342 UNIT 3 MODERN MESOAMERICA
governments not only opened up the Mexican economy to global competition, cul-
minating in the 1994 North American Free Trade agreement (NAFTA) but also cur-
tailed agrarian reform laws and other residual revolutionary programs that had favored
poor peasants, including most Indians.
The Mexican army viciously countered these native movements, relying in part
on paramilitary loyalists in the regions of conflict. As negotiations broke down and
the violence continued, the Indian rebels began to demand political autonomy, first
for rebellious communities and then for entire Indian territories. Spearheaded by Co-
mandante Marcos and the EZLN rebel organization, the Indians began to demand
changes in the Mexican constitution that would transform Mexico from a homoge-
neous nation-state into a multicultural nation made up of “a series of distinct ethno-
linguistic communities each striking to safeguard its identity” (Hamnett 1999:2l).
Despite intense efforts at negotiation and assorted agreements between the govern-
ment and the rebel groups, a solution to Mexico’s “Indian problem” has yet to be
found (for much more on the EZLN movement in Mexico, see Chapter 10).
Just how deeply the cultural divide between the Indians and the state is in Mex-
ico can be illustrated by Natividad Gutierrez’s study (1999) of educated Indians from
diverse regions of the country. Her key informants consisted of five Mayas (three from
Chiapas, one from Yucatán, and one from Campeche), one Nahua, one Zapotec, and
one Mixtec. Gutierrez particularly sought to understand how these elite Indians viewed
their ethnic identities and what they thought about Mexican nationalism.
The views expressed by the educated Mesoamerican Indians were obtained
through interviews on two key topics: (1) the founding myth of Tenochtitlan by the
Aztecs, and (2) the founding myth of the mestizos through the union of the Spaniard
Cortés and the Indian Malinche. What emerged from the responses was a rejection
of these centralizing myths in favor of a multiculturalist perspective, which is ex-
pressed by an intense loyalty to and identification with their own respective regional
ethnic groups. These “modern” Indians expressed little or no knowledge of, nor
any interest in, the Aztecs as a possible integrating national symbol. Rather, they ar-
gued that the origin story of each ethnic “nation” is far more important to them.
They were particularly critical of the idea of a national mestizo identity, an idea that
they saw as a recent political invention designed to control and dominate the native
Mesoamerican peoples. Accordingly, there was universal disapproval of the attempt
in Mexico to build a unified mestizo identity, because, they explained, it only serves
as an instrument for claiming and exercising superiority over the diverse Indian
peoples.
It is striking how strongly these relatively urbanized, educated Mesoamerican In-
dians have remained loyal to their respective home communities and larger language
and ethnic “nations.” They make it clear that multiculturalism is strong in Mexico and
that attempts to unify the Indians by adopting Aztec or mestizo symbols cannot con-
vince, nor ethnically transform, the more than ten million native Mesoamericans
scattered throughout Mexico.
One result of the almost universal rejection by the Indians of the prolonged at-
tempt to create a unified mestizo national identity in Mexico is that the state is finally