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Militarism and Ethnicity in the Sierra de Puebla, Mexico*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Extract
Perhaps the most enduring image of the Zapatista uprising, which began in Chiapas on 1 January 1994, is the masked figure of Subcomandante Marcos. Running a close second, however, would be the sight of this makeshift army filing past delegates at the opening of the Conventión Nacional Democrática in the Lancandona later the same year. Men, women and youths with their wooden rifles for weapons, dignity and silent determination as ammunition. They were not the first, and I dare say will not be the last, indigenous movement in Mexico to be driven to violence in defense of their rights. The state's firm response to the uprising was predictable and illustrates the most common reaction to the specter of an Indian with a gun in his hand. Ironically, the Mexican army has carried out such repression with a rank and file comprised largely of youths from indigenous backgrounds. These young men see enlistment as one of the few escapes from the rural poverty that did much to foster the Zapatista rebellion in the first place. Thus, an armed Indian per se is not a problem; it is merely when this person acts autonomously that the trouble begins.
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- Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1999
Footnotes
*
I would like to express my thanks to Claire Brewster and David LaFrance for their many constructive suggestions upon how I might improve this article.
References
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3 Interview with Gabriel Barrios Cabrera’s son, José María Barrios Nava, 6 November 1993, Tonalapa, Tétela de Ocampo.
4 This article does not attempt to engage in the ethereal, albeit important, question of what constitutes an “Indian.” Such a definition is subjective, open to manipulation, and is perhaps best judged in terms of a range of characteristics that distinguish indigenous communities from a mainstream, mestizo, urban-based society. As this article deals with indigenous military recruitment, it assumes a definition most likely held by senior officers in the Guerra y Marina. As such, “Indian” is taken to mean those for whom, by their language, dress, society and culture were seen as being outside both urban and provincial mestizo society. Such a definition might well include groups more accurately seen as mestizo campesinos. In strictly racial terms, Gabriel Barrios should be described as a mestizo because his father was mestizo and his mother, Nahua. Yet he was brought up within a Nahua community, never fully mastered Spanish, understood and respected Nahua values, wore traje de manta, and shunned the trappings of urban life in preference for the rural environment of his childhood. Consequently, local mestizos and military commanders in Puebla City and Mexico City saw him as a Nahua commander of Nahua troops.
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45 La Opinión, 28 May 1930, no. 2213, p. 1.
46 La Opinión, 20 November 1929, no. 2027, p. 1.
47 La Opinión, 19 February 1930, no. 2116, p. 1; La Opinión, 1 April 1930, no. 2157, p. 4.
48 Interview with Vicente Barrios Vargas, 25 November, 1993, Zacatlán; interview with José María Barrios Nava, 6 November 1993, Tonalapa, Tetela de Ocampo.
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