306 UNIT 3 MODERN MESOAMERICA
Box 8.2 Revolution in OaxacaThe Zapatistas of Morelos proved to be the most consistently radical Mesoamerican group of the
Mexican Revolution. There were many native Mesoamerican recruits to the Zapatista movement
from surrounding states such as Puebla, Tlaxcala, and Guerrero, but in such states the native
Mesoamericans’ militancy tended to be sporadic and kept under control by local conservative
caudillos. In other states, such as Michoacán, revolutionary activity on the part of the native
Mesoamericans was largely confined to postwar conflicts over lands being redistributed as part
of the agrarian reforms. Revolutionary actions were notably weak or absent in the southern states
of Mexico, where native Mesoamericans made up higher percentages of the population. In fact,
most of the native peoples in the south adopted a conservative stance relative to the radical
wing of the revolution. The Oaxaca case can serve as an illustration of the conservatism of
Mesoamericans in such southern states as Chiapas, Tabasco, and Yucatán.
Oaxaca on the eve of the Mexican Revolution had a huge peasant population (approxi-
mately 87 percent of the total state population), made up mostly of Mesoamericans who spoke
the Zapotec, Mixtec, Cuicatec, and other indigenous languages. Except for scattered local up-
risings in 1911, however, the Oaxacan Indians failed to respond positively to the revolutionary call.
Many of them joined a conservative movement that opposed radical change while calling for
state sovereignty. The Indian recruits to the sovereignty army were organized along Zapatista
lines by village units, each with its own chief, but the causes and consequences were totally dif-
ferent. In fact, Carranza’s constitutionalist army, against which the Oaxacans were supposedly
fighting, was able to recruit soldiers from among these very same peasant Indians.
Ronald Waterbury (1975) has observed that the contrast in responses to the revolution by
native peasants in Morelos on the one hand and the Oaxaca natives on the other can be traced
to the profoundly different economic and cultural conditions in the two areas. The haciendas
and plantations of Oaxaca were much weaker and less capitalist than in Morelos, and as a result
the Oaxaca Indians had retained far more of their lands, languages, and customs. Organized na-
tive communities existed in both areas but were more internally cohesive in Oaxaca than in More-
los. Economic conditions in Morelos left the Indians with little choice but to rebel, and their years
of experience working on the plantations had resulted in extravillage relations and ideas that
made a regional movement feasible. The Indians of Oaxaca, in contrast, generally retained the
lands and resources necessary to survive on their own, and they closed themselves off to the
outside by re-creating small cultural worlds with roots extending back into the Mesoamerican past.
They had more to lose than to gain from joining the revolution, and in the end they rejected the
Zapatista call for radical change.commanded much smaller followings among the urban working classes than in Mex-
ico. Certainly, corrupt and dependent political regimes abounded in Central Amer-
ica at the time, and successions from one dictator to another brought on periods of
considerable confusion and instability. In general, however, military caudillos, usu-
ally with U.S. help, were able to fill these periods of political void in Central America,
thereby restoring “order” more effectively than in the case of Mexico.
By the 1960s and 1970s, conditions for revolution in Central America had greatly
increased, and full-blown revolutionary actions broke out in the area. In Central
America, as had been the case in Mexico, Indian peasants played a major role in
these revolutionary events, mediated by middle-class Marxist radicals and their
working-class supporters from the urban zones. Corrupt military regimes lacking