Mesoamericans in the Modern Era Compiled by Brad R Huber

1. Mesoamericans in the Modern Era Compiled by Brad R Huber Special Thanks to Carmack, Gasco, and Gossen’s The Legacy of Mesoamerica (2nd edition) & http://www.pbs.org

2. Three Common Features of Revolutions: Eric Wolf (1969) 1) Large peasant sectors have been strongly affected by capitalist forces that have broken down old landlord-peasant ties. 2) Leadership is provided by ambitious middle-class radicals such as teachers, military officers, merchants, and bureaucrats 3) Corrupt regimes highly dependent on outside powers crumble easily.

3. Three Common Features of Revolutions: Eric Wolf (1969) 1) Large peasant sectors have been strongly affected by capitalist forces that have broken down old landlord-peasant ties. 2) Leadership is provided by ambitious middle-class radicals such as teachers, military officers, merchants, and bureaucrats 3) Corrupt regimes highly dependent on outside powers crumble easily.

4. Overview of the Mexican Revolution Major Players: • Porfirio DíazSeven Term President (1876-1911) catering to interests of wealthy, domestic and foreign • Pancho Villa - Chihuahuan lower class ranch hand, bandit, and leader of northern revolutionaries. • Emiliano Zapata – Morelos’ mestizo leader of southern revolutionaries, merchant and horse breaking family background, ambushed in 1919.

6. Pancho Villa (José Doroteo Arango Arámbula)

7. Emiliano Zapata Salazar

8. Villa and Zapata

9. Francisco Madero - President (1911-1913), north Mexican Hacendado allied with large landholding interests, assassinated in 1913, maybe with Wilson’s Ambassador’s consent. • Victoriano Huerta – Madero’s General, President (1913-1914) • Venustiano Carranza -northern landowner, moderate, controls Mexico City with Obregon from 1914-1916, President (1917-1920) • Álvaro Obregón- rancher recruited by Carranza to fight Huerta, Controls Mexico City with Carranza from 1914-1916, President (1920-24) • Succeeded by Plutarco Elías Calles (1924-28), and • Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (1934-40).

10. Francisco Madero - President (1911-1913)

14. Overview of Events • Revolution broke out in 1910 • with electoral challenge to Diaz by conservative reformer Francisco Madero. • Madero had been jailed during election. • This led to conflict between members of ruling class. • Porfirio Díaz was overthrown, • Díaz replaced by conservative reformer Francisco Madero (1911-1913) • Madero, in turn, was replaced by the conservative Victoriano de la Huerta (1913-1914)

16. It eventually unleashed genuine revolutionary forces: • Pancho Villa in the north and • Emiliano Zapata in south. • The more moderate Carranza and Obregón factions formed an alliance (1914-1916) • Villa's dominance in northern Mexico was broken in 1915 • Carranza (1917-1920) • Zapata was assassinated in April 10, 1919 • Carranza and Obregón integrated their armies in 1920, • Álvaro Obregón became President (1920-24)

17. About 2 million Mexicans died, many after being taken prisoner or from disease (influenza epidemic of 1918–19).

18. Nature of Participation by Mexican Indians: 1910-1920 • Zapatista movement was led by mestizos from the middle level who had close connections with Indian communities. • Mesoamerican Indians participated but not equally in every region. • They had an important impact but were not decisive to the outcome. • Only the Zapatista wing of the revolutionary movement received much backing from Mesoamerican peasant communities.

19. The Zapatistas of Morelos included Indians, • most of whom spoke Spanish • but whose elders spoke Nahuatl. • In 1910, about 9% spoke Nahuatl, • but traditional dress was widely used as a social marker. • 40,000 soldiers at one point; • Indians peasants • tilled communal lands and • worked part-time on the large sugar plantations. • Virgin of Guadalupe was carried on battle flags and sewn into wide-brimmed hats. • Stood for preservation of Indian identity and linkage between native peoples and land.

22. Reaction to the Zapatista movement was very different in other states with large Indian populations • especially weak in southern states of Mexico. • The haciendas and plantations of Oaxaca and Chiapas were much weaker and less capitalistic than in Morelos.

23. Outcome of Mexican Revolution • The radical social changes called for in the 1917 Constitution were not implemented until after 1924 • Most were implemented during Lázaro Cárdenas’ presidency (1934-1940). • Redistribution of land to peasants (subsistence farmers) and rural proletariats (wage laborers). • Redistributed Lands were ejidos, communal properties to which use rights were given to the landless.

24. Central American Revolutions • Revolutions occurred in Central America a half century later than in Mexico. • Capitalist penetration into peasant communities was more localized and not as extensive. • Full-blown revolutions broke out in the 1960s.

25. Background for Revolutionary Activities in Guatemala: • The Guatemalan Revolution (Civil War) • Legacy of the 1954 U.S.-orchestrated overthrow of the country’s legitimate government (Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán), and • subsequent U.S. backing of a succession of corrupt military regimes. • Guatemalan army took over state, serving interests of • foreign and local capitalists, and • its own generals. • When the state became more repressive, young army officers and mestizo peasants of eastern region revolted.

26. 1951-1954 - He was elected president of Guatemala with the largest majority in Guatemalan history. 1954 - CIA planes bombed the capital and US trained and armed troops poured over the border. Arbenz resigned. Guatermala's ten-year "democratic spring" came to an abrupt end.

27. Nature of Participation by Guatemalan Indians: • The military government created a permanent state of terror • By late 1970s, guerrilla fighting erupted in western highlands where majority of Maya live. • several thousand Indian soldiers and • hundreds of thousands of Indian sympathizers. • Two most important guerrilla organizations • Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP) and • Organization of the People in Arms (ORPA).

30. Indian leadership was largely urbanized, educated Mayan Indians • For example Pablo Ceto, an Ixil, • attended high school, and • became the leader in an EGP guerrilla unit. • Ceto’s Committee for Peasant Unity (CUC) • attacked by the army and death squads, • merged with the guerrilla movement. • Ceto used Maya symbolism from the Popol Wuh to empower the Maya revolutionaries. • story of a greedy giant macaw bird brought down by humble orphan twins

31. By the 1980s, 200,000 civilians had been killed, most of them Maya. • 1 million refugees within Guatemala: 200,000 in Mexico.

32. Ixil people carrying their loved one's remains after an exhumation in the Ixil Triangle in El Quiché department, Guatemala by the Centre of Forensic Anthropology and Applied Sciences (CAFCA); approximately 1997

33. Background for Revolutionary Activities in Nicaragua: • late 1920s-early 1930s • Sandino rebellion involved relatively few Indians. • Most fighting took place away from the Pacific coast where Pipil, Chorotega, and Subtiaba are concentrated. Augusto César Sandino 1895-1934

35. 1950s-70s • U.S.-dependent regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle • Somoza, his relatives, and cronies amassed huge fortunes in property and business holdings • Political control maintained by National Guard; support of U.S. • Sandinista National Liberation Front (the Sandinistas or FSLN) founded in 1961

36. Anastasio and Son, Luis Somoza Debayle in 1959

37. U.S. withdrew support in 1978. • In 1979, Sandinistas occupied capital, Managua • Somoza fled to Miami • Sandinistas • created a socialist state • both private enterprise and civil liberties were to be respected.

38. Daniel Ortega (Sandinista) won 67% of vote in 1984. • U.S. cut off all aid and • organized Contras---dissident National Guardsmen and Nicaraguan peasants. • In 1990, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro was victorious over Daniel Ortega • In 2006, Daniel Ortega re-elected President.

40. Nature of Participation by Nicaraguan Indians • MISURASATA (Miskito-Sumu-Rama-Sandinista) wanted Indian self-determination, not national integration during the 1970s and 80s. • Pipil, Chorotega, Subtiaba • resided in Monimbó, and around Managua, Masaya, Granada, and Leon. • could not speak their native languages • But retained crafts, political organization, and ritual. • The insurrection around Monimbó was symbolically important. • However, Nicaraguan Indians participated in a limited manner in revolutionary activities.

42. Diver in the Miskito Cays Diver in the Miskito Cays

43. Development in Mexico • Indigenismo in Mexico is a program promoting • education, • health, • agriculture, and • community development among the Indians. • Some Mexican anthropologists saw Indian refuge regions • as negating the advances of the revolution • perpetuating colonial structures, caste-like stratification systems, and exploitation. • Anthropologists Manuel Gamio and Alfonso Caso argued a modern nation required a common culture.

44. In the 1940s, INI (The National Indian Institute) was formed under the direction of Alfonso Caso. • Tzeltal-Tzotzil coordinating center • Set up in 1951 in highland Chiapas, • Directed by Anthropologist Gonzalo Aguirre. • Aguirre investigated the Maya and mestizo social structure of “refuge regions” • Indigenists tailored programs in education, health, agriculture, and community development. • In following years, INI coordinating centers set up among • Mixtecs, Zapotecs, Mixe, • Mazatecs, Tlapanecs, • Otomí, Tarahumara.

45. Guillermo Bonfil, Arturo Warman, and Ángel Palerm • claim indigenous program is destructive • it modernizes their exploitation by making them more accessible to capitalist exploiters. • Nevertheless, there were acculturative forces even stronger than those of INI. • Agrarian industries, • local branches of PRI reformed civil-religious hierarchies, • Catholic and Protestant churches replaced traditional native beliefs and practices. • 1000s of bilingual teachers and development agents were assigned to refuge regions.

46. Successes and Failures of Indigenist Development: • The Otomí of Mezquital • Prototypical proletariats living in state of Hidalgo. • Located close to Mexico City • 5,000 to 10,000 ft. above sea level • Arid valley and relatively unproductive • Otomí valley population of about 150,000 with about half working in Mexico City. • Subsistence farming: • pulque to drink, • fibers for weaving, and • leaves for roof thatching.

47. Extremely poor and the majority now depend upon part or full-time wage labor. • They joined with the Zapatista and Villa forces during revolution. • Indigenous program in 1952 with headquarters in Ixmiquilpán. • Summer Institute of Linguistics began operating in area in 1950s. • Most social change grew out of developments in transportation and commercial agriculture. • Work in mines of Potosí, streets of Mexico City, fields of Texas and California. • They were transformed from peasants to Proletariats (wage laborers) • Large numbers of proletarianized Indians in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

48. Development in Central America • Most Central American nations established National Indigenist Institutes of their own after 1940. • But only in Guatemala did indigenist institute play an important development role, and only from 1944-54. • Little done to aid Indians in other Central American countries.

49. Native Mesoamerican Ethnic and National Movements in Mexico and Central America • In Mexico, neoliberal policies came to dominate economic and political developments in the 1990s • President Carlos Salinas de Gotari (1988-1994) liberalized market by • privatizing banks, • joining OPEC, • participating in GATT (world’s free-trade agreement), and • allowing foreign companies to operate freely in Mexico (including maquiladoras). • In 1994, Mexico, U.S., and Canada sign NAFTA free-trade agreement • Mexican economy resumed meteoric growth. • However, conditions for Indians and mestizos in rural areas did not improve. • Government policy of land distribution to peasants ends.

50. EZLN (Zapatista National Liberation Army) insurrection in Chiapas in 1994 • Partly as a response, PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) opened up the electoral system by allowing minority parties to compete on a fairer basis. • PRI loses power due to failure to deal with the “Indian problem” (Zapatistas). • In 1997 midterm elections, PRI loses majority in the lower house to PRD (Democratic Revolutionary Party) and PAN (National Action party). • In southern states of Mexico, several PRI governors also were forced out before completing their terms of office. • In 2000, PRI loses presidential elections to PAN’s Vicente Fox.