500 UNIT 4 MESOAMERICAN CULTURAL FEATURES
with me. We don’t want Our Father Díaz to watch over us any more. We want a better
president to care for us. There isn’t enough to eat or to buy clothes. I want every man to
have his own plot of land. He will sow it and reap corn, beans, and other grains. What do
you people say? Will you join us?”
Nobody answered. The days passed. The barracks of Zapata and Everardo González
were set up in the village. González was told to stay in Milpa Alta to watch over the village.
General Zapata was received in the following way. Everyone in the village went out to re-
ceive him. Crowds of men and women came with flowers in their hands. A band played
and fireworks burst; and when he had entered, the band played the diana [a Mexican pa-
triotic song].
Several months went by, and Our Father Porfirio Díaz and the Secretary Justo Sierra
were not worried about the Revolution. Their great passion was the Mexican people.
Wherever there were four children, they were given clothing. Girls were given a blouse
and skirt, and boys were given a shirt and trousers.
Perhaps Señores Díaz and Sierra believed this: “Fathers and mothers will thus learn
how to give an education to their children. They will send them to school.” The hopes of
these great men were fulfilled, and everybody in the village obeyed them....
One day the Zapatistas came down and burned the town hall, the courthouse, and sev-
eral homes. One of these houses belonged to a rich man by the name of Luis Sevilla. His
house was burned to the ground. It was enough to break your heart to hear the bursting
of the grains of corn and the beans. All his domestic animals died in the burning of that
house. The next day, the Zapatistas came down again to the village and forced our men to
take fodder and water to their horses. All of these things were caused by the Zapatistas.
When the men of Zapata entered the town, they came to kill. They killed the rich be-
cause they asked for large amounts of money which the rich were not willing to give up.
Then they would take the rich men to the woods and murder them there. They also car-
ried off girls. People said that they took them to the woods and raped them there. These
maidens were abandoned forever in the woods, never to return to their homes. No one
knew whether they were devoured by wild animals or whether the Zapatistas murdered
and buried them there. (Doña Luz Jiménez, from the transcription and translation of
Fernando Horcasitas 1972:125–135)NEW INDIAN WRITING IN MESOAMERICA
In addition to the incorporation of Native Mesoamerican voices into the national
literatures, ethnohistories, and anthropological studies in the late twentieth century
and early twenty-first century, it must also be noted that Indian scholars and artists
are now increasingly active in producing their own historical and literary texts. In both
Guatemala and Mexico, this new generation of Indian writers became visible in the
1980s with the founding of such organizations as the Academia de Cultura Mayaand
the Instituto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquínin Guatemala, and the Tzotzil Writers’ Co-
operative (Sna Jtz’ibahom),located in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.
These organizations and others like them have encouraged not only the creation of
literature in native languages—including readings and performances of their work
at home and abroad—but also the teaching of literacy in these languages.
It should be noted that local and national governments of both Mexico and
Guatemala have recognized these organizations, but that funding has been hard to
obtain, since their goals are in some respects at odds with other government policies
that encourage acculturation and literacy in Spanish. Still other opposition has come
from Protestant missionary organizations that, prior to the rise of these native cultural