CHAPTER 8 NATIVE MESOAMERICANS IN THE MODERN ERA 331that “has chosen to be ‘Indian’ within the greater mestizo world of modern
Chiapas and Mexico” (Gossen 1999:6).
The Chamulas’ history of opposition to outside cultural influences provides pow-
erful legitimization of the community’s long-standing identity as Indians. The com-
munity followed the state of Chiapas in taking a conservative stance with respect to
the Mexican revolution (a position similar to the one taken by the Oaxacan Indians
as described in Box 8.2). The Chamulan Indians fought under the leadership of a
cacique named Jacinto Pérez “Pajarito” on the side of the landlords who opposed the
radical changes mandated by the Zapatista revolutionaries from the North (see the
preceding account on the Zapatista revolution). The Chamulan rebels paid dearly
for this support when later Carranza forces came to power, drove the Chamulan
rebels into exile, and captured and then executed Cacique Pajarito.
During the Cárdenas period, the government began to make inroads into the
community’s traditional political and cultural life. Through the auspices of the PRI
party, Chamula’s old civil-religious hierarchy was replaced by new municipal au-
thorities more in tune with the revolutionary program. Chamula’s communal (ejido)
lands were officially recognized, and a Department of Indian Affairs and an indige-
nous labor union were organized to protect the Indians against outside exploiters.
During the following years, the Chamulas experienced even more powerful pres-
sures for change as a result of the implementation of indigenist developmental pro-
grams in Chiapas. The National Indigenous Institute’s coordinating center,
established in nearby San Cristóbal de Las Casas, initiated a flurry of health, educa-
tion, and welfare projects designed to open up the community to more modern eco-
nomic and social forces.
By the l980s, Chamula had a growing population of over 50,000 people (it now
has over 100,000 inhabitants), who are scattered across the municipal territory in
well-defined hamlets. 92 percent of the economically active population still engaged
in agricultural pursuits. They cultivated milpas of maize and beans, and husbanded
a few animals, such as pigs, cows, and chickens, all on tiny land holdings. Almost
none of the Chamulas could produce enough food to feed their families, however,
and the majority of them were forced to supplement subsistence production with
work for wages, either in construction or on coastal plantations. Two other means of
economic survival were the growing of commercial crops, such as vegetables and
flowers, and the renting of lands in the lowlands in order to produce both subsistence
and commercial crops. A few families living mainly in the tiny Chamulan town cen-
ter became full-time merchants, in some cases purchasing trucks for the purpose of
transporting goods. One of their most lucrative commodities was locally produced
“moonshine” (pox).
The Chamulan community has become increasingly stratified as a result of lib-
eral and neoliberal developments in the 1980s and 1990s. A fundamental division ex-
ists between those Indians involved in commercial activities (merchants of pox,
producers of commercial crops) and those in wage labor. The majority of the Chamu-
las are caught in a transitional social position between peasant farming and wage
labor, although perhaps up to 30 percent of the Chamulas eventually have become
full-time wage earners.