Neoliberalism and the rise of (peasant) nations within the nation: Chiapas in comparative and theoretical perspective

Abstract

This analysis places the causes and objectives of the Zapatista uprising in relation both to those of other agrarian movements, and to debates about them. Longstanding disagreements on the political left about indigenous autonomy and micro-level nationalist aspirations are examined with particular reference to ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ variants of indigenista discourse in Mexico. Of particular interest is the way in which the discourse about indigenous peasant ‘otherness’ necessarily generates a disempowering intra-class conflict, an issue linked in turn to the broader political economy of indigenismo. It is argued that, in many respects, the true precursors of the 1990s Zapatistas are the 1920s Cristeros and 1930s Sinarquistas, each of which constitutes a traditionalist form of anti-capitalist peasant movement belonging to the same agrarian populist lineage. The political efficacy of a Zapatista programme (cultural autonomy, human rights, systemically non-specific democracy) that leaves the wider class structure and its state intact is questioned.

‘This journey has only served to confirm this belief, that the division of America into unstable and illusory nations is a complete fiction. We are one single mestizo race with remarkable ethnographic similarities, from Mexico down to the Magellan Straits.’ – Ernesto Che Guevara [ 2004 ] after having travelled round Latin America on a motorcycle during the early 1950s.

‘During the late disastrous season, in the autumn of 1839, in a distant western county, when there was no hope of seed-sowing, the little farmers without capital, whose existence seemed to depend upon it, were cheerful and contented; and this was uniformly more the case in proportion to their poverty. If there came a deluge of rain, they said, “God's will be done.” If there came a fine day, they said, “God sent it.” And all their conduct and conversation was so resigned and buoyant, as to shame both landlords and merchants, and other rich men, who at the same period were suffering a comparatively small diminution in their prosperity, from the difficulties of the times and the dearness of provisions.’ – The idealization by Bosanquet [ 1841 : 164] of resignation among impoverished Irish farmers occasioned by religious belief as one of the ‘Virtues of the Poor’.

‘During the third and last general election under the Spanish Republic, a lean, underfed Andalusian land-worker was standing in the queue before a polling booth in Granada. A conservative agent who hung about on the lookout for votes to be bought showed him a silver duro (or crown) in the hollow of his hand. The worker met the manoeuvre with a blank stare. The agent produced a twenty-five peseta note. Another blank stare. Piqued, he produced a one hundred peseta note, almost a fortune for the poor wretch. Unmoved, the worker out of work let fall a lapidary phrase: “En mi hambre mando yo.” I am master of my hunger.’ – The recognition by a liberal bourgeois theorist [de Madariaga, 1958 : 1–2] of both the existence and the power of class consciousness among the rural workers in 1930s Spain. 1

‘Depend upon it there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.’ – Sherlock Holmes to Doctor Watson in ‘A Case of Identity’ [Conan Doyle, 1928 : 56].

Notes

1 This particular epigraph is included to make the point that at the rural grassroots consciousness of class not merely exists but is also politically important. Such an observation – which might normally be considered obvious, not to say trite – is currently necessary, because the idea of a consciousness of class has been attacked recently from two directions. First, by the ‘new’ postmodern populism (see below) that dismisses class as ‘foundational’ and any consciousness thereof as an act of Eurocentric theoretical ‘privileging’. And second, by the many ex-Marxists who are converts to and enthusiastic supporters of this ‘new’ postmodern populism. Like the original adherents of the latter, such ex-Marxists now see the rural workforce in any/every geographical/historical context as incapable of transcending ethnic/national identity, perceived both by them and by ‘new’ postmodern populists as ‘natural’, innate and empowering.

2 Broadly speaking, the campesinista/descampesinista divide corresponds to the opposing theoretical positions taken by protagonists in the longstanding (but, in its internationalist form, still relevant) debate on the agrarian question, which concerns the rôle of peasants in providing surpluses for industrial development. Indistinguishable from indigenismo, and associated with the work of the Russian populist Chayanov [1966], the campesinista position holds that peasant economy, or an homogeneous peasantry composed of self-sufficient petty commodity producers, is a sui generis socio-economic category that produces no surplus. Not only does the peasant family farm resist incorporation by wider economic systems (capitalism and socialism), but throughout the countryside of the Third World it constitutes viable alternative (= ‘peasantization’ or ‘repeasantization’) to them all. Against this are ranged the adherents of the descampesinista position, consisting mainly (but not only) of Marxists who argue that capitalist penetration of agriculture results in ‘depeasantization’. What campesinista populists regard as an indestructible peasant economy is perceived by descampesinista Marxists as being differentiated into a rich, middle and poor peasantry, the top stratum becoming small agrarian capitalists while those from the bottom one join the proletariat. These distinct strata – capital and labour – meet in the market and accumulation takes place, generating a surplus for industrialization. Although there are no descampesinistas who think of themselves as agrarian populists, there are currently adherents of the campesinista position who nevertheless (and erroneously) believe themselves to be Marxists. The reasons for the latter form of political/theoretical misrecognition are complex, and have been explored elsewhere [Brass, 2000].

3 This optimism has generated a large and enthusiastic network of international solidarity with the Zapatistas [Olesen, 2005; Hardt and Negri, 2005], a mainly electronic linkage the mere fact of which is itself frequently invoked in support of claims about the ‘newness’ of this social movement. This, as de Souza Martins [2003: 331, note 53] has pointed out, is ‘due to the simple fact that all previous agrarian movements in Mexico did not have access to the internet’, and amounts to the unpersuasive argument that peasant mobilizations are defined largely by the sophistication of their communication technology. Much the same difficulty informs the attempt by De Angelis [2000] to classify the Zapatistas as ‘internationalist’ purely on the basis of this support network, an interpretation confounded by the indigenous nationalism of EZLN pronouncements. More important in this regard is the precise ideological and political rôle of this international support network. As the contributions to this volume by de Leon and Moksnes attest, not only is its existence conditional on the demobilization of armed struggle in Chiapas, but international supporters visiting the Acteal shrine also reinforce an ensemble of meanings that are politically disempowering. Among them are the significance attached by Roman Catholicism to the innateness of hierarchy, the necessity of obedience to this, hence the notion of passivity and the ennoblement of suffering and martyrdom. In an important sense visiting support – however well intentioned – can also be seen as a form of religious pilgrimage (the benefit of which accrues mainly to the pilgrim).

4 One predictably influential variant of this interpretation – or rather re-interpretation – of grassroots agency is the pseudo-sociological notion of ‘multitude’ informing the fashionable postmodern nostrums of Hardt and Negri [2005]. Their attempt to lever the peasantry into this framework [Hardt and Negri, 2005: 115–27] is, unsurprisingly, replete with non-sequiturs, confusions, and simple errors. Thus, for example, the argument about the differentiation of the peasantry into its rich, middle and poor strata is attributed to Mao and not Lenin, whilst the assertion that Marxists generally regarded the peasantry as a class is similarly incorrect. Unlike Guevara, who wished to dissolve nationalism (see first epigraph) so as to mount a more effective attack on imperialism, Hardt and Negri wish to ban class from this same conflict. Accordingly, their concept ‘multitude’ erases all economic and property relations linking the individual self to the world, thereby making the struggle against neo-liberalism so inclusive that it is difficult to conceive of any category of ‘selfhood’ not wholly signed up by them to the defeat of a correspondingly externalized global capitalism. The absence of class trapped between the exclusiveness of individual selfhood on the one hand, and the inclusiveness of being-in-the-world on the other, is evident from the observation [Hardt and Negri, 2005: 127] that ‘we are a multiplicity of singular forms of life and at the same time share a common global existence’ (original emphasis). For them, therefore, no distinction exists between a millionaire and an agricultural labourer, each of whom is simultaneously ‘a singular form of life’ and both of whom ‘share a common global existence’. In other words, between the irreducibility of the self and the sameness of humanity at the global level there is nothing, and the space in which class relations are usually to be found is for Hardt and Negri empty of socio-economic content. This is all of a part with their earlier pseudo-conceptual framework, based on the notion of ‘Empire’ [Hardt and Negri, 2000], the intellectual pretensions of which have been effectively demolished by Petras [2002].

5 On the subject of whether or not a movement that eschews the capture of state power can be considered revolutionary, see the exchanges about Chiapas in the journal Capital & Class 85 (Spring, 2005). Marxists insist that any movement which does not attempt to capture the state, or avoids doing this, cannot be regarded as revolutionary, since the state apparatus is not only left intact to rule in the name of the bourgeoisie but – as such – will at some future point move against insurgents who have challenged its power in a specific region of the nation and undermine them, even if it does not crush them militarily.

6 Among those who have claimed that the 1994 Chiapas uprising is the first postmodern rebellion are Burbach [1994], Burbach, Núñez and Kagarlitsky [1997: 95–6], Rabasa [1997], Holloway and Peláez [1998], Carrigan [2001], Mignolo [2002], Holloway [2002a; 2002b] and Hardt and Negri [2005: 85]. Associated with a six-volume series edited by Ranajit Guha [1982–89], the subaltern studies project casts itself as an alternative rural historiography of South Asia, an approach that has spread more recently to Latin American rural historiography (on which see Brass [2003]). Similarly postmodern in its epistemology, the ‘everyday forms of peasant resistance’ framework is linked to the work of James Scott [1985], and expounded with regard to the 1994 Zapatista uprising by, among others, Castells, Yazawa and Kiselyova [1995–96]. In contrast to all these campesinista approaches, Marxism confers political legitimacy only on revolutionary struggles for political power undertaken by class categories (a nascent bourgeoisie in the case of a dominant feudalism, a proletariat in the case of a dominant capitalism). For this reason the descampesinista position adhered to by Marxists argues that resistance by rich, middle and poor peasants has a different class basis, meaning and objective. It is the exponents of the subaltern/resistance framework, such as Scott and Guha, who maintain the fiction of an undifferentiated peasantry confronting a non-class specific state (a binary opposition which structures the discourse not of Marxism but of agrarian populism, the ‘other’ of Marxism).

7 On the constituent elements of the agrarian myth, its historical background and political outcomes, see Brass [2000]. The discourse-for of the agrarian myth endorses ‘natural’/harmonious rural-based smallscale economic activity (peasant family farming, handicrafts) and culture (religious/ethnic/national/regional/village/family identities derived from Nature). By contrast, the discourse-against of the agrarian myth expresses opposition to urban-based largescale economic activity (industrialization, finance capital, the city, manufacturing, collectivization, planning, massification) and hostility towards its accompanying institutional/relational/systemic effects (class formation/struggle, revolution, socialism, bureaucracy, the State). All the latter are perceived as non-indigenous/inauthentic/‘alien’ internationalisms imposed on an unwilling and mainly rural population by ‘foreigners’, and therefore as responsible for the erosion of hitherto authentic local culture, traditions and values. The reason for this fusion between the agrarian myth on the one hand and both the subaltern/resistance framework and the ‘new’ populist postmodernism on the other is not difficult to discern. In the epistemology shared by the latter, any/every form of resistance is declared to be legitimate (landlords as well as tenants, the rich as well as the poor). The difficulty with concepts such as ‘resistance’ and ‘power’ as deployed by the subaltern framework, therefore, is a political one. By eschewing a politics, resistance theory not only makes no distinction between resistance by those occupying antagonistic class positions (commercial farmers, rich peasants, poor peasants and agricultural labourers), but also – with typical postmodern aporia – denies the necessity any longer to have to make such a distinction. The assumption is that all resisters are the same, by virtue of belonging to the same ethnic group, whereas evidence from peasant movements worldwide shows that, in order to understand agrarian resistance/accommodation, such a category must be differentiated along class lines.

8 The concept ‘dual power’, central to the analysis by Trotsky of the 1917 Russian Revolution, informs writings by Gilly [1983; 1998] on the subject of Mexican peasants. Initially, he deployed the term in relation to the 1910 Revolution, arguing [Gilly, 1983: 79, 170–71] that the seizure of land corresponded to dual power, albeit a dual power that did not confront State control in that it remained confined to a particular locality. Gilly [1983: 134] also endorsed the idealized view long associated with the Russian populists: namely, that during the revolutionary era the village (in Mexico) was an egalitarian unit, the inference being that it was untainted by the process of socio-economic differentiation. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that a similar misunderstanding informs his more recent analysis of the Zapatistas in Chiapas. The latter is structured by a subalternist approach combined with Scott's ‘everyday forms of resistance’ framework [Gilly, 1998: 267, 273, 275, 302, 314], a theoretical blend which is presented as evidence for ‘dual power’ in Chiapas. (For a similar kind of interpretation, see the concept ‘parallel power’ utilized by Weinberg [2000: Chapter 6] in relation to the area of Chiapas controlled by the Zapatistas) Following Ranajit Guha, therefore, Gilly [1998: 294ff.] identifies eight fundamental characteristics of the 1994 uprising. He then idealizes – as does the EZLN itself – the mere fact of ‘standing outside the State’, regarding it as evidence for the existence of ‘dual power’, whereby one of the fundamental characteristics – ‘the persistence of ancient community’ [Gilly, 1998: 295] – becomes the ‘other’ of the capitalist State. This contrasts absolutely with the concept as deployed by Trotsky (on which see Brass [2000: 72ff.]), for whom it had nothing to do with the perpetuation of ‘ancient community’ (to which Trotsky was implacably opposed).

9 Writing about the EZLN, therefore, Cleaver [1994: 147] evinces an uncritical approach to Zapatista ideology: ‘Among the Indian nations and peoples of the Americas … the affirmation of national identity, of cultural uniqueness, and of linguistic and political autonomy is rooted not only in an extensive critique of the various forms of Western Culture and capitalist organization which were imposed on them through conquest, colonialism and genocide, but also in the affirmation of a wide variety of renewed and reinvented practices that include both social relations and the relationship between human communities and the rest of nature.’ Unsurprisingly, this results not only in a corresponding idealization by Cleaver [1994: 153, 154] of the golden age myth (‘In traditional Indian society life was not so hard’) but also to abandon the notion of class differentiation (‘What is unusual and exciting about these developments is how … struggles are not being … subordinated to “class interests” … [and represent instead] a workable solution to the post-socialist problem of revolutionary organization and struggle’).

10 That the agrarian mobilization in Chiapas raises difficult questions (the idealization/essentialization of ethnic/peasant identity, the predominance of religious ideology) for those on the left about the political direction of the Zapatistas and Subcomandante Marcos is clear from the analyses by Petras and Vieux [1996], Selfa [1997], Cunninghame and Ballersteros Corona [1998], and Berger [2001], as well as from the exchange between Hellman [1999; 2000] and Paulson [2000]. Nor is it the case that such questions are confined to the domain of theory, about how to interpret Zapatista agency in relation to what is known about peasant movements generally. Just as Maoists in West Bengal recruited Santal tribals for the Naxalite movement during the early 1970s by informing them that there was no difference between what was currently being fought for and what their tribal heroes fought for in 1855 [Brass, 2000: 126–7 note 30], so the EZLN have mobilized support among indigenous communities in Chiapas by conflating the figure of Emiliano Zapata with Tzeltal deities [Subcomandante Marcos, 2001: 19–21; Stephen, 2002: 164]. Rather than utilizing a discourse about class, therefore, those on the political left have tended on occasion – and opportunistically – to engage in and thereby reinforce a discourse about ethnic identity and indigenous nationalism.

11 Much the same argument about cultural identity and an inherent ‘right to self-determination’ has been advanced historically by those who were strongly opposed to any concept of socialism. In the late nineteenth century, for example, Bluntschli [1885: 82] made the following claim: ‘[T]he Germans in the middle ages were at once a people … and a nation … while in the last few centuries they ceased to be a nation, and were rather a people divided into a number of different States, countries, and one may almost say nations. Today [c.1870] the German nation … has come to life again, although individual parts of the German people form parts of non-German nations and States.’ In the twentieth century, the same principle informed the creation by the South African apartheid regime of bantustans within the borders of South Africa itself. These were ‘separate nations’ based on a cultural/ethnic ‘otherness’ on the part of the tribal population who, the apartheid regime constantly proclaimed to the outside world, wanted to remain as they had always been, a wish granted to them in the form of a nation of their very own. As many observers pointed out at the time, not only did the majority of the residents of the bantustans reject this arrangement imposed on them from above, but the reason for this was also clear. What the apartheid regime had done was to transform their economically disempowering situation (poverty, oppression, and segregation) into a form of cultural empowerment. Whereas the former invited condemnation and policy initiatives aimed at change, the latter by contrast was a cause for celebration and – as such – a situation that required no further improvement. In short, what was previously a problem had now been turned into a ‘solution’.

12 The main proponent of this view was Luxemburg [1976: 251ff.], who made the following three points. First, that any talk of a-historical and systemically non-specific ‘rights’ was non-Marxist. Second, that to advocate national self-determination is to leave intact class rule, and thus the oppression and exploitation of workers both within and immediately outside the new nation. And third, those arguments concerning the desirability of national self-determination generally addressed only the political bases of subordination (culture, language), and thus tended to avoid its economic causes (class, exploitation), particularly where these were rooted within the context seeking autonomy. In this connection, it is difficult to disagree with the conclusion arrived at by Nettl [1966: 862] some four decades ago: ‘Is it possible to be a Marxist without achieving not only a substitution of class consciousness for patriotic consciousness, but an immersion in class instead of nation? Have any of the leading Marxists in Russia or China achieved it today? Or is the whole substantial return to the national unit as fact and concept the most retrograde step of all? Rosa Luxemburg stands at the apex of the attempt to make operational the Marxist concept of class as the primary social referent, and to break once and for all the old alternative stranglehold of nation. In this respect her contribution is second to none’ (original emphasis).

13 Arguing against Luxemburg, Lenin [1964] maintained that smaller nations should have the right to secede, but only for two reasons. First, where they formed part not of a nation state but of a larger empire, such as that of Russia under the Tsar. And second, because in his view workers – given the choice – would reject bourgeois or aristocratic rule in a new nation, opting instead to remain within a larger unit that was a workers' state (the USSR). This position was opposed by Luxemburg, who insisted – rightly, as it turned out – that in such contest, where a politically unspecific notion of ‘democracy’ circulated, an indigenous proletariat would always side with an ethnically/culturally similar bourgeoisie to form a separate nation.

14 In the early 1930s Shachtman [2003] opposed the attempt to create a separate state for the black population in North America, arguing – as Luxemburg had done earlier with reference to Europe – that such a policy would drive a wedge between agricultural labourers and tenants of different ethnic origins. In the case of the United States, he pointed out, ‘self-determination for the Black Belt [in the Southern US]’ would prevent workers and poor farmers who were black from making common cause with their counterparts who were white.

15 See, for example, the collections edited by Beverley and Oviedo [1993] and also Rodríguez [2001], and more recently the contribution to this journal by Beverley [2004]. This trend towards a wholesale colonization of peasant studies by postmodern theory has been challenged by Petras [1990], Veltmeyer [1997], Brass [2000], and Larsen [2001], all of whom insist on the continuing validity of Marxist theory to an understanding of agrarian transformation in Latin America and elsewhere. Earlier debates about what precisely constituted a Marxist theory and practice for Latin America are contained in the collection edited by Löwy [1992].

16 Although for now the Zapatistas have expressed no desire for formal nationhood apart from Mexico, many of the political demands they make not only hint at this possibility but contain the kind of powers usually exercised only by a nation state. Thus, for example, their demands include [Zapatista Army of National Liberation, 2002: 640, 642] a ‘new pact … which puts an end to centralism and permits regions, indigenous communities, and municipalities to govern themselves with political, economic, and cultural autonomy’, and, further, that: ‘We indigenous people must be permitted to organize and govern ourselves autonomously; we no longer want to submit to the will of the powerful, either national or foreign … Justice shall be administered by the same indigenous peoples, according to their customs and traditions, without intervention by illegitimate and corrupt governments’.

17 Needless to say, where this ‘other’ identity is also an historically ancient one, chronologically preceding cultural accretions that were established (or implanted) subsequently as a result of foreign conquest and/or colonization, it gives rise to a discourse about prior claims, along the lines of ‘we were here before you’. Most of the ethnic conflicts currently taking place throughout the world involve this kind of discourse, which is at root an economic struggle – about property rights to territorially specific resources (land, oil, water, minerals) – that takes the ideological form of a dispute concerning the legitimacy (or illegitimacy) of rival nationalisms. It is perhaps significant that, when making claims to economic resources located within the context over which autonomy is to be exercised, representatives of indigenous movements fail to elaborate on how a shift in ownership patterns will affect urban industrial workers in the wider context whose livelihood is linked to these resources. Whilst claims by sub-nationalisms based on indigenous ‘otherness’ may indeed be a threat to the existing nation state, they are frequently advantageous to monopoly capitalism, which profits from and thus on occasion encourages (and, indeed, foments) such disputes.

18 That the Zapatista discourse about indigenous grassroots autonomy may eventually translate into calls for territory based on and reflecting this ethnic ‘otherness’ is a point hinted at in a number of the contributions to this volume. Thus, for example, Moksnes outlines the centrality to Maya peasants in Chiapas of Roman Catholic religious teaching generally, and in particular the biblical story about the escape of the Israelites from Egypt under the Pharaohs. As in the case of Israel, therefore, the Exodus narrative deployed by Maya peasants may at some point license a discourse about the formation of a separate nation. The argument made by Harvey about how adept the indigenous authorities have been in playing the Mexican State off against the Zapatistas also suggests that a fuller sense of autonomy is not wholly fanciful. This possibility is underlined by the strategic location of Chiapas itself, on the border between Mexico and Guatemala, a line that divides peasants belonging to the same ethnic group (a situation informing separatism elsewhere, as the example of the Kurds in the Middle East and the Basques in Spain/France attest). That the EZLN might effect a political transition, and shift from demanding local autonomy for the indigenous population to a separatist movement, has surfaced in the concern expressed by the Mexican State about the integrity of the nation.

19 That socialist internationalism is currently less popular than it used to be scarcely needs mentioning. What is of interest, however, is the way in which erstwhile adherents of this politics are now reinventing themselves. There seems to be a competition involving ex-Marxists now prominent in western academic circles to see who among them is able to denounce socialism in the most vehement terms. A not untypical example is the following [Hardt and Negri, 2005: 255], which resorts to the well-tried but erroneous formula (socialism = fascism) so beloved of cold warriors of old: ‘[C]ontemporary forms of right-wing populism and fascism are deformed offsprings [sic] of socialism – and such populist derivatives of socialism are another reason why we have to search for a postsocialist political alternative today, breaking with the worn-out socialist tradition. It is strange now to have to recall this amalgam of ideological perversions that grew out of the socialist concept of representation, but today we can finally preside over its funeral. The democratic hopes of socialist representation are over. And while we say our farewells we cannot but remember how many ideological by-products, more or less fascist, the great historical experiences of socialism were condemned to drag in their wake … There is no longer any possibility of going back to modern models of representation to create a democratic order.’ The fact that what passed for socialism was nothing of the sort, and thus the root of the difficulty to which Hardt and Negri allude has more to do with the deployment of non- or anti-socialist ideas/arguments under the guise of socialism, is something which appears to escape them both.

20 The appeal to the monarch in the colonizing nation took the form of a discourse that the latter would him/herself have accepted as legitimate. This was because the claim of royalty to exercise power in a European context was frequently based on many of these same principles (landownership, birthright, lineage, longevity, custom, tradition, ethnicity).

21 In the case of Mexico, an influential example of this view was the study by Redfield [1930] of Tepoztlán, an approach subsequently criticized by Lewis [1951: 428–9] as a ‘picture of the village [that] has a Rousseauan quality … [w]e are told little of poverty, economic problems, or political schisms. Throughout his study we find an emphasis upon the cooperative and unifying factors in Tepoztecan society’.

22 Analyses of rural society in Mexico from the 1930s onwards by anthropologists from Chicago include those by Redfield and Rojas [1934], Tax [1952] and Redfield [1956]. The focus of anthropological and sociological research undertaken by many of those at Chicago [Stein, 1964: 230ff.] was the ‘decline of community’, as migrants to urban areas in the locality shed their rural identity. This same notion – of peasant community in decline – was deployed by Chicago anthropologists engaged in Mexican fieldwork, a point conceded by Redfield [1955: 146–7]. It should be noted that this particular discourse – by Chicago anthropologists about Mexican peasants – has a long history. Even at the end of the nineteenth century, therefore, the Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, Frederick Starr [1899: 108ff.] devoted a chapter in a book about Mexican culture to ‘Examples of Conservatism’, outlining what in his view was an unthinking rejection of modernity on the part of the rural population. In support of this claim he outlined the grassroots rejection of new coins issued by the Mexican State in 1883. That is, in his view the Mexican peasantry had neither the wish for nor an understanding of economic progress.

23 The perception of ‘community’ as a ‘cultural isolate’ also derived from anthropological methodology. In focussing his research at the municipio level in Chiapas, therefore, the US anthropologist Tax and his Mexican co-fieldworkers triggered a familiar ethnographic bias, whereby the investigation in effect defines the boundaries not just of the unit but of its determinations, all of which are perceived as internal. In a critique of community-based studies conducted in rural Chiapas, Salovesh [1979: 142] makes the following apposite comment: ‘[M]unicipios, however, are not islands surrounded by unpopulated ocean, nor are they completely autonomous in their internal affairs … as long as we continue to focus exclusively on the municipio as a cultural isolate, we will continue to misunderstand even that which happens within the municipio.’ This is an important point, in that – together with notions of ‘community’ imported from the United States – the internally focussed methodology utilized by US anthropologists reinforced the view of ethnicity not just as a form of ‘otherness’ outside/apart from Mexico, but also identified this ‘difference’ as the main – perhaps only – grassroots organizing principle.

24 A case in point is the well-known exchange on this subject between the Mexican anthropologist Julio de la Fuente and the British social anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. They disagreed profoundly [Malinowski and de la Fuente, 1982: 178] over the meaning of an episode that occurred in early 1940s Oaxaca, where the two anthropologists were observing peasants selling maize in a local market. About the economic behaviour of a wealthy producer, therefore, Malinowski himself commented: ‘At the first shower … he picked up his bags and went home, thus showing that for him comfort was preferable to a few more almudes sold’. This interpretation was rejected by de la Fuente in the following manner: ‘I should like to remind you [Malinowski] that [the wealthy producer] on that occasion was more worried by the arrival of more maize than by the water. He commented that there was getting to be a lot of competition, and that it was no longer worth staying’. In other words, the economic behaviour of the wealthy peasant was perfectly rational, its classification by Malinowski as ‘irrational’ notwithstanding. Prior to conducting fieldwork in Mexico (1940–41), he had carried out research among tribal populations in New Guinea, a British imperial possession where he formulated his influential functionalist theory about ‘primitive’ culture.

25 This indigenismo discourse was also disseminated outside Mexico via the popular culture of Britain and the United States. During the immediate post-war era, for example, popular texts [Toor, 1947; Covarrubias, c. 1946] reproduced images of rural Mexico reducing it to a compendium of cultural ‘otherness’ (customs, tradition, beliefs, music, dance, myths, tales). It must be emphasized, however, that not all anthropologists have subscribed to this view, as the exchange between Barabas and Bartolomé [1974] and KY and FE [1974] underlines. Whereas the former privilege ethnic ‘otherness’ in a manner consistent with indigenismo discourse, the latter challenge this, and argue against the depiction of an indigenous peasantry as culturally homogenous.

26 That such a view amounted to an idée fixe is evident from comments made by the participants in an anthropology seminar [Tax, 1952: 218–19] in 1950 about whether indigenous communities were changing or staying the same (‘culture traits’, ‘acculturation’): ‘There is evidence that no matter how far these Indians travel, when they return their horizons aren't extended by personal experience … They're travelling to the U.S. They're becoming ladinoized when they return … how are we going to explain the ladinoization? … You find this local view of the world even among those who go on commercial trips and come back … But in that case we could predict that the Indian culture is going to last forever … In the U.S. you have a future orientation – “We are making Progress.” In the Indian community it is: “Maintain what we used to have”.’ What was deemed problematic, in other words, were instances where individuals or groups characterized by anthropologists in terms of a specific culture/ethnicity demonstrated what the latter took to be ‘deviant’ behaviour – such as wearing non-indigenous clothing, adopting non-indigenous traits, and generally acting ‘out of character’. For the importance of the seminar in question, see Cámara Barbachano [1979: 108].

27 This theory is structured by the concept ‘verticality’ [Murra, 1972], which refers to exchanges between smallholding communities occupying different ecological niches. A result of this culturally determined system of reciprocity, so the argument goes, is that subsistence is guaranteed, capitalist penetration is prevented, and thus no economic differentiation of the Andean peasantry takes place. In this way capitalism remains external to what is as a consequence an eternal form of Andean peasant economy, a specifically Latin American variant of the Chayanovian peasant family farm. Much the same kind of theory operates with regard to Mexico, as is evident from the following analysis by Nash [1967a: 99] of a similar cultural dynamic structuring the economic reproduction of what is also peasant economy in indigenous communities: ‘The levelling mechanism keeps the fortunes of the various households nearly equal and serves to ensure the shift of family fortunes from generation to generation. The sanctions behind the operation of the levelling mechanism are generally supernatural, with witchcraft as the means to keep the economic units oriented to the communal drains and claims on their wealth. These economies, then, are market – competitive, free, open – but set into a social structure without corporate units dedicated to and able to pursue economic ends. Working with a cultural pattern forcing the accumulation of wealth into noneconomic channels, and buttressed by a system of supernatural sanctions against those who do not use their wealth, they show a lack of dynamism, a technological conservatism almost equivalent to that of the most isolated communities, and an inability to seize and exploit or create economic opportunity.’

28 In Peru, therefore, Mariátegui [1968] and Castro Pozo [1936] characterized the pre-conquest Inca State as respectively ‘communist’ and ‘socialist’, while Reinaga [1960] saw no difference between the soviet programme being carried out in Russia and the indigenist policies his party – the Partido Indio de Bolivia – advocated in the case of the rural population in Bolivia.

29 For the details see Brass [2000: Chapter 2]. The persistence of agrarian populist views among peasant movements that claim to be pursuing Marxist or socialist ends, and the inability of those studying and/or writing about them to spot this, is a worrying but not unusual combination. It also suggests that an initial prognosis to the contrary, by Oscar Lewis in the early 1950s, was premature. Writing about Mexico, he accepted [Lewis, 1965: 436 n1] the ‘tendency to view the city as the source of all evil and to idealize rural life’, but claimed – wrongly – that such a view ‘has been corrected somewhat by the work of rural sociologists in recent years.’

30 On the history of indigenismo discourse, see Adams [1967: 475–8], Hewitt de Alcántara [1984], Knight [1990] and Ramos [1998]. Latin American literature with an indigenista theme includes well-known texts by Bolivian, Ecuadorian and Peruvian authors [Alegría, 1942; Botelho Gonsálvez, 1967; Lara, 1965; Icaza, 1973], invariably published outside their own country. Writers who deal with the same issue in Mexico include not just Mexicans [Lopez y Fuentes, 1937] but also non-Mexicans. Among the latter are the ‘jungle’ novels of Traven [1974; 1981; 1982; 1994] about forced labour recruited for work in the mahogany camps of Chiapas during the 1920s.

31 These different strands of indigenismo discourse are not mutually exclusive, as the many contributions both by US and by Latin American anthropologists to the collection edited by Nash [1967b] underline.

32 Where the political left in Latin America is concerned, the political dominance of the national struggle (and the peasantry at the forefront of this) may be attributed in part to the continuing influence of Stalinism. From the late 1920s onwards, Stalinist views informing Soviet policy towards the Third World involved the subordination of working class politics to bourgeois nationalist objectives.

33 This is also true of ethnic movements in other Latin American countries, an example being the Confederation of Indigenous Nations of Ecuador (CONAIE) which also rose to prominence during the 1990s [Lucas, 2000].

34 See de la Peña [2002]. On occasion, and against the trend, anthropologists have noted the contextual specificity of what are usually depicted as eternal ‘culture traits’, an ‘otherness’ that indigenous peasants constantly strive to recuperate. Writing in the 1950s about the Maya in Guatemala, Mosk [1965: 168] makes the following observations: ‘La Farge did his field study in Santa Eulalia in 1932, when the world was suffering intensely from Depression conditions, and he recorded some effects of the Depression which were called to his attention. The use of Japanese silk blouses by women had been curtailed, and a parallel decline had taken place in the use of European-type clothing by the men of the community. It is interesting, too, that La Farge picked up the opinion from several people that hard times would bring about a revival of pottery making, a craft which, as we have already noted, had been abandoned in the preceding years of good times. Cash, which earlier had been abundant in Santa Eulalia, was very scarce in 1932, owing to a reduction in the earnings obtained from labour in the coffee fincas, and standards of living had suffered a setback.’ In other words, the indigenous cultural ‘traditions’ that anthropologists invariably cast as enduring because they are much sought after by peasants and workers themselves are much rather contingent phenomena, the existence of which are determined economically. Such cultural erosion as takes place, therefore, occurs ‘from below’ and is not imposed ‘from above’. What capitalist crisis does do, however, is force peasants and workers to adopt once again the ‘traditions’ they had themselves discarded earlier. That is, it forces them back into the mould of ‘otherness’, to become ‘traditional’ once again, not because they want to but because what they would like to do – earn decent wages, make ‘non-traditional’ purchases, not have to carry out ‘traditional’ kinds of work – is no longer within their reach economically.

35 In 1939, for example, a delegation of Mexican rural teachers was sent by the Ministry of Education on an investigative mission to Bolivia, there to study the experimental approach to education along indigenous lines [Velasco, 1940]. Although the laudable objective of this school was to dispel notions of indigenous populations as racially inferior, by demonstrating to the outside visitor the range of their agricultural and artisan skills, the effect of this ethnically specific curriculum was ironically to confirm this very perception. Thus the limitation of what was taught to a series of economic activities associated by outsiders with indigenous communities seemingly underlined the innateness of ‘identity’ linked to ethnic populations inhabiting these contexts. For a typical example of Mexican indigenismo at this conjuncture, see Mendieta y Nuñez [1938].

36 Among other things, this suggests that Gilly [1998: 312] is simply wrong when he states that ‘the [Zapatista] rebellion does not propose a return to a past either distant or near. It suggests instead the possibility of a nonexcluding modernity’ (original emphasis). Later in the same analysis, however, he concedes the centrality of indigenous notions about ‘timeless myth’ to the Zapatista rebellion [Gilly, 1998: 324].

37 Hence the following observation by Rus [1994: 290]: ‘By 1951–52 … Chiapas's ladino elite – the same elite that had perpetrated the conservative reaction of the preceding six years – had already recognized the emergence of a cadre of native leaders with whom it could do business. Such leaders were capable of controlling their communities as principales through “tradition,” on the one hand, and of negotiating “reasonably,” from a position of familiarity, with ladino officials, landowners, and merchants on the other.’

38 These findings emerge from the longitudinal anthropological research conducted in Zinacantan by Cancian [1965; 1987; 1989; 1992]. Although by no stretch of the imagination a Marxist, Cancian nevertheless documents the impact of the 1982 debt crisis in terms of an increasing incidence of rural proletarianization, or – where a reduced access to land continues – semiproletarianization. On this he notes [Cancian, 1989: 160]: ‘Though the process has taken many different forms and has had many different results, I believe that there has been an overall trend towards proletarianization … Populations that were farmers or peasants two or three decades ago [i.e., the early 1960s] have become heavily dependent on wage work in labour markets tied to the world economy’.

39 Rus [1994: 268–70] makes much the same point with regard to Tzotzils and Tzeltals, who also worked as migrant labourers on coffee plantations. Of particular interest is his description of the social relations of production and how these were reproduced. Recruited by and subordinated to labour contractors (enganchadores), these migrants were trapped in debt peonage, a form of unfreedom familiar throughout rural Latin America. Local indigenous authorities were not only complicit with this arrangement, but also enforced it. On the use by labour contractors in northern Chiapas of the enganche system during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, see Washbrook [2004].

40 It is important to recall that a specifically working class agency has a history in Chiapas [Rus, 1994: 275ff.]. During the mid-1930s, migrant coffee workers joined a trade union organization, the Sindicato de Trabajadores Indígenas (STI), which privileged their identity as mainly that of worker, not an ethnic ‘other’. By 1937 some 25,000 Indian labourers were unionized, as a result of which it became impossible to employ non-union workers on the plantations. Additional improvements secured by this unionized indigenous workforce included the elimination of peonage, wage advances and the company store. During the 1940s, however, these specifically working class gains were rolled back, as both labour contractors and traditional authorities fought back. The STI was itself disbanded in 1946 by the governor of Chiapas, who had himself been a labour contractor. What this confirms is that an alternative identity and organizational structure – based on class and trade union membership – is possible, and has existed at the rural grassroots.

41 As is well known, the objective of rural agency that is not socialist is individualist proprietorship: that is, the transformation of a petty commodity producer into a landowning peasant. By contrast, agrarian movements guided by socialist objectives struggle for what might be termed proletarian ends: the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. In this connection it is important to note that the analytical deployment of the term ‘class’ does not necessarily mean that the user is describing an agrarian mobilization pursuing socialist/proletarian objectives. Thus, for example, although Warman [1988] applies this concept to the Zapatistas in Morelos during the 1910 Mexican Revolution, what he refers to is a ‘peasant class’ in opposition to and struggling against landlordism. That is, a populist usage of the term, which is consistent with individualist proprietorship as the object of grassroots agency.

42 Where land is concerned, such claims are made on the basis of usufruct rights enjoyed over generations by a particular peasant community or indigenous group.

43 Nearly three decades ago, one Mexican anthropologist [de la Fuente, 1967: 437] outlined the degree to which – even then – both indigenous and mestizo populations were internally differentiated along class lines. Occupational categories such as landowner, agricultural labourer, farmer, artisan and shopkeeper, were not confined to one group but found in both. He concluded that mestizos ‘as a group, are richer than the Indians, but generally there are some rich Indians everywhere.’

44 For this thesis in the now classic study of peasant movements, see Wolf [1971; 2001: 230–40].

45 Like Harvey, de Leon attributes grassroots discontent on the part of smallholders in Chiapas to the withdrawal of – and hence competition for – resources disbursed by the Mexican State. This discontent, he argues, gathered momentum from 1982 onwards when – following a period (1978–82) of provision/redistribution by the state – free market policies were introduced. Democracy, it is hinted, was seen as a way of regaining access by political means to these economic resources.

46 This point should perhaps be qualified somewhat, in that the Mexican State was not so much weak as ruled via traditional indigenous authorities, the latter being the face and voice of the former within Chiapan village communities. This kind of indirect rule is a process described by Rus [1994: 268] as ‘the State enforcing “native traditions” against the natives themselves to maintain order’ (original emphasis). Not only were these authorities the better-off elements at the rural grassroots in Chiapas, therefore, but according to the same source they also deployed all the symbols and discourse of indigenous ‘otherness’. This is a common enough phenomenon throughout rural Latin America. In Peru during the mid-1970s, for example, both symbols and discourse projecting an image of equality (= we-are-all-the-same, we-are-all-peasants) were deployed in a similar fashion by rich peasants in an agrarian cooperative located in the eastern lowlands [Brass, 2000: Chapter 2]. For an important theoretical analysis of the peasant/state relationship in Latin America, and in particular how the State routinely co-opts the leadership of peasant movements, see Petras and Veltmeyer [2003].

47 This respect for traditional indigenous authorities is also encouraged both by the Zapatistas, who co-opt them in order to secure grassroots support (see Saavedra, this volume), and by the religious teachings of the Roman Catholic church, as adhered to by Mayan peasants in Chiapas (see Moksnes, this volume, and also Tavanti [2003]).

48 On this point, see Dinerman [2001] and McNeish [2002]. The latter attributes a resurgent ethnic identity in 1990s Bolivia to the fact that rural trade unions had been undermined by the neoliberal structural adjustment policies, creating a political space re-occupied by traditional indigenous authority.

49 These involved for the most part small peasants occupying minifundios and/or disputed holdings cultivated by neighbours, confirming that what was happening amounted in some instances to intra-class conflict.

50 This is part of a much broader analytical problem, about the extent to which traditional indigenous authorities and institutions are no more than the form taken by capitalist authority and relationships in specific contexts. Not only have traditional indigenous authorities been a central emplacement of the coercive labour regime operating on capitalist plantations in Chiapas, therefore, but evidence from other rural contexts in Latin America suggests that traditional indigenous institutions frequently mask what are in fact production relations between capital and labour. In the case of Peru during the mid-1970s, for example, exchange labour groups based on notionally reciprocal mink'a and ayni arrangements involved capitalist rich peasants cultivating the profitable coffee crop for export markets. What they swapped with one another in these ‘traditional’ institutional forms was not their own personal labour-power but that of their kin or neighbouring poor peasants who were their unfree workers [Brass, 1999: Chapter 2]. Yet it is these same kinds of ‘traditional’ institutional forms that indigenous movements such as CONAIE in Ecuador wish to retain. Hence the observation by an indigenous leader [Lucas, 2000: 105] that ‘[f]or the indigenous world, power, ushay, means perfecting living conditions, it is a collective concept. It is the capacity to develop collectively, with each making his or her own distinct contribution, as happens in the minga, in which children, women and old people have a role.’ The latter is a description that a small agrarian capitalist would accept as true if applied to his labour process, where he supervised the work of bonded labourers sent by other rich peasants to fulfil ‘reciprocal’ obligations they owed him.

51 Harvey (this volume) notes that because women attribute domestic violence to male consumption of alcohol, they have exerted pressure on municipal authorities in Chiapas to shut down bars on the ejidos.

52 In an important sense, the fact that the Zapatistas and their support network attach so much significance to the concept of an institutionally disembodied notion of ‘human rights’ [Zapatista Army of National Liberation, 2002] is itself an indication of their political weakness. Just how little progress there has been in terms of a theory about human rights – never mind its practice or enforcement – emerges clearly from a comparison of two texts, written a third of a century apart [Raphael, 1967; Owen, 2003]. Not only is the conceptual confusion they both reveal palpable, but this problem underlines the inescapable centrality to the concerns of both the EZLN and its supporters of an issue which they continue to evade. Namely, that any notion of legislative protection – ‘human rights’, as applied to any collectivity and individuals constitutive of this – has no meaning if not upheld and enforced by the State, which in turn necessarily reiterates the political issue posed by Marxist theory. Without struggle aimed at capturing the State, there can be no exercise of the kind of power necessary to provide the Zapatistas with the kind of legislative protection they require.

53 This fact has been routinely overlooked by enthusiastic supporters of the Zapatistas, who fail to question the extent to which the cultural empowerment sought by rural communities on the grounds of their traditions reproduces the historically entrenched disempowerment of indigenous women. An example is the following uncritical observation by Hardt and Negri [2005: 212–13] about the grassroots formation of an unproblematically uniform consciousness (= ‘the common’): ‘Revolts mobilize the common in two respects … the common antagonism and common wealth of the exploited are translated into common conduct, habits and performativity … These elements of style, however, are really only symptoms of the common dreams, common desires, common ways of life, and common potential that are mobilized in a movement … the EZLN in the Lacandon jungle in Chiapas mixes elements of national history … and forges them together with network relationships and democratic practices to create a new life that defines the movement.’

54 An important aspect of this was the recognition that, in order to survive as petty commodity producers, those classified – by themselves and others – as peasants were required to migrate in search of off-farm income sources to supplement the inadequate economic returns from peasant economy. On the issue of rural outmigration, at this conjuncture and earlier ones, see among others Gamio [1966; 1971], Baird and McCaughan [1979] and Grindle [1988]. Whereas adherents to indigenismo discourse (such as Gamio) tended to view migration as being by peasants who sold their labour-power in order to remain peasants, those who were not exponents (Baird and McCaughan) perceived the issue rather differently. The latter regarded migrants as proletarians, since their main source of income derived from working for others; these labourers might (or might not) also own a small plot of land, on which they grew crops to supplement their earnings as workers, the principal source of income.

55 See, for example, the texts by García [1967], Gutelman [1971], Hewitt de Alcántara [1976], and Pearse [1980: 185–93].

56 On these debates, see Bartra and Otero [1987] and Bartra [1993].

57 Adherents of this campesinista view of the peasantry in Mexico and Colombia include Warman [1980; 1983], Gordillo [1988], and Zamosc [1986]. Even when analysed largely in terms of an economic (as distinct from a cultural) dynamic, therefore, peasant smallholding continued to be categorized as ‘other’ – as external to the national and international economy.

58 On this point, see Barkin [1995; 2002] and the collection edited by Randall [1996].

59 Hence the frequently encountered observations on the part of NGOs about the desirability of alternative strategies for small-scale, locally-controlled diversified production, a return to traditional self-sufficiency, programmes to guarantee the survival of peasant communities in the face of market pressures, and the recognition of the vitality of Mexico's indigenous past as essential for a solution to the country's present problems.

60 Ejido property rights have become a politically contentious issue after 1992, not least because land registration reveals among other things that those who currently enjoy usufruct rights are not those in whom this right was originally invested. It may these new de facto proprietors who feel, perhaps, that their rights might be threatened by the State if they are made public. In other words, registration not only uncovers the presence of rival claims to the same land, but stokes up any conflicts arising from this. It is precisely because a similar registration procedure threatened to reveal who really owned ejidal land, and correspondingly who worked the latter but was propertyless, that ejidatarios in Atencingo opposed the taking of an agricultural census in the late 1950s [Ronfeldt, 1973: 158–9].

61 In the case of China and Russia [Chossudovsky, 1986: 42ff.; Allina-Pisano, 2004] this was carried out by better-off producers, who – so as to pre-empt a looming privatization – opportunistically appropriated resources (mainly land) hitherto owned by the State and operated by the members of the agrarian collective. Much the same is true of Cuba [Deere, Pérez and Gonzales, 1994], where the extension/consolidation of private property in land generally, the consolidation of ownership rights within cooperatives, the hiring by the latter of wage labour without property rights, labour market competition with peasant proprietors for workers, and the expansion of the black market all indicate a post-1989 trend towards the privatization of agriculture.

62 Although nominally a communal system of landownership, it has according to Bartra [1993: 94–5] always been ‘a form that intermingles various types of property: State or nationalized, corporate, communal and private. The ejido is, in principle, property of the nation but is granted to a community of peasants in usufruct.’ The same source states, unambiguously: ‘It has been said that the formation of the ejido, as a fruit of the Revolution of 1910, has represented the triumph of communal ownership. If one examines the problem with detachment, this turns out to be a falsehood: the ejido is not a form of communal property; rather, it is a disguised form of small private property, or minifundio’ (original emphasis). Ejido land in the Laguna region [Wilkie, 1971] has long been worked by hired workers composed of the landless kin of ejidatarios, who worked not only for (or instead of) the latter but also for local landowners and industries.

63 It is for this reason that the presence of class relations inside the ejido are so important, since these would cast a more precise light on the connection between on the one hand rural agency in Chiapas, agrarian property relations, and the social division of labour, and on the other issues linked to and arising from gender. On the complex history of the interrelationship between gender and class in rural Mexico, see Fowler-Salamini and Vaughan [1994].

64 On this point, see among others Gott [1971: 15], Paige [1975: 131ff.], and Fioravanti [1974]. Why the coffee crop has long been ecologically suitable for cultivation on peasant smallholdings in Chiapas is outlined in Miranda [1952].

65 For the new farmers' movements in India, see the collection edited by Brass [1995].

66 Not least by English conservatives who supported British imperialism but were opposed to the corrosive impact of the free market on colonial settler loyalty. One such was Richard Jebb (1874–1953), who at the start of the twentieth century warned against the impact of liberal economic policies on nationalist sentiment in self-governing colonies (Australia, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand) of the British Empire. As he saw it, the danger lay in the disintegration of Empire as a result of burgeoning settler nationalism within colonial possessions, where the element of autonomy might easily translate into nationhood. Echoing the Zapatista concern for ‘dignity’, he defended the grassroots nationalism of white settlers in the following terms [Jebb, 1905: 103–4]: ‘Its basis is the national sense of self-respect which chafes under the feeling of dependence upon the favour of others. It feels the degradation of living upon sufferance … It abhors the debasing theory that the status of colony is final; or that its only function is to be reproductive in the material sense.’ That his endorsement of grassroots nationalism was not just exclusionary but deeply reactionary is evident from the complaint [Jebb, 1926: 329] that, as a result of the 1914–18 war, ‘[t]he prominent part played by the Japanese at sea and by the Indian troops on land was a new weapon for use in agitation against the settled racial policy which is common to the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and, as regards Asiatics, South Africa. With the encouragement and sometimes the active support of the subversive movement directed from Moscow attempts have been made to organise Asiatic resentment with a view to the overthrow of the British Empire, beginning with India … the higher nationalism [of France contrasts with] the Dominions, where the white man insists on his superior caste.’ Having started out as an advocate of free trade, Jebb became an opponent of this. In his view British imperial endorsement of the free market overrode the colonial wish for trade preferences, encouraged settler nationalism in colonies, and ran the risk thereby of converting self-government into a separatist movement. In words [Jebb, 1905: 328] that might find many echoes in the current neoliberal economic climate, he stated that ‘the England of unchallenged Cobdenism’ presented colonies with a situation where ‘[t]here was nothing for it but eventual separation’. Although this concern with the territorial integrity and political unity of British imperialism was the mirror image of the problem as perceived by Marxists such as Luxemburg and Lenin, all those who addressed the issue – conservative and socialist alike – were aware of the inherently fissiparous tendencies at work.

67 Unsurprisingly, in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh many of the peasants who were members of the BKU (Bharatiya Kisan Union) – one of the most important new farmers' movements – also supported the rise to political power of the BJP, the Hindu chauvinist party [Brass, 1995].

68 The literature on the 1910 Revolution is vast, but see Knight [1986a; 1986b]. On the Cristero movement, see Meyer [1973–74; 1976], and on the Sinarquistas see Whetten [1948: 484–522] and Hernández [1999]. The Cristero rebellion occurred in the period 1926–29, while the Sinarquista movement emerged in 1937, peaked in 1940–41, and faded in 1944–48. Both were located in the Bajío region, covering the states of Querétaro, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Jalisco and Guerrero.

69 This kind of interpretation has been challenged by Meyer [1976: 85–6] who maintains that – as a result of interviews he conducted with the surviving participants – ‘it is possible to reject as false [the view that] the Cristeros were small independent proprietors threatened by agrarian reform’. He claims that only 14 per cent of the combatants were small proprietors, the rest being composed largely of ‘farmers or sharecroppers’ (15 per cent) and those who ‘lived by manual labour’ (60 per cent), a category that included agricultural workers, muleteers and artisans. However, as Meyer himself accepts, these are not mutually exclusive categories. Hence the admission by him that ‘a plurality of occupations was the rule, even among the small proprietors and sharecroppers’, so as to be able to argue that peasants accounted for even less than 14 per cent of the combatants, and that the social composition of the Cristeros was far more heterogeneous than his own figures suggest. The problems faced by this methodology are twofold. First, his concept of ‘peasant’ is restricted to those who already own the land they cultivate, whereas in reality the term extends to include those who operate holdings they may not own: in other words, it is necessary to include ‘farmers or sharecroppers’ within the category of smallholders. And second, his admission about occupational plurality – which is made to cast further doubt on peasant participation – can in fact be used against him. It is likely, therefore, that the 60 per cent who ‘lived by manual labour’ were actually smallholders – those with conditional access to small plots of land insufficient to meet their economic requirements – who also sold their labour-power to others. The latter, as virtually all analyses of rural agency confirm, see themselves as peasants, regardless of whether they obtain the major portion of their income from cultivating land they own/lease, and – more importantly – it is this individual landowning aspiration that structures their agency. In the case of the Sinarquistas, there is no doubt as to the importance of participation by peasant smallholders, the ‘forgotten peasant masses’ [Hernández, 1999: 238, 240, 415, 442].

70 In Europe during the 1920s and 1930s, these same processes contributed to the rise of the far right. While the argument that the capitalist crisis of that era had an analogous economic impact in the Mexican countryside is not disputed, the similarity of political outcome is the subject of debate. Hence the following observation by Meyer [1976: 212]: ‘Some have interpreted [the Cristiada] as a movement similar to that of Salazar or Franco – a precursor of Sinarchismo, the Mexican variety of Fascism (1937–45); an attempt at counter-revolution, led by the Church, the big proprietors, and the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie’. Meyer denies this link in the case of the Cristeros, but accepts the argument in the case of the Sinarquistas. That the latter were a Mexican variety of fascism is itself challenged by Hernández [1999: 200, 393, 394, 396–7, 453], who nevertheless has difficulty in sustaining this view. His sympathetic account of Sinarquismo – its vehement anti-communism, its ultra-nationalism (hispanidad), its hankering after a lost goldern age, its organizational modalities, its political discourse (admiration for Franco, Mussolini and Hitler), plus the hierarchical and authoritarian structure of the movement – points unambiguously to it having been a fascist mobilization.

71 Hence the following Sinarquista view [Hernández, 1999: 378]: ‘Glorification of poverty freely accepted as a means to serve our fellow man [constituted] the ideal basis of Hispanic culture.’ Whereas the Sinarquistas endorsed hispanidad but Mayan peasants reject this in favour of a specifically ethnic identity, the celebration of poverty as virtuous by them both is due, ironically, to the same ideological source: the influence of Roman Catholicism.

72 About this Hernández [1999: 469] observes: ‘Tradition was glorified, the present rejected; there was a feeling of anti-capitalist nostalgia for an idealised past society’.

73 On this point, see Meyer [1976: 195].

74 The Sinarquista view regarding the incompatibility between socialism and religion is cited in Hernández [1999: 68]. Given the more recent ideological dominance and fashionability of liberation theology, it is easy to forget both that Roman Catholicism has another – and perhaps more authentic – reactionary face, and that during periods of economic crisis it is the latter that has prospered and attracted grassroots support among the poor because of its populist anti-capitalist discourse. During the economic crisis of the 1930s, for example, Belloc [1937] was able to promote Roman Catholic ideas on the grounds that historically the Church condemned liberalism and usury, a protection swept away by the Reformation. His argument was that, no longer held in check by the power of the Church, economic liberalism and usury generated the competition that destroys the virtuous small producer, and unleashes what he maintained were the three un-Godly forces of history – capitalism, the proletariat, and – ultimately – communism. Hence the following view [Belloc, 1937: 152]: ‘The maleficent activity of excessive competition, of Competition unchecked and uncontrolled, was prevented, because it was regarded as a disease in Society (which it is) and treated as a disease mortal to human dignity and freedom … We have unfortunately in the modern world only too much experience of what unbridled competition will do; there are few who have not come across one or another of its evil effects.’ The conservative and hierarchical character of the Church notwithstanding, this anti-capitalist religious discourse permits it to present itself plausibly as part of any solution to the crisis of capitalism. Significantly, the defence advanced by Belloc of the Roman Catholic Church was no different from that of de Maeztu [1941], an ultra-rightwing opponent of the Spanish Republic, who in the same economic crisis of the mid-1930s not only saw religion as a bastion against the global spread of the same unholy trinity (finance capital, liberalism, and communism), but also perceived spirituality as a central emplacement of Spanish nationalism, hispanidad. The latter, as Hernández [1999: 490ff.] points out, was an integral component of Sinarquista ideology.

75 Hence the Sinarquista view, expressed in 1941, that [Hernández, 1999: 480]: ‘The real Mexico does not lie in the cities. It is not in the capital, in any case, alienated, Americanized, false; nor is it in the cities, corrupted by the cinema, the nightclubs, the strident music, where life is faked and simulated. The reality of Mexico, the deep reality, the essence of our authentic being is found in the villages, in the hamlets, on the roads travelled by the Indian alone’.

76 The populism of the Sinaraquistas is evident from their discourse-for and discourse-against, which takes the following form [Hernández, 1999: 393–4]: ‘the rejection of the Left-Right division; the opposition … to the class struggle, which they viewed as a factor of social dissention; they combated Marxist ideologies because they repudiated nationalism, but they were also opposed to Mexican capitalists, whom they judged timorous and as having sold out to the foreigner. In the Synarchist vision, workers and employers had common interests.’

77 Significantly, Collier and Collier (this volume) point out that the attempt by the Zapatistas to recast human rights as economic and social rights failed, and it was only when the latter was replaced by a discourse about indigenous rights to autonomy that EZLN support in Chiapas picked up once again.

78 On democracy as the main object of the 1994 uprising, see Wiener [1994]. The EZLN itself [Zapatista Army of National Liberation, 2002: 640] makes this clear: ‘We demand truly free and democratic elections, with equal rights and obligations for all the political organizations struggling for power, with real freedom to choose between one proposal and another and with respect for the will of the majority. Democracy is the fundamental right of all peoples, indigenous and non-indigenous.’ As has been noted above, the term ‘democracy’ appears to be synonymous with grassroots indigenous autonomy, and the latter amounts in turn to the continuation of traditional forms of oppression in the name of cultural ‘otherness’. When asked about the significance of democracy for indigenous peoples [Lucas, 2000: 106], a leader of the Ecuadorian CONAI replied that ‘the term democracy does not exist in the language of indigenous peoples’.

79 For this contradiction, see Reed [2003] and Brittain [2005]. There are other contradictions, which nowadays are rarely mentioned, especially by those ‘new’ postmodern populists committed to a non-specific notion of democracy. One of the most basic antinomies concerns the level at which democracy is to operate, and consequently the resulting incompatibilities between its expression at different levels. This is a problem of which even bourgeois liberal theorists have long been aware. Thus, for example, some 50 years ago de Madariaga [1958: 89–90] acknowledged this difficulty in the following terms: ‘There are some liberals who solve the problem of separatism with charming simplicity: a plebiscite. But who does not realise that the mere fact of submitting to a plebiscite, the separation of a country from the whole of which it forms a part, is already conceding separation before the vote even takes place? Who is to designate the territory which will have the vote? Suppose tomorrow Catalonia has to vote on this question and that, by the well-known methods of surprise, exploitation of ignorance, emotions and other electoral forces, two and a half million people vote for a separation and two million for union with the rest of Spain. What does this imply? That Catalonia has voted for separation by a majority of two and a half million out of four and a half million, or that Spain has voted for union by a majority of twenty-five million against two and a half?’. Any attempt within a context of a capitalist national social formation to render ethnic identity downwards – as distinct from rendering class identity upwards (= internationalizing it) – has to confront this dilemma: that of ‘nations within the nation’, in other words.

80 This is the case not only where a socialist alternative continues to be available, but also where actually-existing socialism has been destroyed. Hence the significance of a discourse about how much better post-1973 Chile and post-1989 Russia were compared with the previous socio-economic system in both these contexts. The need on the part of the market for legitimization is clear, for example, from the deployment in the Thatcherite Britain of concepts such as ‘popular capitalism’, the inference being that, as everyone benefits from laissez faire economic policy, everyone approves of it.

81 As long as they are able to vote, agricultural workers and peasants in Latin America (and elsewhere) will not elect (or re-elect) a government committed simply to a market-led pattern of accumulation, and the implementation of a deflationary economic programme resulting in cutbacks by the State in public expenditure and investment, leading to declining living standards at the rural grassroots. For this reason, monetarists have long recognized the need for a strong State, not just to implement but rather to impose laissez faire programmes on an unwilling electorate.

82 What form this from-below ‘cultural hegemony’ might take is clear from the analysis by Moksnes (this volume), who notes that a central narrative of Mayan peasants in Chiapas is the identification of ethnic ‘otherness’ with poverty and suffering, a combination encouraged by Roman Catholic teaching. Insofar as the reward for suffering is a spiritual and not a temporal one – found in heaven after death, not on earth during life – suffering occasioned by poverty could be seen as promoting the acceptance of the status quo. That is, rather than a radical questioning of the existing socio-economic system, with a view to transcending it, religious teaching would appear to counsel what amounts to a celebration of material poverty as virtuous, and as meriting its reward in heaven. As many have pointed out, the danger inherent in such a discourse is that it becomes supportive of the accumulation process, in that it deflects a challenge to this and links redemption to a non-material domain. For this reason, it is a retreat from material reality, and consequently politically disempowering.

83 Part of the problem is that the EZLN failed to specify the content of democracy, as this would apply at the level of the nation state. This is because the issue of democracy remained local (= indigenous autonomy) and general, and was accordingly systemically undifferentiated (= making no distinction between socialist democracy and bourgeois democracy). The amorphous nature of democracy as projected by the Zapatistas is reflected in the unsuccessful attempts by commentators to give it some shape. One such [Esteva, 1999] is reduced to deploying concepts like ‘radical democracy’, ‘radical hope’, and ‘the transition to hope’ [sic].

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Tom Brass

Tom Brass formerly lectured in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge University.