CHAPTER 10 THE MAYAN ZAPATISTA MOVEMENT 387Zapatista agenda are many “traditional Mayan Catholics” who do not feel attracted
to either Protestant or liberal Catholic teaching.
It is therefore not surprising that the composition of the EZLN, although gen-
erally Mayan, is actually fairly diverse in terms of ethnic, linguistic, and religious back-
grounds. Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Zoque, Chol, and Tojolabal speakers, as well as Mexican
Mestizos and ethnically “white” Mexicans, are all united in pursuit of common po-
litical and social goals. What is Mayan about the Zapatista Movement must therefore
be sought not in particular variants of Mayan cultural identity, but rather, in general
principles of values and conduct that all might share, be they Zoques, Tzotzils, Mex-
icans, or other Native Americans.
Although the immediate goals of the Mayan Zapatistas appear to outside ob-
servers to be primarily of an economic and a political nature, we believe that the
pan-Mayan nature of this enterprise has a powerful component of postcolonial eth-
nic affirmation that goes well beyond political action. Well-organized pan-Mayan co-
operation now extends into many arenas of activity in modern Guatemala, Chiapas,
and Yucatan. The nature of these pan-Indian groups ranges from intellectual, edu-
cational, and religious organizations to crafts guilds (for example, textile and ce-
ramic cooperatives) that cater to the tourist trade. There are also numerous writers’
and artists’ cooperatives whose members are working to create a corpus of literature
in Mayan languages, as well as graphic and performing arts, that express traditional
and contemporary Mayan themes. A current synthesis of these topics may be found
in Victor Montejo’s Maya Intellectual Renaissance: Identity, Representation, and Leadership
(see the discussion of this book in Chapter 13).
Choreographic Chronology of the Zapatista Enterprise
This introduction to the background of the actual events that comprise the Mayan
Zapatista Movement has seemed necessary and appropriate to us because the inter-
national media have generally ignored its existence since it was “news” back in l994.
On that occasion the occupation of the Chiapas towns by the EZLN was deemed
newsworthy by major commercial and public networks in the United States. It was
even covered as a feature story on PBS’s McNeil/Lehrer News Hour shortly after the
insurrection began. Since then, the Zapatista story has gone underground, surfacing
only occasionally in Europe and the United States over the past decade. There have
been moments of embarrassment and comic opera, as for example, when Subco-
mandante Marcos, spokesman for EZLN, published an open letter to Spanish Court
Magistrate Fernando Baltasar Garzón in November 2002 in which he called the Span-
ish judge a “grotesque clown” and the Spanish Prime Minister Ignacio Aznar an “im-
becile” for outlawing a political party that was committed to Basque political
autonomy.
Marcos subsequently challenged Baltasar Garzón to a debate in the Canary Is-
lands over the issue of state recognition of cultural and political autonomy of in-
digenous people, and he compared the Spanish state’s persecution of its Basque
people with the Mexican state’s failure to recognize and deal honorably with in-
digenous rights and cultural autonomy at home. His comparison of the EZLN cause
in Mexico and the Basque separatist movement in Spain—labeling both national