Adolfo Gilly

From Argentina to a Mexican jail, via the 1968 movement, this man settled in Mexico. Gilly is a gifted intellectual. Recently I read in the Mexico City newspaper I read an incisive article on Mexican social movements. At the same time I am reading Francisco Varela´s ideas on autopoiesis. Here I try to put them together.

Gilly writes that the Zapatista movement in Chiapas learned from the earlier Zapatista movement in the 1910 Revolution. The fact that the first happened in the State of Morelos, and the second further south in Chiapas, does not change the deep Indian roots of both movements.

Varela championed the idea of his teacher Humberto Maturana, both from Chile, that autonomy is a basic property of life. This characteristic is not incidental, nor accidental, they claim is intrinsic to life. Here I write what I have understood so far.

The third rock from the Sun in the Solar System, is an autonoumous system, in important respects. Once it gets its very small entropy from the Sun, its flux of Energy, and who knows what else. Earth just takes off and becomes Gaia, as James Lovelock taught us many years ago.

Inside the biosphere then, we get layers and layers of autonomous objects; just to finish my point. One of these objects is the creature writing this for your enjoyment.