CHAPTER 8 NATIVE MESOAMERICANS IN THE MODERN ERA 327political, and cultural life in all these countries (especially in Guatemala, El Salvador,
and Nicaragua). The peace accords—ended the Central American wars and promised
to initiate transforming developmental patterns that would finally bring benefits to
the Indians in the region.NATIVE MESOAMERICAN ETHNIC
AND NATIONAL MOVEMENTS
IN MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA
Most of the ethnic and national movements to be described next took place in the
1990s and early 2000s, and thus postdate the revolutionary and developmental phases
of Mexican and Central American history described before. These movements have
been particularly stimulated by recent neoliberal economic and political policies,
greatly expanded globalization, ecological problems, and “postmodern” ideas about
the importance of culture as a basis for power.
In Mexico neoliberal policies came to dominate economic and political devel-
opments there during the 1990s. Presidents such as Carlos Salinas de Gotari
(1988–1994) essentially abandoned the previous state-centered model of develop-
ment. They “liberalized” the market by privatizing the banking sector, joining the
OPEC oil cartel (in order to improve the marketing value of oil exports), partici-
pating in the world’s free-trade agreement (GATT), and allowing foreign compa-
nies once again to operate freely in Mexico (including maquiladorafactories located
along the borders with the United States). The decisive development was the 1992
signing of the free-trade agreement with the United States and Canada (NAFTA),
which took effect in January 1994.
The Mexican economy soon resumed its meteoric growth, and by the twenty-
first century, Mexico had achieved the eighth largest Gross National Product in the
world. However, conditions for the Indians and mestizos in the rural areas of Mex-
ico did not significantly improve, in part because of constitutional reforms that ended
“government responsibility for land redistribution to peasants claiming land from pri-
vate estates” (Hamnett 1999:285). Violent antigovernment rebellions broke out in
states with large Indian populations such as Guerrero and Oaxaca (Tehuantepec).
It has been argued that these rebellions were “prototypes” for the more lethal EZLN
(Zapatista National Liberation Army) insurrection in Chiapas starting in 1994, and
the resurgence of the EPR (Popular Revolutionary Army) resistance movement in
Guerrero in l996. (For more on these two movements, see later and especially the de-
tailed account of the EZLN movement in Chapter 10.)
Partly in response to such rebellious movements, Mexico’s official Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) began to open up the electoral system by allowing mi-
nority parties to compete in elections on a fairer basis, although PRI continued to ex-
ercise virtually total control over the state apparatus. Opposition to the PRI-controlled
party increased, and the power of the party was dramatically eroded. An important