By Nicholas P. Higgins

To many observers within the overdue Nineteen Eighties and early Nineties, Mexico looked to be a latest countryside finally assuming a world position via its participation in NAFTA and the OECD (Organization of financial Cooperation and Development). Then got here the Zapatista insurrection on New Year's Day 1994. donning ski mask and significant no longer energy yet a brand new knowing of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, Subcomandante Marcos and his fans introduced what could be the first "post" or "counter" sleek revolution, person who demanding situations the very inspiration of the trendy countryside and its imaginative and prescient of a completely assimilated citizenry.

This e-book bargains a brand new method of figuring out the Zapatista clash as a counteraction to the forces of modernity and globalization that experience rendered indigenous peoples nearly invisible in the course of the global. putting the clash inside a vast sociopolitical and old context, Nicholas Higgins strains the kinfolk among Maya Indians and the Mexican kingdom from the conquest to the present—which finds a centuries-long contest over the Maya people's identification and position inside Mexico. His incisive research of this contest essentially explains how the notions of "modernity" or even of "the kingdom" require the assimilation of indigenous peoples. With this knowing, Higgins argues, the Zapatista rebellion turns into neither stunning nor unpredictable, yet quite the inevitable consequence of a modernizing software that suppressed the id and aspirations of the Maya peoples.