Understanding Zapatista Longevity
When Mexican President Vincente Fox rode into office on a wave of popular support in 2000, he inherited the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas. In 1994, the largely indigenous Zapatista movement began a military campaign to protest economic and political disenfranchisement. Vincente Fox claimed that he could solve the Zapatista uprising in “15 minutes.” Like his predecessor, he has failed to solve the problem. How did the Zapatistas achieve such longevity in the confines of the “perfect dictatorship?”
When Mexico entered the international economy, it opened itself to global scrutiny. Mexico’s trading partners have kept an eye on Mexico’s human rights record. Mexico simply could not crush the Zapatista rebellion with an iron fist: “Mexicans and the international community will not accept a genocidal war in Chiapas” (Collier 167). Furthermore, global connections empowered Mexican human rights organizations to exert more leverage on the Mexican government to moderate their repression. The Zapatistas were particularly adept at using the internet to voice their demands and to protest the excesses of the Mexican government.
The Mexican government also faced legal restraints which prevented an all-out war on the Zapatistas. After the uprising 1994 and the government counter-attack in 1995, the federal congress passed a law for dialogue in 1995. This foreclosed the option of a unilateral show of force by the Mexican army in areas under Zapatista control. The jungles of Chiapas also made a complete military victory improbable.
The government changed its tactics to end the rebellion, resorting to low intensity war. Paramilitaries with differing levels of tacit and explicit support terrorized Zapatistas and their sympathizers. The killings in Acteal in 1997 that claimed the lives of 45 innocent people remains a particularly gruesome example of paramilitary massacres.
Most importantly, the Mexican government lots the war of ideas. Though the Mexican government maintained a virtual monopoly of the press, Marcos and the Zapatistsas managed to diffuse their ideas and goals across the country. Though many did not support their violent tactics, the Zapatistas brought attention to the “plight of those at the losing end of Mexico’s economic globalization, particularly the indigenous groups who were losing both their livehood and their hopes for self-determination” (155). Marcos’ articulate and incisive letters put the government on the “moral defense” (168).
Despite the government’s efforts, support for the Zapatistas increased. The government believed it had scored a victory when it revealed in 1994 that Sub-commandante Marcos was in fact a non-indiginours former philosophy student.
This book by Otis A. Singletary deals with different aspects of the Mexican war. It is a compelling description and concise history of the first successful offensive war in United States military history. The work examines two countries that were unprepared for war. The political intrigues and quarrels in appointing the military commanders, as well as the military operations of the war, are presented and analyzed in detail. The author also analyzes the role that the Mexican War played in bringing on the U.S. Civil War.
Models for post-revolutionary Latin American government are born of the complex economic and social realities of 17th and 18th century Europe. From the momentum of the Enlightenment came major political rebellions of the elite class against entrenched national monarchies and systems of power. Within this time period of elitist revolt and intensive political restructuring, the fundamental basis for both liberal and conservative ideology was driven deep into Latin American soil. However, as neither ideology sought to fulfill or even recognize the needs or rights of mestizo people under government rule, the initial liberal doctrine pervading Latin American nations perpetuated racism and economic exploitation, and paved the way for all-consuming, cultural wars in the centuries to come.
All throughout the 20th century we can observe the marked presence of totalitarian regimes and governments in Latin America. Countries like Cuba, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic all suffered under the merciless rule of dictators and military leaders. Yet the latter country, the Dominican Republic, experienced a unique variation of these popular dictatorships, one that in the eyes of the world of those times was great, but in the eyes of the Dominicans, was nothing short of deadly.
This documentary called “The Storm that Swept Mexico”, talks about one of the most important events in Mexican history which was the Mexican revolution which started on 1910 and lasted for about 10 years. At first this video starts talking about how Mexico lost a major part of their land in Mexican American war. The states that Mexico lost were Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, and California in 1848, by president Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Moreover, another war mentioned was the one Mexico had against France called “Battle of Puebla”. After this atrocious war Mexico had 20 years of peace until the Mexican revolution in 1910 took place. This very interesting video dragged my attention due to the fact that it explains precisely every important figure that was involved in such a big movement. Furthermore, in this fascinating video I learned a lot of interesting facts about Porfirio Diaz. For example, he is the president that lasted 30 years in power, and was the president number thirty to rule Mexico. Another interesting fact about this iconic figure is that his period as Mexican president was called the “Porfiriato”
Mexican Lives is a rare piece of literature that accounts for the human struggle of an underdeveloped nation, which is kept impoverished in order to create wealth for that of another nation, the United States. The reader is shown that the act of globalization and inclusion in the world’s economies, more directly the United States, is not always beneficial to all parties involved. The data and interviews, which Hellman has put forth for her readers, contain some aspect of negativity that has impacted their lives by their nation’s choice to intertwine their economy with that of the United States. Therefore it can only be concluded that the entering into world markets, that of Mexico into the United States, does not always bring on positive outcomes. Thus, one sees that Mexico has become this wasteland of economic excrement; as a result it has become inherently reliant on the United States.
The Russian and Mexican revolution’s differed in the ideas they adopted but they were similar in the way they met their goals and started their uprisings. The Russian revolution was made with the goal to create an egalitarian government that was based off of Karl Marx’s socialism principles. In short, t...
...Morelos seemed at a permanent stalemate. Carranza knew that he could never fully take Mexico while Zapata was still alive and in charge of his army. To rid himself of his enemy, Carranza devised a trap. A letter had been intercepted in which Zapata invited a colonel of the Mexican army who had shown leanings toward his cause to meet and join forces. This colonel, Jesús Guajardo, under the threat of being executed as a traitor, pretended to agree to meet Zapata and defect to his side. On Thursday, April 10, 1919, Zapata walked into Carranza's trap as he met with Guajardo in the town of Chinameca. There, at 2:10 PM, Zapata was shot and killed by federal soldiers, and as the man Zapata hit the ground, dead instantly, the legend of Zapata reached its climax. Carranza did not achieve his goal by killing Zapata. On the contrary, in May of 1920, Álvaro Obregón, one of Zapata's right-hand men, entered the capital with a large fighting force of Zapatistas, and after Carranza had fled, formed the seventy-third government in Mexico's history of independence. In this government, the Zapatistas played an important role, especially in the Department of Agriculture. Mexico was finally at peace.
Many of the battles won were essential in the sense that it to applied pressure to the Mexican government. Without that pressure the revolutionaries would not have been victorious in their battles, proving Pancho Villa’s important role in the Mexican revolution.
Bauer, K. Jack. “Mexican War,” Handbook of Texas Online, last modified June 15, 2010, accessed May 2, 2014, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qdm02
Throughout the conflict, rebel militias would burn down villages leaving few, if any, civilians alive. The government military, while more benevolent, was not often in a position to oppose the rebels’ atrocities.
The history of political instability in Mexico and its need for revolution is very complex and dates back to the colonization of Mexico by the Spaniards in the 1500s. However, many aspects of the social situation of Mexico when the Revolution broke out can be attributed to the thirty-year dictatorship of President Porfrio Diaz, prior to 1911. The Revolution began in November of 1910 in an effort to overthrow the Diaz dictatorship. Under the Diaz presidency, a small minority of people, primarily relatives and friends, were in ...
The Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, otherwise referred to as the “Dirty War” in Argentina, was instructed from 1976 to 1983, the military government to kidnapped, tortured, and murdered progressive militants, and any person who claimed were “collaborators,” including all political adversaries of the regime. Many of the rebels were young people, pupils and other adolescence struggling to convey their discontents with the regime. The abducted people became described as the “disappeared.” The government destroyed any documentations that would aid the families to discovery the bodies or regain their grandchildren. The regime similarly stole babies born to incarcerated pregnant prisoners.
...n Morelos. Zapata secured the town and then cut off the road to Mexico City. A week later Diaz realized he was in trouble and fled Mexico for Europe. After he left a provisional President and a large army that was led by General Victoriano Huerta. Soon after Diaz left Mexico, Zapata took Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos, and he then rode to Mexico City where he met Madero, where he was declared President. The victory, however, was only the beginning of the problem that would come in Mexico. (www.tamu.edu.htm, Encarta 98)
The Mexican Revolution began November 20th, 1910. It is disputable that it extended up to two decades and seized more than 900,000 lives. This revolution, however, also ended dictatorship in Mexico and restored the rights of farm workers, or peons, and its citizens. Revolutions are often started because a large group of individuals want to see a change. These beings decided to be the change that they wanted to see and risked many things, including their lives. Francisco “Pancho” Villa and Emiliano Zapata are the main revolutionaries remembered. These figures of the revolution took on the responsibility that came with the title. Their main goal was to regain the rights the people deserved. The peons believed that they deserved the land that they labored on. These workers rose up in a vehement conflict against those opposing and oppressing them. The United States was also significantly affected by this war because anybody who did not want to fight left the country and migrated north. While the end of the revolution may be considered to be in the year of 1917 with the draft of a new constitution, the fighting did not culminate until the 1930’s.
This earned the Zapatistas enemies, and violence from the government. Naomi Klein’s “Zapatista Code Red” describes this aggression from the Mexican government as undermining the Zapatistas by buying their land and giving it to families linked to the notoriously corrupt Institutional Revolutionary Party. These new owners of the land are linked to thuggish paramilitary groups and violence is surging in Chiapas. Marcos brought some damage to the Zapatista people by enraging the Mexican government by leading this “Other Campaign.”