The collapse of the model
The Mexican peso lost half its value in ten days in December Indeed, there was a mini-devaluation of the peso earlier in 1994, 1994. The country is back where it was in 1982. This is more as well as a rapid decline in the Bank of Mexico's hard currency than a setback for the neo-liberal model of third world economic reserves, which fell from US$ 24 billion in December 1993 to reform. The failure is based in the essence of the model. US$ 14 billion in December 1994. The authorities decided to International Viewpoint has always pointed to the monstrous allow the peso to find its own level, at which point the whole social regression such policies have meant wherever they were system imploded. The US Dollar shot up from 3.44 pesos on 1 applied. But as Maxime Durand argues, the Mexican crisis December to a high of 6.0, settling at a new rate of 5.5 pesos. In demonstrates that, even in terms of capitalist economic logic, the model simply doesn't work. North has increased much quicker. high unemployment. tensions inside the ruling PRI party.
by Maxime Durand
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International Viewpoint #263 February 1995 reflected in its ideas and plans. Later it became the Institutional Revolutionary Party. '4 This party is still in power today. T h e Indians have always been the most marginalised section of the population, ever since the colonisation of what is now Mexico in 1521. Yet they are not mentioned once in the whole history of the revolution in the text-books produced for elementary
These books do not describe the situation of the Indians, before, during or after the revolution. It has already been forgotten that several Indian languages were spoken in the Zapatist army and that as a half-caste Zapata spoke Nahuatl as well as Spanish.
Finally, the official version forgets that the most brutal massacres during the revolution took place in Indian villages.
The collective recollection of these events can only exist through the memories of those who lived through it. In contrast, no-one can remember an official history. Any official history is a kind of artificial memory. Its creation will always be a form of commemoration.
To take an example, the Mexican government long ago created a museum at Anenecuilco. Every 8 August the regional and national public servants gather in the little museum to pay their respects to Zapata on his birthday 'but they usually leave by the end of the afternoon before it starts raining and the village remains melancholy and silent under the beating
IV 'MANY PEOPLE REFUSE to believe that Zapata is dead. Strange stories began to spread... that the body that they had been were shown was not really Zapata's. It was a kind of consolation to believe that he was not dead ... In the final analysis ... it was a way of staying faithful to the leader after he had gone.
John Womack 6 In the myth of the revolution, Zapata began to be associated with the hope of peasants. He became the image around which they rallied. Some suprising processes took place, such as the 12 association of Zapata's image with that of the Archangel St Michel (the patron saint of Indians). He became the symbol of their hopes as well as their waiting. 'I thus came to know a people waiting for a caudillo [leader] to come. They called it Quetzalcoatl, the Archangel, Zapata. A real caudillo, with obsidian teeth, invincible rifle and dazzling sword. They were waiting for it."
Some legends said that Zapata was not killed, that he was living in hiding, waiting for the precise moment for another uprising. Even though after the biological age of Emiliano Zapata made reappearance impossible, the population continued to wait.
Emiliano Zapata constituted the greatest source of hope for a generation who was living in desolation, he constituted the axe around which all transcendant experience was expressed. This is valid for the generations who were still very young at the time, those who learnt through experience, perhaps still very naive, but certainly direct and fundamental. It is also valid for the generations who experienced it through their grandparents' accounts. The transmission of experience through the generations conserves a large part of the charge of the original
Unlike the official history, the collective memory has not forgotten Zapata's assassin. A popular song from the south of Mexico still says:
the peasant of the south by the vile treason of the partisan Carranza, Guajardo' 8
The song emphasises that the method in which Zapata was killed transgresses a code of honour. Retelling the account of this treason is a central element in perpetuating the emotional charge of the memories.
Another element of the song is interesting in the light of new events:
Zapata said to Pancho Madero when he was already president if you don't give them land you will see the Indians fight again'?
The collective image remembers that, despite his half-caste origin, Zapata 'loved the Indians and wanted to help them'. The Nahuatl accounts have not forgotten that the leader spoke their language.
'Like the land, he was patience and fertility, silence and hope, death and resurrection.'
Octavio Paz!'
As we have seen, since 1910 the image of Zapata has run along two different paths. On the one hand, there has been the development of a concept of Zapatism giving legitimacy to the post-revolutionary government. On the other hand, collective memories, incorporated into popular tradition, have kept their emotional charge, their power as the recepter of collective hopes.
The image created by life experience is a dynamic element, capable of crossing geographic frontiers, it is an element transmittable through time, which does not lose its emotional charge and which is capable of adapting to different situations as it incorporates contradictions. The Mexican government today finds itself face to face with the same image which frightened Carranza's government at the end of the revolution. But this time the image also contains the acumulated hopes of almost a century of injustice and poverty. * Notes
1.- SEP, Ciencias Sociales (4th year) p. 131
2. - SEP, Ciencias Sociales (4th year), p.134
3. - SEP, Ciencias Sociales (4th year), p.134
4. - SEP, Ciencias Sociales (4th year), p.135
5. WOMACK, op cit, p.381
6. Voices of Mexico, April/June, 1994 p.95
7.FLORES CANELO, Raul. Presentation a La Espera.
8. 'Corrido del General Zapata'. Cancionero Popular
Mexicano p.397
9. La muerte de Emiliano Zapata'. Cancionero Popular
Mexicano p.414