The Postmodern Prince

Historiography and Hegemonic Processes in Chiapas

Martin Jesper Larsson Advisor: Edda Manga History of Science and Ideas Uppsala University, May 2013

To Mariel

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Edda Manga for her critical comments and advises. I would also like to thank Jos 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.

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. 4.2. 4.3. The modern project: the Mexican revolutionary state ............................... 24 The projects of postmodernity: the new liberating subject ........................ 30 Dominant histories and the Sustainable Rural Cities ................................. 36

5. Conclusions ............................................................................................................ 38 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 42

1. Introduction
In this thesis I discuss the emergence of the idea of the indigenous peoples as a new liberating 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 Niccol 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 understanding 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 liberating 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 within historiographic practice; 2) how the indigenous peoples became the predominant Postmodern 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 dispersed communities in urban centers built in the countryside. The strange theoretical fundaments of the program soon attracted the attention of a number of critics, who also were pre5

sent at the forum. These critiques started connecting the program to a wider neoliberal agenda formulated through the Plan Puebla Panam 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 Marxs discussion on the original accumulation (see Marx, 1999:608), the displacements that the Sustainable Rural Cities program planned for were interpreted as the expansion of capitalism, 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 intense period between August 2011 and January 2012, when I lived in one of the cities, Sant iago 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 Salinas 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 6

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 Proletarian 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, including 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 compaeros persons that take part in the same political 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 follows the tendencies outlined by Antonio Gramsci in The Modern Prince: this means that representations 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. 7

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 perspectives. 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.

2.

What is historiography?

Miguel Gmez

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 Gmez 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

Ahorita estn viviendo un poquito ms mejor, mejor alegra, porque no es igual como el futuro anterior, porque ya est un poco ms civilizado, ms alegre. Carretera... antes no haba carretera, no haba camino... (My transl ation from a transcript made of an interview with Miguel Gmez in September 2011).
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time, which makes the definition rather although not totally empty: Bloch, with his definition, excluded other possible concepts, such as space. As a description of what many historians think they do, Blochs 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 Gmez. 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 fram ework 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 bodies 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 ind ependently 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 discursive constructs around them that are so important that they are used as references? So, when Gmez 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 Gmez 10

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 differences between the past and the present is not upheld in Gmezs narratives. Nevertheless, history, as in the idea about men in time, cannot be said to be absent in the way that Gmez 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 Gmez 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, without 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 historians 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, Gmez (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 dont 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. Lets 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. Lets 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 dont know, people say that they started to pull it up. And it wasnt possible to pull it up! It wasnt possible to pull it up, it wasnt possible, because, the thing is that the owner wouldnt 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 couldnt 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. Thats what they tied it up with, with a stick, they pulled up the bell. But it takes time. Now they took it up. Yes, its true, thats 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 dont know which it was, and they stole it, they stole it. They say that it went to Zinacantn [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 didnt pay attention, it didnt come back. They say that it goes there, the bell. - And is it still in Zinacantn? - I dont know very well if they went to ask, or if they asked for it, who knows, but it didnt, it didnt give [ya no da], and they took our bell. I dont 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 Zinacantn has actually been broken that way], I dont know. Thats how it is. Thats how things are [my translation from Spanish; Gmezs native tongue is Tsotsil, which I do not speak fluently].2

La campana, la campana primero, voy a decir. Primero la campana. Que all anda una persona. Lo miraron que tiene su cosa all arribita, donde dice ah estaba ahoyado, ah lo mostraron la campana, s, la campana mostraron, all arriba en el camino, donde estaba ahorita, all arriba, ah estaba, ah estaba la que la vio. Llegan a juntar a su gente, a decir que hay campana en la tierra, dice uno. Pero no s si es cierto o ser ms hombre valiente [brujo] la que la vio. Pero miraro n la campana que estaba ah, efectivamente en su caminito igual como le dice, miraron qu cosa hay en la tierra, ah lo encontraba y miraron todos, y verlo qu. Vamos a arrancar, dice la gente, vamos a arrancar, porque es la campana para servir a la iglesia, dice la gente y fueron all, y fueron all, todos fueron all a verlo. Vamos a sacar, dice toda la gente, y empezaron a arrancar en la tierra. Ah estaba la campana. Ah estaba. Ah estaba. Ah estaba, y no s, dice la gente comenzaron a arrancar. Y no pudo sacar! No pudo sacar, no pudo porque, la cosa es que el dueo no se da, los 7anjeles [como lo escribe Ochiai 1985], segn creo es que estaba abajo. Lleva tiempo, lleva tiempo, est as, estaba as, mira, ac abajo, abajo, se va, va, va bajando, bajando, va bajando, s, bajando, no pudo sacar pronto. Dice que lo soaron la gente, soaron que cosa puede hacer. Buscaron un lazo nuevo, con limosna, de ofrenda, incienso, velas, hicieron fiesta. Con esto lo
2

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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 separated, 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 contemporary 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. S, es cierto, as hablaba mi abuelo y todo. Y qu pas con la campana? Bueno, te digo la verdad? La que supieron, hubo problema, no s cul es, y lo robaron, lo robaron. Dicen que se fue en Zinacantn, lo llevaron, porque ms abajo, ms grande, ms grande. Ms sabio. Lo llevaron en la noche. Y luego? Ya no hizo caso, ya no revolvi, dice que all se va, la campana. Y ah sigue en Zinacantn ahora? No s decir bien si fueron a preguntar, o van a pedir, quin sabe, pero ya no, ya no da, y nos robaron la campana. Pero no s si es hasta ahorita, o ya se quebr, no s. As est. As est la cosa. Y lo que me han contado de una cruz tambin... Ah, s, tambin una cruz, con Cristo, colgadito, la primera... junto creo, no ves que aqu no hay mucho en la tierra. Hay un arroyo de all atracito del cerrito, un arroyito, que estaba viendo, arrancando tambin, lo arrancaron. [...] Ah lo arrancaron, la gente la misma de aqu, es el mismo terreno, aqu el terreno de Santiago el Pinar, ah lo arrancaron tambin. Pero muchos hablan tambin que lo robaron, dicen. Lo robaron tambin. Fueron de Tenejapa. No s cul es la gente que, qu cosa de... fueron all que era costumbre, tradicin, fueron el 24 de julio all, pasan fiesta [de Santiago el santo patrn]. All lo llevaron su cruz como cargaban, con ese invitan creo. Ah empezaron la bronca. La bronca... all dice que hubo contra, y lo cerraron la iglesia, y lo dejaron ah. Me ha contado mi abuelo. Lo robaron. - Y de qu era la cruz, era tambin valiosa? - Valiosa, tiene listones, tiene todo, fierro creo, fierro, fierro [probablemente una traduccin de la palabra tsotsil takin, que tambin se podra traducir como un metal precioso]... as es, amiguito, as est.

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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 Historians 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 Croces and Blochs proposals are interesting on a descriptive level, I therefore find them difficult to accept as a definition that permits you to delimit a phenomenon. To name something history would then depend on the authority of some kind of historians 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 delimitation 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 separation 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 existence. 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 historians craft, Bloch started with the seemingly nave question formulated 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 Blochs live; Bloch was executed by German troops a year before 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 possibility 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 historical 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 creating 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 human 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, expressed 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 p olitical 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 ideological), 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 legitimized through ideas about race, the white mans 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 Blochs the historians craft, but also add political, economical and military conditions for historiographic production. This more contextual understanding of historiography, and the political role of the historians, 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 16

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) Brechts 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 Florn 1996:53). This difference is also interesting because of the difference that Dahlgren and Florn make between memory and history, where the first is connected 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 interpretation. Of course, we can talk of perspectives, scales, etc., but as I have already argued when discussing Blochs differentiation between history and mere narrative making clear cut differences between one thing and the other will always be difficult. Here, Dahlgrens and Florns somewhat confusing argument could also be worth mentioning. 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 r emember 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 unessential. This process through which these elections are made, and by whom, is as already stated one of the central questions of this thesis.

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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 different expressions and understandings about the banning of sati - a suicide made by wives at their husbands 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 counterhegemonic 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 cannot 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, producing 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 culture 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 liberating discourses, where the author supposedly wants to support the ones he or she is representing. The existence and the translation of the narrative of Gmez, 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 author s? 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 repr e18

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 indication 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 interesting 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 organic 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 development of the material forces and the relations in the process of production (and their contradictions). As to the military forces, the analysis aims at establishing the relation between politics 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 equality 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
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.
4

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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 equilibrium, 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 interests as bound to certain groups into a presentation of them as global interests, a volunt gnrale, 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 Gramscis thoughts which has often been overlooked is the concept of hegemony. Rather than the common understanding of hegemony as domination, 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 language of contention, of struggle rather than consent. Hegemony, understood in this way, include: the words, images, symbols, forms, organizations, institutions, and movements used by subordinate populations to talk about, understand, confront, accommodate 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).

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To analyze the process of hegemony, then, is to analyze the relations of force, where the la nguage of contention could be seen as an important factor, which frames the economical, political 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 Ginzburgs approach as an intent to be part of the formulation of a popular 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 limits of certain relations of force. The same necessity would not be equally important if the position would be closer to dominant interests. A similar analysis could be used to understand why the discourse of Gmez is easily seen as problematic: Gmez subaltern position does not automatically 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 Gramscis theoretical outline, a dominant discourse. Underlining the impossibility to withdraw from power relations, she argues that such intents that is, to formulate 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 subjective, 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 pro posals,

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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 situation is argued to be more important than a theoretical understanding of the problem that is being discussed. Haraways argument certainly makes such explanations necessary. Experience and position are words that easily result in discourses of truth, as a negative pole of the discour ses 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 Blochs 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 subordinate 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 domination, 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 Larchologie du savoir, he suggested to follow the organization of the field of statements (noncs) 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 establishment 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.

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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 observed 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 certain 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 hege mony, and on how this can be connected to the exclusions that appeared in the forum about the Sustainable Rural Cities.

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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 liberation 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 motherland (Snez 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 illustration 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, symbol24

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 connected 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 modernity 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 Snez quoted above, that he (probably) gave to the inhabitants of Etcuaro, Michoacn, 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 reform; it should however be clear that it worked as an important piece for the central government to create stability after the revolution, an even more urgent need for the ruling class after the assassination of the elected president lvaro Obregn in 1928, and the economical crisis of 1929, which also hit Mexico hard.

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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 rhetoric over the years, and a national holyday of the expropriation is also celebrated, despite important 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 population (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 philosophy 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-

Two very influential Mexican authors in this field were Jos Vasconcelos and Samuel Ramos; Ramos was especially 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 understanding was heavily inspired by the Spanish philosopher Jos Ortega , whos disciple Jos 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 particularit y 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 intellectuals; the Mexican government invited Spanish Republican intellectuals to work in calm in Mexico, where they founded La Casa de Espaa, today the prestigious Colegio de Mxico.
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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 dominated by the indigenous peoples (the distinction between Spanish and Indigenous villages 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 municipalities, which were tied to the official party (PRI). The young ruling class broke with traditional ways of making politics, and displaced older ruling classes. After being in power for decades, this new ruling class, nevertheless, started to defend tradition and customs, understood in new ways, which benefited the new ruling class. The official party (PRI) used a rhetoric 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 controlled 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.

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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 urbanization, which created a fundamental change in the Mexican society, which with the time became 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 included. 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 s, comunismo no, and the most important businessmen, 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 Harvey 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 expansion 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 competition between capitalists in different countries, and the tendency towards monopolies. The 28

difference is that while Harvey sees a system in crisis, a theoretical model based on Lenins 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 Luxemburg (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 cap italist 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, Harveys 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 underestimate 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.

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 Harveys explanation, nevertheless, is that this process could be seen as part of a competition for monopoly, which at least one big bank lost. The question is if this process has created greater concentration of capital, and therefore could be seen as part of general tendencies of capital accumulation under imperialism, and therefore not as a crisis of the system.
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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 governmental 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 support to Israel during the Yom Kippur war. The enormous gains of some of the OPEC countries 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 Lpez Portillo announced that Mexico had to prepare to administrate 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 consumption practices (Harvey 1990:124). This form of accumulation also looked at opening up 30

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 during 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 relations 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 situation 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 aspects 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 Lzaro Hernndez and Francisco Gmez, who were part of four important movements simultaneously: 1) Slohp, or La Raz, an organization 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

A term used to get around the ideas about race that the term mestizo implies: ladino is rather aiming at cultural aspects.
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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 Hernndez and Gmez 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 2002:33135). These tensions are possible to perceive in the six Declarations of the Lacandona Rainforest, which are the most important documents of the guerrilla, where major political directions 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 neoliberalism 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 Zapatistas 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-

In Jaime Schlitters 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 Tonin, 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 dont understand what is Maya, I dont know if I am Maya, I dont unde rstand anything. No, but now I know that I am from Mayan origen, now I am from true indigenous origen, now I understand the difference between the Mayas and the Spaniards, I understand a bi t more. (My translation; Schlittler, 101). En la gira vamos a conocer las construcciones de las ruinas de Tonin, la de Palenque, en de todos los centros mayas de cmo estn 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 qu cosa es Maya, ni s si yo soy Maya, no entiendo nada. No pero ahorita ya s que soy de origen maya, ya soy origen indgena verdadero, ora entiendo la diferencia de los mayas y los espaoles entiendo ahorita poco ms. 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.
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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, justice 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 following 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 Zapatistas 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 Zapatistas discourses (as in Schlittler, 2012) This dominant representation of Zapatism, little by little, therefore became less connected 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 raz) 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 commun ities 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 externalization of internal contradictions.

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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 Chiapas, but rather an our history of struggle of us who today conform groups, collectives, persons, organizations and peoples who try to construct their (sic) autonomy and Lekil Kuxlejal (Ibid: 92; my translation).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 reflection and a critique of our political and social acting from a long term perspective. 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 blanket 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 Congress and the unexplained resurgence of the indigenous people: why it happened at this moment is highly unclear.

esto no pretende ser la historia de Chiapas, ni la historia del proceso organizativo de Chiapas, sino ms bien una nuestra historia de lucha de quienes al da de hoy somos como grupos, colectivos, personas, organizaciones y pueblos que buscan construir su autonoma y Lekil Kuxlejal, tejida a travs del relato de algunos de sus participantes.
14

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Shlittlers 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 Jos 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 respected, 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 communities, 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 commented very briefly, what is searched for in the thesis is the word of the subjects themselves, or the subalterns. As the parish (dicesis) 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 (Snchez 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 excluded 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
For a further discussion about the ties between the Catholic church and the indigenous discourses on ha rmony, 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 reconocimiento 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 m Lekil Kuxlejal es vivir en armona con la naturaleza y respetarnos entre personas, entre hermanos 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 construccin de la autonoma.
15

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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 cr itique. 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, including 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

36

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 Csar Gmez, a leader from the Proletarian Organization Emiliano Zapata (OPEZ), this exclusion suddenly got new dimensions. 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 government to by certain pieces of land, etc. Nevertheless, representatives from OPEZ were not invited, since one of the academics, as well as the head of the Universidad de la Tierra did not consider them to be appropriate. No further reasons were actually given. The reasons, at hin dsight, 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 example, with directives of a hospital in San Cristbal, 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 unde rlined, the factions are just as important to look at to understand complex social contexts.

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5. Conclusions
In this thesis, I have argued that the idea of a new liberating subject the indigenous people has been created in Mexico (as in other parts of the continent), and particularly in Chiapas, 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 indig enous 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 independence 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 (integrated) 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 Mexican 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 Rainforest, 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 Roseberrys 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 38

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 discursive 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 interests 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 population that appears to have the strongest interest in the ideals that are defended; these particular interests are implicitly indicated by Schlittlers 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 auton omy 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 excluded subject although a replacement of one liberating subject for another seems a better description 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, nevertheless, 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 liberating 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. 39

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 subjects 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, military struggles. One major problem with this standpoint is that the clear and teleological narrative 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 Foucaults archeology 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 language of contention. I have argued, especially against Spivak, that, although it is true that theoretical frameworks do create ideas about the subalterns as such (that is, the category of subaltern 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 automatically 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 explained. The particularity of the discourse is therefore easily spotted, and that particularity pro40

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.

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