The starting point

In Chiapas, during the 1930s, the government of Lázaro Cárdenas promoted an indigenist policy of social nature that had the objective of the cultural assimilation of this population into the national society. This change in the federal government’s policies towards the indigenous population is part of the social context in which ^{Villoro (2005)} produces one of his most important works: The great moments of indigenism in Mexico (Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México). In the Chiapas Highlands, the new policies were centered on combatting against indigenous culture as a way of advancing towards economic and social development¹. As ^{Köhler (1975)} describes it, the purpose was to leave behind the relationship of imposition and violence that was exerted in the past against the indigenous population to give way to a new policy of rapprochement that would open the path to cultural assimilation. The religion, its languages, education, the government based on traditional authorities, health, communal property, and in general the social life of indigenous communities of the Highlands was subjected to pressure from the policies of post-revolutionary governments that had the aim of transforming the indigenous person into a free citizen, member of a modern society.

The period of developmentalist policies covered from the years of the Lázaro Cárdenas government to the end of the 1980s. It is a type of economic development organized and planned by the federal government, where indigenous communities only acted as receptors of this process.

“… detribalizing is substituting, in those who have them, the distinctive features of native cultures: language, traditional dress, customs linked to the satisfaction of vital needs, and above all, their internal cohesion with those from Western culture. The process is individual, when it is carried out by direct contact between individuals from different modes of production or groups, when the situation motivates the rupture of the indigenous community and its integration to the economic and sociocultural life of the Nation…” (^{Pozas and Hernández: 1972:8}).

These policies failed, they did not achieve their purpose. A cultural and social resistance unfolded among indigenous peoples that did not accept abandoning fully their livelihoods; opposing social processes emerged that generated a rejection to government policies, although processes of appropriation and renovation of these also began to unfold. This allowed for the indigenous community not to disintegrate from the effect of the modernizing policies of the State; as consequence, the mechanism of cultural assimilation did not manage to disintegrate the community. There are multiple studies that show the strength and vitality of the indigenous community in face of government harassment. The work by Ricardo Pozas, Memories of a Tzotzil indigenous man (Juan Pérez Jolote. Memorias de un indígena tzotzil), shows the complexity of these processes.

Attempts to achieve cultural assimilation were surpassed by the processes of cultural appropriation and innovation, which were decisive for the emerging conformation of the new figure of indigenous population, which became a more creative social actor and with greater strength in its claim for a better life. The interaction with the national society and the State policies opened a process of cultural, social and political change that came about in the heart of the communities, but which was not well-perceived by external observers. The anthropologists who studied it considered that the community: “…prevents the accumulation of capital to the extent that it sterilizes the savings that could be invested in the purchase of goods or in the modernization of production techniques. By doing this, it inhibits the development of any economic differentiation that could lead to a form of social stratification…” (^{Favre, 1973: 293}); mistakenly, cultural limitations of the indigenous community were assumed to be present when facing internal processes of social change.

^{Ulrich Köhler (1975)} studies the way in which this process of cultural appropriation and innovation was produced in the Chiapas Highlands without eliminating the indigenous way of thinking and acting. Developmentalist policies by the federal government were modernizing policies that did not manage to eliminate indigenous culture, and in turn the latter was capable of assimilating that which it was meant to be destroyed with. Currently, in relation to health care, the indigenous community makes use of the two types of medicine: modern and traditional; in the legal system, the forms of constitutional government predominate, without this meaning that they abandon the traditional justice system. In the processes of electoral participation, assemblies are carried out by political parties in the communities where direct democracy is exercised to define candidates and then register them with the Federal Electoral Institute (Instituto Federal Electoral, IFE). An important part of the indigenous population uses Spanish and their language, they are bilingual populations. Concerning religious worship, the situation became complex by the presence of various Protestant groups; however, the cargo system was not only preserved, but it was also renovated by the worship of the Virgin of Guadalupe gaining strength as part of the religious festivities of the communities.

Undergoing modernity

The emergence of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, on January 1, 1994, blurred the existing stereotypes about the indigenous population built in Mexico throughout several centuries. The positivist thought that conceived the indigenous population as a social group distant from progress and modernity, and whose future would only be possible if by taking on one of the new identity figures characteristic of modern society, contributed to this. This cultural project, from its origin, sought not to return to the past; its principles lead it to immediately turn the present into a past without return, in the linear sense of progress flooding the social life of any modern society. Within this context Mesoamerican peoples, whose origin precedes modern time, were perceived as people without history (^{Wolf, 1987}).

Facing these peoples, the project of modernity has taken place as “a civilizing trend equipped with a new unitary principle of coherence or structuring of civilized social life and of the world that corresponds to this life, of a new ‘logic’ that would be undergoing a process of substituting the ancestral organizing principle, which is designated as ‘traditional’” (^{Echeverría, 2010}). In this sense, modernity has not only confronted so-called “traditional” groups, as in the case of native peoples, but rather it is also experiencing a frenetic and incessant process of renovation of its own articulating principles, which from a historical perspective, take on “traditionalist” social forms at the time when the new emerges to combat some of its own features present in all the areas of social life.

The Zapatista emergence is combined with the questioning of modernity that gathers strength in the 20^th century, casts serious doubts on the linear and progressive nature of its policies, and evidences the limited scope of it modernizing policies that promised the common good, social welfare and happiness of men and women of the modern society; however, the Zapatista questioning does not constitute a generalized response from the indigenous population in Chiapas. Zapatismo does not represent the indigenous world, this movement is only part of it; there are other indigenous communities that are economically tied to the policies that derive from neoliberal modernization projects.

In the indigenous lands of Chiapas, among the Zapatista and non-Zapatista indigenous communities, divergences arise and conflicts take place in all areas of social life. They are part of these “discontinuous and conflictive” processes (^{Echevarría, 2010}), which shape a particular expression of modernity in these lands, and which have led to a process of economic and political bifurcation between indigenous communities in Chiapas. Although these two perspectives have the same cultural root and have a common past, currently they have opted for political and economic paths that differ; on the one hand, there are Zapatista indigenous communities that develop new forms of association, production and exchange, constitute the search for a more humane and just society; and on the other hand, there are non-Zapatista communities, which for decades have been directing their activities under the influence of neoliberal policies. In these, the effects of social inequality have amplified.

Resilience and communality

The new reality faced by indigenous communities² brought with it a series of unexpected results³, which must be analyzed in light of new theoretical approaches. The capacity of indigenous or peasant communities to remain in time, despite a long history of government policies (^{Bonfil Batalla, 1989}), must be explained beyond their political and cultural resistance. What economic data show, as well as peasant movements from the 20^th and 21^st century, is the capacity for resilience by indigenous communities. Resilience refers to the ability to recover after a disturbance, representing the internal conditions that make it possible to absorb stress or conflict, which lead to interiorizing and transcending it (^{Berkes et al., 1998}). Resilience is a concept that analyzes the capacity for conservation of an organism, but also helps to identify the options and opportunities for renovation and novelty, which are evident in the socioeconomic transformations of indigenous communities in the 21^st century that achieve a combination between their capacity to conserve their culture and worldview and the novel forms of socioeconomic adaptation. “Suárez Ojeda (2006) establishes the relationship between community and resilience, where the latter is described as a group of people linked by a social bond that may be marked by ethnicity, territoriality, religion, implying a shared cultural orientation that is fundamental in its community identity” (cited literally in ^{García Joahann, n/a,186}).

Communality, as axis of organized social life, and a new perspective of production that places internal consumption from the resources available to the community at the center, are elements for the conformation of a new type of economic and social development alternative to the dominating paradigm based on production, individualistic consumption, and buying and selling of goods in the external market.

At the end of the 1970s, ^{Floriberto Díaz (2004)} and ^{Jaime Martínez-Luna (2010)}, researchers of indigenous origin, the first Mixe and the second Zapoteco, coined the expression “communality” in independent studies to refer to a lifestyle. It is a lifestyle that is built by the need of a social rediscovery and reinvention, “we are communality, opposite to individuality, we are communal territory, not private property; we are compartencia (sharing), not competition; we are polytheism, not monotheism. We are exchange, not business; diversity, not equality, although in the name of equality we have also been oppressed. We are independent, not free” (^{Martínez-Luna, 2010}).

For Martínez-Luna the factors that promote poverty in rural communities come from the exterior; the usurpation of the best lands, the disproportionate exploitation of the workforce, the factors of commercialization that increase prices of products, the education that privileges individual training versus community cooperation, the communication media that emphasize individual triumph and discriminate collective success, etc. In communality, there is not entrepreneurial spirit, and the economy is directed towards two aspects:

The criteria of profitability, productivity, competitiveness, and capitalization are not consistent with communality, whose type of property is communal and is linked to the conception of the collective usufruct of land, providing the meaning of territory linked to the basis of physical and social reproduction of any nation; communal property is based on communal orders and plans. There is work for territorial self-determination under three dimensions: 1) property belongs to the community; 2) it can be used in familiar terms; 3) everything can be arranged inside the nation (^{Martínez-Luna, 2010}). To reach territorial self-determination the consensus of the community and the active participation of citizens are necessary, and they both give life to a very particular type of development, ruled by its principles of compartencia (sharing).

The indigenous dilemma in Chiapas

The decade of the 1980s constitutes a new period when indigenous peoples of Chiapas confront the processes of economic and cultural globalization penetrating social life in the indigenous communities. The neoliberal policies opened the way for the indigenous bifurcation in Chiapas. Developmentalist policies that in the past attempted to transform indigenous culture were substituted by neoliberal polices that encouraged the insertion of the indigenous population in commercial activities articulated to the market. The community of Zinacantán in the decade of the 1980s exemplifies this new process of change.

Since ancient times, the inhabitants of Zinacantán, as all the indigenous nations in the Highlands, organized their social and economic life around agriculture. Maize cultivation was constituted as the basis on which the social and religious life of the community was articulated. ^{Wasserstrom (1989)} studied how the Zinacantán resident had to move by seasons towards the fertile valleys of the lowlands to sow maize in agreement with the landowners.

“... We used to go out to work near here on the way to Chiapa de Corzo, we worked on the milpa, rented land, I went with my father and mother, but we would end up far away in the warm lands, since the milpa grows fast there, in three months there is corn, there are at least two harvests per year. If you sow in April, May, by June there is corn; you sow again in July, August, and by September there is corn, and here it takes six months and is only harvested once per year. We rent land. Here in the cold zone I do have land, but since I want more corn we go work far in the warm lands, and I bring some of the corn by car, in bags, and we also sell it over there by tons…” (Arturo Vázquez López, personal interview, July 5 2003).

This lifestyle changed since the 1980s with the introduction of greenhouses to Zinacantán. The state government promoted diverse productive projects that had the aim of transforming agriculture in the Highlands. The economic activity that gathered strength in this community was the production of flowers in greenhouse systems:

“…This was how the first “greenhouse” was created in the community of San Nicolás from the municipality of Zinacantán with the introduction of genotypes of chrysanthemums and carnations of higher quality and greater productive potential. Years later this program was under the coordination of the Ministry of Rural Development, which fostered “greenhouse” production among peasants, so that in 1984 there were already around 20 “greenhouses”… (^{Díaz, 1995: 57}).

The impact of greenhouses was such that the millenary agriculture practiced in these lands was displaced in an accelerated manner. Maize cultivation was substituted by flower growing and with it new social changes appeared in the heart of the indigenous community. This change in the form of production led indigenous people to develop a very intense interaction with the mestizos to purchase plastics, fertilizers, insecticides, hoses, etc., in the shops of the cities of San Cristóbal de Las Casas and Tuxtla Gutiérrez. They established commercial agreements with mestizo intermediaries that arrived in the community to buy flowers and redistribute them in the main cities of the state; or else, in cities as distant as Villahermosa, Mérida, Cancún, and Chetumal. ^{Llanos (2013)} explains how flower growing demanded knowledge about the market from indigenous people; that is where they are supplied with seeds and other implements for flower cultivation and where they find a better price for their production. The greenhouse as technology destined to production transformed the indigenous territory, introducing new social relations and a different notion of time. The cyclic time articulated to the sacred vision of social and religious life was subordinate by the time of accumulation, time of profit, time that takes place linearly, and which seems to have no end.

Since flowers are a delicate and perishable product, and many flower producers still lack the technology to conserve them for a longer time, they are forced to use the resources available to them with the aim of placing their product in the commercial circuit. The use of cargo vehicles, telephones and in recent years the use of computers, fax machines, radio locators and mobile phones, have made it possible to connect to cities that are increasingly farther away, such as the main cities of the southeast, at least for the most advanced Zinacantán residents. Flower producers, due to their activity, have also managed to leave their community, have had the chance to know other markets, since the state government has encouraged them to take training courses in various parts of the country after realizing the importance of flower growing as an economic activity that has brought new social conditions.

“… My father did not go to school, he produced radishes, he was a farmer, he grew maize, fruit, but he found a way to produce flower. Last year he went to Ecuador, they helped him with 50 % of the plane ticket, lodgings and food, and another person from the town had to go as well, but he didn’t have money for the passport and the plane. The visit to Ecuador helped my father to realize the importance of the flower quality, because bright colors are obtained from a well-grafted flower that has been well-cared for to prevent diseases. One of our goals is to be able to export… for the time being, in Chiapas, our flowers are known as the “Choko roses” - Choko means place where there is salt water …” (José Hernández Hernández and Manuel Hernández Hernández, personal interview, March 6, 2004).

The commercial activity in Zinacantán has the goal of reaching the market. This drives it to improve the quality of its crops and the most important flower growers at the end of the productive cycle can obtain economic resources that give them the possibility of feeding their family or improving the technological basis of their production. This attitude brings old stereotypes into crisis that had been built around it for decades.

“…the indigenous person belongs to a community. This belonging could be translated by the use of certain clothes, certain language, by the adoption of certain cultural traits, by the manifestation of certain semantic characters. However, the fundamental thing is that when belonging to a community, the indigenous person cannot accumulate wealth, or transform these riches into capital that produces new wealth and, as consequence, doesn’t have the possibility of competing with mestizo people …”. (^{Favre, 1973:123})

Inside the indigenous community, neoliberal policies have facilitated the processes of social differentiation and accumulation of capital. In the past, agriculture was directed at covering the needs of a family, and it had the nature of self-consumption which attempted to satisfy religious and family requirements. Now the important thing is to produce for the market, and so the indigenous population started losing the image that described it through its dress, language, religion and diet to emerge from this apparent homogeneity as a rainbow of new and renovated identities. ^{Llanos (2013)} mentions how, throughout several decades, various social actors that each bore a new type of social relation, began to emerge: merchant, vegetable producer, flower grower, driver, bricklayer, artisan, municipal president, writer, student, political activist, party militant, street vendor, etc. This is a process of differentiation and social polarization that has deepened due to neoliberal policies since the decade of the 1980s. In indigenous communities, economic and social heterogeneity exists, and indigenous people can be found that regularly reproduce poverty and others that have attained economic margins that make them look as the new rich people in town.

As any other social process, ambiguous and contradictory, flower growing brought economic advantages for a sector of the indigenous population. The polarization and differentiation have increased. Dependency on the market is greater, yet although economic resources obtained allow them to change their lifestyle, the dependency on the market generates new uncertainties; abandoning maize cultivation generates other types of dependencies as is the case of foods. In Zinacantán, despite recent years being dominated by social-leftist governments, the neoliberal economy has penetrated the community and has differentiated inhabitants economically and socially; albeit this, their culture has managed to preserve the cohesion of the community through the cargo system, the organization of religious festivities, and the conformation of committees to address problems such as water supply, school, etc.

However, the neoliberal market is not the only path by which the indigenous population makes incursions. In parallel, other forms of collective and solidary work have emerged in the communities, influenced by the political action of Zapatismo. The neoliberal policy and the Zapatista communities represent two paths that differ; they are two perspectives that lead to different futures. This takes place in the large territory located in the eastern part of the state of Chiapas, which is the scenario where these visions develop; they are two alternatives that are being built from the indigenous perspective and which have also led to confrontation with each other; they are two processes that have managed to differentiate culturally the territory from what is occupied by the mestizo population, but which differ politically and economically. In the extended indigenous territory, it is feasible to find indigenous communities that are outside the influence of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN), and others that have accepted to adhere politically to this alternative.

The two paths have similar cultural characteristics: languages of Maya origin like Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolabal, among others; religious systems, traditions and customs of common origin. Until now the most conventional path of insertion has been the one articulated to the economy and the Mexican political system. This alternative is immersed in the market dynamics with economic and political rules of neoliberal cut and even with policies of social type from the leftist political parties. The second path is the Zapatista, this is a more democratic alternative for development, seeking the direction of justice, representing a path to reach progress and welfare in a more equitable manner; the autonomous Zapatista municipalities prioritize their internal market and the formation of more horizontal political representations. These two paths enter in conflict with each other, and they mutually try to reduce their influence on the whole of the indigenous population. After the indigenous uprising of 1994, the order from the EZLN command was for indigenous communities not to accept help from the government, defining these two paths with greater clarity:

“… But as you can see, the change, in 1994, was still quite good, but after the war of 94, the command changed ideas again, setting it in resistance against the people. That’s when people got angry, thousands of people, because [they would think]: I will fight, what the hell will I fight with, I will give my life, I don’t want to be told not to take a single metal sheet, taking money from the government doesn’t command me, they say you can’t take anything, anything; but then the people got very angry. Many that are authority were upset, because I know many now that are delegates of the government, who are Zapatistas, they are leaders, but they saw that the high command gave that bad order, they didn’t like it, they are working with the government now, but because they got upset, and many peasants like us, we didn’t like it, and so… then we had to leave, because that placed us as opposition. The idea was to fight, but as I’m fighting, I ask and I receive, that’s the idea. But what command did of saying you cannot ask for a house, you cannot take a solar panel, nothing, for that same reason the people got upset and the strength of Zapatismo decreased. There is Zapatismo but they are small groups, like that… every community very little Zapatismo, yes, there is no more. Then that’s how the unity of Zapatismo was also destroyed, and that’s why we left …” (Melquiades Hernández, interview, January 25, 2011)⁴.

Facing the lack of knowledge about the San Andrés Agreements by the federal government, the EZLN decided to advance by the path of the facts in the construction of Zapatista autonomy. This process impacted the territorialization of two types of social, economic and political practices that bring indigenous populations in Chiapas carry out. In the indigenous territory there are internal frontiers, processes of differentiation and conflicts between members of the indigenous nations. These two perspectives confront the power of the State. One accepts the rules of liberal democracy that preserves the State, with indigenous people adhering to various political parties, such as Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN) or else Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD).

The other displays a more communal democracy, although it does not detach fully from the liberal influence, it is a democracy where the power emanates from the people and which rests on the perspective of the general will that ^{Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2003)} proposed in The Social Contract. A direct democracy that Karl Marx rescues from the experience of the Paris Commune and that the Zapatista municipalities apply with the constant change of representatives in order to avoid a concentration of power in individual representations. The two alternatives seek to exchange in the market, one does it within the context of neoliberal rules of the market and another exchanges in solidary markets seeking greater equity, uses money and sometimes barter, attempts to reach a fairer trade. These two visions share the same cultural features, the same origins, they are two paths that conserve collective forms in their social organization; however, both or one of them will define the future of the indigenous territory in the state of Chiapas, in a few more decades.