We have already been through the horrors of a Third World War. Today we are in the Fourth, and if we are to stop this war, we need to know what we are fighting, or rather, what is fighting us. To better understand this moment, we turn to theory from below from those who know about war: our Maya elders, the Zapatista Army for National Liberation, the EZLN. The Maya rebel communities in Chiapas have been not only living under conditions of war for more than 500 years, they have also been theorizing about WWIV since it began with the fall of the Soviet Union and the so-called "triump" of capital. The seven communiques in this book are only a small number of the many writings the EZLN offers us on war and struggle, spanning from 1997 when they introduced their theorizations on WWVI, to 2023 in the context of the genocides before us in Palestine, Congo, Sudan, and the intensified violences across many more geographies: Chiapas, Haiti, Rojava, Syria, Artsakh, Iran... a a geography and calendar of war as unbearable as it is endless. As this exceptional moment unmasks the fallacy of exceptionalism, we are certain of one thing: the world History we have been told is a lie, and we will not allow any more lies. What we are witnessing is reality, "the harshest of all judges," as the Zapatistas put it. It is reality that every day testifies to the fact that we are already in a world war, a global war, a truly total war where the enemy is life, where the enemy is all who stand in the way of capital, where the enemy is us for simply being us.
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Ya hemos pasado por los horrores de una Tercera Guerra Mundial. Hoy estamos en la Cuarta, y si queremos detener esta guerra, necesitamos saber contra qué estamos luchando, o mejor dicho, qué es lo que nos está matando. Para comprender mejor este momento, recurramos a la teoría desde abajo de quienes saben de la guerra: nuestros mayores mayas del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, el EZLN. Las comunidades rebeldes mayas en Chiapas no sólo han estado viviendo en condiciones de guerra durante más de 500 años, sino que también han estado teorizando sobre la IV Guerra Mundial desde que comenzó con la caída de la Unión Soviética y el llamado "triunfo" del capital. Los siete comunicados de este libro son sólo una pequeña cantidad de los muchos escritos que el EZLN nos ofrece sobre la guerra y la lucha, abarcando desde 1997 cuando introdujeron sus teorizaciones sobre la VI Guerra Mundial, hasta 2023 en el contexto de l