The Zapatista Movement: A hybrid and paradoxic political culture
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7203/KAM.12.12371Keywords:
Zapatista Army of National Liberation, democracy, hybrid policy, identity, dialogue, nationalism, dignity
Abstract
This article reveals the hybrid character of the Zapatista movement (Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN). It was announced on January 1, 1994 in protest against the free trade agreement (NAFTA) between Mexico, Canada and the US and entered into force that very same day. The movement launched an armed struggle against the government, under the slogan “Never again a Mexico without us”. In the “Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle”, the movement declared a war on the Mexican federal army. The movement did everything possible to avoid an easy classification so that all univocal interpretations such as a new social movement, or a neo-indigenous movement or pan maya or a traditional guerrilla turned out to be, rather, equivocal. This article will review these interpretations and bring forward the hybridity of this movement. If hybridity was part of a conscious and attempted policy, this article will also point to a series of unintended paradoxes that came to light as a result of a careful analysis of the Zapatista discourse. Its final reflections point to the importance of this movement for the world at large and provide a suggestion for future research.
Downloads
References
Archer, Margareth S. (1995). Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. Cambridge: University Press.
Berger, Mark. “Romancing the Zapatistas: International Intellectuals and the Chiapas Rebellion”. Latin American Perspectives, 28(2) (2001): 149-170.
Brinkel, T. (2006). Nation Building and Pluralism. Experiences and Perspectives in State and Society in South Africa. Nijmegen: SDU.
Bruhn, Kathleen. “Antonio Gramsci and the Palabra Verdadera: The Political Discourse of Mexico’s Guerrilla Forces”. Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 41(2) (1999): 29-55.
Canclini, Néstor (1995). Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. University of Minnesota Press.
Chouliaraki, Lillie y Fairclough, Norman (1999). Discourse in Late Modernity. Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: University Press.
Clifford, Bob (2005). The Marketing of Rebellion, Insurgents, Media and International Activism, Cambridge: University Press.
Díaz Polanco, Héctor (1998) La rebelión zapatista y la autonomía. México: Siglo XXI.
Fairclough, Norman (2003). Analysing Discourse. Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge.
Fairclough, Norman (2006). Language and Globalization. Abingdon/New York: Routledge.
Gilbreth, Chris y Otero, Gerardo. “Democratization in Mexico: The Zapatista Uprising and Civil Society”. Latin American Perspectives, 4(28) (2001): 7-29.
González Casanova, Pablo. “The Zapatista “Caracoles”. Networks of Resistance and Autonomy”. Socialism and Democracy, 19(3) (2005): 79-92.
Gosner, Kevin y Ouweneel, Arij (eds.) (1996). Indigenous Revolts in Chiapas and the Andean Highlands, Amsterdam: CEDLA.
Gutiérrez, Natividad (1999). Nationalist Myths and Ethnic Identities. Indigenous Intellectuals and the Mexican State. Lincoln, London: University of Nebraska Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. “New Social Movements”. Telos, 49 (1981): 33-37.
Harvey, Neil (1999). The Chiapas Rebellion. The Struggle for Land and Democracy. Durham, London: Duke University Press.
Henck, Nick. “Subcommander Marcos’ Discourse on Mexico’s Intellectual Class”. Asian Journal of Latin American Studies, 25(1) (2012): 35-73.
Hernández Castillo, Rosalva (2001). La otra frontera: identidades múltiples en el Chiapas poscolonial, México: Ciesas.
Higgins, Nicholas P. (2004). Understanding the Chiapas Rebellion. Modernist Vision and The Invisible Indian. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Holloway, John y Peláez, Eloína (eds.) (1998). Zapatista! Reinventing Revolution in Mexico. London: Pluto Press.
Huffschmid, Anne (2004). Diskursguerilla: Wortergreifing und Widersinn. Die Zapatistas im Spiegel der mexikanischen und internationalen Öffentlichkeit. Heidelberg: Synchron Publishers GmbH.
Johnston, Josée. “Pedagogical guerrillas, armed democrats, and revolutionary counterpublic: Examining paradox in the Zapatista unprising in Chiapas Mexico”. Theory and Society, 29 (2000): 463-505.
Kampwirth, Karen. “Creating Space in Chiapas: An Analysis of the Strategies of the Zapatista Army and the Rebel Government in Transition”. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 15(2) (1996): 261-267.
Laclau, Ernesto (1996/2007). Emancipations. London: Verso.
Laclau, Ernesto y Mouffe, Chantal (1985). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso.
Le Bot, Yvon (1997). Subcomandante Marcos. El sueño zapatista. Barcelona: Plaza y Janés.
Leyva Solano, Xochitl (1998). “The New Zapatista Movement: Political Levels, Actors and Political Discourse in Contemporary Mexico”. Encuentros Antropológicos: Power, Identity and Mobility in Mexican Society. London: Institute of Latin American Studies.
Mattiace, Shannan (2003). To see with two eyes. Peasant activism and Indian autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Millán, Márgara (1998). “Zapatista Indigenous Women”. Holloway, John y Peláez, Eloína (eds.). Zapatista! Reinventing Revolution in Mexico. London: Pluto Press: 64-80.
Montesano Montessori, Nicolina (2009). An analysis of a struggle for hegemony in Mexico: the Zapatista Movement versus President Salinas de Gortari. Saarbrücken: VDM.
Montesano Montessori, Nicolina. “The design of a theoretical, methodological, analytical framework to analyse hegemony in discourse”. Critical Discourse Studies, 8 (2011): 169-181.
Montesano Montessori, Nicolina. “Un análisis discursivo comparativo entre las narrativas del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) y del ex presidente Salinas de Gortari”. Sociolinguistic Studies, 7(3) (2013): 293–320.
Montesano Montessori, Nicolina (2014). “The potential of narrative strategies in the discursive construction of hegemonic positions and social change”. Kaal, B.; Maks, I. y Van Elfrinkhof, A. (eds.). From Text to Political Positions State-of-the-art approaches to estimating party positions. Amsterdam: John Benjamins: 171-188.
Montesano Montessori, Nicolina (2016). “Why Complexity Matters”. Bakker, C. y Montesano Montessori, N. (eds.). Complexity in Education. From Horror to Passion. Rotterdam: Sense: 261-282.
Mouffe, Chantal (1993/2005). The Return of the Political. London, New York: Verso.
Nash, June. “The Reassertion of Indigenous Identity: Mayan Responses to State intervention in Chiapas”. Latin American Research Review, 30(3) (1995): 7-41.
Nash, June. “The Fiesta of the Word. The Zapatista Uprising and Radical Democracy in Mexico”. American Anthropologist, 99(2) (1997): 261-274.
Nuijten, Monique y Van der Haar, Gemma. “The Zapatistas of Chiapas: Challenges and Contradictions. Review Essay by Monique Nuijten and Gemma van der Haar”. Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, 68 (2000): 83-90.
Olesen, Thomas (2005). International Zapatismo. The Construction of Solidarity in the Age of Globalization. London: Zed Books.
Otero, Gerardo (ed.) (2004). Mexico in Transition Neo-liberal Globalism, the State and Civil Society. Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing, London/New York: Zed Books.
Pansters, Will. “Authenticity, Hybridity, and Difference: debating national identity in twentieth-century Mexico”. Focaal–European Journal of Anthropology 45 (2005): 71-93.
Pitarch, Pedro. “The Zapatistas and the art of ventriloquism”. Journal of Human Rights 3(3) (2010): 291-312.
Reisigl, Martin y Wodak, Ruth (2001). Discourse and Discrimination. Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. London: Routledge.
Rovira Sancho, Guiomar. “El Zapatismo y la red transnacional”. Razón y Palabra, 47 (2005).
Van der Haar, Gemma. “Land Reform and the Zapatista Uprising”. Journal of Peasant Studies, 32(3) (2005): 484-507.
Vanden Berghe, Kristine (2005). Narrativa de la Rebelión Zapatista. Madrid/Frankfurt: Vervuert/Iberoamericana.
Womack, John (1999). Rebellion in Chiapas. An Historical Reader, New York: New Press.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
-
Abstract3067
-
Artículo (Español)1915
Issue
Section
License
This journal provides an immediate free access to the content on the principle that freely make investigation available to the public, which promotes an increased global knowledge exchange.
Unless otherwise indicated, texts published in this journal are under the license Attribution-NonComercial 4.0 by Creative Commons. These texts may be copied, distributed and publicly communicated whenever the publication’s author and title are quoted and whenever they are not used for commercial purposes. In any case, intellectual property of the articles and its potential economic rights entirely belong to its authors.
The full license can be consulted on https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. We encourage authors to disseminate papers published in Kamchatka. Journal of cultural analysis electronically, in institutional digital repository or in their websites.
Similar Articles
Make a Submission
Language
Information
Keywords
