Zapata's Revenge: Free Trade and the Farm Crisis in Mexico
by Tom Barry
South End Press, Boston, 1995
317 pp. (appendix, endnotes, glossary, index)
ISBN 0-89608-499-x
$16.00 (paper)

[This review first appeared in Counterpoise, 1(4): 50-1 (October 1997) -- MFL]

Now that the latter-day zapatistas have become Left's poster children of the decade, it's sometimes easy to forget what the demands of the hooded guerrilleros were when they rose up in Mexico's Lancandón forest in 1994. Tom Barry's Zapata's Revenge, published in 1995, provides a corrective to this tendency. It cuts through distortions of the zapatistas' project promulgated by various factions, be they left or right, and it replants the rebellion's celebrated poetry and heroics firmly in their original soil -- on the devastated Mexican landscape and among the most oppressed of Mexico's poor. But the subject of Barry's study is broader than zapatismo and its recent incarnation in the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN). Barry considers the plight of smallholding mestizo and indigenous farmers since the peonage of early postcolonial times, and he concludes that the latest phase of economic modernization -- in the form of unbridled national and international neoliberal "free market" programs -- not only will impoverish and disenfranchise these campesinos further, but also will not lead, in themselves, to general "economic development." Barry is the founder of the Interhemispheric Resource Center in Albuquerque and the author of a number of books on agriculture and Latin America. His expertise is evident in his meticulous use primary and secondary sources. If one wants to know in concrete terms what the EZLN means when it declares, "We have nothing to lose, absolutely nothing," then Zapata's Revenge is an indispensable resource.

Most of Zapata's Revenge is devoted to detailing Mexico's economic history. Barry treats every aspect of the economy, from farm credit and usufruct rights to national finance and international trade. He does not forget children, women, and indigenous peoples, who not only have been most hurt by economic modernization, but also have been ignored and maligned by economists because they are often involved in "unproductive" labor or "informal" markets. He supplies tabulated economic data in several chapters, which are useful references that keep the reading from becoming too number-heavy. His historic sketch begins with the liberal ideals of the mid-nineteenth century ruling élite in newly independent Mexico. It proceeds to the dictatorial "peace and prosperity" of Porfirio Díaz and the rural rebellion in the first decade of this century against that dictatorship, made famous by two of its more articulate and flamboyant leaders, Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa. These insurrections were followed by an internecine struggle among ruling élite that eventually dispatched Díaz. Barry then discusses the constitutional reforms of 1917, which were a response to the "Revolution" (or, more properly, "coup"). These declared that land and water were "public wealth." In the decades that followed, especially under the government of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-40), the state involved the newly defined agrarian "social sector" in a corporatist scheme of land redistribution and tenancy -- though it did not grant smallholding campesinos full rights of disposal. For the period since the Second World War, Barry traces a path from the agriculture intensification of the Green Revolution to Mexico's accession to such international "free trade" agreements as the NAFTA and GATT, to the concomitant and increasing neo-liberal policies of the recent governments of de la Madrid, Salinas, and Zedillo. Throughout his historical exposition, he pays special attention to the tension between the Mexican state's populist appeal, which regards the social sector as a source of political support, and its technocratic impulses, which often treat the agrarian poor as a useless anachronism.

To my mind, the most interesting historical point Barry makes concerns the "counterrevolutionary" character of post-Revolutionary agrarian reforms, creating, as they did, a bureaucratic hierarchy that politically alienated and made economically dependent the campesinos for whose benefit it was supposed to exist. The hierarchy, built around the state-run National Campesino Federation, has allowed the state to pursue macroeconomic programs of agricultural intensification, export production, and international finance with little regard to the effect on the campesinos themselves. I see this as another example of the failure of highly centralized, undemocratic economic planning, draped in socialist trappings. However, Barry seems to deny his own observations in the final chapter of the book, "Lessons and Options." He is, at least, deeply ambivalent about the role of the state, as currently structured, in "sustainable" economic development which protects and aids farmers, natural resources, and the poor. While he has a sound critical stance toward the EZLN insurgency in the Chiapas, noting that it has expounded more of a regional program than one for all of Mexico (let alone the Third World), he credits the EZLN for having awakened Mexican campesinos and workers from an episode of political passivity and caused them to recognize the international implications of agricultural policy. He believes that the new zapatistas have identified the crucial issues for the social sector in Mexico in their slogan "¡Tierra y libertad!" -- i.e. equitable land distribution and political democracy. Yet in his final recommendation, Barry declares that "outright rejection of state involvement in the agricultural economy is not practical in Mexico." He states this in part, it seems, because he regards economic globalization along neo-liberal lines as inevitable, a situation in which the state still should try to perform some regulatory duties, and in part because -- despite his previous analysis -- he regards the state merely as a repository of economic resources. As he notes, the EZLN itself seems ambivalent about the role of the state, on the one hand calling for greater direct democracy, encouraging occupation of land, and espousing internationalism, and on the other hand appealing to the Mexican constitution for government reforms. I am more interested in the potential of some of the "sustainable agriculture" projects initiated in Mexico by agrarian communities and nongovernmental organizations, which Barry mentions and commends, and I look forward to progressive, farsighted, and viable proposals resulting from forthcoming EZLN-orchestrated international "encuentros" on neo-liberalism.

The book suffers from a few stylistic problems. Each chapter appears to have been written as a separate work; thus the whole book tends to be discursive, with redundant information and scattered historical references. For a book from South End Press, the copy is fairly well edited (only a half dozen or so typos or omissions). These minor problems are counterbalanced perhaps by the book's thorough notes, glossary of Mexican words and acronyms, and appendices listing major foreign investors and nongovernmental contacts. None of this changes the fact that Zapata's Revenge is a formidable documentary resource, written by a person who clearly loves his subject. It is also a critical work, which neither buys into the great narrative of modernization, nor falls prey to anti-progressive nostalgia and romanticism. Unfortunately, space does not permit me to delve into some of the other issues which Barry treats intelligently, such as the role of agrarianism in industrial society or the relationship between class and ethnicity. Given the breadth of the scope of Zapata's Revenge's, reading it with the EZLN communiqués at hand would be excellent introductory course on the Third World in general.

-- Michael F. Lane
28.iv.97