“They left us with no option”: political closure in Chiapas and the Zapatista uprising, 1988-94

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to demonstrate that the Zapatista uprising of January 1^st, 1994, is explained in part by the increasingly adverse political and social context in which a large part of the indigenous and peasant population lived in Chiapas during the 1980s and early 1990s. It examines the scope and limitations of the government’s discourse of consensus-building adopted between 1988 and 1994 and the ways in which the state government intervened with the use of repression to protect the interests of landowners and cattle ranchers’ associations.

The article is based on qualitative research, including the review of newspaper articles, analysis of secondary sources and interviews conducted by the author with peasant leaders in Chiapas between 1991 and 1993.

The analysis finds that the closed political stance of the state government, coupled with the implementation of neoliberal reforms, exacerbated political tensions in Chiapas.

The article allows us to conclude that, among the many factors that explain the Zapatista uprising, it is essential to consider the political closure and the violation of human rights that, in the words of the Zapatistas, left them no other option than to rebel against misery and oblivion.