A Time of Reconquest: History, the Maya Revival, and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas

Abstract

ON THE AFTERNOON OF October 12, 1992, a large protest march of indigenous peoples in the colonial city of San Crist6bal de las Casas, in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, reached its objective. In the courtyard of the beautiful baroque temple of Santo Domingo was the monument to the conquistador Diego de Mazariegos, founder of the city. One marcher knocked the statue off its base with a sledge hammer, and the crowd then beat it into fragments. Hundreds of marchers returned to their mountain homes with souvenirs of an unforgettable historical event. After surviving five centuries of systemic violence and exploitation, the natives of the highlands of Chiapas destroyed the premier symbol of their oppression. This event, along with other recent dramatic actions, has led one observer to remark that they are living in a time of reconquest in Chiapas.2 This small episode by people long scorned and exploited in a remote corner of the world provides an interesting perspective on the blurred boundary between thinking about history and making history, between history as knowledge and history as event.3 Those who erected the monument to Mazariegos inherited and cultivated a particular interpretation of the past that was represented in that

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