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The Chiapas uprising of 1994: Historical antecedents and
politicalconsequencesSarah Washbrook
To cite this Article Washbrook, Sarah(2005) 'The Chiapas
uprising of 1994: Historical antecedents and
politicalconsequences', Journal of Peasant Studies, 32: 3, 417
449To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/03066150500266778URL:
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Introduction
The Chiapas Uprising of 1994: HistoricalAntecedents and
Political Consequences
SARAH WASHBROOK
This introduction examines the historical background and
political
consequences of the 1994 armed uprising by the Ejercito
Zapatista
de Liberacion Nacional (EZLN) in the Mexican state of Chiapas.
It
begins by presenting a chronology of events, and charting some
of
the impacts of the uprising on democratization and the rights
of
indigenous peoples and women in Mexico. This is followed by
an
examination of the debate concerning the origins and nature of
the
EZLN itself. Also considered are the agrarian reform, state
formation, economic crisis and political and religious change
in
Chiapas over the period 19202004. The nal section looks
briey
at some of the consequences of the rebellion of 1994, which
reignited and intensied many of the pre-existing social and
political conicts in the state.
INTRODUCTION
On 1 January 1994, the day that the North American Free Trade
Agreement
(NAFTA) between Mexico, Canada and the United States1 came into
effect,
the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), declared war
on the
Mexican government and seized four municipalities in the
southern state of
Chiapas.2 Within ten days of combat the federal army had
regained control;
however, instead of annihilating the rebel army, the fate of
similar guerrilla
movements in Mexico in the post-1968 era,3 under the pressure of
Mexican
and international public opinion, President Carlos Salinas de
Gortari of
the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)4 called a
unilateral truce
on 12 January 1994. In the years that followed, the EZLN became
an
Sarah Washbrook, St. Anthonys College, Oxford.
The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol.32, Nos.3&4,
July/October 2005, pp.417449ISSN 0306-6150 print/1743-9523
onlineDOI: 10.1080/03066150500266778 2005 Taylor & Francis
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important force in Mexican politics, criticizing the
authoritarian regime and
its neo-liberal economic policies and contributing to
anti-globalization
campaigns and movements for greater democratization and the
rights of
women and indigenous peoples, both nationally and
internationally. Part of
the reason for the success of the EZLN lay in its skilful
manipulation of the
media, particularly the internet, and the timing of its
appearance when
Mexican society was still reeling from structural adjustment and
increasingly
demanding electoral reform and greater democratic
accountability.
This special issue of The Journal of Peasant Studies seeks to
examine
some of the social, economic and political consequences of the
armed
uprising of 1994 and to analyse the phenomenon of Zapatismo in
light of the
changes that have taken place in Chiapas and Mexico more broadly
during
the last ten years. Three of the most salient consequences of
the uprising of
1994 have been its impact on governability and the rural economy
in Chiapas
(addressed in this edition by contributions by Neil Harvey,
Marco Estrada
Saavedra, Heidi Mosknes, Daniel Villafuerte and Gemma van der
Haar);
democratization in Mexico (examined by George and Jane Collier
and
Antonio Garca de Leon); and the rights of indigenous people and
women in
Mexico (see the contributions by Xochitl Leyva Solano and
Mercedes
Oliveira respectively). A nal contribution (by Tom Brass)
locates their
ndings in the broader context of debates about nationalism and
the
peasantry. As will become apparent, there is disagreement among
all these
contributors as to the nature of the EZLN and its impact on
politics and
society in Mexico since 1994.
In this introduction I will survey the historical and political
background to
the uprising and set out the terms of the debate by examining ve
areas of
interest: rst, the political events following the uprising in
January 1994;
second, the debate concerning the origins and nature of the EZLN
itself;
third, the link between economic crisis and political and
religious changes
in Chiapas between 1970 and 2004; fourth, agrarian reform and
state
formation in the post-revolutionary era, covering the 192094
period; and
fth, some of the social and political consequences of the
uprising of 1994 in
Chiapas.
I
THE POLITICAL EVENTS OF 1994 AND AFTER
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari came to power in 1988 amidst
widespread
claims of electoral fraud. In the context of economic crisis and
structural
adjustment that followed Mexicos Debt Crisis of 1982 a large
number of
voters rejected the ruling PRI and voted instead for a leftist
alliance led by
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Cuahtemoc Cardenas, ironically the son of President Lazaro
Cardenas, who
had founded the PRM, a precursor to the PRI, in 1938. However,
the
computers collating the electoral results crashed just as it was
becoming
apparent that Cardenas might win, and the nal result showed a
resounding
victory for Salinas. During his period in ofce President Salinas
extended and
deepened the neo-liberal economic reforms that had begun during
the
presidency of Miguel de la Madrid (198288).
However, by 1994 Mexicos political system was beginning to
crack. Two
months after the Zapatista uprising, in March 1994, the PRIs
presidential
candidate, Luis Donaldo Colossio was shot dead, and in September
1994 the
secretary-general of the PRI, Jose Francisco Ruiz Masseau, was
also
assassinated. Nevertheless, the PRIs replacement presidential
candidate in
July 1994, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, emerged triumphant. In
Chiapas,
Eduardo Robledo Rincon of the PRI won the gubernatorial
elections of
August 1994 amid much controversy. The opposition candidate
Amador
Avendano of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which
was
founded by Cuahtemoc Cardenas after his defeat in 1988, refused
to accept
the results, and a short-lived parallel government was
inaugurated with
support of the states popular organizations.
In December 1995 the Mexican economy was wracked by the peso
crisis,
when the national currency lost half its value overnight,
reducing both the
ability of the middle class to repay dollar-denominated debts
and the
purchasing power of the poor [Rus, Hernandez Castillo and
Mattiace, 2003:
16]. In the following years, President Zedillo instituted
electoral reform and
worked to modernize and democratize both Mexico and the PRI. In
the
1997 National Congress elections the PRI lost its majority in
the lower
house for the rst time, although it remained the largest party,
and in 1999
the PRI broke with the tradition of having presidents pick their
own
successors and held its rst presidential primary. Then, in the
presidential
elections of July 2000, the PRI candidate, Francisco Labastida
Ochoa,
lost to Vicente Fox Quesada of the National Action Party (PAN),
ending
more than 70 years of one-party rule. Less than two months later
the
PRI candidate for the governorship of Chiapas was defeated by
Pablo
Salazar Mendigucha, who was backed by an alliance of eight
opposition
parties.
Despite the ceasere of January 1994, from December 1994 to
February
1995, the territory at least partially under EZLN control grew
from four
municipalities to 38 as many towns and hamlets declared
themselves free
from the control of the ofcial municipal authorities. In
February 1995 the
government, presided over by Ernesto Zedillo, broke the ceasere
and tried to
capture the EZLN high command. Although unsuccessful in its
declared
objective, the army retook large areas of area controlled by the
Zapatistas
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[Rus, Hernandez Castillo and Mattiace, 2003: 1617]. In October
1995
negotiations began between the federal government and the EZLN
in the
small indigenous village of San Andres Larrainzar (renamed San
Andres
Sacamchen de los Pobres by the Zapatistas) near the city of San
Cristobal de
Las Casas. Four themes were scheduled for discussion, but only
the rst, on
Indigenous Rights and Culture, made it to the negotiating table.
An
agreement was signed between the government and the EZLN in
February
1996, which became known as the San Andres Accords. But the
EZLN
unilaterally pulled out of the negotiations soon afterwards,
claiming
dissatisfaction with the implementation of the agreements.
During the period of negotiations overt military actions were
put on hold,
but there was a strong military presence in the central and
eastern regions of
state and a build-up of tension from late summer 1994 as local
political
bosses (caciques) associated with the PRI began arming
paramilitary groups.5
From 1996 the federal government stepped up its strategy of
counter-
insurgency through increased military pressure and programmes of
government
assistance designed to divide and co-opt communities in regions
of Zapatista
inuence and control [Rus, Hernandez Castillo and Mattiace, 2003:
1819].
In many parts of Chiapas the result of the conict between the
EZLN and the
government was growing levels of poverty and intra-communal
violence.
Policies of repression and paternalism in the wake of the
breakdown of
negotiations culminated in the Acteal massacre of December 1997,
in which a
group of paramilitaries associated with the local PRI entered a
chapel in the
small hamlet of Acteal in the municipality of San Pedro Chenalho
in
Chiapass central highlands, and massacred 13 men and 32 women,
members
of Las Abejas (the bees) an indigenous non-governmental human
rights
organization, who were praying at the time (see Heidi Mosknes,
this volume).
Although tensions in Chiapas eased after Acteal, inter and
intra-communal
conict and violence have continued to be one of the most tragic
legacies of
the uprising of 1994 [Rus, Hernandez Castillo and Mattiace,
2003: 20].
Following the victory of Vincente Fox in 2000 the military
presence was
signicantly scaled down and the federal government began to seek
new
solutions to the conict in Chiapas.
After 1994 the EZLN became increasingly identied with the
movement
for indigenous rights in Mexico (see Xochitl Leyva Solano, this
volume). For
example, in January 1996, while discussions on Indigenous Rights
and
Culture were taking place in San Andres, a National Indian Forum
was
convened, organized and presided over by Zapatista commanders
and
moderated by EZLN advisors in nearby San Cristobal de las Casas.
The
forum attracted a large national and international turnout,
including numerous
indigenous representatives and activists from Mexico and other
parts of Latin
America [Rus, Hernandez Castillo and Mattiace, 2003: 17]. In
December
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1996 the government announced that signicant parts of the
constitutional
reform, based on the San Andres Accords of February 1996, and
put forward
by COCOPA (Comision de Concordia y Pacicacion), a mediating
body
made up of congressional members of Mexicos main four political
parties,
was unconstitutional. The government was particularly unhappy
with parts of
the reform referring to administrative autonomy for indigenous
peoples [Rus,
Hernandez Castillo and Mattiace, 2003: 19].
After President Fox took power in December 2000 he sent
COCOPAs
proposal for constitutional reform to the Senate and the
Zapatistas and
members of Mexicos Indian National Congress (CNI) organized a
march for
Indian rights to Mexico City in its support. However, the
proposal was
signicantly watered down by the Senate, and the new version,
which
reduced the scope of Indian autonomy, was publicly rejected by
the EZLN,
COCOPA, and the CNI (see Xochitl Leyva Solano, this volume).
Despite
opposition from Indian organizations, the law was passed by the
Senate on 25
April 2001 and three days later was accepted by the National
Congress. It
became law in August 2001 [Rus, Hernandez Castillo and Mattiace,
2003:
22]. Since the defeat of the PRI in the presidential elections
of 2000 and the
passing of the indigenous law of 2001 the EZLN has become less
important
on Mexicos political agenda and lost much popular support.
Nevertheless,
the EZLN remains of relevance for understanding current social
and political
events in Chiapas.
I I
WHAT IS THE EZLN? INTERPRETING THE CAUSES
AND CONSEQUENCES OF REBELLION
Since 1994 the EZLN has often been presented (and presented
itself) in the
media, as a new social movement, which, in contrast to the
vanguard parties
and class-based social movements of the past, draws its support
from the
grassroots participation of civil society and aims to advance
democracy and
identity-based claims such as the rights of women and indigenous
peoples.
Yet, even though it is in those areas that the EZLN has had its
greatest impact
at the national and international level, many analysts believe
that such an
image does not accurately reect the origins and concrete
political aims of the
organization. Instead, they link the emergence of Zapatismo in
Chiapas to
class-based demands for social justice in the form of peasant
political
organizing from the 1970s onwards. Most obviously, the EZLN
takes its
name from the greatest peasant leader, and socially the most
radical gure, of
the Mexican Revolution, Emiliano Zapata, and in 1994 the
organizations
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principal social base was among peasant cultivators located in
the Lacandon
region of north-eastern Chiapas.
However, while analysts familiar with Chiapass social and
political
history agree that the EZLN cannot be separated from traditional
class-
based politics, they disagree substantially over the exact
nature and origins of
the EZLN, and this disagreement inuences interpretations of the
causes and
consequences of the armed rebellion of 1994. As Neil Harvey
[1998: 89]
points out, two currents of opinion have developed. The rst,
usually
associated with anthropologists who have long experience in the
eld, sees
the uprising as resulting from a combination of ecological and
economic
crisis, the lack of access to resources, the political and
religious
reorganization of indigenous communities from the 1960s, and
the
emergence of an increasingly politicized discourse of ethnic
identity, all of
which were exacerbated by neo-liberal structural reforms in the
late 1980s
and early 1990s. The causes are thus basically internal,
historical and socio-
economic.
Other authors, who constitute the second current of opinion, are
less
convinced that regional social grievances alone were responsible
for the
rebellion and argue instead that outside activists with roots in
the Marxist
Left of the 1970s manipulated Indians in Chiapas for their own
political
objectives. For example, Carlos Tello Daz [1995] argues that the
EZLN
was formed out of the association of revolutionary leftist
groups with
workers of the Catholic diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas.
He therefore
considers that the EZLNs socialist origins are a truer reection
of the
organizations nature than its outward discourse of democracy and
freedom.
The reasons for the disagreement between authors are partly
political and
epistemological and partly due to the shifting nature of the
EZLN itself.
Below I will examine in greater depth the diverging
interpretations given by
Neil Harvey [1998] and Pedro Pitarch [2004a] concerning these
issues, both
of which throw light on the emergence of the EZLN in 1994 and
its
subsequent development.
Neil Harvey asserts that in 1994 the EZLN was not a small band
of
guerrillas hoping to incite a popular uprising. Rather it was a
well-organized
indigenous army with a mass base of support [Harvey, 1998: 3].
While he
does not dispute that the founders of the EZLN, originally known
as the FLN
(Forces of National Liberation), were leftist urban guerrillas
from central and
northern Mexico, he emphasizes the consensual nature of the
relationship
between the outsiders and independent peasant organizations in
northern and
eastern Chiapas, which constitute the forerunners of the EZLN.6
According
to Harvey the small group of guerrillas avoided imposing yet
another
political line or ideology on the indigenous communities.
Instead they
attracted recruits because, many of these communities were tired
of failure,
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manipulation, leadership rivalries, and ideological disputes.
More important
they were tired of living in the same poverty and of facing the
same
repression as had existed prior to their organisational efforts
of the 1970s
[Harvey, 1998: 164]. Regarding the origin of the EZLN, Harvey
recounts a
version given by Subcommandante Marcos, the organizations
spokesperson,
according to which the formation of the EZLN in 1983 was a
spontaneous
response to the local level repression of independent peasant
organizations by
members of the ofcial National Peasant Confederation (CNC),
endorsed by
the state government.
The movement, then, was not born as a guerrilla movement with a
clear
revolutionary strategy for taking power, but as a regional
network of
armed self-defence movements. In terms of ideology, Marcoss
Marxist
beliefs were transformed by contact with indigenous cultural
practices
and beliefs, giving rise to the generation of a new political
discourse.
Similarly the guerrillas vertical structures of command were
transformed by
exposure to the communities practices of collective
decision-making
[Harvey, 1998: 1657]. As a consequence, in 1994, the EZLN was a
new
type of political organisation with a collective leadership that
transcended the
caudillismo typical of armed rural movements of Mexicos past
[Harvey,
1998: 7].
According to Harvey, the independent peasant organizations
that
developed in Chiapas in the 1970s became united by their
opposition to
rural bossism or caciquismo, the product of a pattern of
clientelistic control,
which became institutionalized in the post-revolutionary period
[Harvey,
1998: 36]. As a result, the struggle for land reform in Chiapas
developed into
a struggle for civil rights and the democratization of the
political system
[Harvey, 1998: 199200]. Yet, the struggle went beyond demanding
the
individual rights promised by the constitution, to advocating
collective rights,
such as those of women and indigenous peoples. Consequently, he
considers
that the Chiapas rebellion can be seen not only as a clear break
with the
corporate citizenship of the Mexican State but also as a
critique of narrow
versions of democratic citizenship. The Zapatistas not only
exposed the gaps
between liberal ideals and the daily reality for most Mexicans;
they opened
up the possibility for a more radical understanding of
citizenship and
democracy [Harvey, 1998: 12].
Pedro Pitarch presents a radically different picture of the
EZLN. According
to him, despite its pro-democracy and pro-human rights public
image, the
EZLN remains, essentially, an authoritarian and hierarchical
organization
designed to seize power by non-democratic means. He insists that
Marcos
and the high command of the EZLN are professional
revolutionaries who
projected their own interests and political strategies onto the
indigenous
population and made it appear that they were the origin of the
EZLNs
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opinions, regarding, for example, NAFTA and neo-liberalism. They
thereby
gained strong symbolic capital, while beneath it all they
remained committed
orthodox Marxists with the goal of undermining the Mexican State
[Pitarch,
2004a: 109, 115, 122]. Following Tello Daz, Pitarch states that
until 1
January the EZLN dened itself in terms of an armed
revolutionary
movement of the left: a vanguard group that aimed to seize state
power and
install a socialist regime. However, shortly after the armed
uprising of
January 1994, the Zapatistas presented themselves as an ethnic
movement,
which sought to defend the culture and tradition of indigenous
peoples and
advance their human rights. This strategic shift from orthodox
Marxism to
identity politics was very successful and the EZLN gained
massive popular
support throughout Mexico and the world.
To support his argument Pitarch traces the changing discourse of
the
EZLN from the Jungle Declaration of 1 January 1994, the document
by
which the EZLN rst addressed the Mexican public, to the
constitutional
reform of 2001 and after. He illustrates that by January 1994
the
organizations previous Marxist-Leninist discourse of
revolutionary armed
struggle had been replaced by the nationalist rhetoric of the
Mexican
Revolution. The Declaration portrayed the uprising as a struggle
against an
illegitimate government that had betrayed the Revolution and
sold out to
foreign interests. It included demands for democracy, justice,
freedom,
education, healthcare, work, land; but did not contain any
discourse of
identity. In addition, its terms of reference were drawn from an
interpretation
of national history that had a paradoxical, ambivalent, and, at
times,
conictive relationship to the historical experiences of Mexicos
indigenous
peoples.
Furthermore, among the revolutionary laws promulgated by the
EZLN in
the months following the uprising, there was no law of
indigenous rights
[Pitarch, 2004a: 959]. It was not until 1995, during
negotiations with the
government at San Andres, that the EZLN developed a programme
of
indigenous rights, and even then, Pitarch contends, the
discourse of political
autonomy, which became the centrepiece of the Zapatista project,
came from
academic advisors to the EZLN rather than the movements social
base
[Pitarch, 2004a: 120]. Looking more closely at the EZLN itself,
Pitarch
points out that the high command is composed mainly of mestizos,
and that it
was only a few weeks before the uprising, probably for cosmetic
purposes,
that Subcomandante Marcos created the Clandestine Indigenous
Revolu-
tionary Committee (CCRI), an intermediate tier of civilian
authority, made up
principally of indigenous recruits, still subordinate to the
military command
[Pitarch, 2004a: 107].
Pitarch asserts that the reason for the shift in discourse was
strategic: the
ghting was over quickly; military defeat was inevitable; and the
group had
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nothing to negotiate (its sole aim being to seize state power by
violent
means). As a result, the press became a key weapon and, in a
political context
in which indigenous rights were increasingly on the agenda, the
EZLN began
to engage with identity politics and to invent its own
indigenous mythology,
language and programme of demands. Because of such media
exposure, the
EZLN soon became directly identied with all Chiapass indigenous
people,
despite the great linguistic, social, political and religious
diversity of the
states population [Pitarch, 2004a: 102].7 This change in
strategy provided
the EZLN with much popular legitimacy, although it was
surprising and
paradoxical for Indians in the organizations rank and le who had
been
won over to Marxism-Leninism, identied with a worker-peasant
discourse
and thought they were ghting for socialism (see Pitarch [2004a:
116], and
also Marco Estrada Saavedra, this volume). Yet in the end, the
EZLN, by
being all things to all people, became a movement without a xed
identity or
character, and, after the victory of Vincente Fox in the
presidential elections
of 2000 and the passing of the constitutional reform of 2001,
the organization
was left without space on Mexicos political agenda [Pitarch,
2004a: 110;
1269].
Needless to say, Pitarchs interpretation is controversial.
According to
Harvey, the demands presented by the EZLN in February 1994 in
the rst
negotiations with the government did make reference to
specically
indigenous concerns.8 Additionally, various authors [Mattiace,
2003a,
2003b; Burguete Cal y Mayor, 2003] have pointed out that the
Tojolobal
Indians of Las Margaritas, many of whom came to make up the
social base of
the EZLN, rst developed a politicized ethnic discourse and a
project for
regional autonomy in the late 1980s. Furthermore, even if
Pitarchs
characterization of the EZLNs high command is accurate, it may
be
problematic to reduce the political aims of the movement to an
original
essence or to conceptualize the relationship between the high
command and
the social base as one of straightforward political
manipulation. For, as
Harvey states, the EZLN had strong links to earlier peasant
organizations,
and the political signicance of the uprising was much wider than
the
immediate demands and military resources of the EZLN itself. In
a similar
vein, Sonia Toledo argues that whatever the origin of the EZLN,
in many
respects it appeared to be, in 1994, the armed expression of
deep social
conict. As a result, the declaration of war by the EZLN set off
a resurgence
of the peasant movement throughout the state, expressed in the
seizure of
many lands, and the overthrow of many municipal authorities
[Toledo, 1996:
11]. Yet, Pitarchs arguments are convincing and his position
constitutes an
important point of reference for interpreting the genesis of
Zapatismo and the
causes and consequences of the uprising of 1994 in Chiapas (see
Antonio
Garca de Leon and Marco Estrada Saavedra, this volume).
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I I I
ECONOMIC CRISIS, POLITICAL CONFLICT AND RELIGIOUS
CHANGE, 19702004
While disagreement exists concerning the origins and political
aims of the
EZLN, there is little dispute that during the period 19702000
Chiapas passed
through a period of serious economic crisis, which, directly and
indirectly,
precipitated a political and religious reorganization of rural
society. During
this period, stagnant or falling commodity prices, rising costs
of inputs,
scarce and expensive credit and unfavourable exchange rates for
exporters
contributed to the demise of the plantation economy that had
been established
in Chiapas at the end of the nineteenth century. Many landowners
sold their
properties or, prompted by relatively favourable market
conditions, converted
arable land to cattle pasture. As a result, by the late 1970s
the large-scale
seasonal migration of highland Indian labourers to lowland
coffee plantations
had ended, and the growth of jobs in the primary sector during
the period
198090 was stagnant and fell thereafter.
At the same time, petrol exploration and the construction of
hydroelectric
dams often led to the conscation of land from peasants (most of
whom did
not receive adequate compensation). Both the agricultural
frontier and
agrarian reform reached their limits, and as many as 200,000
Guatemalan
migrants including approximately 80,000 adult men, eeing
repression and
poverty in Guatemala entered Chiapass rural labour market in the
1980s
[Rus, Hernandez Castillo and Mattiace, 2003: 6; Viquiera, 2004].
These
changes were exacerbated by rapid population growth after 1950,
the effects
of which continue to be felt today, despite evidence of a
demographic
revolution in Chiapas from 1990.9 Thus, since the 1970s the
primary sector
has been unable to provide the number of jobs required for the
large and
growing Economically Active Population (EAP) and investment in
other
sectors has been very limited (see Viqueira [2004] and Daniel
Villafuerte
Sols, this volume).
The economic crisis, which has been signicant throughout
Chiapas, has
had different regional expressions and consequences. According
to Jan and
Diane Rus, the percentage of men seasonally migrating from San
Juan
Chamula in the central highlands of Chiapas to coffee
plantations in
Soconusco on the Pacic coast dropped from 40% in 1974 to 11% in
1987.
The increase in Guatemalan migrants in 1983 and the collapse of
coffee
prices of 1987 nally ended seasonal highland migration to
Soconusco, a
process that was established at the end of nineteenth century
and on which the
sustainability of rural community life had come to rely. The
results were an
increase in informal employment, intensive land use,
sharecropping on
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lowland properties, and rising levels of poverty. Diane and Jan
Rus found that
between 1974 and 1998 family corn plots (milpas) became smaller
in size and
were largely farmed by women. The latter were also increasingly
involved in
the production and sale of handicrafts. However, as a result of
very low prices
and the saturation of the market after 1987, handicraft
production has
provided little replacement income (see also Oliveira, this
volume).
In 1998 Diane and Jan Rus found that, in the sample under study,
only
8% of households earned 1.5 times the minimum wage and above;
39% of
households earned less than a quarter of the minimum wage; and
many
families work only for food. When they returned in 2004, they
found that
there had been a very rapid increase in migration to the United
States,
mainly by men and by the most educated and able members of
the
community, who had experience of working outside the community
[Diane
Rus and Jan Rus, 2004]. Since 1994 the situation has not
improved, and the
responses of the rural population have included an increase in
urban
migration, the seizure of the remaining lands in private hands,
and most
notably a rapid rise in long-distance migration (see Villafuerte
Sols, this
volume).
Most of the participants in the Zapatista uprising of 1994 were
Tzeltal,
Tzotzil, Chol and Tojolobal speaking peasants from central and
northern
Chiapas. According to Rus, Hernandez Castillo and Mattiace
[2003: 811]
after 1970 the economic foundation of Chiapass indigenous
societies was
swept away and indigenous people were forced to search for
alternative bases
of community and identity. At the same time, the system of state
corporatism,
rst established by the PRI in the 1930s, collapsed.10 For 40
years peasants
had been co-opted and controlled by ofcial peasant organizations
(most
notably the National Peasant Confederation, the CNC), which
were
dependent on the state and federal governments, and which
provided their
members with resources, such as land, credit and crop subsidies,
in exchange
for political loyalty.
By the mid-1970s state funds began to dry up, and independent
peasant
organizations emerged in Chiapas.11 At the same time, indigenous
peoples
began to struggle against local and regional caciques, including
PRI party
bosses, for control of municipal government. The state and
federal govern-
ments responded with a policy of co-optation and the selective
repression of
peasant and community leaders. However, the fallout of Mexicos
Debt Crisis
of 1982 further weakened the PRI and the ability of the system
of state
corporatism to respond to these new challenges.12 Both Jan Rus
[2004a: 210]
and Neil Harvey [1998: 26] agree that these developments were
part of wider
struggles from 1968 to democratize Mexican society and politics
and
undermine the PRI, which in Chiapas was associated with large
landowners
and Indian and non-Indian (ladino) political bosses.
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In sum, from the 1970s, in a context of economic crisis and
weakening
state corporatism, agrarian struggles and state sanctioned
repression became
increasingly important in constituting the political
consciousness of
indigenous peasants in the area that would later be most
affected by the
Zapatista uprising of 1994. Furthermore, as will be shown below,
many of the
consequences of the uprising, including the seizure of lands,
the rejection of
the Mexican State, and calls for administrative autonomy, can be
conceived
as reactions against corporatism, corruption and the repression
of indepen-
dent peasant organizations in the period 197094.
Religious Change in Chiapas
Another variable which has become increasingly prominent in
political
choices and decisions since 1970, and which has informed both
Zapatista
and non-Zapatista rural community action since 1994, is religion
(see
Moknes, this volume). During the period 19702000 Chiapas
underwent
signicant change in terms of religious afliation. There was a
growth of
Evangelical Protestantism from 5% to 22% of the population, a
fall in
Catholicism from 91% to 65%, and a growth in the proportion of
the
population professing no religion from 3.5% to 12%.13 According
to
Carolina Rivera, Chiapas is now characterized by great religious
pluralism
and fragmentation, with the percentage of each denomination
varying
greatly in and between municipalities. She considers that
Evangelical
groups have been successful because they provide security,
belonging,
fraternity and solidarity, thereby aiding in the construction of
new
communities in a changing world [Rivera, 2004].
After 1970 religious conversion also constituted a political
strategy: by
rejecting the traditional civil-religious indigenous
authorities, who had often
become incorporated into the party-state apparatus (above all in
the central
highlands), converts were expressing their opposition to state
corporatism and
caciquismo. The response in many municipalities, most notably in
Chamula,
was repression. According to Jan Rus, a widespread strategy for
punishing
dissidents became forced exile or expulsion. Thus, he writes, on
the grounds
that they are defending traditional culture, community bosses
and their
henchman allied with the state government and PRI have
threatened, beaten,
raped, burned out, and killed such people, with the purpose of
driving them
from their communities. The state and federal governments . . .
have refused
to intervene . . . claiming that through the 1980s they could
not interfere in
internal community matters out of respect for local culture, and
that
such acts of fanaticism in the 1990s were beyond state control.
By 1997
there were over 30,000 exiles in Chiapas, mainly in the central
highlands, and
a large community of expelled Chamula Protestants resides in San
Cristobal
de Las Casas [Rus, 2004a: 219].
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In Chiapas, as in other parts of Latin America, in the 1960s and
1970s the
Catholic Church became an important force promoting struggles
for land,
social justice, civil rights and the democratization of
political institutions.
Even before Samuel Ruiz Garca, who was named bishop San
Cristobal in
1960, attended the Medelln conference of Latin American Bishops
in 1968,
the diocese had started to create special teams of priests
assigned to
indigenous regions to preach the Word of God. Around 1968 the
diocese
began to promote the preferential option for the poor and to
encourage
reection on the social and political injustices experienced by
the rural
population of Chiapas. At the same time, with the goal of
working within
native customs and traditions so as to bring out the message of
the bible, the
diocese began to prepare young, bilingual and literate
catechists from within
indigenous communities themselves. Consequently, according to
Neil
Harvey, from the 1960s the Catholic Church in Chiapas
contributed to the
emergence of a discourse of liberation struggle and to the
creation of a new
set of community leaders in reconstituted indigenous
communities, above all
in the jungle and a number of lowland regions. The political
outcomes of
these developments were region and community-specic, but in
broad terms,
the Churchs initiatives encouraged greater political
participation and the
genesis and/or revitalization of communal structures of
decision-making and
internal accountability; directly contributed to the emergence
of the
independent peasant movement in the 1970s and 1980s; and also
provided
the organizational and ideological basis for the reinvention of
ethnic
identity [Harvey, 1998: 625].
The clearest link between Liberation Theology, independent
agrarian
organizing, political activism, and the development of a
politicized ethnic
identity is to be found in the Indigenous Conference held in San
Cristobal de
Las Casas in 1974. By 1974 the Church had over 1,000 catechists
in
indigenous zones, including municipalities where the state had a
relatively
weak presence. The governor, Manuel Velaso Suarez, invited the
Bishop of
Chiapas to help organize the conference, which was intended as a
means to
co-opt new indigenous leaders into the expanding state
apparatus. However,
instead of successfully channelling dissent through the
corporate system, the
conference strengthened the opposition movement. The diocese
invited
teachers, students and lawyers to give courses in agrarian law,
history and
economics in preparation for the conference, which provided
many
community leaders with a broader political education. Most
importantly,
for the rst time, activists and leaders from throughout Chiapas
came together
to discuss agrarian and labour issues, education, access to
markets, public
health, and the corruption, arbitrariness and ineptitude of the
political
authorities. Consequently, they found that they had many common
grievances
against the state and resolved to remain independent of the PRI
and the
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patronage that it distributed. According to Harvey, many of the
new
community leaders who attended the conference, and who developed
new
forms of peasant political and economic organizing thereafter,
were
eventually absorbed into the EZLN [Harvey, 1998: 74, 778,
91].
IV
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION AND AGRARIAN REFORM
IN CHIAPAS, 191094
In general schematic terms, Mexico experienced armed revolution
during the
years 1910 to 1920, followed by a period of regime consolidation
and state-
building between 1920 and 1940. Thus, by 1940 most of the
corporate
institutions that allowed the post-revolutionary state to
successfully manage
economic growth and political dissent before 1970 had been
established. As
van der Haar (this volume) shows in following the paradigm of
everyday
forms of state formation developed by Joseph and Nugent [1994],
the
construction of the post-revolutionary state involved processes
of negotiation
as well as repression. In rural Mexico the most important
instrument for
creating a new institutional framework, generating legitimacy,
and establish-
ing a political clientele, was agrarian reform, through which
land was
distributed to peasants in the form of communal land grants
(ejidos).14
In Chiapas, which has a varied economic and social geography,
the process
of land reform was uneven and regionally specic. In addition, in
some areas,
notably that of the central highlands, the post-revolutionary
state had a much
greater presence than, for example, in the Lacandon forest,
where, from the
1960s, migrants constructed a new social order largely at the
margins of the
state [Harvey, 1998: 6667]. Many of the social, political and
economic
relationships that contributed to the emergence of Zapatismo in
1994 and
have determined its outcomes thereafter, can be traced to
regionally specic
processes of state building and agrarian reform in Chiapas
between 1920 and
1994. Furthermore the constitutional reform of 1992 which, as
part of the
negotiations for the free trade agreement (NAFTA) between
Mexico, Canada
and the United States, ended land reform in Mexico, led to the
alienation of
many peasants in Chiapas and growing support for the armed
option offered
by the EZLN.
The Mexican Revolution in Chiapas
The Mexican Revolution, which began in central and northern
Mexico in
1910, had little impact in Chiapas until 1914, when the
promulgation of a
labour law abolishing debt servitude and granting workers the
right to a
minimum wage and other benets triggered a counter-revolution by
local
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landlords against the government of Venustiano Carranza. In the
central
valley and the Pacic coast the rebels, who had considerable
popular support
in their guerrilla campaign against the occupying carrancista
army, were
known as Mapaches (racoons), while, in the central highlands and
northern
Chiapas, the rebels, led by Alberto Pineda, were known as
pinedistas.15 Prior
to 1914, landlords in these two regions had been adversaries;
but to defend
their local economic, political and social privileges they
formed an alliance
against the central government that emerged triumphant in 1920.
In that year
the counter-revolutionaries made peace with President Alvaro
Obregon in
return for considerable de facto autonomy. They were
consequently able to
dominate the state government for much of the post-revolutionary
period.
It was not until the 1930s, under President Lazaro Cardenas
(193440),
when the federal government began to intervene more actively in
the regions,
that many of the social and political changes associated with
the Mexican
Revolution arrived in Chiapas. Thus, in the 1930s peasant
leagues and
unions, which later became incorporated into the PRI, emerged in
the central
valley and Pacic coast [Reyes Ramos, 1992: 65]. It was also in
the 1930s, in
the time of Cardenas that the Revolution reached Maya peasants
in Chiapas
in the form of agrarian reform, labour unions and an end to
labour contracting
by means of debt. However, as Jan Rus states, it was an
ambivalent
revolution that empowered the Indians and brought them new
rights but at
the same time led to a more intimate form of domination as the
state
reached inside the communities, not only changing leaders but
rearranging
the governments. This involved, creating new ofces to deal with
labour
and agrarian matters [and] at the same time. . .granting vast
new powers to the
ofcials charged with maintaining relations with the party and
state. The
result, in many Indian communities, was a renovated form of
caciquismo or
bossism, which penetrated the very community structures
previously
identied with resistance to outside intervention and
exploitation. Thus
indigenous corporate social and political traditions,
inextricably linked to
local religious beliefs, became the means by which
institutionalized
revolutionary communities were harnessed to the state and the
rule of the
PRI legitimized after 1936 [Rus, 1994: 2667].
The corporate system enabled the state to establish a relatively
strong
presence in certain regions of Chiapas from the mid-1930s,
notably in
Chamula and other municipalities in the central highlands. It
also constituted
a means by which local elites were able to co-opt and adapt the
potentially
more radical initiatives of the central government to their own
interests. For
example, in 1934 Cardenas promoted the creation of a Department
of
Indigenous Social Action, Culture and Protection in Chiapas. The
depart-
ment, which was dependent on the state executive, constituted
an
intermediary organization designed to integrate Indians into
national society
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and culture by encouraging agrarian and worker organization.
Thus the Union
of Indigenous Workers (Sindicato de Trabajadores Indgenas),
which was
overseen by the department, was organized to ensure the payment
of a
minimum wage, the fullment of labour regulations and the
substitution of
collective for individual contracts. However, over time the
Union became an
agency that operated for the benet of employers, reducing the
bargaining
power of workers through corporate control and outright
repression.
Similarly, in agrarian matters, the department, which at rst
encouraged
production co-operatives and advised indigenous peoples on land
reform laws
and procedures, became subordinated to the interests of local
landowning
groups [Reyes Ramos, 1992: 56]. In 1940 these groups also
established local
cattle associations linked to state unions and the PRI as a way
to obtain tax
breaks, to pressure the government against agrarian reform and
to repress
independent peasant activism [Reyes Ramos, 1992: 65].16 As a
result, a
political and economic elite of prominent cattle ranchers was
consolidated in
Chiapas in the post-revolutionary period.
Tension persisted between the projects and interests of the
federal and state
governments in Chiapas after the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas.
The federal
National Indigenous Institute (INI) was founded in 1948 and
opened its rst
regional centre in Chiapas in San Cristobal de Las Casas in
1951. According
to Jan Rus [2004a], by 1955 INIs programme of integrated
community
development in Chiapas was in deep crisis. This programme,
which
conceived indigenous peoples poverty and powerlessness as
resulting from
their isolation from national society and culture, proposed to
reorganize the
relationship between indigenous peoples closed cultures and the
wider
economy and society by technical means. However, as Rus points
out,
indigenous people were already well integrated into the regional
economy,
and in practice INIs project constituted a direct assault on the
interests
and prerogatives of the economic and political elites in the
regions where
INI operated, thus provoking great resistance by important state
actors
against the federal agency. INI employees, who uncovered
numerous
abuses and illegal practices used to exploit members of Indian
communities,
clashed with coffee planters and labour contractors over the
continued
enforcement of debt peonage through state-sponsored violence and
over
reform of the coffee workers union; with the state treasurer and
leading
distillers over the state liquor monopoly; and with the state
governor and
local political bosses over native legal rights, land claims and
private armies
(guardias blancas).17
However, they often received little practical support from the
federal
government, and conicts between INI representatives and
political and
economic elites continued in the 1960s and 1970s [Rus, 2004a:
2023, 213].
Rus also points out that even though INI provoked considerable
opposition in
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Chiapas, its remit in 1951 did not include indigenous people
resident on
ncas as debt peons (peones acasillados) and wage labourers
(jornaleros).18
He suggests that this was because it would have been too
politically sensitive
to do so, and because these indigenous people, unlike those
residing in
closed corporate communities outside the boundaries of the ncas,
were not
traditional enough to be of interest to anthropologists.19
Therefore, it was
not until the 1970s, when many landlords switched to cattle
production, that
INI, the Catholic Church, and other political organizations
nally gained
access to these populations [Rus, 2004: 220]. The politicization
of former
debt peons and agricultural labourers in northern Chiapas after
1970
constitutes an important aspect of the background to the
uprising of 1994,
and their different regional experiences of the state during the
post-
revolutionary period help to explain the varied regional
manifestations and
outcomes of Zapatismo in Chiapas.
Agrarian Reform in Chiapas, 192092
The social and political consequences of land reform in Chiapas
after 1920
are much debated, and new regional studies are emerging which
question the
commonplace notion that agrarian reform was limited and had
little impact
on rural society (see van der Haar in this volume). However, the
most
comprehensive study of agrarian reform in Chiapas, by Mara
Eugenia Reyes
Ramos [1992], remains a key text for understanding the scope and
nature of
agrarian reform in the state. As Reyes Ramos notes, her work is
mainly
empirical and descriptive because in the absence of detailed
regional
studies on agrarian policy, agrarian reform and land tenure in
Chiapas she
had to base her study on the analysis of laws and statistics
that had not been
published or compiled anywhere [Reyes Ramos, 1992: 1618]. Using
these
sources, Reyes Ramos shows that in quantitative terms agrarian
reform was
extensive in Chiapas during the period 192088. But, she argues,
it did not
bring about the end of the nca as a productive unit, act as a
force for the
modernization of agricultural production, or bring about social
and political
transformation [Reyes Ramos, 1992: 22].
This was because agrarian reform in Chiapas was principally a
process of
colonization rather than redistribution [Reyes Ramos, 1992:
125]. Much
agrarian reform involved uninhabited national lands, rather than
private
property, thereby preserving the economic and political power of
the
landowning elite [Reyes Ramos, 1992: 32]. However, there were
regional
differences in the timing, nature and extent of land reform in
Chiapas. For
example, in Soconusco, where, in contrast to other parts of the
state, agrarian
workers unions developed after 1914 and a Socialist party was
established in
1921, extensive lobbying resulted in virtually the only land
reform to take
place in Chiapas before 1930. However, Reyes Ramos contends that
the
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establishment of ejidos on peripheral coffee plantation lands
worked
principally to the benet of the latter by providing a stable
workforce in a
context of labour shortage [Reyes Ramos, 1992: 512]. In
addition, as van der
Haar shows in this volume, the redistribution of land and its
conversion from
private property to communal land tenure was extensive in the
Tojolobal
highlands, between Comitan and the Lacandon rainforest after
1930, with
different social and political consequences.
Looking more closely at the process of agrarian reform in
Chiapas, Reyes
Ramos identies two separate phases before 1940. In the period
192034 the
Mapache counter-revolutionaries who emerged triumphant in 1920
used their
power in the state government to limit agrarian reform and to
increase their
power base in the countryside. In 1921 Governor Tiburcio
Fernandez set the
upper legal limit for small property (i.e. that not subject to
agrarian reform)
at 8,000 hectares or 20,000 acres. Landlords whose properties
were subject to
expropriation were to be able to choose the area that they
wished to keep;
they were also given the chance to subdivide and sell off
properties liable for
redistribution. In the event of expropriation, moreover,
compensation would
be paid. The law also permitted the granting of parcels to poor
peasants and
those who had worked for the benet of the state, and allowed
peasants to
purchase land from landlords and the state government, thereby
facilitating
the creation of political clienteles. Additionally, in 1922 a
federal law
exempted coffee, cacao, vanilla, rubber and other plantations
from agrarian
reform [Reyes Ramos, 1992: 48]. As Table 1 shows, only 46,607
hectares
were granted to 5,026 peasants in the period 192029 [Reyes
Ramos,
1992: 51].
In 1934 agrarian legislation became federal, and debt peons
(peones
acasillados), who had previously been excluded, were allowed to
petition for
ejidal grants. In 1935 the upper limits to the extensions of
land not subject to
land reform were set according to the quality and type of land.
But if the land
TAB L E 1 : L A ND R E F O RM S TA T I S T I C S F O R CH I A P
A S , 1 9 2 0 8 4
YearsQuantity of Land Granted to
Peasants (hectares) Number of Beneficiaries
192029 46,607 5026193039 290,354 20,000194049 468,146
26,413195059 649,631 27,365196069 483,526 20,940197079 569,082
20,805198084 445,292 23,495192084 2,952,638 144,044
Source: Compiled from Reyes Ramos [1992: 51, 62, 82, 83, 121,
122, 123].
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was employed productively, it could exceed such limits, and the
buying and
selling of property potentially subject to land reform and the
payment of
compensation continued [Reyes Ramos, 1992: 536]. As the data
show
(Table 1), land reform increased considerably between 1930 and
1939, when
290,354 hectares of land were granted to more than 20,000
petitioners in
diverse regions of the state [Reyes Ramos, 1992: 62].
Nevertheless, according
to Reyes Ramos, in 1940 77% of landowners possessed only 4.4% of
landed
property, whereas 2.6% of landowners possessed 63%. In addition,
large
areas of private property remained uncultivated, production was
character-
ized by a lack of diversication and low productivity; and large
quantities
of land suitable for cultivation remained unutilized [Reyes
Ramos, 1992:
656].
Systematic agrarian reform only began in Chiapas after 1940,
when in
Mexico as a whole it was slowing down. Chiapas had a large
amount of
untitled national land compared to other Mexican States,
including big
expanses of virgin rainforest, and the state government, which
in the 1940s
once again came to have a larger role in the interpretation of
agrarian policy,
favoured opening up and colonizing areas that had previously
remained under
populated and under cultivated due to poor communications [Reyes
Ramos,
1992: 6773]. Between 1920 and 1984 2,954,699 hectares of
national lands
were distributed to ejidatarios and individual colonizers.
Before 1934
colonization was basically private, and the parcels of land
granted were
relatively large compared to the period 193462. In 1962 private
colonization
ended, and thereafter national lands served exclusively for
agrarian reform
and the creation of new ejidal population centres [Reyes Ramos,
1992, 73
80].20 The emphasis on colonization meant that agrarian reform
became
concentrated in a few municipalities. For example, in the period
195059,
46.1% of the total area distributed was located in 12
municipalities, mainly in
the unexploited regions of the Lacandon forest and the frontier.
Similarly,
28% of all land granted to ejidatarios in the period 197079 and
12% in the
period 198084 was located in the same region of colonization
[Reyes
Ramos, 1992: 82; 96].
However, even though agrarian reform was considerable after
1940, it
failed to resolve poverty or ease social tensions in the
countryside.21 Seven
factors stand out which limited the social impact of land reform
in Chiapas:
their relative importance differed by region. First, there was
immunity from
redistribution of properties under 300 hectares in size that
were engaged in
the export of agricultural commodities. Second, certicates of
exemption
were used (inefectibilidad), rst issued in the 1950s to protect
livestock
ranches from expropriation. The number increased greatly in the
1970s and
1980s, until by 1984 they covered most of the remaining private
property in
Chiapas. Third, private property was consolidated through
individual
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colonization, prior to 1962. Fourth, ejidos were created next to
commercial
ncas so as to provide a source of labour [Reyes Ramos, 1992:
847; 119].
Fifth, quite often land granted to peasants in areas of
colonization was either
unofcially occupied by cattle ranchers and logging companies,
who refused
to hand their de facto possessions over to the new owners, or
the new ejidos
were adjacent to property held by these same interests. Both
scenarios created
conicts over territory and resources [Reyes Ramos, 1992: 96].
Sixth, many
presidential decrees granting land to petitioners were simply
not executed, or
there was a long delay between their date of issue and the date
on which the
land was handed over.22 In 1984 Reyes Ramos found 59
unexecuted
presidential decrees covering 792,105 hectares. The oldest dated
back to
1920, but more than 70% were from the period after 1960.
Seventh, and
related to the previous point, the length and complexity of the
land reform
process itself limited the social impact of these reforms. The
legal procedures
were an endless source of frustration for peasants and provided
many
opportunities for landlords, surveyors and bureaucrats to delay.
Ramos Reyes
found that the average period of time that peasants had to wait
from the time
that they submitted their petition to the execution of the
presidential decree
was 7.4 years. [Reyes Ramos, 1992: 100102].
After 1970 agrarian reform in Chiapas was aimed at relieving
growing
social pressures in a context of economic crisis and increasing
peasant
radicalization. In Mexico as a whole, the government of Luis
Echeverra
(197076) sought to regain political support after the brutal
repression of the
1968 student movement by reviving agrarian reform and
encouraging peasant
organizing. The practical results of Echeverras agrarian
policies were
limited, but throughout the countryside independent
organizations of landless
peasants, agricultural workers, and ejidatarios began to
challenge the CNC as
the sole representative of rural demands and to reject co-option
by parties and
the state [Harvey, 1998: 118]. After 1976, President Jose Lopez
Portillo
(197682) attempted to shift the emphasis of rural policy away
from land
redistribution and towards the modernization of production and
marketing.
The result was a downgrading of agrarian reform, preference for
production
over land-oriented organizations, and a policy of fomenting
factionalism and
repressing many of the movements that had emerged in the earlier
period
[Harvey, 1998: 118, 131].
In 1982, the year that Miguel de la Madrid (198288) was elected
president
of Mexico, a hard-line military man from the land-owning elite
in Chiapas,
Absalon Castellanos Domnguez, became state governor. The next
six years
saw increasing militarization, state-sponsored repression of
independent
peasant movements, and rising levels of rural violence as
prominent land-
owning families, allied to the state government, used ofcial
peasant
organizations to defend their interests [Harvey, 1998: 14850,
159]. During
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this period, the CNC, which was in decline in Mexico as whole,
was strongly
supported by the state government and the local PRI as a means
to divide and
co-opt the peasant movement. For example, members of the CNC
received
preferential access to land and also beneted from subsidized
credit and other
inputs [Harvey, 1998: 1078; Reyes Ramos, 1992: 11012]. In 1983,
the state
government was forced to respond to growing peasant mobilization
for
agrarian reform by formulating a new programme that eventually
distributed
over 80,000 hectares to 9,000 peasants. However, the
programmes
implementation exacerbated rather than resolved existing conicts
[Harvey,
1998: 153].
In the Agrarian Rehabilitation Plan, initiated in 1984, the
government
purchased land from landowners to sell to peasants whose claims
for ejidos
had not been resolved through the ofcial land reform process.
The
programme was initially designed to resolve problems in areas
where land
invasions were led mainly by independent peasant organizations.
But, as a
result, the CNC began to carry out its own invasions and to
evict many
peasant squatters belonging to other organizations. As Harvey
points out,
although both groups received land, the programme transformed
conicts
between landowners and peasants into conicts between independent
peasant
organizations and the CNC. Furthermore, landowners received
compensation
for land that they would have lost anyway or could not use,
thereby
motivating them to invent land invasions or to create conicts by
evicting
peasants who were not occupying their land in order to have the
pretext for a
claim. In addition land reform ofcials and members of the state
bureaucracy
gained another means of corruption and patronage. For these
reasons the
programme was briey suspended in 1985 but then reinstated until
1987. At
the same time a large number of exemption certicates were issued
to cattle
ranchers [Harvey, 1998: 1535]. The repression of peasant leaders
continued
under Patrocinio Gonzalez Garrido, who became governor of
Chiapas in
1988, the year that Carlos Salinas de Gortari assumed the
Mexican
presidency.
In sum, as a direct result of the state governments agrarian
policies, the
1980s and early 1990s saw an escalation of violence amongst
peasant groups
and between peasants and the state, accompanied by the growing
polarization
of society between the state government and landowners on the
one hand and
the diocese of San Cristobal, independent peasant organizations
and
indigenous communities on the other [Harvey, 1998: 1713]. These
conicts
intersected with struggles for the control of municipal
governments, better
roads and public services and, in line with events across the
continent, the
growing politicization of ethnic identity (see Xochitl Leyva
Solano, this
volume). When in 1992, as part of the negotiations for NAFTA,
agrarian
reform was ofcially ended by President Salinas, many peasants in
Chiapas
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felt that they had lost all chance of securing land, and became
increasingly
alienated from the political system and the state.
The rebellion of 1994 revived the independent peasant movement
and
exacerbated social and political conicts in Chiapas. Peasant
groups founded
the State Council of Indigenous and Peasant Organizations in
late January
1994 and seized approximately 50,000 hectares in the rst six
months (see
Villafuerte Sols, this volume). However, conicts soon emerged
between
independent peasant organizations with ties to the EZLN and
ofcial
organizations with ties to the PRI, as the government sought to
resolve the
situation by forcefully evicting squatters and buying lands from
landowners
to distribute to peasants, as it had in the 1980s (with many of
the same
problems) [Harvey, 1998: 21117]. Further schisms developed in
1995 after a
number of independent peasant leaders agreed to meet with a
representative
of the federal government without the EZLN. They were promptly
accused of
being traitors by the latter, which broke off all relations with
their
organizations. Subsequently, the period 199596 saw escalating
levels of
violence in countryside between Zapatista and non-Zapatista
peasant groups
and between peasants and the military [Harvey, 1998: 21823].
The Histories of Two Distinctive Regions of Zapatista
Inuence
In this section I shall briey examine the histories of two
regions of Chiapas
where the EZLN has had much support and inuence, both before and
since
1994. The areas in question are: the canadas of Ocosingo,
Altamirano and
Las Margaritas in the Lacandon region of northeastern Chiapas,
which make
up the geographical heartland of the EZLN, and the municipality
of
Simojovel and its environs, to the north of San Cristobal de Las
Casas.23 As
these histories show, although the Zapatista conict was not the
direct result
of the relationship of exploitation and subordination
established between
private nca owners and debt peons at the end of the nineteenth
century, both
the development of commercial agriculture in the
pre-revolutionary period,
and the responses of the post-revolutionary state to peasant
demands for land
and social justice are important for understanding the political
context of the
uprising and its consequences.24
As Ramos Reyes [1992] emphasizes, the Lacandon region was an
important zone of colonization in the post-revolutionary period.
The process
began unofcially in the 1930s, when former peons from ncas
in
neighbouring municipalities began to colonize the rainforest.
They were
joined by landless peasants from other regions of Chiapas, and
the rst ejidos
were granted in the 1940s. At the same time that land was
distributed in
communal land grants, individual smallholdings and private
cattle ranches
were also established in the region [Harvey, 1998: 62; Leyva
Solano and
Ascencio Franco, 1996: 212, 53, 92]. In the 1950s and 1960s
colonization
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accelerated and the Lacandon region became characterized by
rapid
population growth and the establishment of a linguistically and
ethnically
very diverse population. By 1970 approximately 100,000 colonists
had
settled.
The majority were Tzeltal and Chol Indians from eastern and
northern
highlands, and some were Tojolobales from the area east of
Comitan, but
settlers also came from other parts of Mexico [Harvey, 1998:
62].25 In 1970,
738,000 hectares of land in the Lacandon region was in the
ejidal sector and
300,000 hectares in private hands [Leyva Solano and Ascencio
Franco, 1996:
83]. In the 1970s and 1980s ejidatarios shifted from subsistence
to coffee and
cattle production, and by 1990 27% of the total forest area was
dedicated to
cattle raising and 19% to agriculture. Of land used for rural
production 11%
was under coffee cultivation, 31% was dedicated to maize and
beans, and
58% was cattle pasture [Leyva Solano and Ascencio Franco, 1996:
139]. The
regions economy was adversely hit by structural adjustment and
the fall in
coffee prices during the 1980s and early 1990s, resulting in
falling incomes
and rising levels of poverty and environmental degradation.
The post-revolutionary state had a relatively weak presence in
the
Lacandon region, and the migrants that poured into the jungle
after 1960
established independent peasant co-operatives and new
self-governing
communities with much more horizontal social structures than the
ncas
and communities that they had left behind [Rus, Hernandez
Castillo and
Mattiace, 2003: 12; Harvey, 1998: 624]. The development of
the
community, political and cultural identity of the colonists was
strongly
inuenced by religion. Protestant missionaries were rst invited
to Chiapas
by the Mexican government in the 1940s to assist in the
acculturation of the
indigenous population. By 1990 25% of the population in the
Lacandon
region were either Protestants or Evangelical Christians [Leyva
Solano and
Ascencio Franco, 1996, 66]. Catholic missionaries and Indian
catechists also
penetrated the region after 1960 to preach the Word of God.26
Unlike
Protestant missionaries, they sought to revive indigenous
community
practices, for example through the creation of village
co-operatives [Harvey,
1998: 62]. After the Indigenous Conference of 1974 the presence
and
inuence of Catholic pastoral agents became considerable, and
Liberation
Theology was increasingly important in fomenting peasant
political activism
and the development of a militant political and religious
community identity
in the region.27 According to Pedro Pitarch, many Indian
catechists were
recruited by the EZLN in the 1980s and 1990s, and their
religious beliefs
have inuenced the public morals of the organization in matters
such as the
prohibition of alcohol, the strong sanctioning of adultery, and
the emphasis
on discipline, obedience and cleanliness in Zapatista
communities (see
Pitarch [2004: 117] and also Marco Estrada Saavedra, this
volume).
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The political ideas and practices of Maoism also inuenced the
communal
identity of the inhabitants of the Canadas. A number of the
outside advisers
who participated in the Indigenous Conference of 1974 were
members of
Maoist groups from central and northern Mexico. Soon
afterwards,
encouraged by subsidies from the government of Luis Echeverra,
they
began to organize collective ejidos in the Lacandon region,
where state
institutions such as the INI, the CNC and the PRI were weak. In
1980 the
Union of Ejidal Unions (Union de Uniones or UU), which had a
focus on
coffee marketing, was formed from three smaller unions, thereby
creating the
largest independent peasant organization in Chiapas, with
12,000, mainly
indigenous, families in 180 communities located in 11
municipalities.
However, the organization was wracked by leadership rivalries
and split into
two factions in 1983. The bigger faction formed the Union de
Ejidos de la
Selva (UE), which remained the largest organization in the
Lacandon region
in the 1980s, and which participated in the creation of ARIC
(Asociacion
Rural de Interes Colectivo) in 1988 [Harvey, 1998: 7981, 84, 89,
193; Leyva
Solano and Ascencio Franco, 1996: 1504]. In the 1980s and early
1990s, in
a context of economic crisis, structural adjustment, the end to
agrarian reform
and growing political repression in Chiapas, leaders in these
organizations,
notably ARIC, were increasingly attracted by the armed option
offered by the
EZLN, which steadily penetrated and militarized the peasant
movement in
the Lacandon region (Marco Estrada Saavedra, this volume).
The EZLN also had a strong inuence in and around the
municipality of
Simojovel after 1994. In the 1990s, social and ethnic relations
in Simojovel
were still marked by the effects of the coffee boom of the late
nineteenth
century, which had brought land privatization and migration and
precipitated
the conversion of the previously free indigenous peasant
population to debt
peons and labour tenants on ladino-owned ncas [Toledo, 1996:
614]. From
the 1940s a number of large ncas were subdivided as a result of
agrarian
reform, and some ejidos were established. However, landowning
families still
managed to concentrate property as a result of owning many
small
contiguous properties (ranchos), and to exploit Indian producers
by means
of moneylending and transport and commercial monopolies.
Through
political connections to the state government, landowning
families were
also able to retain land that had been granted to indigenous
communities and
ejidatarios through the ofcial land reform process. According to
Sonia
Toledo, between 1930 and 1980 750,280 hectares were granted to
peasants,
but only 141,383 hectares 25% of which were already in communal
hands
were incorporated into the ejidal sector. In 1980 there were 533
ncas and 10
ejidos in Simojovel and 197 ncas and 16 ejidos in the
neighbouring
municipality of Huitiupan. At that same conjuncture there were
also still
approximately 10,000 debt peons in Simojovel [Toledo, 1996:
6974, 102].
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Thus, although the Mexican Revolution and agrarian reform
brought changes
to the region, state institutions remained weak, the political
control of
nqueros, which was exercised through patron client relations,
intimidation
and outright violence, remained strong, and the lives of
permanent nca
workers subject to debt peonage remained little changed [Toledo,
2004].
However, after 1970 a number of developments took place,
including rapid
population growth, the construction of a hydroelectric dam, and
the
expansion of cattle ranching, which reduced labour demand and
increased
labour supply and the competition for land. These changes
altered the
relationship between landowners and their workforce,
precipitating the
development of a peasant movement, the invasion of many private
properties,
rising levels of state sponsored violence and, in the 1980s, the
redistribution
of much land by the state government [Toledo, 1996: 1046;
2004].
According to Neil Harvey, the independent peasant movement began
in the
municipality of Simojovel in 1971 when Tzotzil and Chol Indians,
some of
whom were permanent debt peons but the majority of whom were
landless
seasonal workers, undertook a series of land invasions on
private coffee
plantations in protest against the lack of response to their
agrarian reform
petitions. After nding the CNC ineffective, they formed an
independent
peasant organization, which became increasingly important as
community
leaders trained for the Indigenous Conference of 1974 and,
inspired by
Liberation Theology, began to co-ordinate peasant activism in
Simojovel. As
well as becoming inuential among nca workers, independent
peasant and
community leaders ousted priista ofcials on existing ejidos in
the region.28
The response of the state to growing peasant militancy was
violent
repression by the army in 1976. However, peasant mobilization in
Simojovel
continued, and became linked to the Independent Confederation
of
Agricultural Workers and Peasants (CIOAC), a national level
peasant and
agricultural workers confederation with close ties to the
Mexican Communist
Party. In 1979 the CIOAC established an agricultural workers
union, which in
1981 organized a strike of coffee workers. The organization also
co-ordinated
peasant protest against the construction of a hydroelectric dam
[Harvey,
1998: 929]. During the 1980s, in a context of increasing
repression, the
CIOAC continued to lead land invasions and labour struggles in
Simojovel
[Harvey, 1998: 1579].29 Eventually, the state government
addressed the
conict by redistributing much of the land that had been invaded
to peasants.
However, the way that this was carried out exacerbated conicts
between
members of the CIOAC and the CNC. In 1994, the Zapatista
uprising
reignited the remaining land conicts in Simojovel and intensied
the ght
for municipal control in a political context where memories of
the bitter
struggles of the 1970s and 1980s remained strong. However, since
then,
according to Toledo, the Zapatistas have reproduced much of the
hierarchical
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authoritarianism characteristic of local society, and the recent
years have seen
an increase in caudillismo and corruption in the movement and
the erosion of
support for peasant leaders [Toledo, 2004].
V
SOME LEGACIES OF 1994
After 1994, at the national level, the EZLN contributed to the
movement for
the democratization of Mexican politics, which saw the ending of
the PRI
majority in the National Congress in 1997 and the election of
Vincente Fox of
the PAN to the presidency in 2000 (see Collier and Collier and
Garca de
Leon, this volume). In addition, although the organization
eventually opposed
the reformed constitutional amendment of 2001, the EZLN was
inuential on
putting the issue of indigenous rights on the political agenda.
In Chiapas, the
uprising reignited and intensied many of the social and
political conicts
that had emerged after 1970, giving rise to land invasions,
state sponsored
repression, increasing levels of inter- and intra-communal
violence, and the
establishment of de facto autonomous governments in many
regions, which
rejected the authority and institutions of the Mexican
State.
The period since 1994 has also seen continuing economic crisis,
plus the
accompanying effects of this. Among them have been an increase
in the
politicization of ethnicity and tradition, and a decrease in the
emphasis on
peasant issues.30 In this respect, Chiapas ts into a pattern
familiar in Latin
America and elsewhere (see Tom Brass, this volume). Also
important has
been a growing, but limited, awareness of womens rights.31 An
outcome has
been the erosion of support for the Zapatistas, and, even though
the EZLN
has rejected electoral politics (consistently boycotting
national and state
elections in its area of control), the emergence of competitive
elections and
political pluralism in many municipalities (see Villafuerte
Sols, this
volume).
One of the most signicant effects of the uprising has been on
the
governability of Chiapas. In 1994 approximately 40 town halls
were seized
by insurgents, and 33 municipalities declared themselves in
rebellion against
the government, and after 1994 political mobilization among
those who
joined the Zapatistas focused on the creation of autonomous
municipalities
and regions and structures of governance free from the state.
Thus, although
Indian autonomy was not a demand presented by the EZLN in 1994,
it came
increasingly to dominate Zapatista discourse after 1995 and was
incorporated
into the San Andres Accords of 1996 [Burguete Cal y Mayor, 2003:
195].32
However, the EZLN is not the only group to have taken up the
call for
municipal autonomy. Other groups, including those allied to the
PRI, have
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used the issue of autonomy as a political strategy (in the
latter case claiming
huge amounts of money and power from the government). In
addition, the
state government has tried, largely unsuccessfully, to engage
with demands
for the creation (and often the reconstitution) of
municipalities by proposing
programmes of re-municipalization that would convert de facto
local
governments into constitutional ones.
Thus, the establishment of autonomous municipalities in Chiapas
has been
a complex, conictive, and, at times contradictory process, with
a large and
diverse number of actors, a plurality of meanings, and a number
of far from
benign outcomes [Burguete Cal y Mayor, 2003: 1912; 2004].33
Burguete
Cal y Mayor identies two principal kinds of autonomous
municipality in
Chiapas: on the one hand, Zapatista municipalities in regions
controlled
militarily by the EZLN, many of which were dismantled by the
army in
1998; on the other, Civilian autonomous municipalities,
supported by an
important segment of the indigenous movement in Chiapas. In the
former,
the new authorities often have joint civil and military
jurisdiction and
command, and conicts, aggravated by the state and federal
governments, are
common with non-Zapatistas who share the same territory but who
do not
recognize Zapatista authority or laws [Burguete Cal y Mayor,
2003: 2069,
2136].
With regard to the EZLN itself, since the late 1990s the
movement has
been characterized by divisions in its social base, splits
within the leadership,
and internal conicts over land, all of which have been
exacerbated by
government programmes of social assistance and
counter-insurgency. The
response in areas of Zapatista control has been the development
of
autonomous parallel state structures (juntas de buen gobierno),
with the
jurisdiction to impose taxes, laws and regulations within a
given territory, and
which provide education, healthcare and other public services.
However,
Zapatista objectives have become increasingly confused as
demands for
education, healthcare, democracy, justice, and social and
political integration
are mixed with the rejection of modernity and calls for an
increase in
tradition and indianidad (Marco Estrada Saavedra, this
volume).
According to Carmen Legorreta [2004], initially the EZLN
generated
hopes of liberty and justice, and since the uprising of 1994
Indian municipal
presidents have been elected for the rst time in the Lacandon
region.
However, the EZLN has suspended civil and political rights in
its own
territory, and its vertical command structure had led to the
abuse of power
and conicts between its leadership and its social bases. In
addition, the
Zapatista authorities impose rules and regulations on
non-Zapatistas in the
same geographical space, and many of those who do not support
the EZLN
have been intimidated into leaving their homes. Furthermore, the
EZLN has
distributed land that it seized after 1994 much of which was
already in the
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ejido sector only to its followers. Finally, the refusal to
accept government
funding and the paralysis of rural commerce has resulted in
economic decline
and growing levels of pauperization in regions under Zapatista
control. As a
result, Legorreta considers that the main goal of the EZLN has
become to
maintain people in its ranks rather than to improve their
lives