The Postmodern Prince Historiography and Hegemonic Processes in Chiapas

Martin Jesper Larsson

Advisor: Edda Manga

History of Science and Ideas Uppsala University, May 2013

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To Mariel

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Edda Manga for her critical comments and advises. I would also like to thank José Luis Escalona for interesting discussions that are reflected in the thesis, and CIESAS for welcoming me as a visiting student during the spring 2013. And Mariel, of course, for her important contributions.

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Content

1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 5

2. What is historiography? ........................................................................................ 9

2.1. What is the purpose of historiography?...................................................... 15

3. Hegemonic processes and historiography .............................................................. 18

4. The emergence of the postmodern prince ........................................................... 24

4.1. The modern project: the Mexican revolutionary state ............................... 24

4.2. The projects of postmodernity: the new liberating subject ........................ 30

4.3. Dominant histories and the Sustainable Rural Cities ................................. 36

5. Conclusions ............................................................................................................ 38

Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 42

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1. Introduction

In this thesis I discuss the emergence of the idea of the “indigenous peoples” as a new liberat-

ing subject in Chiapas and Mexico. I analyze this emergence within a theoretical framework

that privileges the concept of hegemony, and where special attention is given to the role that

different historiographic strategies play in hegemonic processes in general, and specifically in

relation to the “indigenous peoples”.

I suggest that we should understand the idea about the indigenous peoples as a new

liberating subject as a “postmodern prince” (among other), which follow the outline made by

Antonio Gramsci in The Modern Prince, which in turn builds on The Prince by Niccolò

Machiavello. While Machiavello and Gramsci aim at advising their respective “princes” – that

is “the Magnificent Lorenzo D' Medici” and the working class party (the communist party in

Italy) – to become dominant and maintain dominance over society, I rather aim at understand-

ing how this “postmodern prince” has been constructed, and what this construction leaves out.

I understand the “prince” as a mythological figure that corresponds to a group or a person that

is projected as a moral and/or political, economical and military leader, who should dominate

over other groups or persons. In the concrete case, it takes its expression in the idea of a “lib-

erating subject”. I finally argue for a historiography that aims at criticizing “princes”, which I

found more effective and less totalitarian.

Formulated as questions, I ask 1) how processes of inclusion and exclusion occur with-

in historiographic practice; 2) how the “indigenous peoples” became the predominant “Post-

modern Prince” in Chiapas, and 3) what kind of historiographic practices are found in these

processes. Given the complexity of the problem, the thesis does not aim at being more than an

outline of some events and tendencies that I see as central.

These preoccupations come from a forum that I participated in at a Zapatista school,

University of the Earth, about a development program called the Sustainable Rural Cities – the

biggest of its kind during the administration of Juan Sabines (2006-2012). At the forum, we

discussed the ideas of the program, which was designed to resolve poverty in very marginalized

areas of the state – or in villages effected by “natural disasters” – by bringing together “dis-

persed” communities in urban centers built in the countryside. The strange theoretical funda-

ments of the program soon attracted the attention of a number of critics, who also were pre-

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sent at the forum. These critiques started connecting the program to a wider neoliberal agenda

formulated through the Plan Puebla Panamá – a development plan for the region from central

Mexico to Panama, which focused heavily on investments in infrastructure, and on the benefits

that the low labor costs could bring to the area (see Mexican Government, without date:128).

Mixed with a reading of capitalism in traditional Marxist terms, where the base of capitalism

was understood as lying in the separation of laborers and means of production, inspired by

Marx′s discussion on the “original accumulation” (see Marx, 1999:608), the displacements that

the Sustainable Rural Citiesʼ program planned for were interpreted as the expansion of capital-

ism, which would destroy indigenous ways of life (see, for example, Wilson, 2009, and Zunino

and Pickard, 2008).

In my own fieldwork, ranging from September 2010 to June 2012 – with a more in-

tense period between August 2011 and January 2012, when I lived in one of the “cities”, Santi-

ago el Pinar –, I had problems finding support for this critique, mainly since its fundamental

premise, the displacement of the population, had not occurred. Instead I argued that what the

development program actually did was to exchange and redistribute resources according to

clientelistic networks, ranging from the exchange between the big corporate group, Grupo Sa-

linas and the state government, to the relationship between local authorities, such as the

presidente municipal and the agentes municipales, and the population in Santiago el Pinar. On the

other hand, the program managed to maintain the political discussions in reference to the idea

of development, and used development ideas as propaganda for certain social groups. The

capitalist markets, understood as something at the margin of these processes, and linked to

“rational” capital accumulation, were rather absent in the process I described. Capitalism, I

therefore suggested, could not be easily linked to markets with “rational” consumer behavior,

but had to be understood in relation to clientelistic networks that worked through reciprocal

and hierarchical exchanges of goods and favors (Larsson, 2012).

From this critical standpoint towards the dominant opposition, I could see during the

forum how the difference between academics and Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs)

on the one side, and “beneficiaries” of the program on the other, became evident. To fulfill the

participatory ideal promoted by some of the organizers (the lack of participation was also part

of the critique of the governmental practice in this program, formulated by these same actors)

people from three of the places where the program had been implemented, or that had been

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included in the plans of the program, had been invited; one was excluded, because of political

differences between the “Zapatista Army for National Liberation” (EZLN) and the “Proletari-

an Organization Emiliano Zapata” (OPEZ) – an organization with presence in one of the

planned cities, that practically had taken over the government project and made it theirs. A

large amount of the academics involved in the event supported the EZLN, why also their

school had been chosen for the forum, although the Zapatistas had not been directly included

in the plans of construction of the “cities”. The development program as such, nevertheless,

was seen as a counterinsurgent messure, aiming at destabilizing the supporters of the EZLN.

The participation of a group of inhabitants from one of these “cities”, nevertheless,

had not included the central critiques of the program formulated by the former group, which

considered that the program created a traumatic territorial displacement of populations, includ-

ing a loss of cultural roots and of autonomous control of food production; indigenous cultures

would therefore disappear, and create rootless identities. Instead of longing for their lost land,

the group denounced the lack of employment possibilities in their new town, and when asked

what they would do about their “right to food” that supposedly had been violated, they simply

answered that they were not thinking about starting a case about the issue.

Another group complained that the construction of the Rural City that they had been

promised four years ago, had still not started. This comment was completely ignored by the

other participants in the forum. Instead, a person in the public asked the participants not to

talk about the people from the “cities” as compañeros – persons that take part in the same polit-

ical struggle.

What caught my attention was how the “justice” asked for by the “beneficiaries” of the

program seemingly did not manage to get through to the main part of the audience – although

I thought it actually got through to me. Why and how was this exclusion produced?

In this thesis I will argue that it can be seen as part of a hegemonic process which fol-

lows the tendencies outlined by Antonio Gramsci in The Modern Prince: this means that repre-

sentations of particular interests as such are connected to a subaltern position, which, when the

position changes into “hegemonic” (or dominant) within certain social fields, changes into a

representation of particular interests as if they were common interests. Dominant discourses

therefore excludes what is seen and represented from that standpoint as particular interests

which go against a political program with claims to benefit “everybody”.

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Following the questions outlined above, I will however start discussing understandings

of historiography as such; this includes an analysis of how different understanding of what

history is, and how it should be written includes and excludes events, processes and perspec-

tives. This leads to a discussion about hegemony and hegemonic processes, which I then use to

analyze the history I outline to understand how the “Postmodern Prince” – the idea of the

indigenous peoples as liberating subjects – was created in the first place.

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2. What is historiography?

Miguel Gómez

Now they are living a bit better, better happiness, because it is not the same as the past future, because now it is a bit more civilized, happier. A road… before there was no road, there was no street.1

Miguel Gómez – the first presidente municipal in Santiago el Pinar – explained to me the changes

that the development program “Sustainable Rural Cities” had brought about. The wish for

“civilization” (or “modernity”) is evident (which could be interesting as an argument against

the simple and idealized image of “indigenous people” as deeply embedded in a spiritual

“world view”, and inherently against “modern” projects) but what most caught my attention

was his use of concepts of times. What did he mean by the “past future”? Did it say something

about a perception of how time works, or were common understandings about time said in a

new way?

Time is often used to explain what historiography is. Bloch, for example, argued that

history is “science of men in time” (Bloch, 2001:58, my translation). But what does this actually

mean? If we consider that “time” can be said to have an existence, “men” would always be in

1 “Ahorita están viviendo un poquito más mejor, mejor alegría, porque no es igual como el futuro anterior, porque ya está un poco más civilizado, más alegre. Carretera... antes no había carretera, no había camino...” (My transla-tion from a transcript made of an interview with Miguel Gómez in September 2011).

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time, which makes the definition rather – although not totally – empty: Bloch, with his defini-

tion, excluded other possible concepts, such as “space”. As a description of what many histori-

ans think they do, Bloch′s definition may describe matters in a pretty accurate way. This way of

thinking about history, nevertheless, accepts the existence of time as such. This can become a

problem when we are confronted with views that seem to be dealing with other notions of

time, as the “past future” of Gómez.

But the basic problem is that “time” does not have an objective existence. What we can

perceive is rather bodies in motion (where the bodies constitute “space”); in certain groups at

certain moments, this motion is understood as “time”. “Time” could therefore be described as

a social abstraction that deals with physical changes and relations: a common reference that is

based on the relation between the sun and the earth (and sometimes including other stars). So,

seen from this viewpoint, “history” would be the study of “men” within a discursive frame-

work expressed through the concept of “time”, although what is studied by historians is rather

what I would conceptualize as “bodies in space”, and the ideas that these bodies have about

themselves and the space. I would therefore understand discussions about different notions of

“time” as a discussion considering different abstractions of how to relate “movements of bod-

ies” to each other.

Seeing these differences as different ways to understand “time”, would then rather be

understood as part of a common anthropological practice of othering, as Fabian has pointed at

(Fabian, 1983); the invisible standpoint of anthropologists working at the beginning of the last

century understood “time” as a linear and teleological direction, something that goes on inde-

pendently of what people do, which was contrasted with other uses of “time” – sometimes

without considering that people did not have a notion about “time” as such, but rather used

different events as references (see Evans-Pritchard, 1940). Maybe it would be more interesting

to analyze the references that are being used when describing movement, where ideas about

science, rationality, economical activities, etc., are expressed: what are the events and the dis-

cursive constructs around them that are so important that they are used as references?

So, when Gómez talks about a “past future”, what does he mean? If we compare these

words to other words in the same phrase, we can see that change as well as abstract references

are present (“better”, “now”, “more civilized”, “happier”, and “before”). Although it would be

possible to think about “time” as a circular movement, I would like to propose that Gómez

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was simply talking about the way that the future seemed to be in the past, in comparison to

how future is thought of today. At the same time, as we will see further on, clear cut differ-

ences between the past and the present is not upheld in Gómez′s narratives. Nevertheless,

“history”, as in the idea about “men in time”, cannot be said to be absent in the way that

Gómez orders and represents the world. He tells “histories” linked to different “moments” in

time. During my fieldwork I could see how there was a “history” that was very much shared by

different inhabitants, which treated histories that were not fixed in time: they happened “long

ago”, and were generally said to have been told by “the grandfathers”. The content of the

shorter perspective, which reached about 50 years back in time, depended very much on the

position of the narrator; the positive attitude that Gómez expressed about the development

program, for example, was commonly not shared by members of the opposition.

“History”, in the long perspective, although often seen as mere “history” (that is, with-

out connections to present events, and seemingly told independently of the context where it is

told), could from time to time be connected to events, as when the violent conflict between

different factions – one belonging to the EZLN, and the other to the official party, the Party

of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI) – apparently could be avoided with reference to the

common history in the long perspective.

What interests me here, however, is to underline the processes of exclusion that occur

when references are not shared; part of this exclusion is precisely made by a historiographic

practice that would not include “other narratives” than historian′s “histories”. I do not see this

exclusion as particular to historians, but rather as part of hegemonic processes, as I will discuss

further on. A political activist that had written about Santiago el Pinar, for example, asked me

about a history about a bell that she had heard at different occasions, but that she never had

mentioned in her articles, since it did not make sense to her. This history, as I see it, is actually

an important reference to understand certain struggles in Santiago el Pinar. About this famous

bell, Gómez (in a manner that does not distinguish between past and present tenses) told me

that:

– The bell, the bell first, I will tell you. First the bell. That there goes a person. They saw him that he had his thing up there, where he said, there. It had a hole, there they showed the bell, yes, the bell they showed, up there in the path, where you just were, up there, there it was, there it was that what he saw. They gathered

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their people to say that there is a bell in the earth, one said. But I don′t know if it is true, or if it rather was a brave man [a “magician”] who saw it. But they saw that the bell was there, really, in the path, as he says. They saw what was in the earth, there they found it and everybody looked, to see what. Let′s pull [it] up, because it is the bell to serve the church, the people say and went there, and they went there, everybody went there to see it. Let′s pull it up, everybody say, and they started to pull it up from the earth. There was the bell. There it was. There it was. There it was, and, I don′t know, people say that they started to pull it up. And it wasn′t pos-sible to pull it up! It wasn′t possible to pull it up, it wasn′t possible, because, the thing is that the owner wouldn′t let it go, the “angels” [the “angels” in this zone are rather seen as representatives of the ambivalent being called the “Lord of the Earth”, than the catholic angels, see Ochiai, 1985]... according to what I think, he [the Lord of the Earth] was underneath it. It takes time, it takes time. It is like this, look, here under, under, under, it goes, it goes, it goes under, under, yes, it goes under, they couldn′t pull it up quickly. The people say that the dreamed about it, they dreamed about what it could be. They looked for a new rope, alms, offering, incense, candles, they made a celebration. That′s what they tied it up with, with a stick, they pulled up the bell. But it takes time. Now they took it up. Yes, it′s true, that′s i show my grandfather speaks and all. - And what happened to the bell? - Well, should I tell you the truth? What they knew, there was a problem, I don’t

know which it was, and they stole it, they stole it. They say that it went to Zinacantán [an “indigenous” village half an hour from Santiago el Pinar by car] they took it, because down there, bigger, bigger. Wiser. They took it by night.

- And then? - It didn′t pay attention, it didn′t come back. They say that it goes there, the bell.

- And is it still in Zinacantán? - I don′t know very well if they went to ask, or if they asked for it, who knows,

but it didn′t, it didn′t give [ya no da], and they took our bell. I don′t know if it is till now, or if it broke [other stories say that a bolt of lightning, a symbol of the Lord of the Earth, struck the bell and broke it; a bell in Zinacantán has actually been broken that way], I don′t know. That′s how it is. That′s how things are [my translation from Spanish; Gómez′s native tongue is Tsotsil, which I do not speak fluently].2

2 – La campana, la campana primero, voy a decir. Primero la campana. Que allá anda una persona. Lo miraron que tiene su cosa allá arribita, donde dice ahí estaba ahoyado, ahí lo mostraron la campana, sí, la campana mostraron, allá arriba en el camino, donde estaba ahorita, allá arriba, ahí estaba, ahí estaba la que la vio. Llegan a juntar a su gente, a decir que hay campana en la tierra, dice uno. Pero no sé si es cierto o será más hombre valiente [“brujo”] la que la vio. Pero miraron la campana que estaba ahí, efec-tivamente en su caminito igual como le dice, miraron qué cosa hay en la tierra, ahí lo encontraba y mira-ron todos, y verlo qué. Vamos a arrancar, dice la gente, vamos a arrancar, porque es la campana para servir a la iglesia, dice la gente y fueron allá, y fueron allá, todos fueron allá a verlo. Vamos a sacar, dice toda la gente, y empezaron a arrancar en la tierra. Ahí estaba la campana. Ahí estaba. Ahí estaba. Ahí estaba, y no sé, dice la gente comenzaron a arrancar. ¡Y no pudo sacar! No pudo sacar, no pudo porque, la cosa es que el dueño no se da, los 7anjeles [como lo escribe Ochiai 1985], según creo es que estaba abajo. Lleva tiempo, lleva tiempo, está así, estaba así, mira, acá abajo, abajo, se va, va, va bajando, bajan-do, va bajando, sí, bajando, no pudo sacar pronto. Dice que lo soñaron la gente, soñaron que cosa puede hacer. Buscaron un lazo nuevo, con limosna, de ofrenda, incienso, velas, hicieron fiesta. Con esto lo

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This history, then, normally goes beyond the interests of journalists, academics and NGO:s, as

it does not directly talk about their experiences in relation to the development program. What

is then excluded could be understood as a way to frame contemporary events, as when I heard

rumors saying that the governor had stolen a bell from the place where the rural city was built.

The bell, as I see it, is a symbol of the people in Santiago el Pinar, but can also represent there

ties to the leaders, which would then function as representatives of the Lord of the Earth: land,

people and leaders are then connected, and threatened by the development program, according

to the gossips – although the members of the ruling coalition tended to discredit the story, as

they, I would suggest, understood its meaning. We could say that it made sense for the ones

that knows the referential framework.

This said, I do not want to suggest that these referential frameworks are totally separat-

ed, nor that it is impossible to understand “other” frameworks, nor that the same questions

can be discussed in different ways. The understanding of history that I have outlined from my

representation of history making in Santiago el Pinar could, for example, be compared with

discussions in other contexts about “history”. We could think of Benedetto Croce, who made

a difference between “chronicles” and “history”, where he thought of “history” as contempo-

rary history, while he considered “chronicles” to be past history, “dead” history. This “dead”

amarraron, con un palo, lo arrancaron la campana. Pero lleva tiempo. Ahora lo sacaron. Sí, es cierto, así hablaba mi abuelo y todo. – ¿Y qué pasó con la campana? – Bueno, ¿te digo la verdad? La que supieron, hubo problema, no sé cuál es, y lo robaron, lo robaron. Dicen que se fue en Zinacantán, lo llevaron, porque más abajo, más grande, más grande. Más sabio. Lo llevaron en la noche. – ¿Y luego? – Ya no hizo caso, ya no revolvió, dice que allá se va, la campana. – ¿Y ahí sigue en Zinacantán ahora? – No sé decir bien si fueron a preguntar, o van a pedir, quién sabe, pero ya no, ya no da, y nos robaron la campana. Pero no sé si es hasta ahorita, o ya se quebró, no sé. Así está. Así está la cosa. – Y lo que me han contado de una cruz también... – Ah, sí, también una cruz, con Cristo, colgadito, la primera... junto creo, no ves que aquí no hay mucho en la tierra. Hay un arroyo de allá atracito del cerrito, un arroyito, que estaba viendo, arrancando tam-bién, lo arrancaron. [...] Ahí lo arrancaron, la gente la misma de aquí, es el mismo terreno, aquí el terreno de Santiago el Pinar, ahí lo arrancaron también. Pero muchos hablan también que lo robaron, dicen. Lo robaron también. Fueron de Tenejapa. No sé cuál es la gente que, qué cosa de... fueron allá que era costumbre, tradición, fueron el 24 de julio allá, pasan fiesta [de Santiago el santo patrón]. Allá lo llevaron su cruz como cargaban, con ese invitan creo. Ahí empezaron la bronca. La bronca... allá dice que hubo contra, y lo cerraron la iglesia, y lo dejaron ahí. Me ha contado mi abuelo. Lo robaron. - ¿Y de qué era la cruz, era también valiosa? - Valiosa, tiene listones, tiene todo, fierro creo, fierro, fierro [probablemente una traducción de la palabra tsotsil “takin”, que también se podría traducir como un metal precioso]... así es, amiguito, así está.

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history, anyway, could be brought to life again, if it made sense in the contemporary world to

the person who heard or read it. “History”, then, would be situational and relational (Croce

1920:19).

This way to understand history is very different from empiricist historiography, which

was influential above all in Europe at the beginning of the last century. History, following the

ideas of Croce, would then depend on the listener, and his or her understanding. Yet another

way to understand how, by whom and when history is made, was put forward by Marc Bloch:

history, according to Bloch, is what the historians make: the product of The Historian′s Craft, as

his famous book is called. But what makes historians′ history different from “mere narratives”

– Bloch would suggest – is their “scientific” approach (Bloch, 1954:11). What I have outlined

as “shared referential frameworks”, could be seen as close to this kind of separation, but the

important difference is the hierarchical element of the differentiation that Bloch made.

Although both Croce′s and Bloch′s proposals are interesting on a descriptive level, I

therefore find them difficult to accept as a definition that permits you to delimit a phenome-

non. To name something “history” would then depend on the authority of some kind of histo-

rian′s guild, or on the reader or listener. I find it much easier to accept that there are no clear

cut differences between different modes of representing past and present events, why a delimi-

tation of the concept of “history” is not possible to make – just unstable approximations. I

would like to suggest that we could think of more or less convincing ways to argue about more

or less “relevant” issues to a certain group of people, but that kind of idea would have to leave

the epithet “scientific” behind – or accept that “science” is made in similar ways. The separa-

tion of different kinds of narrative in a hierarchical framework – I would suggest – has more to

do with how historians think of and represent themselves, but also of how otherness is

thought of and acted on.

I would then see “history” as a practice that insert “men in time”, but also as “bodies in

space and the representations that are made of the bodies and space”. These practices are

made in partly different ways in different – although sometimes overlapping – referential

frameworks. The understanding in each of these frameworks, nevertheless, is not stable: at the

same time as the framework puts limits, it cannot delete divergent understandings of an event.3

3 Eco talked about this in terms of the “openness” and “closure” of a message (Eco 1994:43-61; 152-155; 179).

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These practices, however, are not without a purpose: they do not simply have an exist-

ence. If we are talking about “history” in the terms of Croce, they are also used for something,

but also produced within a certain economical, political and military context.

2.1. What is the purpose of historiography?

In the introduction The historian′s craft, Bloch started with the seemingly naïve question formu-

lated by a child to a friend of his: “[t]ell me Daddy. What is the use of history?” The naivety of

the question is contrasted by the stark context where Bloch formulated his answer: the Second

World War, which was to take Bloch′s live; Bloch was executed by German troops a year be-

fore the end of the war (Le Goff, in Bloch, 2001:9). Despite the rather abstract character of his

meditation about history, contemporary events are definitely present at the doorstep of the

narrative: the German occupation of Paris is mentioned to re-introduce the discussion on the

purpose of history. Furthermore, in a note that was not originally included in the text, Bloch

expressed his preoccupation with his situation through lamentations about the imperfections

of the text that he explained with his lack of access to libraries, and a worry about the possibil-

ity of ever being able to fill out the gaps that this had caused (Bloch, 2001:52).

The humanity – and diversity – of a given situation, which Bloch argued for in histori-

cal writing over all, was therewith introduced in the theoretical discussion. In his argument,

certain positivist positions were targeted as vehicles for a reductive narrative that aimed at cre-

ating theories – which easily could be expanded to a clearly political use of history – as they

excluded acts that would complicate their theories, but also as they reduced the poetry of hu-

man life, the pleasure, or as Leibniz expressed it, “the thrill of learning singular things” (Bloch,

1954:7).

The argument for a complexity that goes beyond reductive theories was put forward in

this way, implicitly directed towards political use of history that legitimates domination, ex-

pressed as a critique of positivist commitment with practical action. (And the noise of the

German troops on the doorsteps is heard again.)

This somewhat anti-theoretical and, implicitly, anti-political standpoint is, of course,

profoundly theoretical and political, but Bloch chose to express his elections in terms of “re-

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sponsibility” (Ibid: 11). This responsibility is found in the inclusion and exclusion of events,

the classification, and the commitment with knowledge – rather than the wish to produce “a

better life”. The vagueness of “responsibility” could of course be filled with concreteness

through practice; at the same time, the term projects an image of the own decisions in specific

cases as “correct”. The term “responsibility” therefore could be argued to hide moral and po-

litical views and interests. The political (and moral) direction is despite all absent in the explicit

meditations of Bloch. The craftsman of Bloch, put in other words, seems untroubled about

who owns the shop he worked in: who explicitly or implicitly – through political (and ideologi-

cal), economical, military means – directed the premises of his historiographic practice.

To put a rather extreme example to underline the importance of the argument: in his

Orientalism, Edward Said analyzed the simultaneous production by European intellectuals

(mainly French and English) of the Self and the Other, in their histories about the people in

what they called “the Orient”. The imperial “shop owners”, was here taken for granted – the

political, economical and military framework – but even explicitly legitimized. In the studies

about the Orient, academic scholars as well as amateurs found the exotic, the wild and sexual,

but also the mysterious, etc. At the same time, the Orient – that is, the Other, the object – was

connected to the imperial Self, the subject, in a subordinate position: a position that was legit-

imized through ideas about race, “the white man′s burden” to civilize the world, etc. (Said

1978:32-36).

Would this way of making history be considered by Bloch as “responsible” and part of

“what historians do”? It seems difficult to find arguments that would not depend on political

(and moral) considerations.

To get around this problem, one could think of a widening of the plurality proposes by

Bloch when using the word “men” instead of “man” to explain the historical craftsmanship:

we could think of historical studies as “the crafts of the historians” instead of Bloch′s “the

historian′s craft”, but also add political, economical and military conditions for historiographic

production.

This more contextual understanding of historiography, and the political role of the his-

torians, has also been discussed for some time. The political standpoint and direction Carlo

Ginzburg expresses in The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller could be

seen as emblematic for a historiography that started to question the implicit support to ruling

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elites historians had made through histories about kings, battles, etc. Here we are dealing with

an historian who searches for answers to questions of the type that Brecht formulated in

“Questions from a Worker who Reads”:

Who built Thebes of the 7 gates? In the books you will read the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock? (Brecht 1935)

Brecht′s critique, then, deals with the implicit perspective used when History is written,

and asks how historiography would look like if the subject of the writing would be the “worker

who reads”. This perspective questions two other perspectives at the same time: the implicit

class perspective, which sides with the dominant classes, but also a change from what Lennart

Lundmark has termed the time of B-series, an “objective” time, and A-series, an “individual”

time (Dahlgren and Florén 1996:53). This difference is also interesting because of the differ-

ence that Dahlgren and Florén make between “memory” and “history”, where the first is con-

nected to the individual, and the second to society as a whole. History, nevertheless, as

memory, cannot be constructed on a basis that goes beyond human perception and interpreta-

tion. Of course, we can talk of perspectives, scales, etc., but – as I have already argued when

discussing Bloch′s differentiation between “history” and “mere narrative” – making clear cut

differences between one thing and the other will always be difficult.

Here, Dahlgren′s and Florén′s somewhat confusing argument could also be worth men-

tioning. At the same time as they mean that the term “collective” memory gives an inaccurate

image of a society that can think for itself, as an individual, they accept that “cultures” can re-

member and forget (47-48). Of course, neither “societies” nor “cultures” have memories in

this sense, and do not, as they suggest, choose certain events as essential, and others as unes-

sential. This process through which these elections are made, and by whom, is – as already

stated – one of the central questions of this thesis.

18

3. Hegemonic processes and historiography

How, for example – as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has argued –, are the subalterns excluded in

historical documents, and by whom? In Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988) Spivak discussed differ-

ent expressions and understandings about the banning of sati - a suicide made by wives at their

husband′s funerals – and noticed how the subjects of the act, the women, were never heard.

Only colonial administrators and hindi ruling classes are speaking in the archives.

This, she argued, is part of a larger tradition in western academy, where, even in coun-

terhegemonic writing – as the writings of Ginzburg could be understood – the subalterns are

always represented by somebody else, and therefore captured within the theoretical framework

of the writer. The subalterns, she then argued, cannot speak. Or, rather, the ruling classes can-

not listen, due to certain theoretical model that excludes their voices; even the ones that aim at

their inclusion can therefore only embrace the subjects they have created as excluded, produc-

ing new exclusions. The term “subaltern”, for example, tends to be used in plain economical

terms, and therefore exclude upper class women who are therefore silenced. They had not

been a theoretical subject, and were therefore the real subalterns, the ones without voice.

This way of understanding silences and voices – rather than talking about how a “cul-

ture” or a “society” remembers and forgets – connects domination with processes of exclusion

and inclusion which it puts at the centre of the discussion. At the same time it points at the

problems of representation of subaltern discourse; an important aspect of this problem is how

the subaltern voice is provocative in a way that the dominant voice is not. While there is no

need to explain why a dominant voice is being represented (the representation of the dominant

is made in a “natural” way), representations of the subalterns need explanations, even in “liber-

ating” discourses, where the author supposedly wants to support the ones he or she is repre-

senting. The existence and the translation of the narrative of Gómez, for example, raised a

number of questions when I wrote this text. How should his way of speaking be translated,

and why did I like the way he talks: did I feel some kind of authenticity, the privilege of being

able to represent what had not been represented? Was it necessary to use the whole narrative,

or would it be enough with a reference to the history about the bell? Should he be treated as

“Don Miguel”, as I call him, or should I use his last name, as for the rest of the authors?

Should he actually be treated as an author, or as some other kind of person? How should I

engage with his use of time references? Was I producing an “Other”, or was I trying to repre-

19

sent an excluded voice? How was I controlling his message? Etc, etc. The fact that the same

number of questions did not occur to me when writing about Bloch, for example, is an indica-

tion of the difficulties of dealing with discourses that are easily understood as “subaltern. How

can we understand this uneasiness?

In some brief notes in The Modern Prince, Gramsci proposed an analysis that is interest-

ing to frame these problems of representation. This analysis includes questions about how

persons and groups represent themselves and are represented in specific relations, to advice

“the Modern Prince” – the party of the working class (Gramsci, 1972:13) – how it should act

to become hegemonic in relation to other parties and forces. This is done through an outline

of the central aspects of the “relations of force”, that is, the positions that different groups

have in relation to one another in the fields of economical, political and military force. The

interest of Gramsci, of course, is to find “incurable contradictions” in the “structure” – “or-

ganic” crisis – and to know how to separate them from “occasional” crisis, but also without

falling into excesses of “economism” (that reduces the “motor of history” to economy only)

nor “ideologism” (that reduces it to pure ideology).

Economically, this kind of study deals with the difficult task to analyze the “develop-

ment of the material forces” and the relations in the process of production (and their contra-

dictions). As to the military forces, the analysis aims at establishing the relation between poli-

tics and military forces, where the subordinate classes or groups have a less clear separation

than the dominant classes or groups. The economical and military relations, nevertheless, are

seen as mediated by the political forces. Here, Gramsci outlines three different moments that

he describes as the passage from the “structure” to the “superstructure”.4 The first moment is

seen as “economical-corporative”, where certain persons think that they should support other

persons in a similar position, but they do not fell the unity with a vaster social group. During

the second moment, the consciousness of unity is instituted between these groups, but they

still move on a merely economical level, fighting for participation within the given political,

economical and military framework, including claims for recognition, legal and political equali-

ty with the dominant groups, and to participate and reform laws and administration. The third

moment is reached when there is a “consciousness” about the proper interests as exceeding

4 In Marxist writings, “structure” is usually seen as the economical basis, that is, how production is organized and labor divided. The “superstructure” corresponds to laws, ideology, etc.

20

the own group, and can and should become the interests of other subordinate groups. This

moment includes that the group takes control of the state and project itslef as the expression

of “universal” or “national” interests. This group is coordinated with subordinate groups, and

conflicts between different actors are seen as continuously overcoming of unstable equilibri-

um, with a limit in the crude economical interests (Ibid:53-58). In other words, the hegemonic

process in the political field deals with a transformation of the presentation of particular inter-

ests as bound to certain groups into a presentation of them as global interests, a “volunté

générale”, as Voltaire would have it. When a subaltern group achieves more military, economic

and political power in relation to dominant groups – that is, the correlation of forces changes –

the particular interests that impulse the formation of groups start to be presented as “general

interests”. The particularity of the interests is therefore “hidden” in an ideological corps.

Although this analysis is based on a particular reading of certain processes in Italy, it is

interesting as a theoretical framework to analyze other situations. However, if we are to take

Gramscis ideas seriously, this particularity should not be taken as a discourse that necessarily

defends universal tendencies.

An important aspect of Gramsci′s thoughts which has often been overlooked is the

concept of “hegemony”. Rather than the common understanding of hegemony as “domina-

tion”, authors like Raymond Williams has noticed how hegemony is used by Gramsci to talk

about processes and struggles, and not about plain “domination” (Williams 2000:129-136).

William Roseberry has therefore argued that hegemony should rather be understood as a “lan-

guage of contention”, of struggle rather than consent. Hegemony, understood in this way, in-

clude:

the words, images, symbols, forms, organizations, institutions, and movements used by subordinate populations to talk about, understand, confront, accom-modate themselves to, or resist their domination [which] are shaped by the process of domination itself. What hegemony constructs, then, is not a shared ideology but a common material and meaningful framework for living through, talking about, and acting upon social orders characterized by domination (Roseberry 1994).

21

To analyze the process of hegemony, then, is to analyze the relations of force, where the “lan-

guage of contention” could be seen as an important factor, which frames the economical, politi-

cal and military relations.

So, for example, when Ginzburg proposes a study of “popular culture” (which takes

distance to the inter-class concept of “history of mentalities”), he could be seen as a participant

in this process, from a position that corresponds to the first step Gramsci outlined; we could

probably think of Ginzburg′s approach as an intent to be part of the formulation of a “popu-

lar” ideology, which includes a proper historiography. The necessity to explain the choice of

perspective, at the same time – if we follow Gramsci – could be read as a necessity born out of

his position as a representative of subaltern interests, that are seen as particular within the lim-

its of certain relations of force. The same necessity would not be equally important if the posi-

tion would be closer to dominant interests. A similar analysis could be used to understand why

the discourse of Gómez is easily seen as problematic: Gómez′ subaltern position does not au-

tomatically give him the “right” to appear in discussions about historiography.

There are, nevertheless, different ways to deal with the contradictions that the

historigraphic practices (or “narrative” practices in general) are part of, and that Ginzburg has

pointed at.

Donna Haraway, for example, has proposed a “partial perspective” and “situated

knowledge” as a critique of texts that do not seem to have an author, as if they came from

nowhere – that is, in Gramsci′s theoretical outline, a dominant discourse. Underlining the im-

possibility to withdraw from power relations, she argues that such intents – that is, to formu-

late ideas from “nowhere” – are “irresponsible” (Haraway, 1991:191). A “responsible” way to

deal act within these power relations would then be the “situated knowledge”, building on a

“partial perspective”. The idea that she presents is thought to resolve simple oppositions of the

kind subjective/objective knowledge, where the critique of objectivist claims often end up; the

negation of universalism easily leads to relativism, where no perspective can claim to be more

important or true than others. But – Haraway argues – the opposite of objective is not subjec-

tive, but a partial perspective, which can construct “objective” knowledge within the limits that

the subject and his or her perspective put. In other words, it is a way to call attention to the

premises of knowledge production, and to be able to formulate “real” political proposals,

22

which accept certain knowledge on certain premises – an attempt, then, to go beyond a mere

critique of scientific representations.

As Haraway points out, we are not dealing here with a completely coherent subject,

with a position that is unproblematic to fix on a paper. It is rather an attempt to get beyond

ideas about legitimate standpoints of announcement, where personal “experience” 5 of a situa-

tion is argued to be more important than a theoretical understanding of the problem that is

being discussed.

Haraway′s argument certainly makes such explanations necessary. “Experience” and

“position” are words that easily result in discourses of truth, as a negative pole of the discours-

es from nowhere. The interesting balance act that Haraway is trying to do is then to produce

knowledge which do not make claims of truth based neither on absence nor on presence. The

problem of absent writers is not the lack of truth value, but simply on their projection of their

ideas as neutral, abstract, etc. What is sought for – to return to the metaphor I introduced in

the discussion of Bloch′s ideas – is the shop owner and the context of knowledge production.

Seen from the perspective of hegemonic processes, I nevertheless would like to ask if

the proposal that Haraway makes can be understood from outside of the somewhat subordi-

nate position that feminism (which she defends) had at the moment she wrote the article.

Could the kind of perspective that she proposes survive the next “moment”, towards domina-

tion, or is she proposing that a society can be created where domination is not at hand at all?

At the same time, cannot the ethical and political emphasis that we find in Haraway and

Ginzburg limit certain ways of thinking and making questions that could be important for a

certain viewpoint, and produce self censorship because of the effects of utterances – forgetting

that “power” is one possible problem, and one possible perspective among many?

An alternative way that hegemonic processes could be studied would be through the

“archeology of knowledge” that Michel Foucault proposed. In his L′archéologie du savoir, he sug-

gested to follow the organization of the field of statements (énoncés) where “discourses” emerge

(Foucault, 1969:76): the “discourse” of Foucault is a practice, something that unites words and

objects. In this way, he tried to get beyond established categories by concentrating on the es-

tablishment of these same categories – a project that looks similar to the Gramscian study of

hegemonic processes, specific changes in the relations of force.

5 By “experience” I mean a particular understanding built on personal perception.

23

As Bloch, Foucault criticized the over-theorizing of certain historiographic practices

(Foucault called the theories “strategies”) which put events together in totalized entities, and

which are projected towards a future that is implied in the totality lined out: the discussion

with Marxist determinism and economism is apparently underlying these comments. Foucault

proposed that academic disciplines do not search for a given object, but create their objects,

excluding at the same time diverging perspectives – much in the same way that Spivak argued

about the sati. The academy is here seen as one of the institutions that are made to materialize

a certain discourse. What Foucault proposed, then, was (beside the discursive emergence) to

look for fissures in these historical monuments, which can make them crack.

The critical perspective of Foucault is difficult to deny. At the same time, the specific

discussions that Foucault had, for example with the communist party, are projected as abstract

conflicts of abstract ideas, which tosses him back into the theorizing moments he criticizes.

But although the withdrawal from contemporary debates is not possible, it is certainly not the

same to formulate questions with a clear political direction as to formulate questions from ob-

served frictions – or even to search for those frictions.

To “situate” this discussion again, as Haraway would require, this discussion – and the

positive finishing with the ideas of Foucault – has then to do with a moment of exclusion of

narratives that I observed at the forum about the Rural Cities, and which I connect with cer-

tain histories about a liberating subject which leave so much out of the picture that also people

are started to be left out (in the name of Great Principles). That is also why I, in what follows,

would like to remember about some historical processes that could present frictions in the

dominant historiography that I see as implicit in the exclusion that I observed: some histories

that, like the bell, create the necessary referential framework to be able to talk about present

events. I the next chapter I will therefore focus on the emergence of (one of) the “Postmodern

Princes” in wider hegemonic processes, through a “language of contention” called hegemony,

and on how this can be connected to the exclusions that appeared in the forum about the Sus-

tainable Rural Cities.

24

4. The emergence of the postmodern prince

“Pan American Unity” (1940) at the City College of San Fransisco, mural painting by Diego Rivera

4.1. The modern project: the Mexican revolutionary state

It seems as if you really are free men. You escaped from the indigenous siege and have entered to the more ample, free and satisfactory life of Mexico. You stopped being indigenous and you have made yourselves Mexican. Your lib-eration came from within yourselves, immortal seed of encouragement and ambition [...] I urge you, as Mexican citizens that you are, to conserve your indigenous loyalty. You're like a big brother, the brother who, when he has reached maturity, has been located in a more even and easy land that the pleasant life of Mexico represents. Do not forget the younger ones who still inhabit the cliffs and hard lands, who does not speak the language of Mexico, who suffer of misery and ignorance, who do not know anything else than their poor and forgotten villages, ignoring the protection of the larger moth-erland (Sánez in Escalona, 1998:32; my translation).

Short after the independence from Spain, the Mexican government started to use a flag that

connected it to the empire and myths of the Mexicas (or “Aztecs”, as the people is called in

certain historiographies because of the name of the place of their origin: according to Mexica

mythology, the Mexicas came from Aztlan). The eagle that is found at its centre is an illustra-

tion of the myth of the foundation of Mexico-Tenohctitlan (now Mexico City). In this way, the

governments following the independence projected a continuation with the Mexicas, symbol-

25

ized as representatives of Mexican unity, and characterized the colonial time as a rupture that

had to be healed through national unity. In this way, distance was marked with Spain, but also

tried to create an identity that could work as a defense from US expansion. At the same time,

the interests that made wealthy criollos (descendants from Spaniards) impulse independence

were hidden: the criollos were mainly preoccupied by the heavy taxes that followed the costly

imperial wars in which Spain had been involved (Zoraida, 2004:113-136). The “Indian”, then,

had a central place in Mexican nationalism that began to take its form.

The liberating figure, nevertheless, was the mestizo, the modern man, thought of as a

mix of European and Indian (Mexica) traditions. The mural painting above, by Diego Rivera –

one of the most important painters of the Mexican nationalism (his third wife, Frido Kahlo,

has also been incorporated fully into Mexican nationalist narratives) – gives a physical image of

these ideas. On the left – which normally symbolizes the past in interpretative systems con-

nected with the Latin alphabet – we find the harmonious indigenous past, where the imperial

aspects of Mexica rule is excluded, and the scientific knowledge underlined. On the right, the

future, or “modernity”, we see the European equivalence. In the center “tradition” and “mo-

dernity” is put together by the liberating subject of post-revolutionary Mexican nationalism:

the working man, a mestizo who has left his indigenous past; the same ideals are also visible in

the speech of Sánez quoted above, that he (probably) gave to the inhabitants of Etúcuaro, Mi-

choacán, as part of his involvement in the state indigenista project that aimed at “acculturating”

(or integrating) the “Indian” population to “Mexico” (the mestizo subject of liberation).

But the mural of Rivera is also interesting as it excludes another important liberating

subject in Mexican nationalism: the campesino, the farmer who owns his own land. One of the

central quotes of the Mexican revolution, connected to the image of the revolutionary

Emiliano Zapata, was that “land belongs to the one who works it (la tierra es de quien la trabaja).

The land question was also one of the central ones for the post-revolutionary governments,

which was expressed by the agrarian reform. Much has been said about the effects of this re-

form; it should however be clear that it worked as an important piece for the central govern-

ment to create stability after the revolution, an even more urgent need for the ruling class after

the assassination of the elected president Álvaro Obregón in 1928, and the economical crisis of

1929, which also hit Mexico hard.

26

With the economical crisis, exports as well as imports fell, which became a problem to

a government that depended on the export – a dependency that was inherited from colonial

times. A corporate system slowly took its form, where the agrarian reform was a way to tie

people to the state project – a state completely dominated by what was to be the Party of the

Institutionalized Revolution, (PRI) through “gifts”: mainly in the form of land. The way that

the Mexican government – as well as a great number of other governments all around the

world – tried to get out of the crisis was to impulse national industrialization through tariffs

and economic support to industries, at the same time as attempts were made to render the

food production more efficient, so that salaries of the industrial workers could be held down.

Important industries were nationalized, where the gas production is an important example, not

just economically, but also symbolically; this nationalization has been used in nationalist rheto-

ric over the years, and a national holyday of the expropriation is also celebrated, despite im-

portant political changes in the country. Other important reforms – following Keynesian ideas

of the welfare state – as the expansion of the capacity in the universities to receive students,

and different reforms in social security, managed substantial changes in the lives of the popula-

tion (Aboites, 2004:263-270)

In philosophy, literature, etc., a rather self confident discussion evolved around the idea

of the Mexican identity – which also the mural painting of Rivera is an example of – which

spread to the rest of Latin America.6 This discussion became intertwined with a historicist phi-

losophy that criticized Universalist claims and emphasized the particularities of each region,

which fitted the discussions about identity well.7 The Liberationist Philosophy, connected to an

important Marxist tradition in Latin America – inspired by the tumultuous year of 1968, espe-

6 Two very influential Mexican authors in this field were José Vasconcelos and Samuel Ramos; Ramos was espe-cially important for the Mexican Nobel price winner, Octavio Paz, as is obvious in his extremely popular El laberinto de la soledad. 7http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Gaos and http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exilio_republicano_espa%C3%B1ol_en_M%C3%A9xico This historicist under-standing was heavily inspired by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega, who′s disciple José Gaos came to Mexico as a refugee from the civil war in Spain, as a very large amount of intellectuals did, some 6-7 000 persons. One of Gaos′ disciples, Leopoldo Zea, is also worth mentioning as one of the major instigator of what has become known as “Latin American Philosophy”, which, then, has stressed the historical particularity and identity in Latin America. (See also Castro 1998).

The intellectual impulse from Spain in these years could probably be compared with the impulses the USA had during the Second World War, through the immigration of Jewish and other groups of persecuted intel-lectuals; the Mexican government invited Spanish Republican intellectuals to work in calm in Mexico, where they founded La Casa de España, today the prestigious Colegio de México.

27

cially in Mexico City (Tlatelolco) and Argentina (Cordobazo), beside the European and US

protests – could also be tied to this philosophical and artistic movement.8

This set of discussions, I would say, came to Chiapas through the Liberation Theology,

inspired by a Philosophy of Liberation that grew strong after the Second Vatican Council, and

connected to ideas about identity and (materialist) historicist understanding of the particular

contexts in Chiapas. These ideas were mixed with certain Catholic ideals, as the community as

the base of the religious life.

But before we get to this point, the Mexican state had first established its influence in

the regions that became of particular interest for guerrilleros and priests alike, in the areas domi-

nated by the “indigenous” peoples (the distinction between “Spanish” and “Indigenous” vil-

lages is a heritage of the Spanish colonialism). And it was the agrarian reform that came to be

the central piece in the introduction of the post-revolutionary state also in the highlands of

Chiapas: locally, the agrarian reform is referred to as “the second war” (“the first war” refers to

the war of independence). Within the general necessity of popular support, state bureaucrats

started to get influence in the highlands through the occupation and take over of land, which

was given to the “indigenous” population. A local ruling class was created in the different mu-

nicipalities, which were tied to the official party (PRI). The young ruling class broke with tradi-

tional ways of making politics, and displaced older ruling classes. After being in power for dec-

ades, this new ruling class, nevertheless, started to defend “tradition” and “customs”, under-

stood in new ways, which benefited the new ruling class. The official party (PRI) used a rheto-

ric where these “traditions” should be respected, which in practice meant that they kept on

supporting the local ruling classes. This ruling class, it is worth noting, organized and con-

trolled the labor force, especially meeting the needs of the coffee plantations in the western

parts of the state – an important drug above all in the industries in Europe and the USA (Rus

2004).

But the migration to the coffee fields was not only due to brutal force. The countryside

in Chiapas had significant problems absorbing its growing population. Beside the new land

that was opened up through the agrarian reform – and on its margins – the coffee plantations

could, despite often very tough labor conditions, offer a relief to low incomes from the own

agrarian production. Over the years, the migration to the cities in the region would be another

8 For a general outline of Latin American Philosophy, see Dussel 2003.

28

“way out”, which was a much more marked process in other parts of the country. The politics

of the modern Mexican state priorized economic growth through industrialization and urbani-

zation, which created a fundamental change in the Mexican society, which with the time be-

came present also in Chiapas: already in 1960, a majority of the Mexicans lived in urban areas

(Aboites 2004:275).

This important change, from a rural to an urban society, coincided in time with various

very significant changes. In 1959, the Cuban revolutionaries took over the state, and aimed at

creating a communist society, which influenced Marxists in the whole continent, Mexico in-

cluded. The Mexican state also used left wing rhetoric, and did not succumb to US demands to

back up the economical embargo they had initiated. This rhetoric, and a practice of socialist

influenced education, worried important sectors of businessmen and churchmen alike. The

church rallied under the parole Cristianismo sí, comunismo no, and the most important business-

men, not more than 30, started organizing themselves (mainly through the Mexican Council of

Businessmen, CMHN).

This reduced number of very powerful businessmen is also an indication of the rising

economical differences that had become more and more visible (Ibid:282-83). The impressive

economic growth that the postwar time had implied for Mexico, started to get more shaky,

which followed global trends of what often has been considered a model in crisis; David Har-

vey has explained this forthcoming crisis as a result of reaching the limits of a corporative

model including big government, big capital and big labor unions, which could keep up mass

production and mass consumption. According to Harvey, these limits had to do, on the one

hand, with a much more intense competition from the countries where US capital had helped

to build up the industries after the war – which had served as an insurance from communist

influence in postwar Europe. On the other hand, Harvey mentions the problems that mainly

the USA faced with the closed market, as the Mexican, that effectively limited commercial ex-

pansion for US-based companies (Harvey, 1990).

A partially alternative way to understand the situation, inspired by the theories about

imperialism put forward by Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1963), would be to understand the “end of

the model” as an end of the possibilities for the globally dominant US capital to increase. This

would accept the problems put forth by Harvey, but emphasize the importance of the compe-

tition between capitalists in different countries, and the tendency towards monopolies. The

29

difference is that while Harvey sees a system in crisis, a theoretical model based on Lenin′s

writings would see a specific moment in the capitalist accumulation in what Lenin understood

as the imperialist phase of capitalism (although it is difficult to see how capitalism has worked

without imperialism…). What Lenin argued, but also – with much more emphasis – Rosa Lux-

emburg (1913; among others), was that the competition between capitalists would lead to wars,

such as the world wars. This, according to Lenin, should be seen as a “normal” phase of capi-

talist accumulation under imperialism – although critical for the people experiencing this form

of competition, which also offered opportunities to suggest other ways of organizing society.

The implication of this “crisis”, then, could be read as one phase in an overall tendency

towards monopolies. The shift from industrial to financial capital that Harvey suggested was

part of the crisis in the early 1970s, would in this sense also be part of a tendency that Lenin

observed at the beginning of the 20th century.9 Put in other terms, Harvey′s insistency in the

relationship between capital and labor – a relationship typically central to Marxist scholars,

since change towards socialism is thought to come out of this relationship – makes him under-

estimate the role of capitalist (and workers′, etc.) factions for the capitalist mode of production.

Independent of the interpretation, the political and economical orientation seemed

deemed to change on global, national and local scales. The modern corporative state, tied to

one party and one prince started to become obsolete. Following an interpretation inspired by

Lenin, the capital – primarily US based – needed to widen its horizons, and not be locked up

in a tight relationship with a state government.

9 This way of reasoning also has implications on how to read the finance crisis started in 2008. Although Harveys explanation probably is correct on one level – that is, in general terms, that with the decreasing salaries, which were a logical outcome of the crisis of the 70s, workers would not be able to pay for what was produced. The point that is missing in Harvey′s explanation, nevertheless, is that this process could be seen as part of a competi-tion for monopoly, which at least one big bank lost. The question is if this process has created greater concentra-tion of capital, and therefore could be seen as part of general tendencies of capital accumulation under imperial-ism, and therefore not as a crisis of the system.

30

4.2. The projects of postmodernity: the new liberating subject

The economical and political crisis in Mexico became visible on important occasions as the

student protests of 1968, which I have already mentioned, followed by a very brutal govern-

mental response, but also through the increasing protests at large. In 1973, the Bretton Woods

system broke down, and short after, the oil prices were steeply raised in response to US sup-

port to Israel during the Yom Kippur war. The enormous gains of some of the OPEC coun-

tries were soon brought into the global finance systems, which made it very attractive to take

loans, due to the low interests. At the same time, Mexico had severe economical problems, and

had to recur to the IMF in 1976. Loans were given against the “structural reforms” that the

IMF has made itself famous for. Shortly after, in 1978, new very big findings of oil were made

in Mexico, and the president López Portillo announced that Mexico had to prepare to adminis-

trate its abundance (Aboites 2004:289). New, enormous loans were taken. As the oil prices

went down and interests up, starting in 1981, the Mexican state had to declare itself bankrupt

in 1982. This year could at the same time be seen as the beginning of a new period, usually

referred to as “neoliberal”: Harvey refer to the economical condition where these politics take

place as “the postmodern condition”, which is characterized by the “flexible accumulation”:

“more flexible labour processes and markets, of geographical mobility and rapid shifts in con-

sumption practices” (Harvey 1990:124). This form of accumulation also looked at opening up

31

global markets, why NAFTA was a logical part of this new orientation. The opposition to this

new political turn, however, was considerable, and the same day as the treaty came into force,

on the 1st of January 1994, the EZLN revolted in Chiapas.

The history of the EZLN is not difficult to see through the light of these

macroeconomical and political tendencies. If the situation of the campesinos had been hard dur-

ing the “modern” politics, that focused on industrialization, in the new, “neoliberal”, politics,

the situation had turned harder. The agrarian reform, though inefficient and insufficient, had

offered a way out. With the new political turn, the agrarian reform was over, at the same time

as any solution to a wide range of problems was not visible within the prevailing order.

Juan Pedro Viqueira has pointed out some of these problems in the case of Chiapas.

They had to do with an increasing population in the highlands that was combined with a near

to complete lack of viable economical perspectives, at the same time as more egalitarian rela-

tions with the ladinos10 were not at sight for the indigenous population. The social mobility was

furthermore slow or non existing, the traditional mechanisms of political control was in crisis,

and democratic rules to deal with the problems at hand were absent (Viqueira 1995:235-36).

The expansion of the EZLN should therefore not come as a surprise, and the economical situ-

ation should have made this intent more successful than the first intent that was made to form

a guerilla in 1971, financed partly by Cuba.

Although economical aspects, as the one Viqueira points at, without any doubt were

important for the establishment of the EZLN since the beginning of the 80s, the EZLN could

also be seen through the light of the Latin American Philosophy. The differences found within

this current of thought could be seen as incorporated in the movement, where different as-

pects of it has dominated the Zapatistas political action and discourse, but also in the ways

they have been understood. This incorporation of contradictory tendencies, which at times

would become explicit, can be found in leaders as Lázaro Hernández and Francisco Gómez,

who were part of four important “movements” simultaneously: 1) Slohp, or La Raíz, an organi-

zation founded by the delegates from the significant Indigenous Congress in 1974 – a congress

proposed by the government, but actually organized by the Catholic church, which managed to

10 A term used to get around the ideas about race that the term mestizo implies: ladino is rather aiming at cultural aspects.

32

inspire a sentiment of indigenous unity and formulation of common claims;11 2) Quiptic, a

social movement which fought for the campesinos′ interests; 3) the EZLN: both Hernández and

Gómez were captains, and 4) the Catholic church, where both functioned as preachers. This

simultaneous “walking four paths” even had a name in tseltal: Chaneb Sbelal (de Vos 2002:331-

35).

These tensions are possible to perceive in the six “Declarations of the Lacandona Rain-

forest”, which are the most important documents of the guerrilla, where major political direc-

tions have been announced. Worth noting is that the word “indigenous” is actually not present

in the first declaration, but becomes more visible in later declarations, often together with the

word campesino.12 At the same time, capitalism has been presented as the main enemy, with ne-

oliberalism as its ideology, and where the Mexican government acts according to the interests

of capitalism. Neoliberalists are projected as the defenders of the rich minority, while the Za-

patistas are presented as the defenders of the interests of the majority (see EZLN, without date,

declarations 3-6). Here, a dualistic vision of the political relations is projected, where the good

Zapatistas are put against the evil government, but also lie against truth, etc.; the Zapatistas

represent the truth (see Ibid, declarations 2, 4 and 5) but also ”the only path” (first and second

declarations). These (possible) tensions, nevertheless, is managed within a clear nationalist

framework – a framework that is seldom noticed by writers about the Zapatista movement. In

the first declaration, for example, EZLN stated that “We are the inheritors of the true builders

of our nation”, and find support for their rebellion in the Mexican constitution; in the third

declaration, EZLN meant that “the Mexican flag, the justice system of the Nation, the Mexi-

11 In Jaime Schlitter′s thesis, a certain Don Joel expresses the active role of the church in the creation of the idea of an indigenous identity. Don Joel means that “the struggle” (la lucha) started with the congress in 1974, and that he was taken on a tour by the priests together with other persons: “In the tour we visit the constructions of the ruins of Toniná, the ones in Palenque, in all of the mayan centres and how they are constructed their earlier construction, of the ancestors. Until it started the tour they make us understand what Maya is, because I don′t understand what is Maya, I don′t know if I am Maya, I don′t understand anything. No, but now I know that I am from Mayan origen, now I am from true indigenous origen, now I un-derstand the difference between the Mayas and the Spaniards, I understand a bit more.” (My translation; Schlit-tler, 101). “En la gira vamos a conocer las construcciones de las ruinas de Toniná, la de Palenque, en de todos los centros mayas de cómo están construidos sus construcciones anteriores, de los antepasados. Hasta que empieza a girarle todo este dan a entender que cosa es Maya, porque yo no entiendo qué cosa es Maya, ni sé si yo soy Maya, no entiendo nada. No pero ahorita ya sé que soy de origen maya, ya soy origen indígena verdadero, ora entiendo la diferencia de los mayas y los españoles entiendo ahorita poco más.” 12 The Marxist heritage is most visible in the third to sixth declarations. The idea of the “indigenous” could be expressed numerically. In the first declaration the word is not used. In the second five times, in the third 14 times, the fourth, 16 times, in the fifth 35 times (!), and in the sixth, 23 times.

33

can Hymn, and the National Emblem will now be under the care of the resistance forces until

legality, legitimacy and sovereignty are restored to all of the national territory”.

In the context of this thesis, it is also interesting to notice that, beside the first demands

of work, land, housing, food, health care, education, independence, freedom, democracy, jus-

tice and peace, in the fourth declaration, the EZLN added that it struggled for “the word” and

for “history”.

An important discursive shift is also possible to find between the first and the follow-

ing declaration, which can be connected to the relations of military force. While in the first

declaration, the strategy is to take over the state (“We declare that we will not stop fighting

until the basic demands of our people have been met by forming a government of our country

that is free and democratic”), after the obvious military superiority of the state army, the Zapa-

tistas changed their discourse, and started to include ideas about identity, culture and dignity, at

the same time, though, more Marxist influenced discourses are noted in the declarations;

commentators of the EZLN tend to delimit the movement to the indigenous aspect, and

therefore silence the Marxist influences in the Zapatista′s discourses (as in Schlittler, 2012)

This dominant representation of Zapatism, little by little, therefore became less con-

nected to Marxism, and more to identity, culture and dignity: in the outline I have made about

the Latin American Philosophy, this turn could be seen as a way out of the conflict between

identity and internationalism, which are two different ways to understand the ideas of historical

particularism and liberation. To search for the “roots” (la raíz) is a different project than

searching for the situation of subjects in a global context. The outcome is also different: while

the first declaration was directed against NAFTA, the organization of “autonomous communi-

ties” which has been a central part of Zapatista politics after 2003, has been understood as

aiming in another direction, and defending other ideals. If the EZLN at first had been sharp

critics of the “traditions” in the villages, the new ideals of the “community” as the base for its

politics made them revaluate the “traditions”, and turned all the sudden the Zapatistas into

defenders of the “culture”, the “traditions”, the usos y costumbres, actually very much in a similar

way as the ruling classes in the highlands had acted half a century earlier, as described by Rus.13

13 The tensions that I see as a result of the encounter between two projects that get together in one

movement has made commentators like Pitarch (2004) to talk about the Zapatista discourse as an example of ventriloquism, where practically any interpretation of its ideas is possible. I would rather see it as an externaliza-tion of internal contradictions.

34

Despite this history of tensions and contradictions, little by little, “the new liberating

subject” – as Jorge Santiago calls the indigenous people in a thesis about the concept “Lekil

Kuxlejal” (that is, more or less “a good life”) – took its form in a history which partiality I have

wanted to question by outlining aspects that tend to be excluded by this historiography

(Schlittler, 2012:102).

A recent thesis of Jaime Schlittler is a good illustration of how this history has been

written. As Schlittler states, the history he wrote in dialogue with some more or less important

figures in the processes that have taken place in Chiapas, is presented not as

the history of Chiapas, nor the history of the history of organizations in Chia-pas, but rather an our history of struggle of us who today conform groups, collectives, persons, organizations and peoples who try to con-struct their (sic) autonomy and Lekil Kuxlejal (Ibid: 92; my transla-tion).14

The overreaching idea is that “[w]e need the memory to continue forward” (Ibid: 95;

no clear distinction is made between “history”, “memory” and “historical memory”), or, as

Schlittler writes:

Historical memory is a tool to fight, something that permits us to make a re-flection and a critique of our political and social acting from a long term per-spective. We remember our past, we remember our dead, and we revive them to continue watching the horizon. So that the memory protects us like a blan-ket and gives us a direction, so that it gives us a possibility to construct towards the future and continue feeding that horizon of struggle, that we can only reach if we are clear about where we come from, who we are and how we have fought (Ibid:94).

The history that is being written is no doubt from a particular viewpoint, where the

role of the Catholics is emphasized, as history seems to start in 1974 with the Indigenous Con-

gress and the unexplained resurgence of the indigenous people: why it happened at this mo-

ment is highly unclear.

14 “esto no pretende ser la historia de Chiapas, ni la historia del proceso organizativo de Chiapas, sino más bien una nuestra historia de lucha de quienes al día de hoy somos como grupos, colectivos, personas, organizaciones y pueblos que buscan construir su autonomía y Lekil Kuxlejal, tejida a través del relato de algunos de sus participan-tes”.

35

Shlittler′s historiography then projects itself towards the future, where Lekil Kuxlejal is

seen as the horizon. The concept is connected to a certain understanding of autonomy, with

close ties to Catholic ideas, as harmony and community, although they are presented as part of

an indigenous world view, but also intimately related to an idea of the indigenous peoples as

close to “mother earth” – at least as an ideal.15 Lekil Kuxlejal is explained in various, similar

ways in the thesis, but a rather good recapitulation of the concept is made by José Alfredo, as

he explains Lekil Kuxlejal to be:

not the material; of course, it has to do with this, but Lekil Kuxlejal implies… it involves everything. It is a totality, that is, Lekil Kuxlejal cannot exist when you have material things and there is no justice, or when there is no respect and there is no recognition of a people, or that the right to land is not respect-ed, nor their natural resources, all of that. So, for me, Lekil Kuxlejal is living in harmony with nature and that we respect each other, as brothers and commu-nities, and that there should be justice, that there should be no injustice, no contamination of mother earth, that is everything, which has to do with the construction of autonomy (Ibid:56).16

Although possible influences from the church and certain anthropologists is comment-

ed very briefly, what is searched for in the thesis is the word of the “subjects” themselves, or

the “subalterns”. As the parish (diócesis) tried to do through the Congress of 1974, the idea is to

“give a voice to those who for years have not been heard, give a voice to those without a

voice” (Sánchez Francso in Schlittler, 100). A problem is that even if the “subalterns” seem to

talk, the author is someone else, with certain liberating interests projected in the text.

This rhetoric of “including the excluded” is then what I want to underline here. As

Santiago Castro has argued, the Latin American Philosophy created a “liberating subject”, the

mestizo or criollo, who were to lead the march towards a bright future, at the same time as it ex-

cluded others, and other possible projects. Making a new “liberating subject” therefore does

not mean to write marginalized histories: it is writing a new teleological history, with a new

15 For a further discussion about the ties between the Catholic church and the “indigenous” discourses on har-mony, and specially on the role of the idea of harmony as a technique of pacification, see Laura Nader, 1994. 16 “no es lo material, claro tiene que ver con eso, pero el Lekil Kuxlejal implica, abarca todo, es un todo, o sea no puede haber Lekil Kuxlejal cuando tienes cosas materiales y no hay justicia, o no hay respeto y no hay reconoci-miento pues a un pueblo no, o que no se le respeta su derecho a la tierra, a sus recursos naturales, todo eso no. Entonces para mí Lekil Kuxlejal es vivir en armonía con la naturaleza y respetarnos entre personas, entre herma-nos y comunidades y pues que haya justicia, que no haya impunidad, no contaminar la madre tierra, o sea todo, que tiene que ver con la construcción de la autonomía”.

36

“liberating subject”, who necessarily has to exclude alternative histories and projects. It is not

the same to write a history to try to understand why you and others are where we are, and to

think about tendencies for the future, and to write a history already knowing where you are

going.

4.3. Dominant histories and the Sustainable Rural Cities

This very brief sketch of some elements that I see as central to the problem I want to discuss,

could probably help us to understand the formation of discourses in new situations, as the

development program called “Sustainable Rural Cities”. As the analysis of the program was all

but convincing – where poverty was explained to be caused “mainly” (but without mentioning

other possible causes) by “accidental geography” and a “dispersed population” – it is then not

a surprise that alternative explanations built upon a history of antagonism between the EZLN

and the government, and that the new “liberating subject” would be at the center of the cri-

tique.

As I have argued in El brillo de la imagen (Larsson, 2012), two opposed poles soon

emerged, where the productions of the discourses had their centers. One the one hand, the

Secretary for Social Communication propagated for the governmental position, through press

releases that were published in a wide variety of papers and web pages, and on the other hand,

the NGO Centre for Economical and Political Research (CIEPAC), which also managed to get

a considerable impact on different actors benevolent towards the Zapatista movement, includ-

ing certain journalists, academics and other NGO:s. As already stated, their main argument was

that the program created a traumatic territorial displacement of populations – to give way to

international companies – including a loss of cultural roots and of autonomous control of food

production; indigenous cultures would therefore disappear, and create rootless identities. This

included a rather orthodox view of capitalism, as the separation between workers and the

means of production – as if the control of the production could not be managed indirectly,

through world markets; as if the dependency theories, imperialism, neocolonialism, etc., would

never have been seriously discussed in Latin America and in Chiapas. The alternative that this

37

pole normally presented was the Zapatista autonomy, which was seen as something completely

different, and presented in uncritical terms.

In an interview one year after the forum (May, 2013) with César Gómez, a leader from

the Proletarian Organization Emiliano Zapata (OPEZ), this exclusion suddenly got new dimen-

sions. Planning the forum, OPEZ was mentioned as an organization involved in one of the

rural cities, which had proposed their own construction of the houses, had forced the govern-

ment to by certain pieces of land, etc. Nevertheless, representatives from OPEZ were not in-

vited, since one of the academics, as well as the head of the Universidad de la Tierra did not con-

sider them to be “appropriate”. No further reasons were actually given. The reasons, at hind-

sight, seem pretty obvious (although more specific and personal differences could probably

also be thought of): OPEZ, as opposed to the EZLN, negotiate openly with the government –

the EZLN officially have no contact with the government, although anybody more involved in

the practical politics of the state is clear about their constant unofficial contacts, as, for exam-

ple, with directives of a hospital in San Cristóbal, as I myself have observed. Furthermore, the

OPEZ does not claim autonomy to be the most important goal, but rather talks in terms of

“popular power” (poder popular). It seems as if liberating subjects are confronted here, or at least

a liberating subject with a movement of people that do not share that subject as its liberating

leader. The exclusion of certain voices, then, does not just concern “individuals”, but entire

movements.

If history is politics, it is not just between “subalterns” and “elite”: as Gramsci under-

lined, the factions are just as important to look at to understand complex social contexts.

38

5. Conclusions

In this thesis, I have argued that the idea of a “new” liberating subject – the “indigenous peo-

ple” – has been created in Mexico (as in other parts of the continent), and particularly in Chia-

pas, at least since the Second Vatican Council. In Chiapas, as in many other places in Latin

America, the poor were intimately connected to an ideological construct of “the indigenous

peoples”, inherited from colonial divisions between “Spaniards” and the “Indians”. But the

“Indians” had already occupied an important role in the nationalist narrative after the inde-

pendence from Spain, where the “mestizo” elite legitimized their power reconnecting to the

rulers before the colonization by the “Spaniards”. The mestizo was also a central figure in the

discussions about the Mexican identity at the beginning of the 20th century, which was partly

opposed to the “Indians”, and partly presented as the heirs of a proud indigenous civilization

(above all the Mexicas). The “Indians”, in this nationalist logic, had to be “acculturated” (“in-

tegrated”) to join the new Mexican: the liberating subject is here the mestizo, and above all – in

socialist rhetoric – the working class.

When the modern Mexican state started to have economical and political problems,

which has important contacts with international trends, the modern liberating subject was also

questioned by certain sectors, although its version of working class Mexican continues to have

important influences. The new liberating subject, then, was the “indigenous peoples” (not the

“Indians”). “Indigenous” as a term reconnects with the nationalist myth of origins of the Mex-

ican state in pre-Hispanic civilizations. The “indigenous peoples”, therefore, had already an

important place in nationalist rhetoric, but was, in the conjuncture of economical and political

crisis, used as a counter-hegemonic figure which could be seen as the voice of the “authentic”

Mexican identity – a project supported primarily by one of the sectors opposed to PRI: the

Catholic church.

But another sector also used a figure that the Mexican state had used as a mythological

figure: the working class. As the EZLN explained in its first declaration of the Lacandona Rain-

forest, the new PRI consisted in traitors of the “motherland” (patria), and connected themselves

to one of the most mythological figures of the Mexican nationalism: Emiliano Zapata.

This use of the same discursive framework, although the direction differs – as Roseber-

ry′s has suggested about hegemonic processes in general – could be seen as how hegemonic

processes work. Although domination is not absent, the way to negotiate takes place through

39

at least partly shared frameworks. The same could be said about the hegemonic processes at a

more local level: the discussions about if the governor had robbed a church bell in Santiago el

Pinar or not, point to opposing positions which are communicated through a common discur-

sive framework.

The only ones opposing the PRI that did not produce a clear liberating subject were

the businessmen. This absence, nevertheless, could be understood as an indication of their

dominant position: the dominant classes may even benefit from this absence, since their inter-

ests then can be presented as the interests of the society as such. A similar “common interest”,

disconnected from particular interests – which is the last step towards hegemony according to

Gramsci –, is hinted at through the intent to position the idea of Lekil kuxlejal as a set of ideals

that are in the interests of the whole world, as they could supposedly solve ecological, political

and moral problems, etc., and not tied to the agricultural production by an “indigenous” popu-

lation that appears to have the strongest interest in the ideals that are defended; these particular

interests are implicitly indicated by Schlittler′s Freudian slip when he states that he writes “an

our history” to create “their” autonomy. It seems as if the ideas of Lekil Kuxlejal and autono-

my are best suited for indigenous campesinos, and not for city dwellers like Schlittler.

In the production of this new liberating subject, historiography has been an important

tool, which has created rather fixed limits of what the “authentic” indigenous people do and

want – or should do and should want. Central to this historiography is the inclusion of an exclud-

ed subject – although a replacement of one liberating subject for another seems a better de-

scription of the proposed changes. This historiographic exclusion at the same time excludes

experiences that do not fit within its borders – a general problem of historiography, which

constructs its objects through the dynamics of exclusion and inclusion. These borders, never-

theless, at times are implicitly or explicitly questioned as they confront other histories, where

the most influential one is still based on “the working class” as the liberating subject (including

campesinos, but not necessarily “indigenous peoples” – although the idea of the new liberating

subject has its impact on the discourses also by these people); this position is represented by

Marxists within the EZLN, as by leaders of the OPEZ. But the discursive borders are also

questioned by understandings of reality built on a less coherent historiography, where the lib-

erating subject is less visible, or absent, as is possibly the case in the pragmatic position by the

“beneficiaries” or the “affected” by the development program “Sustainable Rural Cities”.

40

These confrontations between different narratives of varied degrees of coherence, I

have argued, is possible to connect to certain general problems of historiography, as well as

specific problems of particular historiographic standpoints. The problem of exclusion is here

understood as a general problem, which is not possible to “resolve”. We would therefore have

to accept the antagonic character of different historiographies, and assume the involvement in

the relations of force through our writings. This understanding has lead to certain standpoints

that presents a compromise with certain liberating subjects, which deliberately excludes sub-

jects that do not support the position of the liberating subject; we are not just dealing with a

consideration of the act of writing as part of political, economical and, at least sometimes, mili-

tary struggles. One major problem with this standpoint is that the clear and teleological narra-

tive it easily starts to produce tends to consider theoretical abstraction more important than

real human lives: this is the totalizing element of politically engaged historiography that Bloch

criticized. The historiography I have therefore tried to defend – influenced by Foucault′s ar-

cheology of knowledge – is based on a critical, deconstructive narrative, which seeks to make

history more complicated, less teleological, and less legitimizing of clear political projects.

This historiography does not pretend to “give a voice to the ones without voice” –

which after all is a somewhat paternalistic gesture that maintains power relations between the

representative and the represented – but rather to point to the fissures of narratives. This can

be done through a historical reconstruction of the emergence of certain discourses, as it can be

done through representations of the subalterns and/or the excluded – who, without a doubt,

speak, and produce narratives, histories, as in Santiago el Pinar, using that partly shared lan-

guage of contention. I have argued, especially against Spivak, that, although it is true that theo-

retical frameworks do create ideas about the subalterns as such (that is, the category of “subal-

tern” create a certain understanding of the nature of social relations) and make inclusions and

exclusions of narratives and directions, the subalterns is not just a discursive effect. Political,

economical and military positions go beyond theoretical understandings, and are not automati-

cally changed through new theoretical frameworks. So, the “subaltern”, understood in this way

can speak, and can alter theoretical models, or at least contribute to their alteration, although

their language tends to be much more provocative than dominant discourses. The “difference”

of the subalterns is present; no safe, neutral position is at hand that does not need to be ex-

plained. The particularity of the discourse is therefore easily spotted, and that particularity pro-

41

vokes the perceiver of the message, used to “neutral” (dominant) discourses. But hegemonic

discourses are not totally closed to practical inputs. They are discussed (at least partially) within

the same framework, and the misunderstanding of questions does question the question. Even

the ones made in the name of the new liberating subject, the postmodern prince.

42

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