The Legacy of Mesoamerica History and Culture of a Native American Civilization, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 10 THE MAYAN ZAPATISTA MOVEMENT 397

Box 10.3 The Zapatista Ideal of Inclusion

In a commentary that may one day become famous, Marián Peres Tzu, a Chamulan Tzotzil,

recorded the following impressions about the first few weeks of the Mayan Zapatista insurrection:

For the first two weeks or so after the seizure of San Cristóbal, not a single kaxlan(Ladino,

or non-Indian) showed his face in public: not a policeman, not a parking officer, nor a col-

lector of fees. Not one. They disappeared! They were so terrified of the Zapatistas that they

hid. But the moment they were sure the Zapatista Army was gone and wasn’t coming back,

Ha!, immediately the parking officers were back unscrewing license plates, the municipal po-

lice beating up drunks, and the market collectors chasing away poor women trying to sell

tomatoes and lemons on the street corners. With the Zapatistas gone, suddenly they were

fearless again. But when the Zapatistas were here, they stayed in their bedrooms with the

shades closed, quaking with fear. They couldn’t even get it up with their wives they were so

scared.

You see what that means? They were afraid of Indians, because that’s what the Za-

patistas were, Indians. When we other Indians realized that, we felt strong as well. Strong

like the Zapatistas. The kaslanetikof San Cristóbal have always pushed us around just be-

cause we don’t speak Spanish correctly. But now everything has begun to change. (Peres Tzu

1996:126–127, translated by Jan Rus.)

Marcos’s own statements and ample testimony from indigenous comrades indi-
cate that he and his Marxist colleagues in the early years (l980s) were slowly dis-
suaded, indeed thwarted, from trying to implement standard top-down revolutionary
rhetoric in their efforts to mobilize indigenous resistance against the Mexican state.
This strategy, the indigenous elders said, was old and bad news, bearing memories
of more than 400 years of tutorial supervision and exploitation. They were tired of
being manipulated by European agendas. The key to meaningful social change and
good government, said the elders, was to start with what people themselves wanted
and needed.
We understand that this learning process was aided and abetted by the extraor-
dinary leadership of Samuel Ruiz, Bishop of the Diocese of San Cristóbal, who dur-
ing the the same period (1980s) mobilized major forces—who for the most part were
lay catechists—in the spirit of liberation theology, to establish base communities with
strong commitment to local cooperation and collaboration that would sustain them
spiritually and economically under adverse circumstances. Hundreds of these com-
munities are vital today and constitute an important part of the Zapatista constituency
(on this point, see Kovic 2005). Through these communities, with others that are
more traditionally Mayan Christian and Protestant in their religious affiliation, Mar-
cos learned to listen and realized that any meaningful social change had to begin
from the roots—bottom-up—rather than from above.
There are many other details of the Zapatista movement that demonstrate that
nonindigenous collaborators, human and supernatural, are welcome and essential
to the cause. Among the earliest martyrs of the insurrection was Janine Pauline