CHAPTER 10 THE MAYAN ZAPATISTA MOVEMENT 383patista loyalists murdered. The news and gory details would have been suppressed or
“cosmetized,” and the dead would have been declared “disappeared.” The Mexican
state did not have this option in the case of the Zapatistas, since communiqués re-
garding the mission of the movement and minute details of its military maneuvers
were made available all over the world within hours of midnight on January 1, 1994
(for details, see Chapter 8). The government could no longer suppress dissent vio-
lently as it had in the massacre of Tlatelolco in 1968. And so it continues today, as this
rebel group that is at war with the Mexican state begins its high-profile public rela-
tions tour of the republic with the confidence that instant telecommunication and
public opinion will protect them and help to promote their political position.
The Current Latin American Context
Any observer of current Latin American politics will be aware that, as of 2006, over
half of the South American continent has moved to the left by electing, in carefully
monitored free elections, public officials who generally oppose totally free trade and
open markets, the very underpinning of global capitalism. The new governments
that are now in power in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Venezuela, and Bolivia all favor
public policies that involve the state as the guarantor of the well-being of broad sec-
tors of the urban and rural poor. During the 1970s and 1980s, all of these countries,
under pressure from the United States–controlled International Monetary Fund
(IMF), imposed austerity measures aimed at balancing budgets, privatizing state-
owned utilities and industries, radically curtailing state-sponsored subsidies and eco-
nomic programs, and generally following IMF-recommended formulas for creating
the “level playing field” that would accommodate free trade and open markets.
These golden years of neoliberalismoachieved their stated goals of increasing the
gross domestic product and increasing foreign investment. However, the apparent
economic well-being and economic stability brought by IMF-imposed policies did
not reflect grassroots reality. The new wealth flowed to the white and mestizo elites
and foreign investors, and generally left the urban and rural poor—in the case of Bo-
livia, including virtually all of the that country’s indigenous majority—in worse cir-
cumstances than before. These conditions led to populist electoral rebellions that
eventually repudiated the United States– and European-sponsored austerity mea-
sures and encouraged the reestablishment of state-sponsored social and economic
programs in favor of disadvantaged sectors. They also forced the reassessment of for-
eign investors’ favorable economic terms for operating in these countries.
The Mexican Context
This background may help us to understand the process that has occurred during the
same period (1970 to the present) in Mexico. Without going into tedious detail
(again, for details see Chapter 8), the main parallels may be summarized as follows.
First, foreign investment soared as the austerity conditions imposed by IMF were
implemented. The OPEC-sponsored oil crisis (1979–1980) and the huge spike in
the market price of petroleum called to the attention of Mexican government offi-
cials that they possessed, with Venezuela, the biggest proven reserves of this valuable