Agrario

Zapatismo’s attempt to transcend the capitalist nation state
Rebekah Kartal


July 8, 2012


Thesis draft 2 (EZLN)


Abrstract:

































































On January 1, 1994 the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) invaded San Cristóbal andthree other towns in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico (Womack 42). On this day the Zapatistas released a statement declaring “basta,” or enough (Collier 2). Addressing all people of Mexico they described their frustration of “500 years of struggle: first against slavery, then during the War of Independence against Spain led by insurgents, then to promulgate our constitution and expel the Frenchempire from our soil, and later [when] the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz denied us the just application of the Reform laws…” (2). The Zapatista uprising coincided with the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (Womack 42). The disregard for the people of Chiapas symbolized by the signing of the NAFTA agreement was, in the eyes of the Zapatistas, only one more exampleof the numerous preceding cases where the people of Chiapas were ignored in terms of political and economic decisions. NAFTA serves the interests of national and international capital to continue the plunder of natural resources and the exploitation of human beings, which would sustain and further aggravate poverty in the region (Ocampo 67, 68). Ergo, the EZLN called on all of the people ofMexico to join them in their fight for work, land, shelter, food, healthcare, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice, and peace (Díaz 21).
The Mexican state of Chiapas has been poverty-stricken and divided since the Spanish colonial era. Although Spanish records frequently commemorate the conquistadors as heroes, the indigenous people document the colonization as the start of aprolonged duration of “forced labor, disease, hunger, and cultural weakening” (Joseph & Henderson DATE 95). The indigenous Maya people of Chiapas were obligated to pay taxes to the state and forced to serve as the laborers for the ladino elites (WomackDATE6). Conditions were so harsh that more than 75 percent of the pre-conquest population died during the first decades of the Spanish invasion (Díaz35). During the 19th century legislation was passed requiring the indigenous to split up their land into individual and privately owned plots, the majority of which were taken by the ladinos (Womack 6). Those without land were no longer able to support themselves and became heavily indebted. Mexico´s industrial revolution unevenly favored northern states while causing misery in south pacificstates such as Chiapas (Womack 11; see also Díaz 34).[1] The masters of the land owned everything that the indigenous peons possessed (lands, house, the fruits of their labor, etc.) and thus were able to exploit them (Díaz 39).[2]
Since its onset, the capitalist nation state has depended upon colonialism and slavery to maintain itself. In the case of Mexico, imperial nations exploited its cheaplabor power and natural resources (Hesketh 385). Thus, it was no coincidence, but rather essential, that Mexico developed the way it did. For example, haciendas took the place of communal indigenous villages because the haciendas allowed Europe to extract resources from Mexico more systematically. Additionally Hesketh explains that Europe(include USA here) carved the development of Mexicothrough its building of railroads, which facilitated the strengthening of the state through the strengthening of domestic markets (386). Hesketh notes that “there was a massive decline in real wages from 1898-191… [and] never had so many Mexicans been landless, [with] [j]ust 835 families control[ing] the vast majority of cultivable land” (387). The European’s reorganization of Mexican society to...