386 UNIT 3 MODERN MESOAMERICA
GENERAL STRUCTURAL THEMES
OF THE ZAPATISTA MOVEMENT
As we move to a consideration of the chronology of events and particulars of the vi-
sion for the future that the Zapatistas have articulated, it is important to observe
some general structural themes that are new to this particular Mesoamerican move-
ment.Pan-Mayan/Pan-Indigenous Constituency
Only on rare occasions in colonial and modern Chiapas history—notably, the Tzeltal
Rebellion of 1712; the War of Santa Rosa of l867 to 1870; and Pajarito’s War of 1910
to 1911—have Indian political and religious movements in Chiapas crossed ethnic
and linguistic lines in terms of their constituencies and military mobilization (for
these past movements, see Chapters 5 and 8 in this text). When they have done so
in such a manner as to become active and visible, these movements have been
promptly crushed by the state. Indeed, the Spanish Crown created administrative
institutions, settlement patterns, and local civil and religious organizations that would,
in effect, segregate Indians from Spanish and mestizo communities and also from one
another. In functioning to encourage local identities, languages, customs, and loy-
alties, these policies served the Crown’s purpose in that they discouraged pan-Indian
opposition to state policy.
In many respects, the configuration of ethnically and demographically isolated
Indian townships that are indirectly controlled by the state through the caciquesys-
tem (see Chapter 7) has continued largely intact well into the late twentieth century
and into the present. It is particularly characteristic of municipios in highland Chi-
apas and highland Guatemala. It follows that Zapatista rhetoric invests particular
venom in attacking the caciquesystem as coevil with the Mexican state.
The demographic portrait of the region that spawned the Zapatista Movement,
however, is unlikewhat we have just described, and this dissimilarity matters a great
deal in making sense of the background of the rebellion. The Zapatista homeland,
in the Lacandon jungle lowlands of southeastern Chiapas, is actually a pioneer set-
tlement area. Within the last few decades, tens of thousands of displaced individuals
have emigrated there as refugees from poverty and political and religious persecu-
tion in their Indian townships of origin. The region is also home to thousands of
Guatemalan refugees who fled there to escape the political violence in their own
country in the l980s (on this topic, see Chapter 8). The region therefore has no es-
tablished social order that is dominated by any one Mayan ethnic or linguistic group.
This is also a region of great religious diversity, comprising thousands of newly
converted Protestants and recently evangelized “progressive” Catholics who were,
over the last two decades, the subjects of intense proselytizing by lay catechists and
priests associated with Liberation Theology. The former Roman Catholic Bishop of
the Diocese of San Cristóbal, Samuel Ruiz, is known fondly as Tatik Samuel (“Our
Revered Father Samuel”) by the Zapatistas, for he has, in the spirit of Liberation
Theology, steadfastly defended their interests in dealing with the Mexican state and
with local white landowning elites. Also residing in the region and committed to the