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Zapatista Thunder

 
March 1994
Mexico: Zapatista Thunder
by Lucy Conger
The January uprising in Chiapas has galvanized Mexican 
political thought and forced the country to face a 
fundamental issue: "For decades, the conventional 
wisdom about Mexico held that democratization...would 
threaten political stability in a land with a fearsome 
history of bloody uprisings. Today, democratization 
seems the only guarantor of stability and peace."	
On January 11, 10 days after guerrillas calling themselves 
the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) launched bold 
attacks on five towns and an army barracks in the southern state 
of Chiapas, television newscaster Jorge Ramos fired a pointed 
question at a Mexican official. "Senor consul, is the government 
concerned that in this election year people might want to vote for 
an opposition party because it might bring peace instead of staying 
with the ruling [Institutional Revolutionary] party (PRI), that has 
brought war to the country?"

	With that single question, Ramos put the PRI's much-touted 
record of 65 years of social peace on the line. His question reflects 
the severe credibility crisis at home and abroad for the 
administration of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari that was 
unleashed in two explosive weeks of fighting by the Zapatista 
guerrillas. Salinas himself had achieved an image control with the 
press that nearly matched that enjoyed by American President 
Ronald Reagan in his heyday. But suddenly his grasp on events had 
slipped. "Before, it was as though he was a type of king, or God, 
who made no mistakes and all he touched ran marvelously, like a 
magician. Now we know that was a very partial view. We focused 
on the economic situation in general and lost sight of the social 
question," noted Salinas sympathizer Susan Kaufman Purcell, the 
vice president for Latin American affairs at the Americas Society.

	In late January a worried Salinas scurried off to an 
international financial community meeting in Davos, Switzerland, 
seeking to reassure investors. His message was that the guerrilla 
conflict was localized in Chiapas and that a political pact signed 
just before the meeting would guarantee peaceful presidential and 
congressional elections in August. Despite those calming words, 
the Zapatista army, a predominantly indigenous force several 
thousand strong, has moved the conflict beyond the Chiapas borders 
by pushing its priorities to the top of the national agenda. In their 
"Declaration of War," the guerrillas raised the social question by 
demanding jobs, housing, health, and education for Mexico's 
impoverished indigenous peoples, and made an unequivocal demand 
for honest elections this year. They have created a new imperative 
for democratic reforms in Mexico that will make the August 
presidential race the most contentious ever and holds out the 
possibility of ending the nearly seven decades of continuous rule by 
the PRI.

	It remains to be seen whether Mexico can stage clean 
elections, but what is already clear since the Chiapas uprising is 
that Salinas and his Institutional Revolutionary party are moving 
faster toward political reform than in the previous five years of 
his administration. The crisis exposed the lack of political 
sensibility among Salinas's inner circle of technocrats. Salinas 
initially responded with force, sending the army in to retake towns 
held by the Zapatistas. Within days, the army was under attack in 
the national and foreign press for alleged human rights violations, 
including bombing of civilian areas, summary executions, and 
torture. Ten days after the conflict broke out the Salinas 
administration regained its balance and began moving aggressively 
to recover the political initiative and press for the pacification of 
the conflict. A key move was the appointment of Manuel Camacho, 
the last remaining _politico_ in the Salinas camp, as peace 
commissioner. The toppling of the hard-line interior minister and 
the weak Chiapas interim governor and the announcement of a 
unilateral army cease-fire reversed the initial military response 
and made clear the government's intention of seeking a political 
solution. The rebellion, which claimed as many as 400 lives in 
initial fighting, brought tens of thousands of citizens out for 
marches calling for a truce and peace talks. Opposition politicians 
tried to capitalize on the popular demand for peace, and the 
government benefited from the outcry against violence, which 
helped isolate the armed movement. Within two weeks, the 
government and the guerrillas had accepted Bishop Samuel Ruiz of 
San Cristobal de las Casas, a longtime champion of the Chiapas 
Indians, as a peace mediator, and one month after the fighting 
began both sides had reached agreement about the conditions and 
agendas for peace talks.

	The new reality in Mexico was summarized in dramatic and 
moving terms in a letter sent to the rebel army by 280 
organizations belonging to the State Indigenous and Peasant 
Council of Chiapas. "After a long night that appeared to have no end, 
it took the Zapatista thunder to clear the darkness and aspire to 
the future with a new light," they wrote in an endorsement of the 
guerrillas' demands for freedom, justice, and democracy, 
especially for Mexico's indigenous and peasant peoples. The changed 
political landscape is evident in the new political actors that have 
been moved into key leadership positions and are believed capable 
of implementing meaningful political reform. And in an apparent 
strategy shift, the guerrillas pledged they would "not impede" the 
August presidential elections, holding out the prospect that the 
vote could take place normally. But in the wake of the Chiapas 
uprising, all of Mexico is asking: "What is normal now?" 

CHIAPAS IS MEXICO

	The violent uprising stunned officials and citizens alike, but 
no one was surprised that the insurgency arose in Chiapas. Tucked 
away in the far southeastern corner of the country, Chiapas was 
part of Guatemala until it joined Mexico in 1824. Chiapas is 
Mexico's poorest state, home to 1 million impoverished Indians who 
eke out a spartan living as small farmers, day laborers, charcoal-
makers, and artisans. The legacy of centuries of malnutrition is 
painfully obvious: most of the Indians are less than five feet tall. 
More than 30 percent of the state's 3.2 million inhabitants are 
illiterate, 32 percent speak only an Indian language, and 72 percent 
of schoolchildren do not complete first grade. Although the state 
produces 55 percent of Mexico's hydroelectric power, 34 percent of 
homes have no electricity. The indigenous are the victims of 
countless land disputes in which feudal land barons, known as 
_caciques,_ send bands of armed men to evict Indians from their 
lands. Violence is institutionalized through links between the 
_caciques_ and local officials, who typically turn a deaf ear to the 
land disputes and intimidate or jail priests and other advocates 
who defend the Indians' land struggles. "The origins of the armed 
movement of Chiapas are in actions that were stimulated by the 
government," which for decades has ignored the Indians' claims for 
land and justice, writes political columnist Miguel Angel Granados 
Chapa in Mexico City's _Reforma_ newspaper. Curiously, the 
highest voter support for the PRI in the 1988 election was won in 
this state of poverty and discrimination where, according to 
official election results, more than 90 percent of voters backed 
the ruling party. But as political analyst Alberto Aziz Nassif has 
noted, in Chiapas "thousands of votes [were] extracted by a 
fraudulent administration of elections made by PRI."

	Among government officials and financiers and businessmen, 
it has become popular to refer to the Zapatista uprising as the 
"Chiapas incident." While Chiapas may be physically isolated from 
the rest of Mexico, and living conditions may be miserable in the 
extreme, the state's problems now permeate national life. Many 
Mexicans point to the hardships of life in Chiapas as emblematic of 
what is wrong with Mexico's economic model, which has catapulted 
11 men to billionaire status while confining 43 million Mexicans to 
a life of poverty. "Chiapas es Mexico" is a new slogan born of the 
crisis, and it is a bitter retort to the government's attempts to 
defend its stringent economic policies that have lowered inflation, 
sold off state-owned enterprises, and ended federal budget 
deficits while failing to stimulate robust growth, create jobs, or 
combat poverty. 

	It is telling that no one in government, from President 
Salinas down, has questioned the legitimacy of the Zapatista army 
demands for jobs and social programs as well as independence, 
freedom, democracy, justice, and peace. PRI presidential contender 
Luis Donaldo Colosio, who led the government's antipoverty 
program before he was named the party's candidate, said that 
social programs have been "insufficient to eradicate the ancestral 
poverty" in Chiapas. The bitter conditions that fueled the Chiapas 
uprising exist in many other regions in Mexico and afflict 
indigenous groups that live in 27 of the country's 31 states, posing 
the threat that unrest could spread.

	Mexicans have taken the Chiapas crisis to heart. In 10 years 
of reporting in Mexico, I have never seen friends and acquaintances 
so shaken or moved. "It is clear to me that the [government's] 
economic program benefits me, but morally it is not fair that my 
indigenous countrymen are fighting for land," said one. Teachers 
have stormed out of classrooms enraged with students who refuse 
to admit to racism against Indians, and artists and scholars say 
they cannot sleep and suffer nightmares because of the uprising. 
"Chiapas has awakened a social conscience that was asleep because 
we did not see the possibility of change," says Fernanda Navarro, a 
philosophy professor at the Nicolaita University in Morelia, 
Michoacan. 

A DEMOCRATIC REFORM?

	With pressure from the Zapatistas bearing down, two 
important steps were taken in late January that could make the 
presidential election credible and prevent bitter postelection 
disputes that might turn violent. On January 27 Mexico's three 
leading political parties and five of six small parties signed a 
"Pact for Peace, Democracy, and Justice," saying that honest 
elections acceptable to civil society and political parties are "a 
necessary condition" for establishing a "just and durable peace." To 
gain credibility for the elections, the eight parties pledged to 
adopt measures that would promote clean elections and "establish 
mechanisms that give full reliability to the voter registration 
roll." Ever since the tainted 1988 presidential election, which 
millions of Mexicans believe was won by opposition leader 
Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the voter rolls have been the focus of bitter 
controversy. Leaders of the conservative National Action party 
(PAN) and the liberal Democratic Revolution party (PRD) charge the 
voter rolls are larded with names of dead people and riddled with 
inaccuracies that prevent eligible voters from voting. Election 
credibility will be enhanced by the appointment in January of Jorge 
Carpizo, a respected jurist, as interior minister and final arbiter 
of the balloting.

	The pact also calls on the Zapatistas to put down their arms 
and enter public life as a political force. Peace Commissioner 
Manuel Camacho pressed this issue on the guerrillas by calling the 
EZLN a "political force in formation" in a statement that outlined 
his plan for peace negotiations. The pact recognizes the political 
parties as the representative force on the question of democratic 
reform, and aims to keep the issue of national democratization out 
of the peace talks.

	The agreement demonstrates movement toward political 
reform, a topic that was taboo as recently as a few months ago. 
The significance of the pact lies in its intention to negotiate 
details and its acceptance of the principle of promoting a legal 
reform that would set out stringent election procedures to 
eliminate the present system of PRI control of election review 
boards. The reform debate would also raise the sensitive issue of 
accepting international election observers. Finally, the pact 
recognizes the authenticity of opposition candidate Cuauhtemoc 
Cardenas and the PRD. Through the pact, the government and the PRI 
"have accepted that you can't have a clean election without a fuss 
if Cardenas is not on board" and this grants Cardenas a kind of veto 
power over reform measures, says political scientist Jorge G. 
Castaneda. But others caution against a premature celebration of 
the end of the state-party regime. They point to the desire of 
Salinas and his group to retain control of the political system and 
emphasize the key elements of political reform remain undefined. 
"I prefer to see that which I do not desire: the regime does not 
want to make true changes," writes historian Enrique Krauze.

	Another important step toward democratization received a 
new impetus from pressures created by the guerrilla uprising. On 
January 26, PRI candidate Colosio pledged that he will support 
clean elections and a program of 20 democratic reforms that are 
being proposed to all presidential candidates by a nonpartisan 
movement led by intellectuals, politicians, artists, and citizen 
activists. Colosio's endorsement of the civil society document, "20 
Pledges for Democracy," is significant because the reforms would 
weaken the PRI's hold on power, reduce presidential powers, and 
pave the way for a system of checks and balances by creating 
greater independence in the legislative and judicial branches of 
government. 

A POSTMODERN GUERRILLA

	The Zapatista National Liberation Army is unlike any other 
Latin American guerrilla movement, and in its short public life has 
shown a flexibility and moderation previously unknown in the 
hemisphere. The Zapatistas distinguished their movement with 
their ready willingness to engage in peace talks. Only one week 
after taking up arms, the guerrilla leadership responded favorably 
to government offers to hold a dialogue to debate the EZLN agenda 
of social and economic demands, a cease-fire, and political 
participation for indigenous and other citizens. Three weeks after 
their initial attacks, the Zapatistas announced a major strategy 
shift in a communique that reversed their initial demands for the 
overthrow of Salinas and the army and pledged they "will not 
impede the elections of 1994."

	The Zapatistas launched their uprising in unusual times, 
historian Lorenzo Meyer points out. "The EZLN [rebellion] is the 
first postmodern rebellion of Latin America. The first that is born 
not only in postcommunism but also, and this is important, [born] in 
post-anticommunism," Meyer wrote in the newspaper _Excelsior._ 
In this context, the Zapatistas explicitly renounced the standard 
leftist goals of leading revolution and taking power. "There are and 
there will be other revolutionary organizations. We do not intend to 
be the one, sole, and true historic vanguard," said an EZLN 
communique published January 25. This sharply unorthodox 
approach reflects a keen reading of the political climate by the 
Zapatistas, who can maximize their impact by seizing the precise 
moment for striking--the election year--and have now chosen to 
join the growing clamor for honest elections and democratization, 
analysts say.

	The "public face" of the EZLN is SubComandante Marcos, a tall 
man who wears a ski mask that reveals only his green eyes and 
part of his prominent nose. The subcomandante, who spoke from 
behind his mask to a dazed crowd of residents and tourists in the 
plaza of San Cristobal de las Casas on New Year's Day, has captured 
the popular imagination through the bold moves of the Zapatistas 
and through a dozen communiques that reveal a direct, powerful 
writing style and a sense of humor heretofore concealed by most 
Latin American guerrillas. In a sharply worded communique that 
warned the army it would have to kill every Zapatista to eradicate 
the guerrilla command, the insurgent subcomandante fired a 
potshot at Mexican insensitivity to the indigenous: "A question: 
Will all of this serve so that at least the 'Mexicans' learn to say 
'Chiapas' instead of 'Chapas' and say 'Tzeltales' instead of 
'Setsales'?"

	Public response to the guerrillas might be considered 
postmodern also. The Zapatistas have rekindled the romanticism 
classically associated with leftist movements, but have also 
stirred deep fears of social unrest and sparked massive protests 
renouncing the use of violence. Troubling questions hover over the 
movement about the source of the rebels' money and weapons, and 
the answers could shift public sentiment away from the 
Zapatistas.

CONTINUITY AS LIABILITY

	The guerrilla conflict eclipsed the presidential campaign, 
which was officially kicked off in January. The Zapatista social 
and political demands challenge all candidates to revamp their 
rhetoric and platforms. PRI contender Luis Donaldo Colosio is under 
the most pressure to reformulate his program. Colosio was chosen 
as PRI candidate by Salinas because he best assured the continuity 
of the Salinas economic reforms. But in the redefined Mexico, 
continuity has become a political liability.

	Doubts about the economic model that Colosio would carry 
forward have deepened since Chiapas. The Salinas reforms that 
privatized public companies, removed barriers to foreign 
competition, and created federal budget surpluses also left nearly 
half of all Mexicans living in poverty or extreme poverty. The 
Solidaridad program of public works and targeted food subsidies, 
which was run by Colosio, was created to alleviate the poverty 
spread by the modernizing liberal reforms. Solidaridad projects 
were to be a pillar of the PRI campaign. But once the spotlight of 
national attention was trained on the extreme poverty of Chiapas--
which has received one of the highest levels of Solidarity funds--
the flaws of the antipoverty program became apparent. The dusty 
Tzotzil Indian town of Chenalho, Chiapas, is a case in point. In the 
past two years, Solidaridad came to Chenalho, financed 
construction of a meeting hall for farmers, and built a public 
bathhouse that smells from two blocks away. But no jobs were 
created, and the local priest says farmers lack production credits. 
Many of the Tzotziles of Chenalho scratch out a bare existence 
growing corn and coffee on the steep hillsides above town; many 
others are forced to emigrate to the adjoining states of Tabasco 
and Oaxaca to get work in construction or other jobs. "They stay 
away for two or three months and come back when they've earned 
some money and go away again when they've spent it," Felipe 
Abarca Villafuerte, a primary school teacher, told foreign 
reporters.

	The Colosio campaign got off to a lackluster start. On 
February 1, he made a good effort to drape himself in the mantle of 
justice. In a campaign speech at Ananecuilco, the birthplace of 
revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata, Colosio intoned, "The claim, 
beliefs, and yearnings [of Zapata] are still in force; his call 
demands a reply. The cry of 'Land and Liberty' is still today a 
demand for justice, it is a condition for peace, for stability of the 
country, and for prevailing over poverty." The candidate went on to 
promise a new strategy of governing, but offered no compelling 
details. The government's credibility crisis offers Colosio an 
opportunity to strike out in new directions and create his own 
identity and platform independent of Salinas. If he cannot meet the 
challenge, his campaign may languish. 

	The presidential contest could face another earthquake 
before the final deadline in July for registration of candidates. The 
appointment of former Colosio rival Manuel Camacho as peace 
commissioner has given him national prominence and popularity, 
and has fueled widespread speculation that Camacho will launch 
himself as a presidential contender. The former mayor of Mexico 
City, Camacho was so bitterly disappointed when he lost the PRI 
presidential nomination to Colosio that he staged an unorthodox 
public protest and hinted he would leave government. Back in the 
limelight and active in his preferred role as a protagonist, he 
stands to win great popularity as the man who may restore 
political stability. As peace talks began in February, Camacho 
remained a wild card in the election. He still nurtures presidential 
ambitions, but the scenarios for his candidacy are highly 
problematic, and Salinas himself spoke out to re-endorse the 
Colosio candidacy and quash the rumors that Camacho might 
replace Colosio as PRI's presidential choice. Even if he ran on 
another party's ticket, a Camacho candidacy would divide the PRI at 
the very least. An important motive for Salinas's choice of Colosio 
was the need to maintain unity in the PRI. Paradoxically, Camacho's 
rehabilitation as peace commissioner has re-ignited his followers 
and stirred up one of the most severe divisions the party has faced.

	The leading opposition parties enter the election fray with 
handicaps. The Democratic Revolution party is still struggling to 
unify factions that range from socialists to PRI defectors, but its 
internal divisions are not likely to detract votes from its 
candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who led the strongest challenge 
ever against PRI in the jiggered 1988 election. The National Action 
party has chosen as candidate Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, a man 
who lacks a popular following, and it lost respected independent-
minded leaders last year in an internal dispute over the party's 
cooperation with Salinas's policies. Both parties must compete 
against the awesome PRI behemoth with its overpowering 
economic resources and nationwide election machine. A deeper 
problem for all the parties is the issue of representativity at a 
time when Mexicans increasingly prefer to affiliate with 
nonpartisan special interest groups--and when burgeoning civil 
society has seized the initiative on many pressing issues such as 
government accountability and human rights.

	The strongest threat to Colosio is Cardenas, who drew 31 
percent of the vote in 1988, according to official results. Cardenas 
has tirelessly stumped the country for the past six years, and is 
expected to make a strong showing once again. It would take 
exceptional circumstances to bring about a Cardenas victory, but 
exceptional circumstances are closer at hand than at almost any 
time in PRI history. Cardenas's presidential bid could be boosted by 
fractures in the PRI, resentment against the party's perpetual rule, 
continuing economic hardships, unexpected fallout from the 
Zapatista presence, and a direct appeal to a broad constituency, 
including small political parties and nonpartisan civic groups. 

THE NEW POLITICAL PLAYERS

	As in other countries, new political forces are emerging in 
Mexico that will be important players in the election. The struggle 
to forge alliances across parties and with citizen groups is central 
to the country's political reorganization. The discipline of 
corporate groups and straight party voting are crumbling as part of 
the shift toward democracy. The PRI still counts thousands of labor 
and peasant organizations among its corporatist affiliates, but the 
1988 election proved that their loyalty at the ballot box is 
questionable. Cardenas has already lined up the backing of right-
wing Foro Democratico Nacional, a breakaway from the National 
Action party, and several small socialist parties. Last July the 
Democratic Revolution party endorsed a Cardenas initiative to 
reserve up to 50 percent of its federal and state candidacies for 
independents drawn from popular organizations, advocacy groups, 
and prominent independent people respected for their leadership in 
promoting democratic reforms. 

	On February 5, below the imposing arches of the Monument to 
the Revolution in Mexico City, Cardenas announced the creation of 
the National Democratic Alliance (ADN), a pluralistic coalition that 
includes parties ranging across the political spectrum and scores 
of local civic and labor organizations, and the Citizens Movement 
for Democracy, a national coalition of 150 urban community 
associations, peasant leagues, and ecology and human rights 
groups. In its "Charter for Democratic Change," the ADN sets as its 
goal an end to the "corporatist and authoritarian system" and the 
election of a pluralist Congress that would draft a new 
constitution and promote an equitable social policy; these would be 
the pillars of a transition to democracy, says ADN organizer Joel 
Ortega. The Alliance is an open movement aimed principally at 
uniting civic associations and advocacy groups that can organize a 
massive popular campaign to monitor the presidential election and 
protest election fraud.

	Skepticism about the possibility of clean elections runs deep 
and wide. A recent opinion poll showed that 71 percent of 
respondents expect the elections, which absent reforms will be 
supervised by PRI-controlled agencies, to be dirty. Consequently, 
citizen mobilization for honest elections could be the decisive 
factor in setting up a credible vote and dampening protest over the 
outcome. The validity of the election will depend heavily on "the 
influential group of analysts and national and foreign citizen 
groups that will monitor the process," writes Carlos Ramirez, 
senior political columnist at Mexico City's _El_Financiero_ 
newspaper. The Zapatista army will also put pressure on the 
elections, kindling the threat of electoral unrest if the official 
vote count is cast in doubt.

	The Zapatista movement has breathed new life into the 
burgeoning civil society by giving an urgency to the insistent but 
until now little-heard popular demands for fair elections, 
government accountability, and citizen participation in a political 
system dominated by presidential power and the PRI. But the 
guerrilla uprising creates new imperatives if the community and 
farmer associations, urban groups, and special interest advocates 
that make up civil society are to retain credibility with the 
majority of Mexicans who are poor. "Civil society now has the 
word, but its agenda [had been] minimal and exclusively aimed at 
the transition to democracy. Now, civil society must take on 
simultaneously the struggle for justice, and for democracy," says 
Miguel Alvarez, a member of the Citizens Movement for Democracy. 

THE NOT SO ROSY ECONOMY

	Complicating the political panorama for this year is the dull 
economic outlook. The high expectations that Salinas stirred up in 
selling the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta), 
which went into effect January 1, could prove elusive if investors 
shy away from a troubled Mexico. Growth is expected to reach 3 
percent--at most 3.5 percent--this year, an inadequate level for 
Mexico, where the estimated 2.2 percent population growth rate 
absorbs most economic expansion, and where UN agencies report 
that annual growth of 6.7 percent is required to create enough jobs 
to employ the growing labor force. NAFTA was a leading motive for 
the Chiapas uprising, and was denounced resoundingly by the 
Zapatistas for job losses it is expected to cause among Mexican 
farmers likely to be displaced by imports of cheap United States 
corn. In the short run, NAFTA's greater opening to foreign 
competition could drive some Mexican industries out of business. 
Unemployment has increased in the past two years, and more 
Mexicans are expected to lose their jobs this year, swelling the 
informal economy that some analysts say employs up to 25 percent 
of working Mexicans. The Salinas opening has made Mexico highly 
dependent on foreign investment to pay for a trade deficit that is 
estimated to reach $18 billion in 1994. As in recent years, the 
stock market is expected to turn in a positive performance during 
the year, but as the Chiapas crisis painfully shows, growth in the 
financial sector does not filter down to the needy. Now the 
government is speeding up social spending and some say may slip 
into a deficit. 

	Months before the uprising, Salinas had pledged to lighten the 
austerity burden imposed on voters by the liberal economic reform. 
The anti-inflation program for 1994 includes measures that would 
reduce taxes and fuel costs for consumers and allow for real 
increases in certain wage categories. Discontent among middle-
class professionals who see no prospect for economic advancement 
is rampant, and they could become an important anti-PRI 
constituency if the economy remains weak. 

OF MASKED MEN AND MASKED TRUTHS

	Mexico has a rich tradition of masked men leading popular 
causes. Recently, SuperBarrio, a masked maverick who dresses like 
the popular _lucha_libre_ wrestlers, was born out of the ashes of 
the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. He defends the homeless in their 
fight for housing aid and stands at the side of inner city renters 
battling eviction. SubComandante Marcos now joins the gallery of 
masked would-be reformers. His mask has become controversial as 
peace negotiator Camacho has demanded that Marcos bare his face 
at the peace talks. Marcos replied fiercely to the demand that he 
take off his mask. "Why such a fuss over the ski mask? Is Mexican 
political culture not the 'culture of the veiled?,'" he asked, alluding 
to the traditional secrecy that shrouds the naming of PRI 
presidential candidates. The subcomandante issued a challenge: "I 
am willing to take off my ski mask if Mexican society will take off 
its mask" and reexamine its images of "modernity" to reconcile the 
third world that is Chiapas with Salinas's claims that Mexico is 
entering the first world.

	The subcomandante may remain masked, but the movement 
that he leads is unmasking painful truths about Mexico. "The 
rebellion uncovered the degree of simulation and lies in which we 
live," exposing racism and the impossibility of "organizing a 
modernization program against the people or [based on] their 
ignorance," writes political commentator Jose Agustin Ortiz 
Pinchetti in _La_Jornada_ newspaper. For decades, the state-party 
system dominated by the PRI has been politely called "democracia a 
la mexicana," a euphemism for a pluralistic political charade in 
which the PRI holds nearly all the cards. As these and other masks 
come off in Mexico, a new possibility comes into view: honest and 
competitive elections that could create a pluralistic democracy.

	The Chiapas crisis demonstrates an overwhelming popular 
rejection of violence and potential resilience on both sides of the 
conflict. Under the Salinas administration's technocrats, political 
institutions may be creaking but they are not yet brittle. Salinas 
again adopted bold moves characteristic of his leadership and 
pushed for a peaceful solution to the conflict. The Zapatista 
guerrillas made agile responses to proposals for negotiations, and 
recognized that meeting their demands for justice will take time. 
But the deadline for clean elections is fixed. For decades, the 
conventional wisdom about Mexico held that democratization of the 
state-party regime would threaten political stability in a land 
with a fearsome history of bloody uprisings. Today, 
democratization seems the only guarantor of stability and peace.

	Lucy Conger, Mexico correspondent for Institutional
Investor magazine and Jornaldo do Brasil newspaper, has reported 
on Mexican politics and economics for the past 10 years. The author 
thanks Jornal do Brasil for granting permission to include 
material published in the newspaper.