Ethnicity, Legitimacy and the State:
Understanding Ethnic Movements in Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru

Marc Becker
marc@ukans.edu

Paper prepared for presentation at the panel
"Constructing a National Identity: Ethnicity, Political Protest and Social Policy"
1997 Update on Latin American Conference
University of Kansas
March 15, 1997

On January 1, 1994, the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN, Zapatista Army of National Liberation, better known as simply the "Zapatistas") shocked the world with the news of an armed guerrilla uprising in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico. Many analysts in the United States analyzed this action as a popular referendum against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which coincidently had also come into effect on January 1. In Latin America, however, its significance was seen as more social than economic. In a political milieu in which most people had come to assume that internationally the left had met with failure, the Zapatista uprising retriggered hope within the Latin America's popular movement that a radical social realignment of society was still possible.

The Zapatista uprising also caused intellectuals and activists to rethink the role of ethnicity in what historically had become class-based movements to realign the masses' relationship with state power. Successful movements for social change during the twentieth century in Latin America (particularly the 1910-1920 Mexican, 1959 Cuban and 1979 Nicaraguan revolutions) had been rooted in a class analysis of society. Historians have long noted that unlike in Europe where such revolutionary movements were rooted in an urban working class, in Latin America a rural peasantry formed the basis for revolutionary actions. The Zapatista uprising appeared to introduce another element to the equation. In the aftermath of the 1992 Quincentennial protests, Indigenous peoples utilizing a language of ethnicity appeared to be defining the discourse used in this movement.

Was, as the South and Meso American Indian Rights Center (SAIIC) asked rhetorically on the cover of its journal Abya Yala News, an "Indigenous uprising with campesino [peasant] demands"?(1) Recent activities in other parts of Latin America beg the same question. In Guatemala, the country with the largest Indigenous population in Latin America, a mestizo-dominated guerilla movement which had fought for thirty-five years for the rights of the poor finally signed a peace agreement with the Guatemalan government which some contended excluded the Maya peoples. In Ecuador, the Indige nous-rights movement joined forces with political leftists in an unsuccess ful bid for governmental control of that country through an electoral campaign for the presidency. More spectacularly, on December 17, 1996, in Lima, Peru, the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA, Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement) seized several hundred hostages at the Japanese Embassy. What was the role of ethnicity in the actions of a guerrilla group whose very name came from the last Inka ruler and the leader of an eighteenth-century neo-Inka revolt?

Based largely on statements and declarations published on the Internet, I would like to reflect on the role of ethnicity and its relationship with leftist thought in recent movements in Latin America to gain control of state structures. It is not incidental or out of laziness that I rely on Internet sources. The revolution may not be televised, but it will be carried live on the Internet. The Internet has proven to be an effective medium for the "voiceless" to broadcast their concerns around the world. Media-savvy Subcomandante Marcos of the EZLN has been acutely aware of this medium. The MRTA also consciously referred to the Internet as a modern-day quipu (the system of communication which the Inkas utilized), and noted that "this is the alternative mode of communi cation for those of us who lack the resources to buy important instruments of communi cation that would allow us to make our voices heard."(2)

On January 1, 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation released its now infamous First Declaration From the Lacandon Jungle which began with the statement:

We are a product of 500 years of struggle: first against slavery, then during the War of Independence against Spain led by insurgents, then to avoid being absorbed by North American imperialism, then to promulgate our constitution and expel the French empire from our soil, and later the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz denied us the just application of the Reform laws and the people rebelled and leaders like Villa and Zapata emerged, poor men just like us. We have been denied the most elemental preparation so they can use us as cannon fodder and pillage the wealth of our country. They don't care that we have nothing, absolutely nothing, not even a roof over our heads, no land, no work, no health care, no food nor education. Nor are we able to freely and democratically elect our political representatives, nor is there independence from foreigners, nor is there peace nor justice for ourselves and our children.

This statement concluded with a declaration of war which listed six objectives:

Almost three years later, on December 17, 1996, about 20 members of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement announced that "at 8.25 p.m., the special force unit "EDGAR SANCHEZ" of our organization has militarily occupied the residence of the ambassador of Japan and has taken prisoner several political and business personalities and members of the diplomatic corps accredited in Peru." In fact, they had captured more than 500 guests (a number quickly reduced to 72 over the course of the following weeks) at the home of Japan's ambassador, Morihisa Aoiki. The hostages represented essentially the entire elite political and economic structure of Peru. The MRTA released a communique which stated that:

We also communicate to our peoples that we have been forced to take to this extreme measure in order to save the life of dozens of members and leaders of our organization, who suffer imprisonment under subhuman conditions and under a prison system which aims for their physical and mental annihilation. They are imprisoned in true "grave prisons", as Mr. Alberto Fujimori has repeatedly confirmed with the words "there they will rot and will only get out dead", which shows an irrational rage against social fighters who have risen in arms to fight for the well-being of our peoples.

The MRTA stated that it would release the captured persons only if the government complied with four demands:

What immediately becomes obvious in these statements and lists of demands is the complete absence of any language concerning ethnicity or defending the rights of Indigenous peoples. In all fairness to the MRTA, their December 17th statement is not an accurate reflection of their overall organizational goals. The occupation of the Japanese ambassador's residence and the resulting communique had very narrow and specific goals: the release of their imprisoned comrades, many who had been jailed under an abusive judicial system which violated internation ally recognized standards of justice. Over the course of the next several months, however, the MRTA continued to release communiques which repeated their demand that their imprisoned comrades be released and that politicians and the press refrain from calling them a "terrorist and genocidal band" or otherwise confusing them with the more violent Shining Path guerrilla group.(5) Although it did on occasion draw attention to the fact that the Fujimori government demonstrated "little interest in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Peruvians whom it has plunged into absolute poverty by the brutal application of the neo-liberal model,"(6) the organization rather spent more time pointing to the violation of internationally recognized legal standards which resulted in kangaroo courts convicting much of their top leadership.

Ethnicity rarely emerges in these communiques, and only in the context of off-hand comments such as referring to the Internet as a modern-day Inka quipu or the Andean moral code of Ama quella, Ama sua, Ama Llulla (don't be lazy, don't lie, don't steal). This is not due to a lack of awareness of these issues. The MRTA remained acutely aware of the source of their name. For example, a communique noted that "neither Tupac Amaru nor MRTA initiated the war in Peru, and even less the violence; rather we have been, and continue to be, its victims."(7) Nor does it necessarily mean that ethnicity is absent from their ideological motivation for taking up an armed struggle. But the suppression of ethnicity from their overt discourse is revealing. It perhaps most accurately reflects a leadership structure based in the elite and mestizo populations in Lima, and a natural concern with issues which impact them most immediately and directly. This is a problem which we have seen repeated numerous times throughout Latin America in attempts to organize popular movements for social change. Leadership structures tend to become divorced from the base, and often their success can be judged only in so far as they are successful to organically emerge out of their base.

The EZLN's declarations from the Lacandon jungle are even more interesting and revealing in terms of its ethnic ideology than the MRTA communiques because they present a more compre hensive statement of the Zapatista's purpose and goals. Although the First Declaration From the Lacandon Jungle begins with the statement that "We are a product of 500 years of struggle," an obvious reference to the 1992 Quincentennial protests which embraced the theme of "500 years of Indigenous struggle," the statement never makes an explicit reference to the large Indigenous population in Chiapas, the locus of the Zapatista uprising. Rather, the struggle is framed in the language of the poor, marginalized masses and foreign domination and exploitation.

The EZLN called on people to "struggle for democracy, liberty and justice for all Mexicans," first through taking up military arms and then through the peaceful and civic path of elections.(8) In fact, the Zapatistas have become known not for their military strategies but for their political posturing and negotiating skills. Where the MRTA focused on the situation of their unjustly imprisoned comrades, the EZLN sought to open up political space for those who had been excluded from the governing PRI's monopoly on power. The Second Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle from June 10, 1994 presented eleven demands including housing, land, work, food, health, education, justice, independence, liberty, democracy and peace. They stated that "the electoral process of August 1994 is a State crime." Ethnicity also remained largely marginalized in this discourse. It is one thing to make a statement such as "The EZLN watched as their indigenous brothers in Guerrero, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Chihuahua and Veracruz were repressed and received mockery as an answer to their demands for a solution to their living conditions," and it is different issue to be able to articulate specifically the demands of the Indigenous peoples.

Nevertheless, the EZLN did make statements which gained for them a reputation of defending the interests of Indigenous peoples. For example, in the Third Declara tion of the Lacandon Jungle (January 1995), the EZLN called for autonomy for Indigenous lands:

The indigenous question will not have a solution if there is not a RADICAL transforma tion of the national pact. The only means of incorporating, with justice and dignity, the indigenous of the Nation, is to recognize the characteristics of their own social, political and cultural organization. Autonomy is not separation; it is integration of the most humble and forgotten minorities of contemporary Mexico. This is how the EZLN understood the issue since its founding, and this is how the indigenous communities who make up the leadership of our organization have defined it.(9)

Such calls for Indigenous autonomy endeared the EZLN in the eyes of groups such as the American Indian Movement (AIM), although this quote ("Autonomy is not separation; it is integration of the most humble and forgotten minorities of contemporary Mexico") appears more akin to traditional assimilationist indigenista ideologies than Indigenous calls for sovereignty. Indigenous peoples perhaps comprised the largest demographic element in the Zapatista membership, but the leaders continued to boldly state "our struggle is national." Consider the following statement from the Third Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle:

WE CALL UPON THE WORKERS OF THE REPUBLIC, THE WORKERS IN THE COUNTRYSIDE AND THE CITIES, THE NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENTS, THE TEACH ERS AND THE STUDENTS OF MEXICO, THE WOMEN OF MEXICO, THE YOUNG PEOPLE OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY, THE HONEST ARTISTS AND INTELLECTUALS, THE RESPONSIBLE RELIGIOUS MEMBERS, THE COMMUNITY-BASED MILITANTS OF THE DIFFERENT POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS, to take up the means and forms of struggle that they consider possible and necessary, to struggle for the end of the Party-State system, incorporating themselves into the NATIONAL DEMO CRATIC CONVENTION if they do not belong to a party, and to the National Liberation Movement if they are active in any of the political opposition forces.

Indigenous peoples do not even warrant mention in their laundry list of who should join in a unified revolutionary movement. Similarly, the MRTA also described themselves as "a political organization comprised of men, women, workers, peasants, students, progressive intellectuals, and progressive sectors of the military" who struggled for social justice, while also failing to mention Indigenous peoples.(10) Over time, the EZLN perhaps became more inclusive of Indigenous concerns and announced their support for a National Indigenous Congress. In the Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle (January 1996), Subcomandante Marcos stated that their rebellion "has a dark face and an indigenous language was not born today. It spoke before with other languages and in other lands. This rebellion against injustice spoke in many mountains and many histories." He then proceeded to list forty-seven Indigenous languages from Mexico in which the rebellion had "spoken."(11)

Thus, in an editorial in the issue of Abya Yala News which asked on the cover "Chiapas: Indigenous Uprising with Campesino De mands?" the SAIIC Board of Directors criticized movements which reduced Indigenous demands to only class or economic demands. These "demands are not just for a better salary, or a piece of land, rather they [are] oriented towards reconstructing our communities and cultures."(12) In spite of the fact that the Zapatistas occasionally would use the Indigenous Nahuatl language in their manifestos or otherwise embrace Indigenous iconography in their struggles, it is understandable why some Indigenous organizations hesitated to embrace the EZLN as a bonafide ethnic rights movement.

Significant armed guerrilla movements are a relatively recent development in Mexico, but a similar relationship between Marxist guerrillas and the Indigenous masses can also be observed in Mexico's neighbor, Guatemala. Guerrilla movements which emerged in Guatemala in the 1960s after the overthrow of the reformist Arbenz government in 1954 presented a very traditional Western analysis of ethnic relations in Guatemalan society. Their Marxist analysis considered Indians to be politically and economically marginal to Guatemalan society with little promise of leading or contributing to a revolutionary uprising. The resulting analysis, naturally, held little appeal for the large Indian masses in Guatemalan society who participated only marginally in political struggles.

By the 1980s, Marxist guerrillas still emphasized class struggle and denied the existence of ethnic oppression. According to their analysis, Indian oppression was rooted in Guatemala's class structure and it was a major breakthrough for the left when in 1982 the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG), the umbrella group for Guatemala's various guerrilla groups, included as one of its five fundamental points of struggle that "the revolution guarantees equality between indigenous people and ladinos, ending cultural oppression and discrimina tion.(13) When leftist manifestos did recognize ethnic contradic tions in Guatemalan society, they argued that the class contradictions remained more important. In a 1982 statement on "The Indian Question," the pro-Soviet Guatemalan Labor Party (Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo--PGT) stated that "poor Indians are exploited by ladinos and by rich Indians in the same form and method as are poor ladinos. They are not exploited for their ethnic origin, culture, or for being Indians." Rather, the statement continues, "they are exploited because they are dispossessed and live in a society in which real class antagonisms exist." They are exploited because of economic structures and relations of production which impact all Guatemalans the same.(14) Similarly, in a statement on racism the Organization of People in Arms (Organización del Pueblo en Armas--ORPA) recognized that racism is a serious problem in Guatemala, but they considered mobilizing on the basis of ethnicity to be a matter of "false consciousness."(15) "True consciousness," of course, is that based on a class identity which unified poor Indigenous peoples with poor ladinos.

Writings from the most "Indian" of Guatemala's various guerrilla groupings in the early 1980s, the Ejercito Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP--Poor People's Army) illustrates these points. In an article on Indian guerrilla fighters, the EGP writes that "the ethnic border between indians and ladinos no longer corresponds to the class structure of present-day society."(16) In an analysis which parallels that of Sidney Mintz on the Cuban Revolution,(17) the EGP argued that with the capitalist transformation of the Guatemalan economy "the indian peasants have become wage workers part of the year, or semiproletarians."(18) Although the economic exploitation they faced was doubly painful because it was also accompa nied by racial discrimination, the EGP contended that this process of proletarianization broke down local and ethnic boundaries between Guatemala's twenty-two different Indigenous groups which resulted in not only the emergence of a pan-Indian identity but also created a common bond of identity with ladino workers. It is because of this class identity that for "the first time that the indians align themselves fully with a political revolutionary plan that contains their most deeply felt demands."(19)

Although the EGP was most successful in incorporating Indigenous demands into its revolutionary struggle, it persisted in analyzing their oppression in class terms. In what amounts to a Western, linear, progressive view of the march of historical events, the EGP believed that the "ladinization" of Maya culture was inevitable. Thus, the EGP concluded that there was no future for Indigenous customs or culture in Guatemala and that "the Revolution ary Popular War . . . offers the only alternative and future solution to the ethno-cultural complexity of our country."(20) They did not deny the reality of racial discrimination, but they saw it primarily as a tool of the dominant classes to maintain a system of economic exploita tion. They contended that cultural oppression could be ended only through the fostering of a revolutionary identity which emphasized class unity over ethnic and racial divisions.

To their credit, the EGP understood the racial discrimination which Guatemala's Indigenous people faced and attempted to incorporate their demands into a revolutionary struggle. Most previous political movements had seen Guatemalan politics as concerning only the elite ruling class and mestizos. In an interview EGP Commander Rolando Morán noted that for many years Indigenous people "were generally considered, even by the most progressive movements which occurred before the beginning of the revolutionary guerilla struggle, as an inert mass." The presence of Indigenous fighters in the revolutionary struggle, Morán contended, was "indispensable" and it was "absurd" to see Guatemala's conflict exclusively as a class struggle between mestizos that ignored the role and historic reality of Guate mala's Indigenous minority.(21) Even so, EGP's logo included the portrait of Comandante Ernesto "Che" Guevera rather than a Maya hero or leader such as Atanasio Tzul.

In the Guatemalan case, Carol Smith concluded that due to the Ladino guerrilla leaders' emphasis on a class rather than ethnic analysis the two could not share the same political objectives.(22) The nature of each groups' analysis helped determine their goals--the guerrillas sought to establish a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist state whereas the Mayas strove to defend their cultural identities in the face of Western exploitation. Smith noted that as long as Guatemalan revolutionaries clung to "a traditional (Western) socialist vision of economic oppression and social transformation ... they had relatively little success in incorporating the Indian masses into the struggle."(23) Smith argues for the potential significance of a left which recognizes the importance of Indigenous autonomy and strives to make that a central goal of a revolutionary struggle: "it would have increased the chances of a successful revolution in Guatemala; and had a revolutionary society been constructed whose agenda was the creation of a multicultural socialism, it would have affected the world-historical meaning of revolution as well."(24)

Michael Brown and Eduardo Fernandez in their book War of Shadows examine the history in 1965 of Asháninka (Campa) Indians joining forces with a Castroite guerrilla group (Moviemiento Izquierdista Revolucionario, MIR) in millenarian uprising in the Eastern Peruvian Amazon. Brown and Fernández discussed how Marxists (specifically the MIR) generally ignored Indigenous issues or embraced racist attitudes toward them. "For the MIR," they wrote, "Indians were visible only as generic peasants (campesinos) or even as 'rural proletarians.'"(25) The guerrillas considered the Eastern jungles to be "unpopulated," the people "primitive," child-like, and easily manipulated. Nevertheless, Indigenous groups are drawn toward the millenarian ideology which often drives guerrilla movements, and other groups (such as the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru) were more likely to utilize Indigenous iconography.

Such ambiguous or seemingly contradictory attitudes toward ethnicity within popular movements in Latin America is not unusual. For example, in Ecuador, where in the 1990s perhaps the strongest Indigenous movement in Latin America emerged, Indigenous organizations criticized earlier movements for too heavily depending on the Marxist left to the exclusion of an ethnic analysis while at the same time actively courting strategic alliances with non-Indigenous leftist actors. Similarly, Aymara and Quechua Indians in the Bolivian highland have organized peasant unions in order to agitate for land reform following the 1952 nationalist revolution. This grew into a Katarista movement that rejected Indians' second-class status in Bolivian society. In the late 1970s, Kataristas (particularly Aymara Indians) merged with Marxist-led peasant groups to form CSUTCB, the United Confederation of Rural Workers of Bolivia, which was the peasant wing of the Bolivian Workers Central (COB).

Events such as these have led activists and analysts to examine divisions between the "populares" and those embracing an ethnic analysis. Guillermo Delgado asserts that "indigenous peoples' histories remain colonial when reduced to class."(26) In the context of the 1992 Quincentennial protest which globally raised Indigenous issues in the public consciousness, the marginalization of ethnicity within popular movements became less acceptable. The Declaration of Quito, a document representing the concerns of four hundred Indigenous peoples from 120 nations, tribes and organizations who met in Quito, Ecuador in July of 1990 to strategize for a unified Indian response to the Quincentennial celebrations, stated that "We reject the manipulation of organiza tions which are linked to the dominant sectors of society and have no Indigenous representation, who usurp our name for (their own) Imperialist interests."(27)

In reality, however, divisions between ethnic and class analyses particularly as they relate to popular movements to gain state power are not as deep or significant as one might initially assume. In fact, humans tend to be surprising complex characters who can maintain multiple identities simultaneously with no apparent negative schizophrenic side affects. In addition, by nature revolutionaries must believe in the possibilities of change and even Marxists can alter their perceptions of ethnicity. At the Follow-Up Commission of the National Indigenous Congress, on February 16th, 1997, the EZLN vowed "to participate in the design of a new relationship between the State, the national society, and the indigenous peoples." The San Andrés peace accords "represented a first step toward the resolution of our ancient problems,'' including demands for autonomy for Indigenous land and territories.(28)

Even the Quito Declaration observed that "class and ethnicity are not contradictory, the important matter is our self-affirmation as Native Nations." It further stated that Indigenous organizations should "promote unity of action with those popular sectors that favor the achieve ments and historical objectives of Indian peoples and of those other sectors oppressed and exploited in our countries."(29)

What I believe we have observed in the last ten or fifteen years with leftist revolutionary movements in Latin America is that they succeed in so much as they can establish close linkages with their base. In countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador with large Indigenous populations, this means establishing linkages with Indigenous peoples and their organizations. Ethnicity, thus, becomes a significant issue in legitimizing leftist revolutionary movements which seek to redefine their relationship with the national state.

Endnotes

1. Abya Yala News (SAIIC, Oakland, California), 8:1-2, Summer 1994.

2. Isaac Velazco, MRTA International Representative, "Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA Communique #7, " Europe, January 1997 (http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats/MRTA/mrta-c7.h tm). The communiques from the EZLN and MRTA utilized in the writing of this essay can be found on the Internet at the following addresses: http://www.ezln.org/ (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional), http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats/mrta.htm (Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru), and http://users.cybercity.dk/~ccc17427/ (Voz Rebelde, Organo Oficial del Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru).

3. General Command of the EZLN, "First Declaration From the Lacandon Jungle," January 1, 1993 ( http://www.ezln.org/EZLN_COMMUNIQUE_1-1.html).

4. National Direction of the MRTA, "Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA) Communique #1," Lima, 17th December, 1996 (http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats/MRTA/mrta-c1.h tm).

5. Nestor Cerpa Cartolini, "Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA) Communique #3," Lima, December 28, 1996 ( http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats/MRTA/mrta-c3.htm).

6. National Direction of the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA), "Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA) Communique #4," Someplace in the Central Jungle, December 1996 ( http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats/MRTA/mrta-c4.htm).

7. Dirección Nacional del MRTA, "Comunicado No 9," Desde algún lugar del Perú, febrero 1997 (http://users.cybercity.dk/~ccc17427/co m9esp.htm); Isaac Velazco, MRTA International Representative, "Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA) Communique #7, " Europe, January 1997 (http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats/MRTA/mrta-c7.h tm).

8. Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Commit tee--General Command of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, "The Third Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle," Mexico, January 1995 (http://www.ezln.org/3rd-decl.html).

9. Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee--General Command of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, "The Third Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle," Mexico, January 1995 (http://www.ezln.org/3rd-decl.html).

10. Ibid.; Presentación del MRTA ( http://users.cybercity.dk/~ccc17427/present.htm).

11. Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, Indigenous Clandestine Revolutionary Committee, General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, "Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle," Mexico, January 1, 1996 (http://www.ezln.org/4th-decl.html).

12. SAIIC Board of Directors, "Editorial," Abya Yala News (SAIIC, Oakland, California), 8:1-2, Summer 1994, 3.

13. Miguel Angel Reyes, "El indio en la lucha ideológica," Polémica (San José) 20 (May-August 1986), 12. Reyes also discusses similar statements from the same era from other guerrilla groups such as the Oorganización del Pueblo en Armas (ORPA), Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP), Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (FAR) and the pro-Soviet Partido Guatemalteco de Trabajo (PGT). On this same theme also see Carol A. Smith, "Conclusion: History and Revolution in Guatemala," in Carol A. Smith, ed., Guatemalan Indians and the State: 1540 to 1988 Symposia on Latin America Series. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 268.

14. Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo (PGT), "La cuestión indígena," Polémica (San José) 3 (January-February 1982), 64.

15. Organización del Pueblo en Armas (ORPA), "Acerca del racismo," Polémica (San José) 3 (January-February 1982), 65

16. Ejercito Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP), "The Indian Guerrilla Fighters," Compañero (Guatemala) 4 (March 1981), 6.

17. Sidney W. Mintz, "The Rural Proletariat and the Problem of Rural Proletarian Consciousness," The Journal of Peasant Studies 1:3 (April 1974), 291-325.

18. Ejercito Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP), "The Indian Guerrilla Fighters," Compañero (Guatemala) 4 (March 1981), 7. Rigoberta Menchú presents a similar picture of her family as rural proletariats in Rigoberta Menchú, I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, edited and introduced by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, trans. Ann Wright (London: Verso, 1984).

19. Ejercito Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP), "The Indian Guerrilla Fighters," Compañero (Guatemala) 4 (March 1981), 7-8.

20. Ibid., 7.

21. Comandante Rolando Morán, "El movimiento revolucionario es la primera linea de lucha contra la intervención," Compañero (Guatemala) 7 (November 1983), 13.

22. Carol A. Smith, "Maya Nationalism," NACLA Report on the Americas 25:3 (December 1991), 32-33.

23. Carol A. Smith, "Conclusion: History and Revolution in Guatemala," 271.

24. Ibid., 280.

25. Michael F. Brown and Eduardo Fernandez, War of Shadows: The Struggle for Utopia in the Peruvian Amazon (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 95.

26. Guillermo Delgado-P., "Ethnic Politics and the Popular Movement: Reconstructing a Social Justice Agenda," in Latin America Faces the Twenty-First Century, ed. eds. Susanne Jonas and Edward J. McCaughan (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), 82. For a specific case study of an organiza tional division between these two poles, see Charles R. Hale, "Between Che Guevara and the Pachamama: Mestizos, Indians and Identity Politics in the Anti-Quincentenary Campaign," Critique of Anthropology 14:1 (1994): 9-39.

27. "Declaration of Quito," Quito, Ecuador, July 1990, (http://www.max well.syr.edu/nativeweb/abyayala/declarations/quito.html).

28. Communique from the Follow-Up Commission of the National Indigenous Congress, Mexico City, February 16, 1997 ( http://www.peak.org/~joshua/fzln/cni970216.html).

29. "Declaration of Quito," Quito, Ecuador, July 1990, (http://www.max well.syr.edu/nativeweb/abyayala/declarations/quito.html).