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The Reassertion of Indigenous Identity: Mayan Responses to State Intervention in Chiapas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

June Nash
June Nash*
Affiliation:
City College of the City University of New York
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In the early hours of 1994, a few hundred men and women of the Ejército Zapatista Liberación Nacional (EZLN) blocked the Pan American Highway between Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the state capital of Chiapas, and San Cristóbal de las Casas and the road to Ocosingo, declaring war on Mexico's ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). This move signaled to the world that indigenous populations intended to make themselves heard at home and abroad as Mexico restructures its economy according to the neoliberal model promoted by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. The rebels captured and briefly held the municipal buildings in San Cristóbal, Altamirano, Las Margaritas, and Ocosingo. Speaking for the rebels, Subcomandante Marcos declared that their war was “a final but justified measure”: “We have nothing, absolutely nothing. Not a decent roof, nor work, nor land, nor health care, nor education.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , 1995 , pp. 7 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

Research funds from the National Science Foundation permitted me to carry out field investigations in the summers of 1990 and 1991. I benefited from the presence of students participating in the Research Experience for Undergraduates, some of whom accompanied me to the townships in the region. Some students also collaborated in articles cited herein, among them Pedro Farias, Robert Martínez, Gina Peña Campodónico, Kathleen Sullivan, and Luz Martín del Campo. I am also grateful for the inspiration in the field of Melissa Castillo, Brenda Currin, Liliana Fasanella, Courtney Guthrie, and Christine Kovic, who participated in an exchange program I directed in the spring of 1993, supported by the International Studies Program at City College. Earlier versions of this article were improved by critiques from participants in the discussion group on indigenous movements, including Hugo Benavides, Gina Peña Campadónico, and Hernán Vidal. Kay Warren also provided helpful comments, and I have relied on her publications as well as those of Ricardo Falla, Susanne Jonas, Beatriz Manz, Carol Smith, and others to explicate the Guatemalan indigenous presence in Chiapas.

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