That's a very partisan far-leftist website, from their home page there is a link to an article involving a pueblo with which i am familiar, spent a lot of time there, spoke with an individual from there in about february of this year ... they are presenting an extremely one-sided story to a situation that has developed out of events in the 1980s, 1920s, and before that to a basis in the 1820s, which evolved out of the european invasion of the 1500s conflicting with a culture that had an architectural peak over a thousand years ago ... all the same clash of cultures really, varying waves of influences, differing whacko religions, novel technologies, styles of rhetoric, imbalances of cash-based wealth, language gaps etc, still the same thing all the way through
The campesino indio, i.e. un-mexicanised indigenous maya/mestizo of a communal/consensus culture, knows in his bones he has a god-given right to go anywhere on this continent, slash the vegetation, let it dry three days in the sun, torch it, plant his crops and raise his family there until he decides to move on - his god-construct is very clear and firm on this matter ... the mexicano, i.e. somewhat-europeanised indigenous maya/mestizo whose god-construct leans more toward individual rights/responsibilities, knows from written law that rights to territory stem from little pieces of paper, which are obtained from palaces of government by paying some officious dickhead or collection of dickheads a few pesos, whether over the table or under or both, doesn't matter, system works great ... until the two find they are concerned with the same piece of land, then they might as well be subjects of two whacko religions squabbling over acreage in Palestine, except that being mexicanos and essentially pragmatic, makers of love not war, also low on ammunition, there is far less bloodshed, rather a concerted attempt to outbreed each other and have the grandchildren deal with it, this is what keeps it rolling over half a millennium so far
Not that it's anywhere near that simple, far more complex really, more than two sides to issues everywhere ... can be simplified by going to the basic human quality of always wanting more, or in the worst case scenario, to keep what you have
... anyway, i would disregard that site as uselessly partisan, it's like going to the chamber of commerce site to learn about fairness of taxes, you know what they're going to say, why bother ... soon as a site starts talking up zapatistas, you know they're anti-mining and anti-foreigner, guaranteed, and they do not speak for the majority of mexicanos [no one else does either, in a room of twelve people you'll get as many dozens of opinions as you have time to listen to] |
