Abstract
The administration of President Ernesto Zedillo, which took office in December 1994, inherited from its predecessor Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the unresolved issue of an armed anti-government uprising in the state of Chiapas. After the shock-waves of the political transition including a serious financial crisis and the severe devaluation of the Mexican peso—had more or less dissipated, public opinion expected the new administration to address this conflict responsibly and competently, as had been promised during the presidential campaign. Indeed, shortly after the handing-over of power contacts between the federal government and the rebels were renewed, leading eventually to the initiation of a formal ‘peace dialogue’ which in turn resulted in a signed ‘Accord’ between the parties in 1996. But thereafter further negotiations stalled, new tensions arose, and the dialogue between the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional—EZLN) and the federal government broke off. The Zedillo administration came to its end 6 years later without having accomplished its aim of solving the armed conflict in Chiapas nor, for that matter, any of the major issues which originated the uprising. In a larger perspective, this omission must be chalked up as a major failing of the Zedillo presidency.
Six years after an indigenous uprising in southern Mexico attracted world-wide attention, a new government took power in 2000. The Woodrow Wilson Center (WWC) for International Scholars in Washington DC organized a collective volume on Mexico’s Democratic Challenges, to which I was invited to contribute this evaluation of the Zapatista movement at the beginning of the new decade.
This text was first published in 2003 as: “Mexico’s Unfinished Symphony: the Zapatista Movement”, in: Joseph S. Tulchin and Andrew Selee (Eds.): Mexico's Democratic Challenges (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner): 109–126. The permission to republish this text was granted on 20 July by Ms. Laura Logan, Rights and Permissions, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder, CO, USA.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Evangelical protestantism has made numerous converts in Latin America in recent decades (Stoll 1990).
- 3.
Primera Declaracion de la Selva Lacandona. Declaracion de Guerra del Ejercito Zapatista en Chiapas (1 January 1994).
- 4.
Salinas’ hand-picked successor, PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was murdered in March. Presidential elections were held in July and in December Salinas handed over power to Ernesto Zedillo.
- 5.
Camacho Solis resigned as negotiator in March, after the murder of Colosio. He later broke with the PRI and became an independent contender for the presidency in 2000.
- 6.
As is so often the case, many people know parts of the story, and only a few people may think they know the whole story, but they probably do not.
- 7.
Ronfeldt et al. (1998).
- 8.
After a strenuous public relations campaign by the Salinas government, Mexico was accepted as a member of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), a club of industrial states, the first ‘developing’ nation to have achieved this status.
- 9.
The EZLN organized a ‘Democratic Convention’ in their jungle stronghold in August 1994, just after the presidential election, which was attended by several thousand participants from all over the country and abroad. In the following years they organized other similar international gatherings, maintaining a constant flow of visitors to their base communities. While the Mexican government has been accused of selectively and illegally harassing numerous ‘observers’ from different countries—including arbitrary detentions and deportations—in general, considering the fact that a ‘war’ had been declared in the country, it was surprisingly willing to allow these contacts to continue and the meetings to take place in rebel territory, thinking perhaps to improve its international image and to coax the peace process along.
- 10.
Official opinion holds that the Zapatistas should lay down their arms, take off their masks and transform themselves into a political party. The Zapatistas, however, insist that they will only do this after the peace agreement has been fully implemented. In other words, they feel that only by obtaining the government’s compliance to the agreement will they be able to achieve the political legitimacy needed to become an alternative political force in Mexico. For this they count on the continued support of the Mexican ‘civil society’—which the government considers a useless distraction to any future peace negotiations.
- 11.
A recent FAO study reports that 40 % of Mexico’s population is undernourished.
- 12.
- 13.
See “Chiapas al dia”, in: Boletin, No. 216, CIEPAC (29 September 2000); at: < ciepac@laneta.apc.org> .
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Stavenhagen, R. (2013). Mexico’s Unfinished Symphony: The Zapatista Movement (2000). In: The Emergence of Indigenous Peoples. SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice(), vol 3. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34144-1_6
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