This article challenges the widely held view that, during the Mexican Revolution, the Zapatista villages governed themselves with complete autonomy from the state and according to the pueblos’ customary justice. It shows how Zapatistas in the multi-state region of south-central Mexico dealt with quarrels over small and medium-sized properties, the restitution of usurped pueblo lands and water resources, as well as village boundary disputes. They did so by blending nineteenth-century judicial procedures and civil law, limited but radical reforms to the existing judicial system and new forms of land and water management – all of which strengthened state authority.
