Citizenship and the Struggle for Land and the Environment in Chiapas

Abstract

Neil Harvey The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle for Land and Democracy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. Karen L. O'Brien Sacrificing Forest: Environmental and Social Struggles in Chiapas. Boulder: Westview Press, 1998. Neil Harvey's The Chiapas Rebellion is most thorough English-language study of rise of Ejercito Zapatista de Liberaci6n Nacional (Zapatista National Liberation Army-EZLN) to date. Based on research begun well before launching of rebellion in 1994, book focuses on peasant activism and changing contours of popular mobilization in Chiapas over past three decades. In particular Harvey seeks to determine how indigenous peasants in southern Mexico have contested terms under which political system has constituted them as subordinate. He argues that type of (in which Mexican state sought to determine and regulate acceptable forms of political behavior) has been predominant throughout much of twentieth century. This type of citizenship has been substantially eroded by, among other things, electoral reform since 1980s and shift to national political discourse grounded in liberal constitutionalism. The Zapatistas not only embody clear break with Mexican state's earlier notion of corporatist citizenship but also represent critique of narrow versions of democratic that gained purchase in 1980s, opening up the possibility for more radical understanding of citizenship and democracy (1998: 11-12). Harvey emphasizes that Zapatista struggle is complex amalgam of indigenous, democratic, agrarian, and gender struggles and a novel attempt to articulate new radical democratic imaginary (1998: 200, 210). Having outlined historical background, Harvey quickly turns to campesino organizing that accelerated dramatically in 1970s. He draws attention to organizational and ideological mix provided by involvement of range of activists including liberation theologians and Mexican Maoists, promoting various forms of ostensibly legal political struggle. Although these developments paved way for emergence of Zapatistas, Harvey emphasizes that immediate origins of EZLN are to be found in arrival in Chiapas in late 1983 of new group of activists that advocated armed struggle. By time these new activists (among them future Subcomandante Marcos) appeared on scene, significant number of communities in Lacand6n jungle and elsewhere were tired of living in same poverty