Intimate Enemies: Landowners, Power, and Violence in Chiapas.By Aaron ... Understanding the Chiapas Rebellion: Modernist Visions and the Invisible. Indian.
The Zapatistas, Subcomandante Marcos, and Chiapas, Mexico, Fifteen Years On Jeffrey H. Cohen, The Ohio State University
Intimate Enemies: Landowners, Power, and Violence in Chiapas. By Aaron Bobrow-Strain. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. xv + 272 pp., acknowledgments, abbreviations and acronyms, maps, illustrations, notes, glossary, bibliography, index. $89.95 cloth, $23.95 paper.) Subcommander Marcos: The Man and the Mask. By Nick Henck. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. xxv + 500 pp., acknowledgments, glossary, maps, illustrations, figures, notes, works cited, index. $89.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.) Understanding the Chiapas Rebellion: Modernist Visions and the Invisible Indian. By Nicholas P. Higgins. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. xii + 259 pp., preface, acknowledgments, glossary, maps, illustrations, figures, notes, references, index. $22.95 paper.) Uprising of Hope: Sharing the Zapatista Journey to Alternative Development. By Duncan Earle and Jeanne Simonelli. (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2005. xvii + 323 pp., foreword by June Nash, preface and acknowledgments, maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $80.00 cloth, $34.95 paper.) The Zapatistas surprised the world in 1994, and fifteen years later, the movement continues to hold an important place for the rural poor in Mexico and antiglobalization protestors worldwide. Many questions remain regarding the meaning and role of the Zapatistas and their ubiquitous leader Subcomandante Marcos for Mexico, for the Americas, and more generally for the world as neoliberal reforms peter out under the pressure of economic Ethnohistory 56:3 (Summer 2009) DOI 10.1215/00141801-2009-007 Copyright 2009 by American Society for Ethnohistory
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crises. Regardless of our opinions and what we know of the movement’s past, these are not books content to document the Zapatistas’ roots and Subcomandante Marcos’s origins (although the volumes by Nick Henck and Nicholas Higgins do just that before they focus on the contemporary nature of Marcos and the movement for the future). The authors of these books are part of what can be best described as a new phase in Zapatista studies. Rather than focusing on origins and the conditions that fostered the movement in order to explain immediate, short-term impacts and the tense relationship of Subcomandante Marcos to the Mexican state, these books probe the present and mine both it and the actors that are its creators, including Marcos. They do document where the Zapatistas come from, but perhaps more importantly, they ask what their actions mean and how the movement affects unlikely groups like the landowners of Chiapas, as well as the impoverished, who we are perhaps more ready to hear about. These authors question the very nature of previous research conducted around the issue of the Zapatistas, rejecting approaches conducted at a distance for detailed investigations that often take place on the ground. The clearest example of this new style of research is carried out by Duncan Earle and Jeanne Simonelli, who engage in an activist-based anthropology that builds upon traditional anthropological research but stretches the very meaning of ethnography to include interactive, politically engaged fieldwork. Aaron Bobrow-Strain also stretches ethnography, but in his case the shift is one of focus, from the traditionally underrepresented and poor to the elite of Chiapas and the impacts of the Zapatista movement upon landholders. Focusing more on the movement itself, Higgins frames his discussion in new kinds of methodologies and asks how we might best understand the encounter of the Zapatistas and the Mexican state, while Henck rethinks the very meaning of Marcos as the movement’s leader. The result, as I’ve suggested, is a new phase in Zapatista studies. Gone are the chronological histories and detailed descriptions of the life and times of Marcos that frame the man as something of a god (or devil) and the movement as a juggernaut that is bigger than any of its pieces and somehow overwhelms locals who cannot understand its meaning or structure. Here we have what is best thought of as microethnographic studies of the outcomes of the movement and its goals. While an antiglobal, anti-neoliberal undertone is clear throughout these works, we are not simply observers standing at a distance watching native Chiapas communities respond. Instead, we hear of the details of how Subcomandante Marcos and his supporters frame the very actions they call for, and we also learn of their mistakes and errors. We join (through Earle and Simonelli, as well as Bobrow-Strain) poor and
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rich Chiapanecos as they embrace the goals of the Zapatistas, try to fashion a response to the movement and its effects on the state, and reach for new models of development and living that embrace the goals of humanity rather than the shortcomings of neoliberalism. The breadth and strength of these books makes summarizing them together nearly impossible. Thus, to communicate just a fraction of what the authors have accomplished in each of their texts, I want to spend a few paragraphs on the various books that are included in this review. I group Henck and Higgins together as the authors who share the goal of bringing the Zapatista movement to us—although each has a unique path. Henck documents the life of Subcomandante Marcos to fully interrogate the movement, while Higgins frames his discussion in various theories of political action, asking us to think and rethink how we approach the actors involved, including the Mexican state, the Zapatistas, and native Mayan communities. With the volumes by Earle and Simonelli and Bobrow-Strain, we shift from the movement to its effects. Earle and Simonelli explore how local communities engage with and meet the goals and challenges of the Zapatista movement, while Bobrow-Strain investigates the effect of the movement on wealthy landholders and state leaders. Henck’s biography, Subcommander Marcos: The Man and the Mask, is not just another history of Marcos and the Zapatistas. It is also much more than a simple restatement of Marcos’s life and times. Henck weaves together biography, history, economic critique, and political analysis to capture the strengths and weaknesses of the movement and the man. Reading Henck, it is hard to remember that he never interviewed Marcos personally. Instead he uses a variety of sources to define the man and his movement—to get behind the mask. In the process, we learn of the Zapatistas’ goals, their critical response to the Mexican state and the neoliberal reforms of NAFTA, and their hopes for Mexico’s poor. The chapters of Henck’s book are organized around two intertwined topics, Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatista movement. Parts 1 and 2 capture the man, Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, and the personal, famil ial, national, and professional forces through which he becomes Subcomandante Marcos. We learn why he left his upper-middle-class, academic world for the forests of Chiapas and the “guerrilla” life of a leftist critic of the government. Part 3 of Henck’s work is focused on the many events (hopeful and brutal) that have framed the Zapatista movement. We learn of the creation of “self-ruled” communities in Chiapas, where politics serve the people, but also of massacres that force us as readers to reflect on the meaning of freedom, the costs of violence, and the role that terror plays for the state as it works to maintain and reinforce its control. We also read of the recent moves
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by the Zapatistas, the tour that Marcos organized in 2001, and the “other campaign” with the goal of moving beyond Chiapas to include Mexico’s poor in the critique of neoliberal reforms and NAFTA. Marcos comes alive in Henck’s book. He is not the monster that the Mexican state would have us believe in, nor is he, as the figurehead of a movement, above reproach. Rather, Marcos is a human, and the strength of the Zapatista movement comes alive as we read of his life, his struggles, and his achievements. Higgins’s overview of the Zapatista movement, Understanding the Chiapas Rebellion, frames the events that have occurred in Chiapas and the rise of the Zapatistas against the history of the Mexican state, different theoretical frameworks, and the effects of the movement on local communities. His goals are not those of Henck, and the finished text is very different in quality as well as scope. Higgins builds a model that allows us to understand the Zapatistas as part of Mexico’s history and the encounter between Maya and Mexican. While the outcome is sometimes difficult to read— Higgins’s text is demanding of our full attention, particularly his introduction, which lays out several competing theories for understanding the Maya and the encounter—his goal, a thorough critique of the neoliberal state, is admirable. Higgins argues that the current standoff between the Zapatistas and Mexican state is really nothing new; rather, it has roots that lie in the structure of the conquest and in the modernist assumptions of the state, which argues first that natives are not particularly intelligent and second, and perhaps more importantly, that the beliefs of the natives are demonic and therefore they must be eradicated. The situation is, of course, quite a bit more complicated, and Higgins uses the Zapatistas to argue that the natives have alternatives that should be analyzed in their own right. He maintains that the Zapatistas and their supporters remind us of what is at stake in the neoliberal state, what he calls “modernity untamed.” While his romantic and hopeful alternative is likely unfeasible given the strengths and controls of the Mexican state, it is nonetheless a hopeful opportunity to hear the voices and plans of local leaders. Earle and Simonelli’s Uprising of Hope and Bobrow-Strain’s Intimate Enemies take very different approaches to the Zapatista movement. The authors are not as interested in the Zapatistas and Marcos as with the outcomes of the movement and how very different groups (the poor in the case of Earle and Simonelli and landowners in the case of Bobrow-Strain) react to and interact with the events taking place around them. Bobrow-Strain’s ethnography of elite landowners in Chiapas is perhaps the most unique contribution to the continued debate on the effect and meaning of the Zapatista uprising. Anthropologists, among other social scientists (Bobrow-Strain is a geographer), often focus on the poor, under-
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served, and marginal in their discussions of globalization and its effects. Intimate Enemies is one of the few ethnographies that focus instead on the elite and ask how do events (some global, others local) affect and perhaps marginalize this population as well. The strength of Bobrow-Strain’s work comes in his ability to effectively capture the ambivalent world of the landowners. Landowners are often described in monolithic terms as a population that through time has controlled Chiapas and its poor, peasant, and indigenous people. Here, the author notes the struggles the elite, landowning class faces, what they see as inequities in the system, and the profound effect of land invasion (this is particularly clear in the chapters that make up part 3 of the book). It isn’t easy to feel sympathetic for landowners; yet, Bobrow-Strain effectively communicates the frustration and resignation that marks the landowners’ reactions to Zapatista supporters, land invasions, and the Mexican state. Uprising of Hope is a new kind of ethnography. The authors take an activist stance and carry the reader along on a journey through Chiapas communities that embrace the goals of the Zapatistas and their critique of neoliberal reforms. As June Nash notes in her foreword, Earle and Simonelli succeed in “sharing the Zapatista dreams,” (vii) arguing that development can take many forms—not the least of which celebrates local rule, native custom, and indigenous traditions. The political views of the authors and the communities they visit are clear. These are activists, and the communities they visit embrace the antiglobal goals of the Zapatistas, but there is much more here as well. Earle and Simonelli connect us with communities and community leaders in a way that allows us to move beyond development agendas rooted in state and nongovernmental organizations and the imposition of western ideals on indigenous groups. A reader might wonder if there is truly uniform agreement across the communities documented; Earle and Simonelli’s examples are small scale and do not reveal much disagreement. Regardless, their contribution is important. We understand from them how the Zapatista movement is translated locally to become an effective framework for local, grassroots development that is people-first rather than state-driven and defined from beyond. Together these authors reframe the meaning, value, and trajectory of the Zapatista movement, Subcomandante Marcos, and the reactions of Chiapanecos rich and poor. Gone are simplified models of rebellion and caricatures of the leaders. In their place are complex portraits of a movement and its leader that reveal the positive power of Marcos and the Zapatistas, as well as their failings and shortcomings. Gone too are the broad sketches of the movement’s impact on local communities and the sense that
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Chiapaneco natives follow where Marcos and the movement leads. Instead, we begin to understand how local communities embrace and build upon the goals of the Zapatistas even as elites struggle to make sense of their remade world. After fifteen years, it is reasonable to ask, “Is Marcos an effective leader and do the Zapatistas have anything new to offer?” These books and their authors show that there remains much to learn, that Marcos continues to grow and develop as a leader, and that the movement has morphed. Just as importantly, we now know that local communities are not passive in their reactions to the Zapatistas, and in many cases they have grown to absorb the movement and make it their own.
