Social Movement Studies,
Vol. 6, No. 2, 161–175, September 2007
Local Social Movements and Mesoamerican
Cultural Resistance and Adaptation
JOHN STOLLE-McALLISTER
University of Maryland, Baltimore, USA
ABSTRACT In this article I examine two locally based movements in Mexico that successfully
challenged important neoliberal development projects by building on local identities, values and
communication networks to confront their state and corporate opponents. In the process of
articulating their demands, activists helped to create identities that encouraged community members
to take risky political positions by resignifying commonly held scripts about community, mutual
solidarity and historical unease with centralized projects. Although framing the conflict in terms of
local community versus outside interference proved to be a successful strategy on the part of
movement organizers, it also represented part of a larger cultural process of identity formation and
affirmation of cultural difference. Social activists in these towns saw the conflicts with the
development ideas of the state and multinational corporations not only as threats to their immediate
material circumstances but also as profoundly incongruent with their cultures – that is, their way of
understanding and ordering the world. The struggles in which these communities found themselves,
therefore, became not only disputes over immediate material grievances but more profoundly
struggles over the meanings of their communities, their nations and themselves. Mexico’s transition
to democracy and the local social movements that have grown up in and around that process over the
past decade offer compelling examples of how participants in locally based social movements draw
upon different discourses to project an image of themselves both inward toward other participants
and outward to the larger world. While the appearance and success of these movements is very much
caught up in the political openings created through transformations in Mexico’s institutions, they
also involve deeper issues concerning identity, autonomy and negotiated relationships that point to a
more fundamental cultural conflict between small communities of Mesoamerican heritage and
groups representing neoliberal national and global projects.
KEY WORDS : Mexico, Tepoztlán, Atenco, popular culture
Although it is common to talk of the homogenizing effects of globalization, small
communities around the world manage to negotiate their relationship to global projects
without necessarily losing their own unique identities and cultural diversity. In this article,
I examine two social movements in Mexico that fought, and ultimately defeated, the
construction of development projects by building on local identities, values and
communication networks to confront their state and corporate opponents. In the process of
articulating their demands, activists helped create identities that encouraged movement
Correspondence Address: John Stolle-McAllister, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop
Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA. Email: [email protected]
1474-2837 Print/1474-2829 Online/07/020161-15 q 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14742830701497475
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J. Stolle-McAllister
participants to take risky political positions by resignifying commonly held scripts about
community, mutual solidarity and historical unease with centralized projects. Although
framing the conflict in terms of local community versus outside interference proved to be a
successful strategy on the part of movement organizers, it also represented part of a larger
cultural process of identity formation and affirmation of cultural difference.
These movements represent one of the manifestations of what López Austin (2001) has
called the ‘hard nucleus’ of Mesoamerican culture that is evident in many rural and semirural communities in central and southern Mexico. This complex of social and ideological
relations, while able to adapt to changing circumstances, has maintained itself relatively
intact over the past half millennium of European contact. Social activists in these towns
saw the conflicts not only as threats to their immediate economic interests but also as
profoundly incongruent with their cultures – that is, their way of understanding and
ordering the world. For the communities these struggles therefore became not only
disputes over immediate material grievances but also struggles over the meanings of their
communities, their nations and themselves. Understanding these movements therefore
demands not only studying their political contexts, the cycles of contention under which
they were operating and measuring the resources that activists were able to mobilize, but
also studying the historic roots of the movements and the cultural routes that both created
and were created by them.
Mexico’s transition away from one-party rule and the social movements that have
grown up in and around that process over the past decade offer compelling examples of
how participants in locally based movements draw upon different discourses to construct
and project images both for themselves and for the larger world. The appearance and
success of these movements is caught up in the local, regional and national political
openings created through transformations in Mexico’s institutions. Part of that process
has resulted not only in more transparent elections at the federal level but also a
devolution of decision-making processes from the federal government to the state and
municipal level, creating opportunities for different levels of political intervention by
more locally oriented actors (Cornelius et al., 1999). Those structural changes in the
institutional architecture of the Mexican state, however, have also been accompanied by
a greater interest at both elite and grassroots levels with issues concerning identity,
autonomy and negotiated relationships between local communities and government
agencies. The Zapatista movement in Chiapas, of course, is the most well-known
example of the ongoing tension in Mexico that points to a more fundamental cultural
conflict between small communities of Mesoamerican heritage and groups representing
national and global neoliberal projects.
This dynamic could be seen in the ways that some local communities in central Mexico
have organized themselves and framed their struggle against the perceived harmful
agendas of government agencies and development corporations. In 1995 and 1996, the
town of Tepoztlán, Morelos, waged a protracted and successful struggle against the
construction of a golf course, resulting in the expulsion of local officials and an internal
debate over the meaning and practice of democracy. Six years later, residents in the town
of Atenco, State of Mexico, also successfully defended their territory against its
expropriation for building the country’s new international airport, resulting in similar
disputes about political institutions and local identities. At the height of these struggles
inhabitants demonstrated a remarkable level of internal solidarity and espoused heady
rhetoric about fighting neoliberalism and establishing/defending local autonomy against,
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in part, a supposedly democratizing state. Although these movements obviously
corresponded to immediate political and economic circumstances, they also represented
particular cultural processes unique to each community. Even as the communities engaged
with the ‘outside’ world embodied both by their immediate opponents as well as numerous
allies in the environmental, human rights and anti-neoliberal movements, they managed to
maintain a unique sense of themselves as part of, but distinct from, those forces and
institutions outside their communities. While much could be said about the influence of
various global and national projects on these movements (Stolle-McAllister, 2002, 2005a),
in this essay I focus on how movement participants were able to articulate and build upon
locally grounded cultural discourses and political subjectivities.
This is not to say that these movements are somehow automatic extensions of some
homogeneous or inherently resistant Mesoamerican culture. Cultures are, of course,
neither resistant nor compliant, but rather are dynamic processes. Labeling people’s
culture is a perilous exercise as those dynamic processes often avoid both tags and
being fixed in a particular moment. In this essay I use the term Mesoamerican culture to
denote the wide variety of beliefs, organizations and practices with observable ties to
pre-Columbian times. Of course, that culture is, as all cultures are, an always hybrid
mixture of other influences and temporal evolution (Garcı́a Canclini, 1995). Bonfil
Batalla (1987) refers, not unproblematically, to ‘deep Mexico’, and López Austin (2001)
to a ‘hard nucleus’ to describe the mixed cultural beliefs and practices that have evolved
in rural and semi-rural communities over the past 500 years. Certainly not all
communities would consider themselves ‘indigenous’, but many cultural traits constitute
part of that living heritage. While I want to avoid essentialist overgeneralizations, I also
want to be clear that although these communities obviously and to greater and lesser
degrees engage with national and global cultures, they also maintain important
distinctions and consciously used those differences as both a means and a goal of their
organizing.
The disputes to which these movements were responding were embedded in layers of
relationships and conflicts, both internal to the communities and spreading out through
the regional and national webs in which participants found themselves. Movement
leaders articulated their arguments and built alliances by employing networks of political
activists and media contacts built up over previous activist work. Leaders of the
Tepoztlán movement, for instance, were very much integrated into regional-level
political organizations and were able to access networks that their largely middle-class
position provided them. Similarly, the Atenco movement in part lasted so long and
became so bitter because leaders in that community were working closely with other
political organizations seeking to discredit the Fox administration and the neoliberal
economic model that Mexican elites have been advocating since the early 1980s.
Nevertheless, the argument that I am putting forth is that activists used Mesoamerican
cultural discourses and practices as part of a comprehensive strategy to promote internal
solidarity as well as to construct alliances outside of their immediate communities. Such
an argument should not be seen as attributing certain beliefs and practices to a group of
people simply because ‘that is the way they are’. Rather, I am showing how specific,
historically rooted dynamics become fused with political and economic conflict to
become a means for achieving victory in that immediate struggle and how that conflict
itself contributes to building group identities and reaffirming (and sometimes inventing)
local traditions of solidarity.
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J. Stolle-McAllister
No to Golf and No to the Airport
Despite the constant reinvention demanded by an ever-changing world, many of the
pueblos of central and southern Mexico maintain, at their core, a Mesoamerican
worldview defined by specific relationships to their territory and reproduced through
rituals and practices stressing community history and mutual obligation. This core is
neither homogeneous to all Mesoamerican communities nor does it dictate any particular
action. Indeed, the range of responses to demands for political and economic integration
throughout the region would suggest that this common cultural heritage does not prescribe
a particular answer. Rather, it forms a common history and understanding that, with the
right combination of circumstances and leadership, may serve as one of the means through
which communities defend themselves against what they perceive to be outside
encroachment on their resources and their identities. Although, or perhaps because, this
cultural core was threatened by these projects, movement activists were able to use it to
orient many participants in their decision to take direct action against the companies and
government agencies working toward building them. Furthermore, participation in the
movements helped reinforce the importance of this cultural core by affirming community
members’ mutual dependence on one another and by adding another chapter to longrunning narratives concerning justified rebellion and local autonomy. The movements
created new stories about, and identities of, themselves by splicing together and recycling
fragments of narrative and imagery concerning their indigenous heritage, their
communities’ place in the Mexican Revolution and their social positions as (or legacies
of having been) peasant-farmers within national discourses of identity.
In Tepoztlán, the movement was organized originally by a small group of community
activists calling themselves the Committee for Tepozteco Unity (CUT). The group drew
upon much previous activist experience, the heterogeneous class backgrounds of members
and their integration within influential networks both in the nearby state capital of
Cuernavaca and Mexico City. Beginning in 1994, the CUT researched the proposal by the
Kladt-Sobrino Group (KS) to build a $500 million luxury golf course and country club on
communal, private and state-owned lands within the municipality.1 Despite approval from
government inspectors, CUT members were convinced of neither the ecological nor the
social sustainability of the project. Over the course of several months, CUT activists
gradually convinced fellow Tepoztecos to oppose it, arguing that the project would cause
considerable damage to the community. In August 1995, despite public and written
promises to the contrary, the Municipal President and Ayuntamiento (Town Council)
approved the needed permits for KS to begin construction. Within hours of this news, the
CUT organized a rally in which 8,000 of the municipality’s 24,000 residents took over the
Municipal Offices, and exiled their elected officials.
After a month in which the state governor and project supporter, Jorge Carrillo, refused
to answer numerous requests to officially dissolve the municipal government and hold new
elections, the Popular Assembly, which met nightly and was open to all residents, ordered
the CUT to organize elections for a provisional council and president. Since many
residents feared that the political parties would try to manipulate the conflict for their own
advantage, they banned them from participating. Instead, candidates were selected from
neighborhood assemblies convoked by the mayordomo2 from each of the municipality’s
barrios. On election day, the seven highest polling candidates were named to the
Ayuntamiento Libre, Popular y Constitucional (Free, Popular and Constitutional Council),
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and sworn into office a week later in a ceremony symbolically presided over by
Tepoztecátl, the community’s founding figure, a god-man in regional mythology.
The conflict dragged on for several months and the town was effectively isolated both
by the barricades it had erected at all of its entrances as well as by the refusal of the state to
recognize its new government. The state government effectively isolated the municipal
government by withholding its funds (municipal governments’ funds come almost
exclusively from state treasuries) and refusing to recognize vital documents, such as birth,
marriage and death certificates, issued by the Ayuntamiento Libre, making life in a
bureaucratized society difficult. State officials further attempted to pressure the movement
by imprisoning several of its leaders on falsified murder charges and threatening to arrest
many others. In April 1996, state police ambushed a convoy of Tepoztecos, on its way to
present a letter of protest to President Ernesto Zedillo. One elderly activist, Marcos
Olmeda, was shot to death and dozens of others were seriously injured. As word leaked out
of this attack, KS found itself having to cancel the project and the state government began
making conciliatory appeals to the Tepoztecos. The stalemate, however, continued
through 1997 when regular elections could be held. After much internal debate, the
Tepoztecos arrived at an agreement under which they participated in the elections using
the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution’s (PRD) registry and chose candidates
through the neighborhood assemblies as they had done in 1995.3
In Atenco, the conflict began when the federal government announced in October 2001
that it was expropriating the ejidos in and around the municipality in order to build a new
international airport to serve Mexico City’s ever-growing communication and
transportation needs.4 Without consulting the ejiditarios, the federal government
announced that it would pay landowners 7 pesos (US70 cents) per square meter of land.
Seasoned activists organized themselves quickly into the Front of Pueblos in Defense of
the Land (FPDT) and immediately began a series of direct actions to stop what they
characterized as the theft of their land. Like in Tepoztlán, local officials who had
collaborated with the expropriation order were expelled as traitors and the Popular
Assembly took responsibility for governing. Confrontations with state and federal officials
escalated over the next several months as the FPDT repeatedly blocked highways and held
marches in the capital to win support for its cause. In July 2002, state police attacked an
FPDT march, injuring several and capturing most of the movement’s leadership. One man,
Enrique Espinoza, later died, at least in part from the injuries he received from state police.
In order to free their comrades, Atenco protesters marched to the regional city of Texcoco,
seized the assistant attorney general and some of his staff, blocked the main highway and
threatened to blow up two hijacked gasoline tanker trucks. They also armed themselves
with a large cache of Molotov cocktails and other simple weapons to fend off any potential
police assault. After several days of a tense standoff, the arrested Atenquenses were
released on bail and the government officials freed. The commitment of the expropriated
ejiditarios and the negative publicity surrounding the violence forced the Fox
administration to cancel the project.
As in Tepoztlán, however, the cancellation of the immediate project did not end the
conflict, because movement leaders continued to push other demands, particularly
recognition of their autonomy and the dropping of legal proceedings against them. This
stance resulted in an increasingly bitter dispute within Atenco as some residents wanted to
end the movement and others advocated deeper reforms. The FPDT successfully
boycotted and disrupted elections in March and July 2003 in order to have charges against
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their leaders dismissed and to show their displeasure with what they saw as the
shallowness of Mexican democracy. By December 2003, however, the FPDT negotiated a
deal to allow elections and some of their members agreed to serve as local ayundantes to
represent their neighborhoods.5
Cultural and Historic Roots of the Movements
The movements represented the communities’ collective abilities to adapt to and negotiate
with changing circumstances, while at the same time maintaining and transforming a sense
of self and difference. In his study of indigenous movements in southern Mexico and
Guatemala, Rubin (2004) argues that social movements are important processes through
which groups and individuals not only struggle over material grievances but also negotiate
the meanings of shared cultural signs and attempt to fix identities on themselves and their
opponents. Movement participants pick up fragments of narratives and symbols from their
past and from other outside sources, such as popular media, other struggles, and the state,
in order to fashion an identity of themselves that coheres with their present struggle and
encourages participants to fight against more powerful adversaries. This process of fixing
identity to the circumstances of the struggle represents part of the cultural work of social
movements as they resignify meanings of publicly shared symbols and social practices.
The contentious target of movement activities therefore moves from the resolution of
immediate demands to a broader reconsideration of the meanings of social relations.
Although identities are fluid and cultures dynamic, in moments of struggle, activists
often attempt to freeze them to build coherence and loyalty to the movement. ‘We’ and
‘they’ must be unambiguously defined and differentiated. In the cases of Tepoztlán and
Atenco, activists tried to fix Tepozteco and Atenquense identity based on a supposedly
organic relationship to the land and the need to defend it. In order to further distinguish
themselves from their opponents, the movement chose to highlight their difference from
the neoliberal, capitalist world (in which they at least marginally participated), by building
on and emphasizing their Mesoamerican cultural legacy. They used the communication
and prestige networks of their communities, built on generations of ritual practices, and
looked to their own local myths and histories to explain their situation, justify their actions
and identify themselves.
The most important cultural route used by movement activists to articulate their
difference from their opponents took them through the concept of ‘pueblo’, which Sánchez
Reséndiz (2003, p. 16) points out refers both to the territory that the community occupies
as well as to the totality of the social structures that govern relations within the community.
Land and identity, therefore, are very much interconnected for people living in these
communities. The potential loss of their communal and ejidal land, therefore, represented
not only a potential economic loss, but also a forfeiture of the material basis for their
collective identity and cultural development. That is not to say that these communities live
in isolation from the rest of the world, or that there is internal homogeneity of thought or
belief. Despite frequent internal bickering and disputes, however, there is a sense that
people within the community, for better or worse, belong to each other. In the heat of
conflict with perceived threats from outside, the discourse of pueblo and the resulting
cultural difference associated with the uniqueness of each community became the node
upon which activists attempted to fix an otherwise contentious community identity. As one
long-time Tepozteco activist explained: ‘You have to understand, I have a difficult pueblo.
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We fight among ourselves all of the time, but as soon as we are threatened, we will put
aside those differences and support each other’ (interview, Cuernavaca, January 1999). In
an attempt to distinguish the movement’s goals from those of the projects’ supporters,
movement participants emphasized the Mesoamerican heritage of the towns, as the polar
opposite of the transnational corporations and government agencies. The movements
conflated what it meant to be Tepozteco or Atenquense with opposition to the projects.
Support of the projects, therefore, was seen as traitorous to the community, and a rejection
of its distinct Mesoamerican culture, resulting in a flattening of the usual internal
heterogeneity of both towns.
Activists did not simply invent this Mesoamerican identity to refine its rhetoric; rather,
they were drawing upon and emphasizing already existing practices and beliefs circulating
in their communities. One of the ways in which some pueblos in central Mexico have
maintained this sense of community identity is by preserving and recreating local festivals.
López Austin (2001) argues that the annual cycle of rituals commemorating important
local myths is vital to the maintenance of what he denotes the ‘hard nucleus’ (núcleo duro)
of the pueblos. The hard nucleus is that system of local beliefs and practices that allow
communities to adapt to change, while maintaining their difference from larger, more
powerful systems that seek to assimilate or destroy local cultural formations (López
Austin, 2001, pp. 59– 62). Despite centuries of change, colonial imposition, liberal
alienation and populist nation building, the inhabitants of some small communities
maintain a distinctly Mesoamerican culture centered on religious festivals that are often
tied to the agricultural cycle, and, therefore, directly to their land. In Tepoztlán, the annual
reenactment of the story of Tepoztecatl, Carnival and neighborhood patron saint festivals
all serve to inscribe on Tepoztecos their uniqueness in the world as well as promote
cooperation among inhabitants, as they select leaders and work together to produce
elaborate and expensive celebrations. Similarly, the day of San Salvador in Atenco brings
people together to celebrate their patron saint and their community. Even at the height of
bitterness and division that followed the electoral disputes in Atenco, residents on all sides
of the debate agreed that the annual festival ‘brings everyone together. At least for a little
while, we put aside our differences. Politics does not matter then’ (interview, Atenco
resident, July 2003).
Annual festivals, which consume great amounts of personal and collective resources,
continue to be an important element in the cyclical reproduction of the community
(Echeverrı́a, 1994; Broda & Báez-Jorge, 2001). Sánchez Reséndiz explains that people are
willing to expend great efforts to make their annual festivals successful for the ‘gusto’ of
doing so (Sánchez Reséndiz, 2003, p. 155). That is, when asked why they make such
sacrifices to be mayordomo and assume great financial responsibility for the success of the
fiesta, many respondents cite their pleasure in doing so. This same sense of doing what is
best for the community is translated into other spheres of public service as well, such as
participating in collective work projects. One activist in Tepoztlán cited the Mesoamerican
tradition of cuauteltilco as one of the reasons why people in his neighborhood participate
in collective work and were so active in the anti-golf movement (interview, Tepoztlán,
May 1999). Interviews with many participants in both movements revealed that an
important motivation for them was indeed this sense of gusto, of serving the community
for the sake of serving the community. An FPDT supporter, who was also a professional
and therefore not necessarily as tied to the land as were the campesino members of the
movement, noted:
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I joined the movement to defend my pueblo. We are like a family here. [ . . . ] You do
what you have to in order to protect it. If you were the head of a family, and you
didn’t have anything to feed them, you would go into debt with the milkman,
you would go into debt with the baker, you would go into debt with the butcher. You
would do what you had to. It is the same thing here with the movement. (Interview,
Atenco, July 2003)
This sense of gusto outlived the movement, as participants decided to take part in local
politics out of a sense of obligation to the community and desire to help. An official elected
in Tepoztlán in 1997, for instance, confessed that as a retired teacher he never liked
politics and never thought that he would get involved. With the movement against the golf
course, however, he found himself at a neighborhood meeting one night trying to decide
how to protect the community, and ‘I spoke out and people thought what I said was right.
Later, they asked me to run in the election, because they had confidence in me. I never
thought I would like politics, but I enjoy serving my people’ (interview, Tepoztlán,
January 1999). This drive to community service influences not only the shape of local
politics by providing new political actors but also comes from and strengthens the núcleo
duro of community life, by reinforcing values and practices associated with
Mesoamerican sensibilities of mutual obligation.
In his study of the roots of Zapatista thought in Morelos, Sánchez Reséndiz (2003)
argues that it was precisely these deep ideological, religious and social ties that facilitated
the appearance and spread of Zapatismo at the beginning of the twentieth century and
continue to be important elements in localized rebellions throughout the region.
Historically, community members have been both dependent on each other for survival
and wary of outside intervention. Agricultural work demanded a great deal of cooperation
among community members to be successful, facilitating an ethic of mutual responsibility
that was (and continues to be) played out not only in everyday life but also in the
arrangement of rituals and festivals. In Tepoztlán, for instance, even though the
community is no longer economically dependent on agriculture, the remnants of that
production and the rituals surrounding it continue to be important. Each barrio has a chapel
dedicated to a patron saint, and from time immemorial through today, inhabitants have
collectively worked the saint’s milpa (corn plot) to provide for the needs of the local
chapel. This collective work ethic, exemplified by numerous public service projects
carried out by civil society in both communities, serves to foster a sense of solidarity
among community members.
Furthermore, Sánchez Reséndiz argues that this sense of solidarity, built both through
specific practices and enforced through ritualized observances, crosses over community
boundaries to include larger networks of individuals and groups, who find themselves
mutually dependent upon and obligated to each other (Sánchez Reséndiz, 2003, p. 40). He
notes the geographic diversity of what is now Morelos, Puebla, the State of Mexico and
Guerrero historically made it impossible for individual pueblos to survive without the
support of other communities. In some instances, communities had to work out water
sharing and in no case were any of them adequately self-sufficient to survive on
subsistence farming alone. They needed to communicate and trade with each other. Over
time, these trade and communication routes have been strengthened through pilgrimages
to various holy sites and through annual ritual exchanges of delegates and goods between
communities. These networks of communication and interdependence helped shape
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Zapatista strategies at the beginning of the twentieth century and can be seen repeated
today in acts of solidarity and support among each other in times of crisis. Activists from
Tepoztlán, for instance, were quite visible in their support for Atenco during its conflict
and, in turn, when the Morelos town of Tlalnepantla was shaken by government violence
over an electoral dispute in January 2004, Atenco activists were among the first to
physically confront the police and offer their assistance. While ideological affinity
explains part of this support, it is also rooted in these deeper understandings of mutual
responsibility resulting from generations of regional economic and ritual exchanges.
Commonly shared myths and popular religiosity also form an important component
tying these communities together, allowing them to find common cause with each other
while maintaining their unique identities. Throughout the region, there are myths about
heroes who have gained fame by resisting authority. Tepoztecátl, the founding figure of
Tepoztlán, for instance, is a god-man who defended his pueblo against the monster/tyrant
at Xochicalco and who humiliated the pompous leaders of other communities for not
paying respect to him and to common people. Likewise, there are many stories of
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century bandits throughout the region, including Antonio
Pérez and Agustı́n Lorenzo, who seemed to use either divine or diabolic assistance to fight
the Spaniards and later the hacendados, while defending the honor and integrity of regular
people (Sánchez Reséndiz, 2003, p. 113). Emiliano Zapata, of course, fits into this mold of
god-man who, despite (or perhaps because of) his common background is incorruptible in
his defense of land and liberty. Sánchez Reséndiz speculates that this myth of a god-man is
so strong that it explains why many people in Morelos, despite virtually incontrovertible
evidence to the contrary, believe that Zapata did not die in an ambush in 1919, but lived on
either in disguise or in exile. The importance of these myths cannot be overstated in
explaining the willingness within the communities to take dangerous stands. The
underlying mythology of identity within many of these communities has at its core a nearreligious respect for rebellion against exploitation by outside powers. Rebelling against
the injustices represented by the golf course and the airport, therefore, fit into already
existing scripts that legitimize fighting for social justice as acceptable or even expected
behavior.
This deep-seated respect for justified rebellion is also born from the pueblos’ long
history of resisting outside exploitation. Although it might seem to have been a long time
ago, a collective memory of submission to large landowners is not, in fact, that remote.
Older participants in Atenco, for instance, spoke frequently about the time of ‘slavery’ and
how Zapata gave them their lands to free them (Lands, Yes! Airplanes, No!, 2002). By
expelling them from their lands, therefore, the airport threatened to return them to slavery,
by depriving them of control over their means of production, obliterating the tangible sign
of their liberation and destroying the social relationships that have evolved around their
collective ownership of the land. The FPDT recognized this threat, accusing the Fox
administration of proposing genocide against them, arguing:
To approve of the arbitrariness of the Federal Government is to be complicit in the
extermination of the pueblos, to be with those who have by themselves maintained
us in oppression. To approve the corporate interests in collusion with the federal
government would be to agree with their dispossession of the Mexican people’s
dignity. (Frente de pueblos en defensa de la tierra, 2002, p. 2)
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In order to counter such a threat, they turned to their history of resistance – from preColumbian times, through Zapata and more recent struggles – as a means of justifying and
encouraging their current rebellion. Activists framed their radical, direct action against the
airport; in other words, as part of a long and proud history of rebellion.
Similarly, the Tepoztecos drew on a sense of shared history and a collective memory of
struggle in building their opposition to the golf course. Images of Zapata accompanied
protesters on all of their marches, and many participants specifically cited Zapata and the
fact that they were from Zapata’s lands as reasons for their rebellion. Many concluded that
as a community they were naturally rebellious, as could be seen from Tepoztecátl’s
rejection of corrupt authorities all the way through more recent movements beginning
thirty years ago against unwanted development projects, including another golf course, a
highway, a cable car and a scenic train. These mythical and historic events were
incorporated into many of the Tepoztecos’ sense of who they are and formed part of the
cultural nucleus that portrayed them as innately rebellious. This cultural context combined
with the ideological and practical experience of many CUT members in other movements,
including leadership roles in the dissident teachers’ union and other nongovernmental
organizations in the region, provided an effective formula for activists to mobilize the
population to support the radical proposition of barricading the town and naming their own
political leaders.
What was at stake in both movements, therefore, was not just the defeat of the
immediate projects but also the very definition and survival of themselves as a community.
Activists, as well as more peripheral participants, repeatedly referred to the defense of
their pueblos as the prime motivation for their involvement. Using Sánchez Reséndiz’s
understanding of pueblo as both territory and social structure, therefore, these conflicts
were seen as threats not only to the territorial integrity of the communities but also to basic
relationships and culture, making the stakes that much higher for participants. Activists
made use of those existing social relationships by mobilizing people through
neighborhood religious networks and availing themselves of the tradition of the Popular
Assembly, which has its roots in the communal and ejidal governance structures of both
communities (Quero, 2003). Furthermore, as the conflicts intensified, inhabitants of both
communities, despite assistance and solidarity from outside groups, made sharp
distinctions between locally born residents and outsiders. Pueblo consisted of a very
definite group of people with specific ties to the land and to each other. Outsiders, while
their assistance was appreciated, were still always outsiders.6
These movements, therefore, were one of the vehicles through which inhabitants of
relatively small communities were able to engage with forces of global economic and
cultural power and negotiate an acceptable settlement with them. They used the strength,
knowledge and trust developed over generations to defeat these unwanted projects that
threatened not only their livelihoods but also their sense of self, and they did so by
explicitly invoking their cultural difference as a means to identify themselves and
legitimize their demands and their actions. Furthermore, many residents quickly
incorporated the conflicts into their collective stories as a continuation of the myths of
resistance and uniqueness that constitute their identities. Many participants, both central
and peripheral, speak with great pride and bravado about their actions over those months
and hold it out as further proof of their innate rebelliousness. In Tepoztlán, one activist
stated: ‘The truth is they are afraid to come in here. They know that they cannot beat us’
(interview, Tepoztlán, April 1999). Similarly, in Atenco a movement participant boasted:
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‘we are a combative pueblo. If they come here to screw us over, we’ll take them all.
Whoever they are. Send the US Marines, we’ll screw them too’ (interview, Atenco, July
2003). Such conceptualizations of the movements resignify the preexisting concepts of
territory, the hero-bandit-revolutionary and community solidarity that constitute important
parts of the ‘hard nucleus’ of local popular culture.
Movement Contributions to Cultural Adaptation
Despite the solidarity engendered by these conflicts and the shared values of these
Mesoamerican processes, these communities are neither internally homogeneous nor
devoid of conflict. Quite the contrary is true, which in part helps to explain why movement
leaders were unable to maintain the unity that developed during the conflict. In both cases,
once the immediate outside threat was defeated, divisions within the population quickly
resurfaced. Some of these divisions concerned the best way to resolve outstanding issues
with the authorities, while others were continuations of long-standing intra-community
splits over political parties, kinship or other issues. The key element to unity, therefore,
seemed to be an outside threat to the overall structure (territory and relationships) of the
pueblo. As the cycle of protest wore down, divisions became more pronounced among the
different factions within the communities, and a sometimes bitter contest over the internal
meaning of pueblo ensued.
In Atenco, for instance, as the disputed elections of 2003 proceeded, both factions
within the town vehemently claimed to be speaking for the majority of the pueblo, even
though they had diametrically opposite views on how the community ought to proceed.
Both sides accused the other of being manipulated by nefarious outside forces and of
representing only a marginal group of the population. FPDT supporters, for instance,
dismissed demands by some residents that they allow the scheduled elections in March and
July 2003, by asserting that their opponents were acting on behalf of others’ interests and
not out of the common good. Specifically, they charged that their opponents were
‘organized by [State Governor Arturo] Montiel and the PRI. The police have organized
them and brought in thugs from outside to intimidate us. They call themselves ‘Peace
Group,’ but they want to violently expel us. They eat angels and shit devils’ (interview,
Atenco, July 2003). Similarly, FPDT opponents in town, noting the highly visible support
they received from other radical social organizations, claimed that the
PRD of Mexico City, the CGH (Student Strike Committee) and the Villistas are
behind them and manipulating them. Those idiots in the FPDT are mostly simple
people and don’t understand what they are doing. Besides, none of them work.
Where do they get their money to support themselves, to buy gas for their trucks?
No. They are being paid by outside agitators. (Interview, Atencom, July 2003)
Given the distrust of outside influences, the best and most logical way to discredit one’s
opponents was to accuse them of not being truly authentic, but in the service of outside
interests. To a lesser degree that was a strategy employed in Tepoztlán as well, as more
radical elements of the community rejected working with political parties because they
were part of the state and, therefore, part of the problem. After much of the CUT
leadership became politicians running under the PRD banner, these more radical members
of the movement believed that they had sold out to the party. One elderly campesino and
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an important anti-golf activist compared the former PRI government and the PRD
administration headed by his former CUT allies, by noting succinctly: ‘they’re all jerks’
(interview, Tepoztlán, August 2001).
These internal divisions speak to both the dynamic process of local culture and to the
fact that the núcleo duro is flexible and able to change. An important element of that
flexibility is its ability to assimilate other cultural and social processes. Despite distrust
and hostility toward the outside, it could not be simply rejected, and given the
interdependence of political, cultural and economic relations, no participants expressed a
desire to cut themselves off from the rest of the world. Even the question of local
autonomy shows that the movement members were searching for ways to relate to the rest
of the country and world, but not expose themselves to exploitation or the irretrievable loss
of their unique identities. One Atenco participant explained:
Autonomy is not complete independence; no one wants that. We don’t want to be the
republic of Atenco. We are Mexiquenses and Mexicans, and want to be part of the
state and the country. But we have the right to decide internal matters according to
our own ways. No one can come into your house and tell you, you have to do this or
that. No. The same thing here. If we don’t want an airport or we don’t want elections
or the parties, why should we have to put up with them? (Interview, Atenco, July
2003)
The movements were hardly isolationist or disdainful of modernity. Both movements
made ample use of contemporary technology for communication and made sophisticated
use of mass media coverage – organizing press conferences and getting their messages
across even in the generally hostile environment of television news coverage. They were
not, in other words, simply reactionary rejections of change, but rather were based on an
understanding that the development projects and the institutions they represented
constituted outside exploitation of their resources and their labor. One Tepozteco activist
argued: ‘we are not against development; we just want a voice in it’ (interview,
Tepoztlán, March 1996). Atenco residents also demonstrated this desire not to be
exploited as they were quite aware not only that their land would become astronomically
more valuable than what they were being offered for it, but also that losing their land
represented a serious threat to their long-term wellbeing (Russell, 2003). One ejiditario
questioned, ‘once our land is gone, then what? They give us some money and that lasts
for a while, but once it is gone, we have nothing. At least if we have our land, we and our
children and our grandchildren can always grow something to eat’ (interview, Atenco,
July 2003).7
These attitudes do not represent an unthinking rejection of modernity nor a refusal to
participate with larger social institutions. Rather, they show a desire to have some control
over the economic and political realms of their lives. And, as López Austin and Sánchez
Reséndiz anticipate, that desire is articulated through the frame of the hard nucleus of
these communities’ cultures demonstrating the staying power of those fundamental values
as well as their abilities to adapt. The question of land, for instance, shows the importance
that agriculture has both as an economic and an ideological organizing frame. Community
members explained their struggle in terms of their agricultural production, even though
many ejido members also work for wages outside of their plots. The question of autonomy
demonstrates an ongoing importance in very specific social relationships developed over
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173
time as well as their right and duty to revolt against injustice and attempts to take away
those rights.
At the same time, however, the internal conflicts and debates demonstrated that
adapting intra-community relationships to each other and to outside institutions and forces
was subject to contentious negotiation. The central core of local culture became the point
of reference through which community members opposed the projects and supported each
other. It also provided the means through which internal relationships were renegotiated as
the conflicts came to an end. Community members were able to collectively assimilate the
experience of the conflict and movement into their worldview and social practices,
allowing that experience to contribute toward simultaneously affirming and transforming
their local cultures.
Conclusion
In the case of these local social movements in Mexico, we see communities’ attempts at
negotiating not only material grievances with political and economic powers but also
negotiating and adapting their identities. Faced with the loss of their lands, they were
threatened with not only a potentially serious economic setback but also the tangible
element of their sense of self. As individuals in these communities organized against these
projects, they pulled relevant historic and symbolic fragments together to articulate an
identity that emphasized their attachment to those lands and the historic role that their
predecessors played in resisting exploitation. This rebellious identity resonated with
community members because of their shared myths of revolutionaries and their ritual
practices of solidarity and cooperation. Their mobilization was not caused by, nor is it
reducible to, their shared, hybrid cultural heritage, but during these moments of conflict,
activists were able to resignify collective myths and practices with meanings necessary to
inspire resistance.
These identities, based on a core of Mesoamerican culture, were, as are all identities,
fluid and contingent on context. As the acuteness of the conflict waned, so did the unity of
the communities, and other identities resurfaced and took prominence. Participation in the
movement, however, contributed to the gradual transformation of the Mesoamerican
nucleus by adding another chapter to the overarching narratives of territory and rebellion.
The movement also served as one of the vehicles through which community members
continually negotiate their relationships with the wider world and through which they,
therefore, alter the very cultural core that gave direction and meaning to the movement.
The wider implications for social movement studies in this type of approach is to
consider the importance of movements not just as manifestations of political displeasure
but also as a fundamentally important aspect of the cultural life of communities involved
in them. It is important to analyze the movements in terms of the political opportunities
and constraints afforded them by the opening of Mexican political institutions. In fact,
these types of movements have greatly contributed to the democratization of public life
in Mexico, just as the easing of central control over politics and the lessening of
repression over dissent has made movements more apt to take confrontational
approaches toward the state. At the same time, however, these types of movements are
clearly constructing themselves from the symbolic fragments of their local, national and
global histories, seeing themselves as inheritors of great injustices and demanding
redress to fundamental grievances. In the articulation of those demands, movements
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resignify collective symbols and practices to position themselves as active historic and
political subjects in attempts to realign power to mitigate their exploitation. It would be a
mistake, therefore, to understand these movements only in terms of immediate political
conflict. While they correspond to very concrete political alignments and economic
conditions, they also represent part of a larger cultural cycle of resistance,
accommodation and adaptation. The contours of that cultural cycle depend equally on
the historic particularities of the community, the outside influences circulating within the
experiences of community members and the abilities of movement leaders to mediate
between contradictory systems to provide participants with a means of articulating both a
vision and a practice that serve to help them achieve their goals.
Notes
1. In addition to communal land, to which KS hoped to gain title, it intended to use ‘private’ land that it had
acquired from a corporate predecessor. Legal ownership of this land was much disputed. Former small
landholders charged that they were tricked or coerced into selling in the 1960s and some of the land was
actually communal land that had been improperly ‘sold’ years earlier. The town sued KS over the ownership
issue, and in 2001 the courts finally agreed and returned the titles to the Communal Authorities.
2. Mayordomos are neighborhood leaders selected in an open assembly every year. They are charged with
overseeing the neighborhood’s chapel, organizing the annual celebration and are seen as spiritual leaders.
3. See Rosas (1997), Quero (2003) and Stolle-McAllister (2005a) for a more detailed account of the Tepoztlán
movement.
4. Ejidos are communally held lands established in the land reform in the wake of the Mexican Revolution
(1910–20). Until 1992 these lands were inalienable from their holders, who could only transfer ownership
through inheritance.
5. See Lajous (2003), Russell (2003) and Stolle-McAllister (2005b) for a more detailed account of the Atenco
movement.
6. Many non-native residents of Tepoztlán, known as Tepoztinos, for instance, complained that although they
supported the movement, they felt marginalized from decision making and debates because they were not
originally from Tepoztlán, and therefore were not completely trusted or taken seriously by the community.
7. As Russell (2003) notes, this is a rational reaction to the situation where if these ejiditarios were to lose their
lands and become exclusively wage laborers, they would most probably lose economic ground as wages have
not kept up with expenses in Mexico over the past twenty years.
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John Stolle-McAllister is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Cultural Studies at the
University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His research interests include social
movements, indigenous culture and human rights in Latin America. He has published
several articles on cultural hybridity and social movements in Mexico, and recently
released Mexican Social Movements and the Transition to Democracy (McFarland, 2005).