380 UNIT 3 MODERN MESOAMERICA
over 70 years, in the presidential election of 2000. The winner of that election and
past president, Vicente Fox, of the right-of-center Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN),
has not delivered much cause for optimism. PAN in fact mustered the votes in Con-
gress to change the original language of the San Andrés Peace Accords with the Za-
patistas that government representatives signed in February 1996, so as to effectively
kill the peace agreement. (We are grateful to Duncan M. Earle for his help and crit-
ical commentary on the introductory section to this chapter.)ZAPATISTAS LAUNCH A NEW KIND OF WAR
The Zapatistas themselves declared and honored a unilateral ceasefire shortly after
the original insurrection and have recently indicated their intention to participate
in the national political process. Indeed, on January 1, 2006 (the twelfth anniversary
of the launching their movement), they began a major public relations tour, pro-
jected to last six months, to all of Mexico’s 31 states with the goal of reshaping the
nation’s politics and influencing the recently completed July 2 , 2006 presidential elec-
tion. They have publicly declared, as of January 1, 2006, that they will “stand Mexico
on its head” with a new left coalition. We know that they oppose candidates from all
three major national political parties (PRI, center; PAN, right; and PRD, Partido Rev-
olucionario Democrático, left), and that they are determined to critique the failure
of the Mexican political class in general for their failure even to listen to the issues
that are important to the rural and urban poor. The substance of their current po-
sition on national issues canat this point be inferred from their public statements and
actual practice in the past. The message is simple: They insist on grassroots listening
and response—a bottom-up approach to representation and governance. They de-
mand and practice an anti-ideological stance. Zapatismo and its leadership are in
constant dialogue among themselves and with their allies in “civil society” (meaning
national and international allies and potential allies) about what issues need to be
addressed. There is no fixed platform or ideology. Zapatismo and its leadership have
in fact evolved since the beginning of the rebellion through their preferred dialec-
tical process of listening and response, such that issues like women’s rights, youth in-
volvement, the role of labor and peasant organizations, the role of ejidoorganizations,
the use of alcohol, and the encouragement of sustainable and profitable agricultural
practices—not important in the beginning and centrally important now—are mov-
ing to the fore through what has been called radical democracy, in dialogue both with
itself and with civil society (Earle and Simonelli 2005; Harvey 1998; Nash 1997).
So, then, what kind of war is this? The Zapatistas have publicly stated that “our
word is our weapon,” that radical democracy is their credo, and that their enemy is
global free market capitalism—known throughout Latin America as neoliberalism.
How does this rhetorical warfare work? How does one do battle with an abstract eco-
nomic and political ideology? How can representative democracy work in a multi-
ethnic society where indigenous people have been excluded from power and
representation for 450 years? Zapatistas disclaim any ideology, yet they have made,