The Zapatista Movement and Mexico's Democratic Transition

Abstract

What happens to insurgent social movements that emerge during a democratic transition but fail to achieve their goals? How influential are they? Are they able to survive their initial mobilizing boom? Using the development of the Zapatista movement during Mexico’s democratic transition in the 1990s, this book seeks to answer these questions. The Zapatista movement is probably the best example of an influential and salient insurgent social movement emerging during a democratic transition that successfully mobilized sympathy and support for the indigenous agenda inside and outside of the country, yet failed to achieve its goals vis-à-vis the Mexican state. Why did such an influential movement fail to have its demands fully met? The answer is illustrated using a sliding door analogy to explain how the Zapatista movement developed within almost simultaneous openings and closings of political opportunities for its mobilization, success, and survival. Framing the relative achievements and failures of the movement within Mexico’s democratization is essential to understanding how social movements develop and survive and how responsive an electoral democracy can actually become. As such, this book offers a test of the quality of Mexico’s democracy and the resilience of the Zapatista movement, identifying the extent to which emerging political forces have incorporated dissident and previously excluded political actors into the new polity.

The Quest for Indigenous Autonomy: Communication Media, Internal Conflicts, and Policy Reform in Colombia

“…In addition to resisting the cohesiveness of the state's centripetal force, these practices of self-governance also create venues for consolidating ontological decolonial agendas (Esteva 2015) that challenge the traditional exploitative rule of the elites that are of late dressed in neoliberal fashion. But, as Inclán (2018) shows, even the Zapatista centrifugal resistance needed some centripetal legal protections and political alliances with sectors of the political elite in order to make its model politically relevant at the national level, more effectively protect territorial autonomy, and (I add) to exercise their citizenship beyond their territory.…”

“…However, as the political scientist Maria Inclán (2018) shows, the Zapatistas' de facto autonomy (radical centrifugal governance) and lack of articulation with the state-or "politics of refusal" (Mora 2017, 3)-have facilitated the movement's survival but extinguished its relevance and prominence within the context of national politics. The Zapatista isolation, according to Inclán (2018), resulted from several factors: the traditional exclusionist attitude of the Mexican political elites; the Zapatistas' unwillingness to participate in mainstream politics; their refusal to forge alliances with oppositional elite forces; and their reprioritization of a global-oriented agenda over México-oriented discourses as a way to maintain engagement with its transnational support network. Consequently, the Zapatistas lacked legal protections to contest governmental development projects that affected Zapatista territories, such as the Maya train and the San Cristóbal-Palenque highway (Estrada Saavedra, López Leyva, and Inclán 2020).…”

“…Based on Inclán's (2018) analysis, I argue that the Zapatista case serves as an outstanding example of de facto autonomous organization. Still, it fails to shed light on how autonomous groups can establish a productive relationship with the state as citizens-that is, as subjects with rights and not only obligations (Postero 2007)-and thus to construct a stable "territorial indigenous autonomy" within the modern neoliberal nation.…”

“…In this article I analyze this failed attempt to formulate a communication policy by building on the strategies of the Mexican Zapatistas to develop de facto autonomous practices (Inclán 2018) and Rappaport's (2005, 8) concept of “indigenous utopias” (not impossible dreams, but objectives to strive for). Specifically, I argue that a robust autonomous indigenous governance depends on a constant search for a “utopian balance” between “centripetal” and “centrifugal” forces.…”

Participar o no participar: análisis tipológico de la participación ciudadana de los mexicanos

“…No obstante, no ha sucedido lo mismo con la participación no electoral. Existe un grupo importante de trabajos sobre movimientos sociales y de protesta, sobre todo desde perspectivas sociológicas y antropológicas (Davis 1991;Escobar y Álvarez 1992;Bensusán y Middlebrook 2013;Béjar 2015;Ramírez 2016;Inclán 2018), pero hay pocos estudios que intenten explicar y tipificar la participación no electoral con datos de encuestas (Klesner 2009).…”