El Barzón: Performing Resistance in Contemporary Mexico

El Barzón: Performing Resistance in Contemporary Mexico Daniel Chavez University of Michigan Se me reventó el Barzón y sigue la yunta andando The yoke's hitch btoke and still the oxteam pulls — Revolutionary corrido In January of 1994 Mexican television viewers divided their attention between the Zapatista revolt in Chiapas and the scandals of President Salinas's last days in office. However, as is frequently the case, selective reporting by the media served to mask other important developments in the political arena. New and important grassroots organizations were springing up surreptitiously, receiving little or no media attention since the Zapatista revolt held the main focus of the international and national media. For more than a year, as early as February of 1993, a group of small landholders had started to organize in the Pacific rim states of Colima and Jalisco. Although rivers of ink were devoted to the southeastern unrest, the many tractors, plows, and other agricultural equipment strategically parked in front of banks and around main squares did not win many headlines. At first glance, their grievances were purely economic because the financial situation of small rural farmers was extremely difficult. Despite the "brilliant" IMF-approved macroeconomic reforms of the de la Madrid and Salinas administrations, the microeconomic impact of their palliative programs against poverty received mixed reviews by analysts and public opinion (Kouyoumdjian 90; Krauze 428). At the same time, the old practices of power transference and communication with the masses that had helped assure the Revolutionary Institutional Party (the PRI) its long life were alienating the traditionally loyal rural population (Krauze 402). Moreover, due to the lack of support from PRI regional organizations in charge of rural issues, a group of pequeños propietarios (small Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 2, 1998 88 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies landholders) and some ejidatarios (communal landholders) decided to make their dissention public and move their machinery into the main squares of Sayula and Autlán in southern Jalisco. Eventually this emerging movement would be called El Barzón and would include not only economically-threatened peasants and middle-class famers, but would also come to represent urban middle-class credit-card holders, microindustrial entrepreneurs, taxi drivers, and artisans threatened by skyrocketing interest rates and other decisions of those in control of the re-privatized banking system (Gil Olmos). One of the most harmful policies being criticized was the reformulation of loan contracts, frequently being done without the consent of the signing parties. Compound interest rates and suffer clauses for seizure of property in instances of loan defaulting were also being put into place (Rudiño 5). According to the barzonistas, banks and the local judges were in collusion with the government to deprive small farmers of their property (Adorno Jiménez). Tractors in front of the Government Building in Guadalajara, Jalisco September, 1993 A harsh economic situation resulted in the rapid growth of a number of social organizations. What is so unique about the barzonistas in Mexico is their rapid evolution from a regional organization with limited membership to a full-blown social movement with 500,000 members by 1995, only two years after its inception (Williams, PUnting 8). How was this evolution possible? What practices of public Daniel Chávez 89 performance permitted this petite bourgeois movement to grow so rapidly ? How is public space, historically modelled on official government structures, used by this group? Are these revolutionary or oppositional practices? How can we relate these performative practices to other cultural activity currently taking place in Mexico? What frames of reference can be used to explain the hybrid nature of barzonista cultural appropriations? These are the questions which structure my inquiry. Given the multilayered nature of cultural artifacts and performance practices used by barzonistas it is impossible to stick to one set of tools for analysis. In order to deal with the heterogeneity of the performative acts of this group this essay is divided into three main parts: 1) a brief introduction to the political and economic situation in Mexico and other countries that lead to the emergence of contemporary social movements conscious of the importance of performative acts to express their disagreement...