CHAPTER 10 THE MAYAN ZAPATISTA MOVEMENT 403The optimism of this meeting failed, but its palpable threat to the Mexican po-
litical process, economy, and internal stability caused international tremors. The PRI
candidate, Ernesto Zedillo, won the August 22, 1994, election, but he was almost im-
mediately forced by the United States, the World Bank, and the International Mon-
etary Fund, to “prove” that the country was under sufficient “control” for Mexico to
be worthy of receiving the multi-billion-dollar bridge loan that was in the works as a
bailout from the country’s debt crisis. As “proof” that the Zapatista threat was under
control, on February 9, 1995, the Mexican Army began a scorched earth campaign
to destroy Zapatista-held settlements. Included in their operations was the total de-
struction and occupation of the site of the 1994 Aguascalientes convention. The rest
is history. The EZLN defiantly rebuilt and rededicated the Aguascalientes center at
La Realidad (along with three more regional centers at La Garrucha, Oventik, and
Morelia, all also known as Aguascalientes) in January 1996, the second anniversary
of the beginning of the rebellion.
Now there are five such centers, renamed Caracoles.We would like to note what
these rustic centers mean in terms of their innovative planning and design. All of the
Caracolesare ambitious undertakings. They are conceived on a large scale, using both
traditional (dirt mounds, platforms, log buildings) and modern (plastic-laminated sheets
for canopies) materials. They are for the most part constructed according to preindus-
trial technology, that is, shovels and pickaxes, and are reminiscent in form and function
of the ancient Mayan ceremonial centers. They are, in themselves, political statements.
The Caracolat Oventik, located in the Chiapas highlands, was constructed entirely
without modern tools: no machines, no motorized vehicles, and no petroleum prod-
ucts supplied by PEMEX (Petróleos Mexicanos, the Mexican government monopoly
that controls production, distribution, and sale of petroleum products). In this way,
the Zapatistas blocked any opportunity for quick government purchases of influence
with fleets of Mercedes trucks and Japanese backhoes, a co-optation strategy for
which present and past national governments are well known.
It should be added that the Caracolesare located, conspicuously, outside existing
municipal centers, in an apparent effort to separate them symbolically from the colo-
nial and modern seats of caciquerule, where local Indian elites historically exploited
their own compatriots by accepting favors and gifts from the ruling Spanish and Mex-
ican authorities in exchange for guaranteed “local control.” We hope that readers will
appreciate all that the Caracolesembody in terms of recent historical memory and also
what they mean as symbols for the new society and radical democracy that the Za-
patistas envision for all of Mexico, a time when “... Mexico itself will be truly free only
when all of us are free.”THE WIDER SIGNIFICANCE
OF THE ZAPATISTA MOVEMENT
Although it would be irresponsible and premature to try to “place” the Zapatista move-
ment in modern Mesoamerican history, we do wish to suggest that parallel events in
current Latin American history—notably, the high visibility that indigenous people