Zapata Lives!: Histories and Cultural Politics in Southern Mexico

Notes

PREFACE 1. In his discussion, Field builds on Claudio Lomnitz-Adler’s (1992) term “internal articulatory intellectuals” in describing individuals who “elaborate identities internally to their communities and articulate their communities’ political demands to the elite-dominated state” (Field 1999a, 9). CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1. I thank Kay Warren for pointing this out and for encouraging me to include a discussion of this history in Latin American anthropology. 2. This is a definition of violence taken from Carole Nagengast’s discussion of Raymond Williams’s “key word” (Nagengast 1994, 11). CHAPTER 2. GOVERNMENT CONSTRUCTION AND REAPPROPRIATION OF EMILIANO ZAPATA 1. A wide range of schools, not only in rural areas but in urban areas as well, had textbooks that codified the Mexican Revolution and Zapata as a hero. In 1935, the Secretaría de Educación Pública published a book, Zapata: Exaltaci ón, by Germán List Arzubide, which does precisely what its title suggests—it is an exaltation, a passionate offering of the history of Zapata and the Mexican Revolution. Written for the series The Library of the Worker and the Peasant, the book is accompanied by others with such titles as Marx, What Marx Wanted to Say, and How to Organize and Run a Union. In his volume on Zapata, List Notes 345 Arzubide concludes, “Emiliano Zapata is now a symbol: the man passed on but his work has been transmitted in an idea.” The symbol and idea of Zapata were indeed passed on and skillfully woven by the SEP into publications and programs. In the Libro de lectura para uso de las escuelas nocturnas para trabajadores (Lecture Book for Use in Night Schools for Workers), published in 1938, a page on the army discusses the downfall of “the dictator” (Díaz), the rise of other armies , and finally the new revolutionary army composed of peasants and workers . Zapata’s name enters the pantheon of heroes here as well. This book provided continuity with the Simiente series in linking peasants and workers as the defenders of the Mexican revolution. THE ARMY I. First was the army of the dictator. He who was obligated by the command of mercenary officials bloodied his bayonet with the blood of martyred workers. . . . II. Later: Madero, Aquiles Serdán, Zapata. Deserted factories and abandoned fields because people filled the ranks of the new battalions. III. And Today: Workers and peasants ready to abandon once again the factory and the plow to take up the gun. An army of workers that is formed by a sole front of uniformed brothers to defend their rights. Soldiers, workers, and peasants: the new Army of the Revolution. Secretaría de Educación Pública 1938, 81 This text disseminated in urban areas helped to cement a new image of the revolution in urban culture. It also bound together as “the Army of the Revolution” the three sectors that Cárdenas sought to control by creating mass organizations : peasants through the National Peasants’ Confederation (CNC), workers through the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), and the army. Published in 1938, the same year that Cárdenas created these mass sectoral organizations, the book is an example of how the state’s rewriting of history was disseminated through a variety of channels. 2. The average rural household consists of about 5.5 persons. 3. Chiapas has between 1,873 and 2,015 ejidos, depending on how they are counted (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática 1995, 16). INEGI records two different categories of ejidos. The figure of 2,015 includes those designated “new ejido population centers.” 4. I thank Jennie Purnell for clarifying the legal history of the category comunidad agraria in the twentieth century. 5. Book 4 of the Simiente series focuses even more on the evils of individualism and the possibilities of collectivism. See “Los intereses individuales deben subordinarse a los intereses colectivos” (Individual Interests Should be Subordinated to Collective Interests) and “Sirvamos dignamente a la colectividad” (We Serve the Collectivity with Dignity), in Lucio 1935d, 23–24, 32–33. 6. The subsequent two quotations are taken from a 1994 video production by Dan Hallin, “Dan Hallin Unmasks Jacobo Zabludovsky on Televisa in Chiapas ” (Hallin 1994). 346 Notes to Pages 50–70 CHAPTER 4. THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF INDIGENOUS STRUGGLE IN CHIAPAS 1. See Thomas and Brody (1988, 1–2) for another description of the settlement process of...