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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: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03066150500266778
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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
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