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Since the Zapatista uprising in 1994, Indigenous communities in Chiapas have built their own forms of political, social, and economic organization within autonomous territories. These experiences have been a local response to state violence and neoliberalism, while also becoming a source of inspiration for social movements and transformative initiatives around the world.

In this work, we analyze how Zapatista autonomy is built and sustained through networks of economic solidarity, with a particular focus on coffee production and distribution. Based on several periods of fieldwork carried out between Europe and Chiapas over the course of several years, we explore how Zapatista peasants and European activist collectives weave relationships that go beyond conventional markets and state institutions. The solidarity trade in Zapatista coffee is not merely an economic activity: it is a form of everyday political practice. Through this transnational network, Zapatista communities seek to materially sustain their autonomy, while European collectives participate as part of a broader anti-capitalist project. These relationships are not free from tensions, contradictions, and limitations, but it is precisely through these frictions that autonomy becomes visible as something relational and situated.

The article proposes rethinking the concept of “informality”, which is often associated with precarity or a lack of organization. In the Zapatista case, many economic practices that fall outside state regulation are part of a solid and collective political infrastructure aimed at resisting neoliberal logics and defending specific ways of life. This perspective allows us to challenge views that reduce resistance to invisible acts or to mere survival strategies without a political project. Through a dialogue between Marxist anthropology and decolonial thought, this study shows that contemporary anti-capitalist resistances cannot be understood solely through Western categories or as closed alternatives.

The solidarity networks surrounding Zapatista coffee reveal forms of organization that combine everyday struggle, political imagination, and transnational alliances, opening up other ways of thinking about economy, power, and collective life.