CHAPTER 10 THE MAYAN ZAPATISTA MOVEMENT 385out or hired “scab” field hands in the form of Guatemalan and Salvadoran refugees,
whom they paid far less than the minimum wage. Many thousands of Chiapas Indi-
ans who had counted on dependable seasonal labor jobs in the 1970s were unem-
ployed by the early l980s. Adding salt to this wound, the government withdrew the
hope and promise of new ejidoland grants to which the unemployed and landless
might have sought refuge. This scenario became one of the major sources of social
instability, rural unemployment, and population exodus from the Chiapas highlands,
all of which fed the constituency of the Mayan Zapatistas.
The preceding list of adverse effects of the Mexican state’s embrace of neo-
liberalismoreads, not unpredictably, like pieces in the boilerplate of Zapatista rhetoric
against the Mexican state and in favor of the “alternative” solution that they are seek-
ing. All of the preceding combined in the l980s with many other factors that are pe-
culiar to Chiapas to make possible the gestation of the Zapatista movement.
The Chiapas Context
The last two decades of the twentieth century brought profound change to Chiapas,
molded in part by the issues and Mexican state policies discussed earlier. Because Chi-
apas, with Oaxaca and Yucatan, has a very large (almost 50 percent) population of
rural indigenous origin, it is not surprising that the problems just discussed have
been felt more acutely here than in the central and northern parts of Mexico. It is
also not surprising that the political and economic problems with neoliberalismohave
assumed a racial, ethnic, and class dimension in Chiapas, since those most affected
by the downturn in economic opportunity have been indigenous people of Mayan
origin. Although virtually all Chiapas Mayas have an acute awareness of living in what
is a de facto apartheid society (with ladino bearers of Mexican national culture en-
joying both greater material well-being and higher social status than Indians), what
distinguishes the new “ethnic consciousness” from the older community-specific
identity (e.g., a Zinacanteco Tzotzil) is that the newer voice is pan-indigenous, pan-
Mayan, and affirmative about Indianness rather than deferential to whites.
Another new dimension of Indian ethnicity in Chiapas is that it need not be
and often is notassociated with Mayan Catholic traditionalism or costumbrismo.The
reason for this is clear: Many agents of change have been on hand in the region
to mitigate the pain of massive unemployment, diminished government services,
and forced internal migration (often due to expulsion from their hometowns by
their own traditionalist compatriots). All have had various degrees of success in re-
cruiting followers because they are offering belief systems, social services, and
hope for the future that neither the Mexican government nor the mainstream
Catholic Church is able to offer. Chief among these mediating agents have been
Protestant evangelical missions of many denominations; various progressive mis-
sionary endeavors working within the liberation theology framework of the post
Vatican II (1963) Roman Catholic Church; and of course, the Zapatista Movement
itself. (See the recommended readings that follow for thorough coverage of the
political, economic, and religion background of the Zapatistas in the context of
modern Chiapas.)