THE ZAPATISTA MOVEMENT AND
MEXICO’S DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION
Mobilization, Success, and Survival
María Inclán
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A Inés, Santiago, Cosmo y Mateo, a quienes espero poder enseñar algo.
Y a mi madre, Silvia Oseguera Goytortúa, a quien le debía este libro desde hace rato ☺.
3. Opportunities for Mobilization: Openings, Elites, Allies, and Threats
4. Opportunities for Success: Negotiations, Elites, and Allies
5. Opportunities for Survival: Transnational Solidarity Networks and Discourse Framing
6.
LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES, AND MAP
Figures
1.1 Repertoire of Protests, 1994–2003 9
3.1 Zapatista Cycle of Protests, 1994–2003 51
3.2 Protests in PRI- and PRD-Ruled Municipalities 52
3.3 Protest Activity during Peace Dialogues, 1994–1996 55
3.4 Military Checkpoints and Positions in Chiapas, 1994–2003 63
5.1 “Que van a meter democracia en Iraq . . .” 109
5.2 National and International Media Attention on the Chiapas Conflict, 1994–2003
Tables
3.1 Descriptive Statistics
3.2 Expected Counts of Monthly Zapatista Protests for a Unit Change in Predictors 77
5.1 Indigenous Peoples and Housing Conditions across Chiapas, 1990–2010 113
5.2 Illiteracy Rates and Education Infrastructure across Chiapas, 1990–2010
Map
1.1 Geographic Distribution of Protests across Chiapas, 1994–2003 8
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Just like any other Mexican unfamiliar with the repressive conditions under which indigenous peasants in Chiapas had been fighting for land and basic human rights since the 1970s, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional uprising caught me by surprise. Most of us were made to believe that 1994 would be the year in which Mexico joined the First World. The North American Free Trade Agreement had been negotiated in the previous two years, and it came into force on January 1, 1994. Additionally, Mexico was about to join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in May after overhauling its economy through extensive neoliberal economic policies, and there were rumors that President Carlos Salinas de Gortari was being considered as one of the candidates to lead the World Trade Organization after his term as president. In the official discourse, there was no room for a guerrilla movement launched by impoverished indigenous peasants in Chiapas, but the Zapatistas crashed the party and opened our eyes.
In 1994 I was an undergraduate in Mexico who was only able to follow the development of the conflict through news media coverage. I had to wait until I had the privilege of the time and funding that academia provides to be able to go to Chiapas to learn why a social movement that was poised for success failed to achieve political
autonomy for Mexico’s indigenous peoples, yet has survived and still stands as an icon to other alter-mundista movements around the world. The most important puzzle to me was why the Zapatistas had failed to achieve their political goals when the EZLN uprising had indirectly pushed forward the country’s efforts at democratization.
Through the years I have been fortunate enough to have the guidance of Lee Ann Banaszak, Michael Bernhard, Gretchen Casper, and John McCarthy. The initial research for this book was conducted between 2002 and 2003 thanks to grants from the Department of Political Science and the College of Liberal Arts at The Pennsylvania State University, including the John Martz Award for Research in Comparative Politics and the Dissertation Support Grant, and a fellowship for graduate studies from Mexico’s National Council of Science and Technology (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, CONACYT).
Special thanks go to all who guided my fieldwork: Manuel Aguilar, Luis H. Álvarez, Miguel Álvarez Gándara, Andrés Aubry, Amado Avendaño, Marco Antonio Bernal, Luis Felipe Bravo Mena, Araceli Burguete, Luisa María Calderón, Manuel Camacho Solís, Ricardo Castellanos, José Ramón Cossío, Rutilio Cruz Escandón, Francisco Gallardo, Alejandro Gómez, Dolores González, Gerardo González, Rogelio Hernández, José Herrera, Onécimo Hidalgo, Gustavo Hirales, María del Carmen Legorreta, Gilberto López y Rivas, Manuel López, Daniel Luna, Blanca Martínez, Joel Padrón, Marina Pagés, Fernando Pérez, Miguel Ángel Romero, Margarito Ruiz, Bishop Samuel Ruiz García, Juan Sánchez, Jorge Santiago, Raymundo Sánchez Barraza, and Oscar Torrens.
During my time in Chiapas I enjoyed the support of Araceli Burguete and the Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) in San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Without Araceli’s help and the invaluable generosity of the late bishop Samuel Ruiz, none of the interviews would have been possible. It was through the accounts of more than forty- five interviewees, which included activists, journalists, politicians, academics, and members of the Diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, that I better grasped
how social movements emerge and develop amid hostile political conditions. I also want to thank Roberto Bautista for spending countless hours in the CIESAS library with me collecting newspaper accounts of Zapatista-related events to later construct an archive of protest activity in Chiapas from 1994 through 2003. From 2008 to 2012, with the support from the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), I conducted further interviews with crucial actors involved in the peace dialogues and democratizing reforms.
Many students have helped me along the way as well. María Fernanda Madrid and Samantha Casas at Universidad de las Américas in Puebla worked with me transcribing interviews. At CIDE, former undergraduate students Alejandra Díaz de León, Esteban González, Luis Palerm, and Cécile Sánchez helped me recreate my protest event archive after it perished in an unfortunate fire, while Esteban, Anna Cristina Báez, Guillermo Gómez, Carlos Monroy, Perla Pérez, and Alberto Villaseñor assisted me with other research endeavors related to this project.
Colleagues and friends have been kind enough to read previous drafts of the chapters that compose this book and have offered insightful suggestions: Paul Almeida, Rosario Aguilar, Lee Ann Banaszak, Allyson Benton, Todd Eisenstadt, Carolina Garriga, Ezequiel González-Ocantos, Hank Johnston, Joy Langston, John McCarthy, Brian Phillips, James Ron, and Kathryn Sikkink. Of course the comments from the two Oxford anonymous reviewers and the editorial work of Angela Chnapko significantly improved this manuscript, and without them it would have never seen the light of day. I also want to thank Alexcee Bechthold for her always guidance in producing the integral materials of this book, and Sharon Langworthy and Tharani Ramachandran for their patient and detailed copy-editing. The last stretch of writing, reviewing, and editing would not have been possible without the coaching of Alex Samaniego, who kept me physically fit and mentally sane.
I also want to acknowledge the unconditional support of my family, my mother Silvia, Carlos and Erin, Silvia and Juan, Cosmo, Inés, Santiago, and Mateo. In particular, I thank Juan’s mentorship
and Silvia’s enthusiasm and willingness to read and reread drafts of chapters time and again. Last but never least are all of those with whom I have learned and continue to learn to be a better teacher, researcher, and person: Abby Bigham, Jason de León, Sharon DeWitte and Eric Jones, Erick and Sarah Rochette, Kirk French and Laurel Pearson, Holly Dunsworth and Kevin Stacey, Johanna and Jade Bissat, “Jefe” Geoff Vasile, Ellen Quillen, Halla Olafsdottir, Magda Giraldo, Kim Jordan, Blanca Maldonado, Chris Reenock, Alex Braithwaite, Pete Doerschler, Chris and Danielle Housenick, Matt Ruppert, Jake Frederick, Gretchen Brandt, Susi Colín, Andrés Catzín, Valeska von Schirmeister, Chuy Bernhardt, Erik Feldhaus, Eugenio Mañón, Marina Michaelidou-Kadi, André Portela Souza, Héctor Castillo, Javier Aparicio, Kim Nolan, Sandra Ley, Giovanni Mantilla, Céline González, Gerardo Maldonado, Álvaro Morcillo, and Noelle Brigden. This life’s journey would not be the same without you.
THE ZAPATISTA MOVEMENT AND MEXICO’S DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION
INTRODUCTION
On January 1, 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) declared war on the Mexican government and took over the municipal offices of seven towns in Chiapas: Altamirano, Chanal, Huixtán, Las Margaritas, Ocosingo, Oxchuc, and San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Through the voice of the EZLN spokesman Subcomandante Marcos, the Zapatista cry ¡Ya Basta! was heard almost immediately on national and international news networks, giving the group great salience. The dramatic public appearance of the EZLN marked the beginning of the Zapatista movement outside its clandestine guerrilla organization, which had started in the early 1980s.1 Although the Zapatista movement has not reached the political strength of other indigenous movements in Ecuador or Bolivia,2 its national and international salience has made it a model for indigenous and antiglobalization struggles, as well as for democratization efforts inside and outside of Mexico. More recently the Zapatista banner has become emblematic of anarcholibertarian movements around the world, such as the indignados in Spain and squatters in Germany.3 Nevertheless domestically the political force of the Zapatistas is currently marginal despite their most recent announcement about getting into the electoral politics of the
1. Collier and Quaratiello (1994); Harvey (1998); Legorreta Díaz (1998); Tello Díaz (1995).
2. Yashar (2005).
3. Aranda Andrade (2014).
country by putting forward an independent indigenous female candidate for the 2018 presidential elections.4 While planning on entering electoral politics in 2018 may be considered an opportunity for the Zapatistas to articulate and aggregate the rights and interests of indigenous peoples, electoral support that independent indigenous candidates could gain outside their support bases is rather slim.
The emergence and first stages of the Zapatista movement (1994–1996) coincided with the most intense phase of the Mexican democratic transition. Some have even suggested that the emergence of the Zapatistas was an important catalyst for the transition5 and the revival of the indigenous movement in Mexico.6 However, as Deborah Yashar (1998) pointed out, the indigenous movement in Mexico and the Zapatistas were not able to take full advantage of this process, given their failure to make the Mexican government respond to their concrete demands. The unexpected failure of the Zapatista movement forces us to wonder why an indigenous insurgent movement that was poised to succeed, given the timing of its emergence during Mexico’s democratic transition and its domestic and transnational salience, failed to become an influential political player and achieve its political goals.
One could argue that taking over power has never been one of the Zapatistas’ political goals, and that therefore we should not be surprised by its fate or even ask that question.7 Nevertheless, I believe we need to ask this question and seek to answer it, given that the EZLN rose up in arms to fight for the political inclusion of the impoverished indigenous peoples of Mexico. I also believe that the
4. “Plantea el EZLN una candidata independiente indígena en 2018,” La Jornada, October 14, 2016 (http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ultimas/2016/10/14/ezln-estudiaracandidatura-indigena-a-presidencia-de-mexico), last accessed on February 24, 2018.
5. Stephen (1995); Veltmeyer (2000). Interview with Manuel Camacho Solis, first Commissioner for Peace and Reconciliation during 1994 in Mexico City, November 2009.
6. See Rus, Hernández Castillo, and Mattiace (2003); Velasco (2003); Higgins (2004).
7. Holloway (2010).
answer to this question lies in the changing political conditions in which the Zapatista movement emerged and developed, which resulted in their not seeking political power. This argument can be illustrated with a sliding doors analogy, as I argue that the Zapatista movement developed within almost simultaneous openings and closings of political opportunities for its mobilization, success, and survival.
Automatic sliding doors usually come in sets of two, parallel to each other. The second set of doors is automatically programmed to open as the first set closes. If the automated mechanism fails and the second set of doors does not open, adjacent mechanical doors may be there to prevent getting people trapped between doors. As I explain in this book, I envision the development of the Zapatista movement as one for which the first set of doors of mobilizing opportunity opened after the EZLN’s uprising, but for which the second set of doors of opportunity for success failed to open. Nevertheless, the initial mobilization opened adjacent survival opportunities for the movement and local communities to survive up to this day despite the obstacles they have faced.
Because the EZLN uprising directly pointed at the exclusionary and exploitative practices of the Mexican socioeconomic and political systems, it contributed to the weakening of the one-party regime during the latter’s last years. It also contributed to the weakening of the prosperous façade that the regime had tried to create by implementing economic reforms that allowed the country to become a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). By pioneering the use of the Internet to broadcast local social movement campaigns, the Zapatista movement soon reached global audiences. Additionally, the coincidence of the Zapatista uprising with the implementation of NAFTA and Mexico’s inclusion in the OECD gained the guerrilla group the attention of the public, the media, the Mexican government, and transnational nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). All this attention worked as a shield for the poorly armed,
indigenous insurgents against a repressive response from the Mexican state. As a consequence, doors for mobilizing opportunity opened up and demonstrations flourished.
Demonstrations in support of the Zapatistas also put enough public opinion pressure on the Mexican federal government to force it to negotiate with the rebels. Because Zapatista rebels were successful in triggering negotiations only three weeks after their initial uprising, it seemed as though doors of opportunity for success were opening up. In addition, peace negotiations between the rebels and the federal government coincided with democratizing negotiations among legislative elites seeking to achieve more transparent and competitive electoral processes. Hence, the scenario appeared to be ripe for the movement to achieve political autonomy for indigenous peoples. I argue, however, that precisely because peace and democratizing negotiations developed almost simultaneously but independently from each other, opportunity doors for the success of the movement closed. Hence, what looked like parallel openings for the movement’s achievement ended up trapping the Zapatistas between opening opportunities for mobilization but closing opportunities for success. However, mobilizing opportunities during the early 1990s opened new opportunities for the movement to survive, given the great transnational solidarity network built around the Zapatista cause, which enabled Zapatista communities to sustain a resistance campaign against the Mexican state that still exists.
Studying the development of the Zapatista movement within the Mexican democratic transition under this perspective offers three main contributions to the democratization and political opportunities literatures. First, this study shows how a social movement developing within a protracted transition may benefit from opportunities to mobilize but also face obstacles to achieving its political goals. As mentioned previously, the emergence of the EZLN and the Zapatista movement opened opportunities for mobilization and the formation of organizations, especially in Chiapas, although the San Cristóbal Diocese had contributed greatly for this since the 1970s, creating a longstanding community of local independent NGOs before the
conflict erupted in 1994.8 These first NGOs functioned as a base network for those that came after the EZLN’s uprising. The national and transnational social movement organizations created around the Zapatistas allowed the movement to sustain a ten- year cycle of protests and to survive. However, their demands failed to be articulated and represented by incoming political elites that emerged during the first stages of the Mexican protracted transition, and they did not achieve state-building or policy-influencing opportunities. As a consequence the Zapatistas, as social movement actors, failed to become influential political actors within the country’s democratizing negotiations.
Second, contrary to the general assumptions in the literature on social movements,9 democratic transitions do not always bring political opportunities to previously neglected dissident groups. As this study shows, political opportunities may have different effects on social movements in different political contexts. Protracted democratic transitions tend to favor electoral elite pacts without opening spaces to social movement actors or their interests.10 Third, for the political opportunities literature this study shows which dimensions within the political process approach11 are better suited to foster social movements’ mobilization and survival and which factors tend to provide better opportunities for social movements to succeed in achieving their goals.
This study also illustrates the effects of an incomplete democratic transition on interest representation. Mexico’s democratic transition has been based only on protracted negotiations to regulate elections
8. Interview with a member of the Centro de Capacitación Indígena, CIDECI, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas in March 2003. In another interview also in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, in April 2003, the coordinator of Servicios Internacionales para la Paz, SIPAZ mentioned that after the conflict more than three hundred civic organizations worked in Chiapas.
9. Kitschelt (1986); Kriesi (1996).
10. Casper and Taylor (1996); Eisenstadt (2000).
11. McAdam (1982).
and electoral campaigns.12 As a consequence, Mexico’s democratization process has fallen short of deepening those institutional and socialization changes necessary to consolidate a liberal democratic regime. Transitional changes stopped at the electoral level, without introducing new institutional channels for interest articulation and representation beyond political parties—not to mention necessary measures to ensure accountability and fight impunity and corruption. Moreover, clientelistic practices that prevailed during the one-party regime have permeated other political parties and civic organizations due to the lack of accountability mechanisms. The 1995 judicial reform fell short of providing guarantees to all members of the polity, despite having significantly increased the independence of federal judges and judicial review power of the Supreme Court.13 More recently, a constitutional reform for human rights in 201114 and a legal reform to the habeas corpus (amparo) suit in 201315 opened new paths for the protection of collective rights. Nevertheless, these last efforts have also proven unclear and largely ineffective for social movement actors to achieve significant social benefits regarding those rights. Finally, a more comprehensive political reform that will incorporate minorities into the political process is still pending.
In recent years national opinion surveys, journalists, and academics alike have highlighted the crisis of representation that prevails in the Mexican political system.16 The Zapatista movement and the incipient institutionalization of its demands are only one example of those interests that have been left behind within the new political system in the country. With this book, it is my intention to
12. Eisenstadt (2000).
13. “Decreto mediante el cual se declaran reformados los artículos 21, 55,73, 76, 79, 89, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 116, 122, y 123 de la Constitución Política Mexicana.” Diario Oficial de la Federación, México, Diciembre 31, 1994.
14. http:// www.dof.gob.mx/ nota_ detalle.php?codigo=5194486&fecha=10/ 06/ 2011 (last accessed on July 4, 2017).
15. http:// dof.gob.mx/ nota_ detalle.php?codigo=5294184&fecha=02/ 04/ 2013 (last accessed on July 4, 2017).
16. Azis and Alonso (2009); ENCUP (2009); Elizondo (2011).
provide a clearer understanding of why seemingly influential social movements can end up being isolated or neglected during democratization processes.
THE ZAPATISTA MOBILIZATION CYCLE FROM 1994 TO 2003
A cycle of protest emerged right after the EZLN and the Mexican army agreed to a ceasefire, declared by the Mexican government on January 12, 1994. The images of hostilities between two unbalanced military forces— the Mexican army and the poorly armed EZLN—portrayed on television and the Internet outraged viewers inside and outside Mexico. As a consequence, sympathizers started demonstrating across Chiapas despite the strong military cordon around Zapatista headquarters and strongholds (see map 1.1).
Figure 1.1 shows how the Zapatistas changed their repertoire of protests over time. The ensuing protests ranged from land invasions in 1994 and 1995; to meetings and marches supporting indigenous rights during peace negotiations between the EZLN and the Mexican government in 1996; to sit-ins, roadblocks, and the seizure of buildings and towns during and after the 1997 and 2000 elections.
Most of the land invasions took place in the aftermath of the uprising. These overtaken lands later became the Zapatista- controlled municipios. More than 1,700 land occupations laid claim to 148,000 hectares inside and outside the region of conflict. To quell land invasions the Mexican government, landowners, and peasants signed an agreement promising to resolve land invasions that had occurred prior to April 14, 1994. Peasants were allowed to keep the land but had to commit to stop invading parcels and ranches, while the government compensated landowners for their loses.17 Land invasions decreased, but demonstrations continued. Protestors changed
17. Villafuerte et al. (1999).
Map 1.1 Geographic Distribution of Protests across Chiapas, 1994–2003 Inclán (2008).
Sites of Protests PROTESTS
1–15 16–68
69–168
Guatemala
San Cristobal
Huixtan Oxchuc Chansi
Margaritas
Ocosingo
Tabasco
Veracruz
Oaxaca
Figure 1.1 Repertoire of Protests, 1994–2003 Inclán (2009a).
Blockings Invasions
Marches Meetings
Seizures Sit-ins/strikes
