RESISTANT OFFENSIVE NETWAR

Pro-active resistance on the Internet includes Internet discussion groups, listservers, and webpages. These can be used merely as a means to disseminate information or as organizing tools to build resistance networks in cyberspace. Accion Zapatista, a pro-Zapatista group in Austin, Texas, has its own internal Internet discussion group to continue weekly meetings on line. AZ also administers a webpage that includes EZLN documents and hotlinks to other related webpages. Members of AZ also manage a larger listserver called Chiapas '95, which distributes Chiapas related news from Mexican newspapers (La Jornada, The News), English language sources (New York Times, AP, Reuters), Mexican human rights organizations, and other NGO sources within Mexico and in other countries.

Among the more recent developments is the establishment of webpages based around the Fourth Declaration of La Realidad for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, an EZLN document issued in January that calls for an International Gathering in Chiapas from July 27 to August 3, 1996. Webpages specifically representing this gathering have been established in Berlin and at McGill University in Montreal.

Illegal means of cyberspace resistance include computer hacking and other forms of cyber-tage (sabotage in cyberspace) that involves breaking in to computer systems to transfer, eliminate or corrupt information.

The pro-Zapatista use of Internet and cyberspace, and the subsequent international solidarity generated, has been credited as one reason why the Mexican armed forces have not eliminated the EZLN. (Cleaver, 1995; Halleck, 1995; Robberson, 1995)