-
Preface
- University of California Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
As the year 1993 drew to a close, high-ranking members of Mexico’s government prepared to celebrate the initiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on 1 January 1994. Approval of this agreement by the U.S. Congress in fall 1993 closed years of preparation and bargaining between the two countries. For those in the upper echelons of Mexico’s government, those in the elite tiers of the financial service and banking center, and the twenty-four new billionaires who had prospered during the term of Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari , NAFTA appeared to offer a new beginning, new hope, and a new national image for Mexico as a player in the global economy. The buzzwords of NAFTA—privatization, investment, individual opportunity, economic growth, international markets, global capital, and increased production—could be the basis for a new nationalism that would unify all Mexicans as they assumed their rightful place at the table with “first world” countries. For them, NAFTA would help Mexico to be recognized as a modern nation. Far away from Mexico City, in the last days of 1993, another group was also preparing for 1 January. Throughout the highlands and in the Lacandon jungle of eastern Chiapas, thousands of indigenous soldiers, militia members, and community base members of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) were assembling and preparing to carry out coordinated attacks on five municipal seats in the state of Chiapas (see map 3). These people were not getting ready to celebrate NAFTA. Preface xxv They were using the legacy of Emiliano Zapata and the Mexican Revolution to stake a claim against NAFTA and the kind of Mexico associated with the political and economic elite supporting NAFTA. They were getting ready to let the world know that there was another Mexico —an impoverished rural and indigenous Mexico where most people had nothing. “We have nothing, absolutely nothing, not even a decent roof over our heads, no land, no work, no healthcare, no food, or education ; without the right to freely and democratically elect our authorities , without independence from foreigners, without peace or justice for ourselves and our children. But today we say, enough! We are the heirs of those who truly forged our nationality” (Womack 1999, 248, translating Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional 1994, 33). These words, from the “First Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle,” did not take Mexicans by surprise. Many knew that there was extreme economic stratification in their country—that going from the coffee cafes of Coyoacán to the thatch-roofed huts of indigenous farmers in Chiapas was akin to traveling to a separate world. What did surprise many, however, was that organized indigenous peoples were willing to go to war and die to ensure that the words from this declaration were heard and understood in Mexico and around the world. In representing themselves as “the heirs who truly forged our nationality,” these peoples staked a loud and clear claim to a different vision of the Mexican nation than that imagined by the initiators of NAFTA. In the days following the Zapatista uprising, the imagery of the Zapatistas’ nation views was disseminated throughout Mexico. The Zapatistas had clearly demonstrated their willingness to project their visions. And they had passed the crucial test of nationalists—they were willing to die for their imaginings. While the words and ideas of indigenous Zapotecs from places like Santa María del Tule in Oaxaca may not be as dramatic or as well publicized as the words of the EZLN, like the EZLN, such persons have a distinct view of the nation and of their rightful place in it (see maps 1 and 2). In 1993, people from El Tule openly questioned the intentions of NAFTA and its accompanying agrarian restructuring. They are members of an ejido, a communal form of land tenure, in which members have use rights, usually in the form of an individual plot of land. Ejidos were created after the Mexican Revolution to satisfy the demands of landless peasants who had seen their communal village lands eaten up by large agricultural estates and/or who served as laborers on those estates. The term ejido refers to a specific area of land as well. For many communities, their ejido land refers to territory, actual land tied xxvi Preface [3.235.243.45] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:38 GMT) N V e r d e Atoyac Tehuante p e c 0 50 100 km...