Notes from a Visit to Several Zapatista Communities: Toward Practices of Nomadic Identity and Hybridity

Reflections on meeting members of the Zapatista movement and visiting two Zapatista autonomous zones in Chiapas, Mexico inform
an American liberation psychologist’s reflections on how to engage psychology students (and herself) in community and ecological
fieldwork, community practice, and participatory research. The importance of community psychologists’ exploration of their
own subjectivity as they encounter communities outside their own is underlined, as is critical inquiry on the impact of our
social locations on the communities with whom we partner. Zapatistas’ conceptualization of autonomous zones where people can
work together to create forms of shared leadership, decision-making through consensus, communal economics, empowerment of
women, and liberatory arts and education inspire the creation of public homeplaces throughout the world.