) on Transnational Advocacy Networks.

11 Initially, the author uses a similar concept of “elective affinity”.

12 Social centres (CSOA) are self-managed spaces by left-wing political groups. They are the product of the evolution of autonomism in the 1970s. Significant examples include CSOA Leoncavallo in Milan, CSOA Rivolta in Venice, and CSOA Askatasuna in Turin.

13 The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) is a political and militant group that controls a substantial amount of territory in Chiapas, a Mexican state. Since 1994, the group has been nominally at war with the Mexican state.

14 Documents consulted included: press articles, academic publications, reports from the field, memorandums, multimedia materials, etc. In the article, references to the Ya Basta! archive are reported as follows: (Ya Basta! – year of the document).

15 Interviews were conducted between 2017 and 2018. See the Annex.

16 The autonomist movement in Italy, to which Ya Basta! belongs traditionally gravitated around three centres of political activities in Padua, Bologna and Rome. An anarchic-libertarian approach inspires activists from Bologna. Activists from Padua and Rome are positioned within the tradition of operaismo. The fragmentation of the Italian autonomist movement made it difficult to establish contacts with activists in the capital, so we conducted only one interview with a Roman activist.

17 “Walk while asking” and “command while obeying”.

18 See: t.ly/HAYC.

19 Social center activists found significant institutional leverage in former Mayor of Venice Massimo Cacciari and former Deputy Mayor Gianfranco Bettin. The Zapatistas were in Venice between 12 and 14 September 1997, participating in various activities with civil society and political leaders.

20 Ya Basta! run other cooperation projects in Chiapas from 1997 to 2004, such as the Café Rebelde Zapatista and the educational project for the Rebel Secondary School of Oventic. See: t.ly/cB17 ; t.ly/i8qF; t.ly/DAPI9.

21 See: Informe de la Comisión Civil Internacional de Observacion por los Derechos Humanos, Chiapas-México 15–25 November, 1999. Available at: t.ly/NsF2.

22 The previous year the first president of the National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional-PAN), Vicente Fox, won the elections.

23 One of the most emblematic examples of international paralysis has been the impossibility of deploying a U.N. observer mission due to the veto expressed by the United States in the Security Council, against nine votes in favor and four abstentions on 27 March 2001.

24 The white overalls (tute bianche) acquired prominence after their spokesman Casarini, accompanied by a group of activists wearing white overalls and balaclavas, provocatively read out a “declaration of war against the global powers” and announced their intention to penetrate the red zone during the G8 summit of Genoa, 2001. See Albertani (2002).

25 One of the authors was part of the group.

26 At Kahn Yunis, while attempting a short symbolic march towards an Israeli settlement blocking access to the sea for the inhabitants of the area, the Italians were pelted with stones thrown by Palestinians shouting their support for Hamas (Ya Basta! 2002).

27 “The international platform ‘Action for Peace’ is the way Ya Basta! came to Palestine” (Varotto 2017). Action for Peace was an international network of organizations and individuals supporting the Palestinian cause.

28 Including Luisa Morgantini, a former Member of the European Parliament.

29 I.e., dismantling checkpoints, hoisting the Palestinian flag at symbolic locations, physical interposition between the army and Palestinian civilian targets, and opening direct information channels on Israeli army abuses.

30 “The trip to Palestine allowed me to understand the condition of apartheid experienced by my peers in East Jerusalem” (Interview with Riccardo Varotto).

31 Photographer since the 1960s.

32 One of the authors entered Ramallah with this delegation.

33 Former Member of the European Parliament with the European Green Party.

34 The delegation had a high media impact in the country, thanks to the presence of Grazia Francescato, former president of the Italian Green Party.

35 U'wa’s ancestral territory is between Boyacá and Arauca's departments in the Colombian Orinoquia.

36 One of the authors took part in it.

37 According to Colombian law (Decree 1071/2015), the purpose of the Cabildo is to “legally represent the community, exercise authority and carry out the activities attributed to them by law, their uses, customs and the internal regulations of each community”.

38 See Masullo (2017).

39 Filippo refers especially to the very vivid memory among Paduan activists of the death of Giacomo Turra, a student from Padua who was beaten to death by Colombian police officers in Cartagena on 4 September 1995. This tragedy contributed significantly to the country’s insecurity stigma.

40 Although Colombia is generally classified as a Low Intensity Conflict (Wallensteen and Axell 1993), in specific areas of the country the level of violence resembles that of high-intensity armed conflicts (Riccardi and Taborda 2015).

41 A network of Italian left-wing Associations and activists’ groups, called Caravan for Rojava, supported the fight and self-governance of rebel Kurdish communities in Northern Syria between 2015 and 2016. See t.ly/1zW7.

42 The left-wing community Ukraine’s Social Movement (Sotsialnyi Rukh) since 2015 is trying to create a “platform for European Left Solidarity”, connecting different initiatives within the country and abroad: see: t.ly/nHRG.