McNair Paper Number 53, Chapter 3, October 1996

Since the startling emergence of an armed insurgency in southern Mexico in January of 1994, much ink has been spilled attempting to explain the roots of this rebellion, the implications of its emergence during a time of slow democratization and rapid economic modernization, and the likelihood that such a movement could emerge in a similar context. Most analysis has focused on the relationship between the rebellion and economic adjustment in Mexico and, in particular, on the modernization of agriculture. Other analysts have tied the rebellion to the glacial pace of Mexico's democratic opening, which the rebellion in Chiapas has accelerated immensely. (Note 1)

Easy explanations have been confounded by the complexity and mutability of the demands of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). Is it social movement? A revolutionary socialist movement? An Indian movement? While all these tendencies are present, it is the significant participation in the leadership and ranks of the EZLN by Mayan Indians, and the qualified support of the country's established nonviolent indigenous movement, that distinguishes the Chiapas rebellion from other revolutionary movements in Latin America and the Caribbean. At the same time, the presence of nonindigenous forms of organization and political rhetoric distinguishes the EZLN from other Indian movements in the Americas.

The indigenous movement advances a distinct political agenda that envisions a comprehensive reform of the Mexican Constitution that would redefine the relationship between the state and indigenous nationalities. It is imbued with the ideology of indianismo, a continental intellectual movement that crystallized in the 1970s as a result of an intense dialogue among anthropologists and Indian leaders in the Americas. Indianismo emphasizes the cultural values of Indian civilization-not to sustain or reconstruct pre-Columbian models-but to differentiate Indian culture from that of the national societies of Latin America. Since the mid- 1970s, it has emphasized self-determination, autonomy, the rights of nations in international law, respect for traditional authorities and customary law, and community-directed economic development. (Note 2) While indianismo is a continentwide movement, the goal of the protagonists of the movement-the thousands of indigenous communities and organizations throughout the Americas-is the recuperation of local autonomy and the exercise of authority over traditional territories. Indianismo is an explicit rejection of indigenismo, the prevailing state policy since the 1940s, which seeks to "improve" Indians through assimilation into the dominant culture. It also explicitly confronts revolutionary Marxism, which denies the salience of culture as the defining motif of the Indian-state struggle, emphasizing instead the class solidarity of all subaltern groups.

The EZLN is representative of the Marxist school. While its revolutionary project is rooted in the injustices suffered by the indigenous population of eastern Chiapas, the EZLN calls for the reorientation of Mexican economic policy along traditional socialist lines and the transfer of political power from elites to the mass of poor Mexicans. This essay will compare these two contemporary political forces and trace the relationship between them from the emergence of the clandestine armed movement in the early 1980s to the present time.

This essay distinguishes the formation of the organized nonviolent Mexican indigenous movement from the Chiapas insurgency, showing how the two forces came together for their mutual benefit after the spectacular ascendance of the Zapatista movement in 1994 and how both movements were ultimately eclipsed by the financial and political crisis gripping Mexico after the collapse of the peso in December 1994. The distinction between the Zapatista and the Mexican indigenous movement is important for two reasons. First, as peace talks limped along in summer 1995, the EZLN was in a position to negotiate Indian demands on behalf of the Indians of Mexico. Second, the distinctions to be drawn between the goals and organizational strategies of the indigenous movement and the EZLN will contribute to our evolving understanding of the roots and implications of the Chiapas uprising and the likelihood of a similar movement emerging in other Latin American countries, where indigenous movements have been actively confronting national and local authorities since the late 1970s. (Note 3)

The dialogue between the EZLN and the Mexican Indian movement reflects a larger debate between the armed and legal left and the indigenous movement in Latin America and, within the indigenous movement itself, between those aligned with popular organizations, unions, and the poor and those who prefer to keep some organizational and ideological distance between the Indian movement and its potential allies. This debate is particularly contentious in Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, and Peru, where Indian organizations have struggled to maintain their independence from militant unions and often predatory armed movements.ORIGINS OF THE INDIGENOUS MOVEMENT

There are 56 major Amerindian ethnic groups in Mexico, widely dispersed throughout the country, with the highest concentrations in the central and southern states and in mountainous and forested regions. These regions correspond to those areas with the least economic development, access to social services, and communication and transportation links with the rest of the country. According to the Mexican government, 75 percent of Mexicans living in extreme poverty are indigenous, while the World Bank confirms that poverty in Mexico is closely correllated to the concentration of indigenous population in a given municipality. (Note 4) In absolute terms, Mexico's is the largest indigenous population in Latin America, making up between 10 and 20 percent of the country's population. (Note 5)

Since before the Conquest, indigenous communities have maintained political and social structures whose responsibility it is to administer justice and regulate production, social rituals, and religious festivals. The descendants of these traditional forms of organization today comprise the building blocks of the vast majority of indigenous organizations in Mexico and throughout the region; they have endured under strong challenges from rival forms of authority. Following the Mexican revolution, the Mexican state declared ethnic organizations to be illegal. Indians wishing to organize themselves politically were obliged to identify themselves as "campesinos" (peasants) and to form groups based on occupations or geographical regions. When Indians have organized outside of internal community purposes, most often it has been to defend or reclaim ancestral land. By the 1930s, the Mexican Government had set up an organizational structure within the ruling party-the Party of the Mexican Revolution (later changed to the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI,-to incorporate both the burgeoning peasant and agrarian movements and the isolated cultural organizations into a party structure that would rule Mexico into the 1990s. The dominant policy objective of the government toward Indians was their assimilation into modernizing Mexican society. State-sponsored indigenous organizations were founded in order to channel and control the potentially radical Indian agenda. A myth of mestizaje-or the mixing of the races-was explicitly propagated to psychologically unify Mexicans into one "cosmic race" of European and Indian heritage.

The relationship between indigenous farmers and the state changed radically in the 1980s. Because of the economic crisis following Mexico's 1982 declaration that it could not pay its foreign debt, the government began a period of fiscal austerity that resulted in the curtailment of public works projects, health and education services, and programs to subsidize increasingly unprofitable agriculture. The rural poor suffered the most, although it is important to remember that in the most remote and heavily indigenous areas, these benefits had never reached indigenous communities. At the same time, the discovery of oil and the emergence of alternative industries reduced the importance of agriculture to the Mexican economy leading many to leave the agricultural sector. This caused a surplus of off-farm day labor (exacerbated in Chiapas by the arrival of tens of thousands of Guatemalan refugees), while a decline in international agricultural prices made less efficient rain-fed plots unviable. Indians were unable to find occasional labor to supplement declining ejido(Note 6) (communally owned land) incomes. Thus, as Collier explains, the indigenous farmer was converted from an important partner in the national economy to a burden on it. Taking office in 1988, the Salinas administration continued as a matter of policy the removal of the agrarian safety net that had begun as a requirement of austerity. It set out to dismantle peasant agricultural supports and rewrite the constitutional relationship between peasants and the state. The impact of the combination of changes in the international economy and the Mexican agricultural reform on campesinos was devastating, particularly for coffee growers in Chiapas. (Note 7)

In 1988 many indigenous organizations allied with the Cuauhtemoc C(rdenas campaign, which brought together parties on the left with disgruntled former leaders of the PRI. That campaign marked a change in the political loyalties of indigenous voters, who, prior to 1988, had been securely held by rural PRI bosses through coercion, patronage, or lack of alternatives. The new political coalition united behind C(rdenas, the National Democratic Front (FDN), attracted many rank-and-file Indian supporters, as well as indigenous leaders, who ran on the FDN slate. According to leaders from such diverse Indian tribes as the Seri in the northern state of Sonora and the Mixtec in the southern state of Oaxaca, C(rdenas won the majority of the Indian vote. Through massive fraud, however, the PRI claimed these votes-an act which radicalized the newly independent indigenous voters. Electoral fraud in 1988 was carried out most brazenly in the rural south where C(rdenas had picked up support. (Note 8)

Though the C(rdenas candidacy offered little explicitly to Indians, the symbolism of C(rdenas, whose Aztec name and features evoked an indigenous heritage and whose father L(zaro had distributed land to the poor, gained him a lot of support, which accrued to the FDN's succesor, the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) after his failed candidacy. Following the show of independence in 1988, many indigenous communities that had supported C(rdenas suffered reprisals, particularly in the form of cancelled public works and economic development projects. While this convinced some to stick with the PRI, it radicalized others, who flocked to the prodemocracy civic movements and ethnic organizations that formed around this time. Organizing to counter state-sponsored celebrations of the "discovery" of the Americas, which began in earnest in 1989, was one of the most important catalysts to indigenous mobilization in the hemisphere, and this was also the case in Mexico. Not only did the quincentennary mobilizations politicize Indians, it raised awareness of indigenous communities among other sectors of society and engendered sympathy for their problems. This change in attitude toward Indians in Mexico made possible the widespread sympathy later expressed for the EZLN. (Note 9)

In the early 1990s, indigenous activists protested the official end of agrarian reform and the modernization of agriculture by the Salinas administration. Indian communities protested changes in the Mexican Constitution's Article 27 that weakened the inalienable communal landholding rights of Indian communities, which went into effect in January 1992. (Note 10) Most independent indigenous organizations view the threats to communal property posed by Article 27 as having profound negative implications for the economic, social, and political organization of indigenous communities. As one Indian leader explained, In the end it is the weapon that will destroy our people; because it is a way of dividing us into pieces, families or individuals, because the lands will be privatized. In the ejidos everyone will have their parcel, with title to their property, and the collective life of the community will be destroyed. (Note 11)

The diversity of indigenous organizations cannot be overstated. They range from community-based groups, the most common, to federations of one nationality or conglomerations of several nationalities in a particular region. The groups can be loosely divided into explicitly indianista organizations-which tend to emphasize the protection of indigenous culture, the use of Indian languages, bilingual education, respect for indigenous medicine, religion, and traditional authorities-and the campesino organizations-which tend to be more closely allied with the established left and popular organizations, and whose demands are more explicitly economic. Yet, despite the diversity of languages and customs among the Indians of Mexico and geographical barriers, an indigenous movement has emerged in the last decades that is capable of united action in particular moments, and that shares a desire for greater autonomy, more secure access to land and economic resources, relief from discrimination and violence, and respect for the dignity of the country's diverse indigenous cultures. The indianista and campesino organizations share a pan-Indian nationalism-a shared identification and solidarity-that is not just a political tactic but the expression of a unity based in a common civilization, reinforced by centuries of domination and discrimination, and bound in a shared vision of a future wherein Indian nationalities are recognized as legitimate units of a "pluri-national" Mexican state. The realization of this vision is considered to be the "indispensable condition for the continuity and autonomous development of the distinct culture of each ethnic group," a process that was interrupted by European colonization. (Note 12)

THE CAMPESINO MOVEMENT IN CHIAPAS

Before the 1970s, the campesino movement in Chiapas was nonexistent, save for some localized struggles for land, because of the isolation and dispersion of the mostly rural indigenous population. Chiapas is a state of extreme inequality and contradictions. The state's population is the second most indigenous and the poorest in terms of income. It has the highest infant mortality and illiteracy rates, with indicators of poverty and social marginalization even higher in the eastern zones, which provide the base for the Zapatistas. It is also rich in natural resources and contains some of the country's largest ranches. Land distribution is highly concentrated. The state's 4 percent share of the national population acounts for 30 percent of the country's petitions for landCpetitions that were shelved when the government officially ended agrarian reform in 1992. (Note 13)

In 1974 Bishop Samuel Ruiz of San Crist(bal de las Casas organized a state-sponsored conference commemorating the 500th anniversary of the birth of the city's namesake. Rather than absorbing and channeling through the government the demands of the campesinos as intended, the agenda of the conference was overtaken by the Indians themselves. As a result, the conferees linked formerly dispersed indigenous and campesino groups into increasingly larger and stronger indigenous and campesino organizations and ejido unions. (Note 14) The majority of the groups formed was campesino rather than Indian organizations, and united indigenous communities and poor non-Indians through shared grievances of poverty, political domination, economic exploitation and, particularly, the struggle for land. The land struggles became increasingly combative as landowners and the public and private security forces that backed them used force to break up marches, assemblies, and community-organized seizures of lands-generally, land that had been awarded by legal decree but that local authorities had refused to turn over. By the late 1970s, local land movements were able to transcend their former isolation and improvizational nature and form a regional campesino movement composed of diverse but loosely linked organizations.

The campesino organizations stressed land redistribution and revocation of the recent changes in Article 27; cheap agricultural credits and other economic supports; social services, such as roads, health care, education, and housing; and protection of individual human rights. The smaller indianista movement, spearheaded by the Independent Front of Indian Peoples (FIPI), focused on constitutional recognition of the collective rights and autonomy of indigenous peoples and the creation of pluri-ethnic indigenous regions and special laws to guarantee the participation of indigenous leaders in all branches of the national and state government. (Note 15)

Several national organizations whose members would form the base of the EZLN were formed in this period, all of them inspired by the legend of Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata. During the 1970s and 1980s they were the target of repression on the part of paramilitary groups hired by local ranchers as well as security forces in Chiapas. (Note 16) In 1977, a minority of the peasant and indigenous activists, frustrated by years of poor results and mounting systematic repression, decided to take up arms, while the majority rejected violent methods either on principal or because they considered armed action to be risky and ineffective. Those choosing to go the armed route migrated toward the radical movements in the Lacand\n rainforest. These movements were led by nonindigenous Marxist and Maoist intellectuals from northern Mexico, who learned indigenous languages and organized local Indian groups around cooperative productive activities. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) was formed in 1983 in the Lacand\n jungle, drawing cadres from these radical leftist movements, agrarian organizations, and new waves of colonists from the highlands.

The mostly Indian coffee-growing cooperatives that sprang up in the 1980s were also an important force in the Chiapas campesino movement, and the dire situation of the coffee growers in the early 1990s was a catalyst to the uprising, both in generating anger at the government and in tying the campesinos' feeling of abandonment and powerlessness to the Salinas administration's free-trade policies. Coffee is the most important agricultural product of Chiapas, representing 46 percent of national production, 70 percent of which is cultivated by small growers. Throughout the 1980s, the growers cooperatives worked to decentralize the coffee export industry to reduce the control of the processing and export monopoly and increase the return to growers, and expand into these lucrative sectors. In 1989, however, international coffee prices fell to half their prior level. Because the Salinas administration had dismantled a system of agricultural supports that previously had sustained peasant growers during times of hardship, the coffee growers were left with mounting debts and few alternatives. (Note 17) As the main source of cash income for Indians in eastern Chiapas, the crisis experienced by the coffee-growers cooperatives and the insensitivity of the government to their pleas for assistance fueled political unrest and opposition to the Salinas administration.

As in other states, political unrest was channeled into support for the Cuauhtemoc C(rdenas presidential candidacy in 1988. The blatant fraud perpetrated by the PRI in Chiapas, where C(rdenas had garnered considerable support, galvanized support for the armed movements in the Lacand(n, which could point with renewed credibility to the futility of electoral channels. (Note 18) In order to subdue the increasing opposition political activity that had surrounded the 1988 elections, in 1989 the Salinas administration beefed up the military presence in Chiapas. In addition, upon taking office in December of 1988, the PRI governor signed a decree altering the penal code to broaden his powers to stifle dissent and criminalizing the common modes of political protest of the campesino and indigenous movementCland invasions, organized demonstrations, and mass protest aimed at government authorities. (Note 19)

BIRTH OF A NEW SOCIETY

Between 1960 and 1980, the population of the Lacand\n rainforest exploded from 5,000 to 300,000, spurred by population growth, the exhaustion of traditional Indian lands in the highlands, and the colonization encouraged by the government to satisfy the need for land without upsetting the concentration of landownership in the state. A significant portion of this migration was composed of Indians from the highlands of central Chiapas, where the development of the energy sector in the 1980s had sharpened disparities of wealth and political power within indigenous communities themselves and created a class of "outsiders" who could no longer eke out a living in their ancestral homes. Others were pushed off their lands or prevented from acquiring new land by the expansion of land-intensive cattle ranching and the decline in occasional farm labor that had supplemented meager ejido incomes. (Note 20)

EMERGENCE OF THE EZLN

Because there were few Indian communities in the rainforest prior to the migrations of the 1960s and 1970s (aside from the tiny Lacandona tribe), the organizations that emerged in the Lacand\n tended not to use traditional forms of organization and expression of indigenous cultures. Rather, to reflect the ethnic heterogeity of the local population, they emphasized their campesino identity and the common struggle for land. Many involved in the radical and armed movements were young people from Indian communities from other areas of Chiapas, who severed or loosened ties to ethnic and cultural communities. (Note 21) The EZLN's Lacand\n-based movement attracted the youngest of the disaffected. Initially, the average age of the group was 16, which rose slowly to 22 at the time of the uprising. (Note 22)

The EZLN's rhetoric and tactics were influenced in its formative stage by revolutionary socialism. Only following the offensives of January 1994-as the EZLN came to depend on the physical and moral support of the indigenous communities as a buffer between them and the Mexican army-did the Zapatistas fully embrace the indianista agenda and tone down the passJ rhetoric of socialist revolution. (Note 23) This can be demonstrated by analyzing the content of the Zapatistas' official communiquJs and the statements of combatants from before the uprising to the present date. Given the multi-ethnic nature of the rebels' constituency and the socialist ideology of its leaders, it would appear that the group originally strove to downplay the ethnic factor as both divisive and irrelevant. Then, the attention generated by the quincentennary mobilization in San Crist\bal, together with the extensive press coverage of the ethnic component of the uprising immediately after it began, persuaded the EZLN to adopt the Indian banner more explicitly.

The EZLN's late discovery of cultural demands can be demonstrated by analyzing its own statements, beginning with the manifesto, "El Despertador Mexicano" (The Mexican Awakening), which was issued as a call to arms on December 1, 1993. This manifesto conveys the EZLN's plans for revolution and details rules and procedures for the establishment of a revolutionary government following the beginning of the uprising (which began one month later). Instructions are given for the collectivization of economic production, including land ownership, an explicit attack on the Salinas administration's reform of Article 27. While this language appeals also to Indians, who traditionally own land communally but work it in individual family plots, it is derived from socialist ideas of collective ownership of production. According to "El Despertador Mexicano," the revolution is begun on behalf of "all the poor, exploited and miserable of Mexico," though explicit reference is made to campesinos and agricultural workers.

Nowhere in this document is mention made of Indian culture or the Maya Indians of Chiapas. While the EZLN notes plans to establish health centers with modern facilities, it does not mention protection for traditional medicine; schools are promised, but no mention made of bilingual education or the languages of the local population, 25 percent of whom do not speak Spanish. There is no mention of community autonomy, self-determination, cultural rights, identity, or language, the buzzwords of the contemporary indigenous movement. Moreover, cultural and ethnic symbols are lacking. A mestizo Mexican revolutionary hero is depicted on the front page, while photographs of masked, khaki-uniformed soldiers follow. Indigenous publications generally contain drawings of traditional symbols, words in indigenous languages, and photos or drawings depicting the visual manifestation of local culture. Finally, the document describes the organizational structure of the EZLN as hierarchical and centralized, as exemplified by an admonishment that only EZLN cadres and officials of the rank of major and above may negotiate with agents of the government without authorization from the General Command of the EZLN. (Note 24) Indian organizations are generally decentralized, and hierarchies, when they exist, are de-emphasized.

As Eugenio Bermejillo notes, several weeks following the uprising the Zapatistas began to raise the Indian like a banner. Yet Aindianness" is a highly ideological concept in the postuprising writings of the group's spokesperson-non-Indian Subcomandante Marcos-and is expressed in highly general, panethnic terms. According to Bermejillo, the Indian for the EZLN represents not ethnicity, but the negation of economic modernity. "More than socialism (the revolutionary idea more close at hand), it is the anti-modern character that is the ideological core of the movement." The Indian is the Zapatistas' explicit repudiation of the neoliberal economic project of the government. Rejection of this economic model, and its replacement with socialist, communal production, has been a key theme in all EZLN statements. (Note 25)

Following the uprising, the EZLN issued a series of communiques outlining its intentions. The first, a "Declaration of War," tied the EZLN's fight to that of Zapata and Pancho Villa and evoked other themes from the Mexican Revolution. The EZLN stated its intention of fighting all the way to the capital, defeating the army, and overthrowing the Mexican government. The only explicit references to ethnic issues in this communique are oblique references to "500 years of struggle" and to the "genocidal war" of the Mexican government, which are common Indian rhetorical themes. The communique is signed by the General Command of the EZLN, as was "El Despertador Mexicano." (Note 26)

Between the publication of this communique and the next, on January 6, there had been widespread media coverage of the uprising focusing speculation on its origins. Statements by Zapatista soldiers interviewed in the first days of the uprising, containing socialist slogans and extolling the superiority of communism over capitalism, led many to associate the uprising with the nearby Guatemalan rebels and Central American revolutionaries whose ideas had influenced political groups in the area in the last decade. (Note 27) Based on this association, the Mexican Government and North American political analysts challenged the rebels' assertion that the uprising was led by Indians. This judgment was also based on the evident hierarchy among unmasked Indians without uniforms carrying fake guns, and the uniformed and ski-masked leadership that met with the press, some of whom were clearly non-Indian. In the January 6 communique the EZLN answered these charges, assuring the public that the majority of the soldiers and 100 percent of the leadership were indigenous, and that the non-Indian spokespersons for the group were chosen because of their facility in Spanish, which was a second language to most of the combatants. For the first time, the communique is signed by the Revolutionary Indigenous Clandestine Committee, to which the General Command of the EZLN is now subordinate. Still, no special programs having to do with issues of culture or ethnic autonomy are mentioned. (Note 28)

Five more communiques, dealing with a variety of topics, were delivered to the news media on January 13. In these, the EZLN further articulates its political agenda, clarifies its origins, and conveys its conditions for dialogue. No specific references are made to ethnic or cultural demands. Interestingly, a proposal is rejected that Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchd, the well-known Guatemalan Maya exile who resides in the area, serve as one of the mediators for the negotiations. Menchd was rejected because she is not Mexican, which is listed as one of the EZLN's criteria for mediators. No ethnic criteria are listed.

In late February, Subcomandante Marcos began to articulate the demands of the indigenous organizations that had rallied in support of the Zapatistas demands (but not their armed methods) in the weeks following the uprising. The Zapatistas had achieved broad legitimacy in the eyes of a majority of Mexican society based on the appalling living conditions of Chiapas Indians that media coverage of the conflict had exposed. In addition to the original demands for a reorientation of economic policy and the replacement of the current government with a government of transition, the EZLN leader began to echo the positions articulated by the leaders of the coalition of indigenous and peasant organizations that had formed immediately following the uprising, and called for "broad autonomy for Indian regions of the country" and self-government in areas where they predominate, noting the tradition of Indian self-government in Chiapas. He also proposed Indian "co-governors" to represent in the government each major ethnic group in Chiapas and throughout the country. (Note 29) As will be discussed further below, while the theme of Indian autonomy and ethnic rights would never leave the rhetoric of the Zapatistas, they continue to present themselves as representatives of all the Mexican people, while the most comprehensive and far-reaching proposals for Indian rights are articulated by the national indigenous organizations themselves.

THE MARRIAGE IS CONSUMMATED

The presence of the military in Chiapas is due to its location along Mexico's southern border, the country's first line of defense against illegal immigration, as well as a regular stream of Guatemalan guerrillas and refugees, weapons, and drugs. Tensions between the military and indigenous communities in Chiapas were high in 1993 because of the army's increased harassment of indigenous communities in May and June of that year following the disappearance of two off-duty soldiers on May 20, 1993. The searches, beatings, and interrogations gained intensity after May 28, when the charred bodies of the soldiers were discovered, and the spike in reports of human rights violations attracted the attention of international human rights monitors. (Note 30) Adding to the violence in the early 1990s was growing conflict between Catholic Indians, who tended to be allied with the traditional political bosses and the conservative clergy, and Protestant Indians, who tended to favor the political opposition and were allied with the left-leaning church people in Chiapas. The conflict led to the expulsion of hundreds of Protestant indigenous families from their Catholic communities; many eventually settled in the slums around San Crist\bal or in the Lacand\n rainforest, where an estimated 40 percent of residents are members of Protestant or evangelical sects. (Note 31)

Indian and peasant organizations without direct links to the Zapatistas took advantage of the notoriety the Zapatistas gained in various ways. Indian organizations issuing statements in support of the Indians of Chiapas expressed solidarity with the EZLN but overwhelmingly rejected their violent tactics, as this statement from Nahuatl leader Eustaquio Celestino of Guerrero suggests: "We support all their demands. We know firsthand about corruption and broken promises. But the solution is via dialogue, not arms." (Note 32) Nonviolent indigenous and campesino organizations in Chiapas forged a delicate political alliance in solidarity with the Zapatistas, while continuing to distance themselves from the insurgents' violent tactics. Two weeks following the uprising, approximately 140 such groups in Chiapas met to propose solutions to the conflict and voted to form an independent coordinating organization to represent their interests in the context of EZLN-government negotiations. In that moment of unity, the State Council of Indigenous and Campesino Organizations (CEOIC) called for "a constitutional reform to enable a new relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Mexican state"based on "the reorganization of territory as well as political restructuring," into "autonomous pluri-ethnic regions which would shift power from the state and the federation to Indigenous peoples." (Note 33) In early February, indigenous and campesino organizations seized four town halls and demonstrated in over a dozen other communities to "demand the removal of corrupt local (PRI) authorities." On February 21, peace negotiations began in San Crist\bal, mediated by Bishop Samuel Ruiz. These ended on March 2 with a tentative peace plan based on the negotiations, which the EZLN representatives promised to discuss with their supporters. As these lengthy consultations proceeded in the following months, the land invasions accelerated. While 127 peasants were arrested in June of 1994 alone, most invaders have not been dislodged by the government, despite the irate urgings of local ranchers and landowners. Chiapas officials estimate that over 1,000 land invasions occurred during the 6 months following the uprising. (Note 34)

On March 7, more than 70 Mexican indigenous organizations sponsored a National Electoral Convention of Indigenous Peoples to probe the agendas of the major political parties 5 months prior to the national elections. All the registered political parties sent their presidential candidates except the PRI. Participants issued a declaration rejecting the government-EZLN proposed peace plan as not sufficiently far reaching. In particular, from their perspective, it failed to address adequately the relationship between indigenous peoples and the state embodied in the Mexican Constitution. (Note 35) The Indigenous Convention demanded that 10 percent of legislative seats be reserved for representatives of indigenous organization, and that a sixth national electoral district be created, whereby indigenous candidates would be allowed to run without the sponsorship of political parties for reserved indigenous legislative seats, a provision adopted by Colombia in 1991. A further political proposal was for the redrawing of electoral districts in areas of heavy indigenous population such that the indigenous population would constitute a majority. Currently, in states such as Chiapas, districts have been designed for the express purpose of avoiding Indian majorities and fracturing the electoral support of individual ethnic groups.

On March 23, the attention focused on the Chiapas peace talks was abruptly eclipsed by the assassination of the PRI's presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, and the new national electoral scenario created by the murder. On June 13, the EZLN announced that their constituency had rejected the government's peace proposal. Despite provisions for steeply increased economic assistance and political reform in Chiapas, the EZLN rejected the plan because it failed to address the national issues that were the core of their programCthe reversal of the neoliberal economic policies of the Salinas government and its replacement by a government of transition. In the following weeks, indigenous and campesino organizations took advantage of the diverted national attention and the presence of human rights observers to lead a wave of land invasions of haciendas throughout the state. In retaliation, ranchers and landowners sponsored a wave of assassinations of campesino and Indian leaders.

Immediately prior to the Zapatista-sponsored National Democratic Convention (NDC), held in the zone of conflict on 8-10 August 1994, the fragile CEIOC coalition finally split in half, when those organizations receiving funding from the government opposed participation in the convention. The remaining half, calling itself the Independent CEOIC, "maintains a line of civilian support for the Zapatista proposals and negotiations, and continues to contribute significantly to the extension of 'civilian bridges' into the conflict zone." (Note 36) Independent indigenous leaders participating in the NDC complained that the majority of the participants were non-indigenous, and that only a few paragraphs of the Convention's final declaration referred to the demands of indigenous peoples. Moreover, the Zapatistas changed the term "indigenous peoples" to "ethnic minorities"-a term universally rejected by indigenous organizations throughout the Americas as degrading and restrictive of their rights in international law. (Note 37)

Following the August elections, the Zapatistas demands focused on preventing the inauguration of the winner of the Chiapas governor's race, the PRI's candidate Eduardo Robledo, and his replacement with PRD candidate Amado AvendaZo, an early supporter of the Zapatistas, whom they claim was cheated of victory. (Note 38) While the EZLN had hoped to regain national and international attention following the elections, on September 28 the head of the PRI was assassinated, inaugurating a season of political scandal that has yet to subside. Frustrated, the Zapatistas broke off peace talks on October 10 and closed access to EZLN-held territory in eastern Chiapas. The following week, Subcomandante Marcos warned that the inauguration of Eduardo Robledo in December would lead to civil war.

On October 12, 1994 (not coincidentally, Columbus Day), a coalition of indigenous organizations issued a declaration establishing Indigenous Autonomous Regions throughout the state, which are intended to serve as a level of government between the municipal governments, indigenous communities and the state government. (Note 39) The indigenous organizations, in a document entitled "Autonomy as a New Relationship Between the Indigenous Peoples and the National Society," articulated a series of constitutional reforms that would create autonomous indigenous regions in all parts of the country where indigenous peoples are present, with broad local powers to govern political, administrative, and cultural matters. Leaders of the Autonomous Indigenous Regions demanded "full respect and recognition of our irrefutable right to self-determination of our peoples and with that the recognition of our legitimate right to autonomy." By late October, four autonomous regions had been established, including 58 municipalities covering more than half the state's territory. (Note 40)

The creation of the Autonomous Indigenous Regions is perhaps the most profound expression of the nationalistic aspirations of indigenous peoples in Mexico, aspirations which had been expressed in the numerous marches, manifestos, and legislative proposals sponsored by Indian organizations prior to the uprising. In keeping with the tactics of indigenous organizations in other countries of the region, FIPI president Margarito RuRz deflected criticism of the regional autonomous governments by citing Article 4 of the Mexican Constitution (on the rights and identity of indigenous peoples), as well as the International Labor Organization's Convention No. 169 (1989) on the Rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, (Note 41)and the U.N. Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. By contrast, in launching their rebellion the previous January, the EZLN cited Article 39 of the Mexican Constitution (which bases the sovereignty of the government in the Mexican people), and the Geneva Convention's protections of the rights of belligerents in wars of liberation. Thus, while the Indian organizations justify their actions in terms of the rights of indigenous peoples in Mexican and international law, the EZLN bases its legitimacy on the rights of revolutionaries.

THE SPLIT

The public sympathy the indigenous combatants have gained and the solidarity of indigenous activists in other countries where their demands resonate strongly have provided the EZLN more leverage than their military or rhetorical strength alone could command. The Zapatistas have manipulated public sympathy for the Maya to maintain public support for a nonviolent solution to the conflict, and they have used the legacy of violence and terror against the Maya to manipulate the fears and loyalties of the Indian population. Particularly since the February 9 Mexican army offensive that pushed the EZLN deep into the jungle, the guerrillas have spread rumours of a genocidal war against the Mayan people and vilified the Mexican Government with exaggerations and fabrications of violence on the part of the military against noncombatants. (Note 42) Similarly, the Mexican government has cut off independent media and NGO access to the zone of conflict and is manipulating the information available to the official media. The government's outpouring of funds for public works programs in Chiapas since the uprising has divided the population between hardliners who want to reject the money until major national reforms are made (the position taken by the EZLN) and those desperate for the services the additional resources provide. (Note 43) Suspicious of both the government and the Zapatistas, the authorities of the Indigenous Autonomous Regions and their allies in the National Electoral Convention of Indigenous Peoples work to elaborate their own constitutional reform proposals with regard to indigenous rights and to generate grassroots support in indigenous municipalities for independent indigenous candidates in local elections. (Note 44) A series of national conferences on constitutional reform in April, May and August of 1995, was attended by over 400 indigenous organizations from throughout Mexico and resulted in the crystallization of a far-reaching constitutional reform program that may enable the Indian leaders to regain the agenda-setting prerogative the EZLN seemed to usurp in 1994.

Under the guidelines established by legislation passed by the Zedillo administration and the Mexican congress in March of 1995, a new series of peace talks were held in late April in mid-May, on June 8-11, and in early July. (Note 45) At a press conference during the June meetings, a taped message was played in which Subcomandante Marcos asked for a consultation with the Zapatistas' supporters on the direction that the stalled rebellion should take. The Zapatista leader called on center and left forces throughout Mexico to form a broad social force in support of democratic reform and to consult among themselves and provide answers to the following five questions:

! Do you agree that the principal demands of the Mexican people are: land, housing, jobs, food, health, education, culture, (Note 46) information, independence, democracy, liberty, justice and peace?

! Should the EZLN unite with others in a national front of opposition on behalf of these 13 demands?

! Should there be profound political transformation in terms that guarantee: equity, citizen participation, including non-party and non-governmental participation, respect for the vote, a reliable voting list and recognition of all the local regional and national political forces?

! Should the EZLN convert into a new and independent political force?

! Should the EZLN join with other forces and organizations to form a new political organization? (Note 47)

In this call for direction, one senses a division among those Zapatistas willing to hold out indefinitely for revolutionary change, those wishing to end the armed phase of the rebellion and unite with the left in a political movement, and those wishing to respond to the hunger and sickness reported to be decimating the EZLN cadres and their supporters by making a deal quickly. A clandestine revolutionary organization founded to confront and overthrow the national government directly, the EZLN seems unable to place on the table specific programmatic objectives rather than vague ideals.

The Zapatistas also seem to be losing the coherence of their base in eastern Chiapas, which had lent them credibility and unity in the beginning of the armed uprising. This is indicated by their broad appeals to all the democratic forces in Mexico, including workers, Indians, peasants, students, women, and artists, and to their sympathizers in Europe and the Americas, as well as by their rallying cry: "Everything for Everyone!" The rebels are clearly more interested in mobilizing a national political movement than in resolving the severe social deficit in Chiapas that had made the uprising possible. Scores of poor indigenous families who have suffered the loss of a family member, property, or meager possessions because of the uprising now focus their anger and frustration on the EZLN.

The marriage of convenience that linked the fate of the indigenous movement to that of the rebels has benefitted both parties, however. The incorporation of the Maya of Chiapas-arguably the most disadvantaged and abused people in Mexico-into its ranks gave the EZLN credibility in the eyes of Mexicans and the international community. The indigenous organizations gained from the uprising a level of attention to their demands and their problems that they had been struggling to achieve for many years. They have so sensitized the public to these demands that the government has poured billions of pesos into Chiapas for public works and economic development, put forward proposals to distribute thousands of hectares of land, and has offered to recognize rights to community autonomy and respect for indigenous culture and traditions. Even their most challenging demands-or the right to participate in elections as indigenous organizations rather than political parties, and for constitutional changes acknowleding community autonomy-appear within reach.

By mid-1995 it seemed that the time had come for these two partners to seek a divorce. The Zapatistas lacked-because of their own intransigence, the intrusion of more important national issues, and the Zedillo administration's skillful handling of the conflict-the inclination and the capacity to use what little leverage they have in the interests of Mexico's Indians. They have rejected plans to acknowledge indigenous rights, address the severe deficiency of social services, assist indigenous farmers, and reopen the issue of agrarian reform. The only benefit the EZLN now provides the indigenous organizations is a modicum of attention to the egregious human rights situation in Chiapas-which has not improved since the uprisingCand some restraint on the part of local security forces who do not want to incur the condemnation of human rights groups for their excessive use of force. Nevertheless, it is private actors who have perpetrated most of the violence since the uprising, and the presence of the army and international observers has done little to stop them.

CONCLUSION

The marriage of convenience between the indigenous movement and the Zapatistas has enabled them to pursue mutual benefits in a volatile political region, with neither side fully embracing the other, since the two parties are fundamentally incompatible. The EZLN was created to confront the state with a revolutionary project based on European and Maoist ideas, using the tools, organizational forms, and rhetoric of Latin American-style guerrilla warfare. Added to this mix was a blend of the social customs of the indigenous peoples of the area-in particular, the consensual model of decision-making and the necessity of the Zapatista's nonindigenous leadership to gain the trust of indigenous communities based on years of education and reciprocal service. Analyzing the EZLN strategy as Gramsci might, the intellectual leaders of the movement took a common class position, combined it with revolutionary dogma, and inculcated a self-aware communal conciousness in a cohesive band of several thousand young cadres in the Lacand\n. They then set out to "universalize" the counter-hegemonic project of this class as the interest of the Mexican population. They failed. First, rather than engaging the state's organs of force in a "war of position," they tried to directly confront it with insufficient power. Second, they failed to convert their idealistic vision into a practical program that would appeal to a broad sector of the population. (Note 48)

The Zapatistas were able for a short period to manipulate the nationalism and paranoia endemic to persecuted minorities; to cast their socialist revolution in terms of a last-ditch effort of the Maya peoples to halt their own extermination by a conspiracy of Mexican and international neoliberal elites. As Joseph Rothschild explains, these tactics have been used throughout the world by political entrepreneurs, who stereotype competing ethnic group(s) into starkly polarized images of virtue and menace, images that telescope past conflicts and misproject their oversimplified recollection into the present context such as to exacerbate it. . . . Stereotyping thus interacts in a vicious cycle with the above-mentioned frequent anxiety of ethnic groups that their differences with competing groups are not really over the discrete questions that are seemingly on the agenda but actually over hidden ultimates, indeed over their own survival. (Note 49)

Indigenous communities in Latin America have a long history of attempts by political entrepreneurs to capture the agenda and resources of existing indigenous organizations. Such attempts invariably fail, as indigenous communities have their own methods for testing the legitimacy and commitment of those who purport to lead them.

The indigenous movement, on the other hand, began with the strong ethnic and cultural identities of individual communities, and wove these historically rooted identities into a pan-indigenous self-awareness that resonates strongly with diverse indigenous communities at varying levels of acculturation. The renewal and amalgamation of multiple ethnic identities was provoked by the assault on the indigenous rural economy and land tenure rights and the rapid modernization and internationalization of Mexican culture in the 1970s and 1980s. As Anthony Giddens explains, the inherent nationalism of indigenous peoples was intensified by a reaction to modern society, which generates a desire for "an identity securely anchored in the past. . . . The disintegrative impact which is wrought upon pre-existing traditional cultures by modern economic and political development creates a search for renewed forms of group symbolism, of which nationalism is the most potent. Nationalism engenders a spirit of solidarity and collective commitment which is energetically mobilizing in circumstances of cultural decay." (Note 50) While the indigenous movement is divided along regional, strategic, and programmatic lines, it is capable of unity when it comes to important matters of state policy. This unity is based on a national identity grounded in beliefs about the common descent, common struggles, and shared destiny of Mexico's indigenous peoples, which transcends the sharp ethnic, community, economic, and regional conflicts that characterize ancient and modern inter-ethnic relations. The indigenous conception of democracy, justice, collective rights, and the paramount importance of land and community has developed over hundreds of years and sustained the distinctiveness of indigenous culture against an onslaught of enforced assimilation, repression, and degradation.

In early 1996, it seems as if the indigenous movement has become the dominant partner in the marriage. Peace negotiations between the Mexican government and the EZLN drag on in southern Mexico like a once-popular television series that is now kept on the air by a small but devoted following. Meanwhile, the mainstream indigenous movement seems to have gained a second wind behind the movement for regional autonomy--a consistent, and broad-based demand of Indians throughout Mexico. (Note 51) As discussed above, the autonomy movement was spearheaded by FIPI through its establishment of Autonomous Plurethnic Regions in Chiapas in late 1994. Since the establishment of a National Indigenous Assembly for Autonomy (ANIPA) on April 10, 1995, four national conventions have been held on the topic of ethno-territorial autonomy, convening hundreds of indigenous delegates. The fifth assembly, held on 4-8 January, 1996, in San Cristobal de las Casas, was co-sponsored by the EZLN in conjunction with ANIPA. The agenda for that meeting consisted solely of topics addressing the specific demands of indigenous peoples, such as "Indigenous Peoples Rights for Autonomy," "Guarantees of Justice towards Indigenous Peoples," and "The Promotion and Development of Indigenous Cultures and Traditions." (Note 52)

Thus, while the EZLN has had trouble mobilizing a broad-based political movement behind promises of "everything for everyone," Mexican indigenous organizations are converging behind a movement focusing on a specific demand that defines the indigenous movement in the Western Hemisphere-a reconceptualization and reorganization of relations between Indian nations and communities and non-Indian governments that constructs a sphere of cultural autonomy and territorial jurisdiction free of state interference. While the EZLN's brand of popular socialism and vague sloganeering has been eclipsed by irreversible international economic integration and democratic forces beyond its control, the indigenous movement is connecting to a world-wide impulse to reexamine the ideal of the nation-state and to reinterpret the concept of national sovereignty in accordance with an emerging ideal of cultural pluralism and the reality of many nations co-existing within state boundaries.

The marriage of convenience between the EZLN and the Mexican indigenous movement is thus a marriage of Mexico's revolutionary past and revolutionary future.