394 UNIT 3 MODERN MESOAMERICA
political arena. The culmination of this planning has yielded the current (January
2006) six-month initiative to attempt to “turn Mexico on its head” by means of the
six-month “listening” and informational tour of all of Mexico’s 31 states. Although
they are critical of all three major presidential candidates, they nevertheless hoped
to influence the outcome of the July 2006 presidential election.
All of this is somewhat hard to understand, for the Zapatistas are still at war with
the Mexican state because the Mexican Congress failed to ratify the 1996 San Andrés
Peace Accords, which the EZLN and government negotiators signed in February of
that year. So, perhaps to save face, the EZLN still exists as a clandestine militia that
is prepared to defend the autonomous Zapatista villages and hamlets from harass-
ment from the Mexican army and its paramilitary allies in Chiapas. However, the
focus of the movement has now turned to a war of words and rhetoric and to a con-
solidation of their control of the de facto autonomous zones of Chiapas where they
are now in power.SOCIAL AND ETHNIC STRUCTURE
OF THE ZAPATISTAS
Although the particulars of the Zapatistas’ grassroots social organization and lead-
ership are not officially publicized and although extended residence by outsiders is
discouraged, it is possible to assemble a rough portrait of everyday and public life in
the Zapatista autonomous areas. This sketch depends heavily on close reading of
communiqués, some firsthand accounts via personal communication and a few pub-
lished accounts by scholars who have visited the Zapatista-controlled area. The most
comprehensive recent field report in English is Earle’s and Simonelli’s Uprising of(continued)
“We are committed to broadening, fortifying, and consolidating our gains. We propose to
achieve this by combining our own efforts, as members of Indians communities, with those of many
other fellow Mexicans who already recognize us and are allied with us in this struggle. We will mo-
bilize to organize ourselves in order to make that which we have already achieved stronger, and
also to accomplish what is still lacking. We intend to intensify our efforts at the local, municipal,
and national levels.
“We intend to pursue this struggle without hesitation. We are confident that, through this
struggle, our resistance will be transformed into liberation. We are prepared to do everything
necessary to achieve these goals. We cannot afford to wait around for change any longer. How-
ever, we are also committed to accomplishing these things in peace and harmony. By means of
this agenda, we are seeking to have our ‘de facto autonomous spaces’ [autonomías de hecho]
recognized as ‘de jure autonomous spaces’ [autonomías de derecho].
“We appeal to the rule of law. The Constitution of 1917, which is the Magna Carta that gov-
erns the lives of all Mexicans, grants to the people the right to choose their own form of gov-
ernment. We appeal to the authority of this document (specifically, to Article 39) in order to
re-found this country in such a way that all Mexican men and women may enjoy, at last, a new
Magna Carta that will recognize what the Mexican nation has always been and is today: a multi-
ethnic society.”