The Revolutionary Imagination in the

Americas and the Age of Development

A book in the series

Latin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nations

series editors: Walter D. Mignolo, Duke University;

Irene Silverblatt, Duke University; Sonia Saldívar-Hull,

University of California at Los Angeles

maría josefina saldaña-portillo

The Revolutionary Imagination in the

Americas and the Age of Development

duke university press Durham and London 2003

∫ 2003 duke university press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper $

Typeset in Scala by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

Este libro esta dedicado primero y siempre, al pueblo

nicaragüense, genereso y valiente—por diez años su

revolución

fue la mejor universidad del mundo

a mis padres—

Miguel, quien me enseño ser intelectual, marxista y feminista

Fina, quien me enseño ser feliz con su fuerza para sobrevivir

a mi querida sobrina Rebeca—

amiga, hermana, compañera

¿como es que te fuistes y me dejastes tan sola?

 Contents

About the Series ix

Acknowledgments xi

Part I
1 Introduction 3
2 Development and Revolution: Narratives of
Liberation and Regimes of Subjectivity in
the Postwar Period 17

Part II
3 The Authorized Subjects of Revolution: Ernesto
‘‘Che’’ Guevara and Mario Payeras 63
4 Irresistible Seduction: Rural Subjectivity under
Sandinista Agricultural Policy 109

Part III
5 Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’: Menchú
and the Performance of Subaltern Conciencia 151
6 The Politics of Silence: Development and Di√erence
in Zapatismo 191
7 Epilogue Toward an American ‘‘American Studies’’:
Postrevolutionary Reflections on Malcolm X and
the New Aztlán 259

Notes 291
Works Cited 339
Index 357
 About the Series

Latin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nations is a critical series. It

aims to explore the emergence and consequences of concepts used to define
‘‘Latin America’’ while at the same time exploring the broad interplay of
political, economic, and cultural practices that have shaped Latin American
worlds. Latin America, at the crossroads of competing imperial designs and
local responses, has been construed as a geocultural and geopolitical entity
since the nineteenth century. This series provides a starting point to re-
define Latin America as a configuration of political, linguistic, cultural, and
economic intersections that demands a continuous reappraisal of the role of
the Americas in history, and of the ongoing process of globalization and the
relocation of people and cultures that have characterized Latin America’s
experience. Latin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nations is a forum
that confronts established geocultural constructions, that rethinks area
studies and disciplinary boundaries, that assesses convictions of the acad-
emy and of public policy, and that, correspondingly, demands that the prac-
tices through which we produce knowledge and understanding about and
from Latin America be subject to rigorous and critical scrutiny.
By linking development rhetoric toward Latin America from the United
States (in complicity with local governments) with revolutionary uprisings
in Latin America during the Cold War, Saldaña o√ers a very detailed analysis
of the dialectic between ‘‘regulation’’ and ‘‘emancipation,’’ between ‘‘having
to be developed by global forces’’ and ‘‘wanting alternatives to development’’
implied in revolutionary uprisings and social movements. But more than a
detailed analysis, The Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age
of Development provides a new departure from the now old debate between
literary and cultural studies, on the one hand, and the old paradigm of area
studies (e.g., Latin American Studies in both its social sciences and cultural
versions). Its first contribution emanates from looking simultaneously at
the dialectics between local histories (Latin American countries) and global
designs (U.S. foreign policy and rhetoric). Saldaña’s reading of Rigoberta
Menchú is a refreshing departure from both narrow literary analysis of
testimonio and empiricist ethical reading of her narrative. The second contri-
bution is a look inside the United States at the responses of the civil rights
movement in the local history of the country that was implementing de-
velopment rhetoric and policies toward Latin America and designing new
forms of internal control of the population. As a consequence, Josefina
Saldaña-Portillo (of Mexican descent and teaching in an English depart-
ment) brings a new design for understanding the Americas in the global
order after the end of the Cold War. A truly Latin America Otherwise book.

x About the Series

 Acknowledgments

This book has been in progress since before I even knew that I was going to
write it. Thus, I would like to begin by thanking all of my friends and
colleagues in Nicaragua who are responsible for my profound interest in the
intersection of revolution and development, feminism, and ethnic identity.
Alrededor de una mesa de trago o un juego de nipe discutimos cada aspecto del
proceso revolucionario. Gracias a Amy Bank, Judy Butler, Larry Boyd, Heri-
berto Castillo, Myra Guillen, Joan Kirkwood, Carlos Molina, Orlando Mo-
rales, Carolina Obando, David Oliver, Edwin Paredes, Paul Rice, Esperanza
Rivas, Otto Rojas Aguilar, Michael Saperstein, Richard Staller-Schultz, Lois
Wessel, Joel Zúniga y especialmente Freddy Quesada Pastrán and Mary Tal-
bot. There was never a solution for which Freddy could not figure out a
problem, and there was never a problem for which Mary could not figure out
a solution. If not for the intellectual engagement and revolutionary commit-
ment of all these people, this project would not have been hatched.
As an academic, I have had the good fortune of wonderful mentorship
throughout my career, and I thank them all. Regina Gagnier, Mary Louise
Pratt, Renato Rosaldo, Stefano Varese, and Sylvia Winter, each in their own
way, modeled a feminist teaching practice and politically engaged intellec-
tuality for me during my time at Stanford. Norma Alarcón, Sandra Drake,
Akhil Gupta, and Ramón Saldívar shepherded this project through its first
incarnation with endless generosity, wit, and wisdom. While I was in the
University of California system, a number of colleagues challenged and
inspired my work, and provided me with innumerable opportunities for
intellectual exchange: Inderpal Grewal, Caren Kaplan, Gwen Kirkpatrick,
Francine Masiellos, Lisa Lowe, David Lloyd, and Denise Segura. Of course,
the love and friendship of my dear friends at University of California, Santa
Barbara—Avery Gordon, Beth Merchant, Chris Newfield, Rafael Perez-
Torres, and Chela Sandoval—kept me centered and sane. The Latin Ameri-
can Subaltern Studies Group has left an indelible intellectual stamp on this
project, and I am very much indebted to John Beverly, John Kraniauskas,
Walter Mignolo, Alberto Moreiras, Ileana Rodríguez, José Rabasa, Patricia
Seed, and Gareth Williams for their own scholarship and their brilliant
insights into my work. Finally, I would like to thank all my colleagues at
Brown University for their support and friendship, especially Nancy Arm-
strong, Laura Chrisman, Jose Itzigsohn, and my partner-in-crime, Daniel
Kim. I thank my research assistant Asha Nadkarni. She has not only been
an excellent interlocutor on issues of development but a veritable sleuth
with the bibliography. Naomi Reed I thank for her indexing and proofread-
ing of the final proof. I thank Jane Donnelly, Lorraine Mazza, Suzie Nacar,
Marilyn Netter, and Ellen Viola for their endless administrative support.
Multiple institutions contributed to the completion of this project with
their financial support. I thank the Ford Foundation for its generous Disser-
tation Fellowship, as well as the Stanford Humanities Center. The UC Presi-
dent’s Postdoctoral Fellowship program allowed me to conduct extensive
research in Chiapas, Mexico, while the UC Humanities Research Institute
provided me with the opportunity to share my research in the ‘‘Cultures of
the Americas, Narratives of Globalization’’ Research Group.
I want to thank my family, who were so patient during the entire writing
process, from my mom (¿Cuando acabaras ese mentado libro mija? ), to my
dear sister Ana (page police), to my cousins Ana, Sara, and David (‘‘Just pick
a year, any year. Anything that happened to the Zapatistas after that, too
bad.’’): they were always full of suggestions and support; the Flores women
for being such excellent role models, starting with my Tia Nena: intelligent,
independent, talented, extremely funny, and beautiful; my brothers and
sisters and their spouses, who have loved me throughout all our political
di√erences; my nieces and nephews, especially Elizabeth Semmelman—
twenty shining stars, this is for each and every one of them; all my uncles
and aunts, but especially my sweet Tia Graciela Hernandez, who is always
so loving and in my corner with unwavering support, and my beloved Tia
Irene Saldaña, for always supporting my education financially, and for al-
ways inspiring me with her example and her faith in me. Special thanks to
Alice McGrath, the aunt of my political imaginary, who models engagement
in the social with grace and wit.
I also want to thank my comadres, Alicia Arizon, Alicia Schmidt-Camacho,
Claudia Carrillo, Ines Salazar, and most especially mi hermana de espiritu
Teresa Carrillo: with your love and support there is nothing I can’t face. Paco
guajardo I thank for a long list of things: friendship, love, financial support,
faith, and handy carpentry skills. I want to thank my personal ‘‘team’’ of

xii Acknowledgments
editors, my dearest friends Madhu Dubey and Shay Brawn, who answered
my calls at all hours, listened to me recite endless arguments over the phone,
and read this manuscript so conscientiously for form and content. Shay, of
course, is my fourth sister because twenty-five years of friendship are as thick
as blood. I also thank David Eng, Miranda Joseph, and Fred Moten, each of
whom read sections of this book with meticulous care and gave extraordinary
feedback. If something in this book sounds like David, Miranda, or Fred,
that’s because it probably is. Thanks for the intellectual input and for your
loving friendship. Finally, Ed Cohen, Laura Harris, Anahid Kassabian, Ira
Livingston, Kevin Sullivan, Leo and Maral Svendsen, Mary Talbot (still solv-
ing problems), Livia Tenzer, and Jyotsna Uppal provided much of the love
and support in New York City, making me believe I belong there, even if it’s
not Califas. Thank you for big hearts and sharp wit.
Friendships in Sevilla provided the arte y duende that has sustained my
intellectual life. Evelina Krone and Jill Snow generously invited us into their
homes and into their flamenco community, providing us with countless
music-filled evenings and wondrous adventures. These two women, with
their courage for living life fully, provide me with a model for living mine:
‘‘¡una copa mas!’’ para Evelina y Jill. Geórgia Gugliotta and Miguel Aragon—
amigos queridos y artistas que conmueven con su baile, toque y cante—gracias por
tantas aventuras and for providing much needed comic relief and a touch of
Latin America in Sevilla. A mi maestra, la artista Juana Amaya, quien me hace
olvidar todo do or con su genio musical incomparable, le doy las gracias por ese
olvido y tambien por enseñarme a ser mejor maestra.
Lastly and especially, I thank David Kazanjian for every goofy face he
made to entertain me during the writing of this book, for the pages of notes
he took while I clarified my ideas out loud, for drying tears of frustration and
joy, for the freedom and independence he has always given me in pursuing
my intellectual endeavors, for covering for me with my family when my
research got me into sticky situations in Chiapas, for believing in me and in
this book even when I didn’t. He read every word with love. The trace of
David’s intellectual contribution can be found on every page. Most impor-
tantly, though, David knows all the hiding places of my soul and I thank him
for this.

Acknowledgments xiii
 1
Introduction

One year ago today I proposed that the people of this hemisphere join in an Alianza para el
Progreso—a continent-wide cooperative e√ort to satisfy the basic needs of the American
people for homes, work and land, for health and schools, for political liberty and the dignity
of the spirit. Our mission, I said, was ‘‘to complete the revolution of the Americas, to build a
hemisphere where all men can hope for a suitable standard of living and all can live out their
lives in dignity and freedom.’’
—President John F. Kennedy, 14 March 1962, commemorating the ‘‘Alliance for Progress’’
Initiative

Pedimos tu participación decidida apoyando este plan del pueblo mexicano que lucha por
trabajo, tierra, techo, alimentación, salud, educación, independencia, libertad, democracia, justicia
y paz. Declaramos que no dejaremos de pelear hasta lograr el cumplimiento de estas de-
mandas básicas de nuestro pueblo formando un gobierno de nuestro país libre y democratico.
[We ask your resolute participation in supporting this plan of the Mexican people, which
struggles for work, land, housing, food, health, education, independence, liberty, democracy,
justice, and peace. We declare that we shall not stop fighting for the fulfillment of these basic
demands of our people, forming a government for our free and democratic country.]
—General Command, Zapatista National Liberation Army, Declaration from the Lacandón
Jungle, December 1993

Thirty-two years after President Kennedy told the Latin American diplo-
matic corps in Washington, D.C., that he ‘‘look[ed] forward to the day when
the people of Latin America will take their place beside the United States
and Western Europe as citizens of industrialized and . . . increasingly abun-
dant societies,’’ that day had failed to arrive (Kennedy 18). Instead, on 1
January 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (ezln) issued their
declaration of war against the Mexican government, timing their insurrec-
tion to coincide—in protest—with the inauguration of the North American
Free Trade Agreement (nafta), the latest articulation of Kennedy’s promise
of ‘‘increasingly abundant societies’’ for Latin America. What joins these
remarkably similar performative speech acts, uttered by such seemingly
incongruous subjects?
How is it that a leader of the self-declared ‘‘free world’’ of capitalist
political economies found himself calling for the completion of revolution
in the Americas? How is it that a group of Marxist-inspired, subaltern insur-
gents found themselves reiterating the principles of his development plan
thirty years later? Why is it that development projects and revolutionary
movements persist long after both development and revolution have been
declared ‘‘failures’’ by their critics both on the right and on the left? What
accounts for the striking resemblance between these presumably opposed
and enduring narratives of liberation? These questions about the imbrica-
tion of development and revolution inspire the writing of this book. The
Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development is an
interrogation of the conjunctures and disjunctures between two narratives
of progress that, in one way or another, captured the imagination of three
generations of nationalists in the Americas in the second half of the twen-
tieth century.
The convergence between late-twentieth-century discourses of develop-
ment and revolution cannot be explained by a mechanistic derivation of one
from the other, for developmentalist and revolutionary speech acts are con-
stitutive of each other. For instance, a reading of Kennedy’s historical rea-
soning as ‘‘neocolonialist’’ would dismiss his call for the completion of the
revolutionary project in the Americas as simple rhetorical posturing in the
interest of solidifying U.S. hegemony in the region at the height of the Cold
War. There is some validity in this argument, as development aid was a
powerful weapon in the arsenal of Cold War politics, rewarded to those
economies adhering to the principles of laissez-faire capitalism, denied to
those economies straying from these principles. However, although the
liberal discourse of development that emerged after World War II was
clearly part of a strategy for the containment of communism, that alone
cannot account for the extent to which the nationalist leaders of newly
decolonized countries and of previously sovereign nations, such as those in
Latin America, embraced development theory and its practice. More impor-
tant, reading the development-revolution convergence as neocolonialist
cannot account for the powerful hold that developmentalism had on the
imagination of the post–World War II revolutionary movements, which
were themselves the origin of the ‘‘communist’’ threat to which Kennedy
alludes. The central argument of this book is that a discourse of develop-

4 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

ment captured the imagination of these revolutionary movements, often to
the detriment of the constituencies these movements sought to liberate
through their anti-imperialist struggle.
Alternately, reading this convergence from the vantage point of postcolo-
nial theory might interpret such revolutionary developmentalism as com-
pelled by the mimetic desire of colonial relations, or it might interpret
revolutionary nationalism as derivative, predicated on a repetition, albeit
with a di√erence, of Western development.∞ However, while mimetic desire
and derivative nationalism play a role in the imbrication of revolution and
development, such a reading cannot account for the fact that Kennedy
seemed compelled to articulate his developmentalism in revolutionary
terms, or that development policy was itself compelled by revolutionary
movements. After all, Kennedy does not mention export-led growth or free
trade, the backbones of World Bank development projects. Instead he reiter-
ates the social and economic demands—work, land, housing, education,
health care—that have animated revolutionary movements in Latin America
since the first articulation of these demands as rights in the 1917 Mexican
constitution.
Let me be clear. I am not interested in conflating post–World War II
revolutionary movements and development strategies, for neither is mono-
lithic through time, and these two discursive formations are not merely the
same. Since World War II, First World agencies and think tanks have put
forth complex and various development strategies, often in direct response
to revolutionary analyses and challenges, as we shall see in chapter 2. In
turn, revolutionary movements and development strategies in the Americas
attempted to institute substantially di√erent models of economic and politi-
cal sociality, with substantially di√erent consequences for the populations
that have come under their sway.
Nor am I advocating an antidevelopmental position that would reject in
general and absolute terms the imperative to develop embodied in both
development and revolutionary ideologies. In the last fifteen years, several
excellent poststructuralist critiques of the ‘‘age of development’’ have been
published (Ferguson; Sachs; Escobar, Encountering Development; Ap√el-
Marglin and Marglin; Gupta; Hewitt de Alcántara, Boundaries and Para-
digms). These authors do not merely question the validity of di√erent mod-
els of development (gnp growth, growth with equity, basic needs approach,
sustainability, etc.); they also critique development’s entire discursive and
institutional apparatus—exposing it, as a discourse, to history. If the prob-
lem with the age of development lies in its rendering as ‘‘natural’’ certain

Introduction 5
normative concepts of growth, progress, and modernity, as these authors
make clear, then in the spirit of their critiques we should not respond by, in
turn, uncritically privileging indigeny, tradition, and antiprogressive models
of futurity. For if one continues to recognize a need for revolutionary change
in the aftermath of what fifty years of ‘‘development’’ have wrought—if one’s
sympathies continue to lie with the revolutionary movements committed to
challenging capitalist development, as mine do—then one accepts that some
model of progress pertains. Thus I argue that the problem lies not with the
idea of progress per se but with the mode of progressive movement—indeed,
with the theory of human agency and model of subjectivity—that has under-
written the discursive collusion between the age of development and the
revolutionary movements therein.
To clarify the complex relationship between revolutionary movements
and development paradigms of the last half century, it is important to dis-
tinguish between two relatively distinct modalities of developmentalism.
For much of the post–World War II period, First World development para-
digms subscribed to the idea that societies moved through stages of develop-
ment. Let us consider this the first modality of development. The second
modality of developmentalism is expressed in the idea that this movement
of societies is contingent on the development of the members of these
societies into free, mature, fully conscious, and self-determining individual
subjects. While it is by now evident that most, if not all, twentieth-century
revolutionary movements subscribed to a developmentalist model of history
(the first modality of developmentalism), the impact of the second modality
of developmentalism on revolutionary politics over the last century has been
less recognized. It is the theoretical elaboration of this second modality of
development by revolutionary movements in the Americas with which my
book is concerned. Indeed, it is my contention that the revolutionary move-
ments under consideration subscribed not only to a developmentalist model
of history but—more damning to the everyday practice of radical politics—to
a developmentalist model of revolutionary subjectivity, consciousness, and
agency.
Thus, rather than positing a mechanistic relationship of parody or deriva-
tion between the two speech acts presented in this chapter’s epigraphs, as
the neocolonial and postcolonial readings I sketched might do, I suggest
that they are both animated by a particular theory of subjectivity. Not only do
these two discursive terms depend on each other dialectically for their mu-
tual constitution as historical alternatives (i.e., as vying ideological accounts
of the first modality of developmentalism), but both revolutionary and de-

6 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

velopment discourses also depend on colonial legacies of race and gender in
their theoretical elaborations of subjectivity, agency, consciousness, and
change (developmentalism’s second, less evident, modality). Even as revolu-
tionary movements in the Americas constituted themselves against the cap-
italist models of national development prescribed by U.S. and international
agencies, those movements nevertheless articulated a liberal, developmen-
talist model of revolutionary subjectivity and consciousness in response.
Similarly, even as Cold War development paradigms defined themselves in
contradistinction to revolutionary movements, they nevertheless articulated
the requirement for revolutionary agency and change in the American na-
tions.
A normative theory of human transformation and agency, then, is at the
heart of the discursive collusion between revolutionary and development
discourses. Why might this be so? As narratives of liberation, both dis-
courses share an origin in imperial reason: in those Enlightenment doc-
trines of progress, evolution, and change that were historically articulated
with the practice of European colonialism and colonial capitalism. Thus,
even as post–World War II discourses of development and revolution were
specifically articulated against colonial and neocolonial relations of power,
both shared a theory of human perfectibility that was itself a legacy of the
various raced and gendered subject formations animating colonialism. It is
precisely the prevalence of this meliorist model of subjectivity and theory of
agency in revolutionary movements that, I argue, contributed to the ‘‘fail-
ure’’ of decolonization and liberation struggles in Latin America and the
United States in the late twentieth century. In this meliorist theory of subjec-
tivity, transformation, and agency, the formation of revolutionary conscious-
ness was predicated on the transcendence of a premodern ethnos. The at-
tainment of the universal(ized) condition of revolutionary agency, as I argue
in chapters 3 and 4, was repeatedly (inevitably?) figured as the leaving be-
hind of one’s own particularity, as leaving behind the feminized ethnos of
indigenous, peasant, or urban black cultural identity. The complex imbrica-
tion of development and revolution compels us as cultural critics, then, to
reread the narratives of liberation by minority or marginal subjects in this
postwar period. We cannot simply read revolutionary movements of the
period as against colonial and neocolonial capitalism. We must also read
them as within a racialized and gendered developmentalism. In an attempt
to do so, this book proceeds in three parts.
The shared meliorist theory of subjectivity and human agency is not a
stable, transhistorical formation. Although this mode of subjectivity and

Introduction 7
agency was discursively related to modes of subjectivity produced by impe-
rial reason and colonial subalternization in the Americas, it was also dis-
cretely new and historically contingent. In part 1, I argue that a new mode of
subjectivity emerged as the transformative agent for the age of development
in the aftermath of World War II and decolonization struggles. Chapter 2,
‘‘Development and Revolution: Narratives of Liberation and Regimes of
Subjectivity in the Postwar Period,’’ is an account of First World intellectual
e√orts expended to construct an appropriate subject of labor for capitalist
expansion in the Third World, wherever development might cast its eye. In
examining this new subjectivity’s emergence within hegemonic First World
development paradigms, I engage in a discursive analysis of the implied
subject of (under)development, investigating the principles of human ac-
tivity and the model of historical consciousness implied by the discourse of
development and its policies.
During the age of development there have been several moments of
crisis over the very meaning of development, with each epistemic crisis
producing a plethora of new development strategies in response. I am not
suggesting that these complex and various development paradigms shared a
singular vision of development or relentlessly reiterated a singular recipe
for producing it across Third World countries. However, I am suggesting
that a strikingly similar theory of subjectivity and agency underwrites most
of these paradigm shifts. More precisely, I observe that a particular set of
metaphors, tropes, and themes accompanies the theorization of develop-
ment and its agent/object across quite di√erent development strategies—
indeed, even across ideological and political lines. By analyzing some of the
foundational moments in the formation of the development apparatus, as
well as some important texts in development theory, I identify these key
recurring themes, tropes, and metaphors.
Specifically, I trace the arc of the age of development through the rhetori-
cal formation of its subject across a series of historical flash points: its
beginnings at the Bretton Woods conference, its ascent into Cold War hege-
mony through President Harry Truman’s Four Point Program, its apex in
W. W. Rostow’s modernization theory under presidents Kennedy and John-
son, and its cusping in the critical light of dependency theory during Robert
S. McNamara’s reign at the World Bank.≤ I consider the continuities and
discontinuities between colonial categories of subjectivity and developmen-
tal categories of national citizenship: how race is relativized within the do-
main of cultural attitudes that must be overcome, how gender is allegorized
within the domain of active and reactive nationalisms, and how hierarchical

8 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

and exploitative relations of exchange in a global capitalist system are reor-
ganized into normative levels of productivity that must be achieved. I argue
that the discourse of development requires an epochal change in its subject.
It requires the subject to become an agent of transformation in his own
right, one who is highly ethical, mobile, progressive, risk taking, and mas-
culinist, regardless of whether the agent/object of a development strategy is
a man or a woman, an adult or a child.
To illustrate the discursive coincidence between this subject of develop-
ment and the subject of revolution, part 2 goes on to examine the models of
subjectivity and agency embedded both in the autobiographical texts of two
revolutionary icons of the 1960s and 1970s and in the discourse of San-
dinista agricultural policy. Together, these two chapters theorize the e√ect
this development-revolution convergence had on the national liberation
struggles under consideration. Revolutionary movements in the United
States, Mexico, and Central America, I argue, have met with resistance from
the very people these movements intended to liberate—women and men of
color, indigenous peoples, and the land-poor peasantry—because of their
adherence to an ahistorical teleology of human subjectivity and agency as
revelation, transformation, and transcendence.
In chapter 3, ‘‘The Authorized Subjects of Revolution: Ernesto ‘Che’
Guevara and Mario Payeras,’’ I analyze the impact that Ernesto ‘‘Che’’
Guevara’s theory of human transformation has had on revolutionary leaders
in Latin America and, more specifically, on peasant subalternity and ethnic
particularity. Through an analysis of their diaries and political essays, I
argue that Guevara and subsequent Latin American revolutionary leaders
such as Guatemalan Mario Payeras represent revolutionary transformation
as an epochal conversion experience, as the epistemic death of a prior sub-
ject, the subject of a prerevolutionary and premodern consciousness. I sug-
gest that Guevara and Payeras each experience an epochal conversion to
become transformative agents in their own lives and the lives of others. In
doing so, these revolutionary heroes represent indigenous peoples and
peasant subalterns as the horizon of their messianic, revolutionary errands,
as the agents/objects of a revolutionary developmentalism. Furthermore,
these two men represent themselves as catalysts for the transformation of
subaltern consciousness, a transformation that inevitably entails the tran-
scendence of ethnic, subaltern particularity.
These masculinist narratives of self-development bear a metaphoric, the-
matic, and tropological resemblance to the implied subject of (under)devel-
opment I elaborate in chapter 2. However, I argue that the very act of

Introduction 9
representing themselves as autonomous, self-determining subjects unset-
tles the bourgeois development discourse. Although First World develop-
ment theory appears to mandate this form of subjectivity for Third World
denizens, it ultimately withholds its promise. Thus the performative acts of
these autobiographical texts—their taking development discourse at its
word—hold the possibility of a limited subversion even today.
After coming to power, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (fsln)
was constrained in making policy decisions by the model of dependent
development imposed by the Somocistas and their U.S. allies. In chapter 4,
‘‘Irresistible Seduction: Rural Subjectivity under Sandinista Agricultural
Policy,’’ I suggest, however, that the dependency was not only economic but
also epistemic. The Sandinistas were committed to transforming their
country from an underdeveloped nation into a developed one. While cer-
tainly the economic exploitation of Nicaragua motivated the Sandinistas’
desire for change, the discourse of development’s imperative to economic
growth produced e√ects in spheres beyond such economic considerations.
Hence, when the Sandinista party made decisions about development and
agriculture based on narrow models of subjectivity and national sovereignty,
their decisions had negative impacts on the enfranchisement and political
representation of Nicaraguan citizens. Committed to extending agro-
industrial development nationwide through state farms and cooperatives,
the party’s view of revolutionary national development was based on an
episteme that privileged proletarian and collective consciousness over the
consciousness of the smallholding peasantry making up the majority of
Nicaragua’s rural population.
While the peasantry is not racialized as indigenous within Nicaragua, the
Sandinistas nevertheless viewed peasant consciousness as a ‘‘premodern’’
ethnos, as an obstacle to a model of development that would better serve
both the peasants’ own interests and the economic growth of the nation. On
that basis, the fsln denied sectors of the peasantry the avenues of political
representation that the party made available for other sectors of the rural
population. Instead the Sandinistas took it on themselves not only to decide
the interest of the peasants but to enact paternalistic and coercive policies in
agriculture to assist the peasants in their revolutionary transformation of
consciousness, much as liberal development schemes would have done.
In part 3, I turn my attention to the insurgent subalterns who have so often
been both the intended beneficiaries of revolutionary activity in the Americas
and the targets of economic development: the indigenous and peasant
classes of Mexico and Central America. In chapters 5 and 6, I examine the

10 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

textual production, autonomous articulations, and public performance of
subjectivity by Rigoberta Menchú and the members of the Zapatista National
Liberation Army. Both Menchú and the ezln, I contend, retheorize the
model of human subjectivity and agency put forth by their revolutionary
predecessors. By theorizing how ethnicity and class function historically as
mutually constituting categories in the Americas, these subaltern insurgents
reject the ahistorical developmentalism of a revolutionary transformation
based on the transcendence of ethnic and gendered particularity.
In chapter 5, ‘‘Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘I’: Menchú and the
Performance of Subaltern Conciencia,’’ I consider the autobiographical testi-
monio of feminist and indigenist revolutionary Rigoberta Menchú. In Me
llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia, Menchú strategically
vacillates between the position of the autonomous liberal subject and the
position of the primitive and underdeveloped Other. She does so, I suggest,
to manipulate the Western reader (and her Ladino revolutionary counter-
parts) into a critique of modernization and development, a critique launched
from Menchú’s specific gender, class, and ethnic position. Menchú borrows
the Western form of the authorial ‘‘I’’ to critique the revolutionary teleologies
of consciousness privileged by the masterful ‘‘I’’ of her Ladino guerrilla
predecessors. In Menchú’s narrative, I argue, the process of coming to
consciousness is not represented as epochal or revelatory, as it is in the
narratives of Guevara and Payeras. Rather, an understanding of exploitation
accrues through her experience with the mundane—the territory of women,
of indigenous peoples, and of peasants. In previous narratives of revolution,
this mundane consciousness was typically represented as a premodern eth-
nic formation that had to be superseded for nationalist change to occur.
Menchú, to the contrary, posits a ‘‘nonmodern’’ positionality for indigenous
subalterns, a positionality that allows the K’iche’ Indians to negotiate a
limited participation in the developmentalist discourse that encroaches on
them from all sides. It is this authority over one’s experience that Menchú
demands, on behalf of K’iche’ Indians, from any revolutionary model of
development as well.
In contrast to Menchú’s model of limited K’iche’ participation in moder-
nity and the nation-state, the Zapatistas began their insurrection in south-
ern Mexico by demanding full participation in national development and in
statist forms of government. In chapter 6, ‘‘The Politics of Silence: Develop-
ment and Di√erence in Zapatismo,’’ I analyze the communiqués issued
publicly by the ezln, the peace negotiations between the Institutional Revo-
lutionary Party (pri) and the Zapatistas, as well as the demand for auton-

Introduction 11
omy by the Zapatistas and other indigenous organizations, as attempts by
subaltern indigenous subjects to constitute themselves as ‘‘citizens of the
nation’’ and as global economic agents. The Zapatista insurrection, I argue,
demands the reconstitution of the Mexican state and economy. As such, it
interrupts the rhetoric of progress for Mexico as a ‘‘developing’’ nation. I
analyze how the Zapatistas reconceptualize the meaning and practice of
citizenship through a critique of mestizaje, the pri’s model for citizenship.
The Zapatista critique exposes the inherent developmentalism in the term
‘‘mestizaje’’ as it is predicated on the erasure of the indigenous subject in
favor of the tropologically more advanced mestizo subject. In addition, the
Zapatistas threaten the triumph of neoliberalism and globalization repre-
sented by nafta by demanding control over economic resources for indige-
nous people. They do so, however, not to exclude themselves from a national
development process. Rather, the Zapatistas claim the role of the state for
themselves to dictate the terms of a development project in which they are
already fully implicated. Together, chapters 5 and 6 demonstrate alternative
indigenous approaches to the constant negotiation with nationalism and
modernity that development and globalization demand from all subjects.
They also demonstrate how indigenous movements are rewriting revolu-
tionary projects in the Americas to include indigenous people as authorities
over their own experience.
Indeed, the indigenous/peasant cultural and political production of
Menchú and the ezln exceeds the terms of the revolution/development
dialectic. Rejecting developmentalist notions that interpret their indigenous
and peasant subject positions as premodern, they instead o√er a model of
revolutionary consciousness predicated on the global politics of local ‘‘every-
day life.’’ Thus, I argue, these insurgent subalterns challenge a model of
revolutionary subjectivity and a theory of agency not from a position of
indigenous purity but from an indigenous and peasant subject position
simultaneously produced by modernity and in reaction to its developmen-
talism. As such, they force us to rethink the deployment of the categories of
universalism and particularism so central in Western political thought.
Also, these subaltern interventions require a rethinking of mestizaje. Thus,
in the epilogue I suggest we can no longer uncritically celebrate mestizaje in
Chicana/o and other social formations as a positionality of radical, post-
modern hybridity but must recognize it as a racial ideology with its own
developmentalist history, one that has underwritten revolutionary move-
ments in North and South America prior to the age of development.

12 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 My methodological approach combines the ethnographic study of social
movements with the literary analysis of the textual production of revolution-
aries. And so in yet another way, the reader will find in this book the juxtapo-
sition of what might seem incongruous objects of study and types of evi-
dence in terms of the usual academic divides among literary studies, history,
anthropology, and development studies: modernization and dependency
theory during the Cold War; agricultural policy under the Sandinista gov-
ernment in Nicaragua; autobiographies of Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Mario
Payeras, and Rigoberta Menchú; energy development policies in Mexico;
ezln communiqués, negotiations for autonomy, and political rallies; mes-
tizaje in queer Aztlán. However, it is my contention that when one is study-
ing the theorization of human subjectivity and agency in post–World War II
revolutionary movements, one must place such diverse objects alongside
one another. The problematic I identify is the ideological collusion between
developmentalist and revolutionary models of subjectivity. The project of
development begins within the confines of economic policy to e√ect a spe-
cific political consequence. However, development’s goal is necessarily two-
fold: producing ‘‘developed’’ capitalist national economies and thereby ‘‘de-
veloped’’ liberal citizens therein. Revolutionary movements similarly seek
to transform their national economies from a condition of dependent de-
velopment and neocolonial exploitation to a condition of sovereign and
independent development, thereby transforming dependent and exploited
classes into freed revolutionary subjects/citizens.
I focus my analysis on public economic policy and literary production
because in any revolutionary movement, these are the two areas dedicated to
the task of transforming subjectivity and consciousness. While agricultural
policy, industrial diversification, and autonomy projects provide the model
for the revolutionary transformation of the national economy (with its im-
plied economic subject), autobiographies model revolutionary subjectivity
for a reading public by o√ering exemplary narratives of personal transforma-
tion. If the underlying problematic unifying this book is a certain collusion
between revolutionary and development projects, thematically each chapter
focuses on the production of revolutionary subjectivity, whether it be in
agricultural, industrial, and autonomy projects, or in autobiography. The
combination of these various kinds of evidence enables the reader to see the
coordinated e√ort to interpellate national, revolutionary subjectivity across
governmental policy and literary production. I elaborate on the details of how
I conducted my ethnographic research within the relevant chapters.

Introduction 13
 Finally, before proceeding with a historical and rhetorical analysis of the
subject of (under)development, I would like to specify the interventions I
hope to make with this book, especially because the nature of my interven-
tions defies the usual divisions of academic fields. Minoritarian revolution-
ary movements in the United States are most often interpreted within a
narrowly nationalist paradigm, while revolutionary movements in Mexico,
Central America, and South America have traditionally been interpreted
according to the reductivist East/West paradigm of the Cold War. By con-
trast, I bring U.S. minority and Latin American revolutionary movements
together to examine their discursive and historical connections, both to each
other and to the history of revolution in the Americas. While it is undoubt-
edly true that the Soviet Union and China financed and influenced the
formation of national liberation struggles in Latin America, including revo-
lutionary models of national development, a particularly conservative strain
of Latin American studies disregards the rich history of revolutionary strug-
gle in the Americas. At the same time, U.S. exceptionalism in American
studies has extended to the area of Ethnic studies, which often interprets
minority racial formations only within the constraints of U.S. borders.
Instead, I traverse the historical divide between Latin American studies
and U.S. American studies through the comparative analysis of revolution-
ary movements in the Americas. I contend, first, that the U.S. Revolution of
1776 and the Mexican Revolution of 1910 are the primary intellectual influ-
ences of American revolutionary movements in the late twentieth century.≥
I argue that the legacy of colonialism in the Americas—including the inde-
pendence movements by white settlers in the United States and Latin
America—profoundly influenced the discursive formations of development
and revolution in the second half of the twentieth century. This book o√ers a
comparative analysis of the influence that colonial legacies of race and gen-
der had on the construction of twentieth-century revolutionary agency. I
suggest that on both sides of the Mexico–U.S. border, revolutionary agents
in the late twentieth century unwittingly appropriated Spanish and Anglo-
American colonial quest narratives in their struggles for liberation. Al-
though the distinct racial legacies of Anglo-American and Spanish colonial-
ism produced some variations in the revolutionary appropriations of figures
such as Malcolm X and Che Guevara, the subjectivities prescribed in the
autobiographies of these revolutionaries were nevertheless predicated on a
remarkably similar sense of compromised racial masculinity. In this resem-
blance to Spanish and Anglo racial legacies, and to each other, these appro-

14 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

priations by Guevara and Malcolm X reinforce the model of an autono-
mous, self-determining subject imagining the world in his own image,
albeit a ‘‘revolutionary’’ one. Similarly, the appropriation of mestizaje by
Chicana/o nationalists in their attempt to fend o√ discriminatory practices
in the United States borrows heavily from the colonial register of Indian
subalternization under Spanish colonialism, making coalition across indig-
enous and Chicano movements di≈cult, if not impossible. This appropria-
tion continues to haunt even the antinationalism of contemporary queer
Aztlán.
In addition, I place the texts of U.S. minority subjects in dialogue with
the texts of revolutionary subjects in Latin America because the global de-
ployment of the discourse of development necessitates such a transnational
focus. By placing these texts in dialogue, however, I am not positing a simple
equivalence between these Latin Americans and U.S. minorities. On the
contrary, I examine their di√erential relations within the discursive prac-
tices of development and revolution. As the major neocolonial power in the
Americas in the postwar period, the United States brings U.S. minority and
Latin American subaltern subjects together on the terrain of resistance. As
the major proponent of the development paradigm in the Americas, how-
ever, the United States also depends on a strict di√erentiation between First
World and Third World subjects on the terrain of labor. Although shared
models of racialized and masculinist subjectivity join together revolutionary
movements across the Americas, the di√erentiated positionalities of U.S.
minority and Latin American subaltern subjects across the international
division of labor confounds simple models of Third World revolutionary
unity.
For all of these reasons, the reader will find Malcolm X’s autobiography
and texts from queer Aztlán alongside Che’s diary and ezln communiqués.
My study of the revolutionary imagination is by no means exhaustive, but
no such study would be complete without these kinds of connections. In my
unorthodox traversing of the geographic divide of the literary and cultural
field, I am answering recent calls for the further inclusion of Latino studies
within Latin American studies, as well as the call for a truly ‘‘American’’
studies in the United States. As such, I bring postcolonial and minority
discourse analysis to bear on the cross-pollination of transnational raced
and gendered ideologies in the Americas. But I am answering another call
as well, a call made by the texts themselves, for they were all written in an
anticolonialist spirit that has brought the Americas together as often as

Introduction 15
neocolonialism has rent them asunder. It is a call I hope the reader will hear
echoing in the analysis I o√er. It is my sincere hope that my e√ort toward a
comparative analysis of the impact of colonial legacies on revolutionary
models of human subjectivity and agency, as well as on development sche-
mata of human di√erentiation, might allow us to theorize anew the pos-
sibility of such revolutionary unity across the Americas.

16 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 2
Development and Revolution:

Narratives of Liberation and Regimes of

Subjectivity in the Postwar Period

It was in the struggle of the British bourgeoisie against the remnants of feudalism that the
idea of development was born. There is, then, a connection between the conception of
development and the development of specific social conflicts.
—Jorge Larrain, Theories of Development

We have reached this evening a decisive point. But it is only a beginning. We have to go out
from here as missionaries, inspired by zeal and faith.
—John Maynard Keynes, on the ratification of the Articles of Agreement for the World Bank
at the closing Bretton Woods Plenary, 1944

Although development has occurred throughout history and across civiliza-

tions, its formal, self-conscious articulation as a necessary and self-evident
social process is of fairly recent elaboration, as Jorge Larrain, an intellectual
historian of development, suggests, dating back to the rise of the British
bourgeoisie, to classical economists’ theories of ‘‘progress,’’ and to Marx and
Engels’s theory of the development of social classes and productive forces
(Larrain 1–2). The modern elaboration of the concept of ‘‘development-as-
progress’’ in the late eighteenth century through the mid-nineteenth, how-
ever, is quite distinct from the twentieth-century concern with the engi-
neered economic development of entire ‘‘peripheral’’ and ‘‘semiperipheral’’
areas. In Larrain’s assessment, even the neoclassical and imperialist theo-
ries of capitalist expansion, elaborated during the height of colonial acquisi-
tion (1860–1945), were fairly indi√erent toward the developmental e√ects
of capitalist penetration on the periphery. Instead, these theories focused
almost exclusively on the e√ects of colonialism on the economies of empire
nations (6–10). However, when theorists of the period turned their atten-
tion to the periphery, it was generally agreed by neoclassical and anti-imperi-
alist theorists alike—Walras, Jevons, Menger, Marshall, on the one hand;
Bukharin, Luxemburg, Hilferding, Lenin, on the other—that colonial pen-
etration enhanced capitalist development in the periphery.∞
While genealogically related to Enlightenment doctrines of imperial rea-
son, development’s contemporary usage as the modernization of national
economies dates back only to the beginning of the twentieth century. Im-
manuel Wallerstein places the origin of the idea of ‘‘national development’’
at 1917, in the ‘‘great ideological antinomy of the twentieth century, Wilso-
nianism vs. Leninism,’’ as both the United States and the Soviet Union
expressed their desire for the liquidation of European empires on the basis
of the right to self-determination of peoples (Wallerstein, After Liberalism
108–9). Indeed, Wallerstein credits Woodrow Wilson with universalizing
the individual’s right to self-determination during his administration by
extending this right to entire colonized ‘‘peoples’’ in the international arena.
Likewise, Lenin saw the condition of sovereignty as a necessary step for all
nations or peoples on the road toward the creation of a universal world
proletariat (110). According to Wallerstein, this early articulation by compet-
ing ideologies of the right to self-determination with the need for political
and economic integration of the periphery permanently wed nationalism to
development and, in turn, national development to anticolonial struggle.

National Development as the Promise of a Postcolonial Era

The historical record bears this out. Roosevelt’s purported condition for
entering World War II on behalf of the Allied forces was the dismantling of
empires following the war. He demanded the guarantee of equality of peo-
ples and of free trade among them. In his memoir about his father, As He
Saw It, Elliot Roosevelt writes that the president made this demand explicit
to Churchill during their historic meeting in August 1941, which resulted in
the Atlantic Charter. According to his son, President Roosevelt made the
postwar abrogation of special trade agreements between the British empire
and its colonies a condition for U.S. assistance (George and Sabelli 23).≤
Roosevelt attributed the cause of the war to monopolistic colonial relations,
territorial rivalries, and currency devaluations associated with colonial com-
petition, a position shared by U.S. government o≈cials, political pundits,
and economists of the period. Even before the war was formally over, the
United States spearheaded the implementation of Roosevelt’s conditions by
hosting the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference. More com-
monly known as the Bretton Woods conference after the quiet New Hamp-
shire town that hosted it in July 1944, this conference was a preparatory

18 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

meeting for the foundation of the International Monetary Fund (imf) and
the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (ibrd). After
its mission of reconstructing Europe was fulfilled, the ibrd became what is
today the World Bank (wb). In the documents produced in preparation for,
and in the aftermath of, the Bretton Woods conference, ‘‘free trade among
free nations’’ was repeatedly cited as the blueprint for peace and prosperity
in a postwar era.≥ The Bretton Woods conference sought to create structures
that would put this principle into practice. It was the birthplace of modern
development as social engineering on a global scale.
This new commitment to the right of sovereignty for colonized nations
in the periphery dovetailed nicely with the economic interests of the United
States. Government o≈cials rightly perceived a looming crisis in U.S. cap-
italist expansion, as the booming war economy would need to find new
outlets for its greatly expanded productive capacity (George and Sabelli 23).
Roosevelt’s administration, then, saw no contradiction between undertak-
ing the humanitarian mission of assisting in the development of decoloniz-
ing spaces and expanding the network of trade for the United States. In a
U.S. Treasury Department document explaining the Bretton Woods Accord
to the public, a section on the ibrd states simply:

The need for developmental loans is perhaps less urgent [than loans
for reconstruction], though equally important from the standpoint of
promoting trade expansion. The underdeveloped countries o√er im-
mense stores of raw materials that the more advanced countries, in-
cluding the United States, need to supplement their own exhaustible
resources. They also o√er the prospect of a substantial market for
manufactured goods. Their first need, however, is for machinery,
tools, and heavy equipment, all of which will have to be imported and
largely paid for with borrowed funds. (U.S. Treasury Department 16)∂

The point here is not that the United States was simply or only operating
out of the ulterior motive of solidifying its neocolonial power, for benevolent
intentions and self-serving economic interests are hopelessly intertwined.
Rather, my purpose is to illustrate that, at its inception, development is
inextricably linked to managing a crisis in capitalist production precipitated
equally by the exhaustion of colonial capitalism’s expansive capacities and
by the greatly expanded productive capacity of the U.S. postwar economy. As
a globalizing system, capitalism has always relied on supplementary dis-
courses for its perpetuation and extension. Development, as it took shape in
the fields of diplomacy and political economy, under the auspices of the

Development and Revolution 19

United Nations, the imf, the ibrd /wb, and the U.S. Treasury Department,
began as precisely such a supplementary discourse. Development replaced
the ‘‘civilizing mission’’ of the age of colonialism with the imperatives of
self-determination, independence, free trade, industrialization, and eco-
nomic growth in a postcolonial era.
The United States has arguably been the primary beneficiary of the in-
vention of development as a management tool for capitalist production
crises. However, at Bretton Woods, the U.S. delegation was primarily con-
cerned with solidifying U.S. economic hegemony by institutionalizing the
imf as the vehicle for stabilizing currency exchange rates among Western
nations and financing the (relatively) free trade of manufactured goods and
raw materials globally (George and Sabelli 27–29). According to Susan
George and Fabrizio Sabelli, the U.S. delegation had not contemplated in-
stitutionalizing the concept of developing decolonized economies under the
auspices of a world development bank. Thus, when U.S. treasury secretary
Henry Morgenthau accepted the nomination as conference president, his
speech at the first plenary of Bretton Woods referred only once to the consti-
tution of the future ibrd. After impugning currency disorder and the lack
of free trade as the causes of war, he talked at length about the formation and
functions of the imf. Finally, toward the end of his speech, he made some
brief comments on the role of the would-be bank, ending with a dismissive
comment: ‘‘The technicians have prepared the outline of a plan for an
International Bank for Postwar Reconstruction which will investigate the
opportunities for loans of this character’’ (George and Sabelli 28). George
and Sabelli suggest that the U.S. delegation had little interest in expanding
the bank’s purpose or longevity beyond the short-term goal of reconstruct-
ing Europe. As the joint authors point out: ‘‘The word ‘development’ in
particular had not been pronounced. ‘Postwar Reconstruction’ was what
Morgenthau had said and it was what he meant: the reconstruction certainly
of Europe—possibly China and Japan as well, but he was looking no further.
. . . The conference lasted three weeks and for most of that time, the bank
remained the poor relation [of the imf], relegated to the background’’ (28).
Instead, it was John Maynard Keynes, as chairman of ‘‘Commission II’’
for the establishment of the bank, who explicitly introduced the word ‘‘de-
velopment’’ into the bank’s title and into articles of its constitution. As my
chapter epigraph makes clear, Keynes had in mind a much broader vision of
the bank’s mandate than the reconstruction of Europe; indeed, he proposed
a moral and ethical ‘‘mission’’ for the bank, requiring the ‘‘zeal’’ of devout
purpose and the universalist horizon of a ‘‘faith.’’ In his initial discussions

20 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

of the bank’s future role, he implored the members of his commission to
look beyond its initial mandate for the reconstruction of Europe: ‘‘The field
of reconstruction from the consequences of war will mainly occupy the
proposed Bank in its early days. But as soon as possible, and with increasing
emphasis as time goes on, there is a second primary duty laid upon it,
namely to develop the resources and productive capacity of the world, with
special attention to the less developed countries, to raising the standard of
life and the conditions of labour everywhere, to make the resources of the
world more fully available to all mankind’’ (George and Sabelli 34).
Development as a ‘‘primary duty’’ of this international agency has sup-
planted what British imperial theorist J. A. Hobson identified as England’s
‘‘public duty’’ during the great age of empire (Hobson 231). While the Brit-
ish empire is dwarfed in comparison with the bank’s proposed purview (‘‘to
make the resources of the world more fully available to all mankind’’), the
bank’s purpose is not so far removed from the purpose of British imperial
reason in Hobson’s worldview: ‘‘It is the great practical business of the
country to explore and develop, by every method which science can devise,
the hidden natural and human resources of the globe’’ (229). The social
Darwinism invoked by Hobson’s humanist imperialism, however, which
characterized British colonial subjects as belonging to the ‘‘lower races,’’ has
been banished in Keynes’s estimation of the bank’s mandate; gone are the
references to the ‘‘indolence and torpor of character’’ of tropical populations
(Hobson 227). In their stead we have a nonbiological, evolutionary sociology
of ‘‘less developed countries,’’ and a universalized ‘‘productive capacity’’ of
all world citizens. Development has also banished compulsory labor under
colonial administrations, replacing it with free wage labor and a concern for
‘‘raising the standard of life and the conditions of labour everywhere.’’
It might be tempting to think of development as little more than warmed-
over colonialism, given its role in managing a crisis in capitalist production;
or to think of it as a complete break from colonialism, given its putative claim
to deliver on liberal democracy’s promise of liberty and prosperity for all.
However, it is important to see development’s di√erence from colonialism,
rooted in its action as a vehicle for facilitating decolonization, and its links to
colonialism, rooted in its redeployment of colonialism’s logics and struc-
tures. (Indeed, it is quite stunning that suddenly, at least for the moment, all
nations in both the First World and the Third World—those destroyed by war
in Europe and those ‘‘hindered’’ by a lesser development in decolonized and
decolonizing spaces—existed on the equal footing of ‘‘aid recipient,’’ stand-
ing within a single ‘‘everywhere’’ in need of improved conditions of labor and

Development and Revolution 21

living.) Even as development emerged in concert with the universal right to
national self-determination, it nonetheless carried within it the traces of
imperial reason, of an evolutionary hierarchy and racialized subordination.
Thus, on one hand, development reformulates a racialized theory of human
perfectibility and progress. Even as it dispenses with references to the ‘‘lower
races’’ and genetically determined indolence, the traces of these categories
remain in its concept of ‘‘less developed countries’’ with impaired productive
capacities. Perhaps more significant, though, what lingers almost impercep-
tibly is the religiously ordained nature of the civilizing mission. As the
passive construction of Keynes’s phrase ‘‘a primary duty is laid upon it’’
implies, the bank’s duty to develop the world is mandated by a higher
principle or power than mere economic interest, and it requires the fervor of
faith to implement this divine principle. This trace of religious mission also
inhabits development’s liberatory promise to deliver ‘‘mankind’’ from need.
On the other hand, however, developmentalism far exceeds the scope of
colonialism, bringing the entire world under the surveillance of a few inter-
national agencies. Indeed, colonialism is rendered anachronistic by de-
velopment. It is precisely the marriage of development and decolonization
that discursively legitimates the extraction of resources and productive ca-
pacity in a way the civilizing mission of colonialism never could. The extrac-
tion of resources and productive capacity is ordained as the principal course
of action for a decolonized nation to achieve and maintain sovereignty. Even
as development articulates the liberatory promise of delivering decolonized
nations from need, it simultaneously re-creates it by recognizing the ‘‘less
developed countries’’ as being in need of assistance to carry out this dual
process of extraction. In this manner, development aid and agencies insinu-
ate themselves ‘‘everywhere.’’
Wolfgang Sachs, Gustavo Esteva, and Arturo Escobar have all identified
Harry Truman’s inaugural address on 20 January 1949 as the dawn of the
age of development, as the initiation of a new era of power/knowledge in
world a√airs (Sachs 2; Esteva 6–7; Escobar, Encountering Development 3). I
locate its emergence before this historic speech, in the negotiations for a
postwar order that began with Roosevelt’s conditions for entering the war.
There is no need, however, to quibble over an ever-receding origin point
(Wilson and Lenin? Smith and Marx?) of this new power/knowledge sys-
tem, because at whichever point we locate it, what is important for my
argument is that its emergence is marked by the articulation of a set of
discursive signifiers (‘‘equality of peoples,’’ ‘‘self-determination,’’ ‘‘less de-
veloped countries,’’ ‘‘free trade,’’ ‘‘limited productive capacity,’’ ‘‘prosperity,’’

22 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

‘‘need’’) with a new set of filial institutions (the imf and the wb) dedicated,
in turn, to the financing of trade and the financing of national development
geared toward trade. Development’s discursive emergence was thus, para-
doxically, both a liberatory strategy for decolonizing the world and a ‘‘neu-
tral’’ rearticulation of racialized colonial categories as national di√erence.
Development rendered formal colonialism obsolete, but it also gave impe-
rial knowledge production a new lease on life. Thus I seek to elucidate the
continuities and discontinuities between what I would suggest are the two
great organizing tropes of imperial reason in what Giovanni Arrighi has
called ‘‘the long twentieth century’’: civilization and development.
If we look to these tropes, and to the set of discursive signifiers through
which development mobilizes, then we see that by Truman’s 1949 inaugu-
ral address, this discursive deployment of development had become hege-
monic. Rehashing the 1947 ‘‘Truman Doctrine,’’ the president’s inaugural
address proposed, as an alternative to ‘‘that false philosophy of Commu-
nism,’’ a four-point program for increasing the prosperity of the United
States and the rest of the world in tandem. After outlining the three points
of his program pertaining to the domestic sphere, the Marshall Plan, and
the foundation of nato, Truman turned his attention to the world outside of
Europe and the United States. In his fourth point, he insisted the United
States ‘‘must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our
scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement
and growth of underdeveloped areas.’’ He lamented that half of the world’s
population lived in such areas, often ‘‘in conditions approaching misery.
Their food is inadequate. They are victims of disease. Their economic life is
primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to
them and to more prosperous areas. For the first time in history humanity
possesses the knowledge and the skill to relieve the su√ering of these peo-
ple’’ (Truman 293, 296). What is remarkable, as Escobar points out, is not
that Truman made such a statement, but that such statements ‘‘made per-
fect sense’’ to domestic and international audiences alike (Escobar, Encoun-
tering Development 4). From former colonizing elites to independence lead-
ers in Africa and Asia, from liberal economists in the United States to
revolutionary leaders in Latin America, all had come to understand in a
span of a few years the Southern Hemisphere and its inhabitants as existing
in a condition of ‘‘underdevelopment.’’∑ More remarkable still, many of
these same leaders believed the proper application of development aid in the
fields of ‘‘scientific advances’’ and ‘‘industrial progress’’ would rapidly re-
make the world in the image of the United States.

Development and Revolution 23

 Truman’s inaugural address recognizes half the world’s population as
‘‘primitive’’ and ‘‘stagnant’’ ‘‘victims of disease,’’ but more crucially for the
purposes of this project, it also rhetorically reconfigures the interior space of
the individual subjects living in these ‘‘underdeveloped areas.’’∏ Truman’s
speech thus registers a swerve in development discourse toward subjec-
tivity, a move we can see clearly in his closing remarks, which shift the target
of development from national economies to individuated subjectivities:

The old imperialism—exploitation for foreign profit—has no place in

our plans. What we envisage is a program of development based on
the concepts of democratic fair-dealing. . . . Only by helping the least
fortunate of its members to help themselves can the human family
achieve the decent, satisfying life that is the right of all people. Democ-
racy alone can supply the vitalizing force to stir the peoples of the
world into triumphant action, not only against their human oppres-
sors, but also against their ancient enemies—hunger, misery, and
despair. . . . Slowly but surely we are weaving a world fabric of interna-
tional and growing prosperity. We are aided by all who wish to live in
freedom from fear—even by those who live today in fear under their
own governments. We are aided by all who want relief from the lies of
propaganda—who desire truth and sincerity. We are aided by all who
desire self-government and a voice in their own a√airs. We are aided
by all who long for economic security—for the security and abundance
that men in free societies can enjoy. We are aided by all who desire
freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom to live their own
lives for useful ends. (Truman 297)

Aiding the ‘‘underdeveloped areas’’ of the world becomes completely inter-

twined with fighting communism as U.S. development aid to the ‘‘least
fortunate’’ of the ‘‘human family’’ is aided, in turn, by those who oppose
unnamed tyrannical governments and the ‘‘lies of propaganda.’’ Certainly
these closing remarks are aimed at the citizens of the Soviet Union. They are
also, however, directed at all those involved in revolutionary struggles
‘‘against their ancient enemies—hunger, misery, and despair,’’ those who
might be inspired by communism in this pursuit.
What is noteworthy beyond this imbrication of development, anticolo-
nialism, and anticommunism, however, is the new terrain on which the
battle both for development and against communism will be fought. Where-
as Keynes was concerned with national ‘‘standards of living’’ and indexes of
‘‘productive capacity,’’ with industrialization and infrastructure in ‘‘less de-

24 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

veloped’’ economies, Truman is concerned with a set of attitudes, including
an attitude toward freedom from want: development is aided by ‘‘all who
long for economic security—for . . . security and abundance.’’ With Truman’s
speech, the desire for development-as-freedom is implanted within (under-
developed) subjectivity, evinced by ‘‘wishes,’’ ‘‘desires,’’ ‘‘voice,’’ ‘‘longing,’’
and, ultimately, choice. It is no longer simply the ‘‘less developed countries’’
that may or may not embrace national development; it is now the millions of
‘‘despair[ing]’’ individuals who desire development, who would willingly
choose it as the means for making ‘‘useful ends’’ of their own lives. The
target of development is no longer only the ‘‘less developed countries,’’ but
now also the less developed subjects of the ‘‘human family.’’
That the Point Four Program was principally concerned with the de-
sired/desiring subject of (under)development is underscored by the type of
aid dispensed under its auspices. On 5 June 1950, Congress implemented
Truman’s Point Four Program by passing the Act for International Develop-
ment, allocating $35 million in direct foreign aid for such projects as adult
literacy in India, education on disease prevention in children in Burma, and
a vocational school in Libya (Lott 297). Compared to the lending capacity of
the ibrd and the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which in 1951 jointly extended
more than $1 billion in loans to ‘‘developing’’ nations, the sum allotted for
implementation of the Point Four Program seems minuscule (Hayes 12).
Arguably, the discrepancy in funding suggests that the Point Four Program
was largely symbolic, part of a U.S. Cold War propaganda campaign abroad.
However, I would argue that the direction of the funding points us toward a
significant augmentation in the discourse of development. While ibrd
loans, especially those made in the early years, were directed toward na-
tional economies, toward building appropriate communication, transporta-
tion, and energy infrastructures at the national level, the Point Four Pro-
gram made the target of aid the national citizen. Its aid was directed at
constructing appropriate subjects for national development, at reforming
the illiterate Indian, the diseased Burmese, the unskilled Libyan. Because its
development was ideological more than economic, because its addressees
were individual subjects more than national economies, the Point Four
Program, with its microfunding for small-scale programs, made individuals
available for development.π
Like Truman before him, John F. Kennedy responded to revolutionary
movements in the Third World with a dual strategy of military intervention
and development aid. Indeed, Kennedy’s ‘‘covert’’ involvement in Cuba and
Vietnam strategically, tactically, and geographically mirrors Truman’s in-

Development and Revolution 25

volvement in Korea and Guatemala. Nevertheless, under Kennedy’s admin-
istration, development aid became a far more prominent aspect of U.S.
foreign policy than in the two previous administrations, especially with
regard to Latin America. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress greatly surpassed
Truman’s Point Four Program in scope. More than $1 billion in develop-
ment aid and loans were extended to Latin America in the program’s first
year.∫ Devised under the advisement of economic historian W. W. Rostow,
the Alliance for Progress was a response to communist-inspired national
liberation movements.Ω Rostow saw himself as a member of an intellectual
vanguard of economic historians and theorists in the battle to contain com-
munism. His Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto is both
an explicitly anticommunist treatise on national liberation (as the title at-
tests) and a foundational text in ‘‘modernization theory’’ of the Pax Amer-
icana postwar period.
Development theory was initially formulated by economists strongly in-
fluenced by Keynes; however, intellectual historian Colin Leys has pointed
out that ‘‘by the end of the 1950s . . . the original optimism that this approach
would yield rapid results had begun to evaporate, and the limitations of
development economics as a theory of development were beginning to be
exposed’’ (8). As such, a second generation of development theorists re-
sponded to the failure of Keynesian economics to produce immediate re-
sults in the decolonizing world. Alternately called modernization theorists
or structural functionalists, these men attempted to provide sociological,
psychological, and cultural explanations for the failure of development eco-
nomics to take hold in any given Third World society. With this second
generation, development theory moved beyond the realm of economics into
the disciplines of political science, sociology, anthropology, and psychol-
ogy.∞≠ Although many proponents of modernization theory or structural
functionalism were ‘‘Cold War warriors’’ such as Gabriel Almond, Edward
Shils, Lucien Pye, and Samuel Huntington, who were clearly positioned on
the U.S. side of a polarized geopolitics, it is also true that this second genera-
tion of development theorists gained intellectual ascendancy fairly quickly
(Leys 10). As Larrain has argued, ‘‘the first mainstream post-war theories of
development within the capitalist world were born as modernization theo-
ries, that is to say, as theories of the processes and stages through which
traditional or backward societies were bound to go during their transition to
modern society. These processes and stages were to be determined by look-
ing at the history of developed societies. The assumption was that newly
developing societies must repeat the same experience’’ (85–86). This main-

26 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

streaming of modernization theory in the development establishment, and
particularly in the U.S. academy, dehistoricized the evolution of global cap-
italism. While Keynesian economists saw development as at least in part a
response to the ill e√ects of colonialism, modernization theorists natu-
ralized development’s emergence into a series of discrete stages inevitably
traversed by all national economies. With its sociological and cultural vari-
ants as explanations for why development occurred in some places and not
in others, modernization theory and structural functionalism displaced the
scene of its emergence onto the terrain of attitudes held by national citizens,
of choices made by national societies.∞∞ Rostow’s Stages of Economic Growth
is an ideal text for tracing the e√ect of this displacement, because the key
themes, metaphors, and tropes he employs—indeed, the entire chain of
discursive signifiers he constructs—will accompany the subject of (under)-
development across subsequent generations of development strategies, and
even across the ideological divides of the Cold War.
I am not suggesting that Stages of Economic Growth was the definitive
blueprint for all future development discourses and practices. However, it
does exemplify the swerve of development theory from the terrain of na-
tional economies toward that of human subjectivity initiated by Truman. In
the chain of discursive signifiers accompanying Rostow’s (under)developed
subject, we will find traces of colonialism’s racial legacy. We will also recog-
nize the reiterative force of this chain of signification as it is reformulated
time and again across the age of development. In addition, as director of
policy and planning in the U.S. State Department under Kennedy and as
chief adviser on Vietnam to President Lyndon B. Johnson, Rostow had a
direct impact on the discursive imbrication of development aid (Alliance for
Progress) and revolutionary movements (Cuba, Vietnam).

From Territory to Interiority:

The Desiring Subject of Development

In my readings of Keynes and Truman, I have suggested that some of the

tropes of civilization were incorporated into the idiom of development in the
1950s and 1960s. From that incorporation emerged two new manifest sub-
jects: the modern, fully developed subject and its premodern, underdevel-
oped counterpart. These subjects are manifest because their level of develop-
ment appears as self-evident. What needed to be explained was not whether
these subjects were developed but rather how the developed subject came to
be so, and how the underdeveloped subject might follow in his path. This

Development and Revolution 27

section focuses, then, on modernization theory as precisely one such expla-
nation.
For Rostow and other modernization theorists, the path to national de-
velopment was beautiful in its linear simplicity. Rostow’s Stages of Economic
Growth distills from the histories of Europe, the United States, Russia,
China, and Japan five universal stages of development for all societies en
route to becoming modern, secular nations: traditional society, precondi-
tions for takeo√, takeo√, the drive to maturity, and high mass consumption.
In the preface to the second edition, Rostow states that he is explicitly
idealist in his transhistorical, transsocietal survey of development: ‘‘Stages of
Economic Growth is an e√ort to map a large problem. It is not an encyclope-
dia of economic history’’ (ix). Rostow thus dispenses with the use of eco-
nomic evidence (gnp, per capita income indicators, sectoral indicators)
early on in his comparative survey.∞≤
Indeed, this ‘‘how-to’’ book on modernization is not a study of national
economics at all but a study of the culture of free will. Although he periodi-
cally discusses overhead capital investment, investment-to-income ratios, or
industrial sectors conducive to compounded growth, Rostow inevitably re-
turns to culture as the true indicator of whether or not modernization will
take root in a society: ‘‘In surveying now the broad contours of each stage-of-
growth we are examining, then, not merely the sectoral structures of econo-
mies, as they transformed themselves for growth, and grew; we are also
examining a succession of strategic choices made by various societies con-
cerning the disposition of their resources which include but transcend the
income- and price-elasticities of demand’’ (16, italics mine). In this way,
Rostow emphatically disassociates his inherently economic project from the
economic (‘‘which include but transcend’’), and it is in this disassociation
that subjectivity as the terrain of development enters the scene of modern-
ization. It is within these ‘‘broad contours of each stage-of-growth’’ that we
spot the manifest subject of development.
When Rostow theorizes the economic growth of presumed modern na-
tions as the consequence of a series of ‘‘strategic choices made’’ at transi-
tional points in history, he displaces development onto a question of freely
executing the proper will. He universalizes the uneven and heterogeneous
Euro-American trajectories of development across ‘‘various societies,’’ de-
riving all trajectories from a prescriptive model of an autonomous, self-
conscious, self-controlling subject constituted by his ability to make proper
choices. Development here is precisely an extension of such an imagined
subjectivity. It is the expression of a collective, social disposition for making the

28 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

right choices, free of any imaginable material or historical constraints. In-
deed, such a collective culture of free will transcends even the base motiva-
tions of profitability and competition, as ‘‘income’’ and ‘‘demand’’ are dis-
pensed within the collective calculus of what to do with ‘‘resources.’’
This theme of reducing development and progress to a matter of making
the ‘‘proper choice,’’ free of material or historical constraint, recurs later in
diverse third-generation development paradigms such as the ‘‘basic needs
approach’’ and ‘‘sustainable development.’’ In the case of a ‘‘basic needs
approach,’’ a Third World society is called on to choose, freely and suddenly,
to radically alter the distribution of profit among its classes, so that the ‘‘basic
needs’’ of its poorest members may be fulfilled. In the case of the ‘‘sustain-
able development’’ paradigm, an impoverished local community is called on
to choose to privilege the long-term sustainability of the environment over its
own immediate need, for instance, to deforest an area for planting cash
crops. In both theoretical models, the politics of dictatorial regimes, oligar-
chies, death squads, unjust land tenure systems, and internal migration
patterns are all relegated to the margins, rather than figured as central factors
in determining the possibility for development and change.
While these three development models—modernization, basic needs,
sustainable—are not the same, neither equally viable nor desirable, all three
fall under the sway of a particular discursive formation, that of the individ-
ual and collective subject of free will, capable of transcending material,
political, and historical constraints and choosing to become developed.
More noteworthy than this, however, is the recurrence of these discursive
signifiers in revolutionary theory. Revolutionaries, adhering to specifically
socialist or ‘‘Second World’’ development paradigms, nevertheless repre-
sented their personal transformations in a similar rhetoric of transcen-
dence, representing themselves and others as just such autonomous, self-
controlling, and self-determining individuals freely choosing to become
revolutionaries, as we shall see in part 2.
Returning to Rostow and his chain of discursive signifiers, the content of
the collective culture of free will he describes is curiously bifurcated in his
chapter entitled ‘‘The Preconditions for Take-O√.’’ This chapter describes
the transitional stage between the traditional society and the takeo√ into
self-sustained growth, and for Rostow, this is the pivotal stage in the mod-
ernization process. Here, once again, he eschews merely economic explana-
tions. Though Rostow sardonically agrees with the ‘‘modern economist’’
that takeo√ into self-sustained growth begins when a society’s overall invest-
ment rate reaches 10 percent of the national income, this simple indicator

Development and Revolution 29

fails to explain why investment rates might rise in the first instance (19–20).
Hence Rostow once again locates the preconditions for increased rates of
investments in ‘‘e√ective attitude’’:

But to get the rate of investment up some men in the society must
be able to manipulate and apply . . . modern science and useful cost-
reducing inventions.
Some other men in the society must be prepared to undergo the
strain and risks of leadership in bringing the flow of available inven-
tions productively into the capital stock.
Some other men in the society must be prepared to lend their
money on long term, at high risk, to back the innovating entrepre-
neurs . . . in modern industry.
Some other men in the society must be prepared to accept training
for—and then operate—an economic system whose methods are sub-
ject to regular change, and one which also increasingly confines the
individual in large, disciplined organizations allocating to him spe-
cialized narrow, recurrent tasks.
In short, the rise in the rate of investment—which the economist
conjures to summarize the transition—requires a radical shift in the
society’s e√ective attitude toward fundamental and applied science;
toward the initiation of change in productive technique; toward the
taking of risk; and toward the conditions and methods of work. (20,
italics mine)

On the one hand, Rostow’s phrase ‘‘must be prepared,’’ which he repeats

three times in the passage, suggests that before compounded growth can
occur, men must be ready either to assume leadership in industry and in
banking or to take their place on the factory floor. Once again, moderniza-
tion depends on a certain shift in cultural attitude: on a society of men at the
ready, asserting themselves as free subjects making responsible choices at
pivotal historical conjunctures. Some choose leadership positions as risk-
taking entrepreneurs, and others choose to embrace industrial ‘‘conditions
and methods of work’’ as laborers. Stages of Economic Growth, however, is
also a ‘‘how-to’’ treatise on development. Thus, on the other hand, ‘‘must be
prepared’’ can also be read imperatively: men must be made ready to be
ready, in an Althusserian sense. The development imperative once again
aims for the interiority of subjectivity: some men must be made ready to be
ready to become the risk-taking, innovating subjects of capital, while others

30 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

must be made ready to be ready to become the disciplined subjects of
monotonous wage labor. The imperative of development is also a regime of
‘‘subjection’’—that ‘‘process of becoming subordinated by power as well as
the process of becoming a subject’’—aimed at making ‘‘underdeveloped’’
populations available to capital as never before (Butler, The Psychic Life of
Power 2). The vast majority of the men of these ‘‘traditional societies’’ in
transition ‘‘must be prepared’’ to accept the routinized, narrow, and confin-
ing ‘‘conditions and methods of work’’ o√ered by industrial specialization.
Development aid must be geared toward precipitating this transition in
subjectivity at a national scale, thereby ‘‘making ready’’ the laboring popula-
tion of an entire underdeveloped country for capital investment.
Importantly, while Rostow writes his treatise explicitly against Marx—
and particularly against Marx’s bifurcation of classes into antagonistic capi-
tal and labor—he nevertheless returns us to a bifurcated society that resem-
bles Marx’s in his analysis of the ‘‘sociological and psychological changes . . .
at the heart of the creation of the preconditions for take-o√ ’’ (26).∞≥ While in
the above passage a dissimulating Rostow derives modernization from a
society of men acting in concert to attain a mutually desired and equally
beneficial goal, a few pages later he reduces these multiple roles to just two:
‘‘It would be widely agreed that a new élite—a new leadership—must
emerge and be given scope to begin the building of a modern industrial
society. . . . And more generally—in rural as in urban areas . . . men must
become prepared for a life of change and specialized function’’ (26). Thus
we arrive at a society constituted by a vanguard leadership on one hand, and
a mass population subject to the whims of ‘‘change and specialized func-
tion’’ on the other.
Here we catch a glimpse of a disturbing resemblance between the re-
gimes of subjection under developmentalism and under revolutionary
movements. Although the content of working-class culture could not be
more di√erent under the two theoretical models of discursive signification
—and that is a key di√erence, as we will see—both oddly depend on vanguard
leadership to make men ready either for development or for revolution.
Indeed, behind the foquismo of the first wave of Latin American revolution-
ary movements is precisely such a belief in the incendiary leadership possi-
bilities of a vanguard among the masses. Ideally in revolutionary theory
(though certainly not always in practice), this vanguard leadership is derived
from the masses themselves. Nevertheless, foquismo unwittingly repro-
duces a developmentalist model of hierarchy and subordination in its theory

Development and Revolution 31

of subjection. In part 2, I explore at greater length the consequences of this
for foquista and post-foquista revolutionary movements.
Rostow insists that the emergence of a leadership elite is a universal
condition that must be achieved by all societies poised for takeo√. The
leadership elite he describes, however, is endowed with a particular ethos.
This ethos turns out to be, surprisingly enough, the Protestant ethic, even
though Rostow goes out of his way to deny that the Protestant ethic as such is
a necessary origin of that ethos: ‘‘while the Protestant ethic by no means
represents a set of values uniquely suitable for modernization, it is essential
that the members of this new élite regard modernization as a possible task,
serving some end they judge to be ethically good or otherwise advantageous’’
(26). The rhetorical structure of disavowal, of denying the unique suitability
of the Protestant ethic for the task of modernization while nevertheless
acknowledging its suitability, precisely serves to solidify it as the Ur-text of
modernization, as a key discursive signifier of what one may judge to be
‘‘ethically good or otherwise advantageous’’ within the age of development.
Indeed, what is presupposed by the freely executed choices implied in a
‘‘basic needs approach’’ or in ‘‘sustainable development’’ if not a universally
agreed on criteria for the ‘‘ethically good or otherwise advantageous’’?
Thus Rostow repeatedly prescribes a Protestant ‘‘set of values’’ for this
emerging bourgeoisie: ‘‘The income above minimum levels of consump-
tion, largely concentrated in the hands of those who own land, must be
shifted into the hands of those who will spend it on roads and railroads,
schools and factories rather than on country houses and servants, personal
ornaments and temples’’ (19). Later Rostow paraphrases Adam Smith for
the reader, insisting that ‘‘surplus income derived from ownership of land
must, somehow, be transferred out of the hands of those who would steril-
ize it in prodigal living into the hands of the productive men who will invest
it in the modern sector and then regularly plough back their profits as
output and productivity rise’’ (24). Given Rostow’s rhetoric, this set of values
is not simply Protestant but almost puritanical.
In Rostow’s transhistorical analysis, the ancien régimes of Japan, China,
Russia, and France (‘‘country houses and servants’’), as well as the econo-
mies of present-day indigenous cultures (‘‘ornaments and temples’’), are
rendered equally ‘‘sterile’’ before the vigor of the universal ‘‘productive
men’’ of nineteenth-century Britain, the United States, and Canada. Indeed,
Rostow specifies the four countries in the world who were singly ‘‘born free’’
of the constraints of traditional society: the United States, Australia, New

32 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

Zealand, and Canada. These four white-settler nations essentially skip the
first two stages of development entirely and are ‘‘born’’ in the takeo√ stage,
according to Rostow, because ‘‘they are created mainly out of a Britain
already far along in the transitional process’’ (17). According to Rostow,
the nonconformists of these new worlds, like their British ancestors, are
uniquely unencumbered by the prejudices of caste or clan, of superstition or
intuition, a∆icting the rest of Europe and the world. This discursive binary
between prodigal premodern men and productive fully modern ones re-
curs, as we shall see, in Guevara’s and Payeras’s diaries, as well as in Mal-
colm X’s autobiography and in Sandinista agrarian policy. All four revolu-
tionary texts represent political consciousness among indigenous peasants
or urban blacks as dangerously contaminated by premodern prodigal ten-
dencies and in need of reformation.
In his ‘‘Preconditions for Take-O√ ’’ chapter, amid the discussion of the
formation of extractive industries and social overhead capital, Rostow runs
through the gamut of attitudes in a traditional society that must be trans-
formed in order for takeo√ to occur—those toward clan and region, toward
children, toward work, toward nature. Rostow insists that these cultural
factors are more important than the economic factors. And yet, toward the
end of the chapter, Rostow observes that even these changes in societal
values remain insu≈cient for bringing about the preconditions for takeo√:

While in no way denying the significance of some such changes in

attitude, value, social structure and expectations, we would empha-
size, in addition, the role of the political process and of political motive
in the transition.
As a matter of historical fact a reactive nationalism—reacting
against intrusion from more advanced nations—has been a most im-
portant and powerful motive force in the transition from traditional to
modern societies, at least as important as the profit motive. Men
holding e√ective authority or influence have been willing to uproot
traditional societies not, primarily, to make more money but because
the traditional society failed—or threatened to fail—to protect them
from humiliation by foreigners. (26–27)

Rostow illustrates the positive e√ect of this reactive nationalism with the
examples of nineteenth-century Germany, Russia, Japan, and China. How-
ever, European imperialism and postwar nationalist liberation movements
are also clearly invoked by this passage.

Development and Revolution 33

 Rostow’s reading of reactive nationalism has two important implications.
First, his description of reactive nationalism is homoerotically gendered.
Nationalism reacts to an ‘‘intrusion,’’ to a penetration by a more powerful
nation. As such, traditional society is feminized, rendered incapable of re-
sisting this penetration. ‘‘Men holding e√ective authority’’ over these tradi-
tional societies nevertheless renounce them because of this emasculation,
because they were incapable of warding o√ ‘‘humiliation by foreigners.’’ As
such, reactive nationalism in Rostow’s account is implicitly a condition of
aggrieved masculinity. Given Rostow’s schema, in which most transitions to
modernity are the e√ect of this reactive nationalism, only a chosen few
countries exist in a condition of unaggrieved masculinity. European coun-
tries that constitute the ‘‘advanced nations’’ perpetrating the intrusion (Brit-
ain, France, and the Netherlands), and those few countries ‘‘born free,’’ are
the sole purveyors of a fully masculine modern nationalism. Far from
renouncing the decolonizing nationalisms fueling postwar communist-
inspired liberation struggles, Rostow’s development theory embraces them
as the determinant factor in the transition to modernity by folding them into
a hierarchical structure of gendered nationalisms.
Second, as a consequence of this homoeroticized desire for the Other’s
full masculinity, colonialism is rendered a benign initiation into modernity.
Immediately following his discussion of reactive nationalism, Rostow ex-
plicitly addresses contemporary imperialism, suggesting that the ‘‘colonial
areas of the southern half of the world’’ benefited from the ‘‘dual demonstra-
tion e√ect’’ of colonialism (27). While imperial policies ‘‘did not always
optimize the development of the preconditions for take-o√,’’ they did trans-
form ‘‘thought, knowledge, institutions and the supply of social overhead
capital which moved the colonial society along the transitional path . . . the
reality of the e√ective power that went with an ability to wield modern technology
was demonstrated and the more thoughtful local people drew appropriate con-
clusions . . . and a concept of nationalism, transcending the old ties to clan or
region, inevitably crystallized around an accumulating resentment of colo-
nial rule’’ (27–28, italics mine). The manly ‘‘e√ective power’’ of the colo-
nizer teaches ‘‘thoughtful’’ local people to desire it—to desire ‘‘an ability to
wield modern technology,’’ to emulate the father’s knowledge/power.
With the use of phallic language like ‘‘intrusion,’’ ‘‘humiliation,’’ ‘‘ef-
fective power,’’ and ‘‘to wield,’’ Rostow figures colonialism as, at best, an
unsolicited seduction or, at worst, an auspicious rape. In either case, de-
velopment of the nation is once again metaphorized through the interiority
of subjectivity, with colonialism figured as a constitutive trauma initiating

34 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

adulthood for the underdeveloped subject. Furthermore, this trauma indi-
viduates the subject, forcing him to reject vertical ties of a multigenerational
‘‘clan’’ in favor of the horizontal ties of the presumably abstract and egali-
tarian national community. If colonialism initiates the development of
the underdeveloped, then the development process itself is necessarily in-
scribed by a ‘‘dual demonstration e√ect’’ of colonial gendering. Nations of
the developed Northern Hemisphere are gendered as demonstrative of full
masculinity. Meanwhile the emulative underdeveloped nations are gen-
dered as demonstrative of aggrieved masculinity: ‘‘without the a√ront to
human and national dignity caused by the intrusion of more advanced
powers, the rate of modernization of traditional societies . . . would have
been much slower than, in fact, it has been’’ (28).
Although Rostow explicitly writes his treatise against a Marxist-Leninist
interpretation of development history, with its imputed outcome in revolu-
tion, Rostow nevertheless ends up once again echoing Marx in his evalua-
tion of colonialism as humiliating, but ultimately beneficial, to the colo-
nized country. In Marx’s early texts on colonialism, he was, on one hand,
harshly critical of the motives for colonialism and of the excesses associated
with it, and yet, on the other hand, thoroughly convinced of its ‘‘historical
necessity as the only means to liberate backward societies from their millen-
nial stagnation and to initiate them in the path of capitalist industrialization
and development’’ (Larrain 46). While Larrain’s analysis of Marx’s critique
of colonialism makes evident that Marx’s views on the subject changed
dramatically over time, we nevertheless find the following conclusions in
key early texts by him:

England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindustan was

actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of
enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can
mankind fulfill its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the
social state of Asia? (Surveys from Exile 306–7; quoted in Larrain 46)

England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the

other regenerating—the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the
laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia. (Surveys
from Exile 320; quoted in Larrain 46)

I know that the English millocracy intends to endow India with rail-
ways with the exclusive view of extracting at diminishing expenses the
cotton and other raw materials for their manufactures. But when you

Development and Revolution 35

 have once introduced machinery into the locomotion of a country
which possesses iron and coals, you are unable to withhold it from
fabrication. . . . The railway system will therefore become, in India,
truly the forerunner of modern industry. (Surveys from Exile 322;
quoted in Larrain 46)

Just as Marx believed that the introduction of railroad technology would be

the harbinger of a mimetic industrial development in India, so Rostow
subsequently placed his faith in the mimesis provoked by ‘‘dual demonstra-
tion e√ect’’ of imperial development: ‘‘thoughtful people’’ will draw ‘‘appro-
priate conclusions.’’ And though Marx may revile the violence of imperialist
methods while Rostow glosses over them with phrases like ‘‘a√ront to dig-
nity’’ or ‘‘failure to optimize . . . development,’’ Rostow reiterates Marx’s
apologia for colonialism as a destructive force that is, in turn, the necessary
precursor for regeneration through emulation of Western society. Indeed,
Rostow’s twentieth-century reactive nationalist who is busy overturning his
traditional society’s archaic values is the rhetorical descendent of Marx’s
nineteenth-century British colonizer who annihilates the ‘‘old Asiatic so-
ciety’’ and its outdated mode of production, social relations, and value sys-
tem. There is, of course, a di√erence in focus, as Marx is concerned with the
evolution of forces for class struggle, while Rostow is concerned with the
aggrieved entrepreneurial elite. There is also a di√erence in scope, as Marx
understands the revolution in Indian productive forces that was caused by
colonialism as imperative for global humanity, while Rostow is strictly con-
cerned with the national development of decolonizing countries. Neverthe-
less, it is as if Rostow writes a redaction of Marx at key points, albeit one that
clearly suited the ideological purposes of the Cold War. Thus it should not
surprise us that Rostow’s subtle and not-so-subtle racialization of the appro-
priate ‘‘ethos’’ for a nationalist elite would also echo the racialization in
Marx’s writings on the national question and on colonialism. As Larrain ex-
plains, ‘‘Di≈cult to believe as it may seem to some people, it is a fact that Marx
and Engels refer rather contemptuously to certain nationalities and coun-
tries. Thus the Mexicans are said to be ‘lazy,’ the Montenegrins are labeled as
‘cattle robbers,’ the Bedouins are branded as a ‘nation of robbers,’ and there is
reference to the ‘hereditary stupidity’ of the Chinese’’ (57).
Rostow’s treatise shares more than a similar opinion of colonialism with
Marx, however. As I have discussed in chapter 1, it is necessary to dis-
tinguish between two distinct modalities of developmentalism: the first sug-
gests that all societies move through relatively universal and progressive

36 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

stages of economic development; the second suggests that this first mo-
dality is homologous to (indeed, contingent on) the development of the
individual members of society into free, mature, fully conscious, and self-
determining subjects. Thus Rostow and Marx share a structural resem-
blance as vying theories of the stages entailed in the development of a
universal history, that is, as vying theories of the first modality of develop-
mentalism. Consequently, Rostow’s stages of growth—his traditional so-
ciety, preconditions for takeo√, takeo√, the drive to maturity, and high mass
consumption—parallel Marx’s mode of production theory of development
in his preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: ‘‘In broad
outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of pro-
duction may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic
development of society. The bourgeois mode of production is the last antag-
onistic form of the social process of production—antagonistic not in the
sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from
the individuals’ social conditions of existence—but the productive forces
developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a
solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly
closes with this social formation’’ (Marx, Early Writings 426). While Ros-
tow’s idealist interpretation of world history falls far from the mark of
Marx’s material analysis, Rostow nevertheless posits his ‘‘high mass con-
sumption’’ stage precisely as an answer to the implied ‘‘solution’’ of commu-
nism in Marx. And just as Marx formulates communism as a social forma-
tion in which humanity is universally liberated from ‘‘antagonism,’’ so too
does Rostow suggest that the age of ‘‘high mass consumption’’ brings an
end to antagonism through universalized purchasing power.
It is this teleological drive in Marx’s writing on world development that
orthodox Marxists adhere to and that Second World development theories
issued from. Once again, Larrain provides us with a careful interpretation of
Marx’s historical materialism as elaborated by ‘‘the theoreticians of the Sec-
ond International both from the German spd and the Bolshevik party, and
which was finally codified by Stalin’’:

First, historical materialism is considered [by these theoreticians] to be

an extension or application of the principles of dialectical materialism
to the study of society and history. Second, consciousness is a reflection
of material reality because being, the material world, is prior to and
exists independently of consciousness. Third, productive forces tend to
develop throughout history and are the chief determining factor of

Development and Revolution 37

 changes in the economic structure and, through it, of changes in the
rest of society. Fourth, history evolves through universal and necessary
stages according to the progressive logic of natural-like laws which
inevitably lead humankind toward the classless society. (31)

For this orthodox Second World interpretation of Marx’s theory of history,

the productive forces determine consciousness, historical agency, and
change, as evidenced in the second, third, and fourth principles described in
the extract. Arguably, this strain of Marxist thought—which sees all agency
and change as invariably reflecting and deriving from the ‘‘universal and
necessary stages’’ of growth in the productive forces—is as dehistoricizing
and idealist as Rostow’s attribution of progress to a manly leadership class
making the proper choices. Once again we spot the development-revolution
convergence of these ideologically opposed, yet similarly deterministic, the-
ories of history represented by Rostow and Second World development
principles. Whereas in liberal development’s theory of history, thoughtful
men direct the transformation of productive forces, in Second World de-
velopment’s theory of history, consciousness merely reflects the productive
forces around it, which progress according to ‘‘natural-like laws.’’ While in
one case unencumbered subjects boldly lead productive forces and in the
other unselfconscious subjects simply reflect them, both cases exhibit a
deterministic relationship between the transformation of subjectivity and the
evolution of the productive forces: one irrevocably follows the other.
Larrain admits that there is a strong basis for this orthodox interpretation
of historical materialism in Marx’s corpus. Indeed, he concedes that the
preponderance of Marx’s writing asserts the primacy of the productive
forces in determining consciousness, agency, and change. Nonetheless Lar-
rain insists that we reject this version of Marx in favor of the Marx who saw
the relationship between productive forces and agency as dynamic and di-
alectical. There are ‘‘some essential tensions in Marx’s thought,’’ according
to Larrain, that are expressed in ‘‘the opposition between, on the one hand, a
unilinear and universal conception of history which inexorably leads to a
preordained end, and, on the other, a conception which is based on human
practice and which rejects the interpretation of history as ‘a metaphysical
subject of which the real human individuals are merely the bearers’ ’’ (Lar-
rain 39). Thus Larrain insists that even if the textual evidence in Marx may
have supported the Second World’s deterministic theories of development,
for social critics today, these ‘‘tensions in Marx’s thought’’ ‘‘must be resolved
in favour of a conception which underlines the increasing scope of human

38 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

practice and rejects the idea of an immanent drive which leads history
toward an inevitable end [of revolution]’’ (39).
Larrain refuses to capitulate to a Second World teleology of history. In-
stead, his analysis allows us to see the convergence of developmentalism in
both Second World socialist and First World liberal orthodoxies. What is
interesting about Larrain’s analysis is that while he refuses to capitulate to
the teleology of historical development in Marx’s own writings, and subse-
quently in orthodox and Second World development theory, Larrain never-
theless accedes to Marx’s teleology of consciousness. Larrain rejects the
determinism in Marxist interpretations of the first modality of developmen-
talism, but he quite willingly participates in the deterministic impetus be-
hind Marx’s approach to the universal evolution of human consciousness,
the second modality of developmentalism. Thus, while Larrain dismisses
the stagelike development implied by Marx’s ‘‘Asiatic, ancient, feudal and
modern bourgeois modes of production’’ narrative, he nonetheless agrees
with Marx that there is a schematic evolution of human consciousness that
occurs at the moment of the transition from precapitalist modes of produc-
tion to the capitalist mode of production:

Whereas in pre-capitalist modes of production based on landed prop-

erty natural relations still predominate, in the capitalist mode of pro-
duction ‘‘social, historically evolved elements predominate.’’ This
means that before capitalism human beings were far less capable of
consciously altering the course of history and they were mostly driven
by social and economic forces of which they were not aware and of
which consequently they could not seek control.
With capitalism on the other hand the possibility for conscious
human participation in shaping the future of society is greatly in-
creased. This means that the outcome of socio-political processes is
not determined solely by natural relations but is shaped by conscious
human intervention. True, even in pre-capitalist modes of production,
human intervention was crucial because nothing in history can hap-
pen without human practice. But it was not a fully conscious human
practice in that human beings were unable to understand the real
causes of their actions and set themselves goals which could not be
achieved. (Larrain 35–36)

Larrain insists on a ‘‘qualitative change’’ in consciousness, and I would

agree that forms of consciousness are qualitatively di√erent at di√erent
historical moments, or in di√erent modes of production (39). For instance,

Development and Revolution 39

slaves in ancient Greece struggled for di√erent forms of freedom from
di√erent forms of oppression than do indigenous peasants in Guatemala
who are tied to capitalist plantations through debt peonage and extraeco-
nomic forms of coercion. However, in Larrain’s assessment, such a change
in consciousness is not so much qualitative as it is quantitative. While
precapitalist subjects are ‘‘less capable’’ of historical intervention because
they lack an ‘‘aware[ness]’’ of their own material circumstances, under cap-
italism subjects find their ability for historical intervention ‘‘greatly in-
creased’’ because they are finally ‘‘fully conscious’’ of their own exploitation.
The consciousness of which he speaks does not seem to change qualita-
tively; rather, human subjects simply have more or less of it depending on
the historical era in which they live. Continuing with my example, can we
confidently argue that slaves in ancient Greece were less aware of their
particular form of servitude than indigenous peasant subalterns in Guate-
mala, or less innovative in their political and cultural struggles for their very
di√erent form of freedom? Thus I suggest that Larrain is participating in the
second modality of developmentalism in his assessment of the universal
transformations in consciousness that occur under di√erent modes of pro-
duction.∞∂ Not only is his less-to-more model of transformation idealist, but
it is deterministic, as well, since capitalist relations of production inevitably
produce ‘‘more’’ consciousness, a greater ability for self-reflection and for
historical agency. Larrain ends up formulating a relationship between mode
of production and subject formation that is as deterministic as the relation-
ship proposed between productive forces and subjectivity in Second World
or orthodox Marxist theories of history.
While Larrain’s assessment of transitions in consciousness might appear
to be a moot point, as we would be hard pressed to find a society today that
had eluded the capitalist mode of production, he nevertheless makes avail-
able just such a conclusion. Therein lies the more disturbing, if uninten-
tional, consequence of Larrain’s formulation that human consciousness
increases decisively in the transition from precapitalism to capitalism. In-
deed, Ernesto Laclau has convincingly argued that capitalism requires the
coexistence of other, seemingly precapitalist, modes of production for the
rate of profit to continue to grow on a global scale. Accordingly a host of
Third World nomadic farmers and subsistence producers could easily be
classified as ‘‘precapitalist’’ formations, and indeed many rural societies
have been classified as such by marauding development specialists of all
ideological ilks. Thus Larrain’s own representation of this transition in con-
sciousness unwittingly participates in the inevitable racialization of ‘‘pre-

40 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

modern’’ particularity, as he unintentionally opens the door for the subor-
dination of peoples deemed to exist in precapitalist modes of production
and to su√er from a ‘‘less[er] capab[ility]’’ for understanding and improving
their situation. As I will discuss in the following chapters, rural subalterns
were repeatedly seen as existing in isolated, premodern conditions by revo-
lutionary nationalists in the Americas who were hell-bent on initiating the
subaltern’s entry into modern rationality according to a less-to-more model
of consciousness. Although Larrain breaks free from the orthodoxy of Sec-
ond World development’s theory of history, he paradoxically succumbs to
the orthodoxy of the second modality of developmentalism. Implicit in his
view is the principle that men become more fully human with each subse-
quent stage of economic development. Furthermore, this blind spot in Lar-
rain’s own Marxist analysis allows us to see the seductive power of this
second modality of developmentalism, for in the final analysis, First World
liberal, Second World socialist, and even Western Marxist development par-
adigms all fall under its spell when theorizing a regime of subjection.
Continuing on, then, in our search for the discursive family of state-
ments that accompany this regime of subjection across ideological divides,
let us return to the manifest subject of liberal postwar development theory
as evinced by Rostow. In his theory of history, after the crucial transition
period in which the preconditions for takeo√ are established by manly reac-
tive nationalists, modernization evolves much as one might expect. During
the ‘‘takeo√ into self-sustained growth’’ stage, these risk-taking—if slightly
prudish—‘‘productive men’’ take the lead of a transitional society: trans-
forming social and political institutions, plowing back profits into social
overhead spending, expanding production, and creating wages that in turn
create demand. During the ‘‘drive towards maturity,’’ a nation invests in
more social overhead spending, diversifies industries, creates more wages
and more demand, until finally reaching a stage in which all citizens of the
nation are engaged in high mass consumption.
Although Rostow’s fourth chapter on the takeo√ into self-sustained
growth is the most often anthologized, it is this ‘‘Preconditions for Take-O√ ’’
chapter that best illustrates the age of development’s new discursive regime
of subjection for formerly colonized and neocolonized areas of the world.
This new set of metaphors, themes, and tropes for the formation of modern
subjectivity is deeply nationalist and vehemently egalitarian, as we have
seen. Indeed, it is the prior sovereignty of the nation and dignity of all
individuals that is presumably aroused by the violation of colonialism in
Rostow’s account of reactive nationalism. As a response to postwar national

Development and Revolution 41

liberation movements, development’s new regime of modern subjectivity
must register the political a√ront of colonialism. Consequently, develop-
ment promises to the periphery an alternative mode of integration, one that
is predicated on national sovereignty and respects human equality—one
that promises full masculinity to underdeveloped subjects. Indeed, a condi-
tion of aggrieved masculinity is a recurrent metaphor in the autobiogra-
phies of revolutionaries who, as we shall see, seek the promise of a fully
masculine, modern nationalism for themselves and their societies through
Marxist-Leninist or separatist revolutions.
Even as modernization theory advocated political sovereignty for the
colonial world, it provided an alibi for European colonialism. Liberal de-
velopment’s new regime of subjection, illustrated in Rostow, bore the trace
of colonialism’s racial and sexual legacy. In its chain of discursive significa-
tion—in those recurrent metaphors, themes, and tropes identified by Ros-
tow—we find that colonialism’s di√erences in kind between the ‘‘white’’ race
and the ‘‘lower’’ races were relativized and nationalized in development’s
domain of cultural attitudes conducive to good judgment and moderniza-
tion. Although a Protestant ethos was not uniquely conducive to such good
judgment, it became the baseline against which the character of all other
national bourgeois would be judged. In turn, the discursive terms of gender
and sexuality were reformulated. Under British and Anglo-American colo-
nialism, the hyper-civilized races of Asia were seen as degenerative, while
the African and New World races were eroticized for their excess sexuality.
Under the new discursive regime of development, gendered sexuality has
been allegorized through a hierarchy of nationalisms. The aggrieved mas-
culinity of reactive nationalisms was subordinated to, and yet oddly enabled
by, the full masculinity of the originary nationalisms. Thus we have left
behind the social Darwinism of British and Anglo-American colonialism, in
which evolution is determined by one’s proximity to an appropriately potent
whiteness, without fully abandoning its racial legacy. In its stead we have a
model of development in which modernity was determined by one’s prox-
imity to this risk-taking, decision-making, frugal, nonornamental (i.e., ele-
mental), productive, fully masculine, national subject. At the opposite end
of the continuum of equally human subjects was the rule-bound, doctrine-
led, adorned (i.e., supplemental), profligate, emasculated, clannish subject
of the underdeveloped traditional societies.
It should not surprise us that development’s regime of subjection dove-
tails with the capitalist mode of production of value (in its bifurcated culture
of free will), or universalizes an Anglocentric experience (in its privileging

42 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

of Protestant ethics). It is perhaps even expected that development discourse
would retain the trace of colonialism’s racialized discourse of civilization.
What should surprise, however, is the remarkable resemblance between this
subject of development and the subject of revolution put forth in the United
States and Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s. Many of the meta-
phors, themes, and tropes identified in Rostow as the key discursive terms
for developmentalist subjection appear as well in the texts of revolution-
aries. In both revolutionary and developmentalist regimes of subjection, we
find the prescriptive representations of agency as free will, of consciousness
as autonomous and self-determining, of progressive transformation as tran-
scendence over the restrictions of clan or caste (ethnos). Similarly—or rather
consequently—in both we find a call to vanguard leadership predicated on a
binary division between a mass of prodigal men in need of reformation and
an elite of productive men at the ready to implement reform. Finally, in both
models, we find that a condition of aggrieved masculinity compels the de-
sire for transformation and reform. I am not suggesting revolutionary dis-
course is derivative of development. To the contrary, I am suggesting that
both discursive models depend on a particular rendition of fully modern
masculinity as the basis for full citizenship in either a developed or a revolu-
tionary society. Further analysis of this discursive resemblance or coinci-
dence between the promise of development and the promise of revolution—
and its unfortunate consequences for the latter—is elaborated in the ensu-
ing chapters.
For now let us consider what these reiterative gestures in Rostow’s
schema accomplish for the age of development. Rostow reduces develop-
ment to a series of ethical choices made by a risk-taking vanguard leadership
and a well-disciplined cadre of workers. At the moment when colonial pow-
ers were losing the practical control necessary for maintaining economic
hegemony over vast populations and territories, the First World, I suggest,
established ethical control over the decolonized spaces through develop-
ment’s discursive regime of subjection. I use the term ethical because, as a
regime of subjection, development paradigms subsequently made ‘‘prog-
ress’’ a matter of individuated and collective choice outside of geopolitical or
economic constraints: the choice of embracing technology (development
through import substitution), the choice of shedding feudal mind-sets
(demonstration-e√ect development), the choice to save money (export-led
growth), the choice to be independent (import substitution), the choice to
invest capital in social overhead costs (basic needs approach), the choice
between clan and nation (dual societies models), and, most important, the

Development and Revolution 43

choice to be productive rather than prodigal. As such, the discursive regime
illustrated by Rostow paradoxically absolves the First World from respon-
sibility for the consequences of colonialism, even as the First World is
credited with inciting the desire to choose to enter the age of development.
In modernization theory, as in most second- and third-generation de-
velopment paradigms, Third World countries were seen as traditional so-
cieties or as societies at Rostow’s ‘‘preconditions for takeo√ ’’ stage. Thus
these new nations were still cluttered on one end of the human continuum:
outside of modernization or just on the brink of entering it. Tautologically,
development theories themselves produced this diagnosis. Thus, Rostow
and other development theorists claimed that traditional societies simulta-
neously occupied the contradictory positions of ‘‘self-su≈ciency’’ and ‘‘lim-
ited productivity’’ (5). In what sense can a self-su≈cient society also be said
to be limited in its productivity? Limited for whom? This contradiction can
only be resolved outside of a developmentalist narrative, in the interest of
universal capitalism to bring this self-su≈cient entity, with its limited pro-
ductivity, into full production for the accumulation of capital on an interna-
tional scale. That is, production can be viewed as limited only from the
perspective of an expanding capitalism that this limited production eludes.
Early development theories like Rostow’s placed ‘‘traditional’’ or ‘‘under-
developed’’ nations outside the productivist discourse of modernization so
that it could then become the joint mission of international and national
development agencies to bring these new nations into discourse: to name
the traditional, to define the conditions of underdevelopment, to demarcate
underdevelopment geographically, to inspect it, to enact policy around it, to
police it, to harness its productivity—in e√ect, to contain the anxiety pro-
duced by the Third World’s decolonizing presence.

From Rostow to McNamara and Back Again

Decolonization alone was not the principal threat to the capitalist world
system, as colonialism was fast becoming ine≈cient given the rise of multi-
national capitalism (Magdo√, ‘‘Imperialism’’ 11–39). The establishment of
the Soviet Union as a superpower, however, with its consequent post–World
War II realignment of global economic and ideological forces, did funda-
mentally threaten the extension and intensification of capitalism. The ‘‘free’’
capitalist world, and particularly the United States, countered the rise of
communism in the decolonizing spaces not only militarily but also dialec-
tically, with the birth of a new field and a new regime of subjection. On one

44 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

hand, development discourse—of which modernization theory is just one,
albeit important, early iteration—was simply a rearticulation of Enlighten-
ment concepts of technological, progressive history and world-historical
agency. On the other hand, it was something distinctly new. Development
discourse recognized the gross economic inequality that exists between the
First World and the Third World and managed it, just as Rostow’s discursive
regime of subjection recognized nationalist revolutionary fervor and ac-
counted for it with an evolutionary narrative of progress.∞∑
As a management strategy in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, development
discourse, with its various paradigms, well served the ends of a Cold War
containment. Development paradigms from a wide spectrum of liberal ori-
entations, and even across ideological divides, consistently rendered de-
velopment synonymous with the founding of the nation-state in decoloniz-
ing spaces. Consequently, when Robert Strange McNamara took over as
president of the World Bank in 1969, after serving as U.S. secretary of
defense for eight years, he saw increased intervention in the internal a√airs
of a decolonized state and national sovereignty as entirely compatible, if
such intervention took place under the guise of development. On 30 Sep-
tember 1968, in his first address to the wb’s board of governors, in Wash-
ington, D.C., McNamara proposed expanding First World presence in the
Third World under the bank’s auspices:

The work of the Bank will also be increased because in many of the
countries in which we will now be investing, there is no well estab-
lished Development Plan or Planning Organization. We shall try, in
conjunction with other sources of funds, to help these countries to
develop plans and to adopt wise and appropriate polices for develop-
ment—in some cases by establishing resident missions . . . but always
remembering that it is their country, their economy, their culture and
their aspirations which we seek to assist. (McNamara 9)

Between 1969 and 1973, McNamara’s wb ‘‘assisted’’ considerably in these

sovereign aspirations. During his first five years as president, McNamara
fully doubled the funds lent by the wb during the previous five years (McNa-
mara 6).
By all accounts, McNamara transformed the bank and its mission during
his tenure (1969–1981). He spent his first week as president poring over the
bank’s statistics for each borrowing country, demanding to know why so few
funds were being disbursed, and why politically strategic countries in Asia
and Africa were altogether overlooked. McNamara immediately ordered his

Development and Revolution 45

sta√ to formulate a development plan for each borrowing country as if ‘‘the
only limit on our activities [is] the capacity of our member countries to use
our assistance e√ectively and to repay our loans’’ (McNamara, quoted in
George and Sabelli 40–42).∞∏ During his first five years, the wb expanded its
sta√ by 120 percent; it borrowed more funds on capital markets during that
time than it had during the whole of its previous existence. Between 1947
and 1968, the wb had financed 708 projects at a total cost of $10.7 billion. In
the five years between 1969 and 1973, McNamara’s bank undertook 760
new projects costing $13.4 billion (McNamara 236; George and Sabelli 42).∞π
Not only did he significantly increase the funds and sta√ available for
instituting development projects, but McNamara also reformulated the very
concept of development. As George and Sabelli put it, ‘‘Never before had the
Bank conceived of ‘development’s task’ as relieving the poverty of severely
deprived men and women, individually or en masse. Development’s task had
always been making sure that states had su≈cient electrical power, transport,
communications, et cetera, to become ‘modern’ and more like the already
industrialized countries’’ (38–39). To implement this newly expanded mis-
sion of development, McNamara introduced the multiproject integrated
development program, coordinating various levels of development interven-
tion within one nation (George and Sabelli 43). These integrated develop-
ment programs linked, for example, a national project for introducing green
revolution technology in agro-industries to a regional dam project for re-
structuring irrigation patterns, and, in turn, linked these national and re-
gional projects to communal loans for farmers reorienting their production,
and to monies for female counterparts to develop artisan skills, thereby
expanding the export capacities of each individual family. What George and
Sabelli’s historical research allows us to see is how, under McNamara’s
auspices, development as a decolonization management strategy, on the one
hand, and development as a regime of subjection, on the other, were seam-
lessly conjoined and institutionalized in the bank’s apparatus.
Under McNamara’s new bank mandate, First World and Third World
governments created national, regional, and local o≈ces dedicated to study-
ing the causes of underdevelopment, and to coordinating policies to combat
it at every level of societal relation. Liberal economists, sociologists, anthro-
pologists, missionaries, and freelancers—the bureaucrats and good Sa-
maritans of the development apparatus—proliferated in both hemispheres,
dedicating themselves with religious zeal to administering development
projects, small and large, in decolonizing spaces. ‘‘Development studies’’
became a field of inquiry in all major First World and Third World univer-

46 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

sities. Meanwhile independent think tanks were founded across the globe to
come up with development strategies as well, and nongovernmental aid
organizations sprung up like weeds to assist in the e√orts to implement
them. Most of these disparate development e√orts were coordinated under
the auspices of international agencies with global reach, like the wb and the
imf, under the banner of sovereignty.

‘‘Development Is Peace’’? A Response from the Periphery

Upon becoming World Bank president, John McNamara declared that ‘‘as
Secretary of Defense I had observed, and spoken publicly about, the connec-
tion between world poverty and unstable relations among nations; as a
citizen of the world I had come to sense the truth in Pope Paul’s dictum that
‘Development is Peace.’ ’’ (3). By 1968, though, it was already apparent that
development was producing anything but ‘‘peace.’’ As noted scholar of Mexi-
can development Cynthia Hewitt Alcántara has noted, ‘‘If economic ‘back-
wardness’ and social ‘traditionalism’ were really nothing more than the
result of isolation from the mainstream of technological and socio-economic
change associated with modernization in early industrial centers, as liberal-
ism or structural functionalism held, there was no way to explain why the
process of urbanization and industrialization moving with varying degrees
of speed across the underdeveloped world from the 1940s onward was
apparently not producing prosperous and relatively egalitarian industrial
democracies, in which everyone received some relative material benefit from
modernization, but rather increasingly polarized societies composed of an
opulent ‘modern’ and an impoverished and excluded ‘traditional’ sector’’
(Boundaries and Paradigms 159–60). Thus, by the mid-1960s, early depen-
dency theory was seriously challenging the liberalism of first- and second-
generation development paradigms. And yet, as a diverse group of theorists
from all over Latin America, they were not simply reacting to strategies like
modernization theory or demonstration-e√ect development. Genealogies of
development often represent dependency theorists strictly along a North-
South axis of intellectual exchange, as emerging out of a Euro-U.S. Marxist
tradition or as responding to liberal development theorists from the First
World.∞∫ Although dependency theory constitutes a pivotal moment in the
dialectical relationship between development discourse and revolutionary
thought, the dependency critique grew out of a Latin American tradition of
South-South intellectual exchange in the social sciences dating back to at
least the indigenismo movement of the 1920s.

Development and Revolution 47

 Just as dependency theory grew out of a South-South axis of intellectual
exchange, it went on to inform the revolutionary thought of almost all Latin
American national liberation struggles, as well as a considerable number of
liberation struggles and postcolonial governments in Africa, Asia, and even
the United States. This school of development theory was also highly influ-
ential with many of the progressive Latin American governments that came
to power during this postwar period, such as Salvador Allende’s Chile, and
were subsequently deposed by U.S.-backed, right-wing military coups. In-
deed, many dependency theorists, such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso,
Enrique Dussel, and Enzo Falleto, wrote in exile, having fled the often
deadly persecution of the military regimes in their home countries.
In this post–World War II period of intellectual fecundity for the interna-
tional Left, dependency theory held sway over the perspectives of millions of
political and guerrilla activists all over the Third World. Indeed, it is from
dependency theory that the more popular paradigms of ‘‘neocolonialism’’ in
Latin America and ‘‘internal colonialism’’ in the United States emerged and
took their form. Thus I turn to dependency theory at this point in my
analysis of the discursive regimes of subjection produced by development
theory and revolutionary thought because dependency theory occupied a
prominent position in both discourses. I suggest that dependency theory
was a nodal point in the discursive imbrication of revolution and develop-
ment. And while dependency theorists rarely, if ever, took poetic license in
their analysis, as Rostow did with such idealist flourish, their materialist
paradigm nevertheless implied a subject (or subjects) of development, and a
subject (or subjects) of underdevelopment. Before proceeding to the anal-
ysis of dependency’s models of subjectivity and consciousness, however, I
begin with an analysis of their economic and epistemic critique of liberal
development theories.
With most Latin American countries achieving independence in the first
half of the nineteenth century, postcolonial modernization was well under
way in the Americas by the beginning of the twentieth century. The first
Latin American industrial boom took place between the world wars, before
modernization policies found their formal articulation in development dis-
course. By the late 1940s, modernization in Latin America—import sub-
stitution industrialization, technology transfer, infrastructure building, ur-
banization, enclosure, proletarianization—was not only in full swing but
also had already generated significant internal critique.
The dependency school’s immediate intellectual predecessors, then,
were not Keynes and Rostow but the Economic Commission for Latin

48 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

America (ecla). As one of the first international development agencies
created by the United Nations in the late 1940s, ecla’s mission was to
promote modernization and industrialization throughout Latin America.
As Larrain notes, under the chairmanship of Raúl Prebisch, ecla began to
theorize the limitations inherent in capitalist development for Latin Ameri-
can countries: ‘‘According to [ecla’s] analysis, the terms of trade are consis-
tently deteriorating for raw material exporters because they sell their prod-
ucts at international prices which are below their real value, whereas central
countries sell their industrial products at prices above their real value. There
is therefore unequal exchange between the centre and periphery, a terminol-
ogy which they were the first to introduce. This means that most developing
countries must export an increased amount of raw materials each year in
order to be able to continue to import the same amount of industrial goods’’
(13).
ecla initiated an organic critique of the development processes that were
already under way in several Latin American countries, especially those with
more diversified economies, such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico.
Following in ecla’s intellectual tracks, by the late 1950s, social sciences in
Latin America had turned to the study of colonial relations as a way of un-
derstanding the economic and social similarities among independent states
not only in Latin America but also throughout the decolonizing Third
World. Dependency theory specifically investigated the acceleration of devel-
opment that had occurred in Latin America between the world wars. Since
at least the 1930s, many nationalist governments had followed the general
formula of promoting export expansion for the accumulation of capital that
would subsequently be invested in import substitution industry: the techni-
cal recipe for self-sustained growth. (In fact, despite the income disparities
in promoting the expansion of the export of raw materials to fund the de-
velopment of national industries made evident by their own analysis, ecla
nevertheless continued to recommend import substitution as the best ave-
nue for economic development.) Thus, during the 1960s and 1970s, the
dependency position gained political currency with both First World and
Third World governments, as well as with development theorists and leftist
intellectuals, because of the contradictions generated by the practice of mod-
ernization strategies—contradictions that dependency theorists addressed
systematically.
Dependency theory challenged the essence of liberal development theo-
ries by asserting that the traditional and the modern, the underdeveloped
and the developed, the periphery and the center, are not mutually exclusive

Development and Revolution 49

categories. Development’s progressivist history necessarily constituted the
traditional system and the modern system as mutually exclusive and static
categories that can be objectively described. In the United States, second-
generation development theories like Rostow’s had given rise to a prolifera-
tion of social science literature during the 1960s and 1970s based on the
firm belief that ‘‘the traditional’’ was the primary obstacle to development.∞Ω
Indeed, across the social science disciplines the traditional or underdevel-
oped society was described in terms similar to those observed in Rostow’s
theory. If modern or developed societies were highly di√erentiated, then the
traditional or underdeveloped societies lacked di√erentiation. If developed
societies consisted of highly specialized and autonomous social units oper-
ating in the economic, familial, political, and religious spheres, then under-
developed societies had yet to even di√erentiate between these spheres.
Once exposed to modernization, according to this second generation, the
traditional societies moved toward the desired economic and social di√eren-
tiation and specialization (i.e., the demonstration-e√ect principle in Ros-
tow’s reactive nationalism). Accordingly, the traditional needed to be fully
displaced if modernization were to occur.
In contrast, for dependency theorists, the traditional and the modern were
historically, economically, and epistemologically intertwined conditions. De-
pendency theory began by challenging development theory’s fundamentally
ahistorical treatment of change and community in Latin American rural
areas. In the mid-1960s, Rodolfo Stavenhagen critiqued two operative falla-
cies in the sociology of underdeveloped nations that proceeded from the
static understanding of the modern and the traditional as mutually exclusive
categories (83–97).≤≠ According to Stavenhagen, sociologists of underdevel-
opment eclipse the complexity of Third World spaces by designating entire
nations as ‘‘traditional’’ because of the predominance of a rural economy.
This masks the national and international role of urban centers within these
nations and leads to the misconclusion by some sociologists, as Stavenhagen
notes, that ‘‘up to two-thirds of the world’s population lives in static, archaic,
change resistant folk societies’’ (84). Secondly, development theories de-
ployed the concept of a ‘‘dual society,’’ in which a modern and a traditional
sector are said to exist independently of each other within a single national
space (84). These alternate visions of reality served similar purposes. They
o√ered the Third World two choices of national identity: one embryonic, one
fractured.
Stavenhagen attributes these logical fallacies to the privileged ‘‘time-

50 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

centric’’ gaze of early development theorists who saw change as a recent
phenomenon in the lives of rural populations in Latin America:

Many students of social change in underdeveloped areas not only

su√er from an ethnocentric fallacy but also from a time-centric illu-
sion. In fact, it is frequently thought that change is a recent phenome-
non, perhaps dating from the end of the Second World War, that the
so-called traditional communities are only just now, as Hoselitz
(1964) puts it, ‘‘being drawn into a social framework with much more
complex and more highly stratified structures.’’ It is believed or at
least implied, that before the present-day processes of ‘‘moderniza-
tion,’’ rural society was essentially static, and the term ‘traditional’ is
used to refer to some sort of eternal or perhaps slowly drifting type of
social organization which is only now awakening under the impact of
external innovations. (85)

For first- and second-generation development theorists, change begins once

capital fixes its gaze anew (after colonialism) on the periphery. This, in turn,
dovetails with a refusal on the part of development agencies to recognize the
consequences of colonialism, for decolonized or decolonizing societies have
miraculously remained untouched until the arrival of postwar development
agents.
By contrast, Stavenhagen interprets ‘‘modernization’’ in the Third World
as a process that begins in the fifteenth century with the expansion of
Europe and the integration of rural economies to the urban centers within
and beyond the regional colonies. Subsistence economies of the period, he
argues, were not closed economies, but economies that had been histor-
ically and intricately involved in national and international production. At
the very least, subsistence economies are involved in capitalism through
consumption. More often than not, however, subsistence economies devel-
oped as necessary corollaries to capitalist production. Indeed, as Staven-
hagen’s historical analysis makes clear, creating or maintaining subsistence
economies was most often the o≈cial colonial or state policy, as in the case
of colonial Spain and postcolonial Latin America (85). Subsistence econo-
mies thus continue to provide a flexible labor supply for monocultural com-
mercial agriculture in need of seasonal labor. They also help depress wages
on a national level by providing cheap food for urban centers, thereby keep-
ing industrial costs artificially low (86). Variables between modern and
traditional sectors, then, cannot be the result of isolation; rather, these dif-

Development and Revolution 51

ferences result from a single process of global modernization: ‘‘Underdevel-
opment—not as a state-of-being but as a process—evolved hand in hand
with development in these areas’’ (85).
Stavenhagen challenges the progressive character of modern technology,
as well. The technology of colonial agriculture and cash cropping often
displaced sophisticated techniques of irrigation and erosion control, as in
pre-Hispanic America. Stavenhagen, however, does not romanticize peas-
ant farmers of yore. Rather, his analysis emphasizes that most if not all of
the indigenous farming communities in colonized America, Africa, and
Asia have long since been exposed to cash cropping, wage labor, jeans,
working women, radio, migration, and the disintegration of the extended
family as the site of production, consumption, and authority. Stavenhagen,
like dependency theorists to follow, disrupts development discourse’s facile
characterization of change, especially technological change, as progressive.
Stavenhagen’s insistence on the simultaneity of the ‘‘traditional’’ and the
‘‘modern,’’ foreshadowing hybridity theorists such as Néstor García Can-
clini, begins to undo the binary construction of primitive consciousness/
modern consciousness in development’s regime of subjection as evidenced
by Rostow. If the development of national export agriculture, industrializa-
tion, and urbanization has historically depended on the cheap labor and
food goods provided by subsistence farming and impoverished rural com-
munities, then ‘‘traditional societies’’ can no longer teleologically precede
urban modernity. Instead, these two terms depend on each other discur-
sively for their mutual constitution, and the entire chain of signification—
development’s regime of subjection—is broken. The narrative of progress
implied by the polarization of the terms ‘‘traditional’’ and ‘‘modern’’ is inter-
rupted by Stavenhagen’s formulation, obviating the issue of choice and free
will at the level of subjection. The (under)developed subject cannot simply
choose to enter history, to cross over to the other side of the binary. The
structure of colonial modernization processes constrains him. More impor-
tantly, the subject of development is no longer an autonomous and self-
controlling agent, as his very condition of modernity is enabled by the labor
and production of the underdeveloped subject. The operative fallacies in
development’s masculinist regime of subjection are exposed.
Dependency theorists are credited with having clarified the structure of
Third World economic dependence on the First World. However, they also
exposed the developed First World’s economic and discursive dependence on
the underdeveloped Third World. Whereas Stavenhagen focused on the
legacy of colonialism inherent in the urban-rural relationship within the

52 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

contemporary national setting, subsequent dependency theorists, such as
Theotonio Dos Santos, Celso Furtado, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Er-
nesto Laclau, and André Gunder Frank, considered colonialism’s e√ect on
the (underdeveloped) national economy within the (developed) interna-
tional capitalist system.
In his often anthologized ‘‘The Development of Underdevelopment,’’ for
example, Frank inverts the terms of development discourse. Exposure to
colonial development inevitably led to gross stagnation for the colony, he
argues. Frank enumerates the various contemporary examples of ‘‘ultra-
underdevelopment’’: the sugar-exporting West Indies and northeastern Bra-
zil, for example; or the former mining regions of Minas Gerais in Brazil, the
highlands in Peru and Bolivia, or Guanajuato and Zacatecas in Mexico. Like
Stavenhagen before him, Frank argues convincingly that this condition of
underdevelopment resulted precisely from intensive early contact, rather
than lack of contact, with the ‘‘modern’’ world (27–28). Each of these re-
gions, existing in conditions of extreme economic stagnation and poverty
during the 1960s, had experienced a ‘‘golden age’’ in colonial times. They
had each sustained thriving commercial economies in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, equipped with the most sophisticated technologies
for growing, processing, and mining available at that time. Elites in these
regions engaged in trade relations on a global scale with European metro-
poles in England, Spain, Portugal, and France.
These currently underdeveloped regions were once famous worldwide
for their sugar and silver and had ‘‘provided the life blood of mercantile and
industrial capitalist development—in the metropolis’’ (28). However, these
same regions were also the site of extraeconomic forms of labor exploitation
(the latifundium) and of an extraction of surplus so complete that this
development for export prevented the creation of a wage economy and the
reinvestment of capital necessary for diversification.≤∞ For Frank, it was this
experience of hyper-exposure to the most sophisticated technologies and
extractive markets of the colonial period that generated the conditions of
underdevelopment in the contemporary period.≤≤ Once the markets for
these goods had ceased to exist, or a permanent drop in the prices for these
goods decreased profitability, local economies stagnated. Much like Staven-
hagen before him, Frank determined that the underdevelopment in these
regions is thus not a lack of development but a development of development.
Frank’s ‘‘development of underdevelopment’’ was particularly influential
with those nationalists in the United States who were concerned with un-
derstanding the impoverished conditions of African American, Latino, Na-

Development and Revolution 53

tive American, and Asian American minorities. The ‘‘internal colonialism’’
model borrowed heavily from Frank’s theoretical model in explaining the
poverty and stagnation in the South’s former cotton belt and in the aban-
doned mining regions of the Southwest. Robert Blauner’s ‘‘Colonized and
Immigrant Minorities’’ borrowed directly from Frank, and theorists and
activists such as Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton were clearly
influenced by the general circulation of Frank’s ideas in their groundbreak-
ing Black Power: The Politics of Liberation.
Still, economic and social theorists like Theotonio Dos Santos, Fernando
Henrique Cardoso, Enzo Faletto, and Celso Furtado critiqued Frank’s con-
struction of underdevelopment as the unqualified condition of Latin American
economies. Indeed, it was this group of theorists who coined the term ‘‘depen-
dent development’’ and fully elaborated its operative premises. They argued
that Frank’s model of underdevelopment made colonial and neocolonial impe-
rialism a never-ending cycle of penetration by foreign capital for the extraction
of raw materials and surplus, involving temporary periods of growth followed
by increased stagnation. Dependent development presented a far more dy-
namic interpretation of capitalist development in the periphery, with a complex
rendering of the contradictory interests of foreign and national bourgeois,
civilian and military states, and the proletarian and peasant classes.
In his famous article ‘‘Dependency and Development in Latin America,’’
as in his similarly titled book coauthored with Enzo Faletto, Cardoso recon-
siders the relevance of the dichotomy between development and under-
development in the contemporary global capitalist economy: ‘‘Foreign in-
vestment no longer remains a simple zero-sum game of exploitation as was
the pattern in classical imperialism. . . . it is not di≈cult to show that
development and monopoly penetration in the industrial sectors of dependent
economics are not incompatible. The idea that there occurs a kind of de-
velopment of under-development, apart from the play on words, is not
helpful. In fact, dependency, monopoly capitalism and development are not
contradictory terms: there occurs a kind of dependent capitalist development
in the sectors of the Third World integrated into the new forms of monopo-
listic expansion’’ (Cardoso 89). Cardoso remaps Lenin’s theory of imperial-
ism from the perspective of the periphery, one already deeply inculcated in
the classically defined terms of modernization. With rapidly industrializing
urban sectors, technologically sophisticated ‘‘traditional’’ sectors, participa-
tion by local bourgeois in multinational capitalist enterprise, and the forma-
tion of a working-class elite with expanded consumption capacity, the pe-
riphery is no longer simply a complementary mode of economic production

54 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

to capitalism in the core. In Lenin’s treatment of imperialism, expansion is
fueled by the impossibility of reproducing capital within the confines of a
core nation-state in which conditions of monopoly capitalism have taken
hold. Internal limits to capital investment drive capital abroad, and this
capital is invested primarily in industry for the extraction of raw materials
necessary for the reproduction of capital in the center. For Cardoso, how-
ever, the periphery is no longer simply the site of extraction for raw mate-
rials. The periphery also contains markets, import substitution industry,
and even export industries.
This transformation in the periphery does not mark a significant depar-
ture from imperialist relations for Cardoso, though it does reconfigure the
terms of the First World’s domination over Latin American economies. In a
Latin American dependent economy—which is already an industrialized
economy—capital cannot complete the cycle of its own reproduction with-
out returning to the metropole. Cardoso argues that Latin American capital
must always return to the metropole to purchase the technology (i.e., im-
provements in capital goods, new production methods, etc.) on which in-
creased profit margins and further industrialization hinge. Either as license
fees, as joint venture costs, or as direct purchase costs, capital generated by
businesses in the periphery returns to corporations in the center to pur-
chase technology that Latin American industry cannot produce on its own.
This First World monopoly on technology not only siphons o√ this much
needed capital from the Latin American economies but also becomes a
method of control. Thus development theory’s universal plea for the under-
developed world to accept technology from the First World functions as a
policing technique, as an administered technological obsolescence that de-
termines the terms of dependence.
Dependency theorists destabilize all the established criteria of develop-
ment discourse: underdevelopment and development are simultaneously
modern; underdevelopment is neither original (precursor) nor traditional
(quaint); development is neither autonomous nor nationally bounded; the
di√usion of technology from the core to the periphery neither is a benev-
olent gesture nor holds the promise of independence. Dependency theory
denaturalizes capitalist development by disrupting the linear progress of the
stages of development narrative and denationalizes development theory by
insisting on a truly global analysis. Nations are no longer destined to pass
from one stage to another like Aristotle’s acorn destined to become a tree,
nor do they go forth in their own development independently.
As such, dependency theorists did more than intervene in idealist histo-

Development and Revolution 55

riography. From Stavenhagen’s early formulations to Cardoso’s fully articu-
lated paradigm, dependency theorists also implicitly challenged the deriva-
tive nature of development’s discursive regime of subjection. Dependency
theory exposed the complex, intertwined relationship between developed
and underdeveloped subjects. No longer is the underdeveloped conscious-
ness expected to formulaically emulate developed consciousness as an ave-
nue to modernity. And instead of a relationship of unilateral derivation, the
very agency and model of consciousness of the subject of First World is fully
dependent on that of the Third.
Beyond its discursive reach, dependency theory influenced the economic
policy of a number of reformist and revolutionary governments in Latin
America. Castro’s Cuba, Allende’s Chile, Michael Manley’s Jamaica, Cheddi
Jagan’s Guyana, Maurice Bishop’s Grenada, and the Sandinistas in Nic-
aragua all incorporated some degree of its analysis into their national de-
velopment plans for breaking the cycle of dependence. Many of the school’s
preeminent theorists held government posts in these administrations be-
fore they were overthrown by U.S.-backed right-wing military coups. In-
deed, the vehemence of the United States’ multiple and costly counterin-
surgency campaigns betrays the perceived danger of dependency theory.
Paradoxically, even U.S.-backed military dictatorships, such as Brazil’s in
the 1970s, found themselves using dependency theory in their e√orts to
‘‘catch up’’ with the First World technologically.
Given its geopolitical influence as a form of revolutionary analysis in
Latin America, dependency theory compelled a dialectical reformulation in
the discursive terms of development. Indeed, according to development
theorist and intellectual historian Colin Leys, the development apparatus
was compelled to incorporate the terms of the dependency critique:

The early 1970s thus became—briefly—an era of dependency theory.

Or, to be more accurate, in intellectual circles, especially among stu-
dents in Europe and in Third World countries, dependency theory
held the initiative; and eventually even the international ‘‘develop-
ment community’’ felt obliged to accommodate some of its perspec-
tives: for instance, the International Labour O≈ce’s 1972 call for ‘‘re-
distribution with growth’’ and the World Bank’s adoption in 1973 of
the principle of meeting ‘‘basic needs’’ were both influenced by the
(unacknowledged) impact of dependency thinking. (11–12)

By exposing the deleterious consequences of ‘‘demonstration-e√ect’’ de-

velopment on Latin America, the dependency school indirectly ushered in a

56 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

third phase of development theory. Case study after case study by depen-
dency theorists thoroughly illustrated that despite impressive gnp growth
because of rapid industrialization, structural inequalities not only persisted
but were aggravated during the first ‘‘decade of development’’ in the 1960s.
Income disparity between rich and poor countries increased during this
decade, as did income disparities between bourgeois classes and the work-
ing and peasant classes within Latin American countries. Consequently, by
his 1973 address to the World Bank’s board of governors, McNamara had
explicitly recognized ‘‘the need to reorient development policies in order to
provide a more equitable distribution of the benefits of economic growth’’
(McNamara 243). Alternately called ‘‘basic needs approach,’’ ‘‘growth with
equity,’’ or ‘‘redistribution with growth,’’ a third generation of development
theories and paradigms required new modes of assessing social ‘‘maladies’’
(illiteracy, malnutrition, population growth), and new indices for measuring
growth and development (access to credit, to public services, to potable
water) (McNamara 243–56).
If McNamara incorporated some of the dependency critique during his
second five-year term as president of the World Bank, he necessarily missed
the point of its conclusions: that monopolistic tendencies within global
capitalism will forever limit the potential of industrial development in the
Third World, as well as skew its benefits to national and international elites.
Instead, McNamara reiterated his faith in the wb and in development as
liberation. Indeed, he repeatedly chided the developed world for hampering
the wb in this e√ort by failing to contribute su≈cient funds for lending,
most notably in his 1973 address:

I have heard it said in the developed countries—in the United States

and elsewhere—that their domestic problems are so pressing that they
require exclusive claim on the immense incremental wealth which will
accrue to their societies. . . . But I believe that such critics of additional
assistance to the poorer nations, when citing the needs of their own
cities and countryside, fail to distinguish between two kinds of poverty:
what might be termed relative poverty and absolute poverty.
Relative poverty means simply that some countries are less a∆uent
than other countries, or that some citizens of a given country have less
personal abundance than their neighbors. . . . But absolute poverty
is . . . a condition of life so limited as to prevent realization of the
potential of genes with which one is born; a condition of life so de-
grading as to insult human dignity—and yet a condition of life so

Development and Revolution 57

 common as to be the lot of some 40% of the peoples of the developing
countries. And are not we who tolerate such poverty, when it is within
our power to reduce the number a∆icted by it, failing to fulfill funda-
mental obligations accepted by civilized men since the beginning of
time? (238–39)

In his 1968 address to the board of governors, McNamara had been

positively ebullient in his vision of what the bank could accomplish. Just five
years later, in his 1973 address, McNamara was su√ering from battle fa-
tigue. Although he had accomplished much of his first five-year plan in the
interim between these two speeches, his rhetoric in the 1973 speech regis-
ters a profound sense of frustration with development’s failure to deliver on
its promise of liberating Third World peoples from need. His construction
of the subject of underdevelopment in this passage has all but forgotten the
strident and emulative reactive nationalist from Rostow’s chain of discur-
sive signifiers. Instead McNamara returns us to the abject masses of Tru-
man’s Point Four Program awaiting liberation ‘‘by civilized men.’’
Perhaps McNamara’s reiterative return to this genetically abject, under-
developed subject is a periodic necessity for the constitution of the discourse
itself. Indeed, Rostow’s reactive nationalist and McNamara’s abject masses
are discursive doubles, and the entire discourse of development depends on
their recursive reiteration, for both are subjects-in-waiting. The mimetic
subject of reactive nationalism, as an originary stage of history, awaits com-
pletion. Meanwhile the abject masses simply await their own rescue.
If these are the recursive subjects of development discourse exposed by a
decade of critique, who are the subjects of dependency theory? On the one
hand, capitalist and working-class subjects in the center depend on the
periphery to purchase First World technology and capital goods (the prod-
ucts, after all, of free capital and free labor). These First World subjects also
continue to depend on the periphery for certain necessary inputs and con-
sumer products—minerals, foodstu√s, and inexpensively manufactured
goods. On the other hand, we have the implied subjects of the periphery.
These are local bourgeois elites—the comprador class—who benefit from
their relationship with monopolistic corporate interests in the First World.
Then we have the victims of that relationship: the generalized urban and
rural masses who su√er the consequences of dependent development in the
periphery. Thus, although dependency critique did challenge the many bin-
aries in development discourse, especially the binary of primitive and mod-
ern consciousness, it nevertheless re-created its own determinant binary.

58 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 Dependency theory, in the final analysis, also constructs two kinds of
subjects in the periphery who oddly resemble the recursive subjects of
underdevelopment: bourgeois elites (reactive nationalists) and victims of
their machinations (abject masses). There are significant di√erences, of
course. In dependency theory, the interests of the elites lie in direct contra-
diction with the interests of the masses. Indeed, the elites, with their bifur-
cated loyalties, assist in producing dependent development and its struc-
tural inequities. But just as the recursive subjects of development discourse
await liberation, so too do the generalized masses of dependency await that
possibility. Dependency theorists still entertain the possibility of indepen-
dent development, of fully sovereign nations on the horizon. Thus we are
not outside the discursive imbrication with which we began this chapter. In
dependency theory, the popular classes await a system that will break them
free from bourgeois elites and ultimately bestow on them independence as
national producers. These popular classes are still imminently national sub-
jects because although the goods they produce flow across international
boundaries, and international corporations bring factory floors to them,
their hopes and aspirations are tied to the possibility of their nations break-
ing free from a cycle of dependency.
Indeed, in the final analysis, dependency theory generates a binary
model for peripheral economies that is just as intractable as Frank’s de-
velopment of underdevelopment, for what will break the cycle of Third
World dependence on the First World? What will break the cycle of an
administered technological obsolescence for the periphery? Given the in-
tractability of the system of dependent development, only an epochal break
from this system holds the promise of liberation. The subjects of depen-
dency theory are still e√ects of development’s regime of subjection. These
underdeveloped subjects are still subjects-in-waiting: they await revolution.

Development and Revolution 59

 3
The Authorized Subjects of Revolution:

Ernesto ‘‘Che’’ Guevara and Mario Payeras

I do not intend here to forget that, to become viable projects, revolutions need money-capital,
which is very scarce in poor societies. Neither do I want to gloss over questions relative to
wars—questions we cultural critics often neglect but with which the social scientists re-
lentlessly grapple. I simply want to assert that revolutions are also questions of words and word-
ings. Political leaders often have argued that revolutions are the paramount expressions of
culture. Therefore, disengaging pronouns becomes a grammatical issue impinging on rep-
resentation and power mainly when, as the 1960s slogan asserted, all power (has not been
given) to the people.
—Ileana Rodríguez, Women, Guerrillas, and Love (italics mine)

In the spirit of Latin American literary scholar Ileana Rodríguez’s critique, I

consider revolutions from di√erent angles: from the perspective of the de-
pendent economy in search of new means of capital accumulation, and from
the perspective of revolutionaries in search of new modes of being, new
forms of cultural production. The previous chapter introduced the reader to
the subjects of development, tracing the historical emergence of a model of
subjectivity under the regime of development. This chapter traces the emer-
gence of a model of revolutionary subjectivity through the autobiographical
speech acts of two of the most renowned Latin American revolutionary
heroes of the post–World War II Americas: Ernesto ‘‘Che’’ Guevara and
Mario Payeras. As Rodríguez observes, ‘‘the narrative of the revolution is a
narrative of the construction of the self first as guerrillero, and then as van-
guard, party, leader, and government’’ (Women, Guerrillas, and Love xvii).
My aim is to illuminate the failure of decolonization struggles in North
and South America, to understand the loss of the revolutionary imagination
in the Americas, by interrogating the e√ects of the disturbing resemblance
between Guevara’s and Payeras’s recursive iterations of revolutionary sub-
jectivity and the chain of discursive signifiers associated with the liberal
subject of development. The literature of revolutionary subjection is com-
plicit in this failure, for, as Latin American cultural critic Jean Franco has so
succinctly put it, ‘‘Literature is a protagonist in this drama of loss and
dislocation not only because it articulated the utopian but also because it is
implicated in its demise’’ (Decline and Fall 1). The diaries of Che Guevara
and Mario Payeras were deservedly models of revolutionary transformation
for generations of activists and scholars in the Americas. Nevertheless it is
imperative to interrogate the limits of their revolutionary vision if we are to
move forward through the profound dislocation and loss of the post–Cold
War, postrevolutionary period.

Resemblance-in-Di√erence

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has referred to the European subject’s di√eren-

tiation from colonized subjects during the ‘‘great age of imperialism’’ as
‘‘the ‘worlding’ of what is now called ‘the Third World’ ’’ (‘‘Three Women’s
Texts’’ 262). Spivak ties this worlding of the world and of the ‘‘native’’ to the
colonial mission of ‘‘soul-making’’ and traces this mission to the ‘‘categori-
cal imperative’’ formulated by Kant:

I am using ‘‘Kant’’ . . . as a metonym for the most flexible ethical

moment in the European eighteenth century. Kant words the categori-
cal imperative, conceived as the universal moral law given by pure
reason, in this way: ‘‘In all creation every thing one chooses and over
which one has any power, may be used merely as means; man alone, and
with him every rational creature, is an end in himself.’’ It is thus a mov-
ing displacement of Christian ethics from religion to philosophy. As
Kant writes: ‘‘With this agrees well the possibility of such a command
as: Love God above everything, and thy neighbor as thyself . For as a com-
mand it requires respect for a law which commands love and does not
leave it to our own arbitrary choice to make this our principle.’’ (267)

Spivak argues that this categorical imperative, ‘‘travestied in the service of

the state,’’ turns terroristic when it ‘‘justif[ies] the imperialist project by
producing the following formula: make the heathen into a human so that he
can be treated as an end in himself ’’ (267).∞ According to Spivak, this double
displacement of the Christian ethic from the religious to the philosophical,
from the philosophical to the state, reveals the double logic of colonial
violence—benevolence coupled with instrumentality. With the Christian
soul as the basis for the production of the human social subject, the ‘‘hea-
then,’’ the ‘‘native,’’ or the ‘‘Other’’ of colonial spaces is deftly placed outside

64 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

of humanity, and it becomes the duty (the command to love) of the messianic
colonizer to bring that Other into the family of (Christian) humanity. The
colonial Other is prehuman to the protohumanity of the Western subject,
who is making colonial history through a wilderness of prehistoric spaces.
However, as Spivak notes, the Other, once placed outside humanity in the
realm of ‘‘nature,’’ also ‘‘may be used merely as means’’ toward the greater
project—toward the end of making (Western) man and his world/empire.
The discourses of Enlightenment and messianic Christianity, then, come
together in the colonial process of structuring a feminized Other outside of
(Christian) humanity.≤
As chapter 2 demonstrates, the twentieth-century idiom of development
and modernization gave us yet another worlding of the world. This time
around, a Euro-U.S. subject responds to a new categorical imperative, but
he still has a mission, a promised end, a possibility for profit. The ‘‘indige-
nous,’’ the ‘‘peasant,’’ and the categorized ‘‘Third World’’ have once again
been removed from historicity, this time placed outside or prior to ‘‘develop-
ment.’’ Thus it becomes the task of a benevolent First World and its citizens
to pull the Third World and its inhabitants into the family of developed
nations—coincidentally justifying instrumental, neocolonial relations be-
tween the two. The ‘‘wilderness’’ of colonial space has been displaced onto
the chaos of ‘‘underdeveloped’’ place (feudal countryside, informal sector),
impinging ever more desperately on urban centers (favelas, colonias), but
nevertheless suspended on the verge of history. If we are no longer con-
cerned with soul making, as in the trajectory of the colonizing subject (and if
the ‘‘we’’ now includes ‘‘native’’ party members and policy analysts), we are
concerned with making the preindustrious into the industrious, the prodi-
gal into the prolific.
For first-generation development theorists (indeed, even for many
second-generation ones), the First World is ensconced as the central model
of being (industrial, capitalist, democratic), with the Third World held in the
abeyance of becoming (folk, pre-economic, despotic). The protagonist re-
mains the protohuman of imperial reason that Norma Alarcón has de-
scribed as the ‘‘autonomous, self-making, self-determining . . . subject of
consciousness’’ (357). But in the age of development, the hero dons the garb
of discursive signification specifically associated with its regime of subjec-
tion: he is a risk-taking, resolute, frugal, nonornamental, productive, fully
masculine, fully national fellow. The antagonist is recast as the unruly,
feminized, not-quite-human, but not quite/not human, traditional native,
the object of perpetual instruction.≥

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 65

 Ernesto ‘‘Che’’ Guevara and Mario Payeras figured prominently as op-
positional subjects within development’s ‘‘worlding of the world.’’ And yet
many of the key metaphors, themes, and tropes of development discourse
emerge in the diaries and political essays of Guevara and Payeras. Thus I
suggest their narratives, in theorizing revolutionary subjection, also repeat-
edly figure the moment of achieving revolutionary consciousness as a tran-
scendental moment of choice, with its attendant discursive binary of modes
of being. As in the developmentalist narrative, the tropes of previous per-
sonal histories (ethnos, particularity) are figuratively nullified by this act of
choice, with the subject reborn in/to revolution. Indeed, these two revolu-
tionaries figure the transcendental moment as a moment that frees them
from previous, sometimes painful, personal histories. For Guevara, this is
the history of his bourgeois privilege and complicity, but also of a sense of
compromised masculinity as a Third World subject. Consequently, Guevara
repeatedly represents his personal transformation into revolutionary sub-
jectivity in the language of spectacular revelation and renunciation, of sacri-
fice and deliverance. To illustrate how Guevara’s formula of personal trans-
formation is reproduced and resolutely adhered to in the lives and texts of
subsequent Latin American revolutionaries, I engage in a comparative anal-
ysis of revolutionary subjection in Payeras’s first diary, Los dias de la selva, as
well as his essays on indigenism.∂
However, a resemblance always presupposes a di√erence; the subject of
revolution di√ers from the subject of development in two crucial ways.
Beyond the transcendental choice made by the (under)developed subject
lies the possibility of fully competitive capitalism, with risk-taking entrepre-
neurs on the one hand and disciplined, productive workers on the other. By
contrast, beyond the transcendental choice made by revolutionaries lies the
revolutionary imagining of the fullness of the collective community, a com-
munity not bifurcated by class, gender, or race, brought together in a par-
ticipatory democracy deciding on the production and distribution of mate-
rial goods. This is, of course, a fundamental di√erence, and it is in the
interest of this di√erence that I launch my critique. However, it is precisely
this di√erence that makes the similarity disturbing. There is a second, per-
haps more critical, di√erence-in-resemblance between the subject of de-
velopment and the subject of revolution. This di√erence-in-resemblance
unfolds within revolutionary subjectivity, that is, within the interior narra-
tives represented in the texts of Guevara and Payeras. For these two men,
the moment of transcendental transformation is never fully completed.
Painful and pleasurable histories return to haunt their stories, to hail these

66 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

revolutionaries back to a prerevolutionary subjectivity that refuses to disap-
pear. It is in the tension produced by the haunting loss of the ‘‘premodern,’’
I believe, that we find the revolutionary possibility still animating their
discourse.

Chronicle of a Death, Retold

In the second chapter of Guerrilla Warfare, Guevara instructs prospective

revolutionaries: ‘‘We have already described the guerrilla fighter as one who
shares the longing of the people for liberation and who, once peaceful
means are exhausted, initiates the fight and converts himself into an armed
vanguard of the fighting people. From the very beginning of the struggle he
has the intention of destroying an unjust order and therefore an intention,
more or less hidden, to replace the old with something new’’ (Guevara, Guer-
rilla Warfare 38; italics mine). He goes on to describe the guerrilla combat-
ant as ‘‘an ascetic’’ with a ‘‘rigid self control that will prevent a single excess,
a single slip’’ (39); as ‘‘striking like a tornado, destroying all, giving no
quarter’’ (42); as ‘‘audacious . . . always ready to take an optimistic attitude
toward circumstances’’ (42–43); as possessing a ‘‘degree of adaptability’’ and
‘‘instantaneous inventiveness’’ (43); as ‘‘an extraordinary companion’’ and
physically ‘‘indefatigable’’ (43); as entirely self-contained, ‘‘carry[ing] his
house on his back like a snail’’ (45). In his paradoxical string of adjectives
and descriptive phrases, Guevara is ‘‘utilizing the terminology of Protestant
personal repression,’’ as Ileana Rodríguez has suggested (Women, Guer-
rillas, and Love 44). Indeed, Guevara’s guerrilla subject bears a compelling
tropological resemblance to the hero of development discourse: he is reso-
lute, destructive and productive, a risk taker, an advantage seeker, flexible
and highly mobile; he is loving, strong, frugal, and self-determining.
Yet the most striking attribute of this guerrilla combatant is that he
comes to the people fully formed, ‘‘as a guiding angel who has fallen into the
zone, helping the poor always’’ (39). In this ‘‘how-to’’ manual on revolution-
ary struggle, there is absolutely no indication of how this revolutionary is
forged, of how he ‘‘converts himself into an armed vanguard of the fighting
people.’’ Instead, this manual gives us a clear and consistent picture of who
the revolutionary already is, of what he should carry in his knapsack, of how
he should pitch his tent and tend to his weapon. This representation of
revolutionary subjectivity is important because it models most fully the ideal
subject after a transcendental choice has been made and the revolutionary
has left behind a prerevolutionary order of consciousness. However, it

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 67

stands in dynamic contrast to the representation of revolutionary transfor-
mation in Guevara’s diaries.
In Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria, Guevara’s first diary, he not only
chronicles the triumph of the Cuban guerrilla under Fidel Castro’s direction
but also relentlessly frames the spectacle of his own rebirth from a bum-
bling, inept, asthmatic, would-be doctor into an authorized subject of insur-
rection. He repeatedly bears witness to his own transformation from Er-
nesto Guevara, the young, a∆uent Argentinean intellectual, into El Che, a
weathered revolutionary who transcends the boundaries of nation and class.
Guevara prefaces this entire tale of transformation with an account of his
own personal moment of choice. By 1955 Castro is already in Mexico City
preparing for the secret entry of his group of patriots into Cuba to fight the
Batista regime. Guevara is also there, having fled Guatemala after the 1954
U.S.-backed military overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman’s democratically
elected government. Guevara tells us, ‘‘I met him [Fidel] on one of those
cold Mexican nights, and I remember that our first discussion turned to
international politics. Within a few hours that same night—by dawn—I was
one of the future expeditionaries’’ (Pasajes 1).∑ ‘‘Within a few hours’’ Guevara
makes an ethical choice, represented by him—given the alacrity with which
he makes it—as unwavering and without hesitation.∏ Indeed, the moment of
choice is not even represented in this quote, with Guevara moving swiftly
and directly from ‘‘discussion’’ to ‘‘I was.’’
As a consequence of this epochal choice, Guevara leaves Mexico a year
later, one of eighty-two men to arrive in Cuba on 2 December 1956. The
guerrilla troop is immediately attacked by Batista’s air force, and they take
cover in a nearby swamp. After three days of hiding in this swamp to evade
these forces, the guerrillas emerge into the light: ‘‘We were left on firm
ground, adrift, stumbling, an army of shadows, of ghosts, that walked as if
following some dark psychic mechanism. We had spent seven days of hun-
ger and continuous seasickness in transit, plus three more terrible days on
land [in the swamp]. Exactly ten days after our departure from Mexico, on 5
December at dawn, after a nocturnal march interrupted by fainting, exhaus-
tion, and rest on the part of the troops, we arrived at a place named, paradox-
ically, Alegría de Pío [Joy of the Devout]’’ (Pasajes 4; italics mine). Clearly,
Guevara’s description of the troop as ‘‘an army of shadows, of ghosts’’ is
attributable in part to their hunger and exhaustion. But they are also shad-
ows or ghosts of their former selves because they have made an epochal
choice in choosing to become guerrillas, and thus their former identities are
figuratively eviscerated as a consequence of it. Nevertheless, the certainty of

68 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

the choice they have made to be revolutionaries, that ‘‘dark psychic mecha-
nism,’’ guides them. They are delivered, paradoxically, onto firm ground,
even though they are adrift and stumbling.
Guevara draws attention to the ‘‘paradoxical’’ name of Alegría de Pío,
suggesting an incongruity in such an auspicious name, the joy of the devout,
for such inauspicious beginnings, the su√ering of the guerrillas. Yet a para-
dox is precisely something that, while seemingly contradictory, also contains
truth. Thus another reading of this paradoxical naming suggests that the
troop had certainly arrived at the joy of devotion. After all, in a Christian
model of faith, it is precisely the su√ering entailed by sacrifice for one’s
belief that brings joy to the believer.
Pasajes is a compilation of a series of articles Guevara published between
1959 and 1964. The bulk of the entries were written between 1961 and 1964
for publication in Verde Olivo, the weekly magazine of the Cuban Revolu-
tionary Armed Forces (far). However, the first and the last entries in Pasajes
(‘‘A Revolution Begins’’ and ‘‘Final O√ensive: The Battle of Santa Clara’’)
were originally published in 1959 for the Brazilian magazine O Cruceiro.
Thus Guevara actually wrote two versions of this ‘‘origin story,’’ one for
Verde Olivo and one for O Cruceiro (Waters 30, 34–36). The Verde Olivo
origin story, entitled simply ‘‘Alegría de Pío,’’ provides a more dramatic and
detailed account of the voyage and the guerrillas’ first days in Cuba. The
guerrillas’ arrival in Cuba is again rendered in the language of transcen-
dence and loss, of rebirth and baptism, of (re)creation and religious mis-
sion: ‘‘We had landed on December 2, at a place known as Las Coloradas
beach, losing almost all our equipment. . . . We had reached Cuba following
a seven-day voyage across the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, without
food, in a boat in poor condition, with almost everyone plagued by seasick-
ness, since we were unaccustomed to sea travel. . . . All that was left of our
war equipment was the rifle, the cartridge, and some wet bullets. Our medi-
cal supplies had disappeared, and most of our knapsacks had been left in the
swamps’’ (Pasajes 5). I would suggest that this ‘‘leaving behind’’ of the knap-
sacks, of a personal history, in the swamp is as necessary to the formation of
this primary collectivity as the guns are to revolutionary struggle. The troop
is reborn into a primitive egalitarianism in this passage through the experi-
ence of loss. Each man is reborn into an equivalence with one another,
suggested both by the abandoned knapsacks they leave behind and the gun
each man rescues. They exist as comrades-in-arms, no more, no less.
Guevara then proceeds to render the scene of this primitive egalitarian-
ism in slightly Edenic terms: ‘‘Due to our inexperience, we satisfied our

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 69

hunger and thirst by eating sugarcane on the side of the road and leaving the
peelings right there. But the soldiers didn’t need such subtle hints, since our
guide—as we found out years later—was the author of the betrayal and had
brought them to us. . . . We should never have permitted our false guide to
leave’’ (Pasajes 5). The men satiate their hunger by indulging in the sweet
sugarcane growing freely on the side of the road. In Edenic innocence, they
do not even bother to pick up after themselves. And yet no sooner has
Guevara established this first idyllic moment of collective culture than it is
threatened, violated, apparently from within—the guide will betray them.
The guide, we find out some chapters later, is a peasant named Eutimio
Guerra. With this foreshadowing early in the text, Guevara introduces the
element of deception.
The e√ect is twofold. Not only is this primitive egalitarianism imme-
diately undone, but the betrayal suddenly bifurcates the collective. The
reader is tipped o√: This group of men, having shed their previous attach-
ments, are nevertheless not attached to the scene of their revolutionary
errand. They indeed need a guide, and this guide clearly does not see him-
self as part of this primary egalitarianism, hence the betrayal. This initial
distance between the guerrillas and the peasantry is certainly to be expected;
and by the end of the war, hundreds of peasants will, in fact, come to
understand themselves as part of this guerrilla collective. Nevertheless, by
simultaneously introducing the elements of betrayal and of the peasant
guide into the narrative, Guevara ties the peasantry to deception. Indeed, as
we will see again, for the remainder of the narrative, Guevara repeatedly
deploys a discursive binary of consciousness in his diaries, alternately repre-
senting the peasant classes as either notoriously deceptive or organically
one with the guerrillas.
Pasajes is a conversion narrative. Not only does it tell the story of Gue-
vara’s conversion into a revolutionary, but it also tells of the conversion of
individuated bourgeois subjects into a collective consciousness. True to the
conventions of a conversion narrative, though the choice may be repre-
sented as once-and-for-all, the faith necessary to make this choice must
repeatedly be tested. Throughout Pasajes, then, guerrilla collectivity is re-
peatedly tested, threatened with disintegration, and reestablished, until the
group is forged into a victorious army. Similarly, Guevara recounts how the
revolutionary mettle of each member of the troop, including himself, is
tested. However, the outcome is rarely as fortuitous for the individual mem-
ber as it is for the troop.
The first and most devastating test of the guerrillas comes just a few days

70 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

after their arrival at Alegría de Pío. Guevara informs us that the troop spends
the first five days marching, talking, and eating together. The tranquil, idyl-
lic monotony of their primitive egalitarianism is brought abruptly to an end:
‘‘The compañero Montané and I were leaning against a tree trunk, talking
about our respective kids; we were eating our meager rations—half a sau-
sage and two crackers—when a shot went o√; a di√erence of only seconds
and a hurricane of bullets—or at least so it seemed to our anguished spirits
during that test of fire—drizzled onto our group of eighty-two men. My gun
was not one of the best; I had purposefully asked that it be this way because
my physical condition was deplorable due to a long bout of asthma I sus-
tained during our sea voyage, and I didn’t want a valuable weapon to be
wasted in my hands’’ (Pasajes 6). Guevara’s decision to ask for an inferior
rifle bespeaks his renowned sense of self-criticism and self-sacrifice. How-
ever, the pathos of ‘‘my physical condition was deplorable’’ also conveys a
deeply personal sense of compromised masculinity on Guevara’s part.
Indeed, it is the deplorable condition of his masculinity that is being
tested in this first ‘‘test of fire.’’ This ‘‘test’’ and subsequent ones are repre-
sented as a series of simple, straightforward, life-altering choices that he
must make in combat. These choices inevitably boil down to a choice be-
tween surrendering to a former self, a former order, or embracing a new
subjectivity forged in collectivity and a fully masculine nationalism. Thus
Guevara specifically informs us that he and Montané were having a leisurely
discussion about their children at the moment of the attack. The ‘‘hurricane
of bullets’’ figuratively cuts them o√ from their progeny, as their individual
roles as fathers must be forsaken in the name of their newly designated
collective role as fathers-of-the-patria.π
In the full description of the attack, we find out not all the medicines had,
in fact, perished during landing. The remaining medicine figures promi-
nently in the first choice Guevara must make as part of his revolutionary
transformation:

At that moment a compañero left a box of bullets practically at my feet;

I indicated this to him, and the man answered me with a face I re-
member perfectly, because of the anguish in it, something like ‘‘This
is not the hour for boxes of bullets,’’ and immediately he continued
toward the cane fields (later he was assassinated by one of Batista’s
henchmen). Perhaps that was the first time that the dilemma of choos-
ing between my dedication to medicine and my duty as a revolution-
ary soldier was placed straightforwardly before me. I had in front of me

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 71

 a backpack full of medicines and a box of bullets, together they were
too heavy to carry; I chose the box of bullets, leaving the backpack, to
cross the clearing separating me from the cane fields. (Pasajes 6; italics
mine)

Given that Guevara has just invoked his disabling asthma, the severity of his
choice is painfully evident—he leaves the medicine that can alleviate his own
illness in favor of the box of bullets to be shared with the entire troop. Again,
Guevara represents this as a choice, at once self-evident and revelatory,
between a previous personal order—his deplorable condition, his dedication
as a doctor—and a new order of collective duty. He leaves the backpack and
immediately crosses a clearing—suggesting his own clarity at this moment
—to get to a cane field where the collective awaits him. He evacuates his
former subject position so that he may come to be ‘‘an armed vanguard of
the fighting people.’’ Guevara asserts a revolutionary ethic of collective judg-
ment in making his choice, and the correctness of the choice is underscored
by the fact that the man who left the bullets behind is later killed, for the
passage suggests the man later pays for his (in)decision with his life.
The next choice Guevara must make confronts him immediately after he
reaches the cane fields and joins his compañeros, some of whom are firing
back at the air force. Guevara and another guerrilla soldier are both hit by
the same round of fire:

Arbentosa, vomiting blood through his nose, his mouth, with the
enormous wound from the bullet of a .45, yelled something like ‘‘They
killed me,’’ and he started shooting crazily; well, you couldn’t see
anything at that moment. I said to Faustino, from the ground, ‘‘They
finished me’’ (only I used a stronger word), Faustino looked at me in
the middle of his task and told me that it was nothing, but in his eyes I
read the death sentence my wound signified. I was left sprawled on
the ground [tendido]; I fired a shot toward the woods, following the
same dark impulse as the wounded soldier. Immediately I began to
think about the best way to die in that moment when all seemed lost. I
remembered an old story by Jack London, where the protagonist,
leaning against the trunk of a tree, resigns himself to die with dignity,
once he knows he will freeze to death in the Alaskan cold zones. It’s
the only image I remember. Someone, on his knees, was screaming
that it was necessary to surrender, and a voice in the background, that
I later learned was Camilo Cienfuegos, yelled, ‘‘Aqui no se rinde
nadie . . .’’ (Pasajes 7)

72 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

Faustino, of course, turns out to be correct; we find out the bullet only
grazed Guevara’s neck. Guevara has a dark sense of humor in his writing,
and this scene is at once grotesque, with its image of Arbentosa bleeding to
death through various orifices as he wildly shoots his gun, and comical, with
the image of Guevara led to do the same by the sheer power of persuasion
and then retreating into a bizarre Londonian reverie over his own death.
And yet it is precisely the farcical nature of Guevara’s behavior that ends up
structuring this choice between life and death as entirely a question of sheer
will. Guevara resigns himself to death, indulging in boyhood dreams of
adventure, until Camilo returns him to revolutionary life with the cry ‘‘No-
body surrenders here!’’ Across memory and time, the revolutionary hails
Guevara—that isolated reader/adventurer, that pubescent bourgeois intel-
lectual—and El Che responds, willing himself back to his new life.
As an instance of imagined insertion of the self into a drama of masculine
striving, Guevara’s identification with the protagonist of a Jack London story
is particularly significant for my purposes. Not only does it foreground an
identification with the rugged individualism of the lone adventurer always
present in London’s stories and novels, but it is also a double identification
with a very ‘‘American’’ coming-of-age narrative. On the one hand, London’s
narrative portrays the lone Anglo adventurer in the Americas triumphing
over adversity in wild and threatening nature. On the other hand, Jack
London’s books are most popular with preteens and adolescents, suggesting
that reading these adventure stories is a formative act of subject constitution
for a particular age-group and class stratum of readers across the continents.
Thus a dual identification with London’s stories suggests that Guevara must
free himself from a sense of U.S./white colonial propriety over the American
wilderness in order to free Latin America from the clutches of U.S. neo-
colonialism.
As such, Guevara represents this first confrontation with ‘‘scenes [that
were] at times Dantesque and at times grotesque,’’ as a necessary loss of
innocence for the guerrillas (Pasajes 7). With its imagery of destruction and
rebirth, it is a ‘‘baptism of fire . . . that forges what would one day be the
Ejercito Rebelde,’’ figuratively casting the guerrillas out of a false paradise
(hence his reference to the Inferno and qualified descriptions of this time as
a dystopia) of neocolonial relations (hence his reference to London) (Pasajes
7). Only eighteen of the eighty-two men survive this first attack, and these
men are wounded, lost, dispersed into small groups, unaware of each
other’s presence. The terrain that will become the guerrillas’ theater of
operations—cane fields, mountains, and rain forest—is permanently re-

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 73

figured as a chaotic, hostile, indeed deadly, place. This is the Cuban guer-
rillas’ wilderness, the tabula rasa on which a new revolutionary subjectivity
and a new revolutionary culture will be inscribed.
As with any Edenic teleology (even this dystopic one), there are elements
of prophecy and predestination evinced in Guevara’s retroactive representa-
tion of this momentous transition for the troop and for its individual sol-
diers:

By noon, unusual signs began to occur, when Piper aircraft and other
types of small planes—owned by the military or privately—began cir-
cling nearby. Some of the members of the group tranquilly cut cane
while the planes passed, without thinking of how visible they were,
given the low altitude and slow speed at which the enemy planes flew.
My job at the time as doctor of the troop was to cure the sores on
wounded feet. I believe I remember my last patient on that day. The
compañero was named Humberto Lamotte, and that was his last
working day. A tired and anguished figure sticks in my mind, carrying
in his hands the shoes he could not wear from my first-aid station to
his post. (Pasajes 6)

Lulled into a dangerous, prelapsarian tranquility, these soldiers are incapa-

ble of reading even the most ‘‘unusual signs’’ of their coming expulsion
from this false paradise—the military planes circling above. Just as the pre-
destined loss of the troop’s artificial innocence is foretold in this reconstruc-
tion of events, so is the fate of individual soldiers. Thus Guevara remembers
his last patient’s last day. In anguish, Humberto carries the shoes that no
longer fit, prefiguring his death: the condition of revolutionary subjectivity
is represented as something that does not ‘‘fit’’ just anyone. In other words,
not everyone who has chosen this path will in turn be chosen to become el
nuevo hombre, the new man. Once again, failure to make a decisive choice
over one’s new life—reflected in Humberto’s ‘‘tired and anguished figure’’—
turns out to be fatal.
This brings us to yet a third choice the guerrillas face in this chapter, one
Guevara and most of the survivors fail to make correctly. Even this failure,
however, is ultimately represented as serving a greater purpose. Guevara
interrupts his account of the massacre at Alegía de Pío to inform the reader
that ‘‘later [he] learned that Fidel had tried vainly to get everybody together
into the adjoining cane field, which could be reached by simply crossing a line
[guardaraya]. But the surprise had been too great, the bullets too heavy’’
(Pasajes 6; italics mine). Of course, this passage primarily pays homage to

74 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

Castro, who attends to the troop even as this apocalyptic scene transpires all
around him. Such representations of the commander in chief as loving
caretaker are de rigueur in the literary representations of revolutionary
struggle in la montaña.∫ However, Guevara also draws the reader’s attention
to the path not taken by the guerrillas by emphasizing the ironic failure to
recognize the safe haven reachable by ‘‘simply crossing a line.’’ The passage
is tinged with remorse: the survivors fail to see the obvious and conse-
quently are dispersed into small groups, separated from Castro and wander-
ing around the cane fields for days. There can be only a twinge of remorse
on Guevara’s part, however, not just because the troop evidently went on to
regroup and to win the revolution, but also, I would suggest, because there
can only be slight regret given the predestined nature of these events. In-
deed, the failure to make the correct choice ends up paradoxically being the
right choice, a ‘‘fortunate fall’’ that reestablishes the collective on stronger
terms in the subsequent chapter, appropriately entitled ‘‘Left Adrift.’’
This third chapter retraces the (mis)adventures of Guevara and four
other survivors cut o√ from Castro’s group by the first ‘‘baptism of fire.’’
They are thirsty and hungry, wandering aimlessly through brush and over
rocky hills. Making matters worse, the guerrilla soldier in charge of food
rations, Benítez, inadvertently spills the contents of their one can of milk.
The men come across a cave, o√ering a good defensive position, and decide
to rest out of sight for the day. Guevara informs us that there, in the solem-
nity of the darkness, the five men made a formal vow ‘‘to fight to the death.
Those of us who made this pact were Ramiro Valdés, Juan Almeida, Chao,
Benítez, and your narrator. We all survived that terrible first experience with
defeat and the subsequent battles’’ (Pasajes 8). The structure of Guevara’s
representation, with survival following directly on the heels of making a
pact, once again suggests a causal relation between a decisive commitment
to primary collectivity (after all, they make the vow to each other) and the
possibility for futurity (as all five live to see the triumph of the revolution).
The whole of this chapter, then, is dedicated to demonstrating how collec-
tivity must be repeatedly rea≈rmed and solidified.
At night, his group continues its march toward the Sierra Maestra, and
Guevara uses his knowledge of astronomy to locate the North Star. Always
humorously self-e√acing, though, he tells the reader it was sheer luck that
led them eastward, since he had identified the wrong star. During the
march, Guevara’s group is reunited with three other guerrilla survivors,
including Camilo Cienfuegos. Together these eight men learn to find water
in the crevices of rocks and to ration it with field glasses. They scavenge for

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 75

food and share whatever they find (Pasajes 8–9). On more than one occa-
sion, they narrowly evade Batista’s army. Twice the group mistakenly identi-
fies army soldiers as peasants.Ω Eventually the band of survivors does make
contact with some actual peasants who prepare a feast for them. After eating
until dawn the plentiful food that appears continuously before them, all
eight of the guerrillas become violently ill, and the peasants’ house becomes
‘‘an inferno’’ (Pasajes 11). Through their shared thirst and hunger, their
shared bouts of vomiting and diarrhea, and their near-death encounters
with the army and fraternal encounters with the peasants, these unlikely
heroes learn to discuss their di√erences and reach consensus in a loving
community. In other words, they are (re)born into collectivity with each
infernal (mis)adventure.
The cane fields, mountains, and rain forests of Cuba are the scenes of
their revolutionary transformation. Nevertheless the guerrillas must repeat-
edly rely on the peasants to guide them through their newfound wilderness.
The peasants, of course, have known exactly where Castro is all the while.
After the feast, they agree to lead our meandering heroes to him on the
condition that the soldiers leave their weapons behind to avoid suspicion.
Once again the peasants are not to be trusted, however. As if treachery is
part of their essential nature, the peasants betray the guerrillas in spite of
themselves: ‘‘We had just left the [peasant’s] house when the owner couldn’t
resist the temptation to communicate the news to a friend to discuss where
they might hide the arms; this friend convinced him to sell the weapons,
and they entered into negotiations with a third guy. He denounced us to the
army, and within a few hours after we left our first hospitable mansion in
Cuba, the enemy burst in, taking Pablo Hurtado [a sick comrade] prisoner
and capturing all the arms’’ (Pasajes 12; italics mine). Even the most hospita-
ble peasant cannot resist the temptation to betray. The lesson is quite sim-
ple. Although they must repeatedly rely on the peasantry for guidance,
sustenance, shelter, and ultimately to give their mission meaning, the guer-
rillas must never fully rely on their own trust in them.
Finally, after a few more nights of travel and days of hiding, the group of
eight is reunited with Castro’s troop. This is hardly cause for celebration,
however. Guevara continues: ‘‘Our little troop presented itself [before Fidel]
without uniforms and without weapons, since the two pistols were all we
were able to salvage from the disaster. The meeting with Castro was very
violent. During that whole campaign, and even today, we remember his
admonitions: ‘You have yet to pay for the error you have committed, because
you pay with your life for leaving your gun [behind] in these circumstances;

76 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

the only chance of surviving you had, in the event of running into the army,
would have been your weapon. Leaving them was a crime and a stupidity’ ’’
(Pasajes 12). In Castro’s reaction, the reader recognizes the scolding but
loving parent who berates a child for crossing a busy intersection without
looking. It is this mixture of discipline and love that Guevara repeatedly uses
to describe ‘‘Fidel,’’ the indisputable commander in chief of the rebel army.
Once ‘‘our little troop’’ is reunited with the remaining survivors, Castro
whips the guerrillas into shape. No more wandering or wanderlust is per-
mitted. Castro institutes order where order was sorely lacking in the days
‘‘left adrift.’’ He instills discipline, establishes a training camp, orders target
practice, and insists that the guerrillas bathe (13–14). Furthermore, it is
Castro who establishes permanent relations with the local peasantry and
ministers to the troop’s frequent bouts of defeatism (15–16). Guevara’s
praise for him is lavish.
In Guevara’s representation, the guerrillas learn to act in unison in a
matter of weeks solely because of Castro’s leadership. They go on to win a
series of battles against the army, detailed in the subsequent chapters, with
their success attributable almost exclusively to Castro’s guidance. Time and
again, the guerrillas ‘‘pass the test’’ of battle, until they figuratively arrive on
the other side of the e√ort required to forge a guerrilla army: ‘‘[Ambushing
the army] improved our spirits greatly, and allowed us to keep climbing the
inaccessible woods all day long to escape persecution. . . . That is how we
ended up on the other side of the mountain, walking parallel to Batista’s
troops . . . for two days our troop and the enemy troop marched almost
together, without realizing it’’ (Pasajes 20). Under the disciplining love ad-
ministered by Castro, the guerrillas ‘‘ended up on the other side of the
mountain’’ and on a par with the army troops in strength, cunning, and
speed. The passage suggests that the guerrillas achieve a full masculinity—
walking parallel—through their successful confrontation with the army.
Furthermore, under Castro’s tender but firm hand, I would suggest, Gue-
vara himself is reborn from the condition of compromised masculinity that
shadowed him on the beach to an uncompromised masculinity achieved in
the mountain. But what is the nature of the full revolutionary masculinity?
In e√ect, Castro’s tender, loving care repeatedly threatens to tip into
tyranny, and—foreshadowing his own ascent to platoon commander (and to
commander in chief of the 1967 Bolivian guerrilla e√ort)—Guevara must
repeatedly step in to temper Castro’s tough love. Guevara informs us that
the guerrillas passed various tests of unity. Nonetheless the collectivity of the
group is also continuously undermined, most often by the wavering morale

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 77

of individual members. Consequently Castro resorts to some unflattering
tactics:

There Manuel Fajardo approached, asking if it were possible that we

would lose the war. Our reply, regardless of whether or not we were in
the euphoria of victory, was always the same: indisputably, the war
would be won. He explained that he had asked me because the gallago
Morán had told him that it was no longer possible to win the war, that
we were lost, and he had invited [Fajardo] to abandon the campaign. I
let Fidel know these facts, but he told me Morán had already told him
that he was just testing the morale of the troops. We agreed that this
was not the best system, and Fidel made a short speech urging greater
discipline and explaining the dangers that might arise if it were dis-
regarded. He also announced the three crimes punishable by death:
insubordination, desertion, and defeatism. (Pasajes 21)

Guevara convinces Castro that trickery and espionage might not be the best
method to minister to the morale of the troop. Although partially successful
in this e√ort, the tyranny behind Castro’s tendresse, as Ileana Rodríguez has
called it, nevertheless reemerges in the death threats issued by the com-
mander in chief/loving caregiver.

Is ‘‘el Nuevo Hombre’’ la Nueva Mujer in Drag?

In Women, Guerrillas, and Love: Understanding War in Central America, Il-

eana Rodríguez elaborates on the gendering of Guevara’s ideal of revolu-
tionary subjectivity. Analyzing the feminization of subjectivity in the diaries
and autobiographies of Latin American revolutionaries who posit the equa-
tion ‘‘new man = guerrilla leader,’’ Rodríguez demonstrates that the terms
in which these revolutionaries repeatedly characterize themselves and other
guerrilla leaders are the same terms used to characterize the feminine in
models of nineteenth-century domestic heroism: endurance, tenderness,
discipline, love, sacrifice, surrender, su√ering. Indeed, as I have also illus-
trated, these are precisely the terms Guevara uses to characterize the Cuban
guerrillas, himself as a combatant, and particularly Fidel Castro. Through
her analysis of Guevara’s Bolivian diary and his Guerrilla Warfare, Rodríguez
suggests that Guevara, in his relationship with his troops, not only is the
leader but becomes a tangible example of Julia Kristeva’s ‘‘virginal mater-
nal.’’ Guevara, that ‘‘model of the masculine desire for manliness,’’ is also
‘‘mother as idealization of relations, as paradigm of the complex relation

78 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

between the masculine (Christ/troops) and the feminine (tendresse) as a
point of convergence of humanization; as representation of poverty, mod-
esty, humility, devotion’’ (50, 54). Guevara embodies a feminized masculin-
ity: ‘‘in formulating this image as paradigmatic, a concealed, perhaps even
unconscious, convergence of maleness and femaleness was being pro-
posed, an androgyny necessary for the building of a new society’’ (61). In his
description of the formation of the guerrillas and their revolutionary leader,
Guevara identifies in Castro and in himself the radical potential made avail-
able by this androgynous tendresse as a model for the new social subject.
Guevara’s revolutionary androgyny appears to supersede the binary op-
position put in play by development’s discursive regime of subjection. This
revolutionary androgyny appears to have synthesized, dialectically, the
thesis of a fully masculine, developed subject moving forward universally
through historical time and the antithesis of a feminized, underdeveloped
subject who gets left behind in the particularity of domesticity once the
choice for progress is made. The strength of Rodríguez’s analysis, however,
lies in her ability to contemplate the possibilities made available by the
apparently contradictory tropes operating in revolutionary texts, or, as in the
case of revolutionary androgyny, to complicate the seemingly consistent
ones. Thus, for Rodríguez, at times the guerrilla troop indeed exists in the
mountains as a utopian domestic community in which all the participants
are men—a genuinely democratic space where the new man/collective sub-
ject can be socialized, where the absence of women seems to preclude
certain patriarchal tyrannies from forming. This is precisely the condition of
egalitarianism suggested by Guevara in the opening scenes of Pasajes, an
egalitarianism into which the guerrillas must reiteratively be (re)born
throughout the text. Rodríguez recognizes a revolutionary possibility in the
blurring of gender dualities in the mountains. But the outcome of this
possibility is less favorable, as Rodríguez notes, when time and again the
feminine is introduced and appropriated by the new man in order that
woman, as sign and as referent, may ultimately disappear entirely. Rodrí-
guez’s analysis permits us to see that rather than having a dialectical synthe-
sis, we have the absorption of all di√erence by the primary term.
Rodríguez observes that while the mountains are repeatedly feminized
in these revolutionary texts, they are nevertheless the scene where women
are eliminated and men beget men, albeit feminized ones. The new man, in
a way, is a new woman, better at representing her than his female counter-
part is at being her. Not surprisingly, the new man gets tired of the role
reversal rather quickly, and this domestic community ‘‘demonstrates male

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 79

frustration at and within domesticity, lacking house and woman, someone
to order about, somewhere to unload, ‘repose’ ’’ (Women, Guerrillas, and Love
55). Woman as sign and referent has been banished, but her banishment
does not eliminate relations of subordination and domination. To the con-
trary, her banishment simply displaces this hierarchy onto relationships
between men. Tendresse, Rodríguez argues, inevitably becomes an alibi for
the ‘‘new man’s’’ uncontrolled exercise of power. As we saw in the threat of
Castro’s swift justice, sacrifice slips into punishment, discipline into repres-
sion, love into intransigence, becoming ‘‘increasingly oxymoronic’’ (46).
With regard to Guevara’s troops, then, Rodríguez suggests that the guer-
rilla leader at times (inevitably?) slips from the eternal maternal into the mor-
tal tyrannical. Again, Rodríguez’s analysis allows us to see that the discursive
binary deployed in development discourse has not disappeared. Rather, I
suggest that it has been transposed onto the community of men, interiorized
within each combatant, as these feminized subjects of underdevelopment
strive to regain fully potent agency through revolutionary subjection. Indeed,
this tendresse is the revolutionary’s response to the imperative of mastery
implied by a developmentalist model of unitary, self-determining, and deter-
minant consciousness—the content of a fully masculine national subject.
For what could be more masterful than a subjectivity that is able to slip
e√ortlessly into all subject positions (masculine/feminine, peasant/urban,
intellectual/revolutionary), apparently absorbing all di√erence into his sys-
tem of total experience?
Rodríguez makes evident that for the guerrilla leader to become the new
man, ‘‘woman’’ must be appropriated and excised. The entire chain of equiv-
alencies underpinning this nuevo hombre, she argues, gets contaminated
when tendresse proves necessarily incapable of absorbing all di√erence
implied by the signifier ‘‘woman’’ into the sameness of revolutionary uni-
versalism. Furthermore, I submit that the guerrilla leader cannot equal his
troops, then, and his troops cannot equal the masses, when equality means
the absorption of particularity into a revolutionary homogeneity. There can
be no smooth or simple transition within a revolutionary regime of subjec-
tion (in which such equivalencies are primary) from the masculine ‘‘I’’ of the
guerrilla leader to the feminized, collective ‘‘we’’ of the popular subject. The
same-equals-same chain of equivalence between leader/troops/masses is
disrupted by the persistence of a di√erence in the feminine signifier. And
yet there can be no greater goal for the revolutionary leader than to repre-
sent the masses, as Rodríguez amply demonstrates. Nothing, I suggest,
proves more elusive. By extending Rodríguez’s critique to the revolutionary

80 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

regime of subjection imposed on the subaltern masses by guerrilla narra-
tives, we see that the promise of equality suggested by this regime is impos-
sible as long as it is predicated on a model of transcendence of di√erence.
As Pasajes continues, the interiorized binary of development indicated by
Rodríguez’s analysis of revolutionary tendresse is repeatedly displaced onto
the objects of revolutionary agency, the peasant classes. In Guevara’s multi-
ple diaries, his representations of the peasant subaltern—the ‘‘masses’’ of la
montaña—range from simplistic to sinister. In Pasajes Guevara’s represen-
tation of the peasants moves increasingly toward a profound ambivalence
over the place of the peasant in guerrilla struggle. This ambivalent represen-
tation, I suggest, reflects the displacement of a deep anxiety over his own
personal revolutionary transformation. The arc of this ambivalence and
displacement is best represented in two middle chapters of Pasajes, entitled
‘‘An Unpleasant Incident’’ and ‘‘The Struggle against Banditry.’’
Once Guevara is promoted to commander of his own platoon, it becomes
his duty to instill discipline, dispense love, and administer justice. Castro
sends Guevara’s platoon to an adjacent region to extend the liberated zone:
‘‘Together with our newfound experience of independent life came new
problems for the guerrillas. It was necessary to establish a rigid discipline, to
designate ranks, and establish a General Command to ensure victory in
upcoming battles. This was not an easy task given the poor discipline of the
troops’’ (Pasajes 80). Following a less-than-successful first attack on Pino del
Agua, Guevara decides to establish a disciplinary committee: ‘‘Lieutenant
López’s squadron had distinguished itself at Pino del Agua, and its mem-
bers were serious boys. They were elected as the Discipline Committee,
responsible for surveillance, for ensuring compliance with established
norms of vigilance and discipline in general, for supervising cleaning of the
camp, and for revolutionary morale. But the commission was short-lived,
and was dissolved under tragic circumstances a few days after it was cre-
ated’’ (91). Initially, the committee performs the mundane tasks that estab-
lish domestic order and community: designating cleaning chores, bolster-
ing morale, enforcing the rules of communal living. Things go terribly awry,
however, in the implementation of these feminine duties.
The committee’s members are the target of relentless teasing and practi-
cal jokes by other members of the platoon who, like unruly adolescents,
resist the committee’s arbitrary power, ‘‘obliging it to take drastic measures’’
(Pasajes 98). Guevara does not describe the nature of the teasing, but it is
quite likely that the ground for the teasing is the ‘‘feminine’’ nature of the
tasks the committee performs or enforces. Indeed, only homophobic teas-

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 81

ing could explain the extreme assertion of masculinity triggered as a re-
sponse from a committee member, once again belying the failure of Gue-
vara’s revolutionary androgyny. Indeed, the response is ‘‘drastic,’’ as Lalo
Sardiñas ‘‘impulsively punished an undisciplined compañero by pistol-
whipping him about the head when the gun accidentally went o√ and killed
him instead’’ (98–99).
The troops in the rear guard of the platoon revolt over the incident,
demanding the summary judgment and execution of Sardiñas. Although
corporal punishment of guerrilla combatants is strictly forbidden, and this
is not Sardiñas’s first o√ense in this regard, Guevara cannot bring himself
to execute Sardiñas. ‘‘It was a di≈cult situation,’’ Guevara explains, ‘‘Sar-
diñas had been a brave combatant, a strict disciplinarian, and a man with a
great spirit of sacrifice, while those who demanded the death penalty were
by no means the best of the bunch’’ (Pasajes 99). ‘‘Strict discipline’’ and the
‘‘spirit of sacrifice’’ combine to produce tyrannical excess, which troubles
Guevara, but he nevertheless represses this discomfort. First Guevara at-
tempts to convince the troop that Batista is responsible rather than Sardiñas,
for the comrade’s death was attributable to ‘‘the conditions of struggle, to
the very fact of war.’’ Castro is then summoned to adjudicate the ‘‘unpleas-
ant incident,’’ and he attempts to shift the blame further. He waxes on for an
hour, attempting to convince the platoon that culpability lies finally with the
troops themselves, for it was their general lack of discipline that provoked
the extreme act. Nevertheless, ‘‘despite his eloquence,’’ Castro cannot con-
vince the troops of the rear guard to desist in their demand for justice (99),
and the troop decides to take a vote on Sardiñas’s fate. His life is spared by a
narrow margin; however, the next day, members of both the rear guard and
the Disciplinary Committee resign from the guerrillas. Many of these, Gue-
vara informs us, went on to join the counterrevolutionary troops after the
triumph (100).
This incident provides a window onto the early machinations of revolu-
tionary justice en la montaña, onto the inevitable slippage from the eternal
maternal into the mortal tyrannical within this domestic community. The
unruly behavior of both the undisciplined rank and file and the members of
the Disciplinary Committee, however, gains its full significance when
viewed in the context of Guevara’s subsequent chapter, in which peasant
‘‘bandits’’ are also brought to revolutionary justice. Guevara has previously
informed the reader that ‘‘the guerrillas and the peasantry had melded into
one single mass, without anyone being able to say at exactly what moment in
our long march this had occurred’’ (Pasajes 49; italics mine). For Guevara, it

82 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

is his interaction with the Sierra peasants that transforms his ‘‘spontaneous
and lyrical decision into a strong and serene conviction’’: ‘‘Those su√ering
and loyal inhabitants of the Sierra Maestra have no idea of the role they
played in forging our revolutionary ideology’’ (49). In this passage, the
peasants su√ering at the hands of the Batista regime and their loyalty to the
guerrillas perfectly mirror Guevara’s own su√ering as a guerrilla and his
loyalty to revolutionary struggle. Indeed, the peasantry gives substance to
Guevara’s initial decision, turning spontaneous, transcendent choice into
lasting ‘‘revolutionary ideology,’’ notably without the peasants even being
cognizant of it.
Nevertheless, in the beginning of ‘‘The Struggle against Banditry’’ chap-
ter, Guevara must qualify his previous reflections on peasant loyalty, once
again vacillating in his representation between their organic ‘‘oneness’’ with
the guerrillas and their inherent duplicity. Although a broad swath of the
Sierra Maestra is now liberated territory, Guevara describes the political
situation as ‘‘precarious,’’ in part because he has little confidence in the
peasantry’s commitment to the fight: ‘‘The political development of [the
Sierra’s] inhabitants was very superficial, and the presence of the threaten-
ing enemy army, a short distance away, prevented us from overcoming this
deficiency. As the enemy’s noose tightened once again, and there were signs
of its new advance on the Sierra, the inhabitants of the zone became quite
nervous, and the weakest among them sought the possibility of saving
themselves from the feared invasion of Batista assassins’’ (Pasajes 102).
These ‘‘weakest elements’’ of the peasantry resort to banditry to ‘‘save them-
selves,’’ though Guevara never explains the apparent relation between fear
and banditry. Guevara prefaces the chapter with this disclaimer, presumably
to explain the actions his guerrilla troop then takes in the battle against
banditry. In a matter of a few days during October 1957, Guevara’s platoon
brought dozens of ‘‘bandits’’ to justice, the majority of them of peasant
extraction from the Sierra Maestra. These bands of peasants were guilty of a
variety of crimes, from petty theft to rape and murder. Many of these ‘‘ban-
dits’’ were or had been guerrillas, though. The reader is informed of this
because it was particularly worrisome to Guevara, as their actions sullied the
reputation of the guerrillas in the area. All the leaders of these bandit gangs
were summarily executed, and their followers were subjected to various
punishments, some quite severe, and most were reintegrated into the troop.
The juxtaposition of these parallel chapters on revolutionary justice, pub-
lished just one month apart, reveals Guevara’s anxiety over the inconsistent,
at times contradictory, nature of revolutionary transformation. Although

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 83

Guevara repeatedly represents his own revolutionary transformation as self-
willed and determinant, the behavior of those around him continuously
undermines his developmentalist representation of revolutionary agency.
However, rather than interrogate the evidently vexed and vexing nature of
the transformation among the guerrilla combatants described in ‘‘An Un-
pleasant Incident,’’ Guevara reduces it to a discursive binary displaced onto
a feminized peasantry in ‘‘The Struggle against Banditry.’’ Although Sar-
diñas evidently violates the tenets of proper guerrilla behavior, Guevara
insists that Sardiñas is a model of discipline and revolutionary virtue, while
he represents the rear guard as a rebellious mob. This troubling contradic-
tion between the ‘‘disciplined’’ behavior of a vanguard member who inflicts
grave bodily harm and the ‘‘unruly’’ behavior of the troops who demand
justice is displaced onto the dichotomous, feminized representation of peas-
ant consciousness. Guevara deflects his anxiety over the unruly aspects of
revolutionary transformation onto the criminal excess of the peasantry be-
cause their unruly behavior can be swiftly and clearly adjudicated. Never
mind the fact that many of these bandits identify as revolutionaries, or that
their crimes bear a troubling resemblance to the actions of the guerrillas—
stealing food, rustling horses, executing traitors.
What is ‘‘on trial’’ in these chapters is not just criminality but the inter-
nally contradicted nature of Guevara’s representation of revolutionary sub-
jectivity. And to reach the desired verdict, he displaces the contradiction onto
a familiar binary between the productive, modern, fully developed and po-
tent universal man, on the one hand, and the profligate, premodern, under-
developed, and impotent traditional man, on the other. The peasant masses
of the Sierra are alternately one with the guerrillas or the cause for the
guerrillas’ eternal vigilance. This discursive binary, though, also returns us
to the vanguardist bifurcation of culture put forth in Rostow’s moderniza-
tion paradigm. Just as Lalo Sardiñas, Camilo Cienfuegos, and Che Guevara
are made ready to be revolutionary leaders by Castro (their sins forgiven,
their excesses tempered), the masses of peasants are made ready to submit
to a revolutionary leadership whose tendresse gives way to tyranny at a
moment’s notice. Both representations of the peasant masses are ultimately
feminizing, as the peasants are portrayed as either willingly submitting to
revolutionary law or resisting it through willful excess. Meanwhile the cen-
trality of the revolutionary subject is solidified as he remains the masculine
hero who must, in either case, discipline the peasants’ underdeveloped
consciousness, drawing them forward toward revolutionary subjectivity.∞≠
Thus those peasant bandits who escape execution are nevertheless sub-

84 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

jected to a mild form of psychological torture to ensure their reform. In-
deed, revolutionary discipline works as a form of subjection, for Guevara
tells us that most, if not all, of these men went on to become great combat-
ants and leaders in their own right.
Guevara repeatedly o√ers a strict dichotomous representation of peasant
subjectivity—at the expense of a more nuanced account of their hetero-
geneous subjectivities—to reinforce his representation of his own teleologi-
cal transformation from the unruly, feminized subject of neocolonial under-
development into the disciplined, masculinist subject of revolutionary
development. He desires a seamless narrative of revolutionary transforma-
tion and agency. For what is at stake in this strict binary representation of
peasant subjectivity but an anxious desire to resolve it and, in doing so, to
resolve the developmentalist binary of the developed subject of the First
World and the underdeveloped subject of the Third? In addition, and per-
haps more significantly, Guevara is moved to resolve any di√erentiation
between the peasantry and the combatants. Just as the ‘‘new man’’ needs to
fold feminine tendresse into masculine discipline for his personal transfor-
mation, so too do the guerrillas need to fold the peasantry’s particularity into
the universality of a revolutionary regime of subjection. However, the speci-
ficity of Cuban peasant culture is e√aced in Guevara’s attempt to resolve the
binary.
This binary representation of peasant consciousness also returns us to
Guevara’s representation of the ideal combatant in Guerrilla Warfare : the
one who demonstrates both rigid self-control and unending flexibility, who
shows no mercy and is a loving companion, who is entirely self-contained
and entirely dependent on the ‘‘longing of the people’’ for his own survival.
What is the ideal combatant if not the masterful subject, e√ortlessly occupy-
ing all subject positions at once? In the arc of ‘‘An Unpleasant Incident’’ and
‘‘The Struggle against Banditry,’’ in the shadows of the application of revolu-
tionary justice, we witness Guevara’s anxious attempt to transform di√eren-
tiation—indeed, contradiction—into homogeneity. We witness, that is, his
anxious desire for the ideal revolutionary subject who falls from the sky fully
formed, transcending all di√erences in the process of forming a unified
revolutionary consciousness.
Interrogating Guevara’s (mis)representation of subaltern subjectivity
and culture helps to illustrate the disturbing resemblance between develop-
mental and revolutionary regimes of subjection. It also exposes this revolu-
tionary model of transformation to scrutiny for its teleological and binary
e√ects, allowing us to ask: What is at stake in such a narrative formulation of

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 85

revolutionary subjectivity, consciousness, and agency? What gets preserved
in the forward sweep of the ‘‘after’’ of revolutionary transformation, and
what gets left behind in the brushing away of the ‘‘before’’ of ‘‘prerevolution-
ary’’ consciousness? How is the legacy of race in Latin America caught up in
this revolutionary regime of subjection? How are both regimes of subjec-
tion—development and revolution—racialized in the aftermath of colonial-
ism in the Americas? How are narratives of colonial subalternization pre-
served in these regimes of subjection?

Betwixt Ariel and Caliban:

A Small Arc of Historical Representation

Guevara’s dichotomous representation of these peasants, of the combat-

ants, and ultimately of himself, is not new. Rather, he borrows from a rich
Spanish-colonial register for representing subalternity in Latin America.
Roberto Fernández Retamar first elaborated on this colonial register in his
1971 essay ‘‘Caliban: Notes towards a Discussion of Culture in Our Amer-
ica.’’ In his attempt to answer the perennial question ‘‘Does Latin American
culture exist?’’ Fernández Retamar traces Shakespeare’s literary representa-
tion of Ariel and Caliban in The Tempest back to Cristobal Colon’s Diario de
navegacion. In his collection of letters to the Spanish Crown, Colon describes
the island peoples he first encounters in strictly binary terms, as the meek
and docile Arauacos (Ariel), on the one hand, and the flesh-eating and fero-
cious Canibas or Caribs (Caliban), on the other.∞∞ According to Fernández
Retamar, this initial representation of the indigenous population in the
West Indies introduced a dichotomous set of terms that has been used to
represent Latin America culture to this day. On the Arauaco/Ariel side of
the binary, we have representations of elite Latin American culture as rea-
soned, civilized, and emulative of European modernity. On the
Carib/Caliban side, we find representations of the popular culture of the
masses as irrational, rebellious, and barbarous. Fernández Retamar traces
this discursive dichotomy through the literary and political writing of re-
nowned Latin American independence leaders, literary figures, proponents
of modernity, and contemporary intellectuals. Since before independence,
Fernández Retamar argues, Latin American politicians and intellectuals
have inevitably privileged the Arauaco/Ariel trope as the protagonist of a
progressive Latin American cultural history.
In contrast, Fernández Retamar rereads Caliban’s barbarity as the or-
ganic revolutionary consciousness of the popular classes, as a reservoir of

86 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

courage and honor in the face the submissive and sycophantic Ariel con-
sciousness of Latin American elites, historically complicit with U.S. neo-
colonialism. In a reworking of Gramsci’s distinction between traditional
and organic intellectuals, Fernández Retamar analyzes the function of con-
temporary ‘‘Ariels’’ and ‘‘Calibans’’ in Third World national liberation strug-
gles. Ariel is the traditional intellectual, generally of Creole extraction,
whose economic dependence on the national and the international bour-
geoisie is reflected in his philosophical dependence on classical European
thought and culture. Meanwhile, it is the Calibans, drawn from the mass of
‘‘common men,’’ who are the organic intellectuals of the Americas, the only
men capable of bringing about true revolutionary change. During revolu-
tionary times, a few Arielian intellectuals (like Fernández Retamar himself )
will sever their ties with the bourgeois classes, breaking free of decadent
European paradigms, joining the struggle on the side of the oppressed.
In this influential essay, Fernández Retamar suggests that the entire
history of Latin American cultural production can be viewed through the
lens of these binary forms of consciousness. Rather than subvert this binary
construction, however, he replicates it by simply inverting the hierarchy of
its terms, as did so much of the anticolonial writing of the period. Crucially,
for my purposes, he closes the essay with a discussion of Che Guevara as the
quintessential example of an Ariel intellectual, who, in casting his lot with
the popular classes, transforms himself into a heroic Caliban: ‘‘[Guevara]
proposed to Ariel, through his own luminous and sublime example if ever
there was one, that he seek from Caliban the honor of a place in his re-
bellious and glorious ranks’’ (72). Fernández Retamar, like Guevara himself,
represents Che’s revolutionary transformation as a decisive move from
emasculation to full potency, from submission to self-determination, from
Ariel to Caliban.
In an e√ort to trouble Fernández Retamar’s binarism, we can turn to
subalternist historian Patricia Seed, who traces this discursive dichotomy to
the Spanish Crown’s Requerimiento. The Requerimiento was the document
that Iberian colonizers read aloud to indigenous populations they encoun-
tered in the Americas. Written and read in Spanish, it required indigenous
populations to make one of two choices before the Crown’s representatives:
submit to the Christian empire, in which case their needs and the needs of
their wives and children would be taken care of by the empire, or resist the
Crown, in which case the empire would wage a just and bloody war against
them, their wives, and their children. Concludes Seed: ‘‘By establishing the
opposite of obedience as insurgence, the Requirement [Requerimiento] es-

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 87

tablished resistance as proof-positive of opposition to imperial power and
. . . [as] one of the durable signals by which subalternity could be recognized
for aboriginal groups within Hispanic society. Resistance or rebellion
against authority signaled subalternity’’ (Requirement for Resistance 5).
Whereas to Fernández Retamar Caliban represents a rebellious overthrow
of Ariel’s submission, to Seed the constitutive relationship between re-
bellion and submission forged by the Requerimiento—the inextricable rela-
tionship between Caliban and Ariel, if you will—transforms the indigenous
into the subaltern. That is, Spanish colonialism itself conditioned recogni-
tion of the indigenous, and thus indigenous subjectivity, on the stark choice
between rebellion and submission. By foreclosing any other modes of indig-
enous subjectivity, this Spanish colonial figure of the submissive or resistive
indigenous subject, echoed by Fernández Retamar, does not allow the indig-
enous to represent themselves. Rather, it speaks for the indigenous by re-
quiring that the indigenous speak either as Caliban or Ariel.
Guevara’s representation of the peasantry in Pasajes—either as submit-
ting to revolutionary law or as becoming recalcitrant bandits—participates
in this very subalternizing discourse. By demanding that the peasants be at
once submissive and rebellious, Guevara’s text issues its own Requeri-
miento, and in the process it e√aces the heterogeneous specificities of peas-
ant consciousness. Pasajes resolves this entanglement with the figure of
‘‘Che’’ himself, who emerges, if furtively, as a self-determining, unitary,
masterful, and masculine revolutionary subject. Guevara’s emergence mod-
els the transformation of an underdeveloped consciousness, represented
primarily by the abject devotion or resistive duplicity of the peasant, into a
fully developed consciousness, represented primarily by his own revolution-
ary universality, his tendresse and discipline. Guevara shows how the peas-
ant classes must leave behind their particularity if they are to achieve revolu-
tionary universality. This transformation is the key component of both
developmental and revolutionary regimes of subjection, or rather of a de-
velopmentalist, revolutionary regime of subjection.
Ultimately, Pasajes produces another knowledge of the dictatorship’s re-
liance on repression to secure a particular economic and political order. The
political violence unleashed against the civilian population by the Batista
regime in response to armed struggle foreshadowed the genocidal coun-
terinsurgency policies followed in the 1970s and 1980s by U.S.-backed
dictatorships determined to succeed against communist guerrillas where
Batista had failed. Once again turning to Jean Franco for an assessment of
the overall e√ect of this state-sponsored violence: ‘‘The secular project initi-

88 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

ated by the Enlightenment reached its culmination in the disenchanted
world of these technologically advanced repressive states. When people
found themselves looking for unmarked graves and attempting to identify
their children or parents from piles of bones, they confronted the twisted
nature of late capitalism’s logic in which individual human life, especially in
the Third World, is of little moment’’ (Decline and Fall 13). Dictatorial repres-
sion and torture undergird the post–World War II discourse of a supposedly
peaceful, democratic, and free ‘‘development.’’ Guevara’s dystopia—the
stages of violence and counterviolence described in Pasajes—divulges the
secret cost of development discourse’s Edenic teleology of societies moving
progressively, and relatively painlessly, from one stage of modernization to
another.
Nonetheless Guevara’s dystopian utopia, with its model of revolutionary
transformation, subjectivity, agency, and consciousness, participates in its
own teleology of relatively e√ortless social progress from one revolutionary
stage to another. In his representation of revolutionary subjection, we find
many of the same key metaphors, themes, and tropes deployed by develop-
ment’s regime of subjection. Once again, we find the transition from one
stage of consciousness to another figured as a self-willed choice. Guevara’s
representation of revolutionary transformation ‘‘leaves behind’’ a previously
immature, complicit consciousness for a fully formed, collective one, re-
sembling a model of development that ‘‘leaves behind’’ premodern forms of
subjectivity and agency for thoroughly modern ones. Both models invari-
ably ‘‘leave behind’’ the ethnic particularity of indigenous or peasant subjec-
tivity, while carrying forward a racialized and masculinist understanding of
fully modern, revolutionary agency. The full consequences of this troubling
resemblance for ethnic particularity are borne out when Guevara’s revolu-
tionary formula is transposed onto the terrain of indigenous Guatemala in
Mario Payeras’s Los dias de la selva, as we will see in the next section, and in
Rigoberta Menchú’s response, the topic of chapter 5.
As I suggested earlier, however, resemblance also implies di√erence. We
can locate the di√erence between revolutionary and developmental regimes
of subjection precisely in Guevara’s reiterative return to the moment of
transformation in his serialized diary. This return to the moment of tran-
scendent choice in chapter after chapter belies the impossibility of transcend-
ing internal di√erentiation. Guevara’s narrative return to these scenes of
adjudication expresses his agony over the excision of the unruly, an agony
that exceeds the drive toward transcendence over subaltern particularity. It
is in this reiterative return to the scenes of his own inevitably incomplete

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 89

transformation that we can locate the revolutionary potential for the inclu-
sion of di√erence as di√erence in any future model of revolutionary con-
sciousness and resistance, despite the teleological drive that underwrites his
narrative. In and of itself, his continued return to the problem of di√erence
—both internal and external—holds the possibility for the radical inclusion
of the di√erence that peasant subjectivity and culture represent for Guevara.
I am reminded here of a photograph in The Diary of Che Guevara, Bolivia:
November 7, 1966–October 7, 1968. Che Guevara, the famous guerrillero, sits
in a tree at the end of the day, dressed in army fatigues, recording his
thoughts in his diary. Who is this Ernesto ‘‘Che’’ Guevara if not Ariel in
Caliban—the consummate, contemplative intellectual within and apart
from the revolutionary activity transpiring all around him—resemblance-in-
di√erence?

Che’s Legacy: ‘‘We Announced Simply

That We Were Going to Triumph’’

Mario Payeras was a founding member of the Ejercito Guerrillero de los

Pobres (Guerrilla Army of the Poor), one of the five groups of armed insur-
gents that went on to form the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemal-
teca (urng) (National Revolutionary Union of Guatemala). He was also a
writer, poet, and scholar who spent the last fifteen years of his life as a
political exile in Mexico. A Marxist intellectual and a committed revolution-
ary, Payeras epitomized the Latin American middle-class youth who fol-
lowed Guevara’s incendiary example in their attempt to liberate their coun-
tries from conditions of economic dependency and political dictatorship. As
Rolando Moran, another urng commander, states in his introduction to
Payeras’s Los dias de la selva,

Por eso fuimos llamados ‘‘foquistas’’ y ‘‘guevaristas’’ por muchos, pero

no rebatimos esos califacativos. Porque ‘‘foquistas’’ de hecho lo fui-
mos, aunque nunca consideramos el califactivo de ‘‘foquista’’ como
una consideración estratégica ni ideológica, porque ‘‘guevaristas’’ en
el sentido más amplio, que nosotros no consideramos eliminado con
la muerte el Comandante Che Guevara en Ñancahuazo, lo hemos
seguido siendo y lo demuestra que tenemos a su efige por insignia.
[And so we were called ‘‘foquistas’’ and ‘‘guevaristas’’ by many, but we
do not refute these designations. It is a given that we were foquistas,
although we never adopted foquismo as a strategy or ideology, because

90 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 we continue to be ‘‘guevarista’’ in its broadest sense, in that we do not
consider the Commander Che Guevara eliminated with his death at
Ñancahuazo, and that is why we use his e≈gy as our insignia.]

Unlike Che Guevara, however, Payeras lived to see the outcome of the more
than thirty years of revolutionary struggle in Latin America inspired by the
Cuban revolution. Thus although Payeras never abandoned his revolution-
ary beliefs, he nonetheless had time to reflect on the errors committed by
the revolutionary Left, as the arc of his writings demonstrates.
His thoughts on the relationship between indigenous identity and revo-
lutionary struggle evolved dramatically over the course of his life. As Héctor
Díaz Polanco, renowned scholar of American indigenous history and iden-
tity, has noted, Payeras was one of the first Latin American leftists to recog-
nize Guatemala as a multiethnic society and to consider how race was
intricately related to the oligarchic system of class exploitation. As Díaz
Polanco rightly points out, Payeras attempts to move beyond the either/or
impasse of assimilation and separatism in his 1982 essay Los pueblos indí-
genas y la revolución guatemalteca (Díaz Polanco, ‘‘Etnicidad y autonomía’’ 7–
8). However, although Payeras recognizes the centrality of the ‘‘ethno-
national’’ problem in this essay, he nevertheless characterizes the ‘‘ethno-
nationalist’’ consciousness of indigenous Guatemalans as fundamentally
stunted, and their place in revolutionary struggle as strictly complementary
to the motor force of the worker-peasant alliance (Payeras, Los pueblos 81,
83–84). By a 1992 interview with Concepción Villaverde, Payeras had
changed his position by 180 degrees. He denounced the genocidal tenden-
cies in all nationalisms, insisted on territorial autonomy for the indigenous
populations of Latin America, and recognized that an indigenous-led strug-
gle against racial discrimination was paramount to any successful class-
based revolutionary struggle in Guatemala (Los pueblos 94, 96–97, 100).∞≤
My aim here, however, is not to exhaustively analyze the arc of Payeras’s
intellectual and political growth, exemplary though it may be. Instead, my in-
terest is far more delineated: I examine two of Payeras’s early writings before
his autocritical turn. Payeras’s first diary and his early essay on the indige-
nous question, Los pueblos indígenas y la revolución guatemalteca, illustrate the
degree to which guerrillas of this period modeled revolutionary transforma-
tion on Guevara’s own transformation (a modeling that Rolando Moran
makes clear). Revolutionaries like Payeras deployed a formula for revolution-
ary subjection in their interaction with the indigenous peasantry of Latin
America that was conditioned by the same teleological, masculinist narrative

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 91

of personal development we find in Guevara’s diaries. The reliance on this
regime of subjection by revolutionaries operating among the indigenous
peasantry had deleterious e√ects that Payeras himself came to recognize. I
choose Payeras instead of any of the other Latin American revolutionaries
who have also documented their experiences in writing because, like Gue-
vara, Payeras wrote about his experiences almost immediately after having
them. Unlike Nicaragua’s Tomás Borge, for example, the precritical Payeras
did not have the benefit of ten years of hindsight that would have allowed him
to temper the racial implications of his writing. Also, I have chosen Payeras
because of his revolutionary and literary connection with feminist com-
patriot Rigoberta Menchú, whose autobiography is the topic of chapter 5.
On 9 January 1972, twenty-five years after Castro, Guevara, and their
guerrilla troop landed on Cuba’s beaches, fifteen revolutionaries entered
Guatemala from Mexico through the Ixcán region of El K’iche’. These fif-
teen men founded the first of four new guerrilla organizations that would,
in turn, form the Ejercito Guerrillero de los Pobres (egp). Mario Payeras
was one of these fifteen men. He recorded their early attempts to establish
an armed guerrilla movement among the indigenous peasants of the Guate-
malan highlands in his first diary, Los dias de la selva. Although Rolando
declares that the egp was both foquista and guevarista in his introductory
remarks to Payeras’s diary, the egp’s guerrilla strategy stood in fairly explicit
contrast to Guevara’s famous foco theory. Throughout the 1960s, foco guer-
rilla groups made up of ex-military men and middle-class youths opposed to
the 1954 coup moved to the countryside and launched unsuccessful direct
attacks against the Guatemalan military. The founders of the egp learned
from this history. Payeras’s group sought to establish a social base among
the peasantry and to recruit them into their ranks before engaging in com-
bat with the army: ‘‘The defeat of the previous decade had been educational,
and one of its principal lessons had been to caution us about the risks of
impromptu actions’’ (Los dias 13–14).∞≥ Indeed, Payeras’s description of his
group’s initial activities is a study in contrast to the harried arrival of Castro’s
guerrilla band on Cuban shores: ‘‘While the group at the ranch [on the
Mexican side of the border] maintained appearances, we dug up arms,
unpacked ammunition and supplies, set up the first camps deep inside
[Guatemalan] territory. We were a caravan of ants that started working at
dawn and didn’t finish until the night’’ (Los dias 15). Payeras’s choice of
metaphor, a ‘‘caravan of ants’’ quietly working day in, day out, connotes
patient and diligent organizational labor carried out in obscurity rather than
the frontal assault of foquista tactics.

92 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 Although Payeras di√erentiates his group’s tactics from previous e√orts
in the region, his representations of the Guatemalan jungle, of his revolu-
tionary mission, of indigenous peasant consciousness, and of his own trans-
formation nevertheless adhere to the formula Guevara established in Pas-
ajes. Payeras proceeds with a description of the guerrillas’ first few weeks in
the Guatemalan jungle:

It was an era in which the tracks of a tiger constituted a major event.

By then, the splendid library we had collected over months had been
ruined by the force of the elements. The tomes of social knowledge of
the nineteenth century were perforated by the voracity of termites, or
entire pages were discolored by the rain. The First Year of the Russian
Revolution, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and The Country of Long
Shadows were the only works to survive the disaster. The rest were
abandoned to the rainy season. The law of minimum exertion began
to govern our movements, and a system of priorities based on abso-
lute realism resulted in a new hierarchy of value attached to the mate-
rial goods in our lives. . . .
These first days were spent learning the basic truths of the jungle.
We had entered a sad world, where only with time did our intelligence
learn the points of reference. Without these, our compass was a use-
less instrument. . . . Meanwhile, we learned to orient ourselves rudi-
mentarily, using the light and the events of the land. For now, we did
not often venture out into that silence of butterflies and fireflies. (Los
dias 15–16)

As in the opening scenes of Pasajes, the egp’s theater of operations is

first figured as a negation of a prior order, of a prior history, while a ‘‘new
hierarchy of value’’ is established. Guevara’s dystopic vision most often
rendered the scene of negation and re-creation as a staccato of destruction
and chaos, with prior personal identities rent asunder by dictatorial violence
and reconstituted in revolutionary tendresse/tyranny. Meanwhile Payeras
renders the scene of the negation as a lulling absence of activity, as a loss of
language, as a forgetting of former knowledge and social meaning. In either
Guevara’s dystopic opening scenes or Payeras’s utopic one, the e√ect is
similar. The ‘‘law of minimum exertion’’ suggests a libidinal withdrawal that
equals the death of a prior (bourgeois) subject. Previous forms of orienting
oneself in space and time—of mapping identification—are ‘‘useless instru-
ments’’ in the Guatemalan jungle, as ‘‘basic truths’’ must be relearned.
Not only does this place elude all previous forms of geographic and per-

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 93

sonal mapping, but it is positively hostile to all the trappings of imperial rea-
son. Termites devour the ‘‘social knowledge’’ of its great age, the nineteenth-
century books. Importantly, One Hundred Years of Solitude survives the ele-
ments, for as Franco has suggested, ‘‘García Márquez’s Macondo only
needed to be mentioned for people to understand that it was the fantasy of a
liberated territory’’ (Franco, Decline and Fall 7). With the butterfly allusion,
and with devouring termites referencing the devouring ants in One Hundred
Years of Solitude, Payeras furthers the intertextual identification between the
jungle and Macondo—that quintessential Latin American town that time
forgot. The fantasy of Macondo as liberated territory is precisely the fantasy of
it as a space that has escaped colonial and neocolonial modernity (Franco,
Decline and Fall 8).∞∂
The Guatemalan jungle, like Macondo, is free of the exploitative trap-
pings of bourgeois modernity and subsequently frees the guerrilla combat-
ants from their own bourgeois identifications, as ‘‘with time’’ their intel-
ligence learns new ‘‘points of reference’’ in light and landscape. Once again,
revolutionary transformation is figured as death and rebirth, as an almost
religious transcendence over a prior, complicit subjectivity. Payeras even
invokes Guevara’s ghostly terms in his description of the Guatemalan guer-
rillas’ transformation: ‘‘After having crossed half the jungle, we were a
starving army, in rags. That peculiar pallor of someone deprived of light for
long periods and the bad odor of accumulated sweat identified us as that
troop of shadows, moving by instinct’’ (Los dias 27; italics mine). Here we have a
direct reference to Guevara’s use of the phrase ‘‘army of shadows’’ to de-
scribe the Cuban guerrillas, and consequently to Guevara’s revolutionary
formula of death and rebirth. And again, although dead to their former
selves, these new revolutionary subjects are nevertheless driven ‘‘by in-
stinct,’’ by the ‘‘dark psychic mechanisms’’ described by Guevara as the
inner truth of revolutionary agency.
On the other hand, even if imperial reason and bourgeois civilization are
‘‘devoured’’ by the inhospitable jungle, another form of civilization survives
—or rather arrives—with the Guatemalan guerrillas. After all, some knowl-
edge does survive the jungle’s hostility toward modernity. The jungle in
Dias, as the intertextual equivalent of Macondo, continues to represent the
dependency theorist’s dream of ‘‘an economically workable society freed
from outside control’’ (Franco, Decline and Fall 8). In the representational
foreshadowing of this economically independent social order, the guerrillas’
revolutionary aspirations for the jungle—The First Year of the Russian Revolu-
tion—also survives. In both Guevara’s dystopic and Payeras’s utopic repre-

94 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

sentations of the guerrillas’ death and rebirth, the troops are ‘‘reborn’’ into a
collectivity resembling a primitive communism that prefigures these aspira-
tions. It is as if in both Guevara’s and Payeras’s revolutionary visions, the
guerrilla community must move back in time to move forward toward revo-
lutionary collectivity and egalitarianism.
Thus, throughout the first third of Los dias, we find the guerrillas engaged
in what Payeras describes as a (re)settling of the jungle. For example, after a
few months in the jungle, the guerrilla troop has reestablished contact with
clandestine urban forces who are sending the guerrillas grains, foodstu√s,
and industrial goods. They have also established some tentative contacts
with peasants from isolated towns in the jungle. Despite this contact with
the outside world, though, Payeras insists on representing this period as a
preliminary stage in the mode-of-production narrative, with the guerrillas
represented as transitioning from a hunter-gatherer society to an isolated
agricultural society:

The months for constructing huts in the woods [finally] arrived, and
we stored enough grains for long periods, foreseeing the long winter
and the eventual enemy o√ensive. One day, without us even noticing
when exactly, the time of hunger passed, and the omnipotent powers
of Atilio [a guerrilla member], that Robespierre of provisions, ceased.
It was the era of great inventions and of apprenticeship in sedentary life.
We invented bread, discovered the rubber boot, and learned the art of
navigating on a raft. Jacobo, Jorge, and a few others who came from the
coast or had lived in the countryside were able fishermen, and they
would frequently go o√ at first light. They returned late at night, and
the next morning daybreak would find them in the kitchen with a
string of thirty or more fish. Our camps took on a di√erent aspect, and
for the first time we had time to read and to review some of our
principal experiences. . . . We were the only ones living in thousands
of square kilometers. Someone often said that we had the largest
house [in the world], where water, light, and energy were free and we
paid no rent. (Los dias 53; italics mine)

The guerrillas’ nomadic wandering and hunger come to an end with the
construction of the huts and the storage of goods. With this settlement, they
come to exist as a community where egalitarian relations rule, since there is
no hereditary status or authoritarian power. Instead the guerrillas share a
collective right to the jungle’s basic resources, to the ‘‘water, light, and
energy’’ they may freely appropriate. Although some members of the com-

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 95

munity produce more because of their greater skill, all the goods are dis-
tributed fairly among the entire community, as is made evident in the exam-
ple of the fishermen and their fish. Indeed, men not only hunt and fish but
also cook and clean. The guerrillas learn to attend to each other’s domestic
needs. In other words, with the end of their wanderings, the guerrilla troop
is finally established as a loving community existing in revolutionary ten-
dresse: even Atilio backs o√ of his ironfisted approach to protecting and
distributing the provisions. They exist in an unalienated relation to their
labor, to each other, to their ‘‘feminine side,’’ and to nature. And in Payeras’s
representation of this transition, they appear to accomplish this community
all by their lonesome.
The language that Payeras uses to describe this period in the guerrillas’
jungle life appears to be taken almost directly from Marx’s description of
this initial stage of development in his Pre-capitalist Economic Formations:
‘‘The earth is the great laboratory, the arsenal which provides both the
means and the materials of labor, and also the location, the basis of the
community. Men’s relationship to it is naive: they regard themselves as its
communal proprietors, and as those of the community which produces and
reproduces itself by living labor. Only in so far as the individual is a member
—in the literal and figurative sense—of such a community, does he regard
himself as an owner or possessor’’ (208–9). The jungle is precisely the
‘‘great laboratory’’ of the guerrillas’ ‘‘inventions,’’ its free ‘‘water, light, and
energy’’ their ‘‘arsenal’’ of ‘‘materials [for] labor.’’ As Marx suggests, no
single member of the guerrilla troop considers himself owner of the jun-
gle’s riches; rather, ‘‘they regard themselves as its communal proprietors,’’
reproducing themselves androgynously in loving tendresse. Payeras’s rep-
resentation of the guerrillas as existing in such a state is precisely what
constitutes them as a community for the reader and, more importantly, for
themselves.
If Payeras’s jungle community at this point in the narrative represents a
textbook case of Marx’s definition of production for use value in primitive
communism (Bottomore 445),∞∑ the passage is also rich in the language of a
liberal and imperial discourse of development, coupling scientific mastery
and colonial quest: The guerrillas invent things, and in the process of inven-
ting these things, they remake themselves and the terrain around them. The
guerrillas are the Robinson Crusoes of the Guatemalan jungle, introducing
an imperial narrative of progress—era, invention, discovery, art, navigation—
to a jungle constructed as awaiting their historical agency. The guerrillas are
primary, independent, potent social beings who bring the jungle under their

96 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

explicit control. Payeras’s idea of development in this passage resembles the
Kantian imperative: Everything exists to be used merely as a means by ra-
tional man; nature is rendered in his image. In a liberal model of political
economy, the construction of the social privileges individual action and
individual accumulation. As a Marxist-Leninist, however, Payeras con-
structs the social di√erently. Like Guevara before him, he fills this un-
developed space with a utopian vision of collective action and the satisfac-
tion of material need in a boundless ‘‘house’’ capable of accommodating all.
In this state of primitive communism, the guerrillas even have leisure time
available for pleasurable intellectual activities, such as reading and self-
reflection.
The imbrication of the modernization-through-stages narrative in liberal
development discourse and the mode-of-production narrative in Marxism-
Leninism is revealed in Payeras’s diary even more so than in Guevara’s.
Stated more precisely, these vying narratives of progress are reconciled in the
revolutionary regime for subjection put forth in Guevara and performatively
reiterated by Payeras. While not relying on the liberal figure of the individ-
ual, Payeras’s representation of the collective subject still relies on the con-
struction of the jungle space as a primary lack in contrast to the evolving,
technological presence of natural man. In both Guevara’s and Payeras’s
representations of guerrilla collectivity as a primitive communism unfold-
ing in this jungle space, the transformation into revolutionary subjectivity
(individually and collectively) is foreseen as occurring through discrete, pro-
gressive stages. Guevara and Payeras, in their literary returns to an original
collectivity in order to move forward toward revolutionary communalism,
are simply resetting the historical clock in the hopes of obviating liberal
stages of development with their own model of transformation and agency.
What is far more problematic than their substitution of Marx’s mode-of-
production narrative for modernization’s stages of development, however, is
the dependence of both theories of history—and consequently of Third
World revolutionary nationalism—on a disturbingly similar and normative
model of consciousness and theory of human agency. It is this dependence
on the second modality of developmentalism shared by First World, Second
World, and Third World development paradigms that once again, in Paye-
ras’s text, bifurcates the community in which it transpires.
If Payeras represents the egp as Guatemalan Robinson Crusoes—as a
fundamental collectivity of men creating civilization in an uncivilized
place—is there a Friday in this narrative? Is there a primitive inhabitant of
this blank jungle space who functions as the necessary anterior to Payeras’s

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 97

primitive communism? In the first third of the book, the ‘‘native inhabi-
tants’’ of this place are only present through their conspicuous absence.
Payeras repeatedly tells us that the guerrillas progressively learned the ways
of the jungle—which plants were edible, which were medicinal, which
snakes were deadly, how to avoid getting lost. Yet he does not tell us how they
attained so much knowledge in so little time. Payeras repeatedly uses the
terms ‘‘discovery’’ and ‘‘accumulation’’ to describe the guerrillas’ attainment
of this knowledge. However, this kind of knowledge takes longer to accumu-
late than one or two months. The bearers of this cumulative knowledge, the
‘‘Fridays’’—be they actual indigenous members of the guerrilla troop or
indigenous peasants they may have encountered—must be erased in order
to construct the guerrilla as the ‘‘original man’’ engaged in civilizing this
jungle. As with Guevara, the terms Payeras uses to represent Guatemala’s
indigenous peasantry derive from his own aspirations for transformation.
Payeras references Guatemala’s indigenous population exactly twice in
his narrative of the guerrillas’ first two months in the jungle. The first
reference is in his description of the group’s makeup. Four of the fifteen
guerrillas, it turns out, are indigenous. Even as Payeras acknowledges this,
however, indigenous identity is at once constructed as anterior to revolu-
tionary history and as under erasure. Payeras describes the guerrillas’ first
weeks of marching deep into the jungle:

We did not see the sun again, and we started to lose our sense of time.
We were the first to pass through here in many centuries. Every once
in a while, when we would dig up the humus to do our business, we
would unearth indigenous pottery. It was a small testimony to the fact
that at one point these latitudes had been the regular routes of the
great human migrations of the past. We would get up at daybreak,
with the universal gibberish of birds, and we would march all day in
silence or speaking very little. We had plenty of time to think things
over, to scrutinize our recondite class motivations. What was each one
thinking during that interminable journey? We were a mosaic of
bloods and class positions. Lacho, Jorge, Julián, and Mario belonged to
the Cakchikel ethnic group. Despite the ties of language and culture,
they did not form a group. The enigmas and misadventures of indige-
nous identity would keep Lacho up at night, in the midst of [another]
culture at once hostile and desirable. The others were perhaps not so
troubled by [these] matters, or more likely their thought focused on
the elemental constant [constatación elimental] that men organize

98 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 themselves and fragment the world according to their material inter-
ests. (Los dias 24–25)

Indigenous identity is represented as doubly anterior to revolutionary sub-

jectivity in this passage. Indigenous peoples are the historic ancestors of our
revolutionary heroes, as the guerrillas retrace the steps of the ‘‘great human
migrations’’ of yore. Even as Payeras references an image of the Maya’s
expansive and populous kingdom, with its dynamic trade and travel routes,
this prior civilization is already disintegrated—reduced to broken pieces of
earthenware rummaged from the dank and decomposing jungle soil.
Payeras then moves seamlessly from the late, great Maya empire through
the mysterious and mystical (‘‘recondite’’) class motivations of each guer-
rilla to a description of four living Indians divided in their particularity.
Although the four Cakchikel Indians share a language and culture, ‘‘they
did not form a group.’’ Indeed, it is the laconic Lacho’s racial perturbations
that appear to divide the group, setting him apart from the three whose
analysis is represented by Payeras as clearly more advanced. Jorge, Julian,
and Mario understand the ‘‘elemental constant’’ that is class antagonism,
the ‘‘material interests’’ that drive human history, and consequently they are
not distracted by their own racial particularity. Indeed, Jorge’s, Julian’s, and
Mario’s class analysis frees them from the troubled sleep induced by Lacho’s
racial ruminations, which do not even rise to the level of ‘‘motivations’’ for
struggle. Instead these ‘‘misadventures’’ appear to suspend him in taciturn,
hostile, and inappropriate ‘‘desire.’’
The e√ect of this representation of ethnicity as doubly anterior to revolu-
tionary subjectivity—in chronological time and historical consciousness—is
to deracinate it. In the jungle ‘‘latitudes,’’ indigenous empire is superseded
by revolutionary order, just as among the guerrilla troops Lacho’s ethnic
identification must ‘‘give way’’ to the superior analysis and more fundamen-
tal solidarity of the three men who understand themselves according to their
class position. The particularity of these Cakchikel Indians is, at best, auxili-
ary to their economic universality, given that Payeras represents Jorge,
Julian, and Mario as, at best, indi√erent to their own ethnic identity.
Payeras’s essay Los pueblos indígenas y la revolución guatemalteca appeared
anonymously in 1982 in Compañero, the egp’s international publication,
which reached an audience beyond the group’s militants (Díaz Polanco,
Etnicidad y autonomía 7). As the title suggests, the essay is a position paper
on the role that indigenous Guatemalans should play in the revolutionary
movement. It is an elaborate analysis of the imbrication of racial discrimina-

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 99

tion and economic exploitation. In addition, Payeras theorized the causes
for the demise of Guatemala’s pre-Hispanic populations. According to
Payeras’s historical analysis, the indigenous populations of Latin America
were on the verge of developing the ‘‘national consciousness’’ that would
have facilitated accelerated economic development when the Spanish ar-
rived. Hence in Guatemala the indigenous people were unable to resist
colonization: ‘‘Lacking the unity and national consciousness necessary for
forming an organized resistance that could successfully oppose the invader,
the national liberation struggle was unable to develop, despite the initial
resistance—dispersed and disorganized—by empires in disarray. The subse-
quent capitalist development made it so that the indigenous society, already
in a process of decomposition, was penetrated by new contradictions, those
of dependent capitalism’’ (Los pueblos 85).
In this description of the e√ect of colonialism on indigenous Guatema-
lans, Payeras richly echoes Rostow’s discussion of reactive nationalism. Just
as in Rostow’s homoeroticized theory of colonialism, Payeras’s ‘‘traditional’’
ancestors proved incapable of fending o√ colonial capitalism and its dis-
torted development. Their nascent national resistance was impotent in the
face of Spanish penetration. In an echo as well of the Requerimiento’s terms
of subaltern subjection, Payeras’s Arielian ancestors are positively abject in
their submission: they are in ‘‘a process of decomposition’’ even before cap-
italist penetration. Indeed, Payeras is Rostow’s reactive nationalist, for
Payeras marches in the footsteps of his defeated ancestors, responding with
Calibanian resistance to humiliation, determined to rectify the damage
caused by colonial capitalism with a new and improved national liberation
struggle. So once again we see the tropes of developmentalist, revolutionary
subjection reiterated in a distinctly American register of racial and gender
categories.
Of course, even while ethnic identity is represented as secondary to class
consciousness in Payeras’s description of Lacho, Jorge, Julian, and Mario,
indigenous peasants are absolutely primary to the revolutionary mission of
the egp. Payeras represents the guerrillas as self-determined and determin-
ing revolutionary agents in the jungle, and yet all the while they are search-
ing for those who will be the target of their revolutionary errand. Thus we
come to the second acknowledgment of the indigenous peasantry in Paye-
ras’s narrative. At the end of the first chapter, the guerrillas finally stumble
on some native inhabitants, and—again in accordance with the formula for
revolutionary subjection—the ‘‘Fridays’’ of Guatemala’s uncivilized jungle-
space must ultimately mirror the guerrillas’ own transformation:

100 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 All we could distinguish of the town [at this distance] was an intense
light in the clearing and here and there the old cuttings of axes. It was
the hour of profound silence in the jungle, barely disturbed by the
discreet movement of birds on the upper branches. We waited a long
time, listening to the beating of our hearts. Then we heard the crow-
ing of a cock from the direction of the town. It was the first time
in months that we had heard that welcome trumpeting. We all ex-
changed a glance that held both trepidation and joy in it. There they
were, at last, the poor people of our country; but we were ignorant of what
would be their response. As time passed we distinguished new noises:
chickens clucking, the distant hacking of machetes, familiar voices of
women calling to birds to get back in their cages. All of the sudden,
abruptly and intensely, dogs would bark. . . . As we approached the
houses, a thin boy, with bushy eyebrows and a loud voice, without any
wonder or surprise at our attire or at the guns held by those who
approached him, said hello to us in a most familiar manner, adding
immediately that they [the villagers] had just been talking about us.
They were six families total that had recently settled in this small
clearing, and they already knew of [our] activity on the border through
their radio. They still didn’t have maize, but they put what little they
had at our disposal. That night we brought together the men of the
village, and we explained extensively the reason for our struggle, and
we announced simply that we were going to triumph. (29–30; italics
mine)

The bright light beckoning them toward the town and the unusual si-
lence that falls over the jungle set the scene as one of mystical, almost
religious, arrival by the guerrillas. Indeed, there is a predestined quality to
the encounter insinuated by the young boy’s insouciant response to them
and the villagers’ anticipatory conversation. Payeras simultaneously con-
structs the peasants as awaiting a guerrilla force they already know about
‘‘through their radio’’ and as the horizon for guerrilla activity: ‘‘There they
were, at last, the poor people of our country.’’ Peasant desire (‘‘already know-
ing’’) and guerrilla purpose (‘‘there they were at last’’) are wed in his repre-
sentation, though it is Payeras who displaces his desire onto the peasants
when he represents their foreknowledge as a form of anticipation. It is the
guerrillas who have been awaiting just such villagers in order that their
mission may have meaning. Thus it is the guerrillas—and not the peasants
—who are held in awe (‘‘trepidation and joy’’) by the surprising sight of the

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 101

Other. Just as it is the guerrillas who must performatively pronounce them-
selves into being before these subaltern witnesses: ‘‘we announced simply
that we were going to triumph.’’
In this second passage, Payeras once again represents Guatemala’s indig-
enous peasantry as doubly anterior to revolutionary subjectivity. They are
anterior to revolutionary subjectivity in that they anticipate the coming of
the guerrillas—the peasants know that the guerrilla troop is coming even
before it arrives. But they are anterior to the guerrillas’ revolutionary subjec-
tivity ontologically as well, for the peasants are repeatedly represented in the
passage in terms that equate them with their natural surroundings. First a
cock speaks for the indigenous peasant villagers from the direction of the
town. Then the clucking of chickens, the sounds of machetes, the barking of
dogs, and the voices of women are all equated in this elliptical representa-
tion of the villagers as existing in a primordial, mythological oneness with
nature. The villagers all but dissolve into the primitive wilderness of the
jungle. Or more accurately put, the villagers resolve out of nature—that is,
they come into resolution once spotted by the guerrillas.
What is fascinating about this passage is that the peasants are repre-
sented as at once emerging out of oneness with nature and emerging into
oneness with the guerrillas. In other words, though their level of conscious-
ness is represented as premodern, as organically emanating from their
natural surrounding, it is also represented as organically ‘‘in tune’’ with the
revolutionary consciousness of the guerrillas. Hence even though the vil-
lagers have no maize, ‘‘they put what little they had at our disposal.’’ (Never
mind that the fact of the villagers’ hearing about the guerrillas through their
radios could equally be read as contradicting both their apparent premodern
condition and their intuitive connection with the troop.) The village, in its
apparent isolation and organic community, is the distorted, precapitalist
social formation Payeras discusses in his essay. Although this representa-
tion of precapitalist society may be drawn from Second World development
theory, it is also homologous to the famously autarkic ‘‘traditional society’’ or
‘‘subsistence economy’’ of development discourse. In either interpretation,
the villagers exist in a condition of protohumanity, from which revolution-
ary transformation must rescue them. These villagers, however, are also
filled with anticipatory desire, with a prerevolutionary consciousness that
awaits completion under the guiding hand of the guerrillas. In Rostow’s
terms of developmental subjection, the peasants are prepared to ‘‘be pre-
pared’’ by the guerrillas; they are ready to be made ready (Rostow 20). Once
again, indigenous peasant particularity is figured as doubly anterior to revo-

102 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

lutionary universality. In both their ‘‘need’’ for evolutionary development of
consciousness and their anticipatory desire, these native inhabitants are the
condition of possibility for the guerrillas. The peasants are the anteriority
that gives the guerrillas’ mission meaning. Hence, like a beacon, the bright
light from the village summons the guerrillas forth, into revolutionary
being.∞∏
Payeras elaborates on this double anteriority in Los pueblos indígenas y la
revolución guatemalteca. Although the essay is written in an analytical, rather
than literary, voice, the terms he uses to represent ethnic identity and indige-
nous consciousness are strikingly similar to those used in the diary:

Indigenous subsistence farmers (autoconsumidores) and indigenous

semiproletariats, for example, produce and think di√erently from
each other, though they share the same sense of ethno-cultural iden-
tity; [they are] distinguished from each other by the ideological fea-
tures [rasgos] that derive from their socioeconomic condition. Among
the subsistence farmers there is a correspondence between the way in
which they produce and their ethnic-national consciousness, given
that they live and produce in the basic state of a√airs of the pre-
Hispanic, precapitalist society, [and] for that reason their cultural state
of a√airs is not in contradiction with the socioeconomic state of a√airs
in which they produce. But among the semiproletarian indigenous,
the ethnic-national consciousness is permeated by political and ideo-
logical elements that are proper to the relations of production in
which they find themselves, such as the nascent consciousness of
[their own] exploitation, a glimmer of the class di√erentiation that
allows them to see the rich indigenous [as their exploiters] and of class
consciousness in relation to the Ladinos who are exploiters and
Ladinos who are exploited, et cetera. (Los pueblos 81; italics mine)

Payeras’s analysis also adheres to liberal development discourse. His

description of indigenous subsistence farmers might appear in a develop-
ment studies textbook as a case study of a ‘‘dual societies’’ paradigm. Paye-
ras’s premodern autoconsumidores are ‘‘subsistence economies’’ existing
contiguous to, but in bounded isolation from, modern capitalist formations.
Anxious as he is to liberate his country from its dependent development,
Payeras is nevertheless oblivious to a fundamental tenet of dependency
theory. After all, as I have discussed in chapter 2 as well, Stavenhagen
dispenses with modernization theorists’ facile characterization of rural com-
munities as self-contained, insisting that such communities have not existed

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 103

in Latin America since the conquest. Indeed, even the most remote indige-
nous peasant producers, such as those in the Péten, have been exposed to
modernity. This is made evident by their very migration to the jungle, trig-
gered by their dispossession in the densely populated highlands of Guate-
mala. However, for Payeras, Guatemala’s indigenous peasantry continue to
‘‘live and produce in the basic state of a√airs of the pre-Hispanic, precapitalist
society.’’ As such, they are not even familiar with social antagonism, accord-
ing to Payeras’s representation, since there is no contradiction between their
culture and the prehistoric economic formation. Here Payeras’s analysis is
reminiscent of Larrain’s analysis of subject formation, also discussed in
chapter 2, for once again precapitalist forms of consciousness automatically
give way to more enlightened forms of consciousness under capitalism. And
again, as in Larrain’s analysis, these ‘‘precapitalist’’ peasants presumably live
in blissful ignorance of their own exploitation.
Therein lies a far more troubling implication in Payeras’s teleological
analysis with regard to revolutionary subjection. For Payeras, ‘‘ethnic-
national consciousness’’ is conjoined with precapitalist formation. In his
formulation in this passage, there is a ‘‘correspondence’’ between the two.
In other words, their ethnic particularity and their purported precapitalist
economic formation, for Payeras, are one and the same. Ethno-nationalism
is a ‘‘sense’’ that autoconsumidores and semiproletarian Indians share, an
ephemeral feeling. But in thought these two groups of Indians are divided.
They are cleaved apart by ideological ‘‘rasgos,’’ by the ideologically informed
thought of a semiproletarian consciousness characterized in the privileged
terms of greater mental acuity: ‘‘glimmer,’’ ‘‘see.’’ These semiproletarian
Indians are leaving their emotive ethnic sentiment behind in the private
sphere, while their class consciousness determines their future. Once again,
revolutionary agency depends on a cultural deracination of the racialized
subject.
This requirement for deracination in the revolutionary’s regime of sub-
jection is made most evident toward the end of the essay, when Payeras
ruminates on what ethnic identity will look like after the revolution has
triumphed. Payeras imagines the nation after a fully sovereign, indepen-
dent, and socialist economy has supplanted Guatemala’s dependent, dis-
torted development:

[In the] new multinational patria, it is unavoidable that new relations

of production, established in our country upon having eliminated the
exploitation of some men by others, will erode the culture originally

104 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 based on precapitalist relations of production. To propose the contrary
would be the equivalent of denying our country the development of its
productive social forces, of rejecting the conquests of science and the
technology that humanity has acquired in its evolution. What our new
multinational patria can and should aspire to is for the culture of
indigenous peoples—what is timeless in it, valid, and valuable—to
stop being the object of decomposition, distortion, and debasement by
blind laws and the dehumanization of capitalism. (86)

Not only are the technological achievements of indigenous cultures some-

how outside of the ‘‘conquests of science and the technology that humanity
has acquired in its evolution,’’ but indigenous culture is suspended at the
vanishing point of a precapitalist dawn to the horizon of a socialist future for
humanity. New productive forces will not only evolve into Marx’s commu-
nist vision of a solution of class antagonism but also necessarily entail the
erosion of ethnic particularity.
Payeras’s analysis of the role that ‘‘ethno-nationalism’’ will play in Guate-
mala’s national liberation struggle against U.S. neocolonialism subscribes
to Lenin’s view of the distinction between struggles of nationalist liberation
from colonialism and struggles for national cultural autonomy. In ‘‘Resolu-
tion on the National Question,’’ published in Pravda on 16 May 1917, Lenin
firmly commits himself and the party to the right of nations to self-determi-
nation: ‘‘Only the recognition by the proletariat of the right of nations to
secede can ensure complete solidarity among the workers of the various
nations and help to bring the nations closer together on truly democratic
lines’’ (Selected Works 111). But while Lenin decries the role of modern impe-
rialism in ‘‘subjugat[ing] weaker nations’’ and supports national liberation
movements in their struggles against it, he nevertheless adamantly opposes
all forms of cultural nationalism: ‘‘The party of the proletariat emphatically
rejects what is known as ‘national cultural autonomy,’ under which educa-
tion, etc., is removed from the control of the state and put in the control of
some kind of national diets. National cultural autonomy artificially divides
the workers living in one locality, and even working in the same industrial
enterprise, according to their various ‘national cultures’; in other words, it
strengthens the ties between the workers and the bourgeois culture of the
nations, whereas the aim of the Social-Democrats is to develop the interna-
tional culture of the world proletariat’’ (National Question 112). Thus, while
nationalist identity is appropriate, and even necessary, in the struggle
against capitalist imperial oppression, nationalist sentiment, or a sentimen-

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 105

tal attachment to the cultural trappings of one’s national identity (‘‘national
diets’’), is clearly inappropriate, divisive, and undesirable. Similarly, in his
essay, Payeras distinguishes between two kinds of nationalisms in Guate-
mala. The ‘‘ethno-nationalism’’ of the indigenous minorities, associated, in
his estimation, with precapitalist economic and cultural formations, is anal-
ogous to the sentimental attachment to nationalist culture that Lenin de-
rides. Meanwhile the implied nationalism of the Guatemalan revolution-
aries, who will have ‘‘eliminated the exploitation of some men by others,’’ is
analogous to the anti-imperialist nationalism of a simultaneously interna-
tional proletariat. Hence these anti-imperialist nationalists would never par-
ticipate in ‘‘denying our country the development of its productive social
forces’’ by advocating the preservation of indigenous cultural forms. In
sum, ethno-nationalism for Payeras can only ever play a supplementary role
to the true nationalism of Guatemala’s proletariat, and even this supple-
mentary role must be diminished once the struggle for national liberation
from U.S. imperialism has triumphed and new productive forces take root.
There are two misappropriations in Payeras’s transposition of Lenin’s
analysis onto the American continent and context. First, what Payeras fails
to see—indeed, what he cannot see from his Ladino position—is the pos-
sibility that Mayan ethno-nationalism could be interpreted, even under
Lenin’s schema, as precisely the basis for a continuing struggle against
Spanish colonialism, its heirs, and its neocolonial, capitalist aftermath.
Thus, rather than disagree with Lenin’s position on the theoretical shortfalls
and practical dangers of separatist ethnic movements, I would instead sug-
gest that the pre-autocritical Payeras is incapable of recognizing ethno-
nationalism as anything other than precapitalist and therefore secondary,
when instead it may be a force of resistance to both colonial racialization
and capitalist exploitation, as we shall see in chapter 5. Second, more prob-
lematically, Payeras’s reading of indigenous attachment to ethnic particu-
larity as the equivalent of reactionary attachments to ‘‘national cultural au-
tonomy,’’ evidenced by his insistence that only that which is ‘‘timeless in it,
valid, and valuable’’ will be preserved, inevitably leads to a policy of ethnic
deracination; for who gets to decide what constitutes ‘‘timeless,’’ ‘‘valid,’’ or
‘‘valuable’’?∞π And how exactly does that which is invalid get excised and
eliminated? Finally, we arrive at the crux of the matter: Payeras’s ‘‘multina-
tional patria’’ is paradoxically monocultural. If the indigenous population
wants to participate in the revolutionary struggle, it must participate in a
personal transformation that necessitates the transcendence of its own eth-
nic particularity. In the end, Payeras’s regime of revolutionary subjection is

106 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

not all that di√erent from the nineteenth-century assimilation policies of
liberal independence movements in Latin America, or from the twentieth-
century rearticulation of assimilation under the guise of cultural indi-
genismo.
Payeras’s early essay is published less than two years after the publication
of his jungle chronicle, and one could thus assume that his observations on
the topic of indigenous identity in Guatemala emerged out of his personal
experience in the jungle with the indigenous peasantry. But I have also
suggested that Payeras’s representational terms for the indigenous peasants
emerge from his personal desires and motivations, from a Spanish colonial
narrative of conquest and legacy of race, and, most importantly, from a
fundamentally developmentalist regime of revolutionary subjection. By rep-
resenting his own revolutionary transformation as a transformation into an
enlightened subject possessing full consciousness, into the central, self-
determining, self-contained agent of transformation for the jungle, Payeras,
like Guevara before him, concludes by privileging the modern, self-reliant
subject as the model of oppositional consciousness—a model that is ul-
timately untenable in a modern world of multiple dependencies. Thus
Payeras and the guerrillas mythically survive in the jungles and mountains
of Guatemala by themselves. When the guerrillas do encounter the local
inhabitants of the jungle, these inhabitants are represented as themselves in
need of development, as agent/objects of a future revolutionary develop-
ment who are presently trapped in the misleading and precapitalist con-
sciousness of ethnic particularity. These indigenous peasants are repre-
sented as needing a transformation in consciousness that can only be
actuated by the universal (deracinated), self-contained, self-reliant guerrilla
subjects. Indeed, for Payeras, liberating the patria from underdevelopment
requires liberating it from the very ‘‘precapitalist’’ indigenous particularity
that, in his opinion, maintains the nation in a state of predevelopment vis-
à-vis other Western nations. Thus even as his revolutionary ambitions for
Guatemala are to liberate it and his countrymen from a condition of depen-
dent development, he remains dependent on the second modality of de-
velopmentalism with regard to subjectivity, and thus his literary rendition of
revolutionary subjection in the Guatemalan jungle and highland repro-
duces subalternization and subordination.

In sum, by adhering to this regime of revolutionary subjection, Guevara and

Payeras illustrate the logic that has led to the impasse between Marxist-
Leninist revolutionary movements and peasant classes or ethnic minorities

The Authorized Subjects of Revolution 107

in Latin America. Guevara and Payeras adhere to the orthodox Marxist-
Leninist mode-of-production narrative. While it is unsurprising that these
Latin American revolutionaries adhere to a Second World development
theory of history, what I have been suggesting is that this theory of history
also implies a regime of subjection that is remarkably similar to the regime
of subjection under a liberal First World development discourse. Indeed,
First World, Second World, and revolutionary Third World development
theories all presuppose a teleology of the human subject in which the peas-
ant formation or ethnic identity is a precursor to a higher form of conscious-
ness. Consequently, Guevara’s and Payeras’s representations of indige-
nous/peasant subjectivity and consciousness subscribe to the same key
metaphors, themes, and tropes for representing peasant and indigenous
formations present in the post–World War II liberal discourse of develop-
ment and progress. Payeras and Guevara proceed by bifurcating indige-
nous/peasant subaltern consciousness as primitive and reactionary, on the
one hand, and as organically revolutionary, on the other. I have tried to
demonstrate how this model of revolutionary transformation is structured
around Payeras’s and Guevara’s own bifurcated desires for, and anxieties
about, their personal transformations. They desire full masculinity, a pris-
tine horizon in which this masculinity may unfold, and prerevolutionary
subaltern subjects who not only bear witness to their personal transforma-
tions but also await their masculinist revolutionary agency. Simultaneously,
Guevara and Payeras are anxious about the ‘‘completeness’’ of their own
transformation, about the inherently duplicitous nature of the subaltern,
and about the subaltern’s ‘‘premodern’’ resistance to their revolutionary
modernity. Guevara and Payeras participate in a discourse of development
that necessitates the transcendence or repression of ‘‘preconsciousness’’
particularity in order to attain a revolutionary consciousness capable of
founding a modern, developed nation. In addition, Guevara’s and Payeras’s
representations of revolutionary subjection conform as well to the terms of
colonial history in Latin America for representing indigenous peasants, and
to the paradigmatic masculinity of imperial reason. These literary tech-
niques of representation, however, have political consequences—‘‘it is un-
avoidable’’—as we will see in chapters 4, 5, and 6.

108 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 4
Irresistible Seduction:

Rural Subjectivity under

Sandinista Agricultural Policy

Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything
they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.
—Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

As I discussed in chapter 2, developmentalism constructed Third World

nations as suspended in a preliminary stage of productivity and an elemen-
tary stage in the history of becoming modern, industrialized, capitalist
nation-states.∞ It did so by inventing an underdeveloped, underproductive
subject to be named, located, studied, theorized, and ultimately policed
through development policy and projects. ‘‘Development colonized reality,
became reality,’’ as Arturo Escobar has succinctly stated. ‘‘Development
proceeded by creating abnormalities (‘the poor,’ ‘the malnourished,’ ‘the
illiterate,’ ‘pregnant women,’ ‘the landless’) which it would then treat or
reform’’ (‘‘Imagining a Post-Development Era?’’ 25). Once located and enu-
merated, these subjects could presumably benefit from development proj-
ects imparted from above by governments under the direction of interna-
tional agencies.
This teleology of progress not only provided an alibi for colonialism’s role
in forging the conditions in which decolonized and decolonizing nations
found themselves but also provided the conditions for continued surveil-
lance of peripheral nations and their citizens. Categories of need abstracted
by this discourse warranted development projects that extended the oppor-
tunity for exploitative economic and social relations into every corner of the
globe. The promise of development was to bring these benighted subjects of
the Third World into the epochal history of the modern nation—into full
productivity—with the subsequent rights and privileges available to the pro-
ductive citizen of an international family of nations.≤ From Pinochet to the
Zapatistas, this promise of full productivity, this horizon of political evolu-
tion, this discourse of development, has seduced the Right and the Left in
Latin America for more than forty years.
Development as a discursive phenomenon and as a policy field quickly
assumed a stubbornly ‘‘nonideological’’ character. James Ferguson, in his
case study of livestock development projects in Lesotho, has suggested that
international development agencies and state bureaucracies become ‘‘anti-
politics’’ machines because they continually reduce poverty and inequality
to failures of technological advancement. Developmentalism is not only
antipolitical in its refusal to analyze the role of exploitative geopolitical
power relations in generating such conditions; it is ‘‘nonpolitical’’ and ‘‘non-
ideological’’ in that it perceives development as an ‘‘omni-historical reality.’’
Althusser suggested of ideology in general ‘‘that it is endowed with a struc-
ture and a functioning such as to make it a non-historical reality, i.e. an
omni-historical reality, in the sense in which that structure and functioning
are immutable, present in the same form throughout what we can call
history’’ (Althusser 161). It is precisely in this Althusserian sense of ideology
that developmentalism takes on an apparently nonideological character.
The discourse of development renders development an immutable fact, a
value-neutral process taking place throughout history. Development repre-
sents itself as an imperative prior to and beyond ideologies of capitalism or
Marxism. Hence it is not surprising that although there have been extensive
critiques of particular development models, policies, or projects—by depen-
dency, unequal exchange, and world systems theorists—few, if any, neo-
Marxist critics have questioned the imperative to develop. Quite the contrary,
most of these critical endeavors have sought an alternative development—a
diversified, independent development within equal terms of trade—and not
the alternative to development for which Escobar and Ferguson, among
other recent critics, have called.
To address both the call by neo-Marxists for a model of alternative de-
velopment and the call by post-Marxists for an alternative to development,
this chapter o√ers a case study of Sandinista agricultural policy. The Sandi-
nista National Liberation Front explicitly attempted to forge a revolutionary
approach to development in Nicaragua. While the Sandinista case demon-
strates the seductive power that the imperative to develop has had on the
Left, it also clearly demonstrates the material limits prohibiting countries
from simply stepping outside the paradigm of development.
The fsln came to power in 1979 after two years of general insurrection
in Nicaragua. Although party origins date back to the foquista guerrilla
movements of the 1960s, the party that came to power in 1979 corre-

110 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

sponded to the ‘‘second generation’’ of armed movements in Latin America.
The fsln of the late 1970s had successfully brought together the di√erent
ideological tendencies that engaged in armed struggle in Nicaragua, divi-
sions similar to those that had destroyed armed struggles in other countries.
The party had subsequently abandoned foquismo for a policy of national
alliance with members of the oligarchy, the bourgeoisie, the press, and
various parties. Most important, the fsln had successfully coordinated its
e√orts against the dictatorship with the e√orts of mass-based social move-
ments: the liberation church, the women’s movement, the student move-
ment, syndicalists, and peasant organizations. The Sandinistas—like the
fmln in El Salvador, the urng in Guatemala, and the m-19 in Colombia—
accomplished something the guerrilla movements of the 1960s had been
unable to do: they moved, theoretically and practically, beyond a vanguard-
ism that saw the party as creating a mass movement and adopted a van-
guardism that saw the party in a supporting or coordinating role for the
mass movement.≥
Once in power, the Sandinistas were committed to restructuring Nic-
aragua’s dependent economy for the benefit of the country’s poor majority
and to promoting the interests of the mass movement that had brought
them to power. The conditions of Nicaragua’s insertion into the global mar-
ket, however, placed certain structural constraints on Sandinista choices in
agricultural policy. The devastating U.S. war against the Sandinistas stands
as testimony to the ferocity with which these constraints are enforced. But
not every choice made by the Sandinistas was predetermined by market,
fiscal, and geopolitical constraints. Key decisions in agriculture corre-
sponded to the Sandinistas’ faith in a Marxist-Leninist teleology of progress,
in a developmentalist model of history. Indeed, Sandinista agricultural pol-
icy was itself a regime of subjection: its intention was to produce a model
subject in agriculture, one with a revolutionary consciousness that would
benefit the citizen and the nation. But this theoretical revolutionary subjec-
tivity did not emerge from the material reality in which the peasants found
themselves. Consequently the peasant formation ended up outside a Sandi-
nista vision of revolutionary national development. Even though the peas-
ant was at the center of the revolutionary imagination, the fsln imple-
mented an agricultural development policy that negatively impacted its
peasant base of support in the countryside. By 1985, peasants were filling
the ranks of the U.S.-backed counterrevolutionaries, and in 1990 the fsln
lost the presidential and parliamentary elections. How is it that the Sandi-
nista revolutionary movement met with resistance from the very people

Irresistible Seduction 111

whom their model of development presumably intended to liberate? Why
did the regime of subjection implied in revolutionary agrarian reform pol-
icies clash so violently with peasant reality?

What Women Remember

I conducted the research for this study during the three years I lived in
Nicaragua, from July 1984 to August 1987, and on two summer research
trips in 1988 and 1989. During the three years that I lived in Nicaragua, I
was a part-time researcher, writer, and translator at the Institute Historico
CentroAmericano (ihca), a think tank a≈liated with the Jesuit-run Central
American University in Managua. At that time the ihca published a
monthly academic journal, Envío, written in Spanish and distributed pri-
marily to university libraries and solidarity organizations, and a weekly
newsletter, Update, written in English and distributed primarily to interna-
tional journalists and U.S. Congress members. In addition to translating
Envío articles into English, I had a regular ‘‘beat’’ for Update. I covered the
women’s movement (party a≈liated and independent), the drafting of Nic-
aragua’s new constitution, agricultural policy, agrarian reform, and peasant
mobilizations. Although we published the newsletter without bylines, is-
sues of Update written during this period on these topics were generally
written by me. As such, I could have written this analysis of the Sandinista
regime of subjection from the perspective of women’s rights, or from the
perspective of the drafting of ‘‘revolutionary’’ national rights (a process that
took more than a year and involved extended consultations of almost the
entire citizenry). In addition, my experience since then as a cultural studies
scholar would have permitted me to examine the question of revolutionary
subjection from the perspective of Sandinista cultural policy, or from the
perspective of literary production. However, I chose to examine agricultural
policy and peasant relations because the success or failure of the revolution
was ultimately not determined by women’s rights, constitutional guaran-
tees, cultural policies, or literary production under the Sandinistas. Weighty
as all of these areas are to any revolutionary endeavor, in the Nicaragua of
the 1980s, the revolution’s fate was decided by the peasantry. The majority
of Nicaragua’s population lived in the countryside and were peasants or
agricultural laborers. In addition, from the Sandinistas’ Marxist-Leninist
perspective, the workers and the peasants were the primary agents of the
Nicaraguan revolution, and the primary goal of the fsln was to be the
catalyst of revolutionary transformation for these peasant and working

112 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

classes. Peasants were not only one-half of Nicaragua’s population but also
fully one-half of the Sandinista equation for revolutionary development.
They were the agents/objects of the party’s revolutionary imagination. Nev-
ertheless, by the mid-1980s, it was the peasants, rather than urbanite femi-
nist leaders, cultural workers, or literati, who were joining the counter-
revolutionaries in significant numbers. For all of these reasons, they are the
focus of this study.
In conducting my research for Update (and consequently for this chap-
ter), I regularly interviewed agricultural policy analysts and technicians in
the Ministry of Agriculture (midinra) from several regions in Nicaragua;
members of the fsln-a≈liated organization for farmers and ranchers
(unag); representatives from the fsln-a≈liated agricultural workers’
union (atc); agricultural laborers on state and private farms; beneficiaries
of agrarian reform on cooperatives and on private parcels; and small-, me-
dium-, and large-scale private producers who either supported the Sandini-
stas or actively conspired against them. I also consulted o≈cial and uno≈-
cial government documents, as well as secondary, background readings.
During my research for the institute, I visited dozens of state farms, cooper-
atives, resettlement communities, private farms, and villages; I also spent
extended periods of time on three cooperatives (up to two months on one of
these) and on two state farms working with development projects sponsored
by U.S. solidarity organizations and sister-city projects.
It is as di≈cult for me to write up this research as it was to conduct it,
although for very di√erent reasons. In the mid-1980s, every visit to a coopera-
tive or state farm was di≈cult because I never knew if the friends that I had
laughed and argued with, played cards and shared lean meals with, would
still be alive. Or if they would be dead—tortured and killed by counterrevolu-
tionaries trained and financed by the United States for daring to imagine a
di√erent set of power relations, a di√erent distribution of wealth. Today it is
di≈cult to write about this research not because I naively find it a betrayal to
criticize the Sandinista vision of development for which so many people died.
Rather, it is di≈cult because of the growing consensus between conserva-
tives and leftists (in the apparent triumph of neoliberalism), in which it is all
too easy to blame the failure of socialism to take root in Latin America on the
‘‘antidemocratic tendencies’’ or ‘‘dogmatism’’ of revolutionary groups, or on
the structural impossibility of placing controls on markets. To paraphrase
Zora Neale Hurston’s words from this chapter’s epigraph, we forget perhaps
because it is too painful to remember. Nevertheless, I choose to remember
because I refuse to forget that the blame for the failure of the Sandinista

Irresistible Seduction 113

attempt to institute a di√erent model of development lies first and foremost
with the U.S. government. The cia’s recruitment and direct support of the
counterrevolutionaries caused nearly $5 billion of damage in eight years to a
country with a gnp of less than U.S. $800 million in any given year between
1980 and 1990. However, the credit for the Sandinista successes—most
notably the improvements to education, nationalized health care, enforce-
ment of child support payments and domestic violence laws, lasting changes
in land tenure, and, of course, the institutionalization of representative
democracy—belongs foremost to the revolutionary spirit of the Nicaraguan
people, and also to the courageous vision of thousands of fsln members.
And so I write this chapter because I believe in the possibility of these
successes and not in the inevitability of failure.

The Legacy of Dependency: Establishing an

Agricultural State Sector, 1979–1981

On 20 July 1979, one day after the triumph of the revolution, the new
government nationalized the country’s entire banking system, as well as the
property belonging to Somoza and his associates. The expropriation of
Somocista property brought 20 percent of Nicaragua’s arable land under
state control. From these expropriated lands, the new government created
the Area of People’s Property (app), or state farms, to be administered by
midinra.∂ The Sandinistas envisioned state farms as the most direct path
to satisfying the interests of the majority of the peasants.
Before proceeding, it is necessary to clarify which sectors of the peasantry
I will focus on, since agricultural policy clearly a√ected di√erent sectors of
the peasantry di√erently. During the decade of Sandinista government, the
peasantry as a category represented a broad, heterogeneous, di√use, and in-
flux population in Nicaragua. According to midinra’s calculations, Nic-
aragua had always had a significant percentage of production in the hands
of private peasant producers with small- and medium-scale holdings, rang-
ing between fifty to five hundred manzanas.∑ Most of these producers held
enough land to necessitate hiring workers on a full- or part-time basis,
whom they either paid or to whom they rented land in exchange for services.
Together these producers, the ‘‘bourgeoisie’’ of the peasantry in Marxist
terms, made up 30 percent of Nicaragua’s economically active population
(eap) in the countryside. Even though they were not o≈cially defined as
‘‘land-poor,’’ members of the peasant bourgeois were nevertheless impacted
by Sandinista agricultural policy, as they were among the intended beneficia-

114 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

ries of credit, pricing, and distribution policies. While they are not the
central focus of this study, I will discuss how agricultural policies a√ected
them in contrast to the land-poor peasants.
But even the category of ‘‘land-poor peasantry’’ demands clarification.
Carlos Vilas, a political economist who worked for the Ministry of Planning
(miplan) in Nicaragua from 1980 to 1984, helps us understand the com-
plexity of this category in his book The Sandinista Revolution. Vilas estimated
that by the end of the 1970s, half a million Nicaraguans worked in agricul-
tural production. Of these, roughly 50,000 were agricultural proletarians,
that is, agricultural laborers with permanent employment. Another 75,000
were what he termed the itinerant proletarians, or laborers without perma-
nent employment who changed jobs every three to four months. These
‘‘itinerant proletarians,’’ however, were the recently dispossessed peasantry.
They were peasants who had recently become landless. They had been
forced o√ their land during the post–World War II cotton and cattle booms
but had not been absorbed into permanent labor positions.∏ However, by the
end of the 1970s there still remained 165,000 minifundistas—peasants with
ten manzanas of land or less—who sold their labor during harvest seasons
because their holdings were not su≈cient for meeting their needs for the
entire year. Vilas identifies these minifundistas as the semiproletariat (Vilas
63–69). Together with the permanent proletariat, the itinerant proletariat
and the minifundistas made up 68 percent of the rural eap in Nicaragua.
Vilas’s schematization of the rural population illustrates the level of strat-
ification that existed among the poorest of the rural eap. It also betrays the
Second World developmental imperative shared by the administrators at
miplan who viewed these sectors of the peasantry as a social formation in
transition.π Vilas’s purpose was to show that the proletarianization in Nic-
aragua’s countryside remained ‘‘incomplete’’ in a dependent agro-export
economy. By defining the process as incomplete—that is, in need of comple-
tion—Vilas defines sectors of the rural population as ‘‘problems’’ with cal-
culable parameters. However, the peasants in these sectors constitute ‘‘in-
complete’’ social formations only insofar as proletarianization constitutes
the natural developmental outcome for miplan. At the level of conscious-
ness, or even of self-identification, such a transformation had not even
begun to transpire. After all, less than a generation separated many of the
itinerant proletariat and semiproletariat from viable land tenure. Invariably,
when I interviewed minifundistas, itinerant laborers, and even most mem-
bers of the permanent proletariat, they continued to identify themselves as
campesinos—as peasants. They identified as such not out of ignorance of

Irresistible Seduction 115

their ‘‘true’’ economic position but rather because they recognized that their
dual positionality, as subsistence farmers and agricultural laborers, facili-
tated the extraction of higher rates of surplus from them and increased
profit for the agro-export economy. While the members of all three of these
categories had a definite interest in improved labor conditions, their future
aspirations were actually tied to a return to a prior, perhaps even mythical,
autonomy as campeches (campache is slang in Spanish for campesino, which
means peasant/farmer). The minifundistas, the itinerant proletarians, and
even many of the permanent proletarians still identified greater access to
land as their overriding interest. Together the itinerant proletariat and the
minifundistas made up 240,000 people, roughly half of the rural eap.
Their interests and the interests of an agro-export economy were directly at
odds, because this economy could neither absorb them as full-time workers
nor a√ord to lose their part-time or seasonal labor. These two groups of
peasantry, the minifundistas and the itinerant proletariat, are the central
focus of this study in considering the model of revolutionary development
put forth by the Sandinistas.
midinra’s decision to create state farms rather than redistribute lands
suggested that the ministry intended to ‘‘complete’’ the process of pro-
letarianization through increased employment and improved conditions on
state farms. They assumed, to some degree correctly, that the workers on
these farms would gain not only a sense of ownership over these farms but a
proprietary identification with the fsln’s vision of centralized, large-scale,
industrialized farming. However, there were never enough jobs. The newly
established miplan called for the creation of 50,000 permanent jobs in
state agriculture in its 1980 plan for economic reactivation (miplan, Pro-
grama de reactivacion economica 17). Although this was a significant number
of jobs for the new government to generate, it was by no means enough to
absorb the 240,000 minifundistas and itinerant proletarians. In fact, it took
three years for midinra to attain accurate estimates of these sectors of the
peasant population, a delay perhaps symptomatic of the government’s per-
sistent and more general misapprehension of the condition of the land-poor
peasantry. The measures creating new jobs left 190,000 minifundistas and
itinerant proletarians in exactly the same precarious economic conditions as
before the revolution. This initial reform did nothing to benefit the majority
of minifundistas and itinerant proletarians who worked on these farms only
seasonally, if at all.
To the itinerant proletarians and the minifundistas who were not guaran-
teed full-time employment, this limited agrarian reform appeared as a be-

116 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

trayal by the party that had rallied the peasants to its side with the promise of
‘‘land to those who work it’’ (J. Collins, What Di√erence 45). Pressure for land
from the peasantry had increased during the two decades prior to the revolu-
tion, given the accelerated dispossession that had taken place with the cot-
ton boom. In one region alone, Leon and Chinandega, peasants launched
240 land takeovers between 1963 and 1973 (Spalding 30). These were just
the most evident forms of resistance to the agro-export economy. There is no
way to calculate the less spectacular acts of everyday resistance, such as
squatting and production sabotage that went on before the insurrection.∫
But as just one example of more hidden forms of resistance, an agricultural
laborer on the state farm La Concepcion in Chinandega told me that many
of the workers on this farm, prior to the revolution, had channeled part of
the foodstu√s and revenues from their private production to the guerrilla
ranks.
This rash of takeovers during the 1960s and 1970s and the pursuant
repression by Somoza’s National Guard contributed not only cadres to the
ranks of the guerrillas but moral legitimacy to the fsln’s cause. And during
the two years of insurrection, the permanent workers in coordination with
the itinerant proletariat and the minifundistas took over abandoned farms
and organized production cooperatives, providing crucial logistical support
for the Sandinistas. Nevertheless midinra legalized only a chosen few of
the cooperatives that had formed during the insurrection, and less than 1
percent of Somocista lands were turned over to these peasants as coopera-
tives in this initial phase of agrarian reform. In most cases, once in power,
the fsln used its moral (and sometimes military) authority to disband
cooperatives that had formed on the app lands or on private farms un-
a√ected by the anti-Somocista decree of 20 July 1979 (cahi, ‘‘Agrarian
Reform’’ 2).
Certainly the conditions of development that already existed on the con-
fiscated lands favored the state farm structure. Of the 2,000 farms confis-
cated, half were larger than 500 manzanas in area and had belonged to the
wealthiest clique of large-scale farmers (Ruccio 67). They were immense,
technologically sophisticated estates representing millions of dollars worth
of investment in highly mechanized production practices that ‘‘unified’’ the
landholding. Breaking up these coherent units into smaller parcels would
not lead to e≈cient use of the technology on these estates, and this in turn
would lead to a sharp decrease in their productivity. Planners in midinra
feared, probably justifiably, that if they distributed land to the land-poor
peasantry, the new recipients of land would stop tending to export produc-

Irresistible Seduction 117

tion altogether and begin planting basic grains and domestic foodstu√s (J.
Collins, What Di√erence 60). Nicaragua in 1979 was a model of the first
stage of dependent capitalist development in the periphery: exporting pri-
mary goods to the center while importing most manufactured goods. Trade
acted as a substitute for production, with Nicaragua depending entirely on
the export of a few primary products (co√ee, cotton, beef, sugar) to generate
foreign exchange for purchasing almost all capital goods and inputs neces-
sary in the agricultural sector and the nascent industrial sector (Fitzgerald
1).Ω Thus, maintaining the agro-export sector was essential to the basic re-
production of the national economy, even though this ironically entailed
maintaining an inexpensive seasonal labor force to ensure margins of prof-
itability in a world market.
The technological sophistication of these farms and the policy of pro-
letarianization of these land-poor peasant classes dovetailed with the fsln’s
vision of state vanguardism in the economy. miplan’s 1980 plan estab-
lished the state as the eje dynamico (the dynamic axis) in all economic sec-
tors. Through the direct ownership of some of the means of production, and
the nationalization of the financial system and segments of the commercial
system, the state would manage the entire economy (miplan, Programa de
reactivacion economica 13). The state was to become the center for the ac-
cumulation of surplus and would thereby direct its redistribution through
investments intended to benefit the various classes more equitably. Where
the state did not directly own the means of production, it could direct pro-
duction and accumulation of surplus through the distribution of foreign
and domestic credit, controls over wages, and the control of international
commerce (Ruccio 76). Where the state could not act as direct employer, the
state would service the permanent rural workers on private farms, and the
itinerant proletarians and the minifundistas through investment in a social
wage—education, health care, child care, credit—rather than through mea-
sures involving land distribution.
However, the implementation of the social wage measures often exacer-
bated the stratification between the permanently employed and the under-
employed, land-poor peasantry. The literacy and health brigades of the early
1980s were extensive in their reach. Since these were roving brigades made
up of volunteer urban youths, they were able to extend basic literacy, child
immunization, prenatal care, and preventive medical information to the
most isolated areas in the countryside. Follow-up measures, however, tended
to benefit the already privileged state farm worker. Health clinics, schools,
and child care centers were constructed first on the state farms and then in

118 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

outlying villages. Thus the social wage was disproportionately distributed to
the most economically stable sector of the rural poor—the permanent pro-
letariat. Although schools, child care centers, and clinics were subsequently
constructed in rural villages, itinerant proletarians were by definition a tran-
sient population moving from farm to farm, and the minifundistas’ tiny plots
of land were often located far outside the villages. Also, the precarious
economic position of the minifundistas and the itinerant proletarians meant
that they were less likely to spare the labor of their children so that they could
attend school. Thus access to these services did not have as dramatic an
impact on their daily lives as it did on the lives of those living on state farms or
in the villages. Most often, those living in the villages were the peasants with
small- and medium-sized holdings who could a√ord to maintain a house in
the village as well as on their farms; and after 1983, these centers became the
primary targets of counterrevolutionary activity, further limiting the scope of
these social wage projects.
The Sandinistas hoped that this first economic plan, which resisted radi-
cal redistribution of lands, would calm private-sector fears and maintain the
delicate balance of forces in the governing junta. The Sandinistas had come
to power thanks to the alliance of classes and nationalist visions that had
formed to remove the figureheads of a despotic regime. However, it was
clear to the fsln that propertied classes would not long support a party
promoting the rights and welfare of the classes these elites exploited for
capital accumulation. Thus contradictions between classes reemerged
quickly to a√ect the broad-based approval the fsln enjoyed immediately
following 19 July. The fsln initially appealed to national consciousness,
foregrounding the principle of unity and insisting that its political and
economic platforms for participatory democracy and a mixed economy
could incorporate the patriotic private producer. Any Sandinista concession
to minifundista and itinerant proletarian demands for ‘‘democratizing’’
land tenure at this early stage in the revolution would have been interpreted
by the elite classes as an indication of more expropriations to come. Such a
possibility would lead to decreased investment or outright liquidation of
investment capital by the agro-export sector. And once again, if the minifun-
distas and itinerant proletarians found themselves in the capacity of re-
producing the family through private agricultural production, they would
have little reason to sell their family’s labor to the private and state sectors
during the harvest season.
John Weeks, in ‘‘The Mixed Economy in Nicaragua,’’ argues that it was
naive of the Sandinistas to expect the private sector to participate in this

Irresistible Seduction 119

economic model, since this sector had been stripped of its political power to
direct the economy.∞≠ Owing to the nationalization of financial institutions,
government control of exportation and importation, and qualitative in-
creases in permanent workers’ rights and wages, the private sector lost its
ability to accumulate capital on its own terms: ‘‘It is di≈cult to produce any
other example of a country in which private capital remained the dominant
form of property, while in the political realm capital had been disenfran-
chised. . . . The typical outcomes are either a counter-revolution by which
propertied interests regain the political power commensurate with their
economic importance, or a rapid move by the revolutionary government to
confiscation of large-scale property (in part to prevent the former outcome)’’
(Weeks 49). Weeks goes on to attribute the rapid withdrawal of private
capital from large-scale property that followed the revolution to the bour-
geoisie’s lack of a nationalist identity that would supersede this sector’s
historical ties to the United States (60). However, Weeks’s analysis shows a
narrow understanding of a√ective ties of nationalism. I would argue that the
bourgeoisie was committed to a vision of national progress that agreed with
liberal, free-market modernization theory and was bound to conflict with a
revolutionary model of centrally planned development. The bourgeoisie
believed that the country’s ‘‘development’’ was best left to a few responsible
men, meaning themselves, who could reinvest accumulated capital pru-
dently and according to the laws of a competitive international market. The
Sandinistas not only eliminated the competitive market but displaced the
bourgeoisie from their function as the agents of economic change. The
bourgeoisie saw Somoza’s monopolistic control of the economy as a flaw in
an otherwise rational and just system. With the correction of this flaw, the
bourgeoisie expected a perfected capitalist development to proceed under
the direction of private capital. Ultimately the bourgeoisie did not abandon
Nicaragua out of a lack of patriotism. They did not abandon Nicaragua at all
but rather invested the money they decapitalized from their farms and
industry in the counterrevolutionaries.∞∞
The landed elites were far more antagonistic to a consolidated state sector
in agriculture than they may have been to the redistribution of lands to the
itinerant proletarians and minifundistas, even with the reduction of the
labor force this redistribution would have entailed. I conducted many inter-
views with landed elites who are members of the conservative Union of
Nicaraguan Agricultural Producers (upanic), and at some point during
these interviews, the representatives invariably charged that the Sandinistas
were ‘‘worse than Somoza ever was’’ because of the state’s ‘‘monopolistic’’

120 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

control of the agricultural economy. During an interview with me in 1986,
Rosendo Diaz, then president of upanic, displayed questionable sympathy
for the plight of the agricultural proletariat and declared: ‘‘Before the revolu-
tion, the Sandinistas lured the campesinos with flowery promises that they
would own their own land; instead midinra has turned the campesino into
a peon of the state, a slave of the state who is going to do whatever the state
says, whenever to do it, and by whatever means it dictates.’’ Whether this
was rhetorical posturing on the part of the landed elites or an accurate
representation of state control is beside the point. These representatives
echoed the positions of counterrevolutionary leaders in Washington, in
Miami, and in the Nicaraguan countryside. This right-wing critique by these
elites and the counterrevolutionaries made political headway among the
dissatisfied minifundistas and itinerant proletarians because it asserted,
above all else, the autonomy of the peasantry, albeit within the bourgeoisie’s
framework of private property. In other words, these elites capitalized on the
itinerant proletarians’ and the minifundistas’ continued identification as
campesinos. In e√ect, this right-wing rhetoric positioned the landed elites
and the land-poor peasants in a relationship of equivalence vis-à-vis a state
that denied an abstracted concept of freedom. These appeals by the elites
and counterrevolutionaries spoke to the itinerant proletarians’ and the min-
ifundistas’ interest in autonomy, which superseded their interests as work-
ers, especially since the fsln was unable to dramatically improve their
status as a proletariat.
Consider the impact such a critique would have even among the laborers
with secure permanent employment on state farms in the following situa-
tion. With relatively few exceptions, midinra did not allow agricultural
workers to cultivate small parcels of land on state farms for their personal
consumption, whereas previous owners had allowed the workers to do so.
The Sandinistas interpreted this practice by private owners as exploitative
and paternalistic (ihca, ‘‘The Nicaraguan Peasantry’’ 8c). Undoubtedly, it
was both. Private owners allowed workers to cultivate unused parcels of
land to keep the capital costs of reproducing labor to a minimum. Wage
laborers employed on private farms provided some of their own foodstu√s
by farming these parcels on their own time. This private production, in
e√ect, functioned as part of their wage, allowing the employer to pay them
less. midinra policy makers associated this practice with ‘‘precapitalist’’
forms of labor that hindered the complete proletarianization of the peas-
antry. However, midinra o≈cials were wrong to expect the agricultural
worker to interpret this practice similarly—strictly as a form of precapitalist

Irresistible Seduction 121

labor exploitation and paternalism. Instead, what the terrateniente (large- or
medium-scale landowner) may have interpreted as his own benevolent pa-
tronage, the workers interpreted as a hard-earned right ensuring them a
minimal level of autonomy, a wage supplement, and an identification with a
subject position other than strictly ‘‘worker.’’ In the context of soon-to-be
chronic inflation and food shortages, permanent workers on state farms
experienced the elimination of this practice as a decline in their material
condition and an infringement on their rights. Again, from the ministry’s
teleological perspective, this policy was meant to pull the workers further
toward their true positionality. But one of the long-standing claims pressed
by the atc leaders at the local, regional, and national levels was the right of
state farm workers to use part of the state farms for individual production of
basic grains.
I have emphasized the Sandinistas’ e√orts to ‘‘complete’’ proletarianiza-
tion among the permanent workers, the itinerant proletarians, and the min-
ifundistas to underscore their tendencies to redefine these sectors’ interests
in the state’s developmentalist terms. From the fsln’s perspective, the
interests of these three groups of peasants and the interests of the nation’s
development were best served through the combination of their freed labor
and the state’s capital. While the impetus behind initial agrarian reform
policy was to hurry the process of proletarianization, the Sandinistas did
enact some policies that were intended to reinforce the economic position of
small-scale farmers and the minifundista segment of the peasantry as such.
Two policies were aimed specifically at making them more e√ective private
producers: a policy for the extension of credit, and a policy for pricing and
marketing basic grains and foodstu√s. To a degree, the enactment of these
policies recognized the important role these groups could play as private
producers in generating capital. However, they also revealed a paternalistic
bias on the part of the state that ultimately undermined the position of the
minifundistas vis-à-vis the richer segments of the peasantry.
Under Somoza’s regime, roughly 30,000 producers with small- and
medium-scale holdings received 10 percent of the credit extended to rural
areas through private banks. The other 90 percent of rural credit went to
landed elites. Under the fsln, 100,000 minifundistas and small-holding
peasant producers received 27 percent of the rural credit extended by the
nationalized banking system (Enriquez and Spalding 113). The amount of
credit extended by financial institutions increased by 600 percent during
the first credit cycle in 1979 to 1980 (Deere and Marchetti 57). Thousands of
small-scale farmers and minifundistas who had never had access to credit

122 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

received loans for the production of basic grains and foodstu√s in the first
credit cycle (J. Collins, What Di√erence 56).∞≤ Success of the credit program
for the minifundistas and small-holding peasantry depended on their pos-
session of certain entrepreneurial skills: on their ability to invest loans
e≈ciently—that is, to further rationalize production on their lands—and to
repay the loans promptly. These ‘‘skills’’ necessary to enhance production
on private parcels translated into a knowledge of more sophisticated modes
of agricultural production, a basic level of pre-existing technological produc-
tion on farms that could be enhanced by this new capital, access to means of
transporting the new inputs and goods that must be purchased in the cities
and towns—in short, an ability to combine increased capital, technology
(capital goods such as irrigation systems, processing plants, or even a trac-
tor), and free labor. Since the small-holding producers could improve the
relationship between technology and wage labor with their increased capi-
tal, their surplus production increased; however, the majority of the mini-
fundistas’ production costs are not in capital goods or wage labor but family
labor (Colburn, Post-revolutionary Nicaragua 85). Hence investment of capi-
tal could not increase absolute or relative surplus production on these lands,
and most minifundistas used the funds to satisfy immediate consumption
needs. Consequently, credit extension did not lead to the expected rise in
production, and the Sandinistas had to forfeit the majority of loans extended
to the minifundistas, which led to a growing state deficit. After the first two
years, the vast majority of minifundistas dropped out of the credit program,
leaving the small-holding private producers to benefit the most.∞≥
The rural credit program e√ectively accelerated the stratification among
the lower echelons of Nicaragua’s peasantry: ‘‘That is, the small-holding
‘peasantry’ [small-holding producers and minifundistas] was becoming in-
creasingly divided into two groups: at one pole, producers who employed
wage labor and had access to additional land by buying or renting from
others [smallholders], and, at the other pole, producers who were forced to
sell their labor power and rent and/or sell their land to that first group
[minifundistas]’’ (Enriquez and Spalding 73). A de facto e√ect of midinra’s
rural credit program was to further proletarianize the minifundistas as they
were forced to sell their labor, and in some cases their land, to the small-
holding peasantry now able to extend their production due to the heretofore
inaccessible credit. For the minifundistas, the credit program was an inter-
vention by the state that led to further dispossession and loss of the auton-
omy they associated with the ownership of land. The fsln resisted distribut-
ing lands to the land-poor peasants because it did not want to reinforce

Irresistible Seduction 123

peasant attachment to private ownership among the minifundistas, or to
solidify their identification as peasant farmers rather than as proletarians in
the making. Yet their policies strengthened the bourgeois position of the
small-holding and medium-holding peasants, to the detriment of the land-
poor peasants.
In addition, the fsln displaced the mercantile class by setting fixed
prices for the purchase of certain basic goods from these producers (rice,
beans, sugar, milk, eggs, beef ) and by monopolizing the purchase and
distribution of these goods.∞∂ These policies corresponded to the fsln’s
vanguardist position in directing agricultural development. In accordance
with Second World development theory’s appraisal of the parasitic role of
this class, midinra also wanted to guard the minifundistas and small-scale
producers against the exploitative practices of these merchants.∞∑ As I have
said earlier, the minifundistas had historically produced the bulk of the rice
and beans consumed by the country. While the prices set by the state for
these basic foodstu√s initially responded to production costs (they were
increased significantly between 1979 and 1984), these prices were ulti-
mately unable to keep pace with the increase in inflation of rural consumer
prices. In e√ect, price controls became another means of extracting absolute
surplus from the minifundistas, who were unable to lower their production
costs by a relative increase in productivity, as many of the small-, medium-,
and large-scale peasants were able to do.
To enforce its pricing policies and to eliminate the exploitative merchant
class, the state also attempted to displace merchants from the buying and
selling of these basic foodstu√s by taking over these functions. Not only was
the state unable to reach all the minifundistas, dispersed as they were
through the countryside, but the state was unable to replace all the services
o√ered to the minifundistas by the merchants. Again, the Sandinistas’ pater-
nalistic thinking led to a narrow interpretation of the merchant-minifundista
relationship. The relationship between the merchant and the minifundista
was clearly exploitative, but each merchant serviced a variety of minifundista
needs (mail service, short-term loans, transportation, information on part-
time jobs in other areas, legal and medical advice) that no single state agency
could replace, even if state agents were able to reach the minifundista
(Frenkel 211–12). Small-holding peasants were far less likely to need this
variety of services. Often, merchants came from the peasant communities
and were not necessarily seen as ‘‘outsiders.’’ Most importantly, these mer-
chants o√ered better prices for their goods than the state provided. Inevitably,

124 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

a black market for the purchase and sale of basic foodstu√s developed
because of the low prices the state paid for the goods.
In 1984 I spent two months on La Virgencita, a cooperative eleven miles
north of the city of Esteli. This was one of the few production cooperatives
awarded during the first period of reform immediately following the revolu-
tion. These workers were given the land because of the commitment they
had shown to the fsln. However, the president of this cooperative regularly
lent one of the cooperative’s trucks to his cousin, a minifundista who
farmed nearby, so that he could travel by night and circumvent the state
distribution authorities, taking his production directly to the markets in
Esteli. Of course I was left wondering if the cousin might not be marketing
some of the cooperative’s production as well. Thus, although the merchant-
minifundista relationship was ultimately an exploitative one, even those
peasants most committed to the revolutionary process—those awarded land
early in the process because of their loyalty—recognized that the state in its
role as merchant was becoming equally, if not more, exploitative of the
minifundista.

Stage Two: Agrarian Reform, 1981–1985

The development policies put forth by midinra in the first two years of the
revolution strengthened the economic position of the permanent proletariat
and the small-holding peasantry. However, for the vast majority of the itiner-
ant proletarians and the minifundistas, these same policies either had no
long-term e√ect on their economic position or, in fact, placed them in an
even more precarious economic position. Thus demand for land from these
two groups of peasants continued unabated during the first two years of the
revolution. In Masaya, the department in Nicaragua with the largest con-
centration of minifundistas, thousands of these peasants marched on the
regional o≈ce of midinra in February 1980. They demanded that no more
lands be returned to previous owners and that instead they be redistributed
among the peasantry (ihca, ‘‘The Nicaraguan Peasantry’’ 7c). While de-
mands for land in other regions were not as spectacular, they were chronic.
In the name of the itinerant proletarians and the minifundistas, the atc
consistently petitioned regional midinra o≈ces for the expropriation and
redistribution of unproductive farmland. No one knew better than the agri-
cultural workers and minifundistas in each area which farmers were non-
productive or actively decapitalizing. This early agitation by the minifun-

Irresistible Seduction 125

distas and the itinerant proletarians clearly indicated their dissatisfaction
with their precarious status as agricultural laborers in the government’s
new development plans and with the revolutionary government’s compro-
mise with the landed elites.
The 1981 agrarian reform law cites as its raison d’être the fsln’s historic
duty to restore these peasants’ right to live o√ the land with dignity (Consejo
de Estado 186). Much of the literature on the first agrarian reform law
describes it as a political response by the Sandinistas to their social base
among the dispossessed and land-poor peasantry. This was a partial truth.
In the context of the inadequate response of landed elites to incentives, the
primary purpose of the law was to enable the state to use force where flattery
had failed. As early as 1981, it was clear to the government that this segment
of the private sector was not fully reinvesting its profits. miplan’s 1981 plan
for economic austerity indicates that although profits had recuperated faster
than salaries, the private sector, especially in agriculture, was in most cases
simply maintaining postrevolution production levels (miplan, Programa eco-
nomico de austeridad 121). Where were these profits going? Already there
were signs of decapitalization by some producers (J. Collins, What Di√erence
45). While domestic agricultural production—largely in the hands of small-
and medium-holding peasants—rebounded, export production lagged be-
hind.∞∏
The new law stipulated that landholdings in excess of 500 manzanas
along the Pacific coast and 1,000 manzanas in the mountainous regions
would be subject to expropriation if these lands were abandoned, lying idle,
or underutilized. However, productive properties, regardless of their size,
would be left untouched (Consejo de Estado 187). Even after the expropria-
tions of Somocista land, 21.5 percent of land remained in private holdings
exceeding 500 manzanas. A full one-fifth of the land, then, remained in the
hands of large-scale agro-export producers. This was roughly comparable to
the state’s holdings.∞π Meanwhile, 165,000 minifundista families continued
to live o√ 2.5 percent of the land (J. Collins, What Di√erence 271). And
between 25,000 and 35,000 itinerant proletarians owned no land and had
no permanent employment. Although the 1981 law stipulated that newly
expropriated lands be handed over to the dispossessed and land-poor peas-
ants, allowing for limited private ownership, it emphasized the need for
these peasants to organize themselves into production cooperatives in order
to receive the land (Consejo de Estado 189). Therefore, the first agrarian
reform law allowed for individual or family ownership of land to occur if the
beneficiaries agreed to join some type of cooperative association (i.e., credit

126 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

and service cooperatives or dead-furrow cooperatives).∞∫ But even if the
peasants were willing to join such cooperatives, priority would be given to
peasants who had historical ties to the revolutionary struggle. In e√ect, the
only peasants to receive individual plots of land under this law were those
with long-standing claims to party loyalty.
midinra’s enforcement of the new law between 1981 and 1983 demon-
strated the agency’s reluctance to recognize an autonomous peasant social
formation to any significant degree when it came to the minifundistas and
the itinerant proletarians. Sectors of the fsln in midinra stubbornly ad-
hered to a Leninist construction of small-scale private property as the petit
bourgeois basis for the reproduction of capitalist relations. In Lenin’s
‘‘Speech on the Agrarian Question,’’ which he delivered to the First All-
Russia Congress of Peasant’s Deputies on 22 May 1917, he discussed what
form agrarian reform should take in Russia. Though he called for the expro-
priation of landed estates and for improving rural conditions for poor peas-
ants, he nevertheless insisted that expropriated estates were the property of
the entire nation and should not be divided into small, private parcels:

That is why we say that farming on individual plots, even if it is ‘‘free

labor on free soil,’’ is no way out of the dreadful crisis, it o√ers no
deliverance from the general ruin. A universal labour service is neces-
sary, the greatest economy of man-power is necessary, an exception-
ally strong and firm authority is necessary, an authority capable of
e√ecting that universal labour service; it cannot be done by o≈cials, it
can be done only by the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’
Deputies, because they are the people, they are the masses, because
they are of the peasant from top to bottom, can organize labour con-
scription, can organise that protection of human labour that would
not allow the squandering of the peasant’s labour, and the transition
to common cultivation would, under these circumstances, be carried
out gradually and with circumspection. (Selected Works 138–39)

From Lenin’s perspective, small farms are the equivalent of ‘‘squandering

of the peasant’s labor.’’ And although the ‘‘dreadful crisis’’ he refers to in this
passage is the lack of basic foodstu√s in Russia following the devastation of
World War I, Lenin has just previously referred to the ‘‘crisis’’ as equally the
product of capitalist, private-property relations in agriculture.∞Ω Thus, in their
privileging of cooperativization (with the app, the equivalent of a ‘‘universal
labour service’’) during this second stage, the fsln adhered to a Second
World development orthodoxy, in that the party leadership believed a small-

Irresistible Seduction 127

holding peasantry would actually obstruct the possibility for any kind of
development to unfold in Nicaragua, let alone the Sandinistas’ alternative
model. In holding this position, the party’s analysis was in line with, for
example, Robert Brenner’s account of why there were historical variations in
the speed and force with which capitalism took hold in Europe. According to
Brenner, a noted Marxist scholar of development and imperialism, agrarian
capitalism, and subsequently the industrial revolution, initially flourished in
England but not in France because in England lands were concentrated in
large estates, whereas in France earlier peasant revolts had successfully
produced an independent, small-holding peasantry. Thus, in line with Lenin
and Second World development theory, Brenner concludes that the rapid
pace of all subsequent development in Britain but not in France hinged on
the di√erences in class structure between the two countries: ‘‘This outcome
depended, in turn, upon the previous success [in England] of a two-sided
process of class development and class conflict: on the one hand the destruc-
tion of serfdom; on the other, the short-circuiting of the emerging predominance
of small peasant property’’ (‘‘Agrarian Class Structure’’ 30). If rapid capitalist
development depended on the absence of a powerful small-holding peas-
antry, then there was all the more reason for the Sandinistas to circumvent its
formation in Nicaragua because, in accordance with Second World develop-
ment theory, the fsln planned to accelerate past the later stages of capitalist
development into an alternative, mixed-economy model of development.
Thus midinra was unwilling to create a new small-holding peasantry out of
the minifundistas and the itinerant proletariat because such a peasantry, they
believed, would slow down the technological development that could take
place on large estates (be these privately, state, or cooperatively owned). They
could not imagine an alternative outcome to this developmental narrative
and instantiated reform policies equally as rigid as any liberal development
discourse might have provided. And yet their credit and social wage policies
paradoxically, if unintentionally, strengthened the bourgeois class position of
the small- and medium-holding peasants at the expense of the minifundistas
and itinerant proletarians.
In January 1985, I traveled with a technician from Masaya’s local
midinra o≈ce to visit ten farms owned by minifundistas. In the 1984
elections, the fsln’s poorest show of support had come from this depart-
ment. Several of the men and women on these farms admitted to not having
voted at all in the elections. Most claimed that they did not vote because they
lacked time or were ‘‘not political.’’ However, in a region that had been a
historical base for guerrilla operations during the insurrection, these re-

128 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

sponses from farmers say something in and of themselves. Others admitted
that they did not vote because they did not see the point, and one farmer
stated, ‘‘If you are standing between a person who is hitting you and another
who does nothing to help you, you duck.’’ Of those who said they had voted,
most said they had voted for the fsln. However, one woman I spoke to said
candidly, ‘‘The Sandinistas want us to give them our sons [referring to
military recruitment to fight the war]; they want us to give them our produce
[referring to the low prices on goods]. Well, I don’t have to give them my
vote.’’ This woman used the verb regalar, which I have translated as ‘‘to give’’;
however, in Spanish the word regalar is used in association with the giving of
gifts. Thus the woman was implying that she had given something precious
to the Sandinistas and was now tired of giving things away without getting
anything in return.
Over the course of three years, midinra expropriated 7 percent of the
national arable land from the private sector. Private holdings exceeding 500
manzanas shrunk from 21 percent of the national total to 14 percent. Large-
scale agriculture was reduced by 33 percent. The honeymoon between the
state and large-scale agro-export producers was over. However, improved
relations between the state and the majority of dispossessed and land-poor
peasants did not immediately follow. midinra redistributed these lands
almost exclusively to peasants willing to form production cooperatives:
33,000 peasant families received land in cooperative form; in the same
three years, only 1,000 peasant families received land in the form of individ-
ual ownership (ihca, ‘‘The Nicaraguan Peasantry’’ 11c). From the perspec-
tive of the state, cooperatives appeared as a compromise between large-scale
agro-export production (state or private) and individual peasant production.
From the perspective of the itinerant proletarians and the minifundistas,
however, cooperatives meant either land on the state’s terms or no land
at all.
Cooperatives appeared as an ideal form of production to the Sandinistas
because, during these four years, it became increasingly clear that midinra
could not absorb any more lands and administer them e√ectively.≤≠ Cooper-
ative production, then, could form an adjunct to the app production. Expro-
priated properties did not need to be broken up; rather, one or more cooper-
atives could work as coherent units. As such, they posed less of a threat to
export agriculture than individual ownership would have, and they could
increase food production by planting basic grains between the seasons for
export goods. Furthermore, cooperative ownership, because it concentrated
the new land recipients into large units, would also facilitate the extension

Irresistible Seduction 129

of technical services by an already overextended midinra. This seemed an
ideal way of reinforcing the precarious economic living conditions of the
land-poor peasant without reinforcing private property as a social forma-
tion.
Carmen Deere contends that cooperativization under the 1981 agrarian
reform law was strictly voluntary and that the state did not prioritize it over
private ownership of land (Deere 127). This analysis, however, is somewhat
misleading. Deere projects a liberal agency onto the minifundistas and the
itinerant proletarians that e√aces the state’s power and the poverty of
choices available to these peasants. On the one hand, access to land, techni-
cal services, social services, and credit was ensured only to peasants willing
to form production cooperatives. On the other hand, as the counterrevolu-
tionaries increased their activities in the northern countryside, these pro-
duction cooperatives became prime targets of their attacks. Thus, if the
minifundistas or the itinerant proletarians chose not to join production
cooperatives, they ‘‘chose’’ to continue in their marginal economic position,
whereas joining cooperatives meant that they risked death at the hands of
the counterrevolutionaries. For Deere to presume that the actions of the
land-poor peasants were ‘‘voluntary’’ in this context presupposes an equality
of choices that simply did not exist. Such a presupposition is naive indeed,
especially when projected onto a revolutionary transition that is negotiating
the very issues of equality and freedom within the overdetermined con-
straints of underdevelopment in the context of a war. Arguably, most sectors
of the peasantry had more choices under the Sandinistas than they had ever
enjoyed under the Somoza dictatorship (or would have under the neoliberal-
ism of the 1990s), but the ‘‘choice’’ to join a cooperative was not among
them.
The Sandinistas did not use any physical force in their e√orts at cooper-
ativizing the dispossessed and land-poor peasantry.≤∞ However, the state’s
role in the minifundistas’ and itinerant proletarians’ lives was already e√ec-
tively a coercive one with regard to pricing and purchasing policies. I am not
arguing that state-initiated cooperativization among the peasantry could not
or should not take place. However, even under optimum conditions, there
were likely to be subtle forms of pressure by the state to convince peasants
to join cooperatives. After all, unlike the indigenous peasants in Mexico and
Guatemala, the minifundistas and itinerant proletarians in the Pacific re-
gions of Nicaragua had no history of communal farming. Thus the transfor-
mation of consciousness required by the Sandinistas’ regime of subjection
under cooperativization would necessarily be a violent and troubled one for

130 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

the peasantry. It requires that these dispossessed and land-poor peasants
reconstruct their concept of community. It asks that they, from an extremely
precarious economic position, suspend immediate individual and familial
needs not only for the sake of this larger collective community but for the
national community that has an investment in the cooperative as a revolu-
tionary experiment and an economic unit of production. It requires the
abandonment of a traditional mode of production in favor of a theoretical
one. Indeed, it requires someone who very much resembles the ‘‘reactive
nationalist’’ of development’s regime of subjection: a male who is willing to
become a risk taker and advantage seeker, willing to transcend vertical,
familial ties for horizontal, collective ties, willing to ‘‘choose’’ to relinquish
‘‘wanton’’ modes of agricultural production for proper ones. Thus, while
midinra may not have used force to cooperativize peasants, the high rates
of labor absenteeism and changing membership that plagued many cooper-
atives indicate that not all cooperative members were committed to the
cooperatives they presumably ‘‘chose’’ to join.
To emphasize the necessarily long-term and materially bound nature of
the transformation to collective consciousness instituted by the Sandinista
regime of subjection, I recount an exchange I had once with a cooper-
ativized peasant on a return visit to Nicaragua in 1989, while visiting a
co√ee cooperative outside of El Cua, Matagalpa. This cooperative had been
established six years earlier, in 1983, and this man had been a member since
it was founded. Most of the members had a history of loyalty to the party. Yet
he told me frankly that owing to the scarcity of rural credit in 1989, coopera-
tive members were reinvesting their profits in the farm for the first time
during the 1989–1990 crop cycle. These are the profits they received after
selling their co√ee and paying themselves their regular salaries. I asked him
what they had done with the profits all those previous years. He said that
they had divided them according to how hard each member worked, and
each member spent the profits as he saw fit. What does this reveal? Savvy
financing on the part of these cooperative members? (After all, why invest
your own profits when the bank will provide low-interest loans?) A funda-
mental lack of a sense of ownership? (After all, who could say what would be
the outcome of the war and if they would still own their lands after it was
over?) A failure to prioritize national needs over personal needs (even
though these peasants were presumably committed to the revolutionary
project)? I can only speculate. Until 1988, this zone was virtually o√-limits
to foreigners because of the heavy fighting in the area. Perhaps, with the
relaxation of the counterrevolutionary war, these cooperative members were

Irresistible Seduction 131

now physically and economically secure enough to reinvest their profits in
their farms for the first time. Perhaps the state’s inability to provide services
facilitated a reorientation of a previously paternalistic relation. In either
case, ten years after the revolution and six years after agrarian reform bene-
fited the cooperative’s members, the transformation in consciousness and
sense of collective agency that would make this cooperative self-sustaining
had not finished taking place.
Despite these crises, Deere states that ‘‘the internal organization of the
cooperatives is quite democratic’’ and that ‘‘the cooperatives are totally inde-
pendent of the Ministry of Agriculture . . . [although] they receive technical
assistance from the ministry and credit from the National Development
Bank’’ (128). Once again, this romantic rendition presents the relationship
between the state and the peasant as an untroubled exchange between equal
partners in an uncontested national development project. In e√ect, mi-
dinra was only able to extend full technical services to five hundred pri-
oritized cooperatives. This was 25 percent of the total number of production
cooperatives; 75 percent were disenfranchised from most state services
(ihca, ‘‘The Nicaraguan Peasantry’’ 10c). I would not presume that these
disenfranchised cooperatives enjoyed a greater degree of internal democracy
or choice simply because of their autonomy from the state. However, ‘‘tech-
nical services’’ on prioritized cooperatives often boiled down to orders from
midinra representatives.
Focusing on the cooperatives that did receive technical assistance, let us
rethink the context of the state-peasant relationship. The state chose five
hundred cooperatives with the intention of modernizing their production, of
intensifying their production through the importation of technology (ihca,
‘‘The Nicaraguan Peasantry’’ 10c). This explicit intention of increasing tech-
nical sophistication and industrialization precluded any serious autonomy
for the chosen production cooperatives, since the modernizing e√ort would
require more than a little advice and a few loans. The prioritized cooperatives
represented a national investment of increasingly scarce resources. In e√ect,
these cooperative members, even more than their proletarian counterparts
on state farms, were the critical link in a new schema of national develop-
ment. They were the agents/objects of revolutionary transformation for the
Sandinistas. However, these former minifundistas and agricultural pro-
letarians would need planning, managerial, and technical skills that would
take years to acquire, in the best of circumstances, before they could direct
industrialized production. Once again, they would require proper subjection.
In the discursive terms of Rostow’s developmentalism, these peasants must

132 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

be made ready to be ready for cooperativization. Until the peasants acquired
these technical skills—implying a further transformation in consciousness—
a paternalistic relationship on the part of the state as the provider of such
skills was only to be expected. In e√ect, a recurrent problem on cooperatives
was the tendency toward state intervention in the cooperatives’ internal
organization, norms, and decisions (ciera, ‘‘Propuesta’’ 6).
It is not my intention to present peasants on cooperatives as being com-
pletely without agency in their relationship to the state. Rather, the relation-
ship was a dialectical one, fraught with power imbalances that played them-
selves out in the daily exchange of activity between the peasants and the
representatives of midinra. It was this daily tension between the particular
interests of the peasants and the universalized interest of midinra techni-
cians in the field that eventually forced a reformulation of the state’s overall
nationalist vision. For example, in 1986 I visited a group of five prioritized
co√ee cooperatives an hour outside of the city of Esteli. Three of these
neighboring cooperatives had been attacked by counterrevolutionaries a
week before, and the counterrevolutionaries had burned down a new co√ee
processing plant. This was the third in a series of five attacks on these
cooperatives that would eventually take place in the span of three years. At
one of the two cooperatives that had not been attacked on this particular
occasion, I was walking up a hill with one of the zonal midinra’s five
technical assistants to the cooperatives and a cooperative member. The tech-
nical assistant enthusiastically explained to me that this cooperative was part
of a national project to replace corn production with potatoes and diversify
consumption patterns nationally. Not only would this improve nutrition,
but it would also provide a potential new export for generating much-
needed foreign exchange, and it would replenish the soil. When we reached
the top of the hill, he looked down at the cooperative members in the valley
who were busy planting, and a look of shock came over his face. ‘‘I told you
to plant potatoes!’’ he called out in an agitated voice. Deadpan, the coopera-
tive member answered, ‘‘Oh? I thought you said corn.’’ (The cooperative
member slyly explained to me later that they had taken advantage of the
technician’s weekend away to advance on the planting.) As quickly as anx-
iety had overcome the technician, it left him. He shrugged his shoulders and
said, ‘‘Oh well, no big di√erence.’’ The technician, from his perspective of
resistance to Nicaragua’s history of dependent, monocultural development,
registered the peasants’ resistance to midinra’s modernizing vision and
accommodated it. Fortunately, this technician was much more attuned to
the discrepancies between the peasant interests and the national interests

Irresistible Seduction 133

than his superiors in Managua. He explained to me that he and the other
technicians in this area were sensitive to the top-down structure of much of
the technical assistance to cooperatives and went to great pains to accommo-
date the peasants’ opinions on production decisions. In other words, techni-
cians in daily contact with cooperative members were flexible in their en-
forcement of, and expectation for, a theoretical model of revolutionary
subjection directed from the central o≈ces of midinra. The next time I
visited these cooperatives, this twenty-one-year-old technician named Bay-
ardo had been killed in an attack by the counterrevolutionaries.
Although the cooperativized peasants were not free to set the terms of
their own revolutionary subjection, they certainly intervened at all levels of
the production process whenever possible. Some co-ops were more demo-
cratically run and autonomous than others. The newly trained midinra
representatives brought technical expertise to the project, but the peasants,
who in many cases had previously worked on the farms they now owned,
brought an expertise about the specific farms, work relations, and the local
community. We can assume that the peasantry asserted this expertise when-
ever possible, given their newly empowered status in the years following the
revolution. Nevertheless modernization through collectivization privileged
state power, and peasant agency must always be read in this context. The
peasants’ participation in implementing cooperativization could only be the
result of a complex negotiation among the state’s vision of a national de-
velopment project, its developmentalist regime of revolutionary subjection,
individual midinra representatives, and the heterogeneous national and
local visions of the peasantry.
To assess the overall success or failure of the cooperative movement in
Nicaragua would be inappropriate. Success or failure, in terms of productiv-
ity and the cooperatives’ ability to maintain long-term members, varied
tremendously. A cooperative’s viability depended on a number of factors:
location, number of members per manzana, labor discipline, members’
identification as owners, the degree of democratic practices within the coop-
erative, appropriate technical sophistication among members, access to
small plots of land on cooperatives for familial production, and, perhaps
most importantly, the degree of preexisting group consciousness/collective
agency and ideological commitment to the Sandinista nationalist vision
(ciera, ‘‘Propuesta’’ 3–7). In northeast Nicaragua, specifically in the depart-
ments of Leon and Chinandega, where favorable conditions predominated,
productivity on cotton cooperatives surpassed the levels of their state and
private competitors (ihca, ‘‘The Nicaraguan Peasantry’’ 10c). In the moun-

134 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

tainous war zone, cooperatives demonstrating a high degree of group con-
sciousness and ideological commitment to the Sandinistas became prime
targets for the counterrevolutionary attacks. In this context, it would be
incorrect to interpret their subsequent lack of productivity as ‘‘failure.’’ Be-
fore the institution of the military draft, cooperatives were also the prime
source of recruits for fighting the escalating war against the counterrevolu-
tionaries.≤≤ Thus, in addition to recruits losing their lives, this defense e√ort
also significantly limited cooperative production. In sum, the overdetermin-
ing factor in the fate of all the cooperatives was the U.S.-backed counter-
revolutionary war. In cases where cooperatives were not directly a√ected by
the aggression—through attacks by the counterrevolutionaries or recruit-
ment by the Sandinista army—they su√ered from the overall lack of re-
sources, flexibility, and time caused by the war.
Nonetheless the regime of subjection implied by midinra’s cooperative
program must be critiqued on its own terms. The cooperative program
required a peasant subject who had already undergone a ‘‘revolutionary en-
lightenment.’’ It required a peasant who was predisposed to collectivization
and who was committed to a vision of modernization, one who placed the
needs of national development above the immediate domestic needs of the
autonomous family and the community, one who viewed the state as an ally
in this development—and, finally, one who was willing to die for this na-
tionalist vision. And so we see that it is not Rostow’s ‘‘reactive nationalist’’
required by the Sandinista cooperative vision of agriculture, after all, but the
‘‘guiding angel’’ from Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare: the angel ‘‘who has fallen
into the zone,’’ the flexible, ethical, and highly mobile agent/object of his
own development (39). In other words, it required a peasant subject who
had already attained the transcendent conviction presupposed by Guevara
in his own transformation and repeatedly projected onto the rural sub-
alterns in his diaries. In addition, revolutionary peasant subjection under
the Sandinistas required the androgynous tendresse found in Guevara’s
diaries, as the implied peasant cooperative member was su√used both with
love of nation and a willingness to sacrifice for the nation. And yet, as we
saw in chapter 3, even among the most committed of revolutionaries, such
complete and determinant transformation of consciousness was impossible
to sustain, and such revolutionary tendresse inevitably turned into the tyr-
anny of patriarchy.
And so it should not surprise that the beneficiary of cooperativization, its
implied agent/object, was almost invariably a male. While there are no state
figures on the number of female cooperative members, there were very, very

Irresistible Seduction 135

few. Although women worked on cooperatives alongside men, women were
‘‘represented’’ in decision making through their husbands, fathers, or
brothers. Women were not listed as members on property titles, nor did
they have voting power within the collective. Generally, women who were
members had been granted membership as a reward for their husbands
dying in combat. During the debates and town hall meetings that took place
around the drafting of the national constitution in 1985 and 1986, women’s
representatives from the National Assembly, from cooperatives, from the
atc, and from the fsln-a≈liated national women’s organization amnlae
repeatedly petitioned the party and the National Assembly to make land-
ownership a constitutional right for women, but to no avail. During the
same visit that I made to the cooperative outside El Cua in 1989, I asked a
group of women which party they were planning to vote for in the upcoming
national elections. Quickly, one woman said, with feigned indi√erence,
‘‘I’m not voting. Remember, I’m not a member of this cooperative.’’ This
was received with a≈rming laughter and nods from the other women in the
group.
Any analysis of cooperativization under the 1981 agrarian reform law
must recognize the limited scope of this law. Only 33,000 peasants received
land under this reform, and some of these were members of the permanent
proletariat who had worked on the private farms before they were expropri-
ated. But even if we assume that all of this land went to the dispossessed or
land poor, this figure represents only one-sixth of the minifundista and
itinerant proletariat population who were in need.≤≥ After five years of revo-
lution, only 7 percent of the nation’s arable land had been redistributed to
these peasants, a relatively small amount. The vast majority of this popula-
tion failed to benefit from the 1981 agrarian reform law. In certain cases,
land reform created class stratification among the peasantry, in that those
benefiting from these reforms, especially on export-oriented cooperatives,
would hire the remaining disenfranchised peasants as seasonal and part-
time labor (ciera, ‘‘Propuesta’’ 6). In part, the slow pace of redistribution
was due to the minifundistas’ and itinerant proletarians’ resistance to coop-
eratives, but it also reflected the Sandinistas’ contradictory reluctance to (1)
alienate the private sector, or (2) recognize the potential that small, private
holdings might o√er not only in terms of economic development but also in
terms of political support for the revolutionary process. With the bulk of
production still in the hands of medium- and large-scale private production
or the state, the fsln moved too cautiously in their redistribution e√orts.

136 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

Landownership and National Identity, 1985–1986

On my first visit to the o≈ce of midinra’s Center for the Study and Inves-
tigation of Agrarian Reform (ciera) in January 1985, an investigator,
Freddy Quesada, explained to me that the standard of living for the minifun-
dista and itinerant proletarian had been drastically reduced over the pre-
vious three years. During our conversation, a jeep pulled up outside the
window, and a man dressed in army fatigues and a white T-shirt got out and
entered the o≈ce, interrupting our conversation with the agitated pro-
nouncement ‘‘Freddy, the peasants in Boaco and Chontales are becoming
counterrevolutionaries.’’ He had just returned from a two-week investiga-
tion for ciera of Nicaragua’s central mountainous region, comprising the
departments of Boaco and Chontales. Freddy Quesada was not terribly sur-
prised. He answered, ‘‘¡Se puede jugar con la limozna, pero no con el
santo!’’ [You can fool around with the alms, but not with the saint!]. I asked
him to explain what he meant by this, and he responded that the fsln could
a√ord to make mistakes in policy that a√ected the urban populations be-
cause it was unlikely that they would move to the mountains and join the
counterrevolutionaries; however, the dissatisfied sectors of the peasantry
were more likely to join, and they formed a more critical proportion of the
country’s population. Quesada’s observation reveals that early in the revolu-
tionary process, some members of the lower echelons within midinra
were well aware of the flaws in agricultural and agrarian reform policy.
Unfortunately, it took some time for midinra’s investigators in the field to
convey the severity of the situation in the countryside to Managua policy
makers.
As stated earlier, pricing and marketing policies intended to benefit the
minifundistas and small-holding peasants had failed because of unforeseen
di≈culties in their implementation. By 1985, the negative impact of these
policies on this sector of the peasantry was severe. A comparison of prices
for rural and manufactured goods best illustrates the degree of this crisis.
While o≈cial producer prices for rural goods (rice, beans, corn) had in-
creased sevenfold since 1978, the price of a pair of rubber boots had in-
creased 28 times, and the price of a pair of pants had increased 140 times
(Conroy 211). One reason for the disparity in prices was the lack of domestic
industry and the scarcity of foreign exchange. Most of the products used by
the minifundistas (fertilizers, machetes, wire fencing, rubber boots) were
not domestically produced and had to be imported. Thus, with the allocation

Irresistible Seduction 137

of scarce foreign exchange to agro-export production and to long-term,
capital-intensive state agro-industry, there was little left for importation or
subsidization of the goods necessary for basic food production, the domain
of the minifundista and the small-holding peasant (J. Collins, What Di√er-
ence 185, 201). Consequently, the costs of these goods skyrocketed, making it
impossible to meet production costs without resorting to the black market.
There is another reason for the unequal terms of trade between the
countryside and the city. The majority of the original fsln leadership was
forged in the urban underground, from student activists attending the uni-
versities along the Pacific coast. Thus their analysis emerged from the per-
spective of the popular urban classes who had provided crucial support for
the revolution and had su√ered the worst e√ects of Somocista repression.
The Sandinistas were rightly concerned with immediately improving the
purchasing power of these classes; however, they did so by artificially sup-
pressing prices of domestic foodstu√s. This policy dovetailed with the classi-
cal development dictate that the exploitation of peasant production facili-
tates urban industrialization. To maintain low wages in the cities around
primary industrialization projects and the popular support from the urban
population, the fsln subsidized food costs. However, since the Sandinistas
were not inclined to resort to violence as a means of coercion, they were
unable to force the minifundistas to stay on their land or keep the itinerant
proletarians in the countryside. The dispossessed and land-poor peasants
flocked to the cities, where they could buy staples for less than it cost to
produce them, benefit from extended urban state services, and enjoy the
large profit margins of petty trading (Utting 134–35). The impact of migra-
tion on basic grains production was palpable. Whereas in 1981 production
of beans, rice, and corn was on the rise, by mid-1984 production of these
crops was on the steady decline again (ciera, Cifras 89, 91, 93).
The increase of counterrevolutionary activity in the countryside contrib-
uted to migration and decline in productivity; however, agrarian reform,
pricing, and marketing policies contributed to the rise in counterrevolution-
ary activity. Peasants migrating to the cities were not the immediate con-
cern, although it appeared as such to the urbanite. Of greater consequence
were those peasants who were not migrating and were thus unable to re-
produce themselves from their labor. Where did they go? Estimates on the
number of armed counterrevolutionaries operating inside the country at
this time fluctuated between 6,000 and 10,000, depending on whether the
source was the fsln or the U.S. Embassy. However, after the war ended,
estimates on the number of counterrevolutionaries and their families in

138 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

Costa Rica and Honduras in need of relocation ranged from 28,000 to
40,000. Even in 1985 it had become obvious to all but the most idealistic
that this was no longer strictly a mercenary force. These counterrevolution-
aries were mostly of Nicaraguan peasant extraction. While this is a fraction
of the rural eap, counterrevolutionary operations in the countryside re-
quired the tacit complicity of many more. It is impossible to assess the
degree of the minifundistas’ and itinerant proletarians’ political commit-
ment to counterrevolutionary ideology—to distinguish coercion and need
from fervor. Nevertheless, they were there in numbers. Leon Trotsky, writ-
ing about the transition period in the Soviet Union, once declared: ‘‘politi-
cally, the civil war is the struggle between the proletariat in opposition to the
counterrevolutionaries for the conquest of the peasantry’’ (ciera, Cifras
cover sheet). Such a war was taking place in Nicaragua.
midinra’s Work Plan for 1985 reveals the sudden and strategic changes
in agrarian reform policy that took place in that year. O≈cial projections for
land redistribution for 1985, made in 1984, show that the ministry intended
to continue agrarian reform at the previous sleepy pace. It proposed that 2
percent of the nation’s arable land be expropriated from large-scale produc-
tion; of this 2 percent, 110,000 manzanas would go directly into cooperative
production, benefiting 4,000 peasant families, while 10,000 manzanas
would go to 400 peasant families as private property. The state sector, which
had dropped down to 19 percent in 1984, would remain constant (cahi,
‘‘Agrarian Reform’’ 4). The projections are worth noting as a comparison
with the pattern of distribution that actually came to pass. The fsln faced
deteriorating support from the minifundistas and the itinerant proletariat
nationwide. In the war zones, this deterioration registered as counterrevolu-
tionary activity. Along the Pacific coast, especially in Masaya, it registered as
political apathy (cahi, ‘‘Masaya Peasants’’ 3).≤∂ The war forced the fsln’s
hand: maintain a contradictory alliance with the agricultural bourgeoisie
and a commitment to cooperativization and lose the countryside, or aban-
don the bourgeoisie agro-export production, and previous positions on the
minifundistas’ and itinerant proletarians’ preference for individual owner-
ship, in favor of food production and the hope of winning back these sectors.
The fact is, however, given the country’s economic conditions, the fsln had
no ‘‘choice.’’ The war e√ort required a subsistence economy.
Jaime Wheelock, the director of midinra, announced in June 1985 that
emergency expropriations would take place in Masaya and that expropriated
lands would be redistributed in individual holdings (cahi, ‘‘Masaya Peas-
ants’’ 1). Of the 108,000 manzanas actually distributed in that year, 47,000

Irresistible Seduction 139

were given in private holdings to 6,500 dispossessed or land-poor peasant
families. The remaining 61,000 manzanas were distributed to 5,000 peas-
ants in cooperative holdings. While the balance of land still favored the coop-
erative sector, a change in policy was evident. In January 1986, the legislature
passed a revised agrarian reform law. The new law allowed midinra to
expropriate idle or abandoned holdings of under 500 manzanas on the
Pacific coast, of under 1,000 manzanas in the mountainous regions. This did
away with the protection of nonproductive medium-holding producers un-
der the 1981 law (cahi, ‘‘Reactions to Agrarian Reform’’ 1–2).
During the next three years, significant reductions in landholdings oc-
curred, not only in the private sector but in the app as well.≤∑ The state no
longer had the resources to subsidize ine≈cient production in any sector.
Thirty-three thousand peasants received 550,000 manzanas of these lands.
While these overall figures are comparable to the figures from 1981 to 1984,
the distribution patterns were radically altered. Sixteen thousand minifun-
distas and itinerant proletarians received land in cooperative holdings,
while 17,000 of these peasants received land in individual holdings. By the
end of 1988, roughly 80,000 peasants had benefited from agrarian reform,
capturing 16.5 percent of the total national arable land.
The Sandinistas defeated the counterrevolutionaries militarily in 1989.
However, in February 1990 the Sandinistas lost the national elections for
the presidency and the legislature to the U.S.-backed conservative coalition,
the Union of National Opposition (uno). A pious perspective, exploiting the
benefits of hindsight, would admonish the fsln for doing too little, too late.
Certainly, the arrogant delay in responding to the dispossessed and land-
poor peasantry’s interests undermined the Sandinistas’ support among a
crucial rural base. This contributed to the decline in food production, which
in turn led to a decline in support from an urban base. This negligence on
the part of the fsln had disastrous implications that cannot be ignored.
However, the narrative I have recounted here is itself partial. To focus on the
Sandinistas’ seduction by the paradigm of development in their approach to
the peasantry, I have excluded the multifaceted destruction by the U.S.-
backed war and minimized the dead to marginal references in the chapter.
Rather than pious observations, therefore, I will o√er more useful ones.

For the Prisoners of Hope

Regardless of the tarnished, strategic motivations behind the 1985 change in

agrarian reform policy, this change registered a qualitative transformation

140 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

in consciousness on the part of the leadership of fsln, from midinra
policy makers in Managua to the technicians in the field. The changes in
policy were complicit with military considerations; nevertheless, a funda-
mental redefinition of the fsln’s national project took place within the span
of six years. Given the uneven productivity on app and cooperative holdings,
the Sandinistas were forced to recognize that the most dynamic production
of surplus would come from small, private holdings in the hands of the
peasantry. Thus they took a risk in radically redefining their understanding
of the minifundista and itinerant proletariat economic formation. Arguably,
the dispossessed and land-poor peasantry’s interest in private plots of land
was in tune with a hegemonic and individualistic consciousness privileging
private property that predated the revolution. The Sandinistas were ada-
mantly opposed to abetting this ‘‘petit bourgeois’’ consciousness by giving
away land in private parcels. Paradoxically, because of the need to maintain
agro-export production, the Sandinistas reinforced this bourgeois posi-
tionality in the other sectors of the rural population—the medium- and
small-holding peasants—with their generous incentive packages. This seg-
ment of the rural population benefited enormously during the Sandinista
years, whether or not they politically supported the Sandinistas. Unlike the
terratenientes, these medium- and small-scale producers did not liquidate
the capital invested in their farms. They simply were not wealthy enough to
move to Miami and reproduce their same standard of living there. Unlike
the minifundistas, they were in a position to benefit from agricultural incen-
tives and to at least withstand the harmful impact of some policies. By 1986,
however, the fsln fell back from its attempt to impose from above an ideal
consciousness on the minifundistas and the itinerant proletarians through
the cooperative program or state farms. In e√ect, cooperativization could
not bring about revolutionary consciousness because its successful imple-
mentation necessitated that a commitment to the revolution, to a particular
vision of modernization, and to the national community be in place before
the cooperative was even formed, as discussed previously. Until this 1986
sea change in agrarian reform policy, the minifundistas and the itinerant
proletarians had been judged according to a regime of subjection that read
these peasants as a ‘‘prerevolutionary’’ moment of consciousness in a dou-
ble sense. As a social formation they were considered to be at a prior stage of
development to the higher formation of collective agency implicit in the
cooperatives and state farms. Yet, like Guevara and Payeras before them, the
Sandinistas simultaneously projected an organic predisposition to revolu-
tionary consciousness and agency onto the land-poor peasants. It was then

Irresistible Seduction 141

the role of the party, like guardian angels, to elicit this consciousness from
them through midinra’s enlightened agricultural policy, a consciousness
that, after all, corresponded to a ‘‘natural’’ course of evolution for these
agents/objects anyway.
In the end, the fsln stopped assuming this paternalistic role and did
decide to focus on strengthening the minifundistas and itinerant proletariat
as private producers in the hopes that these sectors would be able to respond
to a call for revolutionary transformation from a more secure economic
position. In a 1986 diagnosis of the Nicaraguan cooperative movement,
ciera concluded, ‘‘The distribution of land in individual holdings could be
preferable for various reasons, in certain situations. Redistribution in this
form does not signify an abandonment of the cooperative movement, but
rather provides a solid base for future cooperative development’’ (ciera,
‘‘Propuesta’’ 4). As this passage suggests, of the 17,000 peasant subalterns
awarded lands in individual holdings under the third agrarian reform law
(1986), 10,000 of them joined some form of cooperative association: either
credit and service cooperatives, or work cooperatives, or dead-furrow coop-
eratives. This reveals the dialectical nature of the transformation of con-
sciousness that took place. The proclivity toward cooperative associations
demonstrated by these producers would not necessarily have been as dra-
matic without the predominance of the cooperative ideology for the pre-
vious four years.
In light of these transformations, how do we explain the Sandinista
electoral defeat? Behind agrarian reform policies lay the supposition that
ownership of land (in any form) would lead to an identification of the
dispossessed and land-poor peasants with the nationalist vision of those
implementing the reform. The peasant ownership of land was mediated by
the nationalist project from the Sandinista perspective. That is to say, the
fsln assumed that the acceptance of land would implicate the peasant in a
model of development predicated on the transformation—‘‘transcendence’’
—of his or her subject position. However, these sectors of the rural popula-
tion were never brought into the decision-making process over this develop-
ment plan because of the fsln’s basic distrust of the peasant formations.
For the first six to seven years of the revolution, the Sandinista national
development project was devoutly modernizing, to pull the land-poor peas-
antry into large-scale agro-industry—which may have been progressive in a
global context as a response to dependent development, but was regressive
in the local context. The minifundistas, the itinerant proletarians, and even
the cooperativized sectors of the peasantry su√ered the negative impacts of

142 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

Sandinista production policies for many years under this nationalist vision.
The increase in land turnovers to private farmers was not accompanied by a
parallel increase in participation in development decision making. Receiv-
ing land from the government implicated the land-poor peasant in a vision
of development, but it did so without granting the peasant any say in the
development project. Therefore, when I interviewed peasants who had re-
ceived private parcels of land after 1987, they were hardly filled with a sense
of gratitude. Most were guarded, if not openly hostile, in their attitude
toward midinra and the party. There was a common assumption among
those I interviewed that they had won the land from a recalcitrant state,
rather than through ‘‘their’’ revolutionary government, and they felt an
uncertainty about their future relationship to the Sandinistas.
It seems clear that ownership of land was not enough to ensure identifica-
tion with the fsln, even on the cooperatives. Meanwhile the counterrevolu-
tion appealed to conservative elements of peasant consciousness with its
emphasis on the church, respect for private property, and, most importantly,
autonomy for the producers; in other words, ‘‘no more interventionist state
policies that end up hurting more than helping the peasant.’’ This held sway
not only with the minifundistas and the itinerant proletarians, who were in
the most precarious economic position, but with members of cooperatives,
those who presumably benefited the most from the revolutionary process as
the earliest recipients of lands and services. When I visited El Cua, Mata-
galpa, in the summer of 1989, I interviewed a local unag representative and
asked him if production on the cooperatives had improved significantly now
that the war had ended in that area. ‘‘Production is much better,’’ he replied,
‘‘now that they [cooperative members] are sleeping at night.’’ I had lived in
Nicaragua long enough to know what this meant. ‘‘Counterrevolutionaries
on production cooperatives?’’ I asked. Amused by my naïveté, he pulled out a
list of the twenty-five local cooperatives and pointed to the ten or twelve that
had had members in the counterrevolutionary forces.
In 1979 Sandinista policy makers correctly assessed Nicaragua’s econ-
omy as an export-orientated, dependent economy. In the fsln’s attempt to
remedy this situation, to practice revolutionary socialist development in
Nicaragua, we find an implied regime of revolutionary subjection that
shared many characteristics with development discourse’s model for hu-
man transformation. midinra and the fsln viewed the peasant formation
as a precursor to higher levels of political, economic, and social conscious-
ness. Rather than accept these sectors of the peasantry as historically given
social formations and basing policy accordingly, the Sandinistas viewed the

Irresistible Seduction 143

minifundista and itinerant proletarian formations, if not as ‘‘backwards,’’
then certainly as precursors to the preferred model of economic develop-
ment. In the Sandinista imaginary of revolutionary development, the peas-
ant subalterns existed in a mythological past tense or future tense, but not in
the ‘‘real,’’ material sense of the present. Given this, the Sandinistas wrongly
assessed the desires and interests of these peasant classes and extended the
peasantry two options: cooperativization or proletarianization. These peas-
ants, for the most part, lacked either the interest or the possibility to choose
either.
Partha Chatterjee has shed some light on the reason for the Sandinistas’
assumptions about development and the peasantry. In Nationalist Thought
and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? Chatterjee considers the for-
mation of twentieth-century Third World nationalist thought as an explicit
response to the division of the world into ‘‘developed’’ and ‘‘underdevel-
oped’’ regions. In Chatterjee’s analysis, the term ‘‘underdevelopment’’ diag-
noses more than an economic condition; it implicitly refers to the epistemic
condition of a country, as well. Because the ideology of development colo-
nizes at the level of representation as well as the level of policy, the e√ects of
underdevelopment are not only material but also social and psychological.
Thus various classes in these countries rally nationalism(s) to remedy their
prescribed psychosocial and economic condition of ‘‘underdevelopment.’’
Through his analysis of India’s struggle for national independence, Chatter-
jee identifies two prominent strands of Third World nationalisms mobilized
by Third World peoples to subvert the developed/underdeveloped dichot-
omy. Chatterjee stresses that the two types of nationalism often occur simul-
taneously, acting at times in concert and at other times antagonistically.
Progressive bourgeois nationalism, represented in India by Nehru, is eager to
displace foreign economic interests but is committed to the project of mod-
ernization and asserts the country’s ability to ‘‘achieve’’ development in
Western terms. Conservative mass-based nationalism, represented in India
by Gandhi, is eager to displace exploitative imperialist elements and their
internal allies but resists modernization and rejects Western development
models to greater or lesser degrees. While this abbreviated discussion may
oversimplify Chatterjee’s position on Third World nationalisms, I want to
illustrate how he brings out the divisions and tensions in Third World
nationalisms so often represented in the West as uniform. From Chatter-
jee’s perspective, capitalists and Marxists often share a commitment to a
particular mode of development that leads them to similar conclusions and
political collusion, though these two groups of nationalists are, in the final

144 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

analysis, ideologically opposed. For example, capitalists are likely to see
recalcitrant mass-based or popular formations, such as the dispossessed or
land-poor peasantry, as ‘‘backward elements,’’ while Marxists may view
them as ‘‘precapitalist,’’ or, as in the case of the Sandinistas, as ‘‘prerevolu-
tionary,’’ representing an ‘‘incomplete’’ process of proletarianization (Chat-
terjee preface). It then becomes the mission of classical development theory
and socialist revolutionary development to complete this process and bring
these elements into productive history by e√ecting a transformation of con-
sciousness from the top down.
The case of the Sandinista nationalist project as exemplified by agricul-
tural policy fits within Chatterjee’s analysis of Third World nationalisms.
While committed to a mass-based liberation movement on the one hand,
the fsln was also committed to a large-scale industrialized agro-export
economy as the means of overcoming Nicaragua’s economic dependence
on the United States. These two visions for the nation—mass-based libera-
tion and further industrialization—did not always coincide. Chatterjee’s
model of heterogeneous and contradictory nationalist visions occurring in
the same geographic space usefully frames the tensions the Sandinistas
encountered in their model of revolutionary development in agriculture. In
their conceptualization and implementation of agricultural policy, the San-
dinistas encountered resistance not only from the landed elites but often
from the social group they intended to benefit: the land-poor peasantry.
Chatterjee’s theorization extracts us from the ideological gridlock in which
capitalist development and revolutionary socialist development are viewed
as diametrically opposed phenomena, allowing us to locate the complicity
between the two in their commitment to remarkably similar regimes of
subjection. In his analysis of India, Chatterjee also helps us to understand
how the Sandinistas, as progressive nationalists with obvious Marxist-
Leninist theoretical bases, could have enjoyed so much mass-based support
among the peasantry at the beginning of the revolution and have lost this
support by as early as 1985. The Sandinistas’ resistance to a significant
redistribution of land among the peasant classes was due to their belief in a
classic developmental paradigm. The fsln identified the itinerant pro-
letariat and minifundista formations with preproletariat or precollective
consciousness and interpreted their desires for land as petit bourgeois aspi-
rations toward private property. The Sandinistas hoped to leapfrog these
formations through an acceleration of proletarianization on state farms or
collectivization on cooperatives. Had the Sandinistas been truer to their
materialist training in their analysis, then perhaps they would have resisted

Irresistible Seduction 145

grafting this ideologically determined development narrative onto peasant
consciousness and instead based their analysis on the peasants as constitut-
ing part of the present tense of the nation.
In the interest of the next revolutionary attempt at improving the quality
of life of rural communities, I believe it necessary to critique the paternalis-
tic and narrowly modernistic attitude toward the peasantry so often as-
sumed by revolutionary states under the guise of benevolent e√orts toward
the development of the peasants into productive members of a nation. This
benevolent development can prove deadly to everyone involved. James C.
Scott, who studies everyday forms of resistance among the peasantry, has
suggested for both conventional and socialist development schemes that
‘‘the radical solution [to development] . . . raises as many problems as it
solves. Only revolutionary victory and the structural change it brings, they
argue, can engender true participation and economic justice. Here the his-
tory of socialist revolutions is not encouraging. In most cases such revolu-
tions have brought to power regimes that are, if anything, more successful
in extracting resources from their subjects and regimenting their lives’’
(‘‘Everyday’’ 3–4). And furthermore:

Under state socialism . . . all the vital decisions about commodity

prices, the prices of agricultural inputs, credit, cropping patterns,
and—under collectivization—the working day and the wage, are direct
matters of state policy. Conflicts that might have been seen as private
sector matters, with the state not directly implicated, become, under
state socialism, direct clashes with the state. The peasant meets the
state as employer, buyer, supplier, moneylender, foreman, paymaster,
and tax collector. . . . Though it may occasionally improve his or her
welfare, the aim of state socialism is invariably to reduce the auton-
omy of a strata previously classified as petite bourgeoisie. The loss of
autonomy by itself has been a source of ferocious resistance. (‘‘Every-
day’’ 15)

I have tried to document the reasons for, and methods of resistance

among, the peasantry to the fsln’s revolutionary development. As Scott
suggests, the fsln’s development model intervened in every aspect of the
minifundistas’ and itinerant proletarians’ lives, without ever granting these
sectors of the peasantry the political means for negotiating the terms of this
intervention. The land-poor peasantry fell out of the revolutionary govern-
ment’s corporativist loop. Representatives of the pro-Sandinista unag saw
their job as that of defending the rights of the medium- and small-scale

146 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

producer, and given how much more powerful these sectors are today than
in 1979, they did so quite successfully. The Sandinista atc, while more
sympathetic with the plight of the land-poor peasants, was primarily con-
cerned with labor conditions on state and private farms. In ten years the
Sandinistas never established an equivalent organization to represent the
rights and interests of the minifundistas and the itinerant proletarians
within the party.≤∏ Consequently the dispossessed and land-poor peasants
had no way of lobbying the Sandinistas from the inside. Of course, this
oversight was symptomatic of the party’s fundamental disbelief in the con-
sciousness of these two sectors as a viable or rational form of revolutionary
consciousness.
The Sandinistas were working with idealized revolutionary subjects in
agriculture. There was ‘‘the patriotic private producer,’’ ‘‘the state farm
worker,’’ and ‘‘the cooperative member.’’ The Sandinistas believed that the
state, in one way or another, could successfully direct all these idealized
citizen-subjects toward technified, rationalized production units. The dis-
possessed and land-poor peasants were outside or prior to this evolutionary
chain of rationalized and enlightened consciousness. Nothing illustrates
this better than the Sandinistas’ failure to create a political organization to
directly represent peasant interests to the party. The Sandinistas believed
that land in the hands of the land-poor peasants would lead to irrational
production. They believed the peasantry would revert to production for
consumption with little or no surplus, and this would lead to a precipitous
drop in the production of export crops. Ultimately they feared that this type
of production would escape the control of the state and their national plan of
modernization. I am not suggesting that the Sandinistas should have aban-
doned all e√orts at production for export and modernization in favor of
some utopian pastoral vision. However, the Sandinistas could have negoti-
ated between their own progressive vanguardist nationalist vision and the
peasants’ ‘‘conservative,’’ mass-based—but not necessarily antirevolutionary
—nationalist vision of economic development. If the Sandinistas had not
considered the peasant formation as regressive, they might have been able
to direct political and economic resources toward incorporating this level of
peasant production into a revolutionary vision of national development
early on in the process. Perhaps then the startling revolutionary vision of the
Sandinistas that emerged in 1979 would have been more viable.

Irresistible Seduction 147

 5
Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’: Menchú

and the Performance of Subaltern Conciencia

What is at stake in constructing the function of representation in the testimonio may be

nothing less than reestablishing the parameters of democracy’s function within Latin Ameri-
can society at large and of suggesting, perhaps, that representation—at least in the impure,
post-modern sense of the term . . . need not be an alienating marker of the distance to be
traversed in the struggle for emancipation, but rather the ineluctable form that all emancipa-
tory practices must take.
—Santiago Colás, ‘‘What’s Wrong with Representation?’’

The temporal paradox of the subject is such that, of necessity, we must lose the perspective of
a subject already formed in order to account for our own becoming. That becoming is no
simple or continuous a√air, but an uneasy practice of repetition and its risks, compelled yet
incomplete, wavering on the horizon of social being.
—Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power

Colás’s estimation of the importance of representation in testimonial litera-

ture is central to this book’s project, to interrogate revolutionary regimes of
subjection in an e√ort to understand why post–World War II revolutionary
movements and leaders misrepresented the constituencies they sought to
emancipate. Colás suggests that understanding how representation func-
tions in the literary genre of testimonio can elucidate how political represen-
tation might function in an emancipatory project beyond the defeated revo-
lutionary politics of the late twentieth century, and certainly beyond the
current parameters of liberal democracy and neoliberal economics. In the
first two parts of this book, I have considered how political and figural
representations of the subaltern were coterminous endeavors in post–
World War II revolutionary projects that imagined the emancipatory trans-
formation not only of national economies and cultures but also of subaltern
subjectivities and consciousness. The third part of this book considers how
subaltern subjects, swept up in the misperceptions of these emancipatory
movements, nevertheless seek to rewrite these representations of them-
selves from within a revolutionary project.
In chapter 4, I interpreted the Sandinistas’ misapprehension of peasant
desire in their attempt to represent subaltern interests in agricultural policy.
I argued their failure in this regard was a consequence of the party’s attempt
to institute a teleological regime of subjection through agrarian reform that
was predicated on the transcendence of peasant specificity, interpreted by
the Sandinista party as premodern. In chapter 3, I analyzed the revolution-
ary autobiographies of Ernesto ‘‘Che’’ Guevara and Mario Payeras, suggest-
ing that the racial residue of colonialist desire underwrites these protago-
nists’ self-representation and, more significantly, their representation of the
rural subalterns who were the horizon of their revolutionary activity. Acting
out of their own sense of compromised masculinity, these revolutionary
icons often feminized and primitivized the peasant or indigenous subaltern
in their representation of the requirements for transformation, conscious-
ness, and agency. Together, in their political and literary e√orts to represent
subaltern subjects, these post–World War II revolutionaries paradoxically
adhered to the developmentalist model of normative subjectivity and na-
tional sovereignty put forth by institutions such as the World Bank, the imf,
and usaid in the service of the Cold War. Through her testimonio, Rigo-
berta Menchú wrests the (Western) terms of literary and political represen-
tation from these revolutionaries, precisely in the hopes of refiguring what
Colás calls ‘‘the ineluctable form that all emancipatory practices must take.’’
Her testimonio, I argue, is a performative intervention into the theorization
of revolutionary subjectivity in the Americas—an intervention which at once
challenges revolutionary developmentalism and risks activating an ethno-
nationalist developmentalism of its own.

‘‘Wavering on the Horizon of Social Being’’

In this chapter, I place Menchú’s text within the ‘‘extraliterary’’ context that
produced it, for the richness of this context has often been reduced to
questions of literary protocol by earlier critics who theorize the genre of
testimonio within the fields of American studies and Latin American stud-
ies.∞ The term ‘‘extraliterary’’ is borrowed from Alberto Moreiras’s ‘‘The
Aura of Testimonio.’’ Moreiras uses the term as a marker for the ‘‘real,’’ or
that which marks the ‘‘referential limits of the literary’’: ‘‘I am not suggesting
that testimonio can exist outside the literary; only that the specificity of testi-
monio, and its particular position in the current cultural configuration,

152 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

depend on an extraliterary stance or moment, which we could also under-
stand as a moment of arrest of all symbolization in a direct appeal to the non-
exemplary, but still singular, pain beyond any possibility of representation.
Testimonio is testimonio because it suspends the literary at the very same
time that it constitutes itself as a literary act: as literature, it is a liminal event
opening onto a nonrepresentational, drastically indexical order of experi-
ence’’ (195). Extending Moreiras, I suggest that the extraliterary context in
Menchú’s text is not only ‘‘the pain beyond any possibility of representation’’
but also the theater of Realpolitik, a theater in which Menchú actively partici-
pates, in part through her performance of testimonial acts. Moreiras insists
that testimonio will always exceed literary representation, that it will exceed
generic and disciplinary concerns. I place Menchú’s text within the context
of a historically particular emancipatory project to illustrate one such mo-
ment of its excess as testimonial literature. Thus I will not put Menchú in
dialogue with Franz Boas, Toni Morrison, or the boom-writers, as testimonio
critics before me have done. Rather, I will put Menchú in dialogue with
revolutionaries such as Mario Payeras and Ricardo Ramirez (nom de guerre
Rolando Moran), leaders of the Ejercito Guerrillero de los Pobres (Guerrilla
Army of the Poor—egp) and her comrades in arms. Menchú’s text responds
to the egp’s theorization of the indigenous people’s revolutionary concien-
cia, especially their portrayal of the guerrilla as the agent actualizing the
revolutionary potential of indigenous peasant subalterns.
David Stoll, in his sardonically titled Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All
Poor Guatemalans, repeatedly characterizes Menchú as little more than a
mouthpiece for the egp, as a political patsy who fabricated much of her story
in order to bolster the guerrilla army’s image abroad and thereby prolong a
costly war at home (Stoll xiv–xv, 11–12, 39–40, 192–93, 203–4, 246). In
particular, he faults Menchú for subordinating ethnic identity to fabricated
class identity in her narrative. According to Stoll, Menchú’s class-based
representation of her community was strictly in keeping with the egp’s
agenda of portraying itself as the defender of an exploited peasant class.≤ In
his rush to portray Menchú as an egp dupe, Stoll entirely misses the cri-
tique of the egp’s estimation of indigenous subaltern agency embedded in
Menchú’s text. Far from mimicking the doctrinaire positions of a misguided
guerrilla movement, Menchú challenges Moran’s and Payeras’s portrayal of
indigenous subaltern conciencia. Rather than sacrifice ethnic identity to
class interests, as Stoll accuses, Menchú’s text demonstrates how the revolu-
tionary transformation of conciencia emerges from an indigenous identity
that is produced by colonialism and capitalism, and that is capable of an

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 153

integrated class, racial, and gender analysis. However, Menchú does not
simply write against revolutionary leaders like Moran and Payeras. Rather,
she is engaged in a critical reevaluation of their interpretation of revolution-
ary agency. Menchú retheorizes the subjectivity of the revolutionary agent
from an indigenous and gendered position.
Rigoberta Menchú, as the testimonial subject of Me llamo Rigoberta Men-
chú y así me nacío la conciencia, answered multiple interpellative hails to
revolutionary conciencia, some issued by her comrades, others issued prior
to the guerrilla’s arrival in the region. She tells us in her autobiography that
these hailings even preceded her physical birth. Her testimonio, with its
narrative description of multiple moments of consciousness birth, reenacts
these scenes of interpellation for the reader. In e√ect, her testimonio is a
multilayer performance of interpellative hailings. In addition to describing
various interpellative moments, the act of testifying is itself an interpellative
performance: the interviewer compels her to confess to the birth of her con-
ciencia as an indigenous subaltern woman, and the very reiterative nature of
the confession—her repeated admission of the birth of her conciencia—
constitutes her as such a subject. In her testimonio Menchú restages the
many scenes of her own subjection to revolutionary conciencia and also
performs an interpellative hailing of her own: she stages a repeated inter-
pellative call to the (Western) reader to subject herself to revolutionary con-
ciencia as well. In addition to this political call to the general reader, Men-
chú’s testimonio stages an intellectual call for this particular reader, calling
me into a space for retheorizing revolutionary conciencia.
Thus two underlying questions structure my reading. First, can inter-
pellation ever slip or misfire, exceeding the bounds of normativity? Second,
if it can misfire, does the genre of testimonio function as a moment of such
slippage, as revolutionary interpellation? Is it what Judith Butler calls an
‘‘uneasy practice of repetition and its risks’’ in this chapter’s epigraph, one
that hails a subject into a new mode of ‘‘wavering on the horizon of social
being’’? To proceed, it is necessary to enter the temporal paradox suggested
in this passage quoted from Butler’s The Psychic Life of Power. To determine
whether interpellation might slip or misfire, we must first begin by deter-
mining if testimonio might itself function as revolutionary interpellation.
That is, how might testimonio embody interpellative excess? Stating tenta-
tively what is by no means obvious—that Menchú’s interpellation exceeded
the bounds of normativity—we must lose sight of the apparently fully con-
stituted, resistive subject in order to turn our attention to the means by
which we come to ‘‘know’’ this subject, the testimonial form. It behooves us

154 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

to reexamine testimonio criticism, a body of criticism enthralled by testi-
monio’s novelty as a form of cultural expression, and by its potential for
democratic representation.

Autobiographical Desire and the Testimonio Critic

Menchú’s as-told-to narrative has repeatedly served as the template for

critics defining the conventions of testimonio, as the genre’s most represen-
tative example (Jara and Vidal; Sommer, ‘‘Not Just a Personal Story’’; Bev-
erley, ‘‘The Margin at the Center’’; Gugelberger and Kearney; Yúdice; Zim-
merman). Georg Gugelberger, in his introduction to the anthology The Real
Thing, delineates three stages in the development of testimonio criticism
over the last two decades, each stage challenging and revising the assump-
tions of the previous one (4–5). Yet in each stage, Menchú’s narrative re-
mains a constant in the critical reevaluation of the genre.≥ The nature of the
authorial voice in Menchú’s text—who is speaking, for whom is she speak-
ing, and to whom is she speaking—has been the subject of much debate in
testimonio criticism and has fundamentally shaped the theory of authorial
voice in testimonio in general. It is as if the entire future of the genre hinges
on the question of representation in Menchú’s text, as if without her text
there could be no such thing as testimonial criticism. If, as Colás has sug-
gested, the question of representation is as central to the future of demo-
cratic change in the Americas as to the future of the genre of testimonio in
the Western academy, it behooves us to consider why Menchú’s narrative
becomes central to the representation of the genre (171). Thus, to arrive at a
discussion of how Menchú’s testimonio alters the possibilities for inter-
pellation within projects of revolutionary transformation, I address the con-
struction of Menchú’s narrative as the quintessential form of the testi-
monial voice.
In her autobiography, Menchú denounces the genocidal military regime
in Guatemala, insisting on the humanity and civility of the victims of this
genocide, the Mayan population of the highlands, jungle, and coast. As
such, her autobiography seems intended for an international audience capa-
ble of extending political and material solidarity. After all, she tells her story
in Spanish, rather than in K’iche’, to an exiled Venezuelan leftist while
visiting Paris on a diplomatic mission. The first wave of testimonio critics
certainly presumed this to be the intended audience, characterizing testi-
monio as a genre of ‘‘urgency’’ meant to elicit solidarity from its readers. In
‘‘Testimonio and Postmodernism,’’ originally published in 1991, for exam-

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 155

ple, George Yúdice defines testimonio as ‘‘an authentic narrative, told by a
witness who is moved to narrate by the urgency of a situation (e.g., war,
oppression, revolution, etc.).’’ ‘‘Emphasizing popular, oral discourse,’’
Yúdice continues, ‘‘the witness portrays his or her own experience as an
agent (rather than a representative) of a collective memory and identity.
Truth is summoned in the cause of denouncing a present situation of exploi-
tation and oppression or in exorcising and setting aright o≈cial history’’
(44). The language of witness, denunciation, summons, and truth, used
here by Yúdice to describe testimonio, implies a reader presumed capable of
responding, juridically or politically, to the urgency of the situation. Turning
his analysis specifically to Menchú’s text, Yúdice uses her discussion of her
‘‘nahual,’’∂ a lifelong companion from the animal world, to theorize the
nature of representation within this type of urgent communication: ‘‘Repre-
sentation for Menchú, then, is something quite di√erent from classical
political representation or the aesthetic reflective mimesis of nineteenth-
century European realist fiction. The nahual, more than a representation, is
a means for establishing solidarity’’ (56). From Menchú’s discussion of the
function of the nahual in her community, Yúdice deduces that something
‘‘more than’’ representation takes place in testimonial literature, something
beyond it—some form of communication more immediately connected to
the referent—that approximates or elicits solidarity. Representation in testi-
monio, then, issues an interpellative hail that is di√erent from the usual call
to mimetic identification with the protagonist; instead, testimonial repre-
sentation issues an interpellative call to form a community of action.
In ‘‘The Margin at the Center: On Testimonio,’’ originally published in
1989, John Beverley classifies testimonio as a new form of cultural produc-
tion emerging from the ‘‘popular-democratic subject(s)’’ contending for
power in an era of ‘‘transition or potential transition from one mode of
production to another’’ (24).∑ Stated di√erently, Beverley suggests that new
modes of interpellation, engendered by this transition from bourgeois hege-
mony to a new revolutionary order, are represented in the testimonial genre.
This new cultural form connotes a di√erent mode of both authorship and
readership. Beverley analyzes both in his discussion of the role of Elizabeth
Burgos-Debray, the Venezuelan who interviewed Menchú and edited her
oral history into printed form: ‘‘Testimonio gives voice in literature to a
previously ‘voiceless,’ anonymous, collective popular-democratic subject,
the pueblo or ‘people,’ but in such a way that the intellectual or professional,
usually of bourgeois or petty-bourgeois background, is interpolated as being
part of, and dependent on, the ‘people’ without at the same time losing his

156 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

or her identity as an intellectual. In other words, testimonio is not a form of
liberal guilt. It suggests as an appropriate ethical and political response
more the possibility of solidarity than charity’’ (31). Although Beverley be-
gins by specifically addressing the role of that intellectual ‘‘of bourgeois or
petty-bourgeois background’’ usually involved in the joint authorship of
testimonial literature, his analysis broadens to encompass the ‘‘appropriate
ethical and political response’’ of any intellectual or professional confronted
with a testimonial text as that of ‘‘solidarity’’ rather than ‘‘charity.’’ Indeed,
even beyond the professional or intellectual, Beverley implies that the read-
erly relationship established by the testimonial text is one of solidarity. Once
again, the interpellative call of testimonio is refigured and refiguring: it is a
collective hail to the individuated reader, a hail to collective action—‘‘as being
part of, and dependent on, the ‘people’ ’’—rather than sentimental cathexis.
And yet it is interesting to note that while the testimonial voice is encom-
passed by, or absorbed into, the anonymity of the ‘‘collective popular-demo-
cratic subject,’’ testimonio does not require the same of the intellectual/
reader. Thus, while the liberal subject’s authorial voice is challenged by the
narrative structure of Menchú’s testimonio, the same does not pertain for
the (liberal) intellectual, readerly subject.∏ As we will see, the critic’s own
desire to see pure, collective action in testimonio risks reestablishing the
very sentimental understanding of the subaltern that Menchú’s text works
to undermine. For what is at stake in denying testimonial protagonists the
liberal, individuated authorial function while preserving the liberal, indi-
viduated readerly function for the critic? What is the e√ect of this erasure of
the author function in Menchú’s text? Is this testimonial voice completely
new to Western letters, as Beverley suggests, and what is at stake in this
claim to novelty?
Together, these now influential definitions of testimonio set the early
protocols for the genre. First, the narrator of testimonio is of popular extrac-
tion (in the Latin American sense of the term popular—of the people) and
speaks metonymically for a collective memory, identity, or subject. Second,
the narrative in testimonio is considered uniquely ‘‘true’’ in comparison
with all previous forms of literary representation: it is ‘‘authentic’’; truth is
‘‘summoned’’ by it. At an earlier point in his essay, Beverley states that
‘‘unlike the novel, testimonio promises by definition to be primarily con-
cerned with sincerity rather than literariness’’ (26; italics mine). Third, be-
cause of the protagonist’s popular extraction and the unmediated nature of
representation in her or his testimonio, the authorial function is mitigated,
if not erased, in the testimonial voice. Finally, the reader—and particularly

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 157

the professional intellectual, the critic—is placed in a privileged relation to
the testimonial text, as testimonio demands an active/activist participation
from its recipient. Testimonio demands, in light of these protocols, what
Moreiras has called a ‘‘hermeneutics of solidarity’’ from the critic/reader.
Again, from Moreiras’s ‘‘The Aura of Testimonio,’’ originally published in
1995: ‘‘Beverley recognizes that the positional distance between the literary
text and the literary critic is di√erent from the radical break separating the
testimonial subject and its reader. The testimonial subject, by virtue of its
testimonio, makes a claim to the real in reference to which only solidarity or
its withholding is possible. The notion of total representativity of the testi-
monial life, which in fact points to a kind of literary degree zero in the
testimonial text, paradoxically organizes the extraliterary dimension of the
testimonial experience: solidarity is not a literary response, but that which
suspends the literary in the reader’s response’’ (202). A paradox is produced
by the first generation of testimonial critics’ insistence on the unmediated
nature of the testimonial. As Moreiras implies, these critics paradoxically, if
not unwittingly, produce their own erasure. The early protocols set by the
critics for the genre produce a textual veracity—a ‘‘notion of total repre-
sentativity of the testimonial life,’’ a ‘‘literary degree zero’’—that, in e√ect,
precludes the task of literary analysis. Solidarity with the extraliterary di-
mension of testimonial is demanded instead, suspending ‘‘the literary in the
reader’s response.’’
This early criticism of the genre responds to a particular historical con-
text, one in which U.S.-backed counterinsurgency movements were claim-
ing hundreds of thousands of lives in Central America. The situation in
Guatemala was particularly severe, as Guatemala’s military dictatorship was
engaged in a tactical genocide, a scorched-earth policy intended to eliminate
30 percent of the indigenous population while bringing the remaining 70
percent under the army’s control (Bastos and Camus, Quebrando el silencio
36; Sanford 40–41).π Thus the early testimonial critics were in step with the
U.S.-based solidarity movement’s attempt to halt U.S. intelligence and mili-
tary aid to the region. In this context, it is not di≈cult to understand—
indeed, to support—the testimonio critic’s own sense of urgency: these
texts, particularly Menchú’s, were not to be pondered but acted on. Hun-
dreds of thousands of civilians, mostly indigenous peasants, were victims of
Guatemala’s genocidal regime, and the publicizing of Menchú’s experi-
ences with the military and paramilitary death squads played no small part
in eliciting the international condemnation of the Guatemalan government.
However, more is at stake in the critical urgency of early testimonial

158 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

criticism than demanding an end to U.S. imperialist intervention in the
region. Moreiras suggests a ‘‘hermeneutics of solidarity’’ is antithetical to
testimonio’s extraliterary solidarity project, and this hermeneutics inevitably
produces its own knowledge e√ect: ‘‘As a consequence of this turning of
solidarity into a critical poetics, or a hermeneutics, of solidarity, testimonio
criticism reauthorizes itself within the epistemological power/knowledge
grid at the expense of that which it originally sought to authorize. Testi-
monio will then be institutionalized within a strict codification: the canon-
ization of testimonio in the name of a poetics of solidarity is equivalent to its
reliteraturization following preassigned tropological and rhetorical regis-
ters. Thus, in the hands of testimonio criticism, testimonio loses its extra-
literary force, which now becomes merely the empowering mechanism for a
recanonized reading strategy’’ (204). Testimonial criticism quickly comes
full circle, according to Moreiras, from emphatically insisting on testi-
monio’s antithetical relationship to institutionalized literary practices, to
antithetically creating the protocols—the ‘‘tropological and rhetorical regis-
ters’’—for a ‘‘recanoniz[ing] reading strategy.’’ Indeed, this first wave of
critical interpretation of the testimonial text is activated by an autobiographi-
cal desire—a desire for power/knowledge, as suggested by Moreiras—that
exceeds the urgency of the historical context. This underlying autobiograph-
ical desire in the interpretation of Menchú’s testimonio requires its own
critical attention.
Although early testimonial critics were nuanced in the claims they made
for the immediacy of the testimonial voice,∫ they nevertheless participated
in and perpetuated an intellectual fantasy of presence in their discussion of
testimonio. Critical presumptions about the unique and unmediated pres-
ence of the collective subaltern in the testimonial text wished away the
problem of subaltern political and figural representation.Ω Furthermore, by
establishing ‘‘sincerity’’ as the standard of testimonial value rather than
‘‘literariness,’’ these critics opened the door for attacks on Menchú’s ve-
racity, such as the one launched by Stoll. Because Menchú’s narrative devi-
ates from his research, unearthed ten years after her book’s publication,
Stoll is able to challenge her narrative precisely on the grounds made avail-
able by testimonial criticism: he questions her sincerity by imputing secret
political motives to the deviations in her text from his questionable ‘‘evi-
dence.’’ The fantasy of subaltern presence, the belief in an unmediated text,
the standard of sincerity, all led to a hermeneutics that simply—perhaps
irresponsibly—failed to account for the multiple factors mediating the gap
between referent and sign in Menchú’s testimonio, as in others. Thus early

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 159

analysis of Menchú’s narrative failed to consider the e√ect of terror and
torture on the individuated and collective memory Menchú represents. It
failed to consider how Menchú’s personal response to, and interpretation
of, the horrific events transpiring around her influenced her representation:
the lingering fear of further persecution, the need to protect those still
exposed to state-sponsored violence in Guatemala, her acknowledged politi-
cal a≈liation with the Guatemalan guerrilla movement.∞≠ Analysis of Men-
chú’s testimonio during this first wave of criticism, I would argue, was
primarily concerned with using her text to establish the protocols for a new
genre requiring a new hermeneutics of solidarity, a hermeneutics that para-
doxically divested the critic of intellectual responsibility. These critics mis-
heard the complex interpellative hail issued by testimonio to them, as crit-
ics, because of their own autobiographical desire for subaltern presence.
The resistance to interpreting the testimonial voice in Menchú as a voice
transversed by specific and conflicting traumas, fears, motivations, inter-
ests, and conscious and unconscious desires precisely serves to abstract her
particularity—the concrete materiality of her situation—into a generic sub-
altern subject whose voice may then be codified into a recognizable set of
criteria for an appropriative critical practice. The elision by critics of the
di√erence between Menchú’s authorial ‘‘I’’ and the collective ‘‘we’’ tells us
more about the Latin American(ist) intellectual’s autobiographical fantasy of
a collective Indian experience than it does about Menchú’s story. There is a
binary at work in the disciplinary practice of testimonial criticism, one that
Patricia Seed has designated the ‘‘binary of the Requerimiento.’’ As dis-
cussed in chapter 3 with reference to Guevara and Payeras, the Spanish
Requerimiento presented the indigenous populations of the Americas with
the option of complete religious and political subordination to the Spanish
Crown or of fighting against the Crown unto death. According to Seed, this
dichotomous colonial ‘‘choice’’ imposed on the indigenous populations led
to a binary pattern of subalternization in Latin America, one in which the
indigenous subaltern would be forever identified either with a state of total
abjection or with a state of glorious resistance. This binary of subaltern
representation produces among the Latin American Left a ‘‘requirement for
resistance.’’ The desire for a homogeneous, resistive subaltern subject in
testimonio expresses residual desire for the Indian warrior who resisted
Spanish colonialism unto death.
Thus, circuitously, we arrive at an explanation of why Menchú’s text
became emblematic of testimonial literature: it complies with what Seed has
called the Latin American Left’s ‘‘requirement for resistance’’ in identifying

160 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

the indigenous as subaltern. Menchú’s testimonio is not only the testimonio
of an indigenous woman but also the narrative of an indigenous woman who
resisted, figuratively, unto death. Three of Menchú’s family members—her
father, mother, and brother—are killed by the Guatemalan military, each
subjected to torture, including the repeated rape of her mother, the death of
her father in the Spanish embassy fire of 1980, and the kidnapping and
public assassination of her fourteen-year-old brother. Her remaining family
members—indeed, her entire village—are forced to disperse by the mili-
tary’s continuing persecution. In response to these dire circumstances,
Menchú neither submits to relocation in one of the military’s model villages
nor disappears into the anonymity of the Guatemalan refugee camps in
Chiapas, Mexico. Instead, Menchú joins the egp, goes into political exile,
and becomes a crusader for Guatemalan human and civil rights at the
United Nations headquarters in Geneva. Menchú’s resistance is neither
uniform nor unique among the Guatemalan indigenous population, a sig-
nificant percentage of whom continue to organize actively against the model
villages, as well as the army-imposed Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil (Self-
Defense Civil Patrols—pacs).∞∞ As anthropologist Jan Rus suggests, though,
‘‘During rural rebellions . . . it is not unusual for neighboring communities
and even di√erent factions within the same community to react di√erently,
some participating in the revolt while others with apparently identical char-
acteristics try to remain neutral or even aid the government’’ (‘‘Introduc-
tion’’ 9). Regardless of these heterogeneous survival strategies of the Maya,
not all of which resemble the kind of resistance desired by the testimonio
critics, early testimonial criticism universalized Menchú’s spectacular re-
sistance when the protocols for the genre insisted on identification between
the testimonial voice and the Latin American popular subject.
In his critical introduction to The Real Thing, through a discussion of
second- and third-wave testimonial criticism, Gugelberger fearlessly and
repeatedly describes the autobiographical desires that subtended the first
wave of testimonial criticism, including his own: ‘‘The desire called testi-
monio was the desire called Third World literature’’ (1); ‘‘We wanted to have
it both ways: from within the system we dreamed about being outside with
the subaltern; our words were to reflect the struggles of the oppressed’’ (2);
‘‘While not necessarily making the subaltern ‘visible,’ testimonio has helped
to make ourselves visible to ourselves’’ (3); and, most pointedly, ‘‘Testimonio
has been the salvational dream of a declining cultural left in hegemonic
countries’’ (7). To this list, I would like to add another, related Latin Ameri-
can(ist) critical desire. The collapsing of the distance between Menchú’s

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 161

claim of authorial representation and a pure, universal category of ‘‘we’’
betrays a desire for the recognizable indigenous-subaltern-Other. This de-
sire is doubly redemptive, for not only does this recognizable indigenous
subaltern, in her/his resistive image, promise to deliver a new revolutionary
order; s/he reestablishes the centrality of the First World critical ‘‘I,’’ as
Gareth Williams has suggested, for it is the testimonial critic who provides
the hermeneutics of solidarity for appropriat(iv)e readings of this new revo-
lutionary subject/order.∞≤ To deny Menchú a mediated and complex auto-
biographical function—representational distance between sign and referent
—I would suggest, is to participate in the developmentalist regime of revolu-
tionary subjection discussed in the previous two chapters. It is to deny her
the subjectivity associated with any authorial intervention, a subjectivity
inevitably inflected by intentionality, interest, desire, artifice, and the power
to manipulate and be manipulated by these factors in representation for
politically motivated ends. In other words, Menchú is inevitably interpel-
lated by the authorial function of the Western literary tradition when she is
called to witness through representation.
Is the normative hail to authorial function the only interpellative hail
operating in or through testimonio, however? I would argue that testimonio
criticism to date has inadvertently obfuscated that which it sought to reveal:
the novel interpellative functions of testimonio. All three waves of testi-
monial criticism have demanded that the protagonist of testimonio be either
agent or author. The testimonial voice is either the voice of the collective
democratic ‘‘we’’ or an individuated ‘‘I.’’ Either subaltern presence or bour-
geois literary representation takes place inside the text. Either egalitarian
cultural exchange or appropriative reading takes place outside the text. Testi-
monio elicits either extraliterary solidarity or appropriative literary analysis
from the critic. Such an either/or structure can certainly be deduced from
testimonial literature, but I would like to deviate from the debate over
whether agency or representation takes place in testimonial literature. In-
stead, I would suggest, one must look at agency and representation as
completely imbricated with each other. The literary, I would suggest, is the
structure of possibility for the interpellation of Menchú and the reader. After
all, a readerly response of solidarity is formed by way of the literary, through
the ‘‘artifice’’ of sincerity performed by Menchú in testimonial representa-
tion. Agency emerges by way of the literary, as well, in Menchú’s representa-
tion of the interpretative ambivalence of interpellation. It is precisely in
Menchú’s slippage, her performative slide between agent and author, be-
tween the ‘‘we’’ and the ‘‘I,’’ that we can locate the misfire of normative

162 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

interpellation and begin to unravel its interpellative excess. Once again,
Menchú’s revolutionary theory calls me into the space between the ‘‘I’’ and
the ‘‘we,’’ into a space for thinking about how her theory deviates from the
revolutionary paradigm that called her.
The binary structure of reading in testimonio criticism mirrors a larger
debate over the very possibility of agency taking place between Marxists and
poststructuralists in U.S. and Latin American literary and philosophical
disciplines. As Butler suggests:

Whether power is conceived as prior to the subject or as its instrumen-

tal e√ect, the vacillation between the two temporal modalities of
power (‘‘before’’ and ‘‘after’’ the subject) has marked most of the de-
bates on the subject and the problem of agency. Many conversations
on the topic have become mired in whether the subject is the condi-
tion or the impasse of agency. Indeed, both quandaries have led many
to consider the issue of the subject as an inevitable stumbling block in
social theory. Part of this di≈culty, I suggest, is that the subject is itself
a site of this ambivalence in which the subject emerges both as the
e√ect of a prior power and as the condition of possibility for a radically
conditioned form of agency. A theory of the subject should take into
account the full ambivalence of the conditions of its operation. (The
Psychic Life of Power 14–15)

In this chapter, I attempt to account for the ambivalence in the interpella-

tive operation of power at the site of subjectivity embodied by testimonio.
However, I o√er one caveat to Butler’s analysis of ambivalence in the func-
tion of interpellation. Indulging a perhaps unwarranted optimism, I would
suggest it is not only a ‘‘radically conditioned form of agency’’ that may
emerge from this ambivalence at the site of interpellation but a condition of
radical agency, as well. Gugelberger views testimonio criticism as having
moved through three stages or phases: from ‘‘unconditional a≈rmation,’’
through a critique of the terms of this a≈rmation, to a critique of testi-
monio’s institutionalization in the multicultural canon of the United States
on the basis of the genre’s initial critical acclaim. From our current stand-
point, it is perhaps more accurate to characterize the entire period between
the publication of Jara and Vidal’s 1986 Testimonio y literatura and Gugelber-
ger’s 1996 The Real Thing as one single stage of testimonio criticism. Dur-
ing this initial stage, critics were primarily concerned with theorizing the
parameters of the genre, the place of the genre within literary studies in the
Americas, and the function of representation within the genre.∞≥ In the

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 163

hopes of inaugurating a next stage, one that extends the insightful criticism
of this previous stage beyond the binaries of Marxist and poststructuralist
readings of Menchú, my reading attends to her performance not at the
margins or at the center of hegemony but in her vacillation between these
two sites of interpellative power.

The Autobiographical ‘‘I’’ and the Ruse of Authenticity

In her autobiography, Menchú enters into a theoretical dialogue over the

contours of revolutionary conciencia that begins in Latin America with
Ernesto ‘‘Che’’ Guevara’s testimonios in the early 1960s and continues
through the diaries of Menchú’s immediate testimonial predecessor in Gua-
temala, Mario Payeras. As one of the original founders of the egp, Payeras
wrote two diaries on his involvement in the armed struggle in Guatemala.
The first, Los dias de la selva, which I discussed in chapter 3, was published in
1980, just three years before the publication of Menchú’s autobiography.
Thus, in this chapter, I read Menchú’s autobiography as a performative
response, staged through literary representation in the theater of Realpolitik,
to Payeras’s construction of revolutionary conciencia, ethnic subjectivity, and
the modern nationhood. Menchú o√ers a model of revolutionary transfor-
mation, an interpretation of ethnic consciousness, a construction of nation,
and a vision of development in an international geopolitical context that
stands in contrast to that of Payeras and the era of revolutionary movements
he represents, an era Menchú embraces but also reformulates. Butler has
posed the question of agency thus: ‘‘How can it be that the subject, taken to be
the condition for and instrument of agency, is at the same time the e√ect of
subordination, understood as the deprivation of agency? If subordination is
the condition of possibility for agency, how might agency be thought in
opposition to the forces of subordination?’’ (The Psychic Life of Power 10).
These are the questions addressed through an analysis of Menchú’s text.
As discussed in chapter 3, Guevara and Payeras operate within the repre-
sentational terms of the Spanish colonial legacy in their revolutionary auto-
biographies. They represent themselves and the peasant/indigenous sub-
alterns they encounter within the racialized and dichotomous terms of the
Requerimiento. Guevara represents the mountains and the jungle that the
Cuban guerrillas traverse as chaotic and dangerous, whereas Payeras repre-
sents them as a tabula rasa. In either case, the mountains and jungles are
not only the scene of their revolutionary transformation but are trans-
formed by them as revolutionaries. They represent themselves as transfor-

164 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

mative agents who refigure the mountains and jungles of Cuba and Guate-
mala as the horizons of their revolutionary/religious errand. The native
inhabitants of these jungles and mountains, however, are invariably repre-
sented as suspended in precapitalist formations, awaiting the arrival of
these transformative agents to bring them into epochal revolutionary his-
tory by eliciting from them a dormant resistance.
To review, in Los dias de la selva Payeras describes the guerrillas’ time in
the jungle as an era of forgetting followed by an era of invention. First, the
jungle swallows whole the signs of civilization, of their previous knowledge
—Payeras tells us that the rains and termites of the Petén destroyed the
library that they brought with them, including One Hundred Years of Solitude
(18). The Petén devours Latin America’s most famous intellectual—García
Márquez—metaphorically displacing Macondo as the quintessential place
that time forgot. Once cleansed of their prior bourgeois subjectivity, the
guerrillas exist as a kind of primary collective man. Payeras tells us that the
guerrillas proceed to enter ‘‘an era of great invention’’ in which they ‘‘dis-
cover’’ which plants are edible and which are medicinal, as well as how to tell
direction and time in the jungle (48). Thus they settle the jungle that has
been the scene of their own conversion into el nuevo hombre, the new man.
Through all this there is no sign of the indigenous population, of the bearers
of precisely the knowledge of the jungle that they are said to acquire or
invent on their own, no sign of those who will be the object of their revolu-
tionary errand. Finally, one-third of the way through the book, the guerrillas
do stumble on a group of indigenous peasants: ‘‘We waited a long time,
listening to the beating of our hearts. Then we heard the crowing of a cock
from the direction of the town. It was the first time in months that we had
heard that welcome trumpeting. We all exchanged a glance that held both
trepidation and joy in it. There they were, at last, the poor people of our country;
but we were ignorant of what would be their response. . . . That night we brought
together the men of the village, and we explained extensively the reason for
our struggle, and we announced simply that we were going to triumph’’
(28–29; italics mine). Payeras constructs the peasants as passively awaiting
the guerrilla force, rather than as protagonists in their own lives. They are
the horizon of guerrilla activity: ‘‘There they were, at last, the poor people of
our country.’’ Payeras displaces his desire onto the peasants when he repre-
sents them as ‘‘in waiting.’’ It is the guerrilla troop that has been waiting for
just such a group of peasants, so that they may announce themselves into
being, so that their mission may have meaning. Like Guevara, Payeras
repeatedly betrays this autobiographical desire in his representation of peas-

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 165

ant consciousness as simultaneously abject and rebellious, as a precon-
sciousness on the verge of ‘‘becoming’’—a ‘‘becoming’’ that only the guer-
rilla can usher into being.
Rigoberta Menchú and her community were indeed some of the indige-
nous peasants that Payeras and his fellow guerrillas stumbled on in the
northern highlands of Guatemala. Like the peasants described in Payeras’s
narrative, in the early 1960s Menchú’s parents and their community of
K’iche’ Indians had been dispossessed of, or displaced from, lands near a
central town in the valley of the department of Quiché. Forced to move into
the mountain range, these peasants settled an area they named Chimal,
near the region of Ixcán, the scene of the egp’s first organizing and recruit-
ing mission, and also the scene of Payeras’s narrative (Burgos, Me llamo 22).
Unlike the indigenous people in Payeras’s account, however, Menchú and
her community are not simply awaiting the arrival of the guerrillas to solve
or analyze their problems. Menchú tells a story of resistance to Guatemala’s
dictatorial regime that begins for her and the members of her indigenous
community at birth.
Payeras’s narrative, I have suggested, frames the spectacle of his per-
sonal transformation, as well as his transformative revolutionary power.
Menchú undergoes no such spectacle of transformation, however, though
the title of her book—Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nacío la conciencia
—which literally translates as ‘‘I am called Rigoberta Menchú and this is how
conscience/consciousness was born to me’’—portends that we will be privy
to just such a conversion. In Menchú’s narrative there is no dramatic mo-
ment of revelation of her own oppression, nor is there the retroactively
constructed moment of innocence such revelatory moments necessarily
entail. Unlike Payeras’s and Guevara’s narratives, which begin with just
such scenes of transformation, Menchú’s first mention of a transformation
of conciencia does not occur until the sixth chapter of the book.
When she was eight years old, she tells us, she decided to start work on
the finca, the large plantations along the coast where she and her family
migrated to each year.∞∂ She tells us that her mother generally worked as a
cook on the fincas, but in her spare moments her mother also cut co√ee to
earn more money for the family: ‘‘So, given this, well, I felt very useless and
cowardly about not being able to do anything for my mother, only take care
of my little brother. And that/this is when my consciousness was born to
me, then. Even though my mother didn’t like it very much that I should start
working and making my own money, but I did it and I asked to do it more
than anything to help her, both economically and in strength’’ (55). In com-

166 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

parison to those documented by her male counterparts in their guerrilla
testimonios, this ‘‘birth of conciencia’’ is represented as fairly incidental.
There is no burst of bullets forcing her to choose sides, as in Guevara’s
narrative, nor is there a superior or transcendent awakening about who is
the enemy, as in Payeras’s narrative. Instead, even her explicit pronounce-
ment on the birth of her conciencia in this passage, structured as if in
answer to a question posed by the interviewer, is undercut by all the subse-
quent, similar pronouncements she makes as she narrates di√erent mo-
ments in her life. Throughout the text, she recounts a repetitive and con-
tinual process of conscience/consciousness birth that defies the unilinear,
messianic model of revolutionary transformation.∞∑
Thus Menchú’s representation of attaining ‘‘revolutionary conciencia,’’
of being hailed as a potential revolutionary agent, is not of a monumental or
deafening call to conversion but of a continuous and reiterative call: con-
ciencia is an understanding that comes for Menchú as a consequence of
repeatedly interpreting her life condition. Even before she narrates this first
‘‘birth of conciencia’’ at eight years of age, she lets it slip to the reader that
she had grasped the conditions of her life at an even earlier age. When she
was a very little girl traveling with her family to the finca, she asked her
mother why they had to go there: ‘‘And my mother would say: because we
have the need to go to the finca and when you are big you will understand
the need we have. But I did know, but I would get bored by everything [on the
finca]. When I was big, it was no longer strange to me [to have to go to the
finca]; because little by little a person begins to see/understand the need,
and a person begins to see/understand that it must be so and that the
problems, the pain, the su√ering was not only ours, but rather that all this
was an entire people’s and we came from all di√erent places’’ (46; italics
mine). Once again her realization of her own exploitation is not epochal but
rather is gained repetitively from the mundane experience of living: ‘‘Little
by little’’ Menchú comes to identify with her mother’s exploitation as a
woman, as an indigenous person, and as a peasant laborer through the
everyday interconnectedness of these three subject positions. Already, as a
child, Menchú does not need Payeras and the egp to reveal to her the
reasons for struggle. Instead Menchú emphatically claims authority over
her own experience of exploitation. Thus I would suggest that to convey her
political vision, Menchú, like her male counterparts, assumes the position
of the authorial liberal subject. She dons the self-reflexive and masterful
autobiographical ‘‘I’’ of a Western literary tradition—‘‘But I did know’’—to
assert her ability to interpret, and thereby represent, her own experience.

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 167

She claims the right to represent her own experience and the experience of
her tribe away from Payeras and other urban Ladino revolutionary leaders
she later worked with when she insists on her interpretive capabilities as an
authorial ‘‘I.’’
How does the ambivalence of interpellation function in these two pas-
sages describing Menchú’s repetitive call to conciencia? In the specific
context of Menchú’s call to subalternized subjectivity, conditions of power
interpellate her as a racialized and feminized laboring subject on a finca,
subordinated to the power of a white finquero or his agents, and conditioned
by her gender as doubly exploitable laborer: as caregiver and day laborer.
Nevertheless, the very repetitive excess of her interpellative call to subordi-
nation—her boring, day-to-day, repetitive performance of this subjectivity—
provides the context for Menchú to recognize the conditions of her own
subjection. In addition, the reiterative performance of this recognition in
her testimonio generates Butler’s ‘‘radically conditioned form of agency,’’ an
agency in excess of her subaltern subjection. It is precisely the pretense of
agency embodied in the authorized ‘‘I’’ of testimonio—the performative ‘‘I’’
of a reflective, autobiographical subject—that constitutes her as representa-
tive of her people, and, in addition, as an indigenous authority over a collec-
tive subaltern experience.
In this passage, Menchú tactically generalizes this interpretive capability
and birth of conciencia across the entire indigenous community when she
switches from the first person singular in ‘‘When I was big, it was no longer
strange to me’’ to the first person plural in ‘‘a person begins to see/under-
stand . . . that all this was an entire people’s and we came from all di√erent
places.’’ Every indigenous peasant in Guatemala, ‘‘from all di√erent places,’’
who has ever worked on a finca may not share the revolutionary conciencia
represented here. Once again, though, the e√ect of this representation—of
all the indigenous subalterns sharing a conciencia of their own exploitation
and its meaning—is to place her community in the position of authority over
their own experience. Menchú’s representation of this authority contravenes
Payeras’s representation of the egp’s first encounter with the Guatemalan
indigenous peasantry, a representation in which he claimed this authority for
the guerrillas. In Payeras’s account, the guerrillas deliver revolutionary con-
ciencia to passive and unwitting indigenous subjects: ‘‘we brought together
the men of the village, and we explained extensively the reason for our strug-
gle, and we announced simply that we were going to triumph’’ (29–30). Paye-
ras must import the guerrillas into the Ixcán region to interpret the indig-
enous peasant’s experience with exploitation for her K’iche’ community: The

168 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

guerrillas ‘‘explained extensively the reasons for our struggle.’’ Menchú not
only provides the grounds for a feminist critique of the egp’s revolutionary
paradigm through her analysis of her mother’s dual exploitation as reproduc-
tive laborer and wage laborer, but in her interpellative slip between the ‘‘I’’
and the ‘‘we’’ she generalizes this distinctly feminist revolutionary concien-
cia born from a recognition of the dual exploitation of women.
In a 1983 interview Menchú gave to the Mexican journal Fem, she was
asked, ‘‘Do you believe, as a peasant woman, participating in all that culture
of the Guatemalan people, that your work has developed more as a conse-
quence of your participation in the struggle?’’ (15; italics mine). She an-
swered: ‘‘In the first place, I have to acknowledge that in my formation, no
one needed to tell me who the poor were and how they lived, because we are
poor. Nevertheless, that formation that I had, that rich history, if a person
does not interact with other Guatemalans in the same country, a person
does not know how to guide that history down a road on which a person
looks for alternatives’’ (15).∞∏ From the deliberate tone of her response, Men-
chú understands the question as an attempt to wrest the power of analysis
from her, as an indigenous ‘‘peasant woman,’’ and place it with an implied
leadership of ‘‘the struggle’’ (of the egp or the urng) external to the indige-
nous peasant communities. She ‘‘develops’’ because of her participation,
not as a consequence of her own cultural formation. However, Menchú
once again halts any such interpretation of her formation by foregrounding
her authority over her own experience: ‘‘no one needed to tell me who the
poor were.’’ And once again, Menchú shifts from the first-person singular to
the first-person plural in this passage: ‘‘no one needed to tell me who the
poor were . . . [because] we are poor.’’ Thus she again insists on this authority
not only for herself but for the ‘‘we’’ who are poor. Nevertheless Menchú
understands that while this authority over one’s experience is in itself a
political awareness—a formation—it is not, in itself, su≈cient to bring about
transformation: ‘‘If a person does not . . .’’ Thus, I would suggest, Menchú
recognizes in this passage that authority over one’s own experience must
necessarily be mediated by interpretation and representation: ‘‘rich history’’
must be ‘‘guide[d] . . . down a road,’’ must be made particular sense of, must
be reflected on, to produce ‘‘alternatives’’—coherent representations—to
produce revolutionary mediations of this indigenous subaltern authority.
Thus in Menchú we find the same claim to authorial voice, to unitary
subjectivity, that we found in her testimonial and revolutionary predeces-
sors, Che Guevara and Mario Payeras.
To understand the interpellative functions of this repeated shift from the

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 169

autobiographical ‘‘I’’ to the tactical ‘‘we,’’ let us return to Yúdice: ‘‘Emphasiz-
ing popular, oral discourse, the witness [of testimonio] portrays his or her
own experience as an agent (rather than a representative) of a collective
memory and identity’’ (44). Once again, it is the pretense of authorial agency
embodied in the autobiographical ‘‘I’’ that allows Menchú to claim authority
over her own experience in the first place. But this ‘‘radically conditioned
form of agency’’ generated by the interpellative pretense of subjectivity nev-
ertheless exceeds the normative bounds of individuated subjection. Through
her oral performance, through her reiterative shift from ‘‘I’’ to ‘‘we,’’ she
performs agency for her people, performs their ability to experience and
interpret their subaltern condition. Indeed, she uses the pretense of the ‘‘I’’ to
claim a collective memory of exploitation, to claim a collective authority over
it for her community, by way of representation. Embedded in the performative
agency that hails Menchú is a psychic misfire, for through it she issues an
interpellative hail to a collective agency. Thus I would disagree with Yúdice
when he insists that the testimonial protagonist is an agent rather than a
representative, for it is only through her performative representations—her
tactical representation of communal conciencia—that Menchú can claim
agency for herself and constitute herself as a representative of her people in
the theater of Realpolitik: within the egp’s exiled leadership in Mexico, or
before the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva. In turn, it
is only by way of her representation as individuated agent that the collective
agency and identity of her K’iche’ community can be recognized.
Menchú recognizes a necessary distance, a necessary gap, between sub-
altern authority and revolutionary representation. She also recognizes that
the power of transformation lies in the mediation of this gap. She seeks to
mediate that gap di√erently than her revolutionary predecessors, but nev-
ertheless within the tradition of revolutionary transformation.∞π She repre-
sents herself as within a revolutionary formation, but she is altering the
historical tropes of revolutionary representation, as well as its teleological
trajectory. For Payeras and Guevara, the indigenous peasant’s subaltern
condition is rendered as abject subordination, as a premodern stage that
must be superseded for transformation to occur. Menchú turns subaltern
abjection into a ‘‘rich history’’ in her representation, a cultural and political
formation that must be included in any future revolutionary subjection.
Although her representational tropes are qualitatively di√erent from those
of her predecessors, it is not a di√erence in kind. Hers is still an authorial
intervention, vexed by conscious intention and unconscious desire. Thus
we must keep in mind that Menchú’s authorial performance runs certain

170 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

risks. From the moment she represents the subaltern in the Western ca-
dence of liberal subjectivity—in the recognizable tropes of authorial agency
—she distances herself from subalternity. Furthermore, she runs the risk of
having readers read her representation as a celebratory assertion of ethno-
nationalism, when it is anything but that. This is the constitutive problem of
representing subalternity with which Menchú’s text grapples. On the one
hand, by appropriating a recognizable form of agency, Menchú emerges
into singularity, into the autobiographical arena of exceptional experience.
She moves away from both the homogenized, racialized tropes for repre-
senting the subaltern and from unrepresentability that constitutes the sub-
altern condition in Spivak’s terms. On the other hand, Menchú remains
committed to representing this subaltern condition. This is the tension
animating her text, with all its attendant risks.
Consequently, while Menchú performs this authorial, autobiographical,
revolutionary ‘‘I,’’ she also repeatedly insists on performing the position of
authentic indigenous Other for the Western readerly subject. During the
first half of the book, Menchú’s personal story—the story of her childhood,
her coming-of-age, her integration into the labor force, her family celebra-
tions, her parent’s political engagement, their persecution and assassina-
tion—sets the stage for detailed descriptions of the major life rituals of her
Mayan K’iche’ community: those commemorating birth, adolescence, mar-
riage, planting and harvesting, death. Her ‘‘own’’ story stages the spectacle
of her culture as ‘‘authentic.’’ Menchú moves back and forth between the
role of the autobiographical ‘‘I’’ and the role of ‘‘indigenous ethnographer,’’
conveying much of her narrative in an anthropological voice of revelation
about, or discovery of, the Other.∞∫ In part, we can attribute this dramatic
shift in voice to the mediation of the interviewer/editor.
In her introduction to the book, Burgos-Debray explains that although
she was a trained ethnographer, she knew nothing about the Maya-K’iche’
culture: ‘‘At first I thought this lack of knowledge about Rigoberta’s culture
would be a disadvantage, but soon it turned into something quite positive. I
had to adopt the position of a student. Rigoberta understood immediately;
this is why her account of the ceremonies and rituals is so detailed’’ (Burgos,
Me llamo 16). Indeed, Menchú’s narrative seems to deliver on Burgos-
Debray’s promise of ethnographic enlightenment about the Maya-K’iche’
for the Western readership.∞Ω As it turns out, though, Menchú’s ethno-
graphic enlightenment might not have been so spontaneously forthcoming
after all. Although Burgos-Debray states in her introduction that she kept
her questions to a minimum during her eight days of interviews with Men-

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 171

chú, asking only for clarification when necessary,≤≠ in an essay written six-
teen years later, Burgos-Debray admits to prompting Menchú to talk about
her culture: ‘‘Very quickly I realized that Rigoberta Menchú wanted to talk
about herself, to go beyond just an account of repression. I therefore opted
in favor of delving deeply into her customs, her vision of the world (as much
political as religious), and, above all, her identity. Of course, taking the
interviews in this direction had much to do with my preoccupations; Rigo-
berta’s desire to express her personal experiences and issues in my own life
coincided’’ (‘‘The Story of a Testimonio’’ 55–56). Whether or not Menchú’s
desire to discuss her culture coincided with Burgos’s desire to know about it
is impossible to determine; what we do know from the text is that the
testimonial protagonist took the prompt, constructing herself for the reader
as both native informant and participant-observer of the K’iche’ culture. As
she passes through the major stages and events of her life, she explains in
detail the meaning of each ceremonial act, and the role of each member of
the community in these acts.
This provides us with another explanation of why early testimonio critics
made claims about the ‘‘authenticity’’ of all testimonios on the basis of
Menchú’s narrative: they were seduced by the ruse of authenticity in her
text. The performance of authenticity in the text is a ruse, I would argue, that
on the one hand forms the basis for her political struggle and on the other
provides a political critique of her Western readership. This is another mo-
ment of excessive interpellation registered in the text, another moment in
which Menchú exceeds the bounds of her subjectification as subordinated
indigenous subaltern. It is this movement in the text between the authorial,
autobiographical ‘‘I’’ and the authentic Other, this oscillation between the
reflexive ‘‘I’’ and an anthropological ‘‘we,’’ that comes to substantiate her
attenuated claim as political representative of her community in the na-
tional and international arena.
Menchú performs her ‘‘authenticity’’ by playing on established inter-
pellative tropes for the Other in Western discourses: transparency and
opacity. Invariably, subsequent to moments of textual revelation about
Mayan K’iche’ custom, Menchú announces to the reader that there is much
she has not told the reader and cannot tell the reader because of the secret
and sacred nature of much of her culture (Burgos, Me llamo 55, 60, 118, 131,
133, 155, 212, 275, 299). Indeed, Menchú flamboyantly withholds informa-
tion from the reader, as Doris Sommer suggests in her articles ‘‘Rigoberta’s
Secrets’’ (36) and ‘‘No Secrets’’ (142). ‘‘It may be useful to notice that the
refusal [of knowledge] is performative; it constructs metaleptically the ap-

172 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

parent cause of the refusal: our craving to know. Before she denies us the
satisfaction of knowing her secrets, we may not be aware of any desire to
grasp them’’ (‘‘Rigoberta’s Secrets’’ 34). On the one hand, these performa-
tive secrets create the ‘‘craving to know’’ in the reader, as Sommer suggests:
these secrets interpellate the reader, eliciting the desire for ethnography, for
discovery about the inscrutable Other. On the other hand, this performative
withholding of information also makes what she does tell us into something
to be known. Menchú creates a spectacle out of the cultural knowledge she
conveys by framing it with what cannot be known. Her performative refusal
to tell only serves to reinforce her position in the text as native informant, for
she is endowed with authentic knowledge about the Other through it.
Her narrative, then, first invites the Western reader into readerly appro-
priation. She appears to say to the reader, ‘‘I will tell you so that you will
understand.’’ But then she dis-invites the reader from any such identifica-
tion, insisting on definitive di√erence—‘‘There are many things you cannot
know.’’ On a preliminary reading of the text, its repetitive interplay between
revelation and secrecy renders the Other in its most recognizable Western
tropes: the quaint transparency of premodern ‘‘folk’’ customs; the dark
opacity of exotic conspiracy. In her readings of Menchú’s performative se-
crets, however, Sommer has suggested that this calculated opacity has a
double valence: ‘‘In fact, any way we read her, we are either intellectually or
ethically unfit for Rigoberta’s secrets’’ (‘‘No Secrets’’ 143). The reader is
incapable of knowing, both because of the gulf of cultural ‘‘foreignness’’
between the reader and the narrator and because of the dangers to Menchú
and the K’iche’ people if the reader should find out.
Sommer does not push her analysis far enough, though. The e√ect of this
doubly valenced opacity is rendered rather benign in her reading: ‘‘The calcu-
lated result of Rigoberta’s gesture for sympathetic readers, paradoxically, is to
exclude us from her circle of intimates . . . it produces a particular kind of dif-
ference akin to respect. So simple a lesson and so fundamental: it mostly ac-
knowledges that di√erences exist’’ (‘‘No Secrets’’ 143). Sommer ultimately
renders the ‘‘di√erence’’ of Menchú and the K’iche’ assimilable through a re-
spectful readerly practice that will simply ‘‘acknowledge that di√erences
exist.’’ As Moreiras suggests, ‘‘In Sommer’s essay . . . silence, identical to it-
self, and therefore in itself its own end, has here been made to speak, and thus
also tropologized as that which is beyond the ‘impassable’ limit’’ (Moreiras 212;
italics mine). Sommer’s reduction of silence in the text to a lesson in liberal
readerly ethics brings it within the limits of Western ethnographic knowledge.
Ultimately Sommer’s reading makes it possible to accommodate Menchú’s

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 173

textual ‘‘di√erence’’ alongside other equally domesticated textual di√erences
on an American studies syllabus, the goal of which is to produce respect.≤∞
Menchú’s secret is not simply a space that protects her K’iche’ commu-
nity’s di√erence from the acquisitive desire of anthropological reading. In
other words, hers is not merely a separatist representational claim. Instead
of producing a ‘‘di√erence akin to respect,’’ Menchú’s textual interplay be-
tween revelation and secrecy creates a di√erence that is the space for regis-
tering a profound critique of colonialism and neocolonialism, of ‘‘the truly
abject ones.’’ At least according to the lofty goals Western anthropology set
for itself at the discipline’s inception, ethnography was supposed to operate,
on one level, as a critique of Western subjectivity (Marcus and Fisher 20).
Menchú’s textual interplay between revelation and secrecy accepts the chal-
lenge. Having invited the anthropological reader into a relationship with the
simultaneously transparent and opaque Other, Menchú instead turns the
ethnographic ‘‘I’’ on the Western subject.
What is it that Menchú ‘‘lets us know’’ about K’iche’ customs, after all?
Very little indeed. What she most consistently reveals about her community’s
customs are the ways in which her customs provide a reiterative critique of
colonization, neocolonial capitalist relations, modernization, consumerism,
and revolutionary developmentalism. Menchú answers the interpellative
hail of the interviewer to perform the subordinated subject position of abject
Indian only to issue another hail from this position: the hail to the Western
reader to recognize his or her own subjection to this neocolonial culture.
From early in her narrative, Menchú introduces the element of critique.
After having described some of the rituals involved in pregnancy and the
birth of a child, she tells the reader:

What is left is the baptism and the integration of the child into the
general community. . . . This is when a talk is given, by the elected
male leader, by the elected female leader, by their children, about how
they have preserved the customs of our ancestors. At the same time
they make a new commitment for the child. That they must continue
to teach the child when he is older and that the child must be an
example, like the elected leaders. . . . They make a commitment. That
the parents have to teach the child . . . this refers mostly to our ances-
tors—that [the child] must learn to keep all the secrets, that no one can
finish o√ our culture, or our customs. So, this is something like a critique
of all of humanity, and of many of our own people who have lost our
customs. (33; italics mine)

174 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

Menchú begins this passage with a quintessential moment of interpellation
into Western Christianity. Baptism represents not only the initiation of the
child into a ‘‘general community’’ of the faithful but her or his subordina-
tion to Christian law. Menchú, as a lay catechist, identifies as Christian,
as does her community, she tells us. It is not particularly surprising that
K’iche’ Maya have syncretically combined elements of an imposed colonial
culture with their own to produce a ‘‘radically conditioned’’ form of indige-
nous agency. However, I would suggest that a misfire takes place within her
K’iche’ community at this primary interpellative moment, producing the
conditions for the interpellation of a radical agency, as well.
An act that should mark K’iche’ assimilation (or Ladinization, as Menchú
refers to this process) into Western culture serves instead as the occasion for
political analysis and critique of this assimilation. Menchú begins by posit-
ing baptism as the grounds for identification with Western Christians, her
presumed readership. These readers expect a representation of quaint or
folkloric baptismal rituals among the Maya that somehow mimic Western
Christian rituals, since Menchú functions for this Western readership at
this moment as ethnographer. However, we get neither a description of the
actual ritual—the anointing of the child, the blessing of the godparents, the
presentation of Christian amulets and gifts—nor a description of the subse-
quent baptismal feast. Instead we get a testimonial reiteration of the ‘‘talk’’
given by the elders of her community. First the elders speak, then the
‘‘children’’ reiterate what their elders have said. The elders, figurative par-
ents of those gathered, perform an interpellative call to ‘‘custom,’’ echoed by
the community of ‘‘children’’ as a mark of their subordination. The content
of this ‘‘custom’’ is neither folkloric rituals nor premodern beliefs, but in-
stead ‘‘something like a critique of all humanity.’’ Menchú describes only a
partial rejection of traditional Western Christianity, however, for the baptis-
mal ritual itself provides the occasion for the interpellative commemoration
of ancestral customs that paradoxically consist of a ‘‘critique of all human-
ity.’’ This will happen throughout her narrative. Once again, embedded
within the call to normativity, to Western Christian subjectivity, is a call
exceeding its bounds. Whenever Menchú describes a moment of ritual
among the Maya that should in some way coincide with Western traditions,
such as adolescent confirmation or marriage, it becomes instead a moment
for the critique of the colonialist imposition of Western culture or patterns
of consumption that perpetuate neocolonialism.
Although in the previous passage Menchú does not give us a substantive
account of such criticism, she does a few pages later. As if she were moving

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 175

down an Althusserian checklist of interpellative moments, Menchú pro-
ceeds from the primary scene of religious subordination to the primary
scene of secular subordination, schooling. During what appears to be a
simple description of education within her community, Menchú adroitly
turns the gaze of the ethnographic ‘‘I’’ on the bourgeois liberal subject:

From the first day it is thought that the child must be the community’s
[child], and that they cannot be only their parents’ [child], and that the
community must teach them. Immediately the parents are thinking
about the schooling of the child . . . it is as with the bourgeois classes,
as soon as the baby is born, they think that that child must be edu-
cated, must have a certain standard of living. So, we the indigenous
people immediately think that the schooling of the child has to be the
community, and that the child has to live the same as the rest [of the
community]. And the child’s hands are bandaged also precisely so that
[the child] will not accumulate things that the rest of the community
doesn’t have and so that the child learns to distribute the few things
s/he has, that his/her hands must be open. The mother is in charge of
opening the child’s hands. It’s a mentality of su√ering, of poverty. (36)

Menchú oddly inserts a comparison in her discussion of education in the

K’iche’ community with the remark ‘‘it is as with the bourgeois classes.’’
Again, this provides the ground for an interpellative recognition, as the
implied bourgeois reader’s interest in educating children is the same as the
indigenous community’s. Menchú can posit the ground for identification
because of the assumed prominence of the liberal social value of education.
Menchú’s narrative just as quickly withdraws this common ground, for her
narrative links the bourgeois classes’ interest in education to an interest in
accumulation of wealth and in securing a class status, whereas the indige-
nous community links education to the redistribution of wealth among the
community, ensuring economic equality among them all. The e√ect of
Menchú’s story is neither to naturalize nor to romanticize this communitar-
ianism. The indigenous child is not born with a predilection to these com-
munitarian values. In fact, the community must use coercion to enforce
these values: the child’s hands must be bound by the mother so that the
child may learn to share and not to hoard things. The visible sign of this
communitarianism, the bound hands, also serves to reiterate these values
for the community who witnesses it each time a child is born. Always
informing this action, Menchú implies, is a critique of the bourgeois society
whose primary value is accumulation.

176 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 Menchú is also parrying the developmentalism in Payeras’s narrative,
and his representation of the indigenous people in his revolutionary quest.
Payeras describes an early encounter between the indigenous peasantry and
his guerrilla group in starkly developmentalist terms. He considers the
indigenous peasantry as being locked in a prehistoric moment, in a culture
that privileges lineage over class:

For them, men were not di√erentiated by their relation to material

goods, but rather by their language and customs. With this manner of
thinking, the landowners ended up being a separate lineage of men—
the ladinos. Never had they [the indigenous peasantry] seen a steam
engine or dealt with poor ladinos; since there were regions where only
indigenous people lived. . . . Since they knew only a small part of
reality, they were lost in the particular and only with di≈culty did they
understand general concepts. Given this, the war appeared to them as
a phenomenon so inexplicable and inconvenient as the typhoid epi-
demics that had razed the highland villages in the past. (75)

In a rehashing of Talcott Parsons’s pattern variables between developed and

underdeveloped societies, Payeras characterizes the indigenous peasants as
particularistic (language, customs) and ascriptive (lineage) in comparison
with the Ladino’s universalism (class) and achievement (steam engines)
(Long 15–40). In Payeras’s representation, the indigenous peasants he en-
counters understand people only according to their ethnic a≈liation. This
representation implies these indigenous peoples are consequently incapa-
ble of class analysis, of understanding their own class exploitation, of cor-
rectly locating the enemy. This lack of economic analysis, this premodern
consciousness, he concludes, is the reason for the indigenous people’s re-
sistance to the guerrillas.≤≤
Although Menchú frequently refers to the importance of ancestral cus-
toms to her community, she does not represent communitarianism as a
simple continuation of a ‘‘prehistoric,’’ pre-Columbian Mayan social forma-
tion, or as the refusal to make the ethical ‘‘choice’’ to embrace progress, as
Payeras suggests. Rather, in her discussion of education, Menchú describes
this communitarianism as a ‘‘mentality of su√ering, of poverty.’’ Thus re-
distribution of wealth functions as a strategy for ensuring the survival of the
community as a whole in the face of severe poverty and economic exploita-
tion. Once again, interpellation misfires, producing communitarianism in
the excess of subordination to capitalist relations of production. Of course,
such communitarianism cannot be read strictly in opposition to capitalism,

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 177

for their communitarianism supplements capital, facilitating the hyper-
exploitation of the indigenous subaltern peasantry.≤≥ Nevertheless this com-
munitarianism produces the space for a collective agency that struggles
against the individuated alienation of wage labor. It also produces the space
for a critique of accumulation that cannot be equated with an all-out rejec-
tion of the bourgeois model of economics based on a ‘‘premodern’’ set of
attitudes, for it is at least as much a contemporary response to a set of
economic relations as it is a cultural tradition.
The e√ect of Menchú’s seemingly anthropological rendering of educa-
tion in her community is, if not strictly, then in part an analysis of class
relations. Although the bourgeoisie and the indigenous people appear to
have nothing in common, we cannot assume that the reference to both in
this context is insignificant. Instead, the mention of the bourgeois classes
serves to implicate them in the lives of the indigenous people, thereby
reflecting her understanding of contemporary class relations. The bour-
geoisie as a capitalist class and the indigenous people as a class of econom-
ically exploited workers are not unrelated formations. The progress of the
bourgeois classes, their tendency to maintain their class position—a certain
standard of living—is contingent on the continued exploitation of the indig-
enous peoples. While revealing the Other through ethnographic revelation,
Menchú has also revealed the interrelation of the bourgeois subject—the
presumed reader—with the indigenous subject laboring in some faraway
place. Indeed, I suggest that in this passage Menchú issues an interpellative
hail to the reader so that the reader may recognize her or his imbrication in
the disembedded social relations of transnational capital.
Contrary to Payeras’s representation of the indigenous subaltern’s con-
ciencia, Menchú’s narrative often recognizes the barriers constructed by
colonization between the indigenous people and poor Ladinos. Neverthe-
less, as the passages about baptism and education in her community dem-
onstrate, when these indigenous people appear most ‘‘ethnic’’ in their mo-
ments of practicing their culture, they are often performing the kind of
political and economic analysis of which Payeras finds them incapable. In
the foregoing passages, as well as in subsequent descriptions of other inter-
pellative rituals, Menchú represents indigenous people linking their ethnic
exploitation with their economic exploitation. Thus, rather than casting
indigenous people as living a life separate and apart from the modern
economic system, she casts them as subject to a dual exploitation within this
system. Their collectivism, their understanding of themselves as a ‘‘separate
lineage of men,’’ as Payeras would describe it, is again cast as a response to

178 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

their integration into a capitalist mode of production, not as an ignorance of
it. As we shall see, rather than being oblivious to the wonders of modernity
—such as the steam engine—Menchú’s community engages in a limited
participation and critique of it.

A Limited Participation

By ‘‘limited participation’’ I do not mean to imply that their participation in a

modern capitalist economy is a matter of choice. As Menchú suggests, as a
land-poor peasantry dependent on hiring out their labor for most of the year,
they are fully integrated into modern relations of capitalist production. Nev-
ertheless, operating in Butler’s model of a radically conditioned agency,
Menchú represents her community as exerting considerable control over
their participation in a capitalist economy. In her representation of this
selective participation in, and rejection of, modernization, however, Men-
chú also articulates a political vision for the future participation in revolu-
tionary transformation by indigenous people. Inevitably, this articulation of
a limited participation in modernity as a mode of revolutionary subjection
runs the risk of slipping into an uncritical and separatist ethno-nationalism.
I would argue this is not Menchú’s political vision for revolutionary Guate-
mala; nevertheless her representation of indigenous subjection does leave
itself open to such an interpretation.
Menchú begins her description of the marriage ceremony in her K’iche’
community by telling the reader that there are four parts to it. Once the
woman has accepted the man as her groom, his family comes to o≈cially
ask for her hand in marriage, and the two families host a party at the bride-
to-be’s home. This party is the second marriage ceremony. Once everyone
has arrived at this party, the couple kneels and speaks to the community:

They [the couple] renew a commitment about their indigenous self.

They say that we are important. That we all have the duty of multiply-
ing the earth, but at the same time we have the duty of multiplying the
customs of our ancestors who were humble. And they make like a
little review of the time since Columbus, where they say, ‘‘Our parents
were violated by the whites, the sinners, the assassins.’’ And that our
ancestors were not at fault. Our ancestors died of hunger because they
were not paid [for their labor]. We want to kill and be done with the bad
examples they [the whites] came to teach us and if this had not come to
pass, we would be together, we would all be equal, and our children

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 179

 would not su√er nor would we only have a bit of land. And this is what
they record and it’s something of a consciousness raising. Then they
make their commitment and they say ‘‘We will be mothers and fa-
thers, and we will try to defend the rights of our ancestors until the
end and we promise that our ancestors will continue to live with our
children and that neither a rich man or a finquero can finish o√ our
children.’’ (92)

Importantly, a ceremony that purports to be about the joining of two people

has little to do with the actual or generic couple involved. Instead this
quintessential moment of heterosexual interpellation provides yet another
occasion for an analysis of their own subjection, this time through an anal-
ysis of the community’s history. Once again, Menchú’s process of represen-
tation begins with the promise of ethnographic revelation—‘‘They renew a
commitment about their indigenous self .’’ ‘‘The indigenous self,’’ however, is
not represented as an internal or independent experience. Rather, indige-
nous selfhood exists in dialectical relation to a colonial past.
As in Western cultural practice, the marriage moment of heterosexual
interpellation carries within it the subordination of sexuality to the purposes
of procreation: ‘‘we all have a duty of multiplying the earth.’’ Yet again,
critical conscience/conscious emerges in the excess of normative subjec-
tion, as the couple calls the community to the collective evaluation of their
history. Gender relations are also reconfigured in the space created by inter-
pellative misfire, for rather than establishing the bride’s subordination to
her groom, the bride stands before the community equally empowered to
summon forth this critical conciencia. ‘‘Multiplying the customs of our
ancestors’’ is linked to ‘‘review of the time since Columbus’’ performed by
both the bride and the groom. Importantly, it is a review not only of what
happened ‘‘then,’’ in the initial colonial encounter, but of what happens
‘‘now,’’ in the lack of equality between whites and indigenous peoples, in the
lack of unity among indigenous people, and in the unjust land tenure sys-
tem. This suggests that the customs the couple is called on to multiply only
acquire meaning in relation to the colonial past and the neocolonial present.
Thus colonialism is critiqued on its own terms: the white invaders were
‘‘sinners,’’ and the ‘‘ways’’ they brought with them fail to propagate equality,
fraternity, or plenty—the promise of liberal democracy. In turn, indigenous
people lay an originary claim to such ‘‘Western’’ values—equality, morality,
fraternity, plenty—as the ways of their ancestors before the coming of the
whites. Menchú represents indigenous women as existing in a condition of

180 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

gender parity within her community through her description of the mar-
riage ceremony. She also performs the gender parity embodied in critical
conciencia as represented in this passage when she reiterates it through the
testimonial act. Here is a moment in which Menchú’s own description runs
the risk of slipping into a celebratory nativism. If we can read her text to be
claiming that the Mayas had Western values before the West, then the text
runs the risk of e√acing subaltern di√erence precisely by collapsing the
distance between Western and indigenous subjection.
Once the couple has finished with its commitment to maintaining the
ways of their ancestors, all the elders speak precisely to these ways of their
ancestors before the coming of the colonizers:

It’s a whole day in which everyone sits down to talk. They say . . . That
our ancestors planted plenty of corn. That no tribe was lacking in
corn, not one community and that we were all one [then]. And they
start to talk, that we had a king and that the king knew how to dis-
tribute all the things that existed among all the people that existed.
The cacao is no longer ours—it’s the whites, it’s the rich peoples. The
tobacco. We cannot plant tobacco. Before there was plenty of tobacco
for the entire people. Before we were not divided by communities or
language. We all understood each other. And who is responsible? The
whites are, the ones who came here. . . . Before there were no medi-
cines, no pills. Our medicine was the plants. Our king knew how to
cultivate many plants. Before, not even the animals bit us and now
they even do that. After, the last part of the ceremony is little sad
because, with great feeling, our grandparents remember all this and
begin to say how it will be later. They are very worried. Today our sons
and daughter cannot live many years. How shall it be later. Today
many drive cars. Before our Guatemala was not like this. Everybody
traveled by foot, but everyone lived very well. (94–95)

The elders engage in a utopic reconstruction of pre-Columbian society

among the Maya. They describe a time when there was plenty of corn, their
sacred crop, for everyone. It was an era of a just law, represented by a just
king. There was unity among the Mayan tribes, now divided in language
and in custom. It was a time before the creation of needs that their system of
knowledge could not address. Indeed, it was an era of perfect harmony—
even the animals did not bite. This is not a futile nostalgia, although it could
easily be read as such. We must remember that the context of this interpella-
tive ‘‘talk’’ is the marriage ceremony; it is delivered in the midst of a particu-

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 181

lar ceremony with a particular purpose. The elders end explicitly by express-
ing their concern about how things will be—the ‘‘will be’’ represented in this
context by the promise of the couple reproducing the tribe physically and
culturally. Whether or not the elders deliver an accurate description of how
things were, they express a possibility about how things could be again for
their community to the couple who will reproduce this community. Not
exactly idle nostalgia or idealized history, for the elders express a political
vision directed toward the future of the marriage couple and to all the
younger members of the community. Like any political vision, this repre-
sentation of the community’s possible futurity contains a critique not only
of the external (the white society they live in dialectical relation to) but of the
internal, as well (the indigenous community).
Menchú ends this description of what the elders say with a reference to
cars, the consummate sign of twentieth-century modernity (in contrast to
nineteenth-century modernity, represented by the steam engine): ‘‘Today
many drive cars. Before . . . Everybody traveled by foot, but everyone lived
very well.’’ It would be naive to read this simply as a rejection of technology,
in favor of some ‘‘return’’ to an idealized preindustrial state. The problem
represented by the cars is not modernization per se but the relations of
power that this modernization entails. Before all lived equally well; today
only some live well. Thus Guatemala has turned into a country of owners
and laboring poor. Importantly, Menchú leaves the referent of ‘‘many’’ driv-
ing cars in Guatemala ambiguous. While the reader might assume she
means Guatemala’s white people, the ‘‘many’’ in this passage also refers
back to the indigenous ‘‘sons and daughters’’ of the previous sentence. Thus
the car is a metaphor for the class di√erentiation that is occurring among
the indigenous peoples as well as the class di√erentiation that exists be-
tween the whites and Indians in Guatemala.≤∂ Similarly, in the earlier pas-
sage in which the couple speak, the lack of equality they mention refers both
to the conditions of inequality between whites and indigenous people and to
the conditions of inequality existing within this indigenous community.
Thus this interpretation of the lack of equality among the Maya checks the
celebratory nativism that echoes in some of her other descriptions, as well as
suggesting that ethnic separatism does not resolve problems of inequality
and capitalist exploitation.
Menchú’s representation of conflict internal to Guatemala’s indigenous
people further problematizes the ‘‘collective we’’ that the first-stage critics
have posited as the true voice behind Menchú’s autobiographical ‘‘I.’’ Also,
this guarded response to modernization could be read by someone like

182 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

Payeras as stemming from a folkloric impulse. Instead I would argue that it
represents an understanding of the class di√erentiation and conflicting
power relations existing within her indigenous community. Menchú repre-
sents this kind of class analysis as intrinsic to ethnic consciousness. Thus
the appeal to resist class di√erentiation among the indigenous people is
made on ethnic grounds, by means of the elders’ interpellative invocation of
an ancestral order.
There are several other examples of this economic di√erentiation and
political division among the indigenous people in Menchú’s narrative,
many of these involving the caporales—the overseers—on the fincas. Men-
chú tells us that the caporales are almost always indigenous peoples who
generally come from the same community as the hired laborers (43). To the
indigenous people who travel to the fincas, these caporales are Ladinized
indigenous people, men who share the racist attitudes of the landowners
they work for (46). The caporales travel from the fincas to their home towns
to recruit and transport workers. On the fincas, each caporal is in charge of
translating orders for the people from his community and overseeing their
work. These caporales play a crucial role in maintaining the system of dual
exploitation under which indigenous people work. To maintain the miser-
able conditions of labor, the plantation system in Guatemala depends on the
workers’ inability to speak or read Spanish, to know or defend their rights,
which are codified in Spanish. Thus the very act of bilingualism on the part
of the caporales represents Ladinization, their complicity in a system of
exploitation, not because anyone who knows Spanish automatically loses
his or her indigenous identity, but because these caporales use their knowl-
edge of Spanish to oppress their fellow indigenous people rather than assist
them. Thus the very speech acts performed by the caporales serve an inter-
pellative function. Furthermore, should speech acts fail to subordinate, the
caporales are responsible for disciplining the workers if they in any way
assert their rights or fail to work. Thus, when Menchú’s little brother dies on
the finca, the caporal fires the members of the family for missing two days’
work and keeps their back wages as payment for burying the boy.
Similarly, many of the soldiers in Guatemala are of indigenous extrac-
tion. The terror that these men perpetrate on their own communities has a
calculated and interpellative e√ect beyond the particular victims of terror.
For example, when a woman on a finca refuses the advances of the fin-
quero’s son, one of the finquero’s soldiers hacks the woman to pieces with a
machete. Even though the woman was much loved by her community, none
of the neighbors come to her aid, although they hear her screams, and

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 183

afterward none will bury her for fear of repercussions. The fragmentation of
the woman’s body metonymically stands in for the fragmentation of the
indigenous communities that often results as the consequence of the inter-
pellative terror perpetrated by these indigenous middlemen.
Importantly, for Menchú and her community, Ladinos are not only those
who are born of mixed heritage, of indigenous and white parentage. Any
indigenous person, Menchú repeatedly tells the reader, can become Ladin-
ized to various degrees by abandoning the traditional ways of the ancestors.
Given that Menchú most often represents the traditional customs of her
ancestors as interpellative ‘‘talk’’ meant to sustain a tradition of critical
conciencia, indigenous identity does not conform to classical Western no-
tions of essential identity, either biological or metaphysical. Rather, indige-
nous identity is a reiterative performance of this conciencia occurring in the
excess of normative interpellation. Indigenous identity is sustained and
confirmed through repetitive critical practices of everyday life taking place
in the misfire of normative interpellation. Thus, while Ladinization marks
the success of normative interpellation, it also marks the failure of an indig-
enous subject to hear the echo of other interpellations in the excess of the
hail to assimilation.
While every K’iche’ ceremony commemorating everyday life that Menchú
describes performs this echo, these alternate interpellations, in the third
marriage ceremony, the performance of indigenous identity foregrounds its
own constructedness. The staging of this constructedness also stages an
ideal resistive subjectivity for this indigenous community, an ideal subjec-
tivity that the members of the community do not necessarily live every day,
but rather one that constitutes and maintains the basis for this community’s
political vision of a transformative future. The third marriage ceremony, I
would argue, stages the possibility for a condition of radical agency to emerge
from the excesses and misfires of normative interpellation.
The second marriage ceremony commemorates the traditions of their
ancestors. Hence everything at this party must be made in the traditional
way, by the peasants themselves. Nothing brought to the party can be store-
bought, or even made in anything store-bought. At the third ceremony,
however, the couple pledges its union, and consequently this ceremony
celebrates the mezcla, or mixture, that the union represents. This union also
provides the community with the opportunity to comment on the mezcla
that they inevitably participate in themselves. Thus, while some traditional
items are brought to this ceremony, like tortillas and tamales, the guests
primarily bring store-bought goods:

184 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 And afterward, they show all the modern things. They bring sodas, an
eighth of rum that’s store-bought, a little bit of bread, eggs, chocolate,
co√ee. . . . Once again [the elders] present themselves, like the time
before, and they begin to give their opinion on everything. For exam-
ple, if it’s ‘‘Coca-Cola,’’ our grandparents say, sons and daughters,
never teach our children to drink this junk because it is something
that tries to end our customs. These are things made by machines and
our ancestors never used machines. These fincas are what cause us to
die young. It’s the food of white people and the whites feel rich with
these things. Don’t let the children drink this junk. This is the content
of the ceremony. Then the bread, they say is mixed with egg, flour and
egg. So, before our ancestors cultivated wheat. Then the Spanish
came and mixed it with egg. It’s mixed, it’s no longer what our ances-
tors had. This is white people’s food, because the whites are like the
bread, they are mixed. . . .
. . . They also talk about the cars, about the bathrooms of the
ladinos, about the rich people. It’s something like an analysis of the
whole situation. They say, for example, even the rich people’s bath-
rooms shine like a new suit, and we, the poor, don’t even have a little
hole in the ground to go in. And our dishes are not like theirs. And
they also say that we do not desire what they have. We have our hands
to make our dishes with and we shall not lose them. Even if there are
modern things, and even if we have money, we must never buy any of
the trash that they have. For example, in our town we do not have a
mill [for maize]. This is not for lack of possibility, for their are many
terratenientes who would have wanted to install a grinder to grind the
maize for all the town. But we say no. Little by little they enter with
their machines and then they are owners of everything. (97–98)

Once again, this passage captures a moment of political analysis that

demonstrates the community’s profound understanding of their own inte-
gration into capitalist production. Thus Coca-Cola, the fetishized sign of
‘‘modern’’ food and consumption practices, is criticized not only because it
is made by machines their ancestors did not use but because it is linked to
the fincas. The Coca-Cola, the co√ee, the chocolate, the bread, are all pro-
cessed in factories from the products that are grown on the fincas that hire
the members of Menchú’s community as laborers. Thus, by buying these
products, they are participating in their own exploitation. Also, even if they
have money, they must not buy the things that would presumably make

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 185

their lives ‘‘easier.’’ If they do buy these things or allow machines to enter
their town, they will progressively lose the skills to live without them—such
as the skill to make their own dishes or to grind their own corn—and
become more dependent on the system of production and consumption
that exploits them. Once again, their poverty, the sign of their exploitation, is
linked to the wealth of the rich. The bathrooms of the Guatemalan rich
shine while Menchú’s people do not even have outhouses. And once again,
the bourgeois reader is implicated, as ‘‘Coca Cola’’ and chocolate, so readily
available in the First World, are historically derived from the coca and cocoa
produced under exploitative and terroristic conditions on fincas all over the
Third World. The reader is implicated in the disembedded capitalist social
relations crisscrossing the globe, linking the consumption practices of the
‘‘modern’’ reader to the exploitative labor practices subordinating the ‘‘pre-
modern’’ indigenous laborer from Guatemala to Peru.
However, something more than this political analysis takes place in the
third ceremony. As I suggested earlier, this ceremony hails those commu-
nity members present to an ideal resistive indigenous subjectivity, a subjec-
tivity that is critical about one’s implication in a capitalist chain of produc-
tion. This subjectivity will not participate in its own exploitation and will live
according to limited needs to ensure the well-being of the entire indigenous
community. But the third ceremony stages an ideal subjectivity precisely
because Menchú’s indigenous community does not and cannot live this
subjectivity in everyday life. Menchú tells us, for example, that many of the
members of her ethnic tribe regularly buy rum for themselves and candy for
their children from the finca stores at exploitative prices on credit. She also
tells us, however, that she learned to ride the buses to Guatemala City and to
speak Spanish in order to better defend the rights of her community. And in
this third ceremony, the community purchases and partakes of store-bought
goods. Paradoxically, the community participates in modernity through its
quintessential sign, consumption, in order to critique it. This paradoxical
positionality demonstrates that the ideal indigenous subjectivity posited by
the community is neither naive nor absolute. The paradoxical positionality
suggested in this third marriage ceremony forms the basis for Menchú’s
articulation of revolutionary subjectivity.
Menchú occupies Western discourse to defend against its encroachment
on her community. To individuate the Other for the Western reader, she
assumes the autobiographical ‘‘I’’ and tells us ‘‘her’’ story; and yet, having
invited the reader to hear her personal story, she instead tells a more general
story about her endangered community. This is not a return to the ‘‘I’’ as the

186 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

collective ‘‘we.’’ Rather, the ‘‘I’’ is a tactical production, a performance irre-
ducible to the ‘‘I’’ that is Rigoberta Menchú beyond the text. Similarly, the
‘‘we’’ in her texts is a tactical production, irreducible to the ‘‘we’’ she at once
seeks to represent and refuses to represent. She produces both the ‘‘I’’ and
the ‘‘we’’ in her narrative only partially, maintaining the ‘‘Other’’ in the gap
between the tactical representation and the lived—just as in the third mar-
riage ceremony her community maintains an ideal resistive subjectivity that
is di√erent from the subjectivities they are forced to live. For now, she seeks
to preserve the space for the Other as Other. There is no other position for
the Other in Western discourse, after all; she does not try to get out of this
double bind. Instead she gives the reader a representation of the Other that
does not exhaust its otherness, that has limits, and these limits ultimately
suit her political ends.
What are those political ends? What does she repeatedly tell us, in her
anthropological voice of revelation, about this Other we want to know and
cannot know? That the Other does not want to know us, her bourgeois
Western readership. But even this desire, paradoxically, cannot be fulfilled.
She needs the Western reader to know her, in some limited way, to assist her
goal of maintaining a space apart from the Western discourse of develop-
ment in which she already participates. She uses her radically conditioned
form of agency in an attempt to preserve the space from which a condition
of radical agency might emerge. Again this interpellation into radical
agency would occur not outside of hegemonic normativity but in the ex-
cesses and misfires of normative interpellation. Thus she learns Spanish to
travel around the world and tell ‘‘her story,’’ to denounce the genocidal
conditions in her country: conditions that are maintained, after all, through
the action and inaction of abject actors beyond the borders of Guatemala.≤∑
Our abjection lies precisely in our failure to recognize our participation in a
chain of production and consumption that consumes her community, in the
success of our normative interpellation and in our failure to interpret the
echoes of alternate interpellations present in the excesses and misfires of
normativity. Thus Menchú’s story celebrates neither ethno-nationalism nor
separatism. Rather, it hails the reader to identify the circuits of exploitation
that bind her in social relation with the indigenous subaltern.
Menchú’s articulation of revolutionary transformation is not epochal or
revelatory. Her story is not a quest for a pure category of revolutionary
consciousness. Menchú’s vision of revolutionary subjection is not a naive
return to a pure category of ethnicity free of contamination. Nor is it a
romantic plunge forward into a pure category of a proletariat fully aware of

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 187

the wonders of a modernization within its control, as Payeras would have it,
for such a plunge ‘‘forward’’ would inevitably entail the disappearance of her
ethnic specificity. Instead revolutionary conciencia carefully and selectively
begins from the present conditions of everyday life. This is where the au-
thority for revolutionary change must come. In her self-representation,
Menchú strategically vacillates between the position of autonomous liberal
subject and the Other of Western discourse to critique development and
modernization from a gendered, classed, and ethnic position, and to cri-
tique teleologies of consciousness put forth by her male counterparts that
are predicated on an interpellative ‘‘transcendence’’ of her present subject
position, that of a K’iche’ woman peasant. It is also through this vacillation
that Menchú achieves political viability—it is her authorial claim to repre-
sentation that catapults her into the international arena as the representa-
tive of the Mayan people, while her simultaneous refusal to represent the
Other maintains critical distance between her authorial ‘‘I’’ and a tentative,
tactical ‘‘we’’ whom she seeks to represent in this arena. However, even my
use of the word ‘‘tactical’’ harkens back to the tactical maneuvers of her male
counterparts and bears the trace of the revolutionary ‘‘I’’ critiqued in chap-
ter 3. Her tactical assertion of the authorial ‘‘I’’ in an attempt to represent the
di√erence of the subaltern ‘‘we’’ necessarily erases di√erence in the web of
autobiographical desire and interest. That is the necessary risk. I interrogate
the revolutionary subjection not to dislodge the authorial ‘‘I’’ but to alter the
tactics of its deployment, that is, to theorize the ‘‘I’’ with the ethical recogni-
tion that it will not—indeed, cannot fully—represent subaltern particularity.
Menchú’s tactical deployment must necessarily leave itself open not only to
the revolutionary Left who accuse her of ethno-separatism, the Pan-Mayan
separatist movement in Guatemala who accuse her of failing to articulate a
‘‘Mayan’’ vision, but also to the future subalterns who will challenge her
tactics of representation in the hopes of a more inclusive revolutionary
imagination.
Thus I return to the many possible interpretations of the title of her
autobiography: Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nacío la conciencia, ‘‘I am
named/called Rigoberta Menchú and that/this is how my conscience/con-
sciousness was born to me.’’ The logic of this sentence branches out in
many directions. She is named or called—hailed in the act of naming by
external agencies—Rigoberta Menchú. Indeed, ‘‘Rigoberta’’ is a Spanish
saint’s name, given to her by a municipal clerk who refused to recognize her
given name, M’in, when her father registered her birth.≤∏ As such, the name
Rigoberta reiteratively performs a call to colonized subjectivity. Meanwhile,

188 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

Menchú, a K’iche’ name, calls her as an indigenous subject who resists
colonial subordination. There is a constitutive ambiguity, though, in the
possible meanings of the Spanish term así, for this term points both back-
ward and forward in time. As ‘‘that is how my conscience/consciousness
was born to me,’’ así freezes her interpellation in a past act of hailing. In
other words, read as pointing backward in time, así would indicate that her
interpellation is exhausted in the act of naming her ‘‘Rigoberta Menchú,’’ a
resistive, but ultimately subordinated, colonized subject. However, así also
points forward in time, to an interpellation still in process. Read as ‘‘this is
how my consciousness was born to me,’’ así suggests that although she has
been hailed as a colonized subject, she has yet to tell us how she trans-
formed that subjectivity. More accurately, she has yet to tell us how the
transformation of her colonized subjectivity emerged from interpreting and
representing the very conditions that she lived as a colonized subject: ‘‘my
consciousness was born to me.’’
Menchú, in her limited representation of herself and her community,
can be said to occupy what Frantz Fanon has called ‘‘the zone of occult
instability where the people dwell’’:

Yes, the first duty of the poet is to see clearly the people he has chosen
as the subject of his work of art. He cannot go forward resolutely
unless he first realizes the extent of his estrangement from them. We have
taken everything from the other side; and the other side gives us
nothing unless by a thousand detours we swing finally round in their
direction, unless by a thousand tricks they manage to draw us toward
them, to seduce us, and to imprison us. Taking means in nearly every
case being taken: thus it is not enough to try to free oneself by repeating
proclamations and denials. It is not to try to get back to the people in that
past out of which they have already emerged; rather we must join them in
that fluctuating movement which they are just giving shape to, and which
as soon as it has started, will be the signal for everything else to be called in
question. Let there be no mistake about it; it is to this zone of occult
instability where the people dwell that we must come; and it is there that our
souls are crystallized and that our perceptions and our lives are transfused
with light. (227)

In this passage from his essay ‘‘On National Culture,’’ Fanon articulates the
inherent di≈culty in representing a national identity from the position of a
subject of colonial rule. The poets, as members of the intelligentsia, are
interpellated as subjects by a system of colonial education, of colonial gov-

Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’ 189

ernmentality. These poets have ‘‘taken everything from the other side’’ and
have inevitably also ‘‘been taken,’’ subordinated by their own subjection.
There is no escaping a colonialism that marks the colonized subject in his or
her attempts at representing a national identity. Similarly, for Menchú there
is no escaping the colonialism that marks her, or the process of moderniza-
tion in which she already participates, as colonial subject. Hence she is
called forth—Rigoberta/Menchú. Hence her community cannot escape the
modernization process they participate in, even as they articulate a political
futurity. Although Fanon and Menchú have considerable political and cul-
tural di√erences, they both call attention to a ‘‘zone of occult instability’’ in
which people dwell: a site of complex compliance with, and resistance to,
colonial authority. This zone, for Menchú as for Fanon, exceeds the possibil-
ities of interpellative representation. Menchú neither looks backward to a
state of innocence nor looks forward to a moment of revolutionary redemp-
tion. Located in the politics of the present, the zone of occult instability
resists transcendent, stable definition and acquires its urgency and contours
of representation in the concrete materiality of everyday struggle. It is in
such a zone that revolutionary consciousness emerges, between polar ab-
stractions of ‘‘I’’ and ‘‘we,’’ between what Spivak has called ‘‘elite knowing’’
and ‘‘subaltern being’’ (In Other Worlds 253; see also 268). It is from such a
radically conditioned agency that the possibility of radical agency emerges.

190 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 6
The Politics of Silence: Development

and Di√erence in Zapatismo

Hasta que guarden silencio no podemos empesar.

—Comandante David, Oventic, 27 July 1996

Politics is possible because the constitutive impossibility of society can only represent itself
through the production of empty signifiers.
—Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s)

On the evening of 27 July 1996, five thousand visitors from forty-three

countries gathered under a starry sky in Oventic, Chiapas, invited there by
the Zapatista Army for National Liberation to celebrate the ‘‘International
Meeting for Humanity and against Neoliberalism.’’ After traveling half a
day by bus to get there, we gathered in the center of an arena built for the
event. Spirits were high as members of the Italian delegation sang antifas-
cist songs, enclaves of Argentines and Chileans played guitar, and there
were shout-outs and ‘‘vivas’’ all around. By the time Comandante David took
the stage and asked for silence, the crowd’s cheers for the ezln and the
event seemed irrepressible. Although we quieted down considerably to lis-
ten, a low but constant buzz of conversation continued among us. This
certainly seemed like silence to us, but Comandante David did not agree. He
asked again for us to be quiet, repeatedly saying, ‘‘Hasta que guarden silen-
cio, no podemos empesar’’ [We cannot begin until you keep silent] and ‘‘Hay
que guardar diez minutos de silencio antes de poder empezar’’ [We have to
be quiet for ten minutes before we can start]. Europeans, Latin Americans,
and U.S. citizens all around grumbled that this seemed unnecessary—even
a bit authoritarian. Eventually, after about fifteen minutes, when we realized
we had no choice, that he was serious, that there might be a point to this, it
happened. We were silent. Completely silent. Not one sigh, not one whisper,
not one chair scraping against the ground.
At first, I could hear—in the silence—people straining not to speak, re-
pressing the urge to hear our own voices. Just when the strain of my interior
speech seemed deafening, silence distracted me. Sounds emerged in the
darkness of silence: the sound of my own breathing, of a distant humming
of electricity, of the hooting of owls around us and the flight of bats above
our heads, of the rustling of the wind as it stroked its way through the crowd,
of a neighbor shivering—even the stars’ shining possessed a quality akin to
sound. After a few minutes of this sensual alertness, I noticed color entering
the periphery of my vision: The Zapatistas were filing into the bleachers
surrounding the central plaza where we, the visitors, were sitting. The
bleachers, shrouded in darkness, were almost completely full when I no-
ticed them filing in—men and women wearing embroidered huipiles and
ponchos, covering their faces with bandannas and masks. I was stunned,
because even though we were sitting there being so quiet—perhaps because
of the ‘‘quiet’’—the Zapatistas had been on the move and quieter still. I
had not heard hundreds of Zapatistas filling up the seats all around us. It
seemed to me that none of us had heard the ezln as its members sur-
rounded us. While we were distracted by silence, the Zapatistas had added
their silence—a silence now reverberating with movement—to our own.
The performative act of silence imposed on our group that evening func-
tioned as a political metaphor: if it was this di≈cult for me, for us as a group
of some five thousand people, to keep silent for ten minutes, what had it
been like for the members and supporters of the Zapatistas to keep silent for
ten years—one minute for every year? On another level, however, the very
content of the silence we experienced that evening is a political metaphor for
the fullness and di√erentiation of our own community; more precisely, si-
lence is the condition of possibility for this di√erentiation and fullness. For
it was in human silence that we were able to recognize the musicality of
noise, the seemingly infinite possibility of di√erentiated sound, extending
community beyond the territory marked as human. How, then, to read the
fullness of this performative silence? ‘‘Now,’’ Comandante David spoke,
‘‘We can begin.’’ And yet, in retrospect, the silence was the beginning of the
political act that followed.
Recent scholarship on subaltern historiography has illuminated the com-
plexity of possible meanings encoded in subaltern silence (Guha, Domi-
nance without Hegemony; Guha, ‘‘On Some Aspects’’; Pandey; Scott, ‘‘Every-
day Forms of Resistance’’). Some theoreticians of subaltern subjectivity,
such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, have also addressed the absolute limits
of Western knowledge when confronted with subaltern silence and iteration
(Spivak, ‘‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’’). Indeed, as I have argued in chapter 5,

192 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

Rigoberta Menchú’s performative silence foregrounds precisely those limits
to Western knowledge. Menchú repeatedly insists on calling the Western
reader’s attention to the secrets she withholds in Me llamó Rigoberta Menchú
y así me nacío la conciencia. She does this, I have argued, as part of a political
project in which she seeks a strictly limited engagement with a Western
audience about her experience as a Guatemalan Indian. Just on the other
side of the border of the highlands and the Petén jungle, the scene of
Menchú’s story, a very di√erent sort of engagement with silence is taking
place in the Lacandón jungle between the indigenous people participating
in the ezln and the Western subject. Occurring more than a decade after
the publication of Menchú’s autobiography, the ezln’s performative silence
at the International Meeting in Oventic was a study in contrast. Whereas
Menchú’s secrets are a stark and purposeful point of dis-identification for
the Western reader, the silence invoked by the Zapatistas at Oventic staged
multiple identifications for the visiting (mostly Western) outsiders: with the
indigenous Zapatistas, with the symbolized Mexican nation, with ourselves
and each other, with a vibrant natural world. To begin with, the Zapatistas
invited us—required us—to join them in their silence. We were asked to
reenact the silence under which the Zapatistas had organized for ten years.
We were asked to experience the di≈culty of attaining and maintaining
silence for even a representative ten minutes. Metonymically, our ten min-
utes together stood in for the ten years of ‘‘silent’’ Zapatista organizing;
however, they also represented another kind of silence, the five hundred
years of silence imposed on indigenous peoples of the Americas by subalter-
nizing discourses of the colonial and postcolonial periods. Silence is the
mark of alterity, of Indian di√erence, in subalternizing discourses of con-
quest, but also the mask for alterity, for in ‘‘silence’’ the Zapatistas experi-
ence community and organize resistance. It is important that the silence
that evening was not exactly voluntary, as we were mimicking the structural
silence imposed on indigenous subalternity in the Americas. Nevertheless,
through this performative silence, the ezln demonstrated to us just how
much can be accomplished under its cover.
The Zapatistas, catching us unaware as they encircled us, were also re-
staging their ten years of organizing in the midst, but outside the aware-
ness, of the rest of Mexico. So then, as visitors, we also symbolized a Mexi-
can nation caught by surprise. We were standing in for those mestizo or
Ladinized Mexicans who, prior to 1 January 1994, were oblivious to the
plight (and fight) of their indigenous compatriots. And yet, as such, we had
also shared in the Zapatistas’ silence. The Mexican nation, as represented

The Politics of Silence 193

here through us, shared with the Zapatista Indians ten years of silent su√er-
ing under structural adjustment policies and neoliberal mandates. Operat-
ing through the visitors’ metonymic silence, the Zapatistas were also identi-
fying themselves with the rest of the Mexican nation.
There was yet another identification being staged here, our identification
as visitors with each other and with ourselves. For we, the many of us
Western and Westernized subjects present, in the habit of thinking about
ourselves as freely constituted and purposeful individuals, had also been
subjected by neoliberalism. In the ‘‘First World,’’ we too had experienced a
less violent, but by no means less virulent, structural adjustment in the
1980s and 1990s, disguised by such regionalisms as Reaganism or Thatch-
erism. And certainly, as leftists and progressives of various stripes and posi-
tions, from various ‘‘developed’’ countries, all our criticisms had been
equally muted by the triumph of post–Cold War neoliberalism—more e√ec-
tively, in fact, than criticism in Mexico. This simple reenactment, then,
provided the grounds for these multiple identifications—constitutively fleet-
ing and inconclusive—identifications that are central to the Zapatistas’ proj-
ect of wresting national and international terms of political representation
for themselves.
The Zapatistas staged these multiple identifications for us by having all
of us perform their silence. We had to pass through their silence—to be as
silent as an Indian—even to come into identification with our own subjec-
tion. But silence, as the quintessential marker of Indian identity in the
subalternizing discourses of both North and South America, had been rup-
tured. The Indian silence enacted here was not the silence of the Indian in
modernizing discourses—the silence of an absence, a lack, an incompletion.
Neither was it the silence of the Indian in revolutionary developmentalism—
the silence of incipient rebels, in waiting for leadership. Nor was it the
silence of the Indian in Christian martyrdom—the silence of forbearance in
expectation of eternal deliverance. It was a silence filled with noise, with
planning, communication, movement, tactics, coercion, frustration, ties,
networks, su√ering, satisfaction—a silence so filled with activity that it rup-
tures from within, a truly deafening quiet. In Spivak’s terms, from her now-
famous introduction to Selected Subaltern Studies, the Zapatistas broke apart
the semiotic chain from within the terms of the discourse (after all, can you
ever really trust a silent Indian?) in an attempt to resignify (to stretch as
much as possible) the sign of being an Indian in Latin America before the
chain can reconstitute itself into a (slightly) new hegemony.
So now let us return to my earlier, possibly troubling, statement about

194 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

identifying with our own subjection by passing through identification with
the Indian, by being ‘‘as silent as an Indian.’’ I want to distinguish this
process of identification from the process of identification involved in nation
building, where Creole elites—such as those in New Spain—appropriated the
identity markers of Indian rebellion to justify Latin American independence
movements, and to formulate national cultures di√erent from the culture of
empire.∞ I would also like to distinguish it from the various contemporary
nostalgic processes of identification in which markers of Indian purity are
appropriated by individuals and movements in search of more ‘‘natural’’
states of being. Although inevitably contaminated by both of these kinds of
identifications, the identification initiated by the Zapatistas was also di√erent
from them. This identification between the visiting outsiders and the indige-
nous subalterns was not a naive erasure of the di√erence of these posi-
tionalities. When the Zapatistas joined the visitors in this performative si-
lence, they did not take their place among the visitors in the central part of the
arena. Or, for that matter, in front of the visitors, on the stage. Instead they
encircled us; they filled the bleachers at the margin of the arena. As such, they
chose to represent the imbalance in political, economic, and cultural power
that sustains the centrality of the Western nonindigenous subject vis-à-vis
the indigenous subject. Indeed, as visitors, we participated in this representa-
tion, reinforcing our own centrality, since it obviously had not occurred to any
of us to sit in the bleachers and leave the middle space for the Zapatistas who
might be joining us. On the other hand, the Zapatista call to identify with
them, to be ‘‘as silent as an Indian,’’ foregrounded the centrality of the
‘‘Indian’’ in our own subject formation. While apparently dramatizing In-
dian silence, we were, in e√ect, dramatizing our own silence before neo-
liberalism. We recognized ourselves as silent, and the silent Indian of our
imaginary as a necessary projection in the habit of recognizing ourselves as
purposeful and freely constituted individuals.≤
The act of the Zapatistas encircling the visitors is suggestive of a number
of other possible symbolic relationships: that of confinement, engulfment,
absorption, protection. These alternate readings of our relative positioning
in this shared silence simultaneously suggest force, resistance, commen-
surability, cooperation, and dependency, all within a context of a materially
given imbalance in power. Identification in this case is a complexly struc-
tured process, simultaneously conflictual and commensurable, in which
di√erences are only temporarily superseded by the Zapatistas’ imposed
silence.≥ The di√erences among the nonindigenous subjects present at the
event were also temporarily superseded by our silence. In e√ect, the many

The Politics of Silence 195

di√erences existing in the crowd that night were brought into an equivalent
relation through the signifier of Zapatista di√erence—silence. Rather than
eliminating di√erences, silence is the condition of possibility for di√erences
to emerge, but also for a universal identification in di√erence to take place.
Silence is the site at which alterity and universality converge.
In Ernesto Laclau’s terms, that night in Oventic, the Zapatistas filled the
empty signifier of the ‘‘fullness of the community’’ with the sign of their
di√erence (Laclau, Emancipation[s] ); they brought all of us into a relation-
ship of abstract and temporary parity (exceeding the solidarity of the 1980s)
with each other, through our identification with their silence. At this mo-
ment, Indian di√erence comes dangerously close to losing all specificity, as
my multiple interpretations of the silence make evident. Each interpretation
begins with the specificity of Indian silence only to abstract it into a gener-
alizable silence capable of encompassing all of us present. This is a micro-
cosmic example of the Zapatistas’ political project at the national level. The
Zapatistas have attempted to become the empty signifier ‘‘fullness of the
Mexican community’’ by alternately emphasizing their Indian di√erences
from mestizo nationals and successfully superseding these di√erences in
their bid to shape the contours of a nonbiologized democratic citizenship.
As such, the Zapatista model of citizenship poses a serious threat to the
terms of mestizo citizenship that have governed Mexico for the last seventy
years—not because they insist on their indigenous identity, but precisely
because they do not.
Zapatista silence, I suggest, becomes a methodology for interrupting the
teleological discourses that have enabled twentieth-century Mexican revolu-
tionary nationalism. It disrupts the deployment of the racial discourse of
mestizaje (and its counterpart indigenismo) as a strategy for national identi-
fication and unification. The Zapatistas’ organized silence also interrupts
the deeply related discourse of modernization, a discourse repeatedly prom-
ising to deliver the Mexican nation into liberal modernity through develop-
ment. Instead, the ezln insists, this modernizing discourse threatens to
‘‘develop’’ the indigenous peasantry right out of existence. These twin dis-
courses have facilitated the emergence of the ideal citizen of a Mexican
revolutionary imaginary in the twentieth century: the modern mestizo na-
tional. Zapatista silence interrupted this revolutionary imaginary, these twin
teleologies of being, on 1 January 1994, and the Zapatistas continue to
challenge identification with this ideal—the modern mestizo—by repeatedly
and successfully o√ering alternative processes of identification to disen-
franchised Mexicans. In this chapter, then, I analyze the significance of the

196 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

Zapatista interruption, on the one hand, and these alternative processes of
identification, on the other.
Zapatista silence has broken into twentieth-century discourses of na-
tionalist becoming, and now a new history of the emergence of the Mexican
nation can be told by virtue of this subaltern interruption. In the first half of
this chapter, I interpret this ‘‘new’’ history of Mexico that the Zapatistas
make visible by decoding the subalternizing e√ect of mestizaje and develop-
ment. I do not provide an exhaustive history of indigenismo and mestizaje
as complementary racial ideologies in Mexico, or an exhaustive history of
Mexico’s twentieth-century development policies, though I review both of
these histories to provide a context for the emergence of the Zapatistas. I
revisit these histories in the service of an interpretive analysis of how colo-
nial, postcolonial, and revolutionary regimes of subjection consecutively
produced Indian di√erence as a technique of governmentality. In the sec-
ond half of the chapter, I interpret selected Zapatista communiqués, and the
instances of public democratic practice staged by the Zapatistas over the
course of a six-year period (1994–2000). I pay particular attention to the
public performance of their negotiations with the government from 1994 to
1996, leading to the signing of the ‘‘Accords on Indigenous Rights and
Culture.’’ The communiqués, these public performances of democratic
practice, and the accords all o√er the Mexican people alternative processes
of identification, and taken together, they open up the possibility of recon-
figuring the meaning of revolution and nation.
Although the ezln promises to permanently alter the revolutionary
imagination in the twenty-first century, I nevertheless believe it is necessary
to subject the Zapatista movement to the same critique of developmental-
ism in revolutionary movements that I have conducted thus far in the book.
As much as observers and critics of the ezln insist on the absolute orig-
inality of this movement, it nevertheless stands in genealogical relation to
the Central American revolutionary movements, as made evident by the
initial Zapatista communiqués and subsequent rhetoric. Critics refuse to
acknowledge this genealogical relationship, naively disavowing all that was
wrong with the earlier movements. In doing so, these critics forget all that
was right with these movements as well, expressing a blind faith in a ‘‘new’’
style of guerrilla politics that, in many ways, is not entirely new. The Mexi-
can revolution of 1910 is the paradigmatic revolutionary movement in Latin
America. It is the first and longest-lasting revolution of the twentieth cen-
tury, and the Zapatistas describe themselves as its rightful heirs. As such, it
is crucial to a study of revolutionary developmentalism, and to the specific

The Politics of Silence 197

purpose of this chapter—to decipher the developmentalism inherent in the
1910 revolution. Finally, to the degree possible, it is important to examine
the Zapatistas’ own revisioning of development from their perspective as
the first fully indigenous revolutionary movement of the post–World War II
period.

I conducted eight months of primary research in Chiapas and in Mexico

City over the course of three years (1994–1997). I interviewed representa-
tives of the ezln, members of pro-Zapatista nongovernmental organiza-
tions, pri o≈cials, leaders of Indianist organizations, members of indepen-
dent and governmental human rights organizations, and members of the
independent and the governmental peace commissions. In addition, I par-
ticipated as a human rights observer on delegations sent to investigate areas
of conflict, and in peace camps established in communities along the border
between the Zapatista liberated zones and the Mexican army camps. From
these experiences, I learned about many of the tensions that exist among
indigenous peasant groups in and around the Zapatista liberated zones, as
well as how adroit the government is at exacerbating those tensions to incite
violence. Under these di≈cult circumstances, I was able to conduct a num-
ber of interviews in Zapatista-held communities, as well as to engage people
in more informal conversations. However, my lack of knowledge of any
indigenous language limited my interaction with the base of the Zapatista
movement, as well as with supporters of the pri. My conversations and
interviews with people in Zapatista zones were limited to Spanish-speaking
men, and to women and men with whom I spoke through a translator. This
is an entirely di√erent experience from my research in Nicaragua, where I
lived for three consecutive years, worked for a research institution, and
spent months at a time in the countryside among peasants who spoke
Spanish as a first language, felt relatively free to speak their minds, and
came to know me well.
This chapter di√ers in other ways as well from the previous chapters.
Unlike the other revolutionary movements I have analyzed, the Zapatista
movement is still going on. This makes the movement an ever-shifting
object of study, its analysis messy and indeterminate. One moment the
ezln is an armed guerrilla movement; the next it is a movement for elec-
toral reform and democratic transition. One moment it is a peasant move-
ment for land and resources; the next it is an Indianist movement in pursuit
of autonomy and cultural rights. In all of its manifestations, the ezln has
inserted a decisive ‘‘Chiapas e√ect’’ into the last eight years of Mexican

198 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

politics (García de León 18). The Zapatista communities are encircled by the
Mexican military and are targets of a vicious counterinsurgency campaign
waged by paramilitary groups. For all of their media savvy and success, the
Zapatistas daily su√er the consequences of this ‘‘low-intensity’’ war and are
under no obligation to make themselves more vulnerable by making them-
selves more accessible.∂ No Zapatista member has published a memoir. No
outside observers have spent significant amounts of time among the rank
and file of the movement. With the exception of the Accords on Indigenous
Rights and Culture, no detailed proposal exists outlining how the ezln
envisions the implementation of revolutionary change taking place. Thus
there is no way to ascertain how democratic or feminist the internal work-
ings of the movement may be.

Inventing the ‘‘Indian’’ for Spanish Colonialism

Noted cultural critic and literary scholar José Rabasa has described the proj-
ect of subaltern studies in Latin America thus: ‘‘Less concerned with identi-
fying and studying ‘subalterns’ as positive entities, the project as I envision
it would call for an analysis of the mechanisms that produce subalternity as
well as the formulation of political and cultural practices that would end it’’
(405). Following Rabasa’s imperative, in this section and the next I cull the
rich historical and anthropological record on colonial violence, Indian ex-
ploitation, and racial ideology in Mexico to theorize the production and
reproduction of Indian di√erence in the service of colonial and postcolonial
governmentality. I suggest that Indian di√erence is the e√ect of a colonial
regime of subjection that successfully articulated processes of exploitation
with processes of cultural formation. In turn, racial and ethnic di√erences
were reformulated by postcolonial regimes of subjection and techniques of
governmentality to structure the modern national identity of nineteenth-
and twentieth-century Mexico. An ethnically inflected Zapatista collectivity
has been configured as a result of a dialectical relationship between the
pri’s policies of indigenismo and economic development and the everyday
practices of indigenous members of the ezln.∑ The pri’s development and
indigenist policies together articulate a revolutionary regime of subjection
that has created the conditions for the ezln to emerge. In turn, the ezln
has brought the one-party state to crisis by appropriating Indian di√erence.
It is this recursive relationship between colonial and postcolonial subjec-
tion, on one hand, and the Zapatista response, on the other, that I seek to
illuminate in this reinterpretation of the historical processes that have pro-

The Politics of Silence 199

duced and reproduced this di√erence into the present. Once again I caution
the reader: the following sections are not meant to provide a complete
history of indigenismo, mestizaje, or pri development policy. Instead I
review certain aspects of these histories to provide a context for the emer-
gence of Zapatista subjectivity, consciousness, and agency.
Those characteristics today that seem most authentic to Mesoamerican
indigenous culture still bear the imprint of colonial subjection. Take, for
example, the formation of the Indian township, thousands of which today
dot the landscape from the valley of Oaxaca to the highlands of Guatemala.
Each town has its own council of elders as its highest normative authority,
its own system of assembly and decision making, its particular religious
obligations, rituals, and saints, its unique traditional costume, a central
plaza around which social and market life is organized, and each shares a
primary indigenous language (Bonfil Batalla 31–37). Indeed, during the first
round of negotiations between the Mexican government and the Zapatistas
on Indian rights and culture in 1995, the Zapatistas sought communal
autonomy rather than regional autonomy in Chiapas, recognizing the town-
ship as the basis for Indian identity and for the organization of indigenous
life. Yet the Indian town as the organizing unit of indigenous life is the
engineered product of Spanish colonial governmentality and economic ex-
ploitation (Díaz Polanco, Indigenous Peoples 24).
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Spanish Crown perfected
ways for managing its most valuable asset in the New World: indigenous
labor. It established institutions for the subjugation of the indigenous popu-
lation and for the rationalization of its exploitation. The most pervasive and
successful of these institutions was the atomized Indian town, with its set of
specific cultural traits. In the first half of the sixteenth century, the Crown’s
system of the encomíenda assigned conquistadors individual Indian com-
munities as laborers and servants for their haciendas and mines (Díaz Pol-
anco, Indigenous Peoples 29–34).∏ Two plagues in the second half of the
sixteenth century severely diminished the indigenous population, pre-
cipitating further relocation and concentration of this population. Under the
supervision of the clerics, the Crown introduced the systems of congrega-
ciones (the forced concentration of dispersed Indian populations) and of
reduccíones (the ‘‘voluntary’’ relocation of entire villages once they converted
to Christianity) (52–58). Presumably undertaken for medical and evangel-
ical purposes, these new townships were more e√ective than the enco-
míendas in reorganizing indigenous life-worlds for the purposes of ensur-
ing a steady supply of labor that would pay tribute to the Crown. All three

200 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

systems for appropriating Indian labor relied principally on the re-creation
of the pre-Hispanic Indian communities into fragmented townships.π
Indian ethnicity was reduced to the level of the town by the colonial
regime through a myriad of administrative e√ects, among them the intro-
duction of a traditional costume for each township as a method of imperial
surveillance, the institution of unique religious rituals for each town orga-
nized around particular saints’ days, the tithing by township for the Crown
and Church, and, most importantly, the elimination of supracommunal
networks of identification. Indian hierarchies—the form of pre-Hispanic
governmentality mediating supracommunal indigenous networks—had
their power and jurisdiction reduced as these hierarchies were slowly re-
placed by elected o≈cials on the local councils. Each council negotiated its
interests separately with the Spanish administration, eliminating the need
for mediation by supracommunal authorities or the possibility for alle-
giance among town councils (Díaz Polanco, Indigenous Peoples 55).
The communitarianism of village life, then, focused around the town
council of elders, which today we identify as a hallmark of various Meso-
american indigenous cultures, is in fact the by-product of Spanish colonial-
ism’s regime of subjection, and its success at dismantling supracommunal
levels of organization and identification. Spanish colonialism’s regime of
subjection universalized Indian identity, as all inhabitants of the Americas
were rendered ‘‘Indian’’—regardless of their heterogeneous cultures and
political organizations—in contradistinction to Spaniards. However, colonial
policy also parochialized indigenous identities by disarticulating previous
cultural, political, and territorial organizations, replacing them with confin-
ing local structures of identifications and governance that existed parallel to,
though also in the service of, colonial governance. Spanish colonial subjec-
tion engineered a lasting Indian di√erence through this simultaneous pro-
cess of universalizing and particularizing Indian identity. It reproduced a
racialized labor force that spanned two continents, not by applying military
force, but by relying on the disciplining power of thousands of atomized
‘‘Indian’’ towns for the production and containment of Indian di√erence.
These towns, however, also proliferated ethnic di√erences among Indians
through their fragmentation of identity.∫ Spanish colonialism transformed
every aspect of indigenous cultural life and political territoriality through the
townships while at the same time (re)producing the grounds for Indian
di√erence at a safe but accessible distance.
Mexicanist historians and anthropologists of indigenous culture who
often disagree in their characterizations of pre-Hispanic indigenous culture

The Politics of Silence 201

nevertheless agree that the colonial system, because it so completely restruc-
tured indigenous life-worlds, created the ‘‘Indian’’ (Aguirre Beltrán, Regiones
de refugio; Aguirre Beltrán, La politica indigenista en México; Varese; Bonfil
Batalla; Knight, ‘‘Racism, Revolution’’; Díaz Polanco, Indigenous Peoples).
Nevertheless these indigenous communities also produced meaning and
value in excess of Spanish techniques of governmentality; they produced a
cultural formation that exceeded colonialism’s subalternized category of the
Indian. This excess, however, neither exists outside of colonialism nor is
other to colonialism. Rather, it is from the dialectical relationship between a
colonial regime of subjection and the everyday practices of a subjugated
population that new and resistant indigenous identities emerged, that new
political and cultural indigenous communities coalesced.Ω It is also from this
colonial regime of di√erence that modern national identities emerged in
Latin America.
In nineteenth-century Mexico, this Indian di√erence articulated with the
economic and cultural processes of forming a national identity, often in
contradictory ways. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Creole elites
claimed the history of Aztec resistance to Spain as their own nationalist
origin story, as the historical resistance to Spain that legitimized New
Spain’s struggle for independence from the Crown (Bonfil Batalla 95). This
historical indigenismo, as some scholars have called it, also gave the Mexi-
can insurgency its distinctive popular character—‘‘an agrarian element and
an element of ‘caste’ struggle against Spain’’ (Díaz Polanco, Indigenous Peo-
ples 16). It allowed nationalist elites to fill the content of the emerging nation
with a ‘‘folk’’ culture, as they appropriated the Indian religious cult of the
Virgen de Tepeyac and translated it into a Creole guadalupismo (Bonfil
Batalla 95). In other words, indigenismo in the nineteenth-century indepen-
dence movement provided a regime of subjection for the nationalist elite,
and not just the subjugated indigenous population. The appearance of the
Virgen de Tepeyac (renamed Guadalupe by these elites) to an Indian named
Juan Diego in New Spain provided nationalists with legitimization—a Chris-
tian blessing—for their cause against Spain in the formation of Mexico. The
Virgen de Guadalupe became the patron saint of Mexican independence,
and her veneration spread among the Creole class.∞≠ Creole nationalists
were able to appropriate Indian cultural forms as their own precisely be-
cause of the colonial regime’s reiterative production of Indian di√erence as
an at once universal and particularistic form of subjection.
By maintaining Indian towns as a structure of governance parallel,
though subordinate, to Spanish town governance, colonialism’s regime of

202 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

subjection had universalized the di√erence between Indians and Spaniards.
These parallel republics rarefied Indians as the native inhabitants of the
Americas and the Spaniards as the Europeans. Indian di√erence thereby
provided Creole nationalists—many of whose very status as mestizo elite
defied this rarefied di√erentiation—with a rich structure of identification in
their actions against the Spaniards as foreigners, as European interlopers.
The dialectical relationship between particular and universal Indian identity
put into play by colonialism allowed the Creole elite to fill the empty sig-
nifier of Indian identity with a content they could appropriate precisely
because this universalized identity lacked any specific content. On the one
hand, the elite filled this empty signifier with the specific content of Aztec
resistance and religious mandate. On the other, they were able to overlook
the history of particular tribal collaboration with the Spaniards in the over-
throw of the Aztec empire, as well as to suture over the evident subordina-
tion of particular, living Indians in their ethnic townships to Creole elites in
theirs.
By the mid–nineteenth century, however, the Liberal government in in-
dependent Mexico had identified Indians, with their communally organized
townships and landholdings, as precisely the obstacle to building a modern
nation based on the private ownership of land (Bonfil Batalla 104).∞∞ The
Indian became the sign of an absence of modernity or, if you will, the sign of
the incompletion of the nation (García Canclini, Hybrid Cultures; Bonfil
Batalla; Medina).∞≤ It was the parochial, heterogeneous, and communal as-
pects of Indian townships that disquieted the liberal reformers. The indi-
genismo of the republican era, therefore, targeted the Indians, and par-
ticularly their townships, as the objects of reform. With the universalization
of private property, nationalists intended to transform the particularity of
Indian di√erence into the abstractness of liberal citizenship. Mexico’s Lerdo
Law of 1856, for example, provided for the disentailment of all corporate
property held by the townships, equating these communal properties with
the monopolistic estate of the Catholic Church—the largest landholder in
Mexico at the time. Both were considered equally backward, colonial institu-
tions. The following year, the Constitution of 1857 did away with all possibili-
ties of communal holdings by recognizing private holdings as the only legal
form of tenure. The stated intention of both the Lerdo Law and the Constitu-
tionalists was to create a de-ethnicized small-holding peasantry out of the
indigenous rural population for the purposes of national development. In
other words, postcolonial governmentality brought about a new regime of
subjection for the indigenous population, presumably meant to inculcate in

The Politics of Silence 203

the indigenous peasants liberal notions of individual autonomy and private
ownership of property. Instead the breaking up of these corporations only
served to dispossess Indian communities and increase Mexican latifun-
dium (large-scale private holding) (Díaz Polanco, Indigenous Peoples 75; Du-
rand Alcántara 165–66; Barre 60–61).
Indian towns did not disappear during this period of dispossession and
warfare. These towns were preserved as a seasonal labor force for planting
and harvesting, or, in many cases, were absorbed by the very latifundios that
took over Indian communal lands. The latifundio economy of the mid–
nineteenth century necessitated the reproduction of Indians as a source of
indentured, racialized labor. In the last quarter of the century, under the
dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz (1876–1910), the Porfirian model of develop-
ment, with its industrialization of rural and urban areas, required the fur-
ther dispossession of the peasantry for the creation of a reliable labor force
in the cities and countryside. Though proletarianization theoretically de-
ethnicizes a workforce, the reiterative invocation of the Indian’s ‘‘natural
indolence,’’ by the planters and industrialists alike, reveals a recursive rela-
tionship between racialization and the production of a labor force in Mex-
ico.∞≥ Here again we see the articulation of a postcolonial regime of subjec-
tion that conjoined a process of economic exploitation (proletarianization)
with a cultural formation (ethnically distinct Indians in their townships) to
produce Indian di√erence anew—this time the slothful Indian, in constant
need of labor discipline to ensure the proper functioning of the de-Indian-
ized ‘‘modern’’ nation.
Despite the Porfirian elite’s stated desire to assimilate the ‘‘antinational’’
Indian element by force, Indian di√erence was not absorbed into the univer-
sal equality of the liberal Mexican nation in the nineteenth century precisely
because of the centrality of Indian di√erence to the very formation of an
abstract national identity. The colonial regime of subjection provided Creole
nationalists with the mythical di√erence that di√erentiated them from
Spaniards in New Spain. After independence was won, however, the regime
of di√erence was reformulated. Indian di√erence as the negation of the
nation paradoxically became the organizing principle for the national elite.
‘‘The Indian problem’’ brought Liberals and Conservatives together in their
need to correct it, to address it reiteratively.∞∂ Perhaps most importantly, the
production and reproduction of Indian di√erence became central for the
production and reproduction of an ethnicized proletariat on which to forge a
national economy that would finally deliver Mexico into modernity. Even
this brief reexamination of Mexico’s postcolonial regime of subjection in the

204 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

nineteenth century demonstrates how, economically and culturally, modern
nationalism emerged from, or, more precisely, is articulated with, a colonial
regime of di√erence: the colonial regime of di√erence is reformulated un-
der liberalism and put in the service of nation building. Time and again, in
one form or another, Indian di√erence summons forth the nation. Revolu-
tionary nationalism in Mexico is similarly summoned forth by the Indian of
the subalternizing imagination in the twentieth century.

The Rise of the Revolutionary Mestizo

During and after the 1910 revolution against the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship,
the revolutionary elite incorporated Indian di√erence into their nationalist
ideology through a renewed policy of indigenismo.∞∑ Similar to the role
historical indigenismo had played in the struggle for independence, revolu-
tionary indigenismo resuscitated the Indian warrior as the symbol of revolu-
tionary nationalism, as the symbol of the true ancestral rights of the Mexi-
can people. In their confrontation with the Porfirian elite, revolutionaries
relied on representations of Indians to authenticate their struggle against
elites allied with foreign interests and represented as European interlopers.
Revolutionary indigenismo was, in part, a response to the great numbers of
Indians who had participated in the revolutionary struggle.∞∏ But the revolu-
tionary elite also identified Indian di√erence as a potential threat to the
formation of a revolutionary nation. According to Mexicanist historian Alan
Knight, the ‘‘problem’’ of Indian di√erence and the project of nationalism
were once again conjoined: ‘‘The revolutionaries’ discovery of the Indian—
of the Indian’s capacity for either troublesome sedition or supportive mobil-
ization—was paralleled by their commitment to state and nation-building’’
(Knight, ‘‘Racism, Revolution’’ 83).∞π At once ancestor to Mexican nationals’
rights and devoid of nationalist sentiment, the Indian was paradoxically
inside and outside the nation—supportive and seditious—in need of full
incorporation, regardless of the fact that thousands of Indians had partici-
pated in the revolution. The war that took place between 1910 and 1920
destroyed the centralized state and ‘‘reduced Mexico to a patchwork of war-
ring factions’’ (84). Though most of the fighting was among revolutionary
elites, these elites, like Liberal and Conservative nationalists of the previous
century, nevertheless identified Indian di√erence as the most powerful
threat to the possibility of unifying and homogenizing the nation. In part,
elites turned to indigenismo as a strategy in their e√orts to create a unified
nation out of the chaos of civil war and their own internal divisions. How-

The Politics of Silence 205

ever, indigenismo, as a strategy of unification, also provided a rich rhetorical
legitimization for minority rule in Mexico.
Manuel Gamio is considered the intellectual architect of revolutionary in-
digenismo in Mexico. His book Forjando Patria (Forging Nation), published
in 1916, was the blueprint for incorporating the Indian in the construction of
a national identity in the aftermath of the 1910 revolution.∞∫ In it Gamio
contemplates everything from the sublime to the mundane: from what
constitutes ‘‘national’’ fine arts to how to constitute a ‘‘national’’ legislature;
from the supremacy of Mexican femininity to the mediocrity of Mexico’s coat
of arms. In many ways, Gamio lays the foundation for the institutionalization
of the revolution, anticipating in these pages the agrarian reform statute of
the 1917 Constitution (173), the aesthetic principles of the Mexican mural
movement (51–52), and the corporativist politics of the pri (77). Gamio’s
ruminations seem to revolve around the central, troubling issue of how to
forge one nation out of the two races inhabiting the country—one of Indian
descent, the other of European descent. As in the nineteenth century,
heterogeneity—racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic—is identified as the
principal obstacle to forging this nation. Unlike its nineteenth-century coun-
terpart, however, Gamio’s indigenismo repeatedly celebrates the Indians’
spectacular contributions in realms historical, artistic, cultural, and scien-
tific. He draws the reader’s eye to the towering contribution of various Indian
tribes, all the while meticulously plotting out their absorption into a future
nation built on the greater principle of the ‘‘fusion of races, convergence and
fusion of cultural manifestations, linguistic unification and economic equi-
librium’’ (183). Members of the 1970s Mexican ‘‘critical anthropology’’ school
thoroughly critiqued the numerous policies and institutes built on indi-
genismo as an integrationism e√ectively based on de-Indianizing the indige-
nous population.∞Ω Thus it behooves us to pause and consider the rhetorical
and intellectual force of Forjando Patria, published at the apex of revolu-
tionary conflict and debate over the future nation, just one year prior to
the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution. In its pages, Indian di√erence
emerges into visibility through the celebratory discourse of Mexican revolu-
tionary nationalism only to disappear again into the ‘‘fusion’’ of mestizaje.
Gamio begins by posing a rhetorical question: ‘‘Can eight or ten million
individuals of indigenous race, language, and culture . . . harbor the same
ideals and aspirations, tend toward identical goals, honor the same patria
and treasure the same symbols of nationalism as the six or four million
beings of European origin, who inhabit the same territory but speak a dis-
tinct language, belong to another race and live and think according to the

206 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

teachings of a culture . . . that, from any point of view, di√ers greatly from
their own. We believe not . . .’’ (9).≤≠ On the previous page, Gamio, the
intrepid anthropologist, has already discerned for the reader the three fun-
damental criteria for constituting a ‘‘clear and integrated nation.’’ Taking
Germany, Japan, and France as his models, Gamio informs us that a nation
depends on the majority of the population sharing (1) an ethnic similarity;
(2) a common language; and (3) a set of cultural traits, that is, shared re-
ligious, political, moral, and aesthetic values (8). According to these criteria,
these two groups, linked by geography but divided by race, language, and
culture, are the antithesis of nation.≤∞ But no sooner does Gamio identify the
problem confronting Mexican nationalism as lying in the multiple di√er-
ences existing between these two fundamental groups with his ‘‘We believe
not’’ than he displaces this problem onto the heterogeneity existing among
the indigenous population:

The indigenous population appears before us [today] as it was during

the Conquest, divided into groupings more or less numerous, that do
constitute tiny patrias due to their common bond of race, of language
and of culture, which in turn, due to their mutual rivalries and re-
ciprocal indi√erence, facilitated their [own] conquest during the XVI
century and caused their cultural stagnation during the Colonial era
and in our current time.
The problem, then, is not [how to] avoid an illusory aggression by
some ensemble of these groupings, but rather how to channel the
powerful energies currently dispersed, drawing their individuals to-
ward the other social group which they have always considered as an
enemy, incorporating them, fusing them with [the other ‘‘European’’
group], tending toward, finally, making a coherent and homogenized
national race, unified in language and convergent in culture. (10)

Within the space of three paragraphs, the indigenous population of Mexico

is transformed from constituting the majority of the Mexican people (‘‘eight
or ten million individuals of indigenous race’’) to constituting a set of petty
rival factions responsible for their own conquest (‘‘divided into groupings
more or less numerous’’ with ‘‘mutual rivalries’’). Gamio dismisses the
potential threat posed by the indigenous majority to the minority as ‘‘illu-
sionary aggression,’’ but ‘‘the problem’’ of the indigenous population per-
sists. Their stagnation is described as metahistorical, both preceding and
proceeding colonization, and seen as entirely a consequence of their dis-
tressing heterogeneity. Rhetorically, this indigenous population is trans-

The Politics of Silence 207

formed for the minority from an equal and numerically superior partner in
the future project of the nation into a latent fund of ‘‘powerful energies’’
waiting to be harnessed—channeled—in the service of the nation. Gamio
heralds the indigenous population as nationalist agent only to transform
them immediately into an entirely passive national resource.
Gamio’s formulation of the problem sets the terms of the debate for
decades to come. The question is no longer how to mix two equal cultures to
forge a third, but rather how to exploit a natural but underused resource. In
Forjando Patria this is clearly the task of the future revolutionary govern-
ment, as it is ‘‘the revolution that told the Indian to abandon his lethargy and
begin to live’’ (93–94). Surprisingly, though, it is the duty of the anthropolo-
gist to guide the revolutionaries in this task. The third chapter of his book,
‘‘The Direction of Anthropology,’’ is dedicated to determining the field’s
essential role in the revolution: ‘‘It is axiomatic that Anthropology, in its
truest, broadest form, should be considered basic knowledge for the dis-
charging of good government, as it is through it that one knows the popula-
tion that is the primary material for governing and for which you govern. [It
is] through the means of Anthropology [that one] distinguishes the abstract
nature and the physicality of men, of a people, and deduces the appropriate
means for facilitating a normal evolutionary development’’ (15).
Using the study of the Otomí people as an example of how anthropology
may be put in the service of the new revolutionary government, Gamio
suggests that the anthropologist establishes a body of knowledge about each
indigenous group, ascertaining its ‘‘mode of being’’ and levels of ‘‘develop-
ment.’’≤≤ The roles of anthropologist and government functionary become
indistinguishable, however, as anthropology becomes a technique of govern-
mentality, a body of knowledge in the service of a revolutionary regime of
indigenous subjection. Its purpose is not simply to attain knowledge about a
population but to create a population for governing by diagnosing ‘‘needs’’
on the one hand, and producing governmental duties such as supplying
‘‘means’’ and establishing ‘‘observation’’ on the other. This knowledge pro-
duction is directly in the service of the nation’s political economy, as anthro-
pology’s guiding purpose, according to Gamio, is to ascertain ‘‘if the capacity
for production of the Otomí is normal or abnormal, establishing if this
abnormality is motivated by physical incompetence or the result of conscious
will’’ (18). Gamio’s anthropologist qua government functionary sifts through
the evidence, sorting out the physical from cultural causes for indigenous
underproduction, and Indian di√erence is once again produced (‘‘normal or
abnormal’’) at the articulation of cultural formation (‘‘physical incompe-

208 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

tence,’’ ‘‘conscious will’’) with economic exploitation (‘‘capacity for produc-
tion’’). With revolutionary governmentality, Indian di√erence emerges
through a field of knowledge capable of racially codifying the capacity to
labor.≤≥ Indian di√erence is that fund of ‘‘dispersed’’ energies, of bodies-in-
waiting—a capacity for production—to be tapped and transformed into na-
tional economy. Indeed, Gamio’s discussion of the function of anthropology
in government foreshadows the post–World War II developmentalist regime
of subjection as evidenced by Rostow, for the anthropologist is precisely
engaged in preparing indigenous men to be prepared for development, in
making prodigal men ready to be made into productive men. Indian di√er-
ence also emerges through anthropological knowledge as a capacity for
culture in the production of all things ‘‘national,’’ as a fund to be tapped in the
formation of Mexican identity.
For the remainder of Forjando Patria, anthropological knowledge pro-
duces just such a cultural fund of Indian di√erence. Gamio systematically
assesses facets of culture in Mexico broadly conceived: fine arts, history,
religion, intellectual culture, language, literature, women, and work. In each
case, he finds the country has yet to arrive fully at an expression of ‘‘na-
tional’’ culture. Instead three principal traditions are at work in Mexico: the
pre-Hispanic/indigenous, the Spanish/European, and the emergent ‘‘inter-
mediate’’ or ‘‘mixed.’’ The Spanish/European tradition is consistently rep-
resented as foreign, exotic, inappropriate, at times even perverse (100).
Though seen as playing a role in the eventual formation of a national cul-
ture, its influence is invariably diminished in comparison with a pre-His-
panic/indigenous tradition repeatedly described in superlative terms (de-
spite his early assessment of pre-Hispanic civilization as stagnant). For
example, Gamio criticizes liberal historians to date for their elitist focus on
the social classes of European descent. Instead Gamio insists it is the pre-
Hispanic/indigenous history that must be documented by historians, as it is
‘‘realistic, vigorous, picturesque, allowing us to see . . . how Mexicans lived
their lives before the Conquest: original art, an apprenticeship for our aes-
thetic criteria. Ingenious industry with multiple manifestations. A complex
social order, strong and wise’’ (65). Gamio locates the roots of modern
Mexican history in the ‘‘vigorous’’ and ‘‘picturesque’’ ‘‘apprenticeship’’ of
pre-Columbian lifeways, as he calls on his contemporary readership—pri-
marily white and mestizo—to identify in their present lives with ‘‘how Mexi-
cans lived their lives before the Conquest.’’ Gamio retroactively produces
this nationalist identification with Indian di√erence in chapter after chapter.
Indian di√erence emerges as the capacity for culture because national

The Politics of Silence 209

culture must invariably derive from Indian culture in Gamio’s indigenismo
schema; and yet it is merely the capacity for culture because though Indian
di√erence authenticates national culture, indigenous traditions are never
enough to constitute national culture in and of themselves. Invariably, only
‘‘mixed’’ or ‘‘intermediate’’ culture may truly constitute a national culture.
More precisely, it is only through the intermediate or mixed cultural forma-
tions Gamio describes as the third tradition existing in Mexico that we
finally arrive at what may be designated a national culture. It is at this
juncture, intellectually and historically, that Gamio’s foundational text biolo-
gizes national citizenship for revolutionary Mexico through the metaphor of
mestizaje. Though any white or Indian person should arguably be capable
of producing such intermediate cultural forms, this is never the case. In-
stead only those of mixed race, the mestizos, are capable of producing
national culture, for in them ‘‘there is the mixture of blood, of ideas, of
industries, of virtues and of vices: the mestizo type appears with pristine
purity as he constitutes the first harmonious product where the racial char-
acteristics of his origin [exist in] contrast’’ (66). By conflating blood with
ideas, industries, virtues, and vices—the very stu√ of culture—Gamio biolo-
gizes a cultural metaphor for citizenship in the nation. Only the mestizo is
capable of producing a national culture by virtue of his mixed blood, blood
that draws him sympathetically toward, though always at a critical remove
from, all things Indian and drives him away from all things ‘‘foreign.’’ Only
the mestizo is capable of national belonging.
Gamio makes this explicit in the chapter entitled ‘‘Our Intellectual Cul-
ture.’’ The revolution’s ‘‘deepest roots germinated and germinate still in the
indigenous race . . . for this social group has been the most oppressed, and
thus, the most disposed to exploding’’ (93–94). Regardless of this natu-
ralized proclivity toward revolution (germinating indigenous/soil), or per-
haps because of it, this population is incapable of actually generating revolu-
tion or revolutionary thought, as the Indian ‘‘lives four hundred years
behind the times,’’ his mental aptitude ‘‘vigorous,’’ but his intellectual man-
ifestations ‘‘anachronistic and inappropriate’’ (95). Instead those of ‘‘mixed
blood’’ must produce the revolutionary nation from the raw material pro-
vided by the Indian, for this mixed-blooded class has been ‘‘eternally re-
bellious, the traditional enemy of the pure-blooded or foreign class, the
author and director of the revolts and revolutions, the one that has best
understood the just laments of the indigenous class and has taken advan-
tage of its powerful latent energies, which it has always used as a crowbar to

210 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

contain the oppression of Power’’ (97). Though the inclination for revolu-
tion resides in the Indian class, it is the mestizo who is the revolution’s
intellectual architect, its ‘‘author and director.’’ The mestizo summons forth,
through sympathetic ‘‘understanding,’’ the liberated nation from the ‘‘pow-
erful latent energies’’ of the Indian masses, indeed by wielding their ener-
gies as a ‘‘crowbar’’ against the power of the ‘‘pure-blooded or foreign class’’
(importantly, one and the same). This is not a particularly flattering repre-
sentation of the intellectual, but one in keeping with the utilitarian meta-
phorics of Indian representation throughout the book. Just as the Indians’
dormant capacity for labor awaits the catalyst of revolutionary government
to transform it into national economy, so the Indians’ capacity for the cul-
ture of revolution requires the catalyst of the ‘‘eternally rebellious’’ mestizo
intellectual to transform it into the national culture. Gamio’s celebratory
indigenismo simultaneously produces Indian di√erence as the very source
of the nation and places Indian di√erence in liminal relation to the nation,
within yet subsumed by the evolutionary logic of mestizaje.
Indians may live in the nation—indeed, they are the very precondition for
the nation—but they will never be of the nation unless they undergo a
process of admixture themselves, forgoing their Indian identities for this
national mestizo ideal. Thus we arrive at the heart of indigenismo as a
strategy for minority rule. Gamio instructs the revolutionary elite: ‘‘To incor-
porate the Indian let us not try to ‘Europeanize’ him all at once; to the
contrary, let us ‘Indianize’ ourselves a bit, to present to him our civilization
already diluted with his own, so that he will not find [it] exotic, cruel, bitter,
and incomprehensible. Naturally, we should not exaggerate to a ridiculous
degree our closeness with the Indian’’ (96). This quotation demonstrates
the central paradox of revolutionary indigenismo as a political imperative. It
produces Indian di√erence in order to finally absorb it: ‘‘let us not try to
‘Europeanize’ him all at once.’’ Indigenismo produces Indian di√erence as
knowledge the revolutionary elite can don lightly—‘‘let us Indianize our-
selves a bit ’’—to establish hegemonic control over the indigenous majority:
‘‘to present him our civilization’’ diluted only slightly ‘‘with his own.’’ Indi-
genismo, with its celebratory nationalist rhetoric of Indian di√erence, dis-
guises a political domination that would otherwise appear to the majority
population as it actually is: ‘‘exotic, cruel, bitter, and incomprehensible.’’
This passage betrays indigenismo’s deeply ideological function in the mes-
tizos’ regime of revolutionary subjection—to inoculate the modern Mexican
nation, to prevent the nation of minority rule from becoming Indianized by

The Politics of Silence 211

the majority. After all, ‘‘we should not exaggerate to a ridiculous degree our
closeness with the Indian.’’ Indigenismo facilitates minority rule by placing
the ideological onus of racial assimilation squarely with the Indian majority.
O≈cially—though certainly not e√ectively—the nineteenth-century
republican-era indigenismo sought to de-ethnicize Indian identity through
the complete assimilation of the indigenous population, through an eradica-
tion of all Indian specificity. Alternately, Gamio believed education and
cultural reform could preserve selective positive elements of indigenous
culture (‘‘let us Indianize ourselves a bit’’) while eliminating the negative
aspects through mestizaje. Although revolutionary indigenismo may seem
more benign than nineteenth-century republican-era indigenismo, it was
no less assimilationist, and it was certainly more developmentalist. Mexican
revolutionary indigenismo inscribed particular Indian subjectivity within a
teleology of becoming more perfect citizens. Nothing testifies more to this
developmentalist logic than the paradoxical relationship that exists between
indigenismo and mestizaje. Indigenismo glorifies Indian di√erence as a
cultural formation. But it is mestizaje that represents political citizenship in
Mexico, as mestizos are the revolution’s architects in every sense. Indians
may be Mexico’s ideal ancestors, but mestizos are Mexico’s ideal citizens.
Indian di√erence is an essential precedent for this mestizo nation, but
Indians, the bearers of di√erence, are the continuing targets of educational
and cultural reform. In the years immediately following the revolution (and
the publication of Gamio’s influential book), institutes and programs for the
education and assimilation of Indians proliferated at national, regional, and
local levels.≤∂ The point, of course, is not to question the intentions of early
revolutionary elites who sought to alleviate the oppression su√ered by the
indigenous class by providing access to education. Rather, it is to underline
the fact that such benevolent intentions invariably entailed the violent trans-
formation of indigenous subjects subjected to the teleological imperative of
an education that promoted mestizaje as its model of citizenship.≤∑
Just as rebellious indigenous identities and communities emerged out of
colonial techniques of governmentality, so the Zapatistas emerge from
within the terms of revolutionary mestizaje, disrupting this regime of sub-
jection from within its own terms. From indigenismo, mestizaje’s constitu-
tive corollary, they appropriate the markers of Indian di√erence: not only
silence, but also the Indian as progenitor of the nation, and the Indian as ‘‘a
complex social order, strong and wise’’ (Gamio, Forjando Patria 65). How-
ever, the Zapatistas also appropriate the terms of the ‘‘revolutionary mes-
tizo’’ as laid out by Gamio: the savvy to wield the masses like a ‘‘crowbar’’ in

212 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

attaining this freedom. The ezln’s appropriation and reformulation of the
discursive terms of mestizaje opens up new processes of identification for
revolutionary nationalism, discussed in greater detail later in the chapter.
Similarly, the Zapatistas have emerged from within revolutionary policies of
agrarian reform and agricultural development. The indigenous commu-
nities of the Lacandón making up the ezln were not somehow left out of
Mexico’s discourse of development, though some critics have argued their
exclusion from development as the reason for rebellion. To the contrary, the
indigenous peasants making up the ezln were the targeted ‘‘beneficiaries’’
of development in Chiapas during the administrations of Echeverría and
López Portillo in the 1970s and early 1980s, just as the Chiapas indigenous
population was the targeted beneficiary of educational and cultural reforms
in the 1920s and 1930s (Burbach and Rosset 5–6). Zapatismo is produced
by, but also is in excess of, the discourse of Mexican development. In the
previous sections, I contextualized the emergence of the ezln from the
macroscopic perspective: first the five-hundred-year view of the production
of Indian di√erence as a result of colonialism’s regime of subjection, and
then narrowing the scope to the one-hundred-year view of the production of
Indian di√erence as the remainder of subjection under the regime of revo-
lutionary mestizaje. In the following section, I narrow the focus consider-
ably to the last thirty years of economic policy that led directly to the forma-
tion of the ezln, to the discourse of development they emerge from and
seek to interrupt. The ezln wakes the Mexican nation from the dream of
development, as Subcomandante Marcos suggests: ‘‘I’m willing to take o√
my mask if Mexican society will take o√ the mask their craving for foreign
pursuits placed [on them] long ago . . . civil society will just now awaken
from the long and idle dream ‘modernity’ imposed on them at the cost of
everything and everyone’’ (20 January 1994).≤∏

Cronica de una guerra anunciada

The ezln’s ten-year history of formation in the Lacandón jungle, from 1984
to 1994, unfolds in the aftermath of Mexico’s 1982 debt crisis. In response
to the debt crisis, Miguel de la Madrid’s administration (1982–1988) imple-
mented structural adjustment policies mandated by the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund. These policies were later developed into a
cohesive neoliberal reform project for the nation under the technocratic
vision of the Salinas de Gotarí administration (1988–1994).≤π This project,
also known as salinismo, consisted of the elimination of trade barriers and

The Politics of Silence 213

production subsidies, the privatization of state enterprises, and the imple-
mentation of limited social programs to ameliorate the cost of the transition
to the poorest constituencies.≤∫ Neil Harvey has quipped that for the peasant
classes in Chiapas and elsewhere in Mexico, this amounted to ‘‘exclusion
from markets, abandonment by the state and the political manipulation of
limited social spending’’ (Rebellion in Chiapas 6). This is a succinct summary
of the e√ects of a neoliberal policy that helped swell the ranks of the ezln, as
well as rebel groups in other regions. Indeed, Subcomandante Marcos, the
principal spokesperson for the ezln, has stated that the Zapatista ranks grew
precipitously between 1988 and 1994 (Montemayor, Chiapas 139). Over the
last seventy years, however, development policy under the guardianship of
the pri has often shifted course without (in most cases) incurring an armed
insurrection (Knight, ‘‘Continuidades’’ 48–49). Economic changes alone
cannot explain what occurred in Chiapas. Certainly, Salinas-style neoliberal
reforms achieved a paradigm shift from the nationalist development models
of import substitution and export-led growth previously followed by the
pri.≤Ω But beyond its economic scope, this paradigm shift in development
policy also required a redefinition of the terms of Mexican citizenship. It
brought mestizaje to crisis by terminating the social contract that had existed
between the pri state and the peasantry since the implementation of consti-
tutionally mandated agrarian reform under the Lázaro Cárdenas administra-
tion (1936–1940). Once again I caution the reader: the following is by no
means a complete historical analysis of industrial and agricultural develop-
ment policy under the pri. Rather, it is a discursive analysis of the crisis in the
pri’s development policies over the last forty years that led to the demise of
mestizaje as a regime of revolutionary subjection.
To fully understand the impact of salinismo on peasant production, we
must place it within the larger drama that unfolded in southeastern Chiapas
in the 1970s and early 1980s: the boom and bust of the oil economy. As
Mexico expanded its oil production for export in the early 1970s, the govern-
ment borrowed heavily against the future earnings promised by high oil
prices. Increased revenues from sales and international loans were invested
in further energy development projects, including the construction of two
hydroelectric dams on the Grijalva River in Chiapas.≥≠ The consecutive ad-
ministrations of Luis Echeverría (1970–1976) and José López Portillo
(1976–1982) consistently invested part of the increased revenues in various
agricultural development programs directed toward small-scale peasant
production as well (Collier 92, 94). This constituted a significant shift in
Mexican agricultural policy, which since the 1930s had been characterized

214 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

by a ‘‘divorce between the government’s commitment to land redistribution
and its productivity objectives’’ (Burbach and Rosset 4). During the 1930s,
under the auspices of Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution, President Lázaro
Cárdenas redistributed expropriated latifundios to ejidos and communal
farms.≥∞ Agricultural development policy under subsequent administra-
tions, however, clearly favored large-scale private agro-industry in northern
Mexico (Burbach and Rosset 4). While Echeverría and López Portillo con-
tinued to support agro-industry, they also directed a portion of agricultural
investment toward ejidos and communal farms. For indigenous peasants,
the combined e√ect of these new investments in energy development and of
this historical shift in agriculture development policy was ‘‘the dramatic
growth of nonagricultural work and the increasing integration of peasant
economies into the national and international markets’’ (Collier 90).≥≤
On one hand, the oil boom brought with it a period of accelerated pro-
letarianization for the indigenous peasants of Chiapas. Mexico’s industrial
sector expanded from 27 to 38 percent of the gross domestic product (gdp)
between 1965 and 1982, while the agricultural sector declined from 14 to 7
percent over the same period. As this industrial sector grew in southeastern
Chiapas, workers migrated from their ejidos or communal farms in the
highlands and the Lacandón jungle to construction sites along the Grijalva
River, or to Tuxtla Gutierrez and San Cristobal de las Casas, service cities
that shared the benefits of the energy production boom (Collier 91, 101). On
the other hand, ‘‘proletarianization’’ is not precisely the correct term for the
process taking place among the state’s peasantry. As discussed specifically
in the case of Nicaragua in chapter 4, when peasant producers increase their
participation in wage work, they neither abandon peasant production nor
cease to identify as peasants. According to anthropologist George Collier’s
extensive research during this period in the highland towns of Zinacantán
and Chamula, the majority of the migrant workers from these two towns
continued to farm their milpas, although the techniques of this farming
changed considerably. Migrant laborers were able to continue farming, even
though they spent extended periods away from the milpa, by using their
wages to invest in labor-saving agricultural inputs they had not used before,
such as enhanced seed, pesticides, and fertilizers (Collier 109).≥≥ The oil
boom, then, did not lead unambiguously to the proletarianization of the
migrating sectors of the peasantry. Rather, wages generated by the boom
paradoxically reinforced peasant a≈liations for some by providing these
sectors with access to the technologies of the green revolution and modern-
izing production techniques.

The Politics of Silence 215

 The oil boom revenues reinforced peasant a≈liations in another, related
way, as well. Echeverría’s administration was the only administration to give
out land on a significant scale after Cárdenas’s initial distribution from 1936
to 1940, and he combined this redistribution with investment in small-scale
production, particularly production for export (Knight, ‘‘Continuidades’’ 39;
Burbach and Rosset 5).≥∂ This shift toward export production was planned
and supported by the World Bank, which saw Mexico as ‘‘a model for its new
policy of trying to assist small scale agricultural producers in the third
world’’ (Burbach and Rosset 5). Peasants in Chiapas, as in the rest of Mexico,
responded positively to the increased incentives for export production, in-
cluding credits, subsidies for agricultural inputs, and state absorption of
other production costs.≥∑ Just as agriculture exports began to play a more
important role in the national economy, so exports began to play a more
important role in the small-holding peasantry’s portfolio, as peasants diver-
sified their production to include co√ee, meat, and specialty fruits and vege-
tables. Agricultural production is especially diversified in the Lacandón, the
Zapatista base of support, where timber, co√ee, and cattle production are as
important as corn production. This diversification for export, however, also
made the peasants more vulnerable to shifts in international market prices
for export goods.
López Portillo’s administration followed Echeverría’s agricultural policy,
increasing credits and subsidies for small-scale agricultural export products,
as well. His administration also started the Mexican Food System (sam) in
response to concern over Mexico’s increased dependence on foreign im-
ports of basic grains (by 1980, Mexico was importing 25 percent of its corn).
This program was designed to improve domestic food production by provid-
ing peasants with subsidies for fertilizer and other inputs, credits, and, most
importantly, price supports for basic grains (Collier 93–94). This policy of
subsidizing agricultural inputs helped to make farming in the Lacandón
plausible on a longer-term basis, since fertilizers supplemented the quickly
depleted soils of the jungle. Nationally, a government-guaranteed price for
corn made it economically feasible for small-scale peasant producers to
continue farming this crop though their techniques were not industrialized,
and, as such, their production costs not competitive with international corn
prices. This crop’s continued importance in the peasant’s production port-
folio is underscored by the fact that in 1991, even after a decade of inflation-
ary debt crisis, ‘‘over 2.4 million rural producers . . . cultivated corn during
the spring-summer season’’ (Appendini 145).≥∏
The oil boom, then, had multiple interpellative e√ects on indigenous

216 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

peasant life all over southeastern Mexico during the 1970s, and especially in
Chiapas. The boom drew peasants into an expanded labor and goods mar-
ket. Migrants’ jobs were directly tied to the fluctuating price of petroleum on
the international market, while in their traditional economic role, peasants
became increasingly dependent on imported agricultural inputs because of
changes in production techniques. The boom brought about the overall
diversification of agricultural production for a significant portion of the
small-holding peasantry in Chiapas, with increased export production again
tying peasants into the international market. With its wage work, class
di√erentiation, and increased export income, oil-led development also di-
versified consumption patterns and ‘‘modernized’’ tastes.≥π It accelerated
colonization of the Lacandón jungle, where several energy development
projects were located and where increased agricultural investment made
farming and ranching viable for small-scale indigenous producers. The oil
boom extended the life chances of the indigenous peasant class in Chiapas
by allowing its members to augment their household incomes with wages
and export earning. Perhaps most importantly, though, the oil boom made
possible the price supports that allowed indigenous peasants to continue
farming corn. Corn is not only a crop with a great deal of cultural signifi-
cance for the Indians of southern Mexico; it is also a crop whose production
had thoroughly integrated these indigenous producers from Chiapas into
the national economy.≥∫ In all these ways, then, development policies guided
by the oil boom were a form of subjection for the indigenous peasants in
Chiapas.
When international oil prices fell, precipitating the 1982 debt crisis and
shrinking the national budget, the e√ects were particularly serious for the in-
digenous peasants in Chiapas who had, in all these ways, been drawn into its
economy. The development boom experienced by Chiapas came to an abrupt
end, and the labor market contracted, leaving many of the peasants who had
been pulled into the market out of work. At the same time, structural adjust-
ment policies that followed the post-boom debt crisis curtailed the subsidies,
credits, and price supports that had made domestic and export agricultural
production economically viable for hundreds of thousands of peasant fam-
ilies. Once again the peasant’s role in the agricultural economy, in basic grain
and export production, was cast into serious doubt (Collier 106).
The structural adjustment programs introduced under the administra-
tion of Miguel de la Madrid (1982–1988) were nothing short of devastating
for the rural sector, and especially the small-holding indigenous peasant pro-
ducers in Chiapas. Peasant producers in the highlands and in the Lacandón

The Politics of Silence 217

jungle had borrowed money and reoriented production toward co√ee and
cattle, and to a lesser degree toward soy and sorghum. They had followed the
path paved by government incentives and World Bank projects. With a char-
acteristic flip-flop, the World Bank now prescribed the privatization of state-
owned industry and the elimination of subsidies in response to Mexico’s debt
crisis. De la Madrid complied, making huge cutbacks in rural credit pro-
grams and co√ee assistance programs.≥Ω In 1989, one year after taking o≈ce,
Salinas began privatizing inmecafe and eliminating all its technical assis-
tance programs.∂≠ In the absence of inmecafe, marketing and transporta-
tion costs were passed on completely to the producers just as credit shrank.
This was followed by the 50 percent drop in the international price of co√ee
in 1989: ‘‘With less income and the simultaneous reduction of credit, thou-
sands of growers were unable to invest in their crop. Both productivity and
total output in the social sector fell by around 35 percent between 1989 and
1993. On average, small producers su√ered a 70 percent drop in income in
the same period. Most producers were caught in a cycle of debt and poverty.
Unable to repay loans due to the fall in prices and income, they became
ineligible for new loans. The accumulation of debts in this sector reached
approximately U.S. $270 million by the end of 1993. In these conditions
thousands of small growers in Chiapas abandoned production in 1989–93’’
(Harvey, Rebellion in Chiapas 11). The question is, where did they go?∂∞
In the new frontier of the free market in rural Mexico, peasants had
nowhere to hide. When Salinas de Gotarí included corn and beans, and
agrarian reform, in nafta negotiations, he signaled the end of ejido- and
communal-farm-based agriculture for Mexico. Salinas may have cropped
the peasant classes out of his neoliberal snapshot of a modernized Mexico
because he saw them as relics of another era, their production techniques
backward and ine≈cient, their communally held lands wastefully under-
utilized. Certainly, in comparison with the seemingly endless fields of com-
puterized basic grain production in the central United States, peasant pro-
duction techniques in Mexico appear outdated, their crops overpriced, their
land underdeveloped. But from the point of view of the indigenous peasants
of Chiapas who had participated in oil-led growth, for better or worse, they
were already fully imbricated in Mexico’s modernized economy and culture
by the time Salinas stepped in, dressed in his technocratic dream coat,
anxious to liberalize trade with the United States and capitalize Mexico’s
area of comparative advantage: the abundance of cheap wage labor. The pri
had historically and politically maintained a place for a mass-based, small-
scale peasantry in the Mexican revolutionary imaginary. Indeed, the peas-

218 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

antry was one of the three fundamental bases of support within the pri’s
corporativist structure. Under salinismo, though, these peasants became
expendable; their production was viewed as marginal. As such, they must be
displaced by commercial agriculture devoted to the production of what Ar-
turo Escobar has called ‘‘modern food,’’ ‘‘fully commodified and industrially
produced food products of remarkable uniformity’’ (Encountering Develop-
ment 163). The administrations of Echeverría and López Portillo may have
seen their investment e√orts as an attempt to save the small-scale peasantry,
a historical base of support for the 1910 revolution and party, by integrating
them into export agriculture. From Salinas’s perspective, these administra-
tions only forestalled making an inevitable decision on the fate of small-
scale peasant production in a modern economy. Salinas’s neoliberal policies
in agriculture withdrew the social contract between the state and peasant
subjects that had existed since the 1917 Constitution, with its Article 27, and
had been renewed under the Echeverría and López Portillo administrations.
In sharp contrast, Salinas revitalized indigenismo policy by increasing
funds to indigenist institutions and by bringing Ladino authorities on indi-
genismo, such as Arturo Warman, into his cabinet. At best, Salinas’s pro-
indigenismo stance may be read as inconsistent with policies geared toward
eliminating the peasantry. At worst, this stance makes evident a historical
contradiction in the pri’s policy toward indigenous people, a contradiction
that lies at the heart of mestizaje and peasant agrarianism. In the contrast
between the revitalizing of indigenismo policy and the shutting down of
economic and political options for peasants, the Salinas administration
imagined that it was possible to eliminate the peasantry as an economic
formation while maintaining indigenous peoples as a cultural formation.∂≤
However, colonial and postcolonial regimes of subjection, including the
pri’s corporativist model of revolutionary mestizaje, have precisely articu-
lated economic processes with cultural formations in the production and
reproduction of Indian di√erence. This is certainly the case in the Lacandón
jungle, where a shifting discourse of economic development (through the
1970s, 1980s, and 1990s) articulated with everyday indigenous cultural
practices to produce the Zapatistas, a discretely new Indian di√erence.
Salinismo’s contrasting policies reveal that the pri’s corporativist state-
client relations have historically been predicated on an artificial division
between economic identity and ethnic identity, between political citizenship
and cultural citizenship in the nation. This is a relation that the pri’s na-
tionalist imaginary promulgated into being with its separation of agricul-
tural and indigenist policies. Lázaro Cárdenas was a major proponent of

The Politics of Silence 219

indigenismo. Under his administration, numerous cultural and educational
institutes for the implementation of indigenismo policy were established
throughout the country. His administration organized and hosted the first
inter-American indigenist conference, held in Patzcuaro, Michoacan, in
1940. Although he is regarded as one of the greatest advocates of indige-
nous peoples in Mexican history, he is also responsible for institutionalizing
the corporativist model of governing adopted by the pri party he helped to
found (Krauze 446–47, 470–73). This corporativist model e√ectively ex-
cluded the indigenous population from participating in political life as
Indians.
In the pri’s corporativist model of revolutionary government, the body
politic (the corpus) is imagined as being made up of separate limbs, of
various constituencies of ‘‘popular subjects’’: industrial workers, peasants,
members of popular organizations (i.e., intellectuals, artistic, teachers).
Each group participates in a separate patron-client relationship with the pri
party, tying it vertically to the state. These groups are represented as clients
before the state by their respective para-state union, all founded during the
Cárdenas presidency: for example, the Mexican Workers Confederation
(ctm) for workers (founded in 1936); the National Peasants Confederation
(cnc) for peasants (founded in 1938); and the National Confederation of
Popular Organizations (cnop) for members of other mass-based groups.
For seventy years, these unions, on behalf of their constituencies, negotiated
directly and regularly with the pri state the terms of their members’ eco-
nomic and political inclusion in the country in exchange for electoral sup-
port.∂≥ Immediately following the revolution, indigenous populations were
represented as one such client before the revolutionary state, eligible for
separate representation. Indeed, Gamio insisted on the importance of sepa-
rate indigenous representation before the revolutionary government and
argued for the importance of indigenous representation in the legislature
(75–78).
This representation of the revolutionary nation as a body made up of
separate limbs repeatedly thwarts indigenous subjectivity, however, by rele-
gating it to a subordinate role in the processes of identifying with the state.
This corporativist model hails the indigenous peasant subaltern not once
but twice: once as peasant and once as Indian. But it is the peasant identi-
fication that is clearly primary, as the subsuming of the indigenous popular
subject within cnop early in the revolutionary process makes evident. In
the political manifestation of the discourse of mestizaje, Indian di√erence is
subsumed within the body politic as a cultural supplement to the peasantry,

220 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

the class of political subjects worthy of direct representation before the state.
It is with peasant subjectivity that the indigenous subalterns are repeatedly
called to identify as revolutionary actors. pri agrarianism performed a sub-
ordinating division between economic and ethnic subjectivity.
The agrarian reform statute in the 1917 Mexican constitution, Article 27,
extended land rights to landless and land-poor peasants in the form of ejidos
and communal farms. It granted separate and discrete ejidos to ethnically
identified, clan-based indigenous groups who could establish they had his-
torically formed a community by proving their status as a township dating
back to the colonial period. Groups of landless or land-poor peasants who
were not so related, or could not document this relation, were granted
communal farms. Ejidos granted under this article recognized the centrality
of the townships in the production and reproduction of Indian di√erence, a
recognition demanded principally by Zapata and his troops in the original
Plan de Ayala and the Zapatista Agrarian Law (Womack, Zapata 393–411).∂∂
While rewarding indigenous towns the lands wrongly stripped from them
under nineteenth-century liberalism, the ejidos were also a strategic refor-
mulation of a colonial technique of governmentality for the management of
Indian di√erence. On the one hand, the ejidos provided for the continued
production and reproduction of the Indian di√erence, as this di√erence was
necessary in the revolutionary origin story in all the ways discussed earlier
in this chapter. On the other hand, the ejidos allowed for the containment of
Indian di√erence when this di√erence was perceived as threatening to na-
tional unity. Though Indians were not contained geographically to their
ejidos as they had been to the colonial townships, the ejido structure con-
tained Indian di√erence in another way, by once again subordinating their
ethnic identity as Indians to their economic identity as peasants. It is at this
moment that the discourse of mestizaje dovetails with a discourse of de-
velopment expressed through agrarian policy to produce a revolutionary
regime of subjection: The processes of subjection of both discourses con-
join to produce a de-ethnicized peasant polity.
The cnc represented the beneficiaries of agrarian reform as peasant-
clients before the state, equal to the worker-client, and the popular-client.
The beneficiaries’ primary political organization was only interested in pur-
suing the narrow rights these clients had before the state as peasants: the
adjudication of further land disputes, the distribution of state resources for
the purposes of agricultural production. Any rights these Indian subalterns
might have to culturally appropriate education, to o≈cial recognition of
indigenous language usage, to political representation as Indians, were rele-

The Politics of Silence 221

gated to the series of temporary o≈ces set up under a series of presidencies
that were finally formalized as the National Indigenist Institute (ini) in
1948. Indeed, the 1917 agrarian reform statute does not formally recognize
the cultural or political rights of Indians as citizens. Thus revolutionary
agrarianism contained an inherent contradiction: through agrarian reform,
the state simultaneously invoked the ejidatarios’ Indian identity as the basis
of their claim to the land, while requiring the suppression of this di√erence
when claiming the recognition of their economic or political rights as equal
citizens before the state.
Although thousands of farm titles were granted under Article 27, benefit-
ing hundreds of thousands of indigenous peasants, Indianist∂∑ activists
have argued that Article 27 was, in fundamental ways, a hindrance to indige-
nous rights as such (Burguete interview, April 1996; Ruiz interview, April
1997).∂∏ Recipients of both ejidos and communal farms have economic
rights over these farms, but no political rights over these parcels (to self-
government, or to the administration of natural resources, for example),
and certainly no cultural rights as tribes over their historical domains (to
language usage or bicultural education, for example). Agrarian reform, as it
took place, precluded the granting of territorial rights over historical domain
to associations of indigenous people, rights that may have extended beyond
the level of the family or village and would have acknowledged the inte-
grated nature of ethnic and economic identity.∂π
In other words, I would suggest, territorial rights would have recognized
a process of identification that privileged indigenous subjectivity, rather
than one that privileged disidentification by separating class rights from
ethnic ones. Agrarian reform, as it was implemented in Mexico, privileges
just such a disidentification. Indeed, agrarian reform performs the division
between ethnic and class identity, subordinating ethnic identity to economic
identity in the service of the embedded discourses of mestizaje and develop-
ment that privileged the de-Indianized peasant identity as the modern form
of citizen. As I have argued in chapters 2 through 4, post–World War II
revolutionary movements often replicated this discursive division between
ethnic and economic identity in their pursuit of revolutionary ideals of
subjectivity, citizenship, and nation. And yet the historical record examined
here, of the articulation of economic processes of exploitation with cultural
formations to produce Indian di√erence, makes evident the impossibility of
this division. It is this developmentalist division—a revolutionary mathe-
matics of identity—that the Zapatistas have repeatedly rejected and defied.
Salinas’s neoliberal policies made manifest the historic contradiction be-

222 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

tween peasant and indigenous identity within the pri’s corporativist model.
The Zapatistas turned this contradiction into a pitched antagonism with
their insurrection on 1 January 1994. No sooner had the ezln started their
insurrection, however, than the Mexican people took to the street en masse,
demanding a negotiated settlement from the government rather than a
military solution. By mid-February, the two sides had agreed to a cease-fire.
Having suspended their armed struggle, however, the Zapatistas have suc-
cessfully maintained this contradiction at the level of antagonism through
their communiqués and through the negotiation process.

Death by Development:
‘‘Dolor, pena, muerte, y . . . silencio’’

Over the past eight years the Zapatistas have produced two substantial ar-
chives. The public record of the negotiation process, including the San
Andres Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture, is an archive o√ering
insight into the reformulation of revolutionary citizenship by the ezln.
Throughout the negotiation process with the government, the Zapatistas
have repeatedly expanded the scope of the negotiations to include the rest of
the nation. They do so through the strategic public performance of demo-
cratic practice, repeatedly calling for and hosting national and international
forums, conventions, and delegations on issues of social justice, indigenous
rights, and representative democracy. The second archive is composed of
the communiqués issued by the ezln’s Clandestine Revolutionary Indige-
nous Committee—General Command (ccri), by Subcomandante Marcos,
or by Marcos in the name of ccri. Much has been made of Marcos’s im-
pressive literary style and range; however, I will focus on the ccri’s commu-
niqués as a counterpunctual discourse emerging from silence, as expressed
in one of their early communiqués: ‘‘In the silence we died, living in silence.
But in the ‘nothing is happening’ our steps were walking. With tender care
we guarded our fierce word. In silence, we were speaking’’ (14 April 1994).
The ccri communiqués mark a transitional moment for the indigenous
subaltern in Mexico, documenting an intervention into a Western notion of
historical time. This is certainly not the first or the last such intervention by
indigenous populations in the Americas, but through the communiqués,
the ezln, like Rigoberta Menchú in her autobiography, takes possession of
the written word to write the indigenous subaltern into the historical time of
the nation, once again o√ering us unique insight into the twentieth-century
paradigm of revolution in the Americas. I read these archives together for

The Politics of Silence 223

the way in which the Zapatistas successfully occupy both the particularity of
Indian identity and the universality of abstract citizenship, alternately ma-
nipulating the signifiers of Indian di√erence and representative democracy,
to challenge the developmentalist paradigms of the Mexican Revolution
embodied in the contradiction between ethnic and economic identities.
The initial communiqués issued by the ezln only hint at the indigenous
content of their struggle. In their first, the ‘‘Declaration from the Lacandón
Jungle: Today We Say Enough!’’ dated 2 January 1994, the reference to the
ezln’s indigenous makeup of their troops is indirect, su√used with other
identifications:

To the Mexican people:

Mexican Brothers [and Sisters]:
We are the product of 500 years of struggles: first against slavery in
the war of Independence against Spain led by the insurgents, then to
avoid being absorbed by North American expansionism, then to pro-
mulgate our Constitution and eject the French Empire from our soil,
then the Porfirian dictatorship denied us the just application of the
Reform laws and the people rebelled forming their own leaders, Villa
and Zapata emerged, poor men like us . . . (Poniatowska and Mon-
siváis 33)∂∫

In the aftermath of the Pan-American indigenous commemorations of

the quincentennial anniversary of the conquest, the ‘‘500 years’’ imme-
diately associates the ezln with indigenous resistance. And yet the Zapatis-
tas make no mention of the many Indian uprisings that took place prior to
Mexico’s independence from Spain. Instead they identify themselves with
the various struggles establishing the geopolitical contours of the modern
Mexican nation: struggles against Spain, against U.S. and French imperial-
ist interventions, against the foreign-allied Porfirian dictatorship. Each of
these events looms large in the narrative of national becoming institu-
tionalized after the 1910 revolution in holidays, and in revolutionary art and
architecture all over the country commemorating the mestizo protagonists
of these events. In this gesture, then, the Zapatistas identify themselves as
the ‘‘product’’ of nation-state formation, placing themselves within the his-
torical time of the nation. However, they are also displacing the mestizo
icons usually associated with its formation, staking a claim for indigenous
peoples as the primary agents in the narrative of the formation of the nation.
For each of these struggles is now su√used with indigenous content. Taking
a page out of Gamio’s own ode to mestizaje, in this passage, the desire for

224 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

nationhood finds its true origin in the very reference to ‘‘500 years,’’ in
indigenous struggle that portends the nation from the moment of coloniza-
tion.∂Ω
Similarly, the super-sized icons of the Mexican Revolution, Villa and
Zapata, are transformed from heroic figures generally represented as mes-
tizos to ‘‘poor men like us,’’ denied access to education, decent housing,
land, work, health, food, and democracy (33). Thus, in the second paragraph,
when the Zapatistas begin with ‘‘we are the heirs of the true forgers of our
nationalism,’’ they echo Gamio. They allude to Zapata and Villa, but only
insofar as these two men have become one with the ‘‘true forgers’’ of na-
tionalism, the ezln’s indigenous ancestors. The communiqué immediately
follows with: ‘‘the dispossessed are millions and we call all our brothers [and
sisters] to join [us] on the only road [left] for not dying of hunger before the
insatiable ambition of this dictatorship of more than 70 years’’ (33; italics
mine).∑≠ ‘‘Dispossessed’’ signifies doubly in this sentence: the dispossession
of the poor who are ‘‘dying of hunger,’’ but also the dispossession of the
original inhabitants of the Americas. Using a dichotomy made familiar by
the discourse of mestizaje, the Zapatistas identify themselves as the original
inhabitants of Mexico, while members of the pri dictatorship are repeatedly
characterized as the interloping foreigners, as a ‘‘coterie of traitors,’’ and as
‘‘vendepatrias’’ (33). Members of the pri dictatorship are one and the same as
those who opposed the independence leaders Hidalgo, Morelos, and Guer-
rero; who ‘‘sold more than half of our soil to the foreign invader’’; who
‘‘brought a European prince to govern us’’ (referring to Maximilian of Aus-
tria); and who, in an utterly ironic reference, ‘‘opposed the expropriation of
petroleum’’ (from U.S. capitalists) (33; italics mine). Although the Zapatistas
never explicitly refer to themselves as indigenous peoples in this first com-
muniqué, they nevertheless operate from within the discursive terms made
available by mestizaje. They appropriate for themselves the representation
of Indian di√erence as the authentication of nationalism and displace the
pri as the true inheritors of the 1910 revolution.
The ezln’s appropriation of Indian di√erence necessarily redefines it,
however. If mestizaje posits Indian di√erence as an originary moment in
the formation of national consciousness to be superseded by mestizo uni-
versality, the Zapatistas posit authenticating Indian di√erence as moving
forward through time to encompass and redeem the national consciousness
of the mestizo. Thus, in the third and last indirect reference to their indige-
nous identity, the communiqué ends: ‘‘The dictators have been waging an
undeclared genocidal war against our peoples [nuestros pueblos] since

The Politics of Silence 225

many years ago, thus we ask for your committed participation in supporting
this plan for the Mexican people, [a plan] that struggles for work, land, roof,
food, health, education, independence, liberty, democracy, justice and peace. We
declare that we will not stop fighting until we achieve the fulfillment of these
basic demands of our people [nuestro pueblo], forming a free and demo-
cratic government for our country’’ (35). The ‘‘genocidal’’ war establishes an
indigenous we (nuestros pueblos) and a nonindigenous they, a mestizo read-
ership from whom the Zapatistas solicit ‘‘committed participation.’’ They
once again call on their Mexican brothers and sisters to join them in strug-
gle. Surprisingly, though, the readers are not called to participate directly in
the struggle against a genocidal war. Instead they are called on to support a
‘‘plan for the Mexican people’’ consisting of eleven points. By the end of the
passage there is only one nation: ‘‘our people,’’ ‘‘our country.’’ Mediating the
movement from multiple indigenous and nonindigenous peoples to one
nation, from pueblos to pueblo, then, is this eleven-point plan, each point
significant in that it is already guaranteed in the 1917 Constitution. Thus the
Zapatistas are not articulating a new set of demands for ‘‘the Mexican peo-
ple’’; rather, they are reanimating the social contract already established by
the 1910 revolution. Importantly, not one of these eleven points appears to
address specifically ethnic concerns, yet these are the points invoked by the
Zapatistas as the remedy to a genocidal war waged through Salinas’s anti-
peasant policies. After all, it is the neoliberal policies put in place by his
administration that signal the abandonment of this contract. With their own
defense of the 1910 revolution and this historic social contract, the Zapatis-
tas displace mestizaje as the discourse mediating the movement from mul-
tiple nations to one with their own patriotic discourse. Just as they su√used
the geopolitical struggles establishing the Mexican nation with indigenous
content, the ezln su√used the social contract promised by the 1910 revolu-
tion with indigenous content through their redemption of it.
Though the ezln begins and ends this first communiqué with implicit
references to indigenous specificity, it is nevertheless significant that they
refrain from identifying themselves explicitly as Indians, or identifying
their movement as an indigenous one. Instead, sandwiched between these
opening and closing references, the communiqué identifies the ezln with a
very di√erent kind of movement: ‘‘We have the Mexican people on our side,
we have Patria, and the tri-colored flag is loved and respected by all our
insurgent combatants, we use the colors red and black on our uniform,
symbols of the working people in their struggles and strikes, our flag bears
the letters ‘ezln,’ zapatista national liberation army, and with it we

226 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

will go into battle always’’ (34). Critics insist on the postmodern nature of
the ezln and on disassociating it from the class-based Central American
revolutions in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. However, the ezln
places itself within this genealogy in this first communiqué (Burbach 1994).
The love of ‘‘Patria,’’ the emphasis on the word ‘‘insurgent,’’ the use of the
colors red and black, the identification with working peoples, and even the
formal structure of their name all associate the ezln with the Central Amer-
ican revolutions of the 1970s and 1980s.∑∞ Like the Sandinista National
Liberation Front (fsln) in Nicaragua and the Faribundo Marti National
Liberation Front (fmln) in El Salvador, the ezln takes its name from an
early-twentieth-century figure considered to be the foremost nationalist and
revolutionary in their country, and they set out to fulfill this figure’s pending
mission: national liberation.∑≤ If the Zapatistas actively place themselves in
this genealogy, there is a certain circularity implied in doing so. For if the
Zapatistas are the last of the twentieth-century revolutions in the Americas,
and specifically of the Central American revolutions, they are mirroring the
first such revolution by choosing Zapata as their guide. By following in the
footsteps of the Central American revolutions, they follow in the footsteps of
the 1910 Mexican revolution, the paradigmatic revolution for Latin America
in the twentieth century. Faribundo Marti and Augusto C. Sandino, both of
whom led major revolutionary movements in their respective countries in
the 1930s, were highly influenced by the Mexican revolution. In fact, San-
dino, a political exile, lived and worked in Mexico during the 1920s, before
returning to Nicaragua to launch his own liberation campaign. Thus, by
placing itself in this genealogy, the ezln claims—reclaims?—the entire cen-
tury’s revolutionary tradition in the Americas for indigenous struggle.
There would appear to be a contradiction, a psychic split, between the
indigenous identification implied in the beginning and ending passages of
this communiqué, and the class identification implied in this middle pas-
sage, devoid as it is of all reference to Indian specificity. But the communi-
qué as a whole articulates a double refusal of this psychic split between
ethnicity and class. The Zapatistas notably refuse to name themselves as an
indigenous movement. In both the opening and closing passages, they
articulate Indian specificity with the national scope of their movement. In
the intervening passage, they go even further than this by claiming a revolu-
tionary tradition that at once finds its origins in Mexico and exceeds its
national boundaries. Precisely because their identification with this revolu-
tionary paradigm is bracketed by opening and closing references to indige-
nous specificity, however, I would suggest that they force a reinterpretation

The Politics of Silence 227

of this revolutionary paradigm, as well. By claiming for themselves this anti-
imperialist Central American genealogy of national liberation, they reject a
revolutionary paradigm that has historically de-ethnicized revolutionary
subjectivity in favor of classed-based identity. By bringing the implicit identi-
fications at the beginning, middle, and end of their communiqué together,
they attempt to maintain ethnic and class identity in dynamic relation with
each other, refusing to privilege either.
On my first research trip to San Cristobal, Chiapas, in April 1994, per-
plexed about the nature of the ezln, I asked a member of the Labor Party
(pt), Alfonso ‘‘Poncho’’ Carrión, if he considered the ezln to be an Indian-
ist movement.∑≥ Carrión insisted the ezln was not an indigenous move-
ment but an agrarian movement, emphasizing that the first ‘‘Declaración’’
mentioned nothing about racial discrimination. Wavering, though, he
added: ‘‘Then again, racial discrimination is also because you arrive [some-
place] dirty and badly dressed. With the indigenous people [discrimination]
happens more because they are the most worst o√, always.’’ Carrión attests
to how profoundly class is racialized in Mexico. Even if a person is not an
Indian, if he or she is poor, dirty, badly dressed, or hardworking, then he or
she is rendered an ‘‘Indian’’ in the eyes of government bureaucrats and the
bourgeoisie. It also testifies to how race strictly determines class position in
Mexico, becoming the ‘‘common sense,’’ as all Indians are uniformly always
‘‘the most worst o√.’’ Carrión continued, once again changing course,
‘‘Then again, on the coast [of Chiapas] there are no Indians. In Tapachula,
for example, the general economic level of the [nonindigenous] peasants is
the same as in the center of the country, and nevertheless they talk of large
movements [happening] there since January.’’ Because the Zapatista move-
ment has galvanized the (relatively) wealthier peasant class on the coast,
Carrión finds his initial opinion rea≈rmed—the Zapatistas cannot be an
indigenous movement, since their appeal extends beyond Indians to the
wealthier, nonindigenous peasants of Tapachula, among whom ‘‘large
movements’’ are taking place.
Carrión’s reluctance in labeling the Zapatista movement ‘‘indigenous’’ is
symptomatic of the developmentalism inherent in the revolutionary para-
digm in Mexico and Central America. He does not believe an ethnically
specific movement could have universal appeal, though he himself provides
the evidence to the contrary: peasant movements inspired by the Zapatista
cause are emerging all over the state. Though Carrión also finds it di≈cult
to disarticulate ethnic from class identity in Mexico, his comments betray a

228 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

continued belief that ethnic specificity must be superseded by class interests
for a revolutionary transformation to take place (and in its wake, modernity).
This attitude among the Left in Mexico helps to explain the Zapatistas’ own
reluctance in asserting their ethnic specificity. Even for sympathizers like
Carrión, particularizing the ezln’s struggle would automatically limit its
purpose and scope. And yet Carrión provides an analysis of why an eth-
nically specific movement has universal ramifications in Mexico: if poor,
then Indian. Carrión’s words lend new insight into the Zapatistas’ rhetorical
appropriation of Villa and Zapata as ‘‘poor men like us.’’ By being ‘‘poor
men,’’ these two national icons are clearly Indian by association. Indianiz-
ing the two most famous heroes of the 1910 revolution necessarily revalues
the derogatory phrase ‘‘like an Indian,’’ draining it of negative associations
and filling it with patriotism, valor, honor, honesty, for all of the poor constit-
uents of the Mexican nation. In practice and in print, the Zapatistas repeat-
edly thwart the artificial division between ethnic and economic (ergo politi-
cal) identity institutionalized by revolutionary nationalism through the
discourses of mestizaje and development.
On 18 January 1994 ccri released a half-dozen communiqués, includ-
ing one dated 6 January. In it, the ezln ‘‘comes out’’ as an indigenous force
to counter government assertions about ‘‘foreign elements’’ having orga-
nized the ezln. Thus, after insisting that neither the fmln and urng nor
the local Catholic Church played a role in organizing the Zapatistas, ccri
declares most of the ezln’s soldiers and all of its commanders to be indige-
nous, primarily Chol, Tojolabal, Tzotzil, and Tzeltal. After all, what better
way to counter the government’s accusation of inauthenticity than by as-
suming your place as the most authentic Mexicans of all: the original inhabi-
tants of the Americas. Once again, however, the ezln emphasizes the na-
tional importance of their struggle. The communiqué begins with ccri
indicating they have started this war to let the world know about ‘‘the miser-
able conditions in which millions of Mexicans live and die, especially we the
indigenous’’ (72–73). And yet the causes for this poverty are not to be found
in the failure of government agricultural policies, in neoliberal economics,
or even in the racism institutionalized at every level of Mexican society.
Instead, the communiqué explains: ‘‘The grave conditions of poverty among
our compatriots have one common cause: the lack of liberty and democracy.
We believe that the authentic respect of liberties and the democratic will of
the people are the indispensable prerequisites for bettering the economic
and social conditions of the dispossessed of our country. For this reason,

The Politics of Silence 229

just as we hoist the flag for the betterment of living conditions for the
Mexican people, we present the demand for liberty and democratic politics’’
(73; italics mine).
Immediately following the insurrection, political analysts from all points
on the ideological spectrum suggested that the Mexican Revolution had
never arrived in Chiapas. According to this analysis, economically, Chiapas
resembled Central America more than it did the rest of Mexico and thus
provided the conditions of extreme wealth and poverty generating rebel-
lion.∑∂ This line of analysis served the Salinas administration’s interest in
representing Chiapas as exceptional, and in characterizing the insurrection
as a local reaction to these exceptional conditions. By identifying the source
of Mexico’s problems as its lack of democracy, the ezln refuses to have the
reasons for their struggle reduced to a set of economic indicators, or to place
it outside of the Mexican context. Instead they echoed the aspirations of
millions of Mexicans frustrated with the pri dictatorship and circumvented
any attempt by the Salinas administration to resolve this problem by simply
promising more development aid to Chiapas. After all, the ezln’s insis-
tence on democracy is precisely the result of their experience with pri
development in the 1970s and 1980s. As demonstrated in the previous
section, the revolution did arrive to the highland and jungle areas of Chia-
pas, however belatedly. The communities that make up the base of support
for the Zapatista forces were not somehow left out of the Mexican develop-
ment model, or an obstacle to it. Rather, as peasant producers, they were its
targeted beneficiaries. The Zapatistas were produced by, within—but also in
excess of—the nation-state’s discourse of development.
In our initial interview, Carríon ruminated on his experience with the
third-tier credit cooperative uu-Pajal Yakactic, one of the first uus formed in
the Lacandón, operating between 1982 and 1989.∑∑

We built economies, but we forgot, or we were incapable of continu-

ing to build a fundamentally political organization. . . . Now it’s clear
to me that we could not have constructed something di√erent from
the static models of development [we were working with] . . . this
became obvious when the price of co√ee dropped. Pajal had producers
in both co√ee and corn, but mostly co√ee. The co√ee producers subsi-
dized the corn producers, and this was a very exciting and interesting
stage. But when the co√ee prices fell, we were bankrupt. We had
bought high and sold low. . . . We did improve people’s standard of
living considerably. Just as their were problems, there were results. . . .

230 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 But for the integral development that we wanted, we learned that you
have to be in a position of real power, in other words, in the municipal
presidency. Even though these people had economic power, the com-
munities didn’t have schools, potable water, enough services. They
needed to have double the economic power, and what we needed
fundamentally was political power. (Carríon interview)

Once again, Carríon’s experience working with the Zapatista base o√ers
fresh insight into the communiqués. When the Zapatistas insist in the 6
January communiqué that ‘‘the authentic respect of liberties and the demo-
cratic will of the people are the indispensable pre-requisites for bettering the
economic and social conditions of the dispossessed of our country,’’ they are
speaking from their experience of development without democracy in the
Lacandón. The ezln is also acutely aware of how local ‘‘economic and social
conditions’’ in Chiapas, indeed all over Mexico, are traversed by national
politics of globalization. Through the expression of ‘‘the democratic will of
the people,’’ I would suggest, the Zapatistas seek control not only of local
development projects but of the national economic and political vision.
Salinas’s neoliberal reforms wrote the Zapatistas out of the pri’s corporativ-
ist script as peasants. The Zapatistas, however, write themselves back into the
script not as peasants or as Indians but as ‘‘the people’’—ethnically inflected
political subjects seeking authorship not only of their lives but of the terms
of their national inscription. They refuse division between the ethnic and
the economic, the local and the national, by methodically appropriating
Indian di√erence produced by mestizaje and developmentalism as the very
grounds for exclusion from the project of modernity, and then by generaliz-
ing this exclusion to include millions of other disenfranchised Mexicans.
This 6 January communiqué puts into play the dialogic relationship
between ethnic and economic subjectivity through a complex interplay of
voices that sets a pattern for communiqués to come. The body of this com-
muniqué is written in the standard rhetoric of class-based revolution. The
ccri iterates demands, enumerates the just causes for insurrection, au-
thenticates the national origin of troops, tabulates dead and wounded, and
puts forth minimal conditions for dialogue with the government in the
fairly formal language of negotiation. The communiqué is prefaced with an
epigraph, however, written in a very di√erent voice, one that will recur:
‘‘Here we are, the dead of always, dying once again, but this time to live’’
(72).∑∏ This invocation of ‘‘the dead of always’’ is a recognition of the Zapatis-
tas’ positionality as Indians within the terms of national inscription. On one

The Politics of Silence 231

level, the Zapatistas refer to the extreme conditions of marginalization in
which they live as poor peasants, conditions that maintain them in a meta-
phorical state of death. On another level, the Zapatistas tap into the repre-
sentation of Indian di√erence as produced by the discourse of mestizaje:
indigenous people as the living dead, as the living museum of Mexico’s
culture, as living relics, as living ancestors of the modern mestizo citizen.
Once again, though, they are appropriating these terms for themselves, for
‘‘the dead of always’’ suggests a syncretic identity existing outside of chrono-
logical time: they were here/have always been here/are here/will always be
here. Naming themselves in this way, the Zapatistas stake a claim in a
cyclical identity which refuses a mestizo future in favor of an imminent
present. The epigraph of another communiqué released in this batch rein-
forces this interpretation: ‘‘Our voice started walking centuries ago and it
shall not be quieted ever again.’’ Their voice and the voices of their ancestors
are one and the same, and in future communiqués the ezln uses ‘‘the dead
of always’’ to refer to themselves and their ancestors interchangeably. And
yet both of these epigraphs register a transition: their voice shall not be
quieted again; in dying, they restore life. The appropriation of Christian
rhetoric, of the resurrection theme, not only makes evident the influence of
liberation theology on the Zapatistas but also registers an entry by the sub-
altern into Western historical time. What better way to demand an entry into
Western history than by appropriating the foundational act of the Gregorian
calendar? It is, after all, Christ’s death that gives meaning to his birth. The
Zapatistas take possession of speech and writing, authorizing themselves
through these messianic communiqués.
There is yet another ghostly apparition in this invocation of ‘‘the dead of
always,’’ for if the Zapatistas enter the historical time of the nation through
their communiqués and through their democratic speech, they do so from
the position of subjects who were always already there. The pri severed
Indians from political participation in the revolution with the party’s exclu-
sion of them from their corporativist model of politics, but now Indians, like
a phantom limb, haunt the body politic, reminding it of its nationalist duty.
In a communiqué released for the commemoration of International Worker
Day, ccri analyzes the Mexican workers’ struggle from this ghostly posi-
tion: ‘‘Mexican workers of the city and the countryside: May your voice walk
together with ours. May your cry sound loudly and firmly on this soil. Accept
the arm your smallest brothers (hermanos más pequeños) extend you. Three
forces should unite: the force of the workers, the force of the peasants, the
popular force. With these three forces nothing can stop us.’’ The Zapatistas

232 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

hail the three pillars of corporativist politics: the workers, the peasants, and
the popular front. Notably, they nowhere suggest adding the indigenous
population as a fourth pillar to this historical triumvirate of revolutionary
power. Instead, like a ubiquitous ghost in the machine, they reanimate the
body politic that has historically excluded them with their ‘‘may,’’ ‘‘accept,’’
and ‘‘should unite,’’ issued as both blessing and imperative. They haunt the
body politic by being everywhere and nowhere at once. In this three-page
communiqué, the ccri never identifies the Zapatistas forces as workers,
peasants, or members of the popular front, and yet, as omniscient narrators,
they occupy all of these positions: ‘‘With these three forces nothing can stop
us.’’ Once again, they extend the terms of indigenous exclusion, referring to
the working class as ‘‘dying’’ and as ‘‘faceless’’ (‘‘sin rostro’’) (230–31).∑π
However, the Zapatistas rely on another permutation of mestizaje to pro-
duce this identification with the Mexican body politic, because every mestizo
bears the imprint of Indian di√erence, carries the Indian hidden inside.
Thus, when Mexican workers, peasants, and popular forces all over the
country took to the streets in defense of the Zapatistas with chants of
‘‘¡Todos somos indios!’’ (We are all Indians!), they were recognizing the
Indian in themselves. Given Mexico’s racial ideology, such an identification
with contemporary Indians among mestizos would have been inconceivable
before the Zapatistas. Today mestizos are responding to the ezln’s hail,
recognizing the Indian in the national imaginary.
For what is arguably the first time in Mexican history, indigenous people
are resignifying the meaning of Indian di√erence at the national level. Until
the Zapatista uprising, the signification of Indian di√erence responded to
the exigencies of colonial and postcolonial governmentality. For modern
revolutionary Mexico, Indian di√erence has simultaneously signified ‘‘folk-
loric cultural backdrop’’ and ‘‘abject premodern residual.’’ The Zapatistas
have disrupted the semiotic chain of national meaning with their insurrec-
tion and with their subsequent antagonistic speech and writing, but they
have disrupted it in the only way possible, by occupying the terms of signifi-
cation made available by it: they persistently write in a folkloric authorial
voice, thematizing their own abject state as Indians. In doing so, they stretch
the limits of Indian di√erence to include self-authored Indian experience
and specificity. Not all the communiqués are written in this folkloric voice or
on this theme. Indeed, many are written in the incendiary rhetoric of revolu-
tion, in the reportage of military operations, or in the diplomatic language of
negotiation. It is precisely the contrast between these communiqués written
in the technical voice of guerrilla operations and those written in the folk-

The Politics of Silence 233

loric voice of autoethnographic representation that draws attention to the
counterpunctual performativity of the latter. The communiqués written in
this counterpunctual folkloric voice are most often addressed to other indig-
enous groups in Mexico or to the general Mexican population, and they take
the form of origin stories, communicating to the outsider the basis of their
being and struggle.
The first such ‘‘origin story’’ was written in response to a letter sent to the
ezln by the ‘‘500 Years of Indigenous Resistance Council,’’ an organization
from the state of Guerrero formed in the late 1980s in preparation for the
national indigenous commemoration of the quincentennial. The communi-
qué was issued on 1 February 1994 and published in the national media.
The ezln begins by formally thanking the council for their strong ‘‘words’’
(sus palabras de ustedes) of support ‘‘in the name of all indigenous and non-
indigenous Mexicans’’ (119). The communiqué continues:

In our hearts there was so much pain (dolor), so great was our death
and our misery ( pena), brothers [and sisters], that it no longer fit in
this world that our grandparents left us to continue to live and fight in.
So great was our pain and misery that it no longer fit in the hearts of a
few, and it overflowed, and other hearts were filled with pain and
misery, and it filled the hearts of the oldest and wisest in our commu-
nities, and it filled the hearts of young men and women, all of them
brave, and it filled the hearts of the children, even the smallest ones,
and it filled the hearts of the animals and plants, it filled the hearts of
the rocks as well, and all of our world was filled with pain and misery,
and the sun and the wind felt pain and misery, and the earth felt pain
and misery. Everything was misery and pain, everything was silence.
(119)

Immediately we are in a world within a world, the ‘‘world that our grand-
parents left us,’’ referencing the premodern residual in Indian di√erence.
The oral quality of the folkloric voice is communicated in the run-on struc-
ture of the second sentence, with its multiple use of ‘‘and’’ and the repetitive
structure of each phrase. The prosopopeic rendering of animals, plants,
rocks, wind, earth, and light plays with anthropological representations of
indigenous people living in harmonious relation with their environment,
while simultaneously naturalizing their abjection, their pain and misery.
And this pain and misery, pumping through all the hearts of all the people,
plants, animals, and elements in their world, transpires in the proverbial
silence of the Indian.

234 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 Such a reading, leaving all the conventional significations of Indian dif-
ference in place, is seductively present in the text; however, the ezln is also
certainly unsettling these significations for ‘‘all indigenous and non-indige-
nous Mexicans.’’ For ‘‘everything was silence’’ is reminiscent of the silence
of the clearing at Oventic, with which I began this chapter. The silence
described in this communiqué, like the silence performed communally in
Oventic, is not the absence of sound but the condition of possibility for
registering its fullness, for hearing the musicality of noise. Silence here
is the backbeat or counter-time of noise. In the sensuality of silence, in-
animate objects are animated, and the Zapatista community hears hearts
pumping in the natural world around them. In the sensuality of silence, the
Zapatistas hear the fullness of the pain and misery of their communal
situation. And as in Oventic, silence is not the silencing of di√erence but the
sensual alertness that allows di√erences to emerge. Silence is the clearing
that makes speech possible, not because it stands in a dichotomous relation
to speech, as contentless space, but precisely because it is in the fullness of
silence where di√erences take shape: ‘‘In silence, we were speaking.’’ Si-
lence is the noise of democracy. Thus the communiqués written in this voice
are not only counterpunctual because they provide a folkloric accent to the
communiqués written in the technical voice of guerrilla action; they are
counterpunctual because they emerge from the silence existing between the
beats of the discourses of mestizaje and developmentalism.
While these communiqués register the musicality existing in the silence,
they also make evident the processes of translation and transcription nec-
essary for communicating the content of silence. The communiqué con-
tinues:

Then the pain that united us made us speak, and we recognized that
in our words there was truth, we knew that not only misery and pain
inhabited our language, we discovered that there was still hope in our
breasts. We spoke with ourselves, we looked inside our [collective] self
and we saw our history: we saw our greatest ancestors su√er and fight,
we saw our grandparents fight, we saw our parents with fury in their
hands, and we saw that not everything had been taken away from us,
that we had . . . what makes us lift our step above the plants and
animals, what places the rocks beneath our feet, and we saw, brothers
[and sisters], that dignity was everything we had . . .
And then in our heart there was no longer only misery and pain,
fury arrived, courage came to us through the mouths of our oldest

The Politics of Silence 235

 [ancestors] already dead, but alive once again in our dignity which they
gave us. And we saw that it was wrong to die of misery and pain, that it
was wrong to die without a fight. . . . Then our hands sought liberty
and justice, then our hands, empty of hope, were filled with fire with
which to voice and cry out our anguish and demands . . . ‘‘For all!’’ our
heart cries . . . ‘‘For all!’’ cries our flowing blood, blossoming in the
streets of the cities where lies and despoilment rule. (119)

The ezln’s speech translates the silence into language, emerging as it

does directly from the pain they register in the silent community existing in
the counter-time of mestizaje and development. Pain is translated into
hope, misery into dignity, death into futurity. We are still in an anthropologi-
cal world of oral tradition, where a history of subaltern silence is handed
down through parents and grandparents; however, this is not a passive
exchange but a creative act of translation. Oral tradition requires actively
taking possession of language through speech: ‘‘we recognized that in our
words there was truth.’’ The act of recognizing the truth of their silence in
their own words is also an act of re/cognizing the terms of indigenous
representation: ‘‘we knew that not only misery and pain inhabited our lan-
guage.’’ The ezln translate their silence into the conventions of folkloric
speech to take possession of language as a discursive system—they rewrite
the representations of indigenous experience in the twin discourses of mes-
tizaje and development. They rewrite a history of abjection, signified in
Indian di√erence, into a tradition of ‘‘fury,’’ ‘‘fire,’’ and ‘‘fight[ing],’’ rewrit-
ing ‘‘misery and pain’’ into dignity and courage. This ‘‘tradition’’ is passed
down ‘‘through the mouths of our oldest [ancestors] already dead,’’ but also
through the act of transcribing their speech into the written word of the
communiqués.
In the previous sentence, I placed ‘‘tradition’’ in quotes because auto-
ethnographic representation, the act of colonized peoples representing
themselves through ‘‘partial collaboration with and appropriation of the
idioms of the conqueror,’’ does not imply some kind of pure access to the
referent, to unmediated Indian experience (Pratt 7–9). Rather, I would sug-
gest that autoethnographic representation involves the active reconstruction
of this experience: ‘‘We spoke with ourselves, we looked inside our [collec-
tive] self and we saw our history.’’ Indian history is not manifest before
them. Instead, ‘‘speaking with’’ and ‘‘looking at’’ imply collective investiga-
tion by mediating, self-reflective subjects. Representing this reconstructed
history also requires its translation into a recognizable idiom for the con-

236 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

querors. In transcribing the content of their speaking among themselves,
the ezln are actually involved in a double translation. They first reconstruct
their grandparents’ and parents’ experience in silence as a history of never-
ending struggle through the idiom of folkloric speech and then translate it
once again into the idiom of twentieth-century revolutionary practice. Thus
the speech that comes through the mouths of their ancestors is translated
into the hands ‘‘filled with fire’’—armed with the bullet and the pen—and
seeking the liberal universals, ‘‘liberty and justice.’’ Silence is broken
through this translation and transcription. This is not an oral tradition made
up of quaint and meaningful stories about Indians’ pastoral existence, or
even glorious stories of past empires and wars, but one that requires from
the ezln their ‘‘blood flowing, blossoming in the streets.’’ Theirs is not a
rural world apart, trapped in the folkloric, but a world in sync with—indeed,
on a collision course with—the world of ‘‘cities where lies and despoilment
rule.’’
The democratic content of silence, the counterpunctual act of speaking
their word, and the idiomatic art of translating silence and the spoken word
into the idioms of revolutionary practice and representative democracy are
all paramount to the ezln’s project. In approximately half of the communi-
qués issued in the first nine months, for example, the ezln begin by either
invoking the right to ‘‘decir nuestra palabra,’’ to speak their word, or thank-
ing an organization or individual for having spoken ‘‘su palabra,’’ their
words, to the ezln.∑∫ In what Subcomandante Marcos has called ‘‘the first
uprising of the ezln,’’ the women in the ezln are said to have demanded
‘‘the right to speak our word and have it respected’’ from their male col-
leagues in March 1993 (109). And in perhaps their most famous communi-
qué, ‘‘Mandar Obedeciendo,’’ ‘‘To Rule by Obeying,’’ their ‘‘word’’ as the
translation of silence takes on divine connotations. This communiqué be-
gins in the mythical past tense of the parable: ‘‘when the ezln was just a
shadow dragging itself amongst the fog and the darkness of the mountains,
when the words justice, liberty and democracy were just that: words.’’ Dur-
ing this mythical past, the ‘‘hombres verdaderos,’’ the true or authentic
men, spoke to a community through its elders, a community in which
‘‘silence had for a long time inhabited [the] house’’ (175–76).
The communiqué takes the form of a story within a story, as what these
‘‘true men’’ say to this silent community is set o√ from the rest of the text by
quotation marks, but what they say is less a narrative than a treatise on good
government. They tell of an earlier time when a previous community was
seeking a means of self-government with ‘‘reason and will.’’ This previous

The Politics of Silence 237

community followed a simple ‘‘path’’ of executing the will of the majority
without disregarding the will of the minority (175). They follow a simple
premise of ruling by obeying the heart of the community (176). It is at this
juncture, the ‘‘true men’’ explain, that ‘‘another word came from far away so
that this government could name itself, and that word named our path
‘democracy,’ but this was a path we had been following since before words
could walk’’ (176). Eventually this community finds itself governed by others
who do not follow this same path but instead rule by minority. At this point
in the communiqué, the two communities have become one, and the reader
realizes the ‘‘true men’’ have told the now silent community’s history. The
‘‘true men’’ call on the now silent community to ‘‘search for men and
women who will rule by obeying, who have strength in their word’’ (176).
The ezln then drops out of the extended quote, having heeded this call, and
the communiqué continues: ‘‘The men and women of the ezln, those
without a face, those who walk in the night, those who are the mountains,
look for words that other men will understand and they say: . . .’’ (177). At
this point the communiqué radically switches voice, enumerating three
demands in great detail: for free and fair elections, for the renunciation of
the executive branch, and for the legal participation of nonpartisan groups
in the election process.∑Ω The communiqué then switches voice again, clos-
ing with: ‘‘This is the word of the ezln’’ (177).
Once again tapping into the convention of Indian di√erence as origin
myth, the ezln lulls the reader into a state of repose through an allegorical
storytelling that borrows heavily from the tropes of the Popul Voh. In the
first two-thirds of the communiqué, the ezln speaks the word of its ances-
tors, ‘‘los hombres verdaderos,’’ in the counterpunctual folkloric voice, tell-
ing of a utopian community that had representative forms of government
long before colonization and independence brought liberal democracy to
the Americas. Even when they drop out of the quoted word of the ‘‘true
men,’’ the ezln continue in this folkloric voice, describing themselves in
the third person as the faceless ones so conjoined with nature, so unmedi-
ated that they must search for words others will understand. Their rapid
code switching into the vernacular of representative democracy, with their
bulleted discussion of the ifs, whens, and hows of the electoral process,
reveals the ruse and shocks the reader into a state of attention. Masters of
folkloric allegory, the ezln also show themselves to be masters of idiom of
liberal democracy. However, the ezln have not yet finished demonstrating
their translating skills. They end the communiqué by mimicking the Chris-
tian convention for closing the gospel, ‘‘This is the word of Lord,’’ and

238 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

thereby infuse their speech with the righteousness of the divine. Their word,
their multivoiced call for democracy, is doubly sacred—ordained by their
ancestors and by God. Indian specificity is shown to contain all these dif-
ferent voices, and once again, the ezln moves from the local to the national
sphere without leaving the content of the local behind. The signification of
Indian ‘‘di√erence’’ in mestizaje and development is once again disrupted
as the idioms of liberal democracy and of Catholic liturgy are claimed as the
idioms of the ezln. Their recoding of the signifier ‘‘Indian di√erence’’
necessarily a√ects the content of all the other signifiers on the semiotic
chain of national meaning. Patria, flag, community, liberty, Zapata, workers,
peasants, corporativism, revolution, and, of course, mestizo are all resig-
nified as the ezln su√use the national with indigenous specificity in their
e√ort to resignify the meaning of Indian di√erence.
In these communiqués, the Zapatistas ‘‘speak their word’’ not only for
themselves as Indians but for all Mexican nationals. Though the Zapatistas
suggest that their model of democracy has been handed down to them from
generation to generation, the specific permutations of ‘‘speaking our word’’
also have a much more recent origin in their experience as migrants to the
Lacandón jungle. As I suggested in the previous section, the development of
the Lacandón jungle articulated with everyday indigenous cultural practices
to produce the Zapatistas, a discretely new form of Indian specificity. Sim-
ilarly, their form of democracy is generated from the noise of the encounter
between indigenous practice and the exigencies of economic development.
Colonizing the jungle required a process of identification that departed
significantly from the circumscribed, parochial identifications produced by
the ejido structure, as well as from the de-ethnicizing identification of peas-
ant agrarianism. The townships, ejidos, and communal farms that took
shape in the Lacandón were no longer made up of a single ethnicity, as
Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Chol, Tojolabal, and even Mixtec and Zapotec migrants from
Oaxaca established multiethnic communities. Interethnic kinship relations
developed within the new communities and also between community mem-
bers from the various new colonies as settlement proceeded (Leyva Solano
207). Clearing the jungle, establishing towns, petitioning the state for land
grants as communal farms or ejidos, preparing the conditions for agricul-
tural production, pursuing government services geared toward this produc-
tion: all these activities required a tremendous amount of organization, of
interethnic cooperation, within and between the new colonies.
Among those migrating to the jungle, however, were highland Indians
who had organizing experience to match this need: many Indians migrated

The Politics of Silence 239

after decades of involvement in unsuccessful struggles for acquiring new
lands in the highlands as comuneros; Protestant Indians migrated after ex-
pulsion from their communities for refusing to submit to cacique demands
for economic participation in Catholic rituals; dispossessed day laborers,
after years of organizing for better working conditions on haciendas all over
Chiapas, migrated in search of land, as did unemployed workers from the
petroleum and hydroelectric projects (Gonzáles Casanova 346). Migration
to the jungle also a√ected gender relations, as colonizing the jungle re-
quired that women play new and varied roles in the community. The Cath-
olic Church was especially instrumental in training women to assume more
positions of authority in the communities as they began recruiting lay cate-
chists during this period of colonization, improving reading, writing, and
orating skills among the women they trained.
The governing structures of these new multiethnic townships are based
on principles of participatory democracy, and the town councils in the
jungle townships vary in significant ways in makeup and function from the
council of elders in the highlands townships. In the highlands, each village
has a set of yearlong politico-religious duties that adult males—and only
males—from the village take up on a rotating basis. Male members of the
community who have discharged all of these duties may then pass onto the
council of elders. This council of elders acts as a religious/political guide,
regulating all social, political, and economic relationships among the mem-
bers of the community. This council of elders functions hierarchically, mod-
eled on familial relations between parents and children, with the children
rarely disobeying the parents (Bartolomé 364–65). Migrants to the jungle
broke with this tradition of gerontocracy, but they also revived indigenous
traditions favoring horizontal structures of governance within the commu-
nities. They returned to regular town meetings and consensus as the basis
for decision making. One Zapatista adviser, Luis Hernández Navarro, has
called this insistence on voice, assembly, and consensus ‘‘neo-traditional-
ism’’ and sees it as a direct result of the struggle against the practice of
caciquismo that historically propped up the pri in highland communities
(‘‘Cuidadanos iguales’’ 33). Most notably, this reinvention of tradition by
migrants facilitated participation in public community life by women. The
migrants call this system of government el comón, or government by ‘‘collec-
tive sentiment,’’ as Xóchitl Leyva Solano, a Mexican anthropologist, has
translated it.
Leyva worked for many years in the Las Cañadas region of the jungle, in a
community made up of Tzeltal and Tojolabal Indians, where she observed

240 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

the functioning of this type of self-government. El comón, or this collective
sentiment, emerges out of regularly held communal assemblies, according
to Leyva:

The communal assembly is the formal and real medium through

which the individual members of the locality act, decide, analyze and
think; it is the principal medium for making decisions. All men and
women over the age of 16 attend, all of them have a voice [in the
decision-making process] although in general the youth listen and the
more mature men and women take charge of intervening. (208–9)

These assemblies last a minimum of three hours. They are moderated by

a ‘‘council of authorities’’ who begin the meeting by presenting an agenda to
the assembly. The assembly breaks into four smaller groups for discussion:
two composed of women, two of men. These smaller groups then return to
the plenary, where each group presents its opinions or solutions to the
issues or problems at hand. Accords are thus reached on each point on the
agenda for the day, and then a second set of accords are reached establishing
the rights and obligations of each member of the community vis-à-vis the
first accords. These accords, these agreements, are what constitute the col-
lective sentiment for these communities in the jungle, and it is through this
comón that control over natural resources is determined and authority over
all the town inhabitants exercised (210): ‘‘This authority is exercised thanks
to the consent of all the inhabitants of the colony. The dominion of the
comón extends to all spheres of daily life (civic, political, economic, religious,
ethical and moral)’’ (210).
Catholic and Protestant indigenous catechists were key to fostering dem-
ocratic forms of communication among and across ethnic communities in
the jungle through their evangelical work as indigenous catechists (Harvey,
The Chiapas Rebellion 72–76). These catechists, trained in liberation theol-
ogy, placed a great deal of emphasis on the ‘‘culture of dialogue’’ and ‘‘inter-
communicative action,’’ believing that through dialogue, ‘‘the written word
of the Bible is reinterpreted in the speech of the indigenous people’’ (Gon-
záles Casanova 350). Thus each person’s word and the collective word of the
comón are sacred and cannot be broken. These catechists directly facilitated
the culture of dialogue they brought to the communities with their translat-
ing skills. The catechists were usually bi- or trilingual. They were often on
the town councils of authority, as the members on these councils not only
monitored the implementation of the comón, but also linked the various
communities in the Lacandón jungle together (Leyva Solano 214). A num-

The Politics of Silence 241

ber of these catechists were women, and unlike indigenous communities
anywhere else in Chiapas, women in the Lacandón communities were al-
lowed on these town councils. These catechists were instrumental in form-
ing the ues and uus during the 1980s, and many of them went on to form
the leadership of the Zapatistas. Their understanding of the sacred nature of
indigenous democratic speech helps to explain the ezln’s belief in the
sacredness of their speech.
The noise of the comón, where everyone has a right to be heard, mimics
the noise of silence, in which all sound is heard. Just as in the clearing in
Oventic the performance of silence enacted the fullness of our community,
the comón enacts the fullness of the Zapatista communities. As in silence,
the comón is not the elimination of di√erence but the arena in which
di√erences are vocalized, discussed, and translated into collective senti-
ment. Neither the silence invoked in the communiqués nor the collective
sentiment of the comón is natural or intrinsic to pre-Hispanic cultures;
rather, both are the materially given by-products of the encounter between
indigenous beliefs and practices and (post)colonial techniques of govern-
mentality and discourses of power. In the paradox of this encounter, silence
has provided the space for resistance within capitalism, whereas the comón
has provided the space for alternative democratic practices in an era of
neoliberal globalization begging for such alternatives. It is this comón, with
its secular and sacred permutations, that the Zapatistas have attempted to
translate into the idiom of liberal representative democracy. They have at-
tempted to do so both during negotiations with the government of Ernesto
Zedillo (1994–2000) and through their performance of democratic practice
at the various national and international events they have staged to pressure
the government. I now trace the history of the negotiations to analyze the
e√ect of this translation.
One round of negotiations took place between the ezln and the Salinas
administration. After a month and a half of procedural negotiations, during
which the government methodically sought to limit the scope of the di-
alogue to the local arena of indigenous Chiapas, the Salinas administration
finally agreed to discuss the ezln’s thirty-four-point agenda. Substantive
negotiations between the two sides were held from 27 February to 2 March
1994, in the San Cristobal Cathedral, with Bishop Samuel Ruiz acting as
mediator. Only six of the ezln’s thirty-four demands addressed specifically
indigenous concerns. The rest reiterated, in much greater detail, the eleven
national demands issued in the first ‘‘Declaracion from the Lacandón.’’ The
government responded, in a limited way, to thirty-two of the ezln’s thirty-

242 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

four demands, and the Zapatistas took this preliminary accord back to their
constituency for discussion and decision making in the comón of each
community. While the ezln was consulting its base, Donaldo Colosío, the
pri presidential candidate for the upcoming federal elections, was assassi-
nated on 23 March. On 10 June the ezln issued a communiqué stating its
communities had rejected the government’s o√er and broke o√ negotia-
tions with Salinas’s lame-duck government.∏≠
As the entire country debated over which faction of the pri might have
ordered Colosío’s assassination, and as preparations for the first interna-
tionally observed federal elections consumed party politicians, the media,
and ngos, the ezln could easily have slipped o√ the front page of news-
papers, becoming nothing more than a poetic but marginal guerrilla force.
Two days after breaking o√ negotiations, however, the ezln issued their
‘‘Second Declaration from the Lacandón Jungle.’’ It declared: ‘‘this revolu-
tion will not result in a new class, faction of a class, or group in power but in
a ‘space’ for free and democratic political struggle’’ (273), once again evok-
ing the space of silence and the comón. In the communiqué, the ezln
invited all ‘‘honest elements of Civil Society’’ to a ‘‘National Democratic
Convention’’ (cnd) in the liberated Zapatista territory to discuss how to
guarantee rule by plebiscite, the formation of a transitional government in
the event of fraudulent federal elections, and the drafting of a new constitu-
tion that would better balance federal, state, and local government (273–76).
For the next two months, preparations for the cnd regularly made front-
page news as the Zapatistas opened a clearing in the jungle near Guadalupe
Tepeyac and built an enormous spiral-shaped stadium christened ‘‘Aguas-
calientes.’’∏∞ The cnd was held from 6 to 9 August, twelve days before the 21
August elections. More than six thousand members of peasant, indigenous,
labor, and urban organizations, as well as innumerable members of the Left
intelligentsia, attended the cnd (Womack, Rebellion in Chiapas 48). During
opening ceremonies, the ezln commanders presented a Mexican flag to
representatives of ‘‘civil society,’’ symbolizing their handing over to the peo-
ple the responsibility of forging a democratic union.∏≤
In the course of discussions about the importance of universal su√rage
and electoral transparency, an unexpected consensus for full participation
in the federal elections emerged at the cnd. A number of people I inter-
viewed after the elections underscored the impact of this consensus in
Chiapas. Javier Sanchez, another technical adviser with cnoc, told me,
‘‘There were a lot of doubts about participating in the election among our
membership [because of the history of electoral fraud], but after the conven-

The Politics of Silence 243

tion, our members returned convinced. The indigenous communities in the
jungle and in the highlands did participate, and they voted for Amado Aven-
daño’’ (Sanchez interview). Feminist Blanca Hidalgo, who worked with a
local women’s ngo, commented, ‘‘The cnd obliged us to assume our right
to be citizens of this country. It pulled feminist discourse into an area it
hadn’t gone before. People never used to vote because fraud was just as-
sumed, and we certainly didn’t think of eliminating fraud as a feminist issue,
but now indigenous women are defending their right to vote, and even the
urbane ngo advisers, like myself, who were abstentionists on principle, are
voting’’ (Hidalgo interview). Thus, while political parties in the Mexican
National Congress were negotiating reforms of the electoral law to ensure
an accurate voter registry and party observers at voting sites, the ezln held a
parallel National Congress, symbolically producing representative democ-
racy by performing it. By translating the practices of the comón into discus-
sion and debate at the cnd, they revalued the electoral process for indige-
nous and nonindigenous citizens, enfranchising new voters.
There was considerable evidence of electoral fraud in Chiapas, and the
pri governor Robledo Rincon was eventually forced to step down. However,
national and international observers confirmed that Zedillo, the pri candi-
date who replaced Colosío, had won the presidential election without fraud
by 50.3 percent. Just a few days after Zedillo’s inauguration, the ezln shifted
strategy back to the local arena, reminding the new administration of their
nagging presence. On 20 December 1994, the Zapatistas broke through the
Mexican military’s lines without firing a shot, quietly took over thirty-eight
sympathetic municipalities located outside of the liberated zones, and de-
clared them autonomous.∏≥
A month and a half later, on 9 February, Zedillo took his revenge by
unilaterally breaking the cease-fire and invading liberated communities mil-
itarily. Furthermore, government agents arrested alleged Zapatistas in Vera-
cruz and Mexico City and revealed the identity of ‘‘Marcos’’ as Rafael Guil-
len, humble professor of sociology from Monterrey (Gilbreth 1–2). Once
again hundreds of thousands of Mexicans took to the streets denouncing
the government’s military actions and demanding a peaceful resolution to
the conflict in Chiapas. It was during this series of demonstrations in Mex-
ico City’s zocalo, or central plaza, that demonstrators coined the chants
‘‘¡Todos somos indios!’’ (We are all Indians!) and ‘‘¡Todos somos Marcos!’’
(We are all Marcos!). Zedillo was pressured into a new cease-fire and new
negotiations by the demonstrations and by his own National Congress,
though he refused to order the retreat of the military forces now occupying

244 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

dozens of Zapatista communities. Procedural negotiations between the two
sides commenced in March at San Andres Larrainzar with a new mediating
body, the Commission for Concordance and Peace (cocopa), made up of
congressional representatives from all the parties in the new legislature.
For the following five months, procedural negotiations languished. Be-
tween 9 April and 26 July 1995, the two sides formally met six times but
were unable to agree on the issues of disarmament and military withdrawal
from the conflict zone. More significantly, government representatives
steadfastly refused to agree to any negotiations with the ezln on matters of
national dimension. With procedural negotiations at an impasse, the Zapa-
tistas staged their second national civics lesson. On 8 August, the one-year
anniversary of the cnd, the Zapatistas called on the cnd and Allianza
Civica (ac), or Civic Alliance, to hold a ‘‘Great National Consultation for
Peace and Democracy,’’ a nationwide referendum made up of six questions
proposed by the ezln. Though none of these questions was directly about
the negotiations, the consulta was e√ectively a referendum on whether or
not negotiations should continue, and on what the scope of the negotiations
should be.∏∂
Over one million Mexican citizens from across the country participated
in the consulta, with more than 90 percent of the participants voting to
a≈rm the national scope of the negotiations between the ezln and the pri
government.∏∑According to Marcos, however, the ezln was not simply in-
terested in people ‘‘marking the ballot [with a] yes or no to each of the six
questions, rather, above all, we are interested and our hope lies in the orga-
nizational process of this consulta, from its promotion, from its di√usion—
what it signifies and how to do it—to the organization to conduct and realize
the consulta’’ (Marcos, ‘‘La Consulta’’ 5). He characterized the consulta as
‘‘another mirror in which this society can see itself, a mirror of its own
capacity to organize a dialogue with itself,’’ and as ‘‘a first step toward new
forms of plebiscite, of referendum and interchange of opinions flowing
from diverse sectors of civil society’’ (5). The consulta represented an at-
tempt by the ezln to have the citizenry decir su palabra, ‘‘speak their word,’’
at the national level. The aesthetics of the consulta, interpreted here by
Marcos, suggest that form mimics content, with the event equal to the result
in significance. As in the communiqués, the event—the act of taking posses-
sion of language—is the creative act that enables speech. In the case of the
consulta, this means taking possession of the language of organizing: re-
flecting on and interpreting one’s own reality, initiating dialogue around
this reality, and acting collectively to translate self-reflective dialogue ‘‘in

The Politics of Silence 245

which society can see itself ’’ into ‘‘the word,’’ nationwide democratic prac-
tices.∏∏ The consulta was a translation of Zapatista revolutionary practice
into representative forms of democracy that—though new to Mexican poli-
tics—are familiar to Western liberalism, such as plebiscite, referendum.
The symbolism of the event had a very real e√ect on the negotiation
process. In a letter assessing the significance of the consulta, Marcos put it
bluntly: ‘‘The exhausted San Andres dialogue found new life, not in the will
of the government but in the voice of hundreds of thousands of men and
women who demanded of the all powerful and his servile bureaucrats to
change their attitude at the table’’ (Marcos, ‘‘Mesa Nacional’’ 2). When the
ezln and government teams met again on 5 September, progress was made
for the first time in the procedural negotiations. The government team
agreed to the ezln’s agenda, dividing negotiations into four tables: (I) In-
digenous Rights and Culture, (II) Democracy and Justice, (III) Economic
Development and Welfare, and (IV) Women’s Rights.∏π The first two nego-
tiating sessions on Table I took place from 18 to 22 October and from 13 to 18
November.∏∫
The Zapatistas expanded public participation in the dialogue even fur-
ther than the consulta and the cnd, however, by calling for a National
Indigenous Forum (fni) to be held in concert with the negotiation process.
Negotiations for Table I were divided into six areas of concern: the definition
of autonomy and community; the guarantee of justice for indigenous peo-
ple in state and federal areas of jurisprudence; the rights of indigenous
women within national and communal forms of jurisprudence; access to
the media; and the promotion and development of indigenous culture.
Thus the ezln invited national Indianist and nonindigenous organizations
to participate in a five-day forum divided into six parallel discussion ses-
sions. The forum was held in San Cristobal from 3 to 8 January 1997, two
days before the third scheduled round of negotiations on Table I. Organized
by the Indianist base from sixteen di√erent states within Mexico, with very
little time and resources, the event was yet another historic event precipi-
tated by the Zapatistas but organized by members of civil society (Hernán-
dez Navarro, ‘‘Cosecha india’’ 10). Four hundred ninety representatives
from 197 organizations attended the forum, of which 236 were Mexican
Indians, including Zapotec and Mixtec migrant laborers who returned from
the United States to participate in the forum. There were fifty-four indige-
nous participants from other American countries. The remainder were non-
indigenous Mexican citizens (Rojas and Gil Olmos, ‘‘Piden una profunda
reforma’’ 1). Though the forum had no o≈cial mandate within the negotia-

246 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

tions process, the Zapatistas nevertheless presented preliminary accords
reached with the government to the corresponding forum sessions for ratifi-
cation by the participants. Twenty-four members of the ezln’s General
Command attended the fni, and all the legislative members of cocopa
were in attendance as well, having accepted the ezln’s invitation to partici-
pate in the forum as observers (Gil Olmos 8).
The forum’s stated objective was to ‘‘enrich, through ideas adopted by
consensus,’’ the proposals and preliminary accords presented by ezln as
the basis for their ongoing negotiations with the government (fni, ‘‘Foro
Nacional Indígena’’). The forum, however, was far from a rubber stamp of
the ezln’s positions. Rather, there was heated debate over a number of
issues, and the consensus reached by forum participants often moved be-
yond or contradicted the positions put forth by the Zapatista delegation.∏Ω
Disagreement among the participants focused primarily on the issue of
autonomy: on its juridical reach, and on its ultimate form of governance.
Two basic positions emerged over the course of five days of discussion:
those who favored regional autonomy and those who favored communal
autonomy. The advocates of regional autonomy favored the formation of
autonomous municipalities, which would then join together in regional
assemblies corresponding to the pluriethnic territoriality of historic tribes.
These regional assemblies would equal state assemblies in power and juris-
diction.π≠ The advocates of communal autonomy insisted on the legal rec-
ognition of the community as the highest form of governance. During a
twelve-hour final plenary discussion, no consensus was reached on this
issue. The forum’s final document stated simply that indigenous peoples
had the right to decide on their form of government, be that regional,
municipal, or communal autonomy (Rojas and Gil Olmos, ‘‘Se requiere un
Congreso Nacional’’ 9; Gil Olmos 8).π∞ Although the ezln’s decision to hold
the fni during the middle of its negotiations was clearly a tactical maneuver
to pressure the government, it also reflected the Zapatistas’ aesthetics of
silence and politics of the comón.π≤
The forum and its proceedings demonstrate, yet again, the power of the
ezln to summon the citizens of the nation to the project of remaking it.
They succeeded in making the most ‘‘local’’ of issues on the negotiating
table—indigenous rights and culture—into a national concern by inviting
both indigenous and nonindigenous organizations to participate in the proj-
ect of theorizing the formation of a new Mexican state, one capable of
encompassing autonomy within it. In the discussions that took place at the
forum, indigenous and nonindigenous people searched for ways to com-

The Politics of Silence 247

bine customary law and Western law, to accommodate rights made available
to indigenous citizens under both systems of law in any future project of
autonomy. As Father Gonzalo Ituarte,π≥ a participant in the fni, put it,
‘‘Autonomy is not a look backward, at traditions that may or may not have
existed, but a look at the present and a look forward. The ezln claims the
right to give to the nation and not only to receive from it. The fni was an
opportunity for Indians and mestizos to collectively interpret the kind of
nation we desire’’ (Ituarte interview).
The participants at the fni were also collectively incorporated into the
negotiation process, as the radicality of the positions voiced at the fni
forced concessions from the government’s negotiating team. Prior to the
forum, the government’s position on autonomy had been quite limited:
allowing each ethnic community to negotiate the terms of its autonomous
government individually with the legislatures of each state, with the federal
government then ratifying each individual agreement (Henríquez and Gil
Olmos 9). After the fni, however, the government’s position shifted consid-
erably, on this and other issues.
The third and final round of the Table I negotiations took place from 10
through 19 January, during which considerable advances were made, and
final accords were reached. In prior negotiating sessions, the government
team had insisted on referring to indigenous peoples as ‘‘poblados indi-
genas’’ rather than ‘‘pueblos indigenas’’ (Moguel 24). The distinction is an
important one, for while ‘‘poblados indigenas’’ literally translates into indige-
nous populations, ‘‘poblado’’ also means town or village, reminiscent of the
fragmented colonial township structure. Meanwhile ‘‘pueblos indigenas’’
translates into indigenous peoples, the language used in the Convenio 169
de la OIT. By agreeing to the OIT definition, the government team also
recognized indigenous peoples’ tie to historical domains and their right to a
constitutional guarantee of self-determination (Moguel 24). The San Andres
Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture, as they are o≈cially called,
guaranteed state and federal legislative reforms that would (a) establish the
autonomy of indigenous communities and peoples, recognizing them as
entities with public rights, including the right to form municipalities with an
indigenous majority, and for such municipalities to associate freely; (b)
protect the integrity of indigenous lands, as specified by indigenous peoples
and communities in accordance with the concept of territorial integrity
included in the Convenio 169 of the OIT; (c) give preferential privilege to
indigenous communities in the granting of concessions for obtaining bene-
fits from natural resources; (d) ensure representation in all legislative bodies,

248 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

especially the National Congress and state congresses, through redistricting;
(e) establish the right of indigenous peoples to elect their own authorities and
exercise that authority in accord with their own norms, guaranteeing the
equal participation of women; (f ) recognize the pluricultural makeup of the
nation in all legislative content, so that it may reflect intercultural dialogue,
the shared norms for all Mexicans, and respect for the internal normative
systems of indigenous peoples; (g) guarantee protection against discrimina-
tion on the basis of racial or ethnic origin, language, sex, belief, or social
conditions within the Magna Carta; (h) protect all individual guarantees,
rights, and freedoms; and (i) guarantee access to media for indigenous
peoples so that they may freely exercise and develop their cultures (cocopa
1996).
The government held fast against recognizing any form of regional au-
tonomy and postponed all discussion of agrarian reform and development
(i.e., Salinas’s reform of Article 27 from the 1917 Constitution) until Table
III. Nevertheless these first accords legally established a national right to
autonomous government for indigenous peoples, a right that would require
the modification of seven constitutional articles, as well as the modification
of the national civil, penal, and electoral codes. The ezln took these accords
back to their communities for ratification and, on 15 February, announced
that 96 percent of the members of their communities had approved the
accords. They were signed by both teams the next day. This was an aus-
picious beginning for the negotiating process. In less than five months, the
two sides had drafted a detailed and promising accord for Table I.
Negotiations for Table II on Democracy and Justice began almost imme-
diately, but in the following six months, negotiations took a turn for the
worse. Though the two sides met repeatedly, no progress was made on the
issues of democracy and justice. This time around, the government flatly
refused to discuss any national reforms, though the Zapatistas had many
such demands on the table. Once again, the Zapatistas turned to the na-
tional and international community. In July, they hosted a Forum on the
Reform of the Mexican State, resembling the fni in organization and struc-
ture. In August they hosted the International Encounter for Humanity and
against Neoliberalism. This time, however, their ability to galvanize the
national and international community in these democratic performances
had no e√ect on the Zedillo administration. The Zapatistas suspended ne-
gotiations in September, citing the government’s unwillingness to negotiate
on national issues as a factor.
Why was the Zedillo government unwilling to do so in Table II negotia-

The Politics of Silence 249

tions when they had been so willing to compromise in Table I negotiations?
Why did the Zapatistas’ ability to galvanize the Mexican citizenry have no
e√ect on Zedillo’s administration this time around? I posed the first ques-
tion to Adriana Lopéz Monjardin, a political scientist and ezln adviser for
Table II, in September 1996. Her response is worth quoting at length. She
began by discussing her experience advising the ezln:

When the advisers [for Table II] met with the ezln representatives
in our first assembly, we asked them, ‘‘So what are your demands?’’
The Zapatistas answered, ‘‘We have no demands, we want to hear
what you think.’’ Well, we were a little surprised at first, but it doesn’t
take much to convince a bunch of intellectuals to talk. So we made
many proposals about how we thought democracy could be improved
in Mexico. Among all the proposals we made, though, it is no coinci-
dence that the most attractive to the ezln were those enabling par-
ticipatory democracy. There were a lot of disagreements among the
advisers about how to reform electoral law, but it was clear that the
proposals emphasizing direct democracy were the most attractive to
the ezln —plebiscite, referendum, popular initiative. . . . In Mexico
the tradition is for the president to initiate laws and the legislature to
pass them. Now that there are opposition parties in the Congress,
there are more initiatives put forth by the members [of Congress], but
this doesn’t imply any consultation with their constituency. There is
no tradition of consulting your constituency, of lobbying or anything
like that. There has never been any relationship of sustenance [with
the constituency]. The ezln was very interested in anything having to
do with citizens’ action. For example, they were very interested in
having the ability to bring charges against o≈cials for violating the
Constitution. Right now you can bring civil or criminal charges
against o≈cials, but you have no recourse if they violate your constitu-
tional rights—for example, if an o≈cial takes away your communal
land in order to grant a concession for the exploitation of natural
resources. They were very interested in the right to recall an elected
o≈cial if he [or she] was not discharging his [or her] duty correctly.
Participatory democracy is central to the Zapatistas. . . . There lies the
utopic dimension of the ezln —they formulate it as ‘‘ruling by obey-
ing,’’ and they want to take this to the national level, they want this as
the model for a new relationship between the governed and the gover-
nors. In most indigenous communities, you have to earn the right to

250 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 hold an o≈ce by serving your community in a number of capacities
first. To rule by obeying gathers up all these traditions. It’s utopic, but
they say, ‘‘If it is possible for this kind of authority to exist in the
communities, then it should exist for the whole country.’’
When we got to the negotiating table, the government insisted they
were in agreement with these issues—with the idea of plebiscite, ref-
erendum, recall. Well, the next logical step was to discuss the mecha-
nisms for ensuring these were citizen’s initiatives, and not another
vehicle for state intervention. You know, rules for who can initiate
such measures, how many signatures would be necessary to put a
referendum on a ballot, or to require the recall of a state o≈cial. The
government team absolutely refused to contemplate procedures such
as these, which are essential if these things are to become real rights.
They said, ‘‘Many other actors need to express themselves on these
issues before we can proceed with this discussion.’’ Which actors?
Who knows. A lot of civil organizations and ngos participated in the
assemblies with the ezln before negotiations and insisted on these
reforms as well.
The Zapatistas and many other indigenous groups are proposing
to Mexico a new form of government, one that gathers up all their
traditions, one that proposes building a national consensus on issues.
This is in direct contradiction with the party system. The party system
is based on the idea that there are irreconcilable di√erences; it is based
on antagonism. The Zapatista model recognizes that there are di√er-
ences but proceeds according to the belief that you can reach con-
sensus as a community, that there is no need for parties. Also you
must remember that the party system has brought division to their
communities. To participate in even a municipal election, you must
belong to a party, and this has introduced artificial divisions and ten-
sions in indigenous communities.π∂

The demands made by the Zapatistas clearly challenged the centraliza-

tion of power in the one-party system of government that had held sway in
Mexico for seventy years. Given the nature of their demands, however, the
Zapatistas found few allies among the newly empowered opposition parties
in National Congress for continuing Table II negotiations. Indeed, rather
than continue negotiations with the Zapatistas, Zedillo initiated negotia-
tions with the opposition parties for the reform of the electoral code. Al-
though the changes to the electoral code made possible the defeat of pri

The Politics of Silence 251

presidential candidate Francisco Labastida by PAN candidate Vicente Fox in
the 2000 elections, they did not limit the power of party politics in any way
or augment the channels of participation available to the Mexican constitu-
ency. One has to wonder if Zedillo’s faction of the pri was willing to relin-
quish the party’s seventy-year hold on power to an opposition party in order
to prevent Indian particularity from translating into the abstract universality
of national democratic politics. After all, the reforms suggested by the
Zapatistas, though new to Mexico, are present in many other Western de-
mocracies. Nevertheless, Zedillo’s administration steadfastly refused to re-
sume negotiations on these issues for the remaining five years of his admin-
istration. Although the Zapatista reforms and the Zapatistas did pose an
immediate and direct threat to the pri’s hold on power, I would suggest it
was the far more dangerous threat they posed to the discourse of mestizaje
that required the permanent breaking o√ of negotiations.
The ezln not only tried to translate their Indian specificity into the
language of representative democracy within the negotiation process, as
Lopéz Monjardin suggests, but also successfully translated their Indian
particularity into the practice of democracy through the cnd, the National
Consultation, the fni, and the Forum for the Reform of the Mexican State.
This was their true crime, for in so doing they attempted to build the con-
sensus of the comón at the national level, to register the di√erences in the
fullness of the community of silence that is the disenfranchised Mexican
populace. The ezln’s successful performance of democratic practice, their
successful translation of silence, necessitated the failure of negotiations.
Ontologically, the possibility of contemporary Indian particularity inform-
ing abstract national universality posed such a unique threat to the myth of
the modern Mexican mestizo that Zedillo set about reparticularizing the
ezln into the primitive Indian di√erence of mestizaje. By breaking o√
negotiations, Zedillo contained the ezln to the San Andres Accords, re-
inscribing Indian di√erence as ‘‘culture.’’ His administration allowed the
ezln a voice in the formulation of the particular rights of indigenous people
within these accords, rights that could be construed as ‘‘simply’’ cultural.
This was the extent to which his administration was willing to let the ezln
have a say in Mexican politics. When the ezln attempted to inform the
terms of national enfranchisement for indigenous and nonindigenous peo-
ple, his administration shut down the negotiations, redirecting the discus-
sion on national democratic reform to its ‘‘proper’’ forum, negotiations with
mestizo legislators and party representatives. The Zedillo administration
also sought to reprimitivize the ezln through the use of counterinsurgency

252 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

groups in Chiapas. With the support of local pri o≈cials and with the
federal army turning a blind eye to their activities, indigenous counterin-
surgency groups, such as Paz and Justicia, organized and swung into action
in 1997. In addition to the unprecedented loss of human lives in the Chia-
pas conflict at the hands of these counterinsurgency groups, their actions
gave the conflict an interethnic representation, as the Zedillo administra-
tion tried, for the second time in Mexican history, to turn an ethnically
inflected class antagonism into a caste war.
Ideologically, the Mexican revolutionary elites of 1910 functioned by in-
voking the native—the forsaken ‘‘folk’’ nation—as the legitimation for their
revolution, and it is through the discourse of mestizaje that the folk became
assessable as pure Indian di√erence, as what gives Mexican national identity
its uniqueness. Once the revolution came to pass, however, a European
paradigm of nation emerged from behind the mask of Indian di√erence, as
the Spanish variable in the equation of mestizaje was ultimately more valued
than its Indian counterpart. From behind the mask of Indian di√erence
emerged the developmentalist paradigm of the revolutionary mestizo, a
mestizo who must supersede his glorious Indian past if he is to have access to
the promises of modernity in his future. The mask of Indian di√erence
functioned as the quintessential empty signifier within the discourse of
revolutionary mestizo nationalism, for while it politically galvanized national
identity as the common origin among the population—temporarily provid-
ing a mythical fullness of community—it was itself devoid of all particularity.
It was a discursive construct which shunned all Indian specificity, preferring
instead a content so abstracted as to lose all referential meaning as origin.
Indian di√erence is a signifier unmoored from its presumed referent, the
indigenous population of Mexico. The Zapatistas have seized the empty
signifier of Indian di√erence and its function in Mexican culture. From
behind their masks, their pasamontañas and bandannas, the ezln calls for a
second Mexican revolution to achieve the unfulfilled potential of the 1910
revolution, emphatically and repeatedly placing themselves within the gene-
alogy of this first paradigmatic revolution for Latin America through their
communiqués and democratic performances. They make their appeal to the
nation from within the discursive terms of the 1910 revolution, even par-
ticipating in the developmentalism of mestizaje through their autoethno-
graphic choice of representation as the folk origin of the Mexican nation. And
yet they also exceed the discursive terms of the revolutionary mestizo na-
tionalism of 1910. The Zapatistas seize the mask of Indian di√erence in an
attempt to fill its ‘‘empty’’ content with Indian specificity, a specificity that is

The Politics of Silence 253

neither pre-Hispanic or postmodern but o√ers Mexican citizens an alterna-
tive modernity. It is an Indian specificity produced within, but also in excess
of, the discursive terms of revolutionary mestizo nationalism and develop-
mentalist modernity.
In ‘‘Why Do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics?’’ Laclau theorizes how
empty signifiers function at moments of potential hegemonic transition
when various working-class struggles achieve unity in their confrontation
with a repressive regime (Emancipation[s] 40). He begins with a review of
semiotic theory, reminding the reader that the systematicity of a semiotic
system always depends on radical exclusion from the system: ‘‘the very
possibility of signification is the system, and very possibility of the system is
the possibility of its limit’’ (37). As every signifying totality is a system of
di√erences, the signifying system’s limit cannot be neutral. It cannot be a
limit such as would occur between two signifying terms within the system,
but must be antagonistic. The absolute limit of a signifying system, beyond
which is radical exclusion, by definition cannot be represented by the sig-
nifying terms of the system and exists as pure negativity against which the
system defines its totality (37). This is the first empty signifier we come upon
in Laclau’s essay, the empty signifier of the exclusionary limit. This empty
signifier of the exclusionary limit, however, only interests him insofar as it
‘‘introduces an essential ambivalence within the system of di√erences con-
stituted by those limits. On the one hand, each element of the system has an
identity only so far as it is di√erent from the others: di√erence = identity.
On the other hand, however, all these di√erences are equivalent to each
other inasmuch as all of them belong to this side of the frontier of exclusion.
But, in that case, the identity of each element is constitutively split’’ (38). It is
this constitutively split identity of every signifying term in the system that
allows for the empty signifier of the pure being of the system, on this side of
the exclusionary limit of pure negativity, to signify itself. Because each ele-
ment of a signifying system is split ambivalently by di√erence and equiva-
lence—contains both these possibilities—signifiers are able to ‘‘empty them-
selves of their attachment to particular signifieds’’ (of their identity as
di√erence) and, in turn, ‘‘assume the role of representing the pure being of
the system—or rather the system as pure Being’’ (identity as the equivalence
of all the elements of the system) (39). Indian di√erence, as I have sug-
gested, has historically performed this function of representing the Mexican
nation as pure being, as the equivalence of all the elements of the system.
Laclau then uses the logic of the semiotic system as a metaphor to ana-
lyze the political terrain at a moment when a repressive regime has in-

254 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

creased its repression to such a degree that it becomes ‘‘less the instrument
of particular di√erential repressions and will express [instead] pure anti-
community, pure evil and negation’’ (42). Laclau tells us that at such mo-
ments, according to Luxemburg, disparate working-class struggles may
unite not because of a unity of interests but because they are all equivalent
before the repressive regime (41). A community of struggle is created
through identification in opposition, through ‘‘this equivalential expansion’’
in which their di√erences are deferred in their confrontation with the re-
gime. Although this community of struggle is nevertheless punctuated by
di√erential interests, community will emerge as ‘‘the pure idea of a commu-
nitarian fullness which is absent as a result of the presence of the repressive
power’’ (42). Laclau has brought us very close to the function the Zapatistas
have played for the idea of ‘‘civil society’’ in Mexico since the time of their
uprising. Laclau continues: ‘‘The community as such is not a purely dif-
ferential space of an objective identity but an absent fullness, it cannot have
any form of representation of its own, and has to borrow the latter from
some entity constituted within the equivalent space—in the same way as
gold is a particular use which assumes, as well, the function of representing
value in general. This emptying of a particular signifier of its particular,
di√erential signified is, as we saw, what makes possible the emergence of
‘empty’ signifiers as the signifier of a lack, of an absent totality’’ (42).
Following Laclau’s analysis of the function of empty signifiers in repre-
senting the absent fullness of the community, I suggest that the Zapatistas
once again mobilize the empty signifier of Indian di√erence to unite a
community of struggle against the pri dictatorship. After ten years of struc-
tural adjustment policies, followed by two years of neoliberal reform, the
Zapatistas were able to coalesce the various working-class and leftist strug-
gles in Mexico by mobilizing the empty signifier of Indian di√erence to
represent the fullness of ‘‘civil society’’ in their communiqués and in their
repeated performance of democratic participation. When the Zapatistas in-
terrupted Salinas’s neoliberal project because it excluded them as Indians,
they were successful in generalizing their exclusion as Indian di√erence. If
Indians have traditionally been excluded from the privileges of mestizo
citizenship in Mexico, then what the Zapatistas made evident to the general
population, through their communiqués and political acts, was that neo-
liberal reform had turned the entire country into Indians. The popularized
chant ‘‘todos somos indios’’ attests to this. The Zapatistas succeeded in
making Mexican society aware that they were all Indians before this neo-
liberal agenda, an agenda that defaulted on the historical promise of inclu-

The Politics of Silence 255

sion extended by the developmentalist revolutionary nationalism of the pri.
The Zapatistas succeeded in universalizing the alterity traditionally ascribed
to Indians.
In mobilizing the empty signifier of Indian di√erence to unite a commu-
nity in struggle, however, they also reclaimed this empty signifier discur-
sively for Indian specificity. I am suggesting that the empty signifier is no
longer empty. The Zapatistas twice challenge Laclau’s antagonistic formula-
tion of hegemonic politics when they fill the ‘‘empty’’ signifier of Indian
di√erence with their own particularity even as they universalize this particu-
larity to represent the fullness of the Mexican community. They fill Indian
di√erence with a specificity—with the aesthetics of silence and the politics of
the comón—capable of encompassing the abstract national community in
struggle and in di√erence. The Zapatistas disrupt the pri teleology of mes-
tizaje and revolutionary developmentalism by insisting that Indian particu-
larity, finally, openly inform the condition of revolutionary national citizen-
ship, that Indian particularity inform the national forms of democratic
representation. In so doing, they o√er alternative forms of democratic prac-
tice that envision the fulfillment of community not as an empty signifier, as
an impossible horizon, but as a community of di√erences functioning
through the building of consensus. If we take the Zapatista challenge se-
riously, we must take their theorizing of utopia as seriously as we take
Laclau’s. This challenge cannot be satisfied by the math of liberal pluralism,
by the simple addition of a resignified Indian di√erence onto a long chain of
antagonistic equivalences. Rather, we must take seriously the challenge of
their politics and aesthetics as presenting modernity with alternative models
of representation.
By simultaneously claiming their Indian particularity and the rights of
universal citizenship, by insisting that the former inform the latter, the
Zapatistas also present us with an alternative modernity. They eschew the
antimodernist position of nativist movements because even their particular
indigenous forms of democratic representation were produced by moder-
nity and modernization. They eschew the completion of modernity prom-
ised yet again by (neo)liberal development because that promise went un-
fulfilled under the pri’s last modernization scheme. But they also eschew
the promise of a more perfect modernity o√ered by the Central American
guerrilla movements of the 1980s because history has taught them—and
us—that it does not exist. Instead they are interested in presenting moder-
nity with the gritty task of reevaluation, of presenting modernity with an-

256 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

other vision of itself by weaving together the social justice of revolutionary
radicalism, the consensus-building practices of their indigenous commu-
nities, and the democratic promise of representative liberalism. This is the
vision and knowledge not of those excluded from developmentalist moder-
nity but of those who have fully su√ered its consequences and have seen its
possibilities.

The Politics of Silence 257

 7
Epilogue Toward an American

‘‘American Studies’’: Postrevolutionary

Reflections on Malcolm X and

the New Aztlán

This book has o√ered a genealogy of the regime of subjection under revolu-
tionary movements in Latin America over the course of the last half century.
In the interest of further understanding the internal contradictions that led
to the demise of these post–World War II revolutionary movements, I have
investigated the disturbing resemblance between the discourse of develop-
ment and the revolutionary imagination in the Americas, suggesting that
these two seemingly vying models of futurity paradoxically converge at the
site of subjectivity, with each demanding from its agent/object a similar
transformation in consciousness and mode of being. The similarity be-
tween these vying theories of history lies in their mutual dependence on a
teleological and meliorist concept of human development, derived from
imperial reason but reformulated through the rhetorics of decolonization,
development, and national liberation after World War II. As a consequence
of this mutual dependence on reformulated Anglo- and Spanish-colonial
legacies of race, First World development discourse and Third World na-
tional liberation struggles in Latin America shared a requirement for deraci-
nation that was placed on their respective agent/objects. Thus, on the one
hand, revolutionary agents such as Ernesto ‘‘Che’’ Guevara, Mario Payeras,
and the vanguard leadership of the fsln represented personal transforma-
tions as epochal, revolutionary consciousness as unitary and universal, and
collective agency as willful, masterful, and finally masculine. On the other
hand, the targets of their revolutionary errand—those feminized objects
scheduled for revolutionary transformation by these manly agents—were
invariably in need of development: trapped in precapitalist formations,
steeped in the false consciousness of ethnic particularity and peasant cus-
tom. These agents of early post–World War II revolution proceeded much
as one might imagine their bureaucratic counterparts in the development
apparatus would have: by locating the ‘‘traditional,’’ the ‘‘premodern,’’ the
‘‘folk’’ and then subjecting it to reform. Indeed, a developmentalist regime
of revolutionary subjection demands of its agent/object a transcendence out
of particularity into the presumably universal consciousness of a fully devel-
oped, masculinist, deracinated, self-determined and determining proletar-
ian subjectivity.
The agent/objects of this revolutionary errand responded to this regime
of subjection with deafening silence. The texts produced by Rigoberta Men-
chú and the Zapatistas are texts performed in the ‘‘silence of the Indian.’’
And yet these texts and their authors insist on retheorizing revolutionary
subjection from within the revolutionary tradition in Latin America and
from within development. To wit, while the silence in Menchú’s autobiogra-
phy and in the Zapatista communiqués enacts the impossibility of accessing
an authentic ‘‘Indian’’ di√erence—the impossibility of an authentic sub-
altern representation—they nonetheless insist on just such representation
by appropriating the compromised terms of liberal and Marxist subjection
and democracy. In other words, these subaltern subjects refuse to vacate
their responsibility in formulating a revolutionary alternative for the Amer-
icas, one that could include the specificity of both their class oppression and
their ethnic particularity. In laying claim to the legacy of the twentieth-
century revolutionary movements in the Americas, they claim the liberal,
authorial voice necessary for articulating their ethnic specificity with their
role as transformative agents. In so doing, these subaltern subjects begin a
transformation of the conditions of their own subjection, away from the
unrepresentability of their subaltern experience toward the terms of West-
ern representation. They are engaged in the tenuous and tentative process
of emerging out of subalternity in a Spivakian sense. However, in so doing,
they also shift the terms for that transformation away from a teleological
development out of particularity and into universality. Instead they insist on
locating their particularity, as it already exists (has always existed?), within
the terms of a ‘‘universal’’ model of full humanity. Thus although both the
Zapatistas and Menchú resort to the ruse of authenticity, of the folk, in
laying claim to the Latin American revolutionary tradition, they do so from a
distinctly modern positionality. They do not ‘‘escape’’ the developmentalism
of modernity; no one does. Rather, they bring an understanding to the
revolutionary tradition of precisely how their ethnic specificity is an e√ect of
the development of the productive forces in Latin America. The indigenous
subalterns represented in Menchú’s autobiography and the Zapatista texts
understand themselves as fully imbricated with Latin American moderniza-
tion.
Consequently there is no authentic consciousness of the Indian to be

260 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

located through them; there is no ‘‘tradition’’ left to reform them out of, as
these traditions were forged in the colonial encounter with imperial reason
and modernity. What these subalterns bring to the revolutionary regime of
subjection is a profound understanding of how ethnic identity and eco-
nomic identity are articulated together, of how their particularity is pro-
duced out of the presumably universalizing experience of economic de-
velopment, and vice versa. Rather than reject this constitutive experience
with modernization and its subjection out of hand, through a retreat into
ethnic separatism, these indigenous subalterns instead assert their place
within a revolutionary developmentalism. They insist on negotiating the
terms of revolutionary subjection in order that the revolutionary imagina-
tion in the Americas may incorporate their living and modern di√erence.
Two sets of questions, then, are generated from this genealogy of revolu-
tionary subjection. First, does this paradigmatic subject of revolution—
embodied in the diaries of Guevara and Payeras, and in the agrarian reform
policies of the fsln and the pri —have a more global reach? Does this
paradigmatic revolutionary subject cross the formidable South-North bor-
der into the United States? Is s/he truly an ‘‘American’’ subject, forged in
the spirit of José Martí’s writing? If the answer to these questions is yes, as I
believe it is, then does the critique of this paradigmatic revolutionary subject
issued by indigenous subalterns from within revolutionary practice pertain to
the experience of revolutionary subjection in the United States? And if the
call to revolutionary subjection is issued from the ethnic and raced posi-
tionalities of Chicana/o and black nationalism, is the treatment of subaltern
di√erence necessarily di√erent? Are the regimes of subjection under these
two U.S.-based movements for ‘‘national’’ liberation any less developmen-
talist in their requirement for transformation? The answers to this second
set of questions are by no means obvious, but these questions nevertheless
demand a response from any serious study of revolutionary subjection in
the Americas. Thus I turn my attention in this epilogue to the ‘‘early’’
revolutionary black nationalism of the 1960s as represented in The Auto-
biography of Malcolm X, and to the ‘‘late’’ Chicano revolutionary nationalism
in the 1990s as represented in the texts of Tomás Rivera, Gloria Anzaldúa,
and, yes, even Richard Rodriguez.
My interest in pursuing this comparison of Latin American revolution-
ary subjection and U.S. minority revolutionary subjection is multifaceted.
On one hand, this interest is generated organically, as the texts speak to each
other across the artifice of geographic and disciplinary divides. Malcolm X
and Che Guevara speak to each other in the language of anticolonialism and

Epilogue 261
in the interest of independent national development. Similarly, the Zapatis-
tas and queer Chicanas/os such as Anzaldúa and Rodriguez speak in the
‘‘common language’’ of mestizaje, if only to say very di√erent things. Thus I
am interested in making the dialogue among all these revolutionary sub-
jects explicit, in ‘‘tuning in’’ to all the reverberations of the sounds of subjec-
tion.
On the other hand, my interest in the comparison is also ‘‘purely aca-
demic.’’ Over the course of the last decade, American studies has called on
scholars to move beyond the paradigm of U.S. exceptionalism in the Amer-
icas and has insisted on studying U.S. literature and culture in a transna-
tional frame. These programmatic calls have nevertheless failed to produce
such a body of transnational scholarship, largely because such scholarship,
when it occurs, steers clear of the di≈culties and complexities of archival
research, ethnography, multilinguality, and multiculturality required by this
approach. Often such studies run the risk of turning into intellectual tour-
ism, with U.S. scholars selectively revisiting one or two Latin American
intellectual luminaries in study after study. Alternately, these studies move
from North to South, presupposing the dominant influence of the imperial
center on the neocolonial periphery, resubalternizing the subaltern.
Meanwhile, over the last ten years, Latin American studies has realized
that a significant portion of Latin America now lives in the United States.
Thus Latin American studies recently ‘‘discovered’’ the Latino, his liminal
cultural forms, his racial resistance. While usually the purview of Ethnic
studies, Latinas/os in the United States may well be a natural extension for
scholars of Central America, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, et cetera. Neverthe-
less there is also an ulterior motive behind this newfound institutional inter-
est in the U.S. minority subject. All at once, a new constituency has come
into focus for an area studies threatened with extinction in the post–Cold
War academic politics of the twenty-first century. Indeed, in the case of both
U.S. American studies and Latin American studies, the ‘‘transnational’’ and
the ‘‘Latino’’ run the risk of being instrumentalized for the purposes of
rejuvenating aging fields of inquiry, sagging under the weight of poststruc-
turalist and postcolonial critique.
Thus I pursue this comparison against this instrumentalizing institu-
tional e√ect. This epilogue is an attempt to read from South to North, or
rather to read horizontally across the regimes of subjection put forth by
revolutionary figures in the United States and in Latin America, not because
these modes of subjection are the same, but rather because in their di√er-
ence they nevertheless share paradigms of gender and racial codification

262 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

and could potentially share a new model of oppositional consciousness.
Thus I pursue this comparison in the interest of an American ‘‘American
studies.’’

Malcolm X: Angry Prince or Gentle Servant?

Although Ernesto ‘‘Che’’ Guevara and Malcolm X were from di√erent na-
tions, classes, and races, these two men were nevertheless brought together
on the terrain of resistance to capitalist relations and to legacies of race.
These two revolutionaries were products of their time and were influenced
by the theories of neocolonialism in Latin America and of internal colonial-
ism in the United States that were generated from dependency theory. Gue-
vara and the revolutionaries who followed his example directed their revolu-
tionary struggles against U.S. neocolonialism and its local representatives,
the comprador classes. However, as I have argued in chapter 3, they also
attempted to recuperate an uncompromised masculinity through their
armed struggle. Meanwhile Malcolm X’s autobiography and speeches of-
fered an unflinching critique of the racism associated with U.S. internal
colonialism and, as well, of the internalized racism caused by the ‘‘depen-
dent development’’ of U.S. minorities. These two historic revolutionary
figures, then, are brought together not only by a shared anticolonialist
understanding of the United States as an imperial power. They are also
brought together, across international and disciplinary divides, by their
shared desire to break free from the psychic dependency of neocolonialism
and internal colonialism. Guevara and Malcolm X moved beyond the eco-
nomic orientation of dependency theory when, in their diaries and auto-
biography, they theorized just what such psychic freedom might entail—
indeed, what it had entailed in their own lives at the level of subject forma-
tion and consciousness.
Thus I suggest they are brought together not only negatively—against
colonialism, capitalism, and racism—but also positively, within develop-
mentalism. The narratives of these revolutionaries—Guevara’s diaries and
Malcolm X’s autobiography—bear a powerful resemblance to each other.
Indeed, the representations of revolutionary self-construction in these texts
share, perhaps unsurprisingly, a formulaic narrative structure and a similar
tropological register. Beyond this resemblance to each other, however, Mal-
colm X’s formulation of revolutionary subjectivity and agency, like Gue-
vara’s, bears a remarkable resemblance to the ethical subject of develop-
ment typified by Rostow. To review, in development discourse, the pivotal

Epilogue 263
moment of entry into modernity is repeatedly figured as a transcendental
moment of choice. The underdeveloped subject must make the ethical
choice to enter development and thereby history, to leave behind a prodigal
life in favor of a productive one, with this prodigal life most often thema-
tized negatively as ethnos—as clan, caste, tribe, or extended family. Mean-
while the developed subject must choose to do the civilized thing, the ethical
thing, and assist the underdeveloped subject in achieving this end once he
has made his choice. Both choices are posited as transcendental, as life
altering and epochal. Thus a powerful discursive dichotomy between pre-
modern forms of consciousness and modern forms of consciousness is put
into play by this developmentalist regime of subjection. Fully developed
subjectivity, on one side of the binary, is repeatedly metaphorized in mas-
culinist discursive terms privileging unitary, self-determining conscious-
ness and agency; while underdeveloped subjectivity, on the other side of the
binary, is metaphorized as emasculated and as bearing the taint of ethnos.
In his eulogy, Ossie Davis makes clear on which side of this binary the figure
of Malcom X belongs: ‘‘Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black man-
hood! This was his meaning to his people. . . . [He was] a Prince—our own
black shining Prince!—who didn’t hesitate to die because he loved us so’’
(Clarke xii). As occurs in Guevara’s diary, this discursive chain of significa-
tion accompanies the autobiographical representation of Malcolm X’s trans-
formation from the degenerate Harlem hustler to Harlem’s most revered
minister. And again, as in Guevara’s diary, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
repeatedly deploys a discursive binary to describe those saved and those
unsaved by revolutionary transformation in the black community. This de-
velopmentalist dichotomy has deleterious consequences for the constitu-
tion of blackness in the Americas, as we shall see.
The biographical writing on Malcolm X engages in a binarized represen-
tation of him, as well. In the literature on Malcolm X, by both those who
knew him well and those who knew him at a distance, commentators fre-
quently note the di√erence between the public and the private Malcolm X.
Friends, journalists, and academics all mention that the fiery Malcolm X of
public lecture or debate receded into the background in private conversa-
tion, and that the kind, polite, ‘‘aristocratic’’ Malcolm X came to the fore.
Benjamin Karim, Malcom X’s assistant minister and friend, underscores
this dichotomous representation: ‘‘In his eulogy [Ossie Davis] praised ‘our
own black shining Prince,’ a phrase that for me did not capture the man I
knew: the minister, from the Latin word for servant; our counselor, healer,
judge, and peacemaker; the teacher at the blackboard with a world in his

264 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

mind and a piece of chalk in his hand’’ (Karim 194). Perhaps because of
these two di√erent styles of Malcolm X’s self-presentation, representations
of him span the spectrum from hatemonger to honest denouncer, from
angry prince to gentle servant. However, while Ossie Davis’s ‘‘black shining
Prince’’ and Benjamin Karim’s ‘‘servant . . . counselor . . . healer’’ appear to
conform to this dichotomous representation of Malcolm X, the ‘‘prince’’ and
the ‘‘servant’’ both contribute to the singular representation of his life in
messianic terms. As Karim’s and Davis’s statements make evident, for the
black community of the 1960s, Malcolm X’s revolutionary agency was inti-
mately tied to the possibility of national liberation from U.S. racial subor-
dination. And just as in the case of Che Guevara’s iconic status for Latin
Americans, Malcolm X’s revolutionary agency was, in turn, intimately con-
nected with his performance of masculinity for the U.S. black community:
‘‘Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black manhood!’’
If Che Guevara and Mario Payeras performed their masculinity within
the racial register dictated by the legacy of Spanish colonialism in Latin
America, as I argued in chapter 3, then Malcolm X does so within the racial
register dictated by the legacy of Anglo-British colonialism in the United
States. Houston Baker Jr., in Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature,
succinctly outlined the ‘‘discursive family of statements’’ that constitute the
white, Anglo-American subject of history in the Americas: ‘‘ ‘Religious
man,’ ‘wilderness,’ ‘migratory errand,’ ‘increase in store,’ and ‘New Jeru-
salem’ are . . . [the] essential governing structures of a traditional American
history’’ (19). In Autobiography, the representation of Malcolm X appropri-
ates these discursive terms for ‘‘whiteness’’ that accompany the paradig-
matic U.S. subject. From the moment of his conversion to Islam in jail,
Malcolm X sees himself in a line of prophetic black men sent on a ‘‘migra-
tory errand’’ to lead the chosen black people out of the ‘‘wilderness’’ of
American racism into the ‘‘New Jerusalem’’ of free nationhood under Islam.
While there are, of course, significant di√erences between Baker’s discur-
sive paradigm and the construction of Malcolm X’s subjectivity, it was Mal-
colm X’s appropriation and inversion of this ‘‘white man’s story’’ that, I
contend, so unnerved members of the white community and thrilled mem-
bers of the black community. Indeed, his relentless deployment of the
tropes of ‘‘Americanness’’ —from his claims to religious mission and revolu-
tionary origins to his no-nonsense, bootstrap, self-reliant representation of
the Nation of Islam (noi) —permanently unsettles that construction.
Guevara and Payeras begin their diaries with scenes of destruction that
serve as the narrative (re)births for their revolutionary subjectivity. Auto-

Epilogue 265
biography also begins with a scene of chaos and violence—his earliest mem-
ory—that serves as the narrative birth of the revolutionary:

When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, a party of
hooded Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home in Omaha Ne-
braska, one night. Surrounding the house, brandishing their shot-
guns and rifles, they shouted for my father to come out. My mother
went to the front door and opened it. Standing where they could see
her pregnant condition, she told them that she was alone with her
three small children. . . . The Klansmen shouted threats and warnings
at her that we had better get out of town because ‘‘the good Christian
white people’’ were not going to stand for my father’s ‘‘spreading
trouble’’ among the ‘‘good’’ Negroes of Omaha with the ‘‘back to Af-
rica’’ preachings of Marcus Garvey. (1)

In utero, Malcolm X has been baptized by fire into the savage landscape of
white Christianity, and into his messianic destiny. Guevara and Payeras
arrive in the jungles and mountains of Cuba and Guatemala and proceed to
map a wilderness onto them. In his construction, Malcolm X is born into the
wilderness of white racism simply by being born black. But just as with
Guevara and Payeras, so the wilderness portends Malcolm X’s coming: the
Klansmen have hailed his father to the door—‘‘good Negro’’ or messianic
nationalist? Malcolm X prophetically comes forward, in his mother’s womb,
answering this call as a preordained revolutionary.
Once again, though, this messianic narrative belies a condition of limited
masculinity. When Malcolm is only six, the Black Legionnaires kill his fa-
ther, Earl Little, making clear the consequences of exceeding the bounds of
acceptable black masculinity. This condition of limited masculinity is multi-
ply determined by the discursive, juridical, and material limits placed on the
possibility of black male subjectivity in the racist United States of the 1940s
and 1950s.∞ As with Guevara and Payeras, then, Malcolm X’s transforma-
tion into a revolutionary subject is motivated, in part, by a desire for tran-
scendence over this condition of limited masculinity. The murder of his
father not only makes these limits viscerally clear but also denies Malcolm
Little a literal and figurative relationship to the patronymic. In Guevara’s
diary, dictatorial violence cuts Ernesto Guevara o√ from his progeny, and
this consequently leads Che Guevara to ‘‘father’’ the revolutionary collective
instead. In the case of Malcolm X, the murder of Earl Little at the hands of
white racists not only severs Malcolm Little from his father but symbolically
replicates the violence of slavery, which severs an entire race from its ances-

266 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

try. Thus Earl Little represents an organic, patrilineal tie to a revolutionary
consciousness and to a prior civilization, an ancestral connection that is
generally the strict purview of white citizenship through the myths of
(white) founding fathers and (white) immigrant histories. Malcolm Little is
severed from the patronymic, but like Che Guevara, Malcolm X reestab-
lishes the mythic patronymic relationship in the narrative through the re-
construction of his father’s life in the epic terms of black nationalism.
Malcolm X, through his enunciatory act of retelling his father’s story, fills
the X—symbol of patronymic loss—with precisely an ancestral history of
resistance, justice, courage, independence, and self-determination, charac-
teristics generally reserved for the trope of (white) American subjectivity.≤
In the diaries of Guevara and Payeras, revolutionary transformation re-
quired the death of the prior bourgeois subjectivity associated with the
accoutrements of civilization. However, these prior subjectivities are never
fully elaborated in Guevara’s and Payeras’s texts, as personal histories are
sublated to the ‘‘now’’ of the collective struggle. Prior subject positions are
absolutely necessary as the ‘‘before’’ of an epochal transformation in con-
sciousness, but dwelling on early life stories would violate the revolutionary
code by privileging the individual bourgeois subject over the collective. For
Malcolm X, however, dwelling on his whole life is precisely a way of telling
the collective story. Every moment in his life—from birth to his descent into
depravity to his jailhouse conversion—is described in Autobiography in great
detail because, like the ‘‘religious man’’ from Baker’s paradigm, every inci-
dent in Malcolm X’s life is preordained, unique, and yet exemplary of the
lives of the members of the ‘‘chosen’’ black nation. Thus, while the opening
scene of the narrative christens Malcolm Little with an organic revolution-
ary consciousness, his father’s death temporarily severs Malcolm Little’s
patronymic relationship to this form of consciousness. This revolutionary
consciousness must be reestablished in the course of the narrative. Severed
from this ancestry, Malcolm Little has access to two prescribed forms of
acceptable ‘‘Negro’’ consciousness in the United States: the ‘‘Mascot’’ and
the ‘‘Homeboy,’’ as his chapter titles indicate. Malcolm X’s analysis of these
two subject positions is analogous to Roberto Fernández Retamar’s analysis
of the Ariel and Caliban positionalities. These dichotomous forms of con-
sciousness are not only sanctioned by white racism (the language of the
colonizer), as Retamar insists, but indeed invented and prescribed by it.
Retamar concludes his analysis by celebrating the possibility for the subver-
sion of both these categories, which he claims is made evident by Guevara’s
personal transformation. Malcolm X’s story problematizes Retamar’s con-

Epilogue 267
clusion, however. In Autobiography these categories are not simply potential
sites for subversion but ultimately sites of a mimicry that are always already
surveilled by the state.≥
As ‘‘mascot,’’ Malcolm Little tries hard to be Ariel, only to discover the
discursive limitations implicit in this form of mimetic consciousness.∂
While living with his legal guardians, the Swerlins, Malcolm does his chores
around the house, gets very high marks in his studies, gets a part-time job,
plays basketball on the school team, and even gets elected class president.
He believed that this had lifted him out of the category of ‘‘nigger’’ and
enfranchised him into American meritocracy through mimicry. Hence
when Malcolm’s ‘‘well-intentioned’’ English teacher and adviser Mr. Os-
trowski asks him what he would like to be, Malcolm unselfconsciously
responds that he would like to be a lawyer, even though ‘‘Lansing certainly
had no Negro lawyers—or doctor either—in those days, to hold up an image
I might have aspired to’’ (36).
White people, like the Swerlins, his teachers, and his neighbors, ap-
proved of young Malcolm’s mimetic achievements, but only as a respectable
but necessarily fraudulent copy of their own achievement. To borrow from
Homi Bhabha’s ‘‘Of Mimicry and Men,’’ I suggest that as representatives of
a colonial state, these white people will only authorize young Malcolm’s
mimetic consciousness if it remains mimetic, that is, if it remains a partial
presence of (white) humanity. However, Malcolm Little, with his high marks
and sense of responsibility, comes dangerously close to slipping from partial
presence of mimesis into full presence of (white) humanity. Thus when he
tells Mr. Ostrowski that he would like to be a lawyer, the teacher as regula-
tory authority must police young Malcolm’s mimicry (just as in Lansing the
o≈cers policed his father’s) and tell him, ‘‘That’s no realistic goal for a
nigger’’ (36), reinscribing young Malcolm’s identification with ‘‘those nig-
gers’’ who were the consistent targets of white people’s derogatory remarks.
After this rude awakening, Malcolm Little abandons his positionality as a
mascot for the positionality of ‘‘homeboy.’’ For Malcolm X, this turn also
marks the beginning of a descent into depravity that ultimately lands him in
jail. Malcolm X inscribes this dramatic shift in consciousness as a necessary,
indeed preordained, precursor to revolutionary consciousness even though it
led to degradation: ‘‘All praise is due to Allah that I went to Boston when I
did. If I hadn’t I’d still be a brainwashed black Christian’’ (38). For Malcolm
X, it is all but impossible for a black man to attain true revolutionary con-
sciousness from the representationally feminized position of the mascot.
Later in his life, Malcolm X often derided the black leadership of the civil

268 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

rights movement for precisely this ‘‘e√eminate’’ mascot mentality. Better a
tough, streetwise hustler than a meek and docile Christian, in his eyes.
Better the organic rebellion of Caliban than the sycophancy of Ariel. This
was a belief he held firmly from the time he went to Boston until after the
end of his tenure with the noi.
Robin D. G. Kelley, in his essay ‘‘The Riddle of the Zoot: Malcolm Little
and Black Cultural Politics during World War II,’’ has greatly elucidated the
oppositional content of Malcolm X’s homeboy days by contextualizing his
zoot suit, lindy hopping, and hustling during this period within the black
working-class youth culture of the day. However, Kelley assumes that Mal-
colm X, in his retelling of the story, either dismisses the resistive knowledge
encoded in these oppositional signifiers or is simply unaware of their truly
radical character. ‘‘As Malcolm tells the story, this period in his life was, if
anything, a fascinating but destructive detour on the road to self-conscious-
ness and political enlightenment. . . . Malcolm had reached a period of his
life when opposition could be conceived only as uncompromising and un-
ambiguous’’ (156–57). However, I would disagree that Malcolm X regarded
any part of his life, especially this part, as a ‘‘detour.’’ For a religious man
whose life is prescribed by Allah, there are no detours. Again, Autobiography
messianically reconstructs every event, every turn of Minister Malcolm’s life
as charged with significance, as leading or contributing to his revolutionary
Islamic awakening. And this is not the reductive significance of a negative
consciousness against which to measure the transformation. Malcolm X
does understand that the consequences of this period were self-destructive,
but he never underestimates the latent revolutionary content of his home-
boy consciousness.
Rather than forget the resistance of the hustler, the homeboy, the hipster,
their resistance constituted the revolutionary horizon of Malcolm X’s religious
errand, just as the peasants of Guatemala and Cuba constituted the revolu-
tionary horizon of Payeras’s and Guevara’s guerrilla errand. After all, it was
among these people, more than any other class of blacks, that Minister
Malcolm regularly ‘‘went fishing’’ for converts to the noi. In Autobiography
the inherent rebellion of these black subjects, like their peasant counterparts
for Guevara and Payeras, functions as a preconsciousness to revolutionary
transformation. While the inherent resistance ascribed to these disa√ected
black youths resembles the organic resistance ascribed to the peasant classes
by Guevara and Payeras, there is also a di√erence. Payeras and Guevara
naturalize peasant consciousness in a way that Malcolm X never completely
does with black consciousness. For Malcolm X, who is of the ‘‘ghetto,’’ this

Epilogue 269
resistive consciousness is an acquired knowledge for survival that is the
counterpart to racist white knowledge. This unhoned, resistive knowledge
operates as a preconsciousness that holds the potential for transforma-
tion into revolutionary collectivity under Islam and Malcolm X’s guidance:
‘‘Many times since, I have thought about it, and, what it really meant. In one
sense, we were huddled in there [the hustler’s society], bonded together in
seeking security and warmth and comfort from each other, and we didn’t
know it. All of us—who could have probed space, or cured cancer or built
industries’’ (90). Thus within the degenerate community of hustlers lies an
organic resistive knowledge, as well as an organic collectivity of a brother-
hood ‘‘bonded together,’’ albeit through criminality, to be tapped by the noi
for the greater good of curing cancer or building industries for the larger
black community.
Just as peasant consciousness in Guevara’s diary functions as the site of
displacement for Guevara’s anxiety over his own transformation, so too does
resistive black consciousness reiteratively return as the site of anxiety in
Malcolm X’s Autobiography. As Kelley suggests, and I would agree, Malcolm
X’s retelling of his teenage years should be read ‘‘as a literary construction, a
cliché that obscures more than it reveals.’’ However, it is not the latent
revolutionary content of these years that is obscured as Kelley presumes,
because such revolutionary content is de rigueur in Autobiography’s mes-
sianic reconstruction of Malcolm X’s life as revolutionary. Rather, what is
obscured, what constantly resurfaces only to disappear under the disciplin-
ing eye of Minister Malcolm’s interpretation, is the sheer pleasure of those
days. Indeed, the tension between Minister Malcolm disciplining ‘‘Harlem
Red’’ (his nickname during his hustling days) into the appropriate subject
for revolutionary transformation and Malcolm X appreciating this period as
something pleasurably more than just preparation for transformation ani-
mates the entire ‘‘Homeboy’’ section of the autobiography. Thus Malcolm X
is not Kelley’s ‘‘uncompromising and unambiguous’’ political animal in his
reading of his own past. Rather, he is full of anxiety and ambivalence about
the place of pleasure in black oppositional consciousness.
To catch Malcolm X in the act of repressing the unmistakable element of
pleasure associated with the ‘‘prerevolutionary consciousness’’ of the home-
boy hustler, let us turn to the epilogue of the book, the one section of
Autobiography that never passed his censoring eye. In his epilogue, Alex
Haley tells the reader that Malcolm X’s mood during the retelling of his
childhood ranged ‘‘from somber to grim,’’ but when he reached his move to
Boston in the narration:

270 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 Malcolm X began to laugh about how ‘‘square’’ he had been in the
ghetto streets. ‘‘Why, I’m telling you things I haven’t thought about
since then!’’ he would exclaim. Then it was during recalling the early
Harlem days that Malcolm X really got carried away. One night, sud-
denly, wildly, he jumped up from his chair and, incredibly, the fear-
some black demagogue was scat-singing and popping his fingers, ‘‘re-
bop-de-bop-blap-blam—’’ and then grabbing a vertical pipe with one
hand (as a girl partner) he went jubilantly lindy-hopping around, his
coattail and the long legs and the big feet flying as they had in those
Harlem days. And then almost as suddenly, Malcolm X caught him-
self and sat back down, and for the rest of that session he was decid-
edly grumpy. (391)

The energy and jubilance of this ‘‘scat-singing’’ and ‘‘finger-popping’’ recur-

sively returns in his dazzling descriptions of this period in his life: from his
first awestruck visits to the black sections of Boston and Harlem to the
elegant fit of his zoot, from the staying power of his lindying to the grandeur
of his hustle, Malcolm X’s descriptions are exuberant. And always the ‘‘de-
cidedly grumpy’’ spin doctor steps in to make sure that the reader does not
get as carried away as the narrator. For example, he describes Harlem with
clear race pride as a ‘‘technicolor bazaar’’ with palatial ballrooms, wailing
music, and ‘‘fever-heat’’ dancing, with bars full of sharply dressed sophisti-
cates and musical celebrities (many of whom, he never fails to mention,
became his good friends) (74). Malcolm X sums up: ‘‘That night I was
mesmerized. This world was where I belonged. On that night I had started on
my way to becoming a Harlemite.’’ Then, immediately, Minister Malcolm
steps in with ‘‘I was going to become one of the most depraved parasitical
hustlers among New York’s eight million people—four million of whom
work, and the other four million of whom live o√ of them’’ (75).
Repeatedly, Malcolm X’s description of this world, of himself, his hus-
tling, and his associates, builds to a captivating crescendo of wit, grace,
sophistication, and musicality. Then, as if catching himself, Minister Mal-
colm silences the orchestra with the material reality of racism and poverty.
While this is used, of course, as rhetorical technique to drive home his
political message, there is also always something more in these descrip-
tions.∑ I ask, then, of Malcolm X as homeboy, as Detroit Red, as Harlem Red,
what is this something more that must be obscured? What is the source of this
ambivalent pleasure, this jubilance that must be repressed by the ‘‘fearsome
black demagogue,’’ as Haley puts it? What does the ‘‘decidedly grumpy’’

Epilogue 271
Malcolm X fear he has revealed through these descriptions of Boston and
Harlem, through the expression of scat-singing pleasure over these colorful
days? What is the danger Malcolm X senses, and that the minister still
admires, in the world he simultaneously leaves behind and carries with
him?
If the civilizing discourse of the racist state encodes the ‘‘mascot’’ as the
partial presence of (white) humanity, then the ‘‘homeboy,’’ with his music,
his lindying, and his hustling, is encoded as the excess of that presence.∏
Hence Malcolm X’s ambivalence over the interpretation of his homeboy
days reflects an appreciation of the inherent contradiction of colonial appro-
priation. On the one hand, white people, including Red’s girlfriend Sophia,
want to get close to and participate in precisely this ‘‘excess of humanity.’’π At
the same time, this excess is also precisely what the state must discipline.
Malcolm X tells us that the judge in e√ect sentences Shorty and him to long
prison terms for sleeping with white girls, the sign of their sexual excess, of
their inappropriate sexuality, rather than for the burglaries they committed
(150). Bhabha suggests in his discussion of mimicry that, as a strategy for
colonial appropriation, it ensures its own failure: ‘‘The success of colonial
appropriation depends on the proliferation of inappropriate objects that
ensure its strategic failure, so that mimicry is at once resemblance and
menace’’ (‘‘Of Mimicry’’ 127). The civilizing discourse of the state calls on
the other to mimic the colonizer but guarantees its inappropriateness be-
cause mimicry always ‘‘repeats rather than re-presents’’ (128). Malcolm X is
aware that this ‘‘proliferation of inappropriate objects,’’ the ‘‘excess’’ of the
hustler’s life, in the logic of mimicry constitutes a ‘‘menace’’ that summons,
indeed sanctions, the discipline and the authority of the state.∫ And thus, I
would suggest, Malcolm X resists simply celebrating this ‘‘excess’’ not only
because of the moral code of Islam, or because of an uncompromising
political consciousness, but out of an understanding of the logic of colonial
appropriation.
Malcolm X as minister of the noi disrupts this colonial logic by appropri-
ating the disciplining function of the state in the service of black national-
ism. As a member of the noi, with its authoritarian organization, its origin
story, and its explicit sexual boundaries, Malcolm X disciplines this excess
through an appropriation of the tropic confluence between Anglo-Ameri-
can subjectivity and full masculinity. His mimicry turns to mockery in the
eyes of white America precisely because, as a member of the noi, Malcolm
X successfully moves from partial or excess presence to a subjectivity en-
coded as virtual essence of (white) humanity. Three moments of this disci-

272 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

plining function in Malcolm X’s life demonstrate this move from mimicry
to mockery and elucidate the importance of his mission for African Ameri-
can and white America.

Disciplining the Other and White Anxiety

In the previous section on Guevara and Payeras, I suggested that the whole
guerrilla experience served as the trope for fantasmatic recuperation of full
masculinity. In Autobiography, words and a certain mode of speech serve this
tropic function: ‘‘Bimbi was the first Negro convict I’d known who didn’t
respond to ‘What’cha know, Daddy?’ . . . we would sit around, perhaps
fifteen of us, and listen to Bimbi. Normally, white prisoners wouldn’t think
of listening to Negro prisoners’ opinions on anything, but guards, even,
would wander over close to hear Bimbi on any subject. . . . What fascinated
me with him most of all was that he was the first man I had ever seen
command total respect . . . with his words’’ (153–54; italics mine). Bimbi com-
mands respect from blacks and whites through a mode of speech that is
pointedly not the vernacular of the hustler. Rather, Bimbi speaks in a lan-
guage that lays claim to cataloged encyclopedic knowledge—historical, sci-
entific, and literary. It is Bimbi’s deployment of this knowing language that
first inspires Malcolm X to take a correspondence course in English and
then in Latin. Once Malcolm X converts to Islam, under the tutelage of his
brother and Elijah Mohammed, he proceeds to obsessively absorb this cata-
loged knowledge himself, first by copying the dictionary and then by read-
ing the entire prison library. As with Menchú, this mastery of the colonizer’s
mode of speech provides Malcolm X with subjection and authority on a
personal level, as well. It is through the deployment of the power of words
that Malcolm X reconstructs his personal patronymic at the beginning of
the Autobiography. Malcolm X refuses the racist stereotyping that might
label Earl Little as derelict father, and instead inserts his father and himself
into the historical continuity of black nationalism through a performative
act of knowledgeable speech. Minister Malcolm X learns to speak with the
authority of God and history, albeit a Muslim God and an anticolonialist
history. The fiery minister in the pulpit and the gentle teacher in the class-
room merge in the singular function of these very di√erent performative
speech acts, which redeem an Afrocentric history for himself and for black
Americans. Malcolm X then proceeds to reclaim the future by disciplining
sexual boundaries in the service of the black nation.
What most impresses Malcolm X about the noi once he has been re-

Epilogue 273
leased from prison is the responsibility it brings to bear on his brother
Wilfred and the order it brings to the home: ‘‘This Muslim home’s atmo-
sphere sent me often to my knees to praise Allah. . . . There was none of the
morning confusion that exists in most homes. Wilfred, the father, the family
protector and provider, was the first to rise. ‘The father prepares the way for
his family,’ he said. He, then I performed the morning ablutions. Next came
Wilfred’s wife Ruth, and then their children, so that orderliness prevailed in
the use of the bathroom’’ (193). Wilfred then prepares the prayer rug on
which the family, once purified, kneels together in prayer, facing East ‘‘in
unity with the rest of our 725 million brothers and sisters in the entire
Muslim world’’ (194). This daily ritualized performance of the prayer estab-
lishes order in the household. This is not just the order of a morning routine
and who gets to use the bathroom first. Rather, through this prayer ritual,
gender categories are also performed, ritualized, and hierarchized. This
description of Muslim prayer tells us far less about the performance of
gender categories in the heterogeneous ‘‘Muslim world’’ than it tells us
about the status of these categories and the romanticized nuclear family in
the United States of the 1950s and 1960s. Malcolm X’s recuperation of a
normatively gendered and hierarchized family comes precisely at a moment
when the myth of the white nuclear family is being challenged by the 1960s
counterculture, and particularly by the counterculture of white youth. Mal-
colm X sees the recuperation of this normative construction of the family
unit as essential for the survival and advancement of blacks in the ghettos of
the United States. The recuperation of the family as a model for black
nationalist projects has now been soundly critiqued by African American
feminists and queer theorists.Ω The legitimacy of this criticism notwith-
standing, recuperating the nuclear family has the radical e√ect of inverting
the logic of colonial mimicry. The construction of this family unit within the
noi, and Malcolm X’s propagation of this family unit in the entire black
community through his preaching, coincides with a growing anxiety among
white Americans over the erosion of the family perceived as the foundation
of the white nation. Indeed, the noi’s success in propagating this idea of
family contributes to this anxiety. Suddenly Muslim black families appear to
participate in this gendered, structured, and orderly family with greater
success than all other families, black or white. Black Muslims have the myth
of the nuclear American family, ‘‘only more so.’’∞≠ This rationalized and
disciplined unit of economic and ideological reproduction is no longer es-
sentially white.
Finally, Minister Malcolm disciplines the hustling society into the indus-

274 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

trious society. This was at the heart of the redemptive ministry of Malcolm X
and the noi. Malcolm X, as a member of the noi, achieves the indepen-
dence and self-reliance for the black man that his father desired. At various
points in Autobiography, Malcolm X tells the reader that the noi had its own
newspaper, banking system, farms, processing plants, trucking business,
chain of stores, and restaurants. As I have discussed in chapter 2, during the
post–War World II politics of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the U.S. govern-
ment was the major proponent of such self-sustained, diversified develop-
ment paradigms in the decolonizing Third World countries. As I argued,
this developmentalist paradigm—with the founding of the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund, and the proliferation of development projects
—emerged as a method for maintaining colonial surveillance, political influ-
ence, and economic control over countries on the verge of national indepen-
dence. As a refiguration of the logic of colonial appropriation, development
held the promise of equal citizenship in the fraternal order of First World
nations. Precisely as the First World, led by the United States, was busy
propagating development paradigms all over the globe, the black brothers
and sisters of the noi were busy at home creating a modernized Muslim
nation within a nation.
The noi, in establishing this economic organization, adhered to the
regime of subjection put forth by development discourse. As typified by
Rostow, modernization hinges primarily on choice, on a community mak-
ing the ethical choice of taking money out of the hands of those spending it
on ‘‘prodigal living’’ and transferring it into the hands of those who will
amass and invest it as capital (Rostow 24). The noi, with its strict moral
code, does precisely this. Money previously spent by converts on entertain-
ment is centralized through donations to the mosques and funneled by the
ministers, who function as an executive board, into Muslim businesses.
Profits are ‘‘plowed back’’ into related businesses, jobs for Muslim brothers
and sisters are created, wages grow, demand increases, the economy diversi-
fies. Although Minister Malcolm saw his role as primarily spiritual, he
played no small part in the noi’s economic e√orts. He provided the con-
verts. He fished for converts not only among the working blacks but among
those doing the most profligate spending: drug addicts, hustlers, and pros-
titutes. Malcolm X disciplined the ‘‘prodigal’’ into the industrious, thereby
appropriating the terms of the emerging post–World War II discourse of
development. The noi thus becomes a textbook case of the modern nation
and demands equal standing with another modern nation, the United
States.∞∞

Epilogue 275
 As chief minister of the noi, Malcolm X successfully recuperates the
discursive terms of full masculinity for himself: mastery of language, the
myth of family—both nuclear and national—with a clearly demarcated role
for himself as both father and minister, the industry and self-reliance of the
U.S. founding fathers. Through the apparent recuperation of these terms,
Malcolm X attains the fantasy of coherence that Judith Butler suggests is at
the center of all identity formation, and that I suggest motivates Malcolm
X’s quest for revolutionary subjection:

According to the understanding of identification as an enacted fantasy

or incorporation, however, it is clear that coherence is desired, wished
for, idealized, and that this idealization is an e√ect of a corporeal
signification. In other words, acts, gestures, and desire produce the
e√ect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface
of the body, through the play of signifying absences that suggest, but
never reveal, the organizing principle of identity as a cause. Such acts,
gestures, enactments, generally construed, are performative in the
sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to ex-
press are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal
signs and other discursive means. (Butler, Gender Trouble 136)

Through his ‘‘corporeal signs,’’ his words, acts, gestures, and desire,
Malcolm X performs coherence, that ‘‘organizing principle of identity as a
cause.’’ He successfully performs Baker’s tropic Anglo-American subjec-
tivity, but as a black Muslim, he does so as an ‘‘inappropriate’’ subject. In his
performance of this subjectivity, full masculinity necessarily appears as
hyper-masculinity precisely because it is performed in such an ‘‘inappropri-
ate’’ subject, and consequently Malcolm X’s masculinity is perceived as
caricature by white America. Nevertheless, when Malcolm X brings disci-
pline to bear on this ‘‘hyper-masculinity,’’ when he successfully usurps the
disciplining function of the white state, he achieves the appearance of co-
herence; he successfully achieves the fabrication of essence. He thereby
destroys, for the white community, the boundary between the white, Chris-
tian subject and the black, Muslim other. Butler suggests: ‘‘What constitutes
through division the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ worlds of the subject is a border and
boundary tenuously maintained for the purposes of social regulation and
control’’ (134). Malcolm X, as inappropriate subject laying claim to this inner
world of the (white) tropic Anglo-American subject, erases this tenuous and
tenacious border of social control. Thus he threatens the social regulation of
the segregated United States of the 1950s and 1960s not by armed insurrec-

276 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

tion, or even by the peaceful means of nonviolence, but simply by the
enactment of a disciplined American masculinity, by the appearance of
being. This performance is a parody, a mockery, not because Malcolm X is
parodic, but because Malcolm X in his recuperation of full masculinity as
tropic Anglo-American subject reveals to white men that they lack an origi-
nal claim to this masculinity, to this ‘‘internal core.’’ Malcolm X reveals that
there is no (white) essence to this tropic American subjectivity, that the
essence of this subjectivity is a fabrication he can successfully represent.
Therein lies the violation, the ‘‘violence,’’ of Malcolm X, a gentle man who
was never personally associated with physical violence. At the time of his
death, all he had on his person in the way of defense was a pen that sprayed
Mace. But Malcolm X does violence to a discursive term.∞≤
Malcolm X’s performance of full masculinity, disciplined by ritualized
gender categories, a strict Muslim moral code, and a puritanical ethic of
industry, does violence to the category of whiteness, to the purity of category.
Nevertheless Malcolm X, in his political performance as ideologue, pro-
fesses the inviolability and purity of categories such as white/black, male/
female, ‘‘field Negro’’/‘‘house Negro,’’ at least for his tenure as minister for
the noi. So that even while Malcolm X’s ‘‘inappropriate’’ performance of
the tropic Anglo-American subjectivity violates the racial imperative behind
the categories of gender and nation, it nevertheless substantiates the catego-
ries themselves. Thus the category of the feminine in Autobiography is in-
variably deceptive, weak, and in need of strict policing so that women may
better serve the nation run by men.∞≥ This is the double bind of the perfor-
mance, that even when the performance of such categories by inappropriate
subjects reveals the artifice of such categories, these categories as artifice are
necessarily maintained by the performance. I am not suggesting the exis-
tence of pure categories outside of those discursively given by cultural sys-
tems. Rather, I am trying to locate in Malcolm X’s performance of a tropic
(male) Anglo-American subject the grounds for exclusion in Malcolm X’s
construction of a modern black nation.
Cornel West has suggested that Malcolm X’s black nationalism was
based on a fear of cultural hybridity: ‘‘Malcolm X . . . seems to have had
almost no intellectual interest in dealing with what is distinctive about the
Black Church and Black music: their cultural hybrid character in which the
complex mixture of African, European, and Amerindian elements are constitu-
tive of something that is new and Black in the modern world. Like most Black
nationalists, Malcolm X feared the culturally hybrid character of Black life.
This fear resulted in the dependence on Manichean (black-and-white or

Epilogue 277
male/female) channels for the direction of Black rage—forms characterized
by charismatic leaders, patriarchal structures, and dogmatic pronounce-
ments’’ (54). Thus while Malcolm X was exemplary of a cultural hybridity—
precisely through his deployment of paradigmatic white U.S. subjectivity as
a black man—his fear of this hybridity, his recursive fear of his own pleasur-
able past, contains an impulse toward exclusion. This exclusion is the exclu-
sion not only of whites but also of blacks who refused to accept the pa-
triarchal teleology of consciousness implicit in the developmentalist trope of
the Anglo-American subject that Malcolm X appropriated. This included
not only the ‘‘house Negro’’ leaders of the civil rights movement but any
blacks for whom this cultural hybridity was not just a pleasurable point of
identification but also a means for resisting racial subordination.∞∂ Malcolm
X’s break with the noi led him away from a dogmatic insistence on racial
and cultural separation. Perhaps, if he had lived longer, this break might
have led him closer to a politically viable understanding of the fact of cul-
tural hybridity that is far more evident today than it may have been in the
1960s.
Nevertheless, I do not intend to end with a trite celebration of cultural
hybridity, for if the era of Zapatismo has taught us anything at all, it has
taught us that hybridity, as a model of oppositional consciousness, does not
in and of itself constitute liberation, nor does it invariably escape the exclu-
sionary developmentalism present in revolutionary nationalisms and their
regimes of subjection. The Zapatistas’ critique of the much-vaunted cate-
gory of mestizaje demonstrates that certain concepts of hybridity, no matter
how theoretically popular, may subtly reinscribe a developmental impetus
as well. And so I turn my attention to the postnationalist, postrevolutionary
articulation of mestizaje in the contemporary writings of Chicanas/os.

Ticket to the New Aztlán

As in the case of the black nationalism of the Black Power movement, the
Chicano nationalism of the late 1960s and early 1970s was heavily influ-
enced by the theory of internal colonialism. According to this theoretical
model, just as U.S. capitalism had a vested interest in maintaining the
economies of Latin America and the Third World in conditions of under-
development and dependent development, so too did it have an interest in
maintaining U.S. minority populations in conditions of underdevelopment
and dependency. Furthermore, just as U.S. neocolonialism used any means
necessary to maintain Third World countries in this subjugated position, so

278 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

too did U.S. internal colonialism use any means necessary to maintain its
minority populations in subjugation. Thus, while the Black Belt extending
from southern agriculture land to the northeastern industrial corridor was
the geographic site of the black internal colony, the former Mexican territory
in the Southwest was the site of the Chicano internal colony. However,
unlike black nationalism, Chicano nationalism was able to make a prior
proprietary claim on the Southwest. Working under the premise of this
model of internal colonialism, Chicanas/os appropriated the Mexican dis-
course of mestizaje by claiming Aztlán as an indigenous nation historically
anterior to the founding of the United States. Indeed, it is the concept of
mestizaje that enabled Chicanas/os to claim a biological tie to this Aztec
origin story and to place it in the U.S. Southwest. Mestizaje lent a moral and
historical legitimacy to claims for economic and civil rights by constituting
Aztlán as a space outside the U.S. nation, prior to the U.S. nation, from
which to launch a critique of a hegemonic and racist regime of subjection
(Padilla). Aztlán-based Chicano nationalism has been eloquently and ex-
haustively critiqued by Chicana feminists and Chicana/o poststructuralist
and queer scholars, and thus I will not rehash these arguments here. In-
stead I would like to refocus our attention on the residual e√ect of this era of
Chicano nationalism: the continued use of mestizaje as a trope for Chi-
cana/o identity and the presumed access to indigenous subjectivity that this
biologized trope o√ers us. Although the deployment of mestizaje in the
Southwest is di√erent from its historical deployment in Mexico, when Chi-
cana/o intellectuals and artists appropriate the tropes of mestizaje and indi-
genismo for the purposes of identity formation, we are nevertheless operat-
ing within the racial ideology from which these tropes are borrowed. We
must take seriously, then, the Zapatista movement’s critique of mestizaje
and indigenismo as a singular racial ideology that incorporates the figure of
the Indian in the consolidation of a nationalist identity in order to e√ectively
exclude him. Thus, in our Chicana/o reappropriation of the biologized
terms of mestizaje and indigenismo, we are also always recuperating the
Indian as an ancestral past rather than recognizing contemporary Indians
as coinhabitants not only of this continent abstractly conceived but of the
neighborhoods and streets of hundreds of U.S. cities and towns. I would
like to suggest that mestizaje is incapable of suturing together the hetero-
geneous positionalities of ‘‘Mexican,’’ ‘‘Indian,’’ and ‘‘Chicana/o’’ that co-
exist in the United States, or, more importantly, of o√ering e√ective political
subjectivity to those represented by these positionalities. Why, in other
words, do Chicanos in Austin dance to tejano music in one bar, mestizo

Epilogue 279
Mexican migrants in another, and indigenous Mexican migrants in none at
all? In mestizaje, we are reduced to searching for signs of our indigenous
past and, more significantly, for a collective political future in some inherent
tie to the land—in our ‘‘cosmic green thumb,’’ as Guillermo Gómez-Peña,
the border brujo, has so ironically put it. To recognize this process is not to
deny our indigenous ancestry; rather, to recognize this is to refuse to reduce
indigenous subjectivity, and indeed Mexican mestizo identity, to biologistic
representation that, in discursive and political terms, always already places
indigenous peoples under erasure.
The question before us, then, is if postnationalist intellectuals such as
Gloria Anzaldúa and Richard Rodriguez are able to recuperate a more so-
phisticated concept of mestizaje: one that might possibly extend political
enfranchisement or literary representation to the broad range of subject
positions implied by a common Mexican heritage. In the opening pages of
Borderlands/La Frontera, Anzaldúa movingly represents la frontera, the bor-
derlands, in a way that indeed promises us a new paradigm of mestizaje:
‘‘The U.S.–Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World
grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages
again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country—a border
culture. Borders are set up to define the safe and the unsafe, to distinguish
us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A
borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional
residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition’’ (3).
The border is the quintessential site of mestizaje, of the untidy mixture of
‘‘lifeblood.’’ In this first image of the borderland, Anzaldúa unsettles the
conventional usage of mestizaje by restaging the brutality of the initial
colonial encounter between Spaniard and Indian in the neocolonial en-
counter between the First World and Third World. This encounter, this
mixture, ‘‘es una herida abierta’’—an open wound, a wound that refuses to
heal because the violence of the initial encounter continues, metamorphos-
ing into new instances of wounding. The traditional Mexican usage of mes-
tizaje sutures over the violence of the colonial encounter with the develop-
mentalist logic implicit in it as a third term—the Indian and the Spaniard
evolve into the mestizo.∞∑ Anzaldúa interrupts the teleological drive in mes-
tizaje, however, with her image of the wound that has not healed: when the
‘‘lifeblood[s]’’ of these ‘‘two worlds’’ merge in the borderlands, they hemor-
rhage. Anzaldúa’s ‘‘third country,’’ her border culture, is not a neat and tidy
end of history but a ‘‘constant state of transition.’’
In this passage, Anzaldúa’s borderland promises to unsettle the conven-

280 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

tional usage of mestizaje for Chicanos, as well. For if Anzaldúa’s borderland
undoes the artificial duality of a border, of the ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them,’’ it does so in
the service of recognizing the material violence of such artificial constructs.
Thus, at this point in the text, Anzaldúa could proceed to resituate the
Chicana/o as mestizo, the Mexican as mestizo, and the Indian as Mexican
within a transnational frame that would address the unequal power rela-
tions among such positionalities. In other words, whereas the mestizaje of
Aztlán in the 1970s allied Mexicanos and Chicanos through a common
past—through a dead indigenous ancestry—the mestizaje of Anzaldúa’s
borderlands could disrupt such assumption and place each of these posi-
tionalities in that uneasy and ‘‘constant state of transition’’ within a capitalist
world system that depends on national, cultural, and racial di√erentiation
for the reproduction of its productive forces.
Instead of taking up her own provocative challenge to do this, however,
Anzaldúa quickly slips back into the conventional usage of mestizaje, con-
structing Chicanas/os in the borderlands as the ‘‘us’’ against the Anglo
‘‘them.’’ In other words, she once again rallies mestizaje to access an indige-
nous ancestry that legitimates a prior claim to the Southwest for Chicanas
and Chicanos: ‘‘The oldest evidence of humankind in the United States—
the Chicanos’ ancient Indian ancestors—was found in Texas and has been
dated 35000 b.c.’’ (4). Ignoring the contemporary Native American inhabi-
tants of the Southwest and their very di√erent mytho-genealogies, Anzaldúa
predictably claims this ‘‘oldest evidence of humankind’’ for Chicanas/os as
evidence of the occupation of the Southwest by the indigenous ancestors of
the Aztecs. Consequently, one page and a few thousand years later, when the
settlement of the Southwest by the Spaniards occurs in her book, she con-
tinues: ‘‘Our Spanish, Indian and mestizo ancestors explored and settled
parts of the U.S. Southwest as early as the sixteenth century. For every gold
hungry conquistador and soul hungry missionary who came north from
Mexico, ten or twenty Indians and mestizos went along as porters or in
other capacities. For the Indians, this constituted a return to the place of
origin, Aztlán, thus making Chicanos originally and secondarily indigenous
to the Southwest’’ (5).
Let us trace the circuitous route by which mestizaje makes Chicanas/os
‘‘originally and secondarily indigenous to the Southwest.’’ According to
Anzaldúa, Chicanas/os are originally indigenous to the area because of our
biological tie to the first Indians who inhabited it some 37,000 years ago
(her date), the mythical Indian tribe that traveled from Aztlán in the U.S.
Southwest to Mexico City and subsequently formed the Aztec empire. And

Epilogue 281
we are secondarily indigenous through our ‘‘return’’ to this homeland with
the Spaniards as Indians and mestizos. As in Payeras’s jungle diary, when
he reads the guerrilla as following in the tracks of the ‘‘great migrations’’ of
his Mayan ancestors, mestizaje is once again deployed to produce a biolog-
ical tie with pre-Aztec Indians rather than a political tie with contemporary
U.S. Native Americans or Mexican Indians. Consequently, in this system of
representation, indigenous subjectivity is once again put under erasure.
The condition of possibility for Chicana/o nostalgia over our indigenous
subjectivity made evident in this passage is the rarefaction of indigenous
peoples as past.
Of course, this is mestizaje with a feminist, queer twist. In an important
contradistinction to earlier Chicano deployments of mestizaje, Anzaldúa
draws from the female deities in the Aztec pantheon to explain a variety of
Chicana-mestiza customs, to explain patriarchy in Chicano culture, and to
explain Chicana sexuality. Thus, throughout the book, Anzaldúa links Chi-
cana artistic creativity to Coatlique, the goddess of fertility; Chicana sexual
expression or freedom to Tlazolteyotl, a goddess of the underworld; and
Chicana mourning or sorrow over oppression in all its guises with Cihuoco-
watl, goddess of war. To access our mestiza consciousness as Chicanas, we
must open ourselves up to the connections in our everyday lives with this
pantheon of female deities, to our psychobiological links with the matriar-
chal Aztec culture of some five hundred years ago: ‘‘The new mestiza copes
by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity. She
learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, to be Mexican from an Anglo
point of view. She juggles cultures. She has a plural personality, she operates
in a pluralistic mode’’ (79). Anzaldúa is certainly correct when she suggests
that in her model of mestiza consciousness one ‘‘learns to be an Indian in
Mexican culture’’ because in Anzaldúa’s model we are right back where we
started under the pri’s state-sponsored mestizaje and indigenismo. What
Anzaldúa does not recognize—indeed, cannot recognize from her priv-
ileged position as First World minority rather than Third World subaltern—
is that her very focus on the Aztec female deities is an e√ect of the pri’s
statist policies to resuscitate, through state-funded documentation, this par-
ticular, defunct Mexican Indian culture and history to the exclusion of
dozens of living indigenous cultures. When she resuscitates this particular
representation of indigenous subjectivity to be incorporated into contempo-
rary mestiza consciousness, she too does so to the exclusion and, indeed,
erasure of contemporary indigenous subjectivity and practices on both sides
of the border.

282 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 Turning now to Richard Rodriguez, despite his woeful misinterpretation
of contemporary Mexican politics and culture, he reinterprets the tropes of
mestizaje and indigenismo in some provocative ways for Chicanos and
Mexicans. He begins his chapter ‘‘India’’ in Days of Obligation:

I used to stare at the Indian in the mirror. The wide nostrils, the thick
lips. . . . Such a long face—such a long nose—sculpted by indi√erent,
blunt thumbs, and of such common clay. No one in my family had a
face as dark or as Indian as mine. My face could not portray the
ambition I brought to it. What could the United States of America say
to me? I remember reading . . . the Kerner Report in the sixties: two
Americas, one white, one Black—the prophecy of an eclipse too sim-
ple to account for the complexity of my face.
Mestizo in Mexican Spanish means mixed, confused. Clotted with
Indian, thinned by Spanish spume.
What could Mexico say to me?
Mexican philosophers powwow in their tony journals about Indian
‘‘fatalism’’ and ‘‘Whither Mexico?’’ El fatalismo del indio is an impor-
tant Mexican philosophical theme; the phrase is trusted to conjure the
quality of Indian passivity as well as to initiate debate about Mexico’s
reluctant progress toward modernization. Mexicans imagine their In-
dian part as deadweight, stunned by modernity; so overwhelmed by
the loss of what is genuine to him—his language, his religion—that he
sits weeping like a medieval lady at the crossroads; or else he resorts to
occult powers and superstitions, choosing to consort with death be-
cause the purpose of the world has passed him by. (1–2)

In this passage, Rodriguez eloquently captures the failure of literary and

political representations of race in the United States and Mexico to capture
the complexities of a face. The hegemonic black/white paradigm of race
relations in the United States precludes the recognition—much less the
reward—of a face like his, so he turns to Mexico. But Mexico has nothing to
o√er his ambition, either. If black/white relations in this country eclipse the
complexities of his mestizaje, Mexican philosophical ruminations on mes-
tizo identity deny him and his Indian features any futurity. The Indian in
mestizaje is dead weight, modernity incomprehensible to him. Indeed,
Mexican scholars and philosophers since Manuel Gamio have repeatedly
shackled the Indian and his lack of futurity with the responsibility for the
failure of a system that was predicated on his erasure to begin with.
In this first passage, Rodriguez synopsizes the history of Indian repre-

Epilogue 283
sentation in mestizo Mexico: in mestizaje, the Indian is feminized and
prehistoric as a ‘‘medieval lady’’ (indeed, she gives birth to the mestizo race
only to disappear with Malinche from the script of history), passive and
resigned in his ‘‘weeping,’’ incomplete in his loss of truth (symbolized by
his language and religion). Alternately, like the precapitalist indigenous and
peasant formations in Payeras and Guevara, he is treacherous in his frater-
nizing with the devil through the occult, but nevertheless impotent in his
rebellion as he is always already consorting with death. Ultimately Anzaldúa
finds nothing but a celebratory hybridity in the concept of mestizaje, but
Rodriguez recognizes and reveals mestizaje as the repressive regime of
subjection that it is for the indigenous peoples of Latin America. For the
remainder of the chapter, Rodriguez resists traditional representations of
mestizaje precisely because any futurity that incorporates the reality of his
face depends on it. Instead Rodriguez inverts the power relations implicit in
mestizaje by insisting that the mestizo is not the evidence of the triumph of
the Spanish colonizer over the colonized Indian but the evidence of the
triumph of the colonizing Indian over the colonized Spaniard.
Rodriguez begins this inversion with a rejection of the construction of
Malinche, the representational birthplace of mestizaje, as either the victim
of a Spanish rape or the betrayer of her indigenous past. She is instead the
curious seductress of Spain, with all of the agency that postmodern femi-
nism has restored to the power of seduction:

Because Marina was the seducer of Spain, she challenges the boast
Europe has always told about India.
I assure you that Mexico has an Indian point of view as well, a
female point of view:
I opened my little eye and the Spaniard disappeared.
Imagine a dark pool; the Spaniard dissolved; the surface triumphantly
smooth.
My eye!
The spectacle of the Spaniard on the horizon, vainglorious, the shiny
surfaces, clanks of metal; the horses, the muskets, the jingling bits.
Cannot you imagine me curious? Didn’t I draw near?
European vocabularies do not have a silence rich enough to de-
scribe the force within Indian contemplation. (22)

The ‘‘boast’’ that Europe tells itself is, of course, that the Spaniards dis-
covered the Indians. Instead Marina casts her gaze on the Spaniard and
discovers him. Just as millions of Indians ‘‘disappeared’’ from disease on

284 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

‘‘discovery,’’ the Spaniard immediately disappears within the gaze of discov-
ery. The complexity of his subjectivity—his heritage, his culture, his history
—is immediately dissolved into the dark pool of a mestizaje that swallows
him and is ‘‘triumphantly smooth’’ afterward, leaving no trace. Marina is
unconcerned with the depth of the Spaniard; what she is enamored of is the
surface; what she is after in her seduction are the jingly trinkets. The Span-
iard is the spectacle here, not the Indian. And yet this is not a simple
anticolonialist inversion of the identity terms. It is more complicated than
an inversion, as Malinche is only accessible to us through her Spanish given
name, Marina—through the language of the colonizer.
Nevertheless the Indian does not simply return the gaze: the Indian is the
gaze. And while the European hears the silence as a vanquished enemy, the
silence, like the silence in Zapatismo, is not an absence but a presence filled
with centered and active contemplation: ‘‘The Indian stands in the same
relationship to modernity as [Marina] did to Spain—willing to marry, to
breed, to disappear in order to ensure her inclusion in time; refusing to
absent herself from the future. The Indian has chosen to survive, to consort
with the living, to live in the city, to crawl on her hands and knees, if need be,
to Mexico City or L.A.’’ (24). The weapons available to the Indian in the
colonial and postcolonial regimes of subjection have been the ‘‘weapons of
the weak’’: to remain visible, you disappear; to survive, you crawl; to win,
you breed (Scott, Weapons). Modern Indians find agency in the only way
possible, through resistive adaptation (Mintz, Caribbean Transformations,
Sweetness and Power). And by making assiduous use of the weapons of the
weak, the Mexican Indian not only survived in mestizaje but eventually
consumed his other, the Spaniard, the European:

Look once more at the city from La Malinche’s point of view. Mex-
ico is littered with the shells and skulls of Spain, cathedrals, poems,
and the limbs of orange trees. But everywhere you look in this great
museum of Spain you see living Indians.
Where are the conquistadores?
Postcolonial Europe expresses pity or guilt behind its sleeve, pities
the Indian the loss of her gods or her tongue. But let the Indian speak
for herself. Spanish is now an Indian language. Mexico has captured
Spanish. (R. Rodriguez, Days of Obligation 23–24)

The mestizo is now an Indian. The Spaniard is the museum. Through

mestizaje, a thoroughly modern Indian has cannibalized the Spanish mark-
ers of identity. The Indian has absorbed the European terms of subjectivity,

Epilogue 285
and consequently these terms are turned into indigenous markers of iden-
tity from the inside out. The European is silent; the Indian is speaking.
Rodriguez’s reworking of the representational tropes of mestizaje and in-
digenismo for Chicana/o subject formation is perhaps the most fruitful to
date. It refuses the erasure of the Indian by putting the Spaniard under era-
sure instead—by insisting on the Indian as the primary term in the trope of
mestizaje. He recognizes not only the Indian presence in the contemporary
world but the Indian as the primary agent of modern Mexican history. How-
ever, Rodriguez also ends up at a biological representation of indigenism—
one that is exciting and new but has its own set of limits. Ultimately for Rodri-
guez, the signs of indigenous identity are reducible to the surface signifiers of
facial features, to genetics: the ‘‘beak nose,’’ the dark skin, the almond eyes.
And the only avenue to political agency for the modern-day Indian is the ave-
nue of this newly configured domain of mestizaje. While Rodriguez’s mesti-
zaje radically reconstructs power relations between the colonizer and the
colonized, it nevertheless requires the Indian to give up his or her language,
religious practices, and other forms of cultural and social organization.
In other words, Spanish is not an Indian language precisely because
most Indians living in Mexico and the rest of Latin America do not speak
Spanish as a first language. And for a further understanding of the underly-
ing biologism in both Anzaldúa’s and Rodriguez’s representation of tropes
of indigenism and mestizaje, we need to return to Menchú’s and the Zapa-
tistas’ insistence that indigenous identity is not reducible to biology. Any
person born an Indian, with all the genetic Indian features, can become
Ladinized by refusing to practice his or her indigenous identity in the hopes
of accessing the limited amount of power made available to poor mestizos.
Indigenous identity, for Menchú and the Zapatistas, depends not simply on
biology but on the rigorous practice of the thoroughly modern cultural,
linguistic, social, religious, and political forms that constitute one as indige-
nous. And these are not forms that exist in a kind of pastiche grab bag of
Indian spiritual paraphernalia, as they seem to exist for Anzaldúa. Ulti-
mately, Anzaldúa’s model of representation reproduces liberal developmen-
tal models of choice that privilege her position as a U.S. Chicana: she goes
through her backpack and decides what to keep and what to throw out,
choosing to keep signs of indigenous identity as ornamentation and spir-
itual revival. But what of the living Indian who refuses mestizaje as an
avenue to political and literary representation? What of the indígena who
demands new representational models that include her among the living?
Menchú’s and the Zapatistas’ texts o√er nonbiological forms of culture that

286 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

are not only shared among a practicing community of indigenous people
but hold the possibility of an alternative model of democratic practices for
revolutionary subjection. Thus the Zapatista movement appropriates liberal
constitutional discourse, but they appropriate it precisely in the hopes of
constructing a space for legitimating themselves as multilingual, multi-
cultural citizens of the body politic. In other words, these indigenous popu-
lations appropriate the Spanish of the mestizo to insist on their inclusion in
the body politic not as mestizo but as radically other: as coterminously
national citizen and Indian.
In contrast to Anzaldúa and Rodriguez, Tomás Rivera’s . . . y no se lo trago
la tierra o√ers nonbiological coordinates for revolutionary subjection. And
as in the Zapatista communiqués, the coordinates of this subjection lie in
the generative place of silence. Rivera’s autobiographical fiction employs
many of the same literary techniques as the Zapatistas employ in their
communiqués. The strategic use of the folkloric voice, the place of silence
and language in the formation of community, and the role of intellectuality
in Rivera’s tierra and in the communiqués mirror each other across the span
of forty-odd years. (Although I provide the English translation from the
bilingual edition of tierra, I will be analyzing the original Spanish because
the English translation is inaccurate):

Siempre empezaba todo cuando oía que alguien le llamaba por su

nombre pero cuando volteaba la cabeza a ver quién era el que le
llamaba, daba una vuelta entera y quedaba donde mismo. Por eso
nunca podía acertar ni quién le llamaba ni por qué, y luego hasta se le
olvidaba el nombre que le habian llamado. Pero sabía que él era a
quien llamaban.
Una vez se detuvo antes de dar la vuelta entera y le entró miedo. Se
dio cuenta de que él mismo se había llamado. Y así empezó el año
perdido. (7)
[It always began when he would hear someone calling him by his
name but when he turned his head to see who was calling, he would
make a complete turn and there he would end up—in the same place.
This was why he could never discover who was calling him nor why.
And then he even forgot the name he had been called.
One time he stopped at mid-turn and fear suddenly set in. He
realized that he had called himself. And thus the lost year began.] (83)

On first reading, this scene appears to be a textbook case of Althusserian

interpellation. The boy does not know who calls him or why—he even for-

Epilogue 287
gets the name he is being called—nevertheless he is certain it is he who is
being called. An omniscient voice hails the boy into Subjectivity, with a
capital S, at once anonymous and universal, and the boy responds appropri-
ately: he turns around. In the necessary extension of this Althusserian inter-
pellation, the boy, evidently, is calling himself: he has internalized the disci-
plining voice of ideology. And yet the moment of recognizing that he is
calling himself is also the moment of an interpellative misfire: ‘‘Se dio
cuenta de que siempre pensabe que pensaba.’’ He becomes aware of the fact
that he ‘‘always thought that he thought.’’ It is as if the boy becomes aware of
liberal development’s imperative that men must be prepared to be prepared to
become exploited laborers. The protagonist in tierra recognizes the work-
ings of ideology through him when he recognizes that he only thinks that he
is thinking. As with Menchú’s experience working on the finca, interpella-
tion slips, and a ‘‘radically conditioned agency,’’ in Judith Butler’s terms,
begins to take shape.
The rest of the autobiographical novel makes evident why this interpella-
tive misfire is almost a necessary condition of his own subaltern subjection.
The boy is being hailed not into the pretense of agency, as suggested in
development discourse, but into its exact opposite, into the condition of the
muted object, or, to borrow a phrase from African American scholarship, of
the commodity that speaks. As Ramón Saldívar argues in his definitive
chapter on tierra in his book Chicano Narrative, the boy in this first scene
becomes the chronotopic point of organization for this fragmented post-
modern narrative, with each memory of his lost year metonymically repre-
senting the collectivity of south Texas migrants. Thus, in the twelve vi-
gnettes that ensue, the members of this community are collectively hailed to
the positions of religiously ordained subservience, of patriotic fodder for
war, of flea-ridden beasts of burden, of psychosis bereft of speech. The
extremely exploitative terms of their interpellative subjection suggest inter-
pellation must misfire, if any form of conditional agency, other than crimi-
nal agency, is to take shape. The community’s interpellation into complete
abjection culminates in the penultimate vignette, ‘‘Cuando lleguemos.’’ It is
this vignette, with the paragraph that follows it, that most closely parallels
the Zapatista speech acts.
In ‘‘Cuando lleguemos,’’ the members of the migrant laborer commu-
nity are crammed into the back of a truck, all standing, like cattle, literaliz-
ing their positionality as commodities being driven to market. Like the
Zapatistas reduced to the level of animals, plants, and rocks, the migrants in
the back of the cattle truck have been reduced to muted objects. The migrant

288 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

workers do not speak to each other; there is no cotorreo here. There is
resounding silence in the back of the cattle truck, and yet again, this silence
is not contentless. As we hear the self-reflective internal monologues of
various migrants, the communal experience of misery and pain they share
for fourteen uninterrupted hours in the back of the truck is made evident to
the reader. However, again, not only pain and misery transpire in the si-
lence: one man, in existential reverie, marks the beauty of the stars above;
another finds endless humor in the expression of the man’s face who took
his order for fifty-four hamburgers; a woman contemplates how much she
loves her husband. And once again, the silence in the back of the truck
represents the possibility of radical democracy. Silence is the condition of
possibility for di√erences to emerge as each person thinks his or her own
thoughts, as in the Spanish adage ‘‘cada cabeza es un mundo.’’ Although
these thoughts in the silence make evident the mutuality of their su√ering, a
communal consciousness of their material condition cannot emerge as long
as the migrants’ expectations of what they will do when they arrive remain
isolated in the individuation of internal monologue. As Saldívar points out
in his analysis of the novel, ‘‘Read dialectically . . . with the recognition that,
as one voice puts it, ‘es la misma cosa llegar que partir,’ the phrase carries
quite another valence: when we arrive we are no better o√ than we were
when we departed. At this point we are at a protopolitical level, one step
away from the recognition that the cycle of arriving and departing is itself
part of the coercive system for guaranteeing the availability of cheap and
plentiful labor’’ (88).
Rivera’s tierra suggests that this ‘‘protopolitical consciousness’’ emerges
from the democratic silence of each person’s thoughts into the fullness of
democratic community, into class for itself:

Los grillos empezaron a dejar de chirriar poco a poco. Parecía como

que se estaban cansando y el amanecer también empezó a verificar los
objetos con mucho cuidado y lentamente como para que no se diera
cuenta nadie de lo que estaba pasando. La gente se volvía gente. Em-
pezaron a bajar de la troca y se amontonaron alrededor y empezaron a
platicar de lo que harían cuando llegaran. (69)
[Little by little the crickets ceased their chirping. It seemed as though
they were becoming tired and the dawn gradually a≈rmed the pres-
ence of objects, ever so carefully and very slowly, so that no one would
take notice of what was happening. And the people were becoming
people. They began getting out of the trailer and they huddled around

Epilogue 289
 and commenced to talk about what they would do when they arrived.]
(146)

Once again, the fullness of silence is communicated: the crickets’ chirp-

ing tapers o√ as the sound of dawn, quietly animating presumably inani-
mate objects, takes their place: ‘‘The people are becoming people.’’ Enabling
this transformation is the emergence of silence into sound: together, the
migrants begin to discuss what they will do when they arrive. Their emer-
gence from their muted status as objects into human identity, as well as
their emergence into community, transpires at one and the same moment:
at the moment of their collective speech about the possibility of what they
might do when they arrive. But this is not just idle chitchat; rather, the
paragraph-story that follows this vignette pointedly describes the nature of
this collective speech act for the reader:

Bartolo pasaba por el pueblo por aquello de diciembre cuando tan-

teaba que la mayor parte de la gente había regresado de los trabajos.
Siempre venía vendiendo sus poemas. Se le acababan casi para el
primer día porque en los poemas se encontraban los nombres de la
gente del pueblo. Y cuando los leía en voz alta era algo emocionante y
serio. Recuerdo que una vez le dijo a la raza que leyeran los poemas en
voz alta porque la voz era la semilla del amor en la oscuridad. (71)
[Bartolo passed through town every December when he knew that
most of the people had returned from work up north. He always came
by selling his poems. By the end of the first day, they were almost sold
out because the names of the people of the town appeared in the
poems. And when he read them aloud it was something emotional
and serious. I recall that one time he told the people to read the poems
out loud because the spoken word was the seed of love in the dark-
ness.] (147)

Through poetic speech, the subaltern is inserted into historical narration.

This poetic speech is the language of subaltern silence. It is the inaudible
language at the site of interpellative misfire: the language of the racialized
commodity that redefines the meaning of silence as a rebellious reading of
his or her own positionality. It is an act of self-love in obscurity. It is the new
language of the revolutionary imagination in the Americas.

290 Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas

 Notes

1. Introduction

1 Homi Bhabha and Partha Chatterjee have each, respectively, elaborated models
of colonial mimesis and colonial derivation. In ‘‘Sly Civility’’ and ‘‘Of Mimicry
and Men,’’ for example, Bhabha argues that the British colonial administration
incites mimetic desire in its colonized subjects. The foregone conclusion is that
this mimetic desire will be doomed to failure, precisely because mimesis is
predicated on repetition with a di√erence. However, for Bhabha, mimetic acts
by colonized subjects inevitably produce, in this di√erence, a parodic under-
standing of colonial civility, exposing it to critique. Similarly, Chatterjee argues
that although nationalisms in the colonial world are derivative of European
nationalism, this relationship of derivation necessarily produces significant dif-
ferences between First World and Third World nationalisms. More importantly
for Chatterjee, it produces di√erences among Third World nationalisms. The
relationship of derivation pluralizes the concept of nationalism, such that the
historical significance of each variation is greater than the significance of the
originary form. Thus Chatterjee focuses his analysis on the Indian case, elab-
orating on the di√erence between bourgeois and popular nationalisms. Chatter-
jee’s model of derivation will be discussed in detail in chapter 3. My point here is
simply to stress that neither of these models provides an adequate account of
the relationship between development and revolution. Both models are uni-
directional, focused exclusively on how the periphery reworks discursive terms
dictated from the center. Instead I suggest that the relationship between de-
velopment and revolution is dialogical, predicated on exchanges between the
periphery and the center. Thus the articulation of revolution in the periphery
repeatedly calls forth articulations of development from the center. Likewise,
the discursive terms of development summon those of the revolutionary imagi-
nation. Mimesis and derivation exist on both sides of the equation, as either
term dialectically constitutes the other.
2 I borrow the term flash point from David Kazanjian’s work on constitutive flash
points in the American history of racial formation. He defines the flash point as
a productive historical juncture that, in its episodic occurrence, congeals par-
ticular discursive terms for the critic: ‘‘ ‘Flashpoint’ in this sense refers to the
 process by which someone or something emerges or bursts into action or being,
not out of nothing but transformed from one form to another; and, it refers to
the powerful e√ects of that emergence or transformation’’ (Kazanjian 33). For
my purposes, the subject of development ‘‘bursts into action or being’’ out of the
chaotic post–World War II Cold War historical conjuncture. Rather than emerg-
ing ‘‘out of nothing,’’ this model of subjectivity emerges out of, and simulta-
neously transforms, the discursive terms of the prior colonial conjuncture. My
project traces the ‘‘powerful e√ects’’ the emergence of this developmentalist
subjectivity had on revolutionary movements in the Americas.
3 It is not my intention to exclude the Haitian revolution of 1787 as a paradigmatic
revolution in the Americas. Rather, my limited knowledge of Caribbean history
in general, and of Haiti in particular, precludes my tracing the possible influ-
ence of the Haitian revolution on the twentieth-century revolutionary move-
ments I consider in this book. Nevertheless, I look forward to Caribbean schol-
ars correcting my limited vision in any response my analysis might incur.

2. Development and Revolution

1 As Larrain points out, it was not until the Sixth Congress of the Third Interna-
tional in 1928 that imperialism was declared an obstacle to the development of
colonized areas (9). Furthermore, Larrain contends that it is not until the pub-
lication of the work of Paul Baran in the 1950s that a Marxist political economist
theorized the e√ects of colonialism on the periphery.
2 Certainly Churchill recognized Roosevelt’s proposition of free trade conducted
among free peoples as a call for the end of empire: ‘‘Mr. President, I think you
want to abolish the British empire . . . everything you have said confirms it. But
in spite of that, we know you are our only hope. You know that we know it. You
know that we know that without America, the British empire cannot hold out’’
(quoted in George and Sabelli, who in turn cite it from Georges Valence, Les
Maítres du Monde L Allemagne, États-unis, Japon [Paris: Flammarion, 1992], 24–
26).
3 See, for example, Helen Alfred’s First Steps toward World Economic Peace and
The Bretton Woods Accord: Why It Is Necessary. These pamphlets are the pub-
lished reports of the proceedings of public conferences hosted by the Citizens
Conference on International Union in Washington, D.C. In speech after speech
from the proceedings of the Bretton Woods Accord Conference, U.S. senators,
State and Treasury Department o≈cials, economics professors, and representa-
tives from the agricultural and industrial sectors repeatedly reference the need
for dismantling colonial relations, associating free trade with the key to peace
and security. For example, the inaugural speech of the conference, delivered by
the conference chairman, Louis Heaton Pink, begins: ‘‘Bretton Woods should
give us courage and hope. The proposed International Monetary Fund and Bank
for Reconstruction and Development should serve as the keystone of future

292 Notes to Chapter 1

 peace and security. These economic bodies, plus an international tari√ agency, a
lowering of tari√s and the removal of competitive trade barriers, are all essential
to a firm foundation for the future. The most important objective to interna-
tional cooperation is undoubtedly a large volume of trade. . . . If there were a free
flow of trade between all commercial nations there would be no reason for
major wars. The interchange of goods and ideas, not only eliminates to a very
considerable extent the underlying causes of war, but would help materially to
increase world-wide production and minimize unemployment’’ (Alfred, First
Steps 5).
4 In the hearings of the House Special Committee on Postwar Economic Policy
and Planning in 1944, assistant secretary of state Dean Acheson was more
direct about the singular interest of the United States in ensuring access to new
markets, not bothering to cloak this priority in the humanitarian language of
development. He said, ‘‘No group which has studied this problem has ever
believed that our domestic markets could absorb our entire production under
our present system . . . we need those markets [abroad] for the output of the
United States . . . we cannot have full employment and prosperity in the United
States without the foreign markets’’ (U.S. Congress 1082–83). Acheson is quite
clear on whose peace and prosperity is primarily at stake.
5 Indeed, as Akhil Gupta demonstrates in his Postcolonial Developments, even
subaltern populations around the globe came to recognize themselves as ‘‘un-
derdeveloped’’ and to refer to themselves as such (39–42).
6 In Encountering Development, Arturo Escobar analyzes how development be-
came the ‘‘common sense’’ of an era, and how this discourse re-created the
world into ‘‘developed,’’ ‘‘developing,’’ and ‘‘underdeveloped’’ components. Es-
cobar investigates how the discourse of development reorganized knowledge,
creating new fields of vision and systems of speech, ‘‘creat[ing] a space in which
only certain things could be said [or] even imagined’’ (39). Combining historical,
anthropological, and discursive analysis, Escobar suggests that new techniques
in comparative economic indexing were combined with newly minted interna-
tional ‘‘aid’’ programs to invent the subjects/clients of ‘‘development’’: ‘‘the
poor,’’ ‘‘the hungry,’’ ‘‘the peasant,’’ ‘‘women,’’ ‘‘the environment.’’ Escobar’s
study provides an excellent genealogy of how these broad categories of subjects
were ‘‘discovered’’ by the discourse of development, how each subject/client
was elicited by its own particular type of development knowledge/aid in ‘‘food,’’
‘‘health,’’ ‘‘agriculture,’’ ‘‘population control,’’ and ‘‘sustainability.’’ However,
while Escobar’s analysis of the subject populations and knowledge categories
produced by development is exhaustive, he does not specifically focus on the
(under)developed subjectivity or consciousness implied by development dis-
course, which it is the focus of my project.
7 Making ‘‘underdeveloped’’ subjects available for capital investment is also the
subject of an address delivered by Samuel P. Hayes Jr., the special assistant to
the assistant secretary of state for economic a√airs, on 26 January 1950. During

Notes to Chapter 2 293

 this speech in defense of Point Four before the League of Women Voters in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, Hayes responded to criticism that the program was
underfunded, especially in comparison with funding for the Marshall Plan. He
explained the discrepancy in funding thus: ‘‘In Europe, the preconditions for
economic recovery were, in 1947, already present. The people were healthy,
enterprising, literate, and skilled. . . . This [aid] was a kind of blood transfusion
from one developed body to another developed but wounded body. Before capi-
tal and modern technology can be fully utilized in an underdeveloped one, there
is usually a lot of groundwork to be done. The people in that area must be ready
to receive technical knowledge and to make e≈cient use of capital, and the early
stages of economic development in many areas must, therefore, be concerned
with improvements in basic education, health and sanitation, and food supply’’
(Hayes 12). The metaphor employed by Hayes, of a ‘‘blood transfusion’’ from
one ‘‘developed body’’ to another, again registers this mapping of the discourse
of development onto individuated bodies with subjectivities. Thus, by exten-
sion, the implicit ‘‘underdeveloped’’ body must ‘‘be made ready’’ to receive
transfusions of capital. The Point Four Program was understood by the State
Department as working in tandem with national development loans, as aid
aimed at remaking human subjectivities in preparation for remaking their na-
tional economies in the image of the United States.
8 These loans were supposedly contingent on Latin American countries institut-
ing land and tax reforms, as well as presenting the Kennedy administration with
specific development projects. Tying aid disbursement to land reform once
again highlights the dialectical relationship between development aid and revo-
lutionary movements in Latin America. The Kennedy administration is com-
pelled to articulate its aid program in the language of revolution, though in
practice Latin American countries received aid regardless of whether or not
reforms were e√ectively introduced and enforced. Hence New York Times re-
porter Tad Szulc represents the Alliance for Progress in revolutionary rhetoric:
‘‘It must be noted that the Alliance proposes a fundamental and drastic change
in centuries-old patterns throughout [the] region’’ (Szulc 12).
9 Rostow saw communism as an unfortunate by-product of the di≈cult transition
periods between predictable stages of national economic growth. Rostow’s pre-
Bolshevik Russia, as his prime example, is already well on its way to moderniza-
tion, with the Russian Revolution portrayed as a violent interruption in that
nation’s transition from a traditional to a democratic society. He held that it was
imperative to accelerate modernization processes all over the Third World, and
to ease transition periods with plentiful development aid (Rostow 162–64).
10 My periodization of development theory is borrowed from Colin Leys. In The
Rise and Fall of Development Theory, Leys suggests, ‘‘The first formulations of
development theory were the work of economists, all strongly influenced by the
ideas of Keynes and the wartime and postwar practices of state intervention in
the economy, including the success of the Marshall Plan, which was in many

294 Notes to Chapter 2

 ways a model for later ideas about ‘aid.’ They shared the broadly social-demo-
cratic ethos of the period, including its commitment to planning and its convic-
tion that economic problems would yield to the actions of benevolent states
endowed with su≈cient supplies of capital and armed with good economic
analysis. . . . By the end of the 1950s, however, the original optimism that this
approach would yield rapid results had begun to evaporate, and the limitations
of development economics as a theory of development were beginning to be
exposed. . . . What was it about these societies that made them unresponsive to
the ‘positivist orthodoxy’ [of development economics]? . . . ‘Modernization the-
ory’ was an American response to this question’’ (8–9). For two excellent histor-
ical analyses of the genealogy of development theory, see Larrain and Leys.
11 In the preface to the first edition, for example, Rostow indicates that the book
was conceived as a response to Marx: ‘‘I found Marx’s solution to the problem of
linking economic and non-economic behaviour—and the solutions of others
who had grappled with it—unsatisfactory, without then feeling prepared to o√er
an alternative’’ (xvii). Even as Rostow acknowledges his treatise as a direct re-
sponse to Marx, he shifts the terms of the debate from the structural relation-
ship between capital and labor in Marx’s own analysis to an ephemeral terrain of
economic and noneconomic behaviors. Unsatisfied with a Marxist history of
economic development grounded in the binary of class struggle, Rostow sub-
stitutes instead a far more nebulous binary of human behaviors.
12 Instead of analyzing and comparing economic and population indices for spe-
cific nations, for example, Rostow promises to analyze growth as the more
elusive ‘‘progressive di√usion of new technologies’’ (xii). He admits that this is
impossible to do on the basis of statistical data, especially when one is attempt-
ing to construct an ‘‘elegant international cross comparison . . . for the historical
past’’ (xii). Indeed, Rostow addresses criticism of the book as too sweeping by in
turn eschewing ‘‘the easy use, in good conscience, of gnp [gross national prod-
uct] per capita as a measure of economic growth’’ (xiii).
13 Rostow’s men of science in this passage, capable of manipulating and applying
knowledge, are symptomatic of the elusive role of intellectual labor in the divi-
sion of classes. They elude development’s bifurcated regime of subjectification
precisely because, as intellectual laborers, their positionality in the division of
classes is frustratingly ambiguous. As scientists, are they removed from the
entire process of subjectification because they tra≈c in the realm of ‘‘truth’’?
Alternately, are these intellectual laborers aligned with capitalist entrepreneurs,
or are they merely capitalists’ well-remunerated lackeys? After all, in Rostow’s
historical recapitulation, scientific knowledge in and of itself is of little use. It is
relevant only when an entrepreneurial class applies it to the production process.
This is a particularly telling slip, since Rostow himself was an intellectual la-
borer for the state for so many years.
14 Larrain here appears to echo Lenin in his analysis of the transformation in
consciousness that takes place in the shift from previous modes of production

Notes to Chapter 2 295

 to capitalism. Lenin, in ‘‘What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are,’’ also describes a
shift in consciousness taking place in this historical transition: ‘‘Never has it
been the case, nor is it the case now, that the members of society are aware of the
sum total of the social relations in which they live as something definite, inte-
gral, as something pervaded by some principle. On the contrary, the mass of
people adapt themselves to these relations unconsciously, and are unaware of
them as specific historical social relations; so much so, in fact, that the explana-
tion, of instance, of the relations of exchange, under which people have lived for
centuries, was discovered only in very recent times’’ (83–84). And yet Lenin is
far more nuanced in his description of consciousness than Larrain. While Lenin
acknowledges that certain modes of analysis have been ‘‘discovered only in very
recent times,’’ it is nonetheless true for Lenin that people are never entirely
‘‘aware of the sum total of the social relations in which they live,’’ even in the era
of capitalism, which has presumably facilitated a greater sophistication in the
analysis of ‘‘historical social relations.’’ In other words, although the improve-
ment in the productive forces under capitalism has entailed a complementary
improvement in systems of analysis, individual consciousness does not auto-
matically follow on the heels of the development of the productive forces for
Lenin.
15 James Ferguson’s The Anti-Politics Machine provides an excellent Foucauldian
analysis of the institutionalization of development as a strategy for managing
poverty in the African nation of Lesotho. Ferguson traces the ways in which
international development agencies and local state bureaucracies invent a ‘‘tra-
ditional peasant class’’ in Lesotho and then proceed to spin out plan after plan
for the modernization of an agricultural people. Meanwhile these ‘‘agricultural
people’’ lost their land to South Africa in the very processes of modernization
and colonization in the last century and have functioned as an international
proletariat for five generations, providing domestic labor and seasonal labor in
the mines for South Africa. Hence these development agencies and local state
bureaucracies appear to be ‘‘doing something’’ about poverty, with their projects
for improving the productivity of livestock or for the privatization of reduced
tribal lands, while remaining resolutely ‘‘anti-political’’ in their ahistorical inter-
pretation of poverty and its possible solutions.
16 As just one example of the boundless scope of McNamara’s early optimism and
his driving sense of mission, from the 1968 speech: ‘‘We in the Bank . . . set out
to survey the next five years, to formulate a ‘development plan’ for each develop-
ing nation, and to see what the Bank Group could invest if there were no
shortage of funds, and the only limit on our activities was the capacity of our
member countries to use our assistance e√ectively and to repay our loans on the
terms on which they were lent’’ (McNamara 6).
17 In 1973 McNamara referenced the success of the wb in implementing the goals
he had set out in 1968, thereby documenting the massive growth of the develop-
ment apparatus under his tenure: ‘‘To achieve the doubled level of our opera-

296 Notes to Chapter 2

 tions, it was necessary, of course, to strengthen the Bank both organizationally
and financially. Worldwide recruitment was increased and the sta√ was expanded
by 120% during the period. We were determined in this e√ort to broaden its
international charter to the maximum degree feasible. In 1968 the sta√ repre-
sented 52 nationalities. It now represents 92. In 1968 the proportion of sta√
from our developing member countries was 19%. The proportion is now 29%,
and continues to grow’’ (McNamara 236).
18 The dependency school clearly belongs to the tradition for the study of twentieth-
century imperialism beginning with Lenin and Luxemburg, and continuing in
Western Marxism through Baran and Sweezy. However, to suggest that they do
nothing more than transpose Western theories of imperialism onto the study of
the contemporary Third World political economy would represent, as Cynthia
Hewitt de Alcántara has so aptly stated, the ‘‘acceptance of the very kind of
‘intellectual colonialism’ against which dependency theorists stood’’ (Boundaries
162). Dependency theorists are among the first to read imperialism from the
perspective of the periphery. As such, they not only fundamentally reformulate
the theory of imperialism but also (along with cultural theorists such as Frantz
Fanon and Roberto Fernandez Retamar) lay the groundwork for postcolonial
studies today. However, they remain uniquely ‘‘of the margins’’ in Western
Marxist discourse. Their collective theories of imperialism were often labeled
flawed, unorthodox, or mere ‘‘description’’ by Marxist social scientists from the
First World. Meanwhile contemporary scholars in cultural studies dismiss the
dependency theorists as deterministic, appropriate their terms, or ignore them
all together, even though they were pioneers in the field of interdisciplinary
studies. I believe the anxiety they engender in the First World is at least twofold.
They addressed a crisis in democratic capitalism after World War II and antici-
pated the crisis in orthodox socialism in the ‘‘Second World.’’ Thus they not only
interrupted bourgeois historiography and its narrative of individuation but also
interrupted the progressive teleology that some of these Western schools of
Marxism share with developmental capitalism.
19 In anthropology, see, for example, Robert Redfield, The Little Community and
Peasant Society and Culture; and George Foster, Tzintzuntzan: Mexican Peasants
in a Changing World. In sociology, see J. O. Hertzler, The Crisis in World Popula-
tion: A Sociological Examination with Special Reference to the Underdeveloped Areas;
and B. F. Hoselitz, Sociological Factors in Economic Development. In political sci-
ence, see G. Sjoberg, ‘‘Folk and ‘Feudal’ Societies’’; P. M. Hauser, ‘‘Some Cultural
and Personal Characteristics of the Less Developed Areas’’; and D. E. Apter, ‘‘The
Role of Traditionalism in the Political Modernization of Ghana and Uganda.’’
20 My choice to begin this discussion of dependency theory with Rodolfo Staven-
hagen is purposefully unorthodox. Most intellectual historians would not neces-
sarily include Stavenhagen in a discussion of dependency theorists, and cer-
tainly Stavenhagen himself might resist such a nomenclature. I begin with him
because his early work on the relationship between indigenous rural areas and

Notes to Chapter 2 297

 urban centers in Mexico clearly articulates an early dependency analysis. Fur-
thermore, André Gunder Frank’s work borrows directly from Stavenhagen. In
the process of canonization, many theorists working within the paradigm are
ignored or forgotten. Indeed, as a German-born U.S. political economist who
worked in Chile for an extended period before the U.S.-backed coup, Frank is
not considered a ‘‘dependency theorist,’’ though he is most famously antholo-
gized as such. But clearly dependency theory, at the hour of its emergence, was a
di√use, heterogeneous, and pervasive mode of analysis in Latin America. As
just some examples of its heterogeneity, much debate took place among theo-
rists over the term ‘‘underdevelopment’’ versus the term ‘‘dependency’’; over the
possible meanings of ‘‘mode of production’’ for Latin America; over the pos-
sibility of ‘‘liberation’’ from a condition of dependency. In addition, dependency
theorists are interdisciplinary not only in the number of disciplines they collec-
tively represent but also in the integration of historical materialism, culture,
political economy, and psychology in their individual analysis of the legacy of
colonialism. Consequently, my own analysis of the dependency paradigm is
necessarily partial and selective. However, I am not interested in a seamless
representation of the various dependency positions. Rather, I am primarily
interested in their collective challenge to the bourgeois historiography implicit
in modernization theories, and their challenge to the concepts of independence,
individuation, and nationalism.
21 By ‘‘extraeconomic forms of labor exploitation’’ I am referring to forms of labor
exploitation outside the wage labor form. In the case of the latifundium, la-
borers are tied to the plantation or hacienda not through wages, although they
may earn a wage. Rather, they are obliged to work for the plantation or hacienda
through extraeconomic forms of coercion (debt peonage, or sharecropping), or
they are forced to give part of their harvest to the latifundium owner as payment
for patronage.
22 The extraeconomic forms of labor exploitation maintained in the latifundium
made it the link between the subsistence indigenous or peasant communities
and production for urban centers. These forms of labor exploitation in the
periphery allowed for an increased production of surplus and an accelerated
accumulation of capital and raw materials in the European and United States
centers (where the surplus was transferred), thereby making possible the pre-
cipitous industrialization of those centers. The latifundium, indeed, harnessed
the ‘‘limited production’’ of previously self-su≈cient communities for the full
production of global capitalism. The development of underdevelopment is not
only coextensive with development of development; underdevelopment in the
periphery is a condition of possibility for the center’s modern form of develop-
ment. Frank’s insistence that the latifundio was not a precapitalist mode of
production but part of the capitalist mode of production sparked much debate
among Marxist and neo-Marxist dependentista scholars. Ernesto Laclau, in
‘‘Feudalism and Capitalism in Latin America,’’ accepts Frank’s claim that the

298 Notes to Chapter 2

 Latin American latifundio has always been ‘‘bound by fine threads’’ to the
‘‘dynamic sector[s] of the national economy and, through [them], to the world
market,’’ but rejects the claim that it is thus part of a capitalist mode of produc-
tion (20). Laclau argues convincingly that Frank confuses a commercial rela-
tionship between the latifundio and the world market for a mode of production.
From a Marxist perspective, the capitalist mode of production is constituted
fundamentally by the ‘‘free labourer’s sale of his labour-power, whose necessary
precondition is the loss by the direct producer of ownership of the means of
production’’ (20). Hence the latifundio, regardless of its integration into a larger
world system, is a feudalist mode of production because the laborers involved
still own their means of production, although they are forced to work for latifun-
dia or to turn over surplus through servile obligations outside the wage labor
form. Feudalism allows for the accumulation of capital by a commercial class,
since surplus is privately appropriated by someone other than the direct pro-
ducer. However, the direct producers maintain ownership of the means of pro-
duction (31). Frank, according to Laclau, operates under the mistaken assump-
tion that feudalism is a closed system, much like modernization theory’s
assumption that traditional societies are closed, corporate societies. Therefore
Frank insists that feudalism is not an appropriate description of the latifundio as
a site of international commerce. Instead, Laclau sees feudalism as a dynamic
mode of production that is distinct from the capitalist mode of production with
which it interacts through the world market. I am not interested in settling this
debate here, although it is indicative of larger philosophical divisions between
Marxists and dependentistas that lead to di√erent political conclusions. For the
moment, my interest is to demonstrate that although Laclau disagrees with
Frank’s construction of the latifundio as capitalist, he nevertheless agrees with
the larger issue of ‘‘show[ing] the indissoluble unity that exists between the
maintenance of feudal backwardness at one extreme and the apparent progress
of a bourgeois dynamism at the other’’ (31). Whether this is neofeudalism or a
form of capitalism, the latifundium as the site of ‘‘underdevelopment’’ does not
exist prior to, or independent of, bourgeois capitalist development.

3. The Authorized Subjects of Revolution

1 To clarify Spivak’s use of the word ‘‘travestied’’ in describing the process of

appropriation of Kant’s imperative by the state, I quote: ‘‘The ‘travesty’ I speak of
does not befall the Kantian ethic in its purity as an accident but rather exists
within its lineaments as a possible supplement’’ (‘‘Three Women’s Texts’’ 270).
The colonial state’s ethical reliance on Kantian philosophy in delineating its
‘‘mission’’ is not a misapplication of Kant’s categorical imperative. Rather, the
terror enforced by the state is already present in Kantian logic. Kantian logic
provides for the exclusion of the non-Western from the rational, and hence
from humanity, and for the messianic force behind ‘‘conversion.’’

Notes to Chapter 3 299

 2 The colonial Other is feminized because the European subject in the colonial
arena, operating according to Kant’s categorical imperative, exists in relation to
the quest for scientific knowledge. As Evelyn Fox Keller has argued, the Enlight-
enment subject’s quest for scientific mastery proceeded according to the discur-
sive practice of feminizing nature as its object. This feminization of nature
‘‘solidified the polarization of the masculine and the feminine that was central
to the formation of early industrial capitalist society’’ (Keller 20). This quest for
scientific mastery arguably fueled colonial imperialism, as colonialism repre-
sented the political extension of scientific domination. The discursive practice
of colonial politics proceeds, then, by feminizing the ‘‘native’’ Other (and his or
her territory) as its object, its resource.
3 Here I am once again borrowing from Homi Bhabha’s ‘‘not quite/not white’’
formulation of colonial mimicry (‘‘Of Mimicry’’ 132), as discussed earlier in
chapter 1, note 1, of this volume.
4 In her discussion of the fraught, often antagonistic relationship between intel-
lectuality and revolutionary cultural politics, Franco elaborates the mixed moti-
vations of the Latin American intelligentsia and artists who joined revolutionary
struggle: ‘‘The guerilla movements drew the intelligentsia and the middle class
into their ranks. Jorge Castañeda calculated that 64 percent of those who died as
a result of counterinsurgency repression were intellectual workers, many of
whom must have been students who wanted to purge themselves of the original
sin of being middle-class intellectuals. Indeed, Che Guevara never confused
intellectual work with revolutionary struggle and declared that ‘there are no
artists of great authority who also have great revolutionary authority . . .’ Per-
sonal experience of the armed struggle was the motor of transformation that
created the new man [for Guevara]’’ (Franco, Decline and Fall 88).
5 All translations of Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria are my own. I refer to this
diary as Pasajes in the remainder of the chapter.
6 According to Mary Alice Waters, Guevara was only the third person to sign up
for the mission to overthrow the Batista regime. From her introduction to the
English edition of Pasajes: ‘‘In Mexico City, Castro soon met Ernesto Guevara
and signed him up as the third confirmed member of the expedition. Raúl
Castro, Fidel’s brother, had been the second’’ (12).
7 At the risk of over-reading, I would suggest that the juxtaposition of the descrip-
tion of Guevara’s ‘‘deplorable condition’’ with the interruption of their discus-
sion of their progeny in this passage is also a reflection of the compromised
nature of Latin American masculinity in general, within structurally deter-
mined relations of neocolonialism. Castro’s men are attempting to regain the
sovereignty of Cuba, defending the patrimony of the nation from the exploit-
ative relations of U.S. capitalism. However, Batista’s men—the lapdogs of
Yankee imperialism, if you will—violently punish the men for the improper
assertion of this masculinity. The attack thus doubly threatens the guerrillas: it

300 Notes to Chapter 3

 threatens to cut them o√ from their patronymic relations with their children,
and from their patronymic relationship with the fatherland.
8 This is not my own but Ileana Rodríguez’s formulation, which I will discuss in
greater detail hereafter (Women, Guerrillas, and Love 49–61).
9 When they approach, they find these soldiers celebrating their ‘‘victory’’ over the
guerrillas instead. The ne’er-do-well Benítez is the culprit of their first such
encounter, having insisted on making contact with the presumed peasants be-
cause of his hunger. Seconds before initiating conversation with a soldier out-
side a hut, Benítez recognizes him as a member of Batista’s forces and retreats.
Guevara says of their group’s escape, ‘‘Truly, Benítez and all of us were born
anew’’ (Pasajes 10).
10 Indeed, it is quite possible that the discursive resemblance between bourgeois
development’s regime of subjection and a revolutionary regime of subjection
finds its origin in a previously existing narrative of heroic militancy, with its
roots in an imperial genealogy of reason. Nevertheless, as the importance of my
work lies in examining the contemporary relationship between the two regimes,
I leave the valuable investigation of an imperial narrative of heroic militancy to
scholars of colonialism.
11 Fernández Retamar’s essay points to an early convergence in Anglo and Span-
ish racialization projects in the Americas. It is my contention that there are, in
fact, significant di√erences in the racialization projects of Anglo- and Spanish
American colonization schemes, made most evident in the contrast between the
genocidal policy reservations in early U.S. history and the assimilative policy of
mestizaje in early Mexican history. Nevertheless, Fernández Retamar’s analysis
of how key terms in Colon’s writings were absorbed by Shakespeare makes it
evident that these discrete racialization projects overlapped at times, contami-
nating each other. Indeed, I suggest the discursive resemblance in the binary
terms deployed by both developmental and revolutionary regimes of subjection
is, in part, an e√ect of this generative cross-pollination in Spanish and Anglo
colonial racialization projects.
12 The following are the excerpts from the interview I refer to in the text. On
nationalism, Payeras concludes: ‘‘El nacionalism produce divisiones, el na-
cionalism no suma, resta.’’ On autonomy: ‘‘Yo creo que la autonomía debe ser
una autonomía territorial, es decir, no sólo autonomía legal o reconocimiento de
la autonomía cultural, sino una autonomía que tenga base materiales.’’ On the
place of the indigenous in revolutionary struggle: ‘‘Podemos hacer una revolu-
ción, pero si la revolución no tiene una política de lucha contra la discrimina-
ción y si los mismos indios no participan en la revolución masivamente en-
tonces la discriminación va continuar.’’
13 All translations are my own.
14 Franco elaborates further on the symbolism of Macondo in the Latin American
cultural imaginary: ‘‘The always masculine protagonists of the boom novels, in

Notes to Chapter 3 301

 their attempt to dream up an economically workable society freed from outside
control, encounter the specter of the excluded (especially the feminine) as well
as the unhappy consequences of identifying the human exclusively with the
domination of nature. Yet to transcend these limits would have meant the
collapse of the enterprise itself. The final chapters of One Hundred Years of
Solitude register the breakdown of the male fantasy in dramatic fashion with the
invasion of ants, the death of Amaranta ‘rsula, and the reduction of the Buendía
enterprise to the solitary task of deciphering. Rather than a retreat from a
revolutionary project that Gárcia Márquez never seems to have seriously enter-
tained, the novel is the fantasy of a society based on kinship; Macondo aspires to
be a ‘cold’ society—to use Lévi-Strauss’s term for societies whose mechanisms
are conservationist rather than geared to change. The change that comes from
the outside is degeneration’’ (Decline and Fall 8).
15 Indeed, the Dictionary of Marxist Thought defines primitive communism as ‘‘the
collective right to basic resources, the absence of hereditary status or authoritar-
ian rule, and the egalitarian relationships that preceded exploitation and eco-
nomic stratification in human history’’ (Bottomore 445).
16 Importantly, Payeras never identifies the villagers as indigenous, nor does he
identify them as mestizos or Ladinos. Indeed, it is unlikely that they were
mestizos or Ladinos, as it was almost exclusively land-poor, highland Indians
who were colonizing the Péten during the period described by Payeras. Payeras
withholds ethnic a≈liation from the reader. This withholding is underscored
because, in the next chapter, the guerrillas encounter a second village, where the
villagers run away and hide from them. In his description of this encounter,
Payeras, in turn, stresses the villagers’ indigenous identity:

Upon knowing of our presence, the inhabitants of the place locked them-
selves into their houses or hid in the woods. At certain moments, the situa-
tion took on dramatic characteristics. Some of our soldiers were forced to
run after the stragglers and threaten them to stop. We will never forget those
moments. All of a sudden, the guerrillas were left alone in the streets. The
few inhabitants of the village who were willing to talk with us barricaded
themselves in their dialect, and it was impossible to get information from
them. . . . Here we heard for the first time the word macá, a terrible term
which for us at the time meant something like, there is none, taking on a tone
of rejection with centuries-old roots. (Las dias 34)

For the first group of villagers, their predisposition toward the guerrillas signals
precisely their emergence out of their primitive state; hence they resolve into
view from the jungle for the guerrillas and for the reader. The second group of
villagers, however, reject the guerrillas out of centuries-old prejudice, locking
them into a prehistoric mindset. In Payeras’s representation, this second group
of villagers are still so fully ensconced in their own ethnic particularity that they

302 Notes to Chapter 3

 approach barbarism. Hence they disappear into the woods like frightened ani-
mals when man approaches; stragglers from the herd must be corralled by
threatening soldiers; and their utterances defy meaningful communication or
signal misguided hostility.
Thus I would suggest that Payeras withholds the ethnic identification of the
first group of villagers because their openness to the guerrillas already signifies
an evolution away from a primitive, indigenous particularity. Ethnic identity is
literally put under erasure by Payeras’s failure to identify them as Indians.
However, even if the first group of peasants were not indigenous but Ladino or
mestizo, the e√ect is the same. Ethnic identity is put under erasure in a narra-
tive of development where the particularity of racial consciousness must give
way to class consciousness if revolutionary transformation into fully human
subjectivity is to occur.
17 In fact, it is the responsibility of the revolutionary movement’s leadership to
arbitrate in such matters, as Payeras stipulates at the end of the essay: ‘‘It is the
obligation of the Revolutionary Movement’s leadership to investigate and clarify
each aspect, to establish the necessary di√erences between the positive ele-
ments and the negative elements, to take advantage of the first and eliminate the
second’’ (88).

4. Irresistible Seduction

1 Of course, this is a reformulation of early classical economists such as David

Ricardo, Adam Smith, and Jean-Baptiste Say.
2 For a more extensive critique of the ideology of development as an epistemolog-
ical strategy, see Escobar, Power and Visibility. Also, James Ferguson’s The Anti-
Politics Machine provides an excellent Foucauldian analysis of the institutional-
ization of development as a strategy for managing poverty in the African nation
of Lesotho.
3 See Castañeda.
4 While realistically one-fifth of the nation’s arable land might have been more
than the newly organized government could e√ectively administer, midinra
had expected more. Sandinista leaders shared the popular belief that Somoza
and his associates owned one-half of all the nation’s resources. Until October
1979, when investigators finished compiling estimates of Somocista holdings,
fsln leaders in midinra believed that the state possessed 60 percent of the
arable land (J. Collins, What Di√erence 39). These estimates showed that the
state sector controlled less than 20 percent of the land in cotton and co√ee
production, and less than 10 percent of the land in livestock production, and
only had significant control (40 percent) of the land in sugar and rice produc-
tion (Colburn, Post-revolutionary Nicaragua 42). Clearly, the state sector had
considerably less direct control over agricultural production in general, and

Notes to Chapter 4 303

 export production in particular, than the fsln had hoped. This miscalculation
increased the political clout of an already powerful sector—the landed elites and
medium-holding private producers—in the eyes of the fsln.
5 These relatively wealthy peasants are not the landed elites. Those owning more
than 500 manzanas of land—the landed elites or terratenientes—made up only
2 percent of the eap and held 36.2 percent of the arable land in 1978 (Vilas 66;
ciera, Cifras and Referencias). A manzana equals 1.75 acres.
6 Between 1952 and 1978, there was a 14 percent decrease in the number of
landholdings consisting of 1 to 99.9 manzanas, as these lands were taken over
by agricultural bourgeoisie. The number of minifundistas decreased by half,
with the dispossessed either finding permanent employment or, more often,
joining the ranks of the underemployed. This peasant displacement took place
predominantly along the Pacific coast, in the departments of Chinandega, Leon,
Managua, and Masaya, where cotton production flourished (Spalding 19–20).
7 The stratified composition of Nicaragua’s rural population resembles Russia’s
in 1917, and Vilas’s schematization likewise resembles Lenin’s description of
the Russian peasantry in his Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution: ‘‘At the
present moment we cannot say for certain whether a mighty agrarian revolution
will develop in the Russian countryside in the near future. We cannot say exactly
how profound the class cleavage is among the peasants, which has undoubtedly
grown more profound of late as a division into agricultural labourers, wage-
workers and poor peasants (‘semi-proletarians’), on the one hand, and wealthy
and middle peasants (capitalists and petty capitalists), on the other. Such ques-
tions will be, and can be decided only by experience’’ (Selected Works 35). Indeed,
Lenin’s ‘‘agricultural labourers, wage-workers and poor peasants’’ correspond to
Vilas’s agricultural workers, itinerant proletarians, and minifundistas. Whereas
Lenin’s vision of ‘‘agricultural revolution’’ was of a Russian countryside made
up entirely of large state farms, miplan envisioned a mixed-economy in the
countryside. Nonetheless the Sandinista vision and Lenin’s vision share an
aversion to reinforcing the small-scale freeholding peasantry.
8 Here I am borrowing from James Scott’s concept of ‘‘everyday resistance’’
coined in his analysis of local class relations in the Malaysian village of Sedaka
(Scott, Weapons of the Weak).
9 Adding to the pressure of maintaining the production of foreign exchange were
the immediate costs of reconstructing the agricultural and industrial infrastruc-
ture. Material destruction caused by the insurrection was estimated at U.S.
$400 million. This figure, not including production losses or losses from de-
capitalization, equaled more than one-half of an average year’s export earnings
under Somoza (ihca, ‘‘Nicaraguan Peasantry’’ 6).
10 The state, in fact, provided a cushy incentive package for private producers: 80 to
100 percent financing of working capital for the production of export crops,
subsidized inputs, and fixed prices for the purchase of export crops, which were
generally declining in value on the world market. Between January 1980 and

304 Notes to Chapter 4

 August 1981, 52 percent of foreign exchange was redistributed to the private
sector for reinvestment (ihca, ‘‘Right of the Poor’’ 19). Nevertheless, the state
was now mediating all these transactions, and in e√ect, large-scale production
su√ered a decline in political weight vis-à-vis medium- and small-scale agricul-
tural production. For example, under Somoza, large-scale agro-production had
received 90 percent of all credit extended; with the democratization of credit
under the Sandinistas, large-scale producers were receiving only 29 percent of
the credit extended by 1985 (Enriquez and Spalding 114). The increase in credit
extended, in cordobas, was artificially maintained through the printing of money,
which in turn lead to spiraling inflation. Ironically, guaranteed financing of
production costs negatively a√ected the productivity of state and large-scale
production. In an economic crisis, private enterprise will use credit as a means of
rationalizing production, forcing unprofitable businesses into liquidations, mer-
gers, or bankruptcies. The state financial institutions never performed this
regulatory role because of political considerations; hence nonproductivity es-
caped reprisals (Weeks 53).
11 Another problem with Weeks’s analysis is his failure to di√erentiate between
sectors of the bourgeoisie. His analysis holds true for large-scale producers
(with few exceptions), and some medium-scale producers. However, over the
course of ten years, medium- and small-holding peasant producers proved to be
the most consistently productive, taking full advantage of the benefits extended
by the Sandinistas. Even according to Weeks’s construction of nationalist iden-
tity, these producers prove to be quite ‘‘patriotic.’’
12 For a thorough critique of the Sandinista credit policy see Enriquez and Spald-
ing. Also see Joseph Collins, What Di√erence Can a Revolution Make, chap. 6.
13 By 1985, there were only 66,000 recipients of the rural credit program. Stricter
state regulations on credit, fear of indebtedness, inaccessibility of banking facili-
ties, and inability to deal with bank bureaucracy combined to discourage eligible
minifundistas—and even many small-holding producers—from attaining loans
(Enriquez and Spalding 118).
14 For a thorough critique of the state’s pricing policies, see Frenkel 211–13. For a
critique of the state’s ability to handle the marketing of goods, see Saulniers.
15 Engels described the role of merchants in terms that correspond to the Sandini-
sta assessment. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, he
discusses the emergence of this class: ‘‘Now for the first time a class appears
which, without in any way participating in production, captures the direction of
production as a whole and economically subjugates the producers; which
makes itself an indispensable middleman between any two producers and ex-
ploits them both. Under the pretext that they save the producers the trouble and
risk of exchange, extend the sale of their products to distant markets and are
therefore the most useful class of the population, a class of parasites comes into
being, ‘genuine social ichneumons,’ who, as a reward for the actually very
insignificant services, skim all the cream o√ production at home and abroad,

Notes to Chapter 4 305

 rapidly amass enormous wealth and correspondingly social influence’’ (214–
15).
16 By the 1983–1984 crop cycle, domestic production had surpassed its prerevolu-
tionary average of manzanas planted; in the same crop cycle, the export sector
had not yet recuperated its prerevolutionary average (Gibson 39). The 1979–
1983 period was the most favorable for production in Nicaragua because the
counterrevolutionary war was not yet fully under way. While we cannot attribute
the drop in export production exclusively to ill will, it was clear early on that the
large-scale agro-exporters were recalcitrant.
17 The only figures that I have been able to find in my research for the evolution of
land tenure between 1979 and 1983 are from Joseph Collins, who gives figures
for 1980 (What Di√erence, 271). He cites midinra as his source but does not
give the name of publication. Collins’s figures place state holdings at 18 percent
for 1980. Conflicting estimates of state holdings during this period exist in the
literature on Nicaragua. However, I will continue to use 20 percent as a rough
estimate.
18 A dead-furrow cooperative is a cooperative in which members own a farm
collectively but divide the farm into individualized plots separated by dead fur-
rows. This allows them to farm individually but to do some of the work collec-
tively, especially work involving large capital goods such as tractors and irriga-
tion systems.
19 From Lenin’s ‘‘Speech on Agrarian Question’’: ‘‘The dire need I speak of is
precisely this—we cannot continue farming in the old way. If we continue as
before on our small isolated farms, albeit as free citizens on free soil, we are still
faced with imminent ruin, for the debacle is drawing nearer day by day, hour by
hour. Everyone is talking about it; it is a grim fact, due not to the malice of
individuals but to the world war of conquest, to capitalism’’ (Selected Works 138).
Although the direct referent of the ‘‘imminent ruin’’ Lenin refers to is starvation
brought on by the devastation of World War I, the referent is also the referent
‘‘capitalism’’ with which he closes the sentence. From Lenin’s perspective there
is a direct logical progression from the petit bourgeois relations embodied by
‘‘small isolated farms’’ to the development of capitalism, to the provocation of
wars of colonial conquest, to the devastation of productive forces caused by
these imperial wars. Thus a small-holding peasantry would not only be incapa-
ble of technically achieving the needed food production but also be the first step
toward consolidating a bourgeois capitalist order in the countryside.
20 One way of gauging app productivity is to examine its credit history. Between
1981 and 1984, the app share of agricultural credit grew from 34 percent to 41
percent, even though the share of land under its control decreased from 20
percent to 19.2 percent in that same period. Meanwhile credit recuperation rates
for the app had reached only 60 percent by 1984 (Enriquez and Spalding 120–
21). Continued growth in credit to the app is partially explained by midinra’s
continuing investment in capital-intensive, long-term agro-industry. During this

306 Notes to Chapter 4

 period of regional recession, Nicaragua was the only Central American country
with growth in investment (Enriquez and Spalding 138). Several external and
internal factors, however, explain the drop in productivity that led to low profits
on the app farms. Nicaragua experienced a general decline in its terms of trade
during this period. The country su√ered a severe drought in May 1982, a√ecting
production. State farms became the prime targets of the escalating counter-
revolutionary war. Finally, state farms experienced a decline in both the number
of hours worked and productivity of labor. In some sectors of the agriculture,
norms for labor productivity were reduced between 25 and 40 percent. The
reduction of labor productivity was not restricted to the working class. Profes-
sionals and technicians lacked the expertise to e√ectively do their jobs (Enriquez
and Spalding 77, 137).
21 I exclude the resettled communities in regions I and VI from my discussion of
cooperatives because of the extraordinary circumstances surrounding their for-
mation. Although these communities were resettled as cooperatives by force,
this was strictly a military decision that a√ected a very small segment of the rural
population and fell outside the purview of midinra and the agrarian reform
law.
22 By 1984, the defense e√ort required between 70,000 and 100,000 people-in-
arms, an e√ort the permanent army alone could not meet (Utting 136). Men and
women from cooperatives and state farms were mobilized into battalions to
fight the war. If the prospect of possible counterrevolutionary attack did not
su≈ciently discourage peasants from joining a cooperative, the probability of
military recruitment did.
23 In their assessment of the first five years of agrarian reform, the ihca claims
that by the end of 1984, 22 percent, or one-fifth, of the total peasant families had
received lands through cooperativization (ihca, ‘‘The Nicaraguan Peasantry’’
12c). I believe this is a miscalculation that underestimated demand for land and
overestimated Sandinista e≈cacy in meeting that demand. In these calcula-
tions, the ihca adheres to a rigid definition of peasant identity, maintaining a
distinction between the minifundistas as ‘‘true peasants’’ and the dispossessed
itinerant proletariat as ‘‘true proletariat.’’ However, it is necessary to recognize
the itinerant proletariat as dispossessed peasantry in order to fully comprehend
the inordinate pressure for land.
24 For a complete analysis of the Masaya situation, see ihca, ‘‘The Nicaraguan
Peasantry,’’ 51.
25 Between 1984 and 1988, the percentage of national arable land in holdings
exceeding 500 manzanas decreased from 13 percent to 6.4 percent; in holdings
between 50 and 500 manzanas, from 43 percent to 26.4 percent; in state hold-
ings, from 19 percent to 11.4 percent (ciera, Cifras 39).
26 Ironically, although the Sandinistas shared Lenin’s prejudice against a small-
holding peasantry, they apparently did not share his view on the importance of
political representation for the itinerant proletariat and the minifundistas. In

Notes to Chapter 4 307

 Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution, Lenin insisted on the importance of
ensuring they have separate representation from the agricultural laborers of the
more economically secure peasantry: ‘‘Without necessarily splitting the Soviets
of Peasants Deputies at once, the party of the proletariat must explain the need
for organizing separate Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies and sepa-
rate Soviets of deputies from the poor (semi-proletarian) peasants, or, at least,
for holding regular separate conferences of deputies of this class status in the
shape of separate groups or parties within the general Soviets of Peasants’
Deputies. Otherwise all the honeyed petty-bourgeois talk of the Narodniks re-
garding the peasants in general will serve as a shield for the deception of the
propertyless mass by the wealthy peasants, who are merely a variety of capital-
ists’’ (Selected Works 35).

5. Reiterations of the Revolutionary ‘‘I’’

1 Of course, I realize that such a ‘‘return’’ to the extraliterary may inevitably

become just another reading strategy for canonization, as Moreiras also sug-
gests. Though I do not share the anxiety expressed by some of my colleagues
over the inclusion of Menchú’s texts on countless syllabi throughout the coun-
try, I do believe that one way of combating the incorporative logic of canon
formation is to proliferate readings of texts such as Menchú’s, readings that are
perhaps more di≈cult to assimilate.
2 Indeed, according to Stoll, Menchú gains international acclaim precisely for this
reason, through a powerful Marxist cabal posed to take over the coveted disci-
pline of Ethnic studies: ‘‘For Marxists moving into ethnic studies, the Menchú-
Burgos collaboration became a classic text because its description of a young
woman’s political awakening turned indigenous tradition into a platform for
class organizing’’ (Rigoberta Menchú and the Story 209). However, Stoll’s own
narrative is deeply contradictory on this point. Later in the book, he faults
Menchú’s narrative for foregrounding her indigenous identity, thereby playing
on the sympathies of the U.S. solidarity movement: ‘‘Mayan Indians have been
at the heart of Guatemala’s appeal for foreigners. With the women still dressing
in traditional garb, it is easy to imagine that Mayan culture is unitary, or would
be if it were not for the ravages of colonialism’’ (236). In his insistent and largely
unsubstantiated accusation that Menchú simplified her story to garner soli-
darity for the guerrilla movement abroad, Stoll simplifies the solidarity move-
ment in the United States. He portrays the solidarity movement’s members as
loyal advocates of the urng, instead of the ideologically heterogeneous group of
people that we were. As a movement, solidarity’s primary goal was to draw
attention to the atrocities committed by the Guatemalan army and its paramili-
tary death squads, and to bring an end to the indirect U.S. military aid flowing to
the dictatorship through Israel. In addition, as Norma Chinchilla Stoltz has
pointed out, ‘‘Powerful as Rigoberta’s book and even more, her persona were in

308 Notes to Chapter 4

 reaching uninitiated audiences, heads of state, and international diplomats,
however, I, Rigoberta Menchú was hardly the human rights and solidarity move-
ment’s ‘little red book,’ ’’ (33). Stoll repeatedly equivocates on the military’s
culpability for the genocide in Guatemala. As Victoria Sanford suggests, ‘‘Stoll’s
narrative strategy appears to be to distract attention from the army’s culpability
for is atrocities—a di≈cult task given that these range from selective assassina-
tions to such public acts as the firebombing of the Spanish embassy and mas-
sacres of 626 villages, acts which finally claimed the lives of more than 200,000
Guatemalans’’ (39). At one point in his narrative, even Stoll has to admit that the
preponderance of the killing was done by these forces, and not the forces of the
urng:

During this period [the 1980s], army killing became so massive, and so
obviously required an emergency response, that it was di≈cult not to accept
other claims made by the guerrillas. If peasants did not support the guer-
rillas, why would the army kill so many? It also seemed logical that the
guerrilla movement grew out of basic peasant needs. All those dead civilians
began to certify not just that the Guatemalan army was committing mass
murder but other propositions advanced by the guerilla movement. If most
of the combatants were indigenous, then the insurgency must have been a
popular uprising. It must also have been an inevitable product of oppression
triggered exclusively by Guatemala’s power structure. (238)

Though Stoll poses these questions rhetorically, he never successfully addresses

the issues raised here. Stoll’s book is largely an apologia for the Guatemalan
military’s genocidal policy. He blames the guerrillas for provoking the violence,
for somehow they should have known their organizing in the mountains
among the peasants would lead to the massive retaliation by the army. Indeed,
in Stoll’s twisted logic, Rigoberta Menchú is most culpable, for without her
testimony, he claims, the urng would have admitted defeat in the early 1980s
and thereby somehow avoided further civilian massacres by the Guatemalan
military. Thus, according to this logic, since Menchú’s book lent credibility to
the guerrillas’ cause, it was the primary factor that allowed them to continue the
war.
3 Of the twelve essays in Gugelberger’s anthology, nine analyze Menchú’s text as
exemplary of the genre. Of course, as the second- and third-stage essays are in
dialogue with the first-stage essays, the return to Menchú is somewhat predeter-
mined. Nevertheless the question of how to interpret authorial representation
in Menchú became absolutely fundamental to establishing the parameters of
the genre and the genre’s political significance and potential, as well as to
insisting on the possibility of authentic subaltern representation, a point hotly
debated in Western letters, at the time.
4 According to Menchú, each person is born into the community with a ‘‘nahual’’
that is his or her lifelong companion and connection to the natural world: ‘‘His

Notes to Chapter 5 309

 or her nahual is like a shadow. They are going to live parallel lives, and almost
always, the nahual is an animal. The child has to dialogue with nature. For us,
the nahual is a representative of the earth, a representative of all the animals and
a representative of water and the sun’’ (Burgos, Me llamo 39). The identity of the
child’s nahual is not revealed to the child until s/he becomes a young adult. All
translations of Menchú are my own, unless they are within a quote from an-
other critic.
5 Beverley does not specify if he means by this a transition from a capitalist mode
of production to a socialist mode of production, but one may assume so. From
our present vantage point, Beverley’s appraisal of the period may seem lu-
dicrously optimistic, but within the historical context in which he wrote this
essay, such a transition did, in fact, seem imminent. At the height of the Central
American revolutionary movements in the mid-1980s, it appeared as if the
fmln in El Salvador and the urng in Guatemala would follow in the victorious
footsteps of the fsln in Nicaragua, establishing a mixed economy (private and
state capital investment under strict government supervision) and a popular,
participatory democracy. Indeed, plans for a common Central American market
based on these political principles were seriously theorized at Nicaraguan re-
search institutes throughout the 1980s. Although the transition to this ‘‘new
mode of production’’ never fully took place, new modes of subjectivity and
conciencia did emerge from these revolutionary e√orts at transformation, and
as such, these subjects continue to organize against neoliberalism and Chris-
tian Democrats in the region. However, it is less clear if distinctly new modes of
cultural production emerged, as well. My engagement with Yúdice, Beverley,
Gugelberger, and other first-wave critics is, indeed, an attempt to retheorize this
new subject and his or her cultural production.
6 For Beverley and other first-wave testimonial critics, the author function in
testimonial literature is, for all intents and purposes, eliminated. This is in part
because testimonios tend to be jointly authored, as slave narratives were in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And yet this is not the only reason for the
erasure of the author function. ‘‘There is a great di√erence between having
someone like Rigoberta Menchú tell the story of her people and having it told,
however well, by someone like, say, the Nobel Prize–winning Miguel Angel
Asturias. Testimonio involves a sort of erasure of the function, and thus also of
the textual presence, of the ‘author,’ which by contrast is so central in all major
forms of bourgeois writing since the Renaissance, so much so that our very
notions of literature and the literary are bound up with notions of the author, or,
at least of an authorial intention’’ (Beverley, ‘‘The Margin at the Center’’ 29).
Similarly, Georg Gugelberger and Michael Kearney, in their introduction to the
1991 Latin American Perspectives two-part special issue on testimonio, use Men-
chú to insist on the di√erence between the bourgeois author and the testimonial
author: ‘‘Whereas the Western writer is definitely an author, the ‘protagonist’
who gives testimony does not conceive of him/herself as extraordinary but

310 Notes to Chapter 5

 instead as an allegory of the many, the people. This collective identity is par-
ticularly revealed in female-gendered testimonials, in the often quoted opening
of I, Rigoberta Menchú: ‘I’d like to stress that it’s not my life, it’s also the testi-
mony of my people’ ’’ (8). In 1992, of course, Menchú joined Asturias’s award-
winning company, becoming the second Guatemalan in history to receive a
Nobel Prize—although for peace rather than literature—and causing some of
her detractors, such as Stoll, to accuse her of elitism and insist that there was no
di√erence between Menchú and the Guatemalan intellectual Left. Clearly there
is a di√erence between Asturias’s subject position as a dissident member of the
oligarchic class in Guatemala and Menchú’s as an indigenous peasant woman
persecuted by the armed forces defending this oligarchic class. Similarly, there
is a di√erence between the authorial form of the bourgeois novel and the au-
thorial form of testimonio. My point is merely to suggest that such racial and
class di√erences in subject positions will not directly or necessarily manifest
themselves as the complete erasure of the authorial function, for the authorial
function does not depend on subject position. Indeed, Beverley hedges his own
claims: it is ‘‘sort of ’’ an erasure, but not quite. For similar interpretations of
Menchú and the new genre of testimonio, please see, in this same issue of Latin
American Perspectives, Lynda Marín, ‘‘Speaking Out Together: Testimonials of
Latin American Women’’ (52). See also Claudia Salazar, ‘‘Rigoberta’s Narrative
and the New Practice of Oral History’’; and Doris Sommer, ‘‘ ‘Not Just a Personal
Story’: Women’s Testimonios and the Plural Self ’’ (109–10).
7 Bastos and Camus, in their book Quebrando el silencio: Organizaciones del pueblo
Maya y sus demandas, quote an indigenous person describing the period of the
scorched-earth policy that was put into e√ect by General Rios Montt imme-
diately following Ronald Reagan’s 1980 inauguration: ‘‘The target was the In-
dian, in that moment persecuted on all sides to see that s/he not be organizing,
to see what s/he was doing . . . soon, well, the [military] control came . . . they
planted a deep mistrust in the interior of our own population, well, nobody
trusted anybody, not even your own family members’’ (36).
8 For example, Beverley qualifies his stance on the presence of the popular sub-
ject in testimonio considerably when he writes, ‘‘the presence of a ‘real’ popular
voice in the testimonio is in part at least an illusion. Obviously, we are dealing
here, as in any discursive medium, with an e√ect that has been produced, in the
case of testimonio both by the direct narrator—using devices of an oral storytell-
ing tradition—and the compiler who, according to norms of literary form and
expression, makes a text out of the material’’ (‘‘The Margin at the Center’’ 34).
Thus Beverley seems to recognize the mediated nature of any representation,
and the doubly mediated nature of testimonio, but he hesitates—it is only ‘‘in
part’’ that representation in testimonio is contaminated by distance from the
referent. The overwhelming e√ect of testimonio, in Beverley’s critical estima-
tion, is ‘‘a sensation of experiencing the real and . . . this has determinate e√ects
on the reader that are di√erent from those produced by even the most realist or

Notes to Chapter 5 311

 ‘documentary’ fiction’’ (‘‘The Margin at the Center’’ 34). There is a great invest-
ment by these early critics of testimonio to di√erentiate it from other genres,
not just qualitatively, but in kind. Beverley continues, ‘‘What has to be under-
stood, however, is precisely how testimonio puts into question the existing institu-
tion of literature as an ideological apparatus of alienation and domination at the
same time that it constitutes itself as a new form of literature’’ (‘‘The Margin at
the Center’’ 35). Yúdice also qualifies his understanding of this ‘‘authentic’’
narrative later in his essay: ‘‘I do not claim that testimonial writing su√ers no
problems of referentiality, but I do point out that it is not so much a representa-
tion of a referent (say, the ‘people’ or Lukács’s ‘typical man’) but a practice
involved in the construction of such an entity. That is, testimonial writing is first
and foremost an act, a tactic by means of which people engage in the process of
self-constitution and survival’’ (46). Yúdice’s estimation of testimonio as a tactic,
as a performative act, in the Butlerian sense, is close to my own analysis of
Menchú’s narrative, and I will return to this aspect of Yúdice’s definition of
testimonio hereafter. Like Beverley, however, he hesitates in allowing for the
possibility of mediation of the subaltern voice in testimonio, barely willing to
qualify its immediacy: ‘‘I do not claim that testimonial writing su√ers no prob-
lems of referentiality.’’
9 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak addresses this e√acement of the complex geopoliti-
cal role of intellectual interpretation, in the context of a conversation between
Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, in her ‘‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’’ These
two theorists suggest that the desires and interests of subaltern subjects invari-
ably coincide, are fully expressed by these subaltern subjects themselves, and
are thus available to the attentive and sympathetic First World intellectual.
Please see my chapter 2, footnote 12, for a full discussion of Spivak’s response to
Foucault’s and Deleuze’s position.
10 For example, to date, no testimonial criticism on Menchú considers how her
narrative is influenced by the conventions of Mayan oral tradition. But precisely
such textual analysis is warranted and would explain much, if not all, of the
incongruities Stoll finds between Menchú’s version of events and the version of
events he puts together. Jan Rus, an anthropologist who has lived and worked
for more than ten years in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, has suggested
precisely such an interpretation of narrative voice in Menchú. Rus collaborates
with his wife on ethnohistories of the area, as well as with Tzotzil and Tzeltal
Maya communities in publishing their histories in their own languages. In his
introduction to the Latin American Perspectives special issue on the Menchú-Stoll
controversy, Rus explains that Mayan oral conventions ‘‘include the assumption
of a collective or amalgamated identity by the storyteller in order to summarize a
whole community’s history, the creation of a ‘golden past’ before exploitation or
colonialism, in order to show how bad things have become and to identify the
causes of the deterioration, and the simplification of the order of events in order
to clarify the story line. To appraise I, Rigoberta Menchú fairly, then, the reader

312 Notes to Chapter 5

 must understand both the context in which it was written and the fact that it is a
product of an oral, non-Western tradition’’ (8). Although Rus does not address
the specific issues raised by Stoll, these conventions—the amalgamation of
identities to summarize a community history, the glorification of the pre-
colonial past, the simplification of events to create a coherent time line—can
explain the discrepancies Stoll finds in the details of Menchú’s narrative.
11 For a discussion of the ongoing resistance to military control of indigenous life
in Guatemala, please see Santiago Bastos and Manuela Camus, Quebrando el
silencio: Organizaciones del pueblo Maya y sus demandas, particularly chapters 2
and 3; and also their Abriendo caminos: Las organizaciones Maya desde el Nobel
hasta el Acuerdo de derechos indígenas.
12 According to Gareth Williams, there is another binary structure operating
within testimonio criticism, for, according to this hermeneutics of solidarity, in
testimonio the cultural production of the subaltern exists in a relationship of
parity (of ‘‘solidarity’’) with the cultural production of the testimonio critic.
Williams has argued that instead of parity, early testimonio criticism reimposed
a center-periphery binary on testimonio. In testimonio criticism, Williams ar-
gues, ‘‘testimonio comes to be a homogeneous and totalizing resistance to the
metropolitan center and to metropolitan discourses of centrality’’ (233). Indeed,
the very insistence on the genre’s novelty—critics’ refusal to place it within the
traditions of the slave narrative, autobiography, or earlier Native American ‘‘as-
told-to’s’’—represents the genre as a margin uncontaminated by the metro-
politan center or its modern discursive forms. In tandem with the requirement
for novelty, the protocols for identifying this new genre produce the homogene-
ity suggested by Williams. For example, the criteria of the unmediated presence
of the collective subaltern subject in all testimonial voice, on the one hand,
homogenizes testimonial voices of di√erent subaltern extraction and, on the
other, totalizes the testimonial voice as resistive to the metropolitan center.
Williams has called the hermeneutics of solidarity a ‘‘fantasy of cultural ex-
change’’ resulting from the critic’s tendency to fetishize subaltern particularity:
‘‘In short, we act as if Latin American subalternity were not, in the very practice
of cultural exchange, inevitably submitted to discursive commodification, as if
the object actually realized itself as something other than exchange-value within
the space occupied and delineated by U.S. institutional critical practices on Latin
America’’ (234).
13 Though in hindsight we can see that testimonio is neither new to Western
letters nor unique in its mode of representation, testimonio had been histor-
ically undertheorized until this period of testimonio criticism. (The exception to
this general rule of neglect is, of course, the African American slave narrative,
which received pronounced critical attention beginning in the early 1970s.) As
Elzbieta Sklodowska points out in her essay ‘‘Spanish American Testimonial
Novel: Some Afterthoughts’’: ‘‘The fact that we, the interpretive community of
academic critics, has agreed to ‘recognize’ testimonio and give it institutional

Notes to Chapter 5 313

 legitimation is, arguably, one of the most important events of the past two
decades in Spanish American literary history. I insist on the word ‘recognize,’
because the presence of testimonial qualities has been a time-honored trait of
Spanish American writing since its inception, and one could easily make a case
for viewing it, along with realism, as a perennial mode of Western letters’’ (84).
This is true not only for ‘‘Spanish American writing’’ but for American writing
broadly conceived.
14 These fincas are large farms belonging to terratenientes that exist in the low-
lands of Guatemala where Menchú, her family, and most members of her
K’iche’ community travel to seasonally, since their own lands do not produce
enough food for them to live. They must travel to these fincas for seven to eight
months out of the year to supplement their crop production.
15 This may recall for the reader the di√erences between conversion narratives of
male and female saints. Paul and Augustine experience climactic, discrete reve-
lations, while Teresa de Avila’s spiritual connectedness to God is achieved
through a concatenation of continual, more ‘‘homely’’ events as she meanders
through her own life experience. Just as there is no rarefied moment of inno-
cence for the female saint, there is no dramatic moment of redemption.
16 The translation of this interview is my own.
17 Indeed, later in the interview, she thanks the ‘‘thousands of Guatemalans,’’ and
especially the mestizos, who added to her formation.
18 In the past two decades, much theoretical work in the field of anthropology on
ethnography has challenged the nature of ethnographic revelation and the mo-
tives behind such revelation as complicitous with colonialism. See, for example,
Talal Asad, ed., Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter; and more recently,
James Cli√ord and George E. Marcus, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography. Despite this recent critical perspective in the theory and practice of
ethnography, the motif of revelation remains central to ethnography, although
the revelatory ‘‘I’’ has turned occasionally on the observer as well as the ob-
served.
19 For a lengthy discussion of the changing function of ethnography vis-à-vis a
Western readership in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Marcus and
Fisher, esp. the introduction and chap. 2, ‘‘Ethnography and Interpretive An-
thropology.’’
20 ‘‘I tried to ask as little possible, indeed, to not ask absolutely anything. When
some point remained unclear, I would write it down in my notebook, and I
would leave the last session of the day for clarifying these confusing points’’
(Burgos, Me llamo 17).
21 Instead Moreiras suggests that the secret in Menchú’s text is at once the space in
which the abject in her representation of her subalternity is turned on the
reader, and the marker of that which ‘‘cannot and should not be absorbed by the
literary-representational system’’: ‘‘Menchú’s secret in my opinion is at the
same time the metonymic displacement of the necessary (re)production of

314 Notes to Chapter 5

 abjection in Menchú’s text, and its most proper cipher. After all, Menchú must
produce or reproduce unlivability, in order to be persuasive as testimonio; on
the other hand, however, Menchú’s word is lucid enough to make of that neces-
sary (re)production of abjection, which gives her a place to speak, the region for
a counterclaim where abjection is reversed and passed on to the reader: as far as
we are concerned, Menchú seems to say, our place will remain uninhabited by
you, the truly abject ones.’’
22 In this passage, Payeras assumes that the indigenous population’s resistance to
the guerrillas is predicated on a lack of knowledge—a lack of knowledge about the
larger reality, technology, general concepts, and the guerrillas’ cause. I would
argue that the opposite is true. The indigenous peasantry resist the guerrillas
because the peasants do know the e√ects of Ladino technology in the Guatema-
lan highlands and jungle, and because they know the likely consequences of a
guerrilla insurgency in their regions. After the U.S.-backed coup against the
Arbenz government in 1954, there were various attempts to launch insurgen-
cies against the installed dictatorship from the jungle and highlands in the
1960s. Consequently, the guerrilla activity chronicled by Payeras as occurring
during the 1970s was not exactly new to the indigenous peasantry. And given
the Guatemalan dictatorship’s counterinsurgency strategy of razing indigenous
villages to eliminate the guerrillas in the 1980s, it is eerily appropriate that
Payeras suggest that these populations see the guerrillas, with their transforma-
tive mission, as ‘‘inconvenient as the typhoid epidemics that had razed the
highland villages in the past.’’
23 In Against the Romance of Community, Miranda Joseph analyzes the function of
‘‘community’’ in various scenes where it presumably emerges organically as an
extension of identity. Joseph interrogates the concept and function of commu-
nity in, among other sites, San Francisco-based lesbian and gay theater organi-
zations, international nonprofit organizations, the Christian right in the south-
ern United States, and the National Endowment of the Arts. Similar to Menchú,
Joseph challenges the utopian connotations traditionally associated with com-
munity by analyzing its supplementary relationship to capitalism. Indeed,
Joseph argues communitarianism is not only not ‘‘natural,’’ but develops as the
necessary counterpart to market relations, fulfilling innumerable privatized
needs that are generated through the alienation of labor.
24 It is significant that Menchú chooses cars as the site of this di√erentiation
between indigenous people because of an earlier reference to the ideological
function of cars. When she is telling the reader about her first visit to Guatemala
city at eight years of age, she says that what most impressed her about the city
were the cars: ‘‘And when we arrived at the capital, I thought that the cars were
animals and that they walked. I couldn’t get it out of my head about the cars. . . .
When I would see [them], I thought the whole world is crashing into each other
and, well, hardly any would crash’’ (52). Here again cars serve as a metaphor for
a potentially catastrophic condition of permanent struggle in Guatemala.

Notes to Chapter 5 315

25 In her second book, Rigoberta: La nieta de los maya, Menchú further illustrates
the complex and contaminated nature of her radically conditioned agency, as
well as how such agency creates the space for radical critique: ‘‘I always walk
around with my computer tucked under my arm. I am Maya and I belong to the
Mayan culture and I need a computer because it is at the service of my work, but
I am not at the service of my computer. In that moment when a person puts
herself at the service of her inventions, certainly they trample life, morality,
ethics, dignity’’ (153). Again, she participates in the consummate sign of mod-
ernization, computers, but in a limited way. Or rather, her embrace of moder-
nity is limited by her critical worldview: the refusal to subordinate herself—
ethics, morals, dignity—to interpellative processes of modernization. Thus the
computer does not mark her alienation from Mayan culture; only a misinterpre-
tation of its function can do so.
26 Menchú’s explanation, in her second book, of how she came by the name
Rigoberta Menchú is an incredible documentation of interpellative misfiring: ‘‘I
am called Rigoberta Menchú Tum only since 1979. In reality, my real name, the
name of my [maternal] grandmother is M’in. Actually, my nieces and nephews
and all of my family calls me M’in. My village knew me as such, as did the town
of Uspantán. When I was born, my father didn’t have time to register me in the
municipality and he let many days go by. When he arrived at the municipal
o≈ces, the authorities wouldn’t accept the name M’in. They gave him a list of
saints and he chose Rigoberta from all those names. I don’t know why he chose
Rigoberta. It is a very complicated name. In my family, no one could ever
pronounce it, especially my mother. She never could say ‘Rigoberta.’ She always
said ‘Beta,’ or ‘Tita.’ Anyway, in my house I was always known as M’in. When I
turned eighteen, my father had to fight to establish my identity. He went to the
municipal o≈ces to look for my birth certificate and he wanted them to give him
the birth certificate for his daughter M’in. They answered that they had abso-
lutely no M’in registered. In addition, [my father] insisted that I was born at
eight in the morning on January 4, and the [municipal authorities] insisted that
no Menchú Tum was born on that day. He had to pay a lot of fines to find a name
in which the last names of my father and mother coincided, that was Rigoberta
Menchú Tum, born on the 9th of January. Well, they supposed that was me and
that is how my legal identity was established. And that is how I was named/
called’’ (114). First let us notice that the municipal authorities replace a matrilin-
eally given name with a Hispanic saint’s name. We are told her family, especially
her mother, could not pronounce the name, but attempted to adapt it. In the
end, her family, village, and town just give up on the name and return to the
primary feminist and indigenist interpellative, M’in. Gender parity is fore-
grounded, as the father pays dearly to search for a last name in which her
mother’s and father’s names coincide. Notably, the establishment of her ‘‘legal’’
identity as Rigoberta coincides with Menchú’s assumption of a political per-
sona. Again paradoxically she must accept the legal interpellation in order to

316 Notes to Chapter 5

 defend against it. She establishes a radically conditioned agency in her bid to
formulate a radical one. Thus she has two possible birth dates, the January 4th
date, when M’in was born, followed by the January 9th date, when Rigoberta
was born. Even the attempt to document her normative interpellation as legal
subject misfires.

6. The Politics of Silence

1 A similar appropriation of indigenous identity was involved in the formation of

U.S. national culture, though the characteristics attributed to indigenous peo-
ples in the subalternizing discourses of Anglo North America varied substan-
tially from the characteristics attributed to them in the subalternizing dis-
courses of Iberian South America. For a discussion of the di√erences between
the Anglo and Spanish subalternizing discourses during the colonial period,
see Patricia Seed’s ‘‘The Requirement for Resistance: A Critical Comparative
History of Contemporary Popular Expectations of Subalternity in the Amer-
icas.’’ For a discussion of the U.S. appropriation of indigenous identity in the
formation of a national character within the sphere of literature, see David
Kazanjian’s ‘‘Charles Brockden Brown’s Biloquial Nation: National Culture in
White Settler Colonialism in Memoirs of Carwin, the Biloquist.’’ For the appropri-
ation of Indian identity in other spheres of U.S. culture, please see Robert E.
Bieder’s Science Encounters the Indian, 1820–1880: The Early Years of American
Ethnology; Alden T. Vaughan, The Roots of American Racism: Essays on the Colo-
nial Experience; Elisabeth Tooker, ‘‘The United States Constitution and the Iro-
quois League.’’
2 By refusing to fill the stage in front of the visitors, the Zapatistas were also
rejecting the possibility of an inversion of the hierarchical relation between a
simplistically rendered colonizer and colonized, a possibility that many anti-
colonial struggles embraced in the 1960s and 1970s. The Zapatistas refused the
purity such an inversion would have granted them, and in so doing, they also
refused the visitors the promise of a vanguard that would deliver us safely from
our own responsibility.
3 This would be analogous, in psychoanalytic terms, to heteropathic identifica-
tion, in which the subject identifies self with the other (excorporative), and
contrasting to ideopathic identification, in which the subject identifies the other
with its self (incorporative) (Laplanche and Pontalis 205–8, 226–27).
4 I would like to thank all of the people who did so generously make themselves
available to me in a time of war, especially those who were living in commu-
nities surrounded by the Mexican military and under the constant threat of
violence. Their courage is inspirational.
5 Aída Hernández Castillo, a Mexican anthropologist who has worked extensively
among the contemporary Mames, suggests ethnic identity is ‘‘the result of a his-
torical process in which everyday practices and governmental discourses and pol-

Notes to Chapter 6 317

 icies configure the sense of belonging to a collectivity’’ (132). According to Her-
nández Castillo, the Mame, an indigenous people on the southeastern border of
Chiapas and Guatemala, have invented and reinvented indigenous ‘‘traditions’’
in response to more than a half century of the pri’s shifting indigenist policies.
These collective ethnic identities are forged, then, in dialectical relation with
governmentality, through resistance and negotiation with the state. This transla-
tion of Hernández Castillo is my own, as will be all subsequent translation of her
work, and the work of other historians and anthropologists written in Spanish.
6 Presumably placed under the ‘‘guardianship’’ of the conquistador as a reward
for his exploits on behalf of the Crown, these encomenderos also performed the
service of collecting tribute for the Crown from Indian laborers. Out of concern
over the depletion of the indigenous labor supply at the hands of the encomen-
deros, the Crown reformed the encomíenda at the mid–seventeenth century,
introducing labor regulations that constrained the encomenderos from squan-
dering this resource. Technically, the encomíenda was not slavery, as it could not
be inherited by the heirs of the encomendero. But this limited life span pro-
duced its own justification for abuse, as encomenderos anxiously squeezed
every last drop of labor power out of their charges before the encomíenda was
vacated. Consequently, the reforms of 1549 sought to regulate the use of indige-
nous labor, but the Crown’s interest was always in preserving their assets in the
New World. The prominent Mexican anthropologist Héctor Díaz Polanco has
characterized the reform as follows: ‘‘Control over the labor force passed to the
government from that moment on. Encomenderos had to request permission
from royal o≈cials to use Indian labor on their own encomíendas. Those benefit-
ing from the workers’ toil had to pay them whether they belonged to their
encomíenda or not. O≈cials more actively intervened in the regulation of trib-
utes and working conditions. All these changes benefited the king, who ex-
tended his socioeconomic and political control over the colonial society and
increased the number of persons o√ering him tribute’’ (Indigenous Peoples 43).
7 Díaz Polanco has summarized the e√ects of this transformation thus: ‘‘The shift
[from pre-Hispanic communities to colonial townships] consisted of turning
the communal nucleus into the single milieu of Indian ethnicity, given the elimi-
nation of preexisting higher levels of political, socioeconomic, and cultural
organization and the reduction of their territoriality. The jurisdiction of the
Indian hierarchy (nobles and other members of the town councils) was limited
to a narrower and narrower communal world. Each separate nucleus estab-
lished its own links to Spanish power, without the mediation of any intermedi-
ate political structure as the expression of a supracommunal authority’’ (Indige-
nous Peoples 53; italics mine).
8 With regard to native populations, Spanish colonial practices were quite distinct
from those of the United States. U.S. colonial governmentality marginalized the
surviving native populations by physically removing them from sight onto res-
ervations, as if their di√erence were contagious. But under Spanish colonial

318 Notes to Chapter 6

 rule, Indians towns were everywhere visible, with Spaniards and Indians cross-
ing into each others’ townships regularly. Spanish colonialism was also quite
di√erent from early British colonialism in India, which until the second half of
the eighteenth century governed through a class of client rulers without funda-
mentally changing indigenous governmental structures.
9 As an example of these resistant identities that emerged from within the regime
of colonial di√erence, I refer the reader to four indigenous religious movements
that took place in the highlands of Chiapas between 1708 and 1713, the last of
which ended in an organized, armed rebellion by the religious members. The
four townships involved in these religious movements were Zinacantan, Santa
Marta, Chenalho, and Cancuc. The Virgin purportedly made serial appearances
to the Indians in three of these towns over the course of five years, and the
indigenous peoples of these towns consecutively formed cults of worship to her.
Although Indian leaders insisted they were following standard forms of wor-
ship, the local Catholic priests objected to the Indians’ rituals and repressed their
movements, prosecuting for heresy the Virgin’s interlocutors. In the case of
Cancuc, the cult leaders claimed that God had spoken with them, proclaimed the
king of Spain dead, declared the end of tribute to the Crown and church, and
asked that the Indians replace Spanish priests, mayors, and governors with
Indian priests, mayors, and governors. The cult raised a multiethnic army from
more than thirty towns in the region and proceeded to take over other Indian
towns and declare their church the o≈cial church. For a full account of this
resistive religious movement, see Victoria Reifler Bricker (53–83).
10 Of this phenomenon, Bonfil Batalla writes: ‘‘Nevertheless, the cult of the Virgin
Of Tepeyac had spread widely, and pilgrims, mostly Indians, came from all
directions to the same site at which they had previously venerated Tonantzin. It
is a fact . . . that the name Guadalupe was unknown to the majority of the Indian
pilgrims who arrived at Tepeyac, even in the middle of the eighteenth century.
Even so, the history of the appearance was immediately accepted in New Spain
and the cult of the Gudalupana . . . spread rapidly. For the creoles, the indisputa-
ble fact was that the Virgin Mary had chosen this land among all others. She had
not appeared personally in any other nation, leaving behind her image and
requesting a cult in her honor’’ (Bonfil Batalla 95).
11 In viewing the Indian as obstacle, Liberal and Conservative Mexican elites were
in line with other nationalist elites in Latin America, who saw the heterogene-
ous indigenous population as the primary cause of the failure of their newly
founded independent societies to congeal as national cultures.
12 Liberal and Conservative elites came to this conclusion even though, as Flor-
encia Mallon has established, indigenous peasant subalterns participated in the
struggles for independence as nationalists, expressing republican aspirations
and defending Mexican territory from the repeated foreign invasions.
13 Alan Knight, historian of the 1910 revolution and of racial ideology in Mexico,
has commented on these nineteenth-century proletarianization e√orts: ‘‘As in

Notes to Chapter 6 319

 colonial countries, the ‘myth of the lazy native’ was invoked—by foreign and
Mexican employers—to explain peasant resistance to proletarianization and to
justify tough measures to overcome it. The co√ee planters of Chiapas deplored
the ‘natural indolence’ of the sierra Indians; a Morelos planter lamented that
‘the Indian . . . has many defects as a laborer, being, as he is, lazy, sottish and
thieving.’ Only by strict discipline, which in Yucatán and elsewhere became
virtual slave-driving, could these traits be countered’’ (Knight, The Mexican
Revolution 88).
14 The idea of Indian di√erence even brought some Mexican elite on the Yucatán
Peninsula into allegiance with U.S. imperialists in their successful joint e√ort at
turning an ethnically inflected class war in southern Mexico into the Caste War
of 1847 (Joseph, ‘‘The United States,’’ Rediscovering the Past; Reifler Bricker).
15 For an exhaustive analysis of revolutionary indigenismo in twentieth-century
Mexico, as well as a thorough comparison of revolutionary indigenismo and its
nineteenth-century predecessors, please see Knight, ‘‘Racism, Revolution, and
Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910–1940.’’ Knight addresses the ideological di√erences
among the various revolutionary proponents of indigenismo, its uneven ap-
plication in the realms of culture and politics, as well as the historical and
political factors behind its adoption by the revolutionary elites. I borrow sub-
stantially from his discussion of indigenismo in this period in my attempt to
sketch a broad historical outline of the creation and perpetuation of Indian
di√erence in the service of governmentality.
16 The most notable examples of this participation were the original Zapatistas,
the indigenous peasants from Morelos who, under the direction of Emiliano
Zapata, were a central force in deposing the Porfirato. Indeed, the 1917 constitu-
tion, with its guarantees of agrarian rights to the peasantry, is a testament to the
participation of indigenous subalterns in the processes of revolutionary nation
building (Womack, Zapata).
17 Unfortunately, Alan Knight loses critical distance from the revolutionaries’ per-
spective on the Indians. Although Knight meticulously documents the prejudi-
cial opinions of the revolutionaries concerning the Indians, he nevertheless
uncritically adopts the revolutionaries’ position that the indigenous population
was lacking in nationalism: ‘‘For them [the indigenous population] the nation-
state was, at best, a source of fiscal and other demands; they owed it no loyalty
(revolutionaries lamented the Indians’ blind support of antinational reactionary
caudillos like Meixueiro in Oaxaca and Fernández Ruiz in Chiapas).’’ He then
goes on to cite one of the great architects of revolutionary indigenismo, Alfonso
Caso, in order to characterize the Indian for the reader: ‘‘Mexico’s Indians
lacked ‘the essential sentiment of the citizen, that political solidarity which is the
very base on which the principle of nationality rests’ ’’ (Caso 110; Knight, ‘‘Rac-
ism, Revolution’’ 84). While some Indian groups in Mexico did indeed support
antirevolutionary forces, indigenous armed support of the revolution and its
principles has also been thoroughly documented (García de León; Womack,

320 Notes to Chapter 6

 Zapata; Womack, Rebellion chap. 5); and even Knight recognizes this support at
other points in the article.
18 This book is so closely associated to the revolution of 1910 that Justino Fer-
nandez, in the prologue for the second edition of the book published in 1960,
refers to it as ‘‘un ideario de la Revolución Mexicana,’’ as the ideology or plan of
the Mexican revolution (x). Gamio’s program for racial unity is considered so
fundamental to building a revolutionary nation that Fernandez insists, ‘‘Its [the
book’s] programs for action have been realized, are being realized or will soon
be realized, such that his book could also be titled ‘The Revolution in Process’ ’’
(ix).
19 See works by Ricardo Pozas, Mercedes Olivera, and Arturo Warman. For a
synthesis of this line of critique, see Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo, ‘‘Inven-
ción de tradiciones: Encuentros y desencuentros de la población Mame con el
indegenismo mexicano.’’
20 All translations of Gamio’s text are my own.
21 One could argue that, by his own criteria, the indigenous population already
constituted a nation in themselves. After all, as the majority of the population,
the indigenous population belonged to one ‘‘race,’’ sharing the set of cultural
characteristics Gamio describes with only slight variation across ethnic lines.
The distinct indigenous languages also shared common roots as well, much like
the Romance languages. Of course, the ‘‘unfortunate’’ implication of drawing
such a conclusion, from Gamio’s perspective, is that the majority population
would be in a position to impose its majority culture as the o≈cial national
culture.
22 ‘‘Once we know, scientifically, the mode of being of the great otomí family and
the reasons for their mode of being . . . [we] must determine the actual needs of
this great family, ascertain and immediately supply the means for remedy[ing
those needs] and establish the scientific observation of their development’’ (17).
23 In fact, Gamio devotes a subsequent chapter to the detailed comparison of
indigenous, mestizo, and white laborers’ capacity to labor, the kinds of labor
they are capable of, as well as the factors influencing the di√erences in their
levels of productivity. Gamio admits that his conclusions are drawn from purely
anecdotal evidence; nevertheless he concludes indigenous workers have a
greater capacity for work than those of mixed race or European descent, though
indigenous workers are physically smaller, consistently undernourished, and
generally unmotivated (Forjando Patria 140). Thus Gamio suggests the task
before the revolutionary government is twofold. First, the government must
isolate the factors contributing to Indians’ greater capacity to labor so that these
factors may be generalized. Second, it is necessary to improve the conditions
under which Indians labor so that, in part, they may produce at an even greater
capacity. But also, improvement in labor conditions is essential if a ‘‘socialist’’
solution is to be avoided in favor of an ‘‘integral development’’ (141). Gamio
produces Indian di√erence in productivity in the hopes of reproducing it for

Notes to Chapter 6 321

 national development, but this process of production and reproduction is neces-
sarily informed by an anxiety over that di√erence—an anxiety over its potential
for sedition. Again, Indian di√erence must be harnessed for the nation or else
be lost to ‘‘antinationalist’’ forces.
24 In 1921 the Federal Education System was founded to ‘‘promote . . . national
values and achieve linguistic homogeneity’’ through universalization of Spanish
(Hernández Castillo 133). In the same year, the Department for the Education
and Culture of the Indigenous Race was also founded, and a program of travel-
ing teachers was established under its direction to promote, in addition to
literacy in Spanish, the principles of ‘‘industry’’ and ‘‘saving’’ among the indige-
nous populations throughout rural areas (Pozas Arciniega 248; Durand Alcán-
tara 113). In 1925 the Department of Rural Schools for the Cultural Incorpora-
tion of the Indian was created to institutionalize the work of the traveling
teachers program by establishing a system of permanent rural schools (Barre
61). In this same year the first National Boarding School for Indians opened as a
venue for pursuing advanced education (Durand Alcántara 113). In 1934 the
Department for Social Action, Culture, and Indigenous Protection was founded
in Chiapas, its primary task to promote Western styles of dress among the
Indians of the state (Hernández Castillo 133). In 1936, Lázaro Cárdenas na-
tionalized this department, and in 1937 he created a Department of Indian
Education to centralize the many national and regional indigenista departments
and programs already established under a newly created Secretary of Education.
25 Manuel Gamio and other revolutionary intellectuals of this era transformed the
legacy of a colonial regime of racial di√erence into the twentieth-century dis-
course of mestizaje through their literary and political production. This dis-
course of mestizaje provided the primary process of identification for the revo-
lutionary nation, and as such, it had devastating e√ects on the indigenous
population of Mexico. In the 1930 census, one-third of the Mexican population
identified as Indian, but today the indigenous population makes up a little over
one-tenth of the population (Medina 133; Hernández Navarro, ‘‘Cuidadanos
iguales’’ 33). In Chiapas, one of the four states with the largest indigenous
populations, the 1910 census recorded the indigenous population as 35 percent
of the state’s total, but by 1950, this percentage was reduced to 26 percent. This
figure has remained fairly constant since then, with the Chapanecan Indians
making up 26 percent of the population in 1990, as well (Viquera 282).
This precipitous decline cannot be explained by overall growth or a dramatic
increase in interracial marriages. Instead, I would suggest, it reflects the partial
success of the discourse of mestizaje as a process of identification—Indians
were culturally Ladinized into the national mestizo ideal. Mestizaje’s rhetorical
force did not diminish over the course of the twentieth century, despite the
dramatic growth in Pan-American indigenous organizing in its second half. As
Sarah Hilbert has argued in her wonderful article ‘‘For Whom the Nation?
Internationalization, Zapatismo, and the Struggle over Mexican Modernity,’’

322 Notes to Chapter 6

 President Carlos Salinas de Gotarí (1988–1994) repeatedly relied on the dis-
course of mestizaje in his pitch to sell Mexico’s participation in world trade to
his own constituency. In nationalist speeches advocating Mexico’s participation
in nafta, Salinas repeatedly invoked the discourse of mestizaje, citing the
Mexican people’s ‘‘adaptability’’ and ‘‘vitality’’—their ability to survive and trans-
form—as evidence of their readiness to fully open the country’s border to the
world market (Hilbert 127–26). Salinas’s use of mestizaje to justify the neo-
liberal reforms necessary to enter nafta is symptomatic of the complicity be-
tween the discourse of mestizaje and the discourse of development in produc-
ing the Mexican nation and national character as modern, a complicity that
becomes particularly evident in the second half of the century, as we shall see
hereafter.
26 All translations of the communiqués are my own. In instances where the Zapa-
tistas use the masculine noun form to indicate both men and women, I insert
the female form in brackets.
27 imf structural adjustment mandates in the 1980s forced most Latin American
countries to adopt neoliberal economic policies. However, the generation of pri
cadres who came of age in the party with Salinas—those trained at Harvard and
Stanford business and economic schools—embraced neoliberalism, without res-
ervation, as the only sound approach to economic development left for Mexico.
28 For an exhaustive analysis of the e√ects of salinismo on all areas of peasant
production, see Harvey, Rebellion in Chiapas. For the e√ects of the oil boom and
energy development in the Lacandón jungle on indigenous social relations, see
Collier, Basta!
29 Critics of development, such as Philip McMichael, conclude, somewhat regret-
fully, that the shift to neoliberalism has e√ectively brought about an end to the
era of development. From McMichael’s (1997) perspective, even if models of
development were rife with problems—ranging from technical ones to episte-
mological ones—the idea of development rested on an accepted notion of the
need for economic planning and government intervention; it entailed a consid-
eration of the issues surrounding economic inequalities. Government plan-
ning, economic intervention, and consideration of social costs are all anathema
to a neoliberal understanding of the proper functioning of the economy.
30 Mexico’s economy su√ered the same oil syndrome that other oil-led economies
su√ered during their boom periods. The export boom in oil overvalued the
national currency, drawing labor and capital into oil production and related
nontradable industries, such as construction, infrastructure, and services.
31 An ejido is a geographically restricted farm that is granted to members of a
single indigenous ethnic group that have historically formed a community, such
as a village or town. A communal farm is granted to groups of farmers regard-
less of their ethnic, geographic, or historical ties to each other. In both cases, the
land is granted under the presumption that the land will be worked communally
by the members of the cooperative. Such communal farming does not generally

Notes to Chapter 6 323

 take place, even on the ejidos granted to indigenous peoples. Generally, the
members are granted individual plots of land within the ejido or communal
farm, and they may or may not pool their labor for certain seasonal work (Ruiz
interview, April 1996). Ejidos and communal farms are discussed in greater
detail later in this essay.
32 The indigenous peasantry has been thoroughly integrated in national and inter-
national markets since the conquest and has been ‘‘involved’’ in nonagricultural
work since the colonial era, as made evident by the Requerimiento and the
encomíenda systems discussed earlier. Nevertheless, in Mexico, the nature of
their work and the terms of their integration into national and international
markets changed dramatically with the oil boom and the shift in agricultural
policy that the boom financed. Forms of economic exploitation once again
articulated with cultural formations to redefine Indian identities.
33 This apparently innocuous change in farming techniques had profound e√ects
on indigenous social relations, according to Collier, including the increased
class di√erentiation between families that could a√ord to send family members
to do wage work and those who could not. In Zinacantán and Chamula, Collier
found that labor-saving inputs made it no longer necessary for these families to
employ the services of poorer indigenous peasants in the community. Some
migrants were also able to turn savings into capital for investment in other
economic activities, such as trucking or small stores, further di√erentiating
themselves within their communities. As relationships of reciprocity and de-
pendency were displaced by a money economy, the existence of the poorest
sectors of the peasantry became more precarious (Collier).
34 During Echeverría’s administration, corn imports from the United States actu-
ally increased. This increase in corn imports was part of a policy to provide
cheap food for the poorest sectors and was not simply meant to compensate for
decreased domestic production (Collier 93). Nevertheless, such importing of
basic grains invariably contributes to a decrease in domestic production, as
peasants find it cheaper to buy corn than to produce it.
35 In 1973, for example, under Echeverría, the responsibilities of the Mexican
National Co√ee Institute (inmecafe) expanded from research and technical
support to include the organizing, financing, purchasing, and distributing of
co√ee production by peasant producers organized on ejidos and communal
farms (Harvey, Rebellion in Chiapas 9). By the end of the 1970s, inmecafe
purchased 44 percent of the domestic co√ee supply (9). Not only did inmecafe
extend credit to these small-scale farmers through their second- and third-tier
cooperative organizations—Uniones de Ejidos (ues) in the Chiapas highlands
and the Union de Uniones (uu) in the Lacandón jungle—but inmecafe also
absorbed a large percentage of the transportation costs.
The increased services in export agriculture provided by the state were not
simply the result of a newfound sense of duty to its constituency on the part of

324 Notes to Chapter 6

 the pri. Rather, these ue organized into third-tier cooperatives (such as the
Rural Association for Collective Interests–Union of Unions [aric-uu] in the
Lacandón jungle) and pressured the government for credit and technical assis-
tance. This pressure was the determining factor in garnering assistance from
the government. This form of assistance was, nevertheless, in line with López
Portillo’s agricultural strategy.
36 Nationwide, corn producers make up 68 percent of the economically active
population employed in agricultural production (Barry 103). Ninety percent of
this 68 percent are small-holding producers, with five hectares or less in land
under cultivation. Nationally, on average, they sell a little less than half of the
corn they produce on the domestic market, keeping a little more than half for
household consumption (Appendini 145). The statistics for Chiapas show some
significant variations. In Chiapas, as of 1990–1992, 91 percent of the ejido
members still produced corn, with 61.5 percent of the state’s arable lands dedi-
cated to its cultivation. In 1992, fully 67 percent of Chiapas’s corn produced was
destined for the national market. Only 33 percent went to household consump-
tion (Harvey, Rebellion in Chiapas 14–15; Orozco Zuarth 101). These figures
indicated that the peasantry in Chiapas was more invested in corn production,
and considerably more dependent on the domestic market for the sale of their
corn (as well as on the subsidies that facilitated that sale), than their counter-
parts in other states. The figures also demonstrate that these small-scale corn
producers, so often misidentified as ‘‘subsistence farmers,’’ are in fact deeply
integrated into the national economy.
37 Hence, in the ezln’s second declaration from the Lacandón jungle, the Zapatis-
tas were as quick to demand refrigerators, televisions, and laundry machines as
they were to demand health care, education, and justice. They were as interested
in urbanizing the Lacandón jungle as in guaranteeing peasants access to land.
38 López Portillo’s parallel policies of funding both export and domestic agricul-
tural documents a larger, ongoing debate in Mexico over the value of small-scale
peasant production. During the 1970s some Mexican intellectuals, such as
Roger Bartra, argued that peasant production in general was ine≈cient and
added nothing to the agricultural development policy of enhancing Mexico’s
comparative advantage in exports. Others, such as Armando Bartra and Arturo
Warman, argued it was essential for Mexico to maintain small-scale peasant
production to ensure a domestic food supply and subsidize industrialization
(Collier 66–67; Hewitt de Alcántara, Anthropological Perspectives). The abun-
dance of revenues from oil made it possible for López Portillo to forestall a
decision on peasant production. He was able to use excess revenues to support
both large-scale agro-industry for export and the small-scale peasant production
for export and domestic consumption. In addition, oil-led development projects
allowed the consecutive administrations of Echeverría and López Portillo to
avoid the redistribution of land in Chiapas by providing two safety valves for

Notes to Chapter 6 325

 absorbing the increasing landless population. First, wage work in the Gulf Coast
oil fields, as well as in the hydroelectric projects that oil production financed,
siphoned o√ the indigenous population from the highlands who could no
longer incorporate themselves into the existing, but saturated, communal farms
and ejidos. Second, oil revenues financed an agricultural policy geared toward
making small-scale peasant production viable on a long-term basis, and this, in
turn, fostered the continued colonization of the Lacandón jungle (Collier 91–
94, 101). Since the 1950s, the Lacandón jungle had functioned as an agricultural
frontier for landless indigenous peasants from all over southeastern Mexico.
But in the 1970s, migration from the Chiapas highlands to the jungle increased
dramatically (Rus, ‘‘The ‘Comunidad Revolucionaria Institucional’ ’’ 296; Har-
vey, The Chiapas Rebellion 60). pri agricultural development policy during this
period targeted the indigenous peasantry, making small-scale production in the
fragile ecosystem of the jungle profitable, though not sustainable.
39 Beginning in 1982, the governmental subsidies that had become a standard of
peasant life ‘‘decreased on average by 13 percent annually, after having increased
by 12.5 percent per year during the 1970s’’ (Harvey, Rebellion in Chiapas 11). By
1987, only 43 percent of the rural social sector (those organized on ejidos and
communal farms) was receiving credit. In the Chiapas highlands and jungle—
the Zapatistas’ two strongholds—only 30 and 38 percent of the rural social
sector, respectively, received credit that year (7). On the national level, only 37
percent of the area planted in corn, and 43 percent of the area planted in beans,
received credit. These are crops that are almost exclusively farmed by small-
scale producers. The shift toward commercial agriculture dominated by large-
scale private production—favored by the World Bank and the imf —was already
under way before Salinas was elected. Nationally, by 1990, only 12.7 percent of
the rural social sector received credit for planting (7, 11).
The e√ects of structural adjustment were just as drastic in the area of co√ee,
with the virtual elimination of inmecafe as a buyer of peasant co√ee. In 1982–
1983, inmecafe’s purchasing share of the national co√ee supply had been 44
percent. By 1987–1988, it was down to just 9.6 percent (Hernández Navarro,
‘‘Nadando con los tiburones’’ 62; Harvey, Rebellion in Chiapas 9).
40 Again, the impact of this measure was particularly felt in Chiapas, where
roughly one-third of the rural social sector farms co√ee. In the Lacandón jungle
alone, there were 17,000 co√ee producers, 93 percent of them cultivating under
two hectares of land (Hernández Navarro interview, September 1994; Harvey,
Rebellion in Chiapas 10). Chiapas is the principal co√ee-producing state in Mex-
ico, in terms of tonnage, and co√ee is the third most important crop for the
state, in terms of income generated (Orozco Zuarth 101). The vast majority of
co√ee producers are small-scale peasants, but the distribution of the land in
co√ee cultivation resembles a Central American nation more than it resembles
other states in Mexico. According to Harvey, with nearly 74,000 co√ee growers
in the state, ‘‘91 percent . . . have less than 5 hectares, while 116 private owners

326 Notes to Chapter 6

 possess 12 percent of the area under co√ee cultivation’’ (Rebellion in Chiapas 10).
There are approximately 200,000 ejidatarios and comuneros in the state.
41 Since small-holding peasants invariably farm more than one crop, they could
presumably have retreated into the safety of basic grains production, which
continued to enjoy price supports throughout de la Madrid’s administration.
This was due to the consistent pressure put on his administration by the peasant
producers themselves. Independent peasant organizations flourished during de
la Madrid’s administration, and mobilizations for increases in the price paid for
corn were frequent and partially successful. These mobilizations by peasants
generally occurred at the statewide level. In the 1980s, independent peasant
organizations in Chiapas staged demonstrations and takeovers of government
facilities in support of corn producers. Though the peasant mobilizations in the
1980s were often met with violence by the state government, and leaders were
frequently jailed, Chiapas was one of the few states where these independent
associations were able to negotiate increases in price supports and credit for
corn producers, as well as support for infrastructural development projects
(Hernández Navarro, ‘‘Cuidadanos iguales’’ 33, 35). Nevertheless, price supports
for corn failed to keep pace with the inflation. By 1987 the tide began to turn
against corn producers when the cnc, unsurprisingly, signed onto the Pact for
Stability and Economic Growth (pece). The pece was an agreement between
various sectors on price and wage freezes intended to control inflation and
stabilize the value of the peso. It was somewhat successful in this regard, bring-
ing inflation to around 20 percent by 1991. According to Harvey, however, the
agricultural sector bore the brunt of the burden: ‘‘The real value of guaranteed
maize prices fell behind the rate of increase in input costs. As a result, the
proportion of maize producers operating at a loss jumped from 43 percent in
1987 to 65 percent in 1988’’ (Harvey, Rebellion in Chiapas 11).
By 1989 to 1993, the period Harvey refers to as the most critical, Salinas was
in o≈ce. Price supports for basic grains were phased out early on in his admin-
istration, and the tide turned definitively against small-scale basic grain pro-
ducers. Initially Salinas liberalized all basic grains prices except for corn and
beans. This was devastating for thousands of small-scale producers who had
diversified into soy and sorghum under the administrations of the 1970s and
early 1980s on the basis of price supports. Nevertheless it left the purchasing
price for the two most important basic grain crops safely subsidized. This ar-
rangement, however, was short lived. Though recognized as ‘‘sensitive crops,’’
corn and bean price subsidies were nevertheless included in the nafta negotia-
tions. The nafta accords provided for a gradual phasing out of price supports
for these two crops over the course of fifteen years, e√ective immediately (Har-
vey, Rebellion in Chiapas 13). Corn is Chiapas’s most important crop. As I have
already mentioned, over 90 percent of the state’s small-holding peasantry is
involved in producing corn on more than 60 percent of the state’s arable land
(Orozco Zuarth 101). As incredulous as pri politicians may be about indigenous

Notes to Chapter 6 327

 peoples’ knowledge of nafta, the Zapatistas’ citing it as one of the reasons for
their insurgency makes perfect sense if we consider that nafta turned tempo-
rary adjustment policies into international law.
42 I am not implying that indigenous identity is contingent on the ownership of
land, or even restricted to rurality. Indeed, indigenous identity exceeds the
category of the peasant, just as peasant identity exceeds the category of land-
ownership. With regard to Mexican indigenous identity, Stefano Varese has
convincingly argued for an understanding of ethnicity as a historical formation
of long duration, a formation that is, in most cases, both anterior and posterior
to social class (Varese 154). I would add, however, the impossibility of treating
these two sources of identity as separate or independent from each other at this
particular moment in the historical formation of indigenous subjectivity in
Mexico.
43 As a historical formation, this corporate clientelism was the result of a compro-
mise between the elites and the rural and urban subalterns that had participated
in the 1910 revolution, a compromise registering the pressure that was brought
to bear on elites in the formation of a postrevolutionary state by these mass
participants and their aspirations for inclusion in the national project. See John
Womack, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, for a study of the peasant pressure
brought to bear on state formation during and after the Mexican revolution.
44 The Plan de Ayala calls for the restitution of lands to the ‘‘oppressed pueblos’’ of
Morelos in Articles 6, 7, and 8. The Agrarian Law delineates the methods and
standards under which such restitution will take place. Neither the Plan de Ayala
nor the Agrarian Law makes specific reference to Indians when demanding
restitution of the land for the ‘‘pueblos.’’ Nevertheless, Article 6 of the Plan de
Ayala states that ‘‘usurped’’ lands will be returned to ‘‘the pueblos or citizens
who have the titles corresponding to those properties’’; and Article 1 of the
Agrarian Law specifically states that for those despoiled of lands, it is ‘‘su≈cient
that they possess legal titles dated before the year 1856, in order that they enter
immediately into possession of their [despoiled] properties’’ (Womack, Zapata
402, 406). This would suggest that both documents are acknowledging the land
tenure prior to nineteenth-century liberal reforms of 1857. Though these docu-
ments never recognize the ‘‘pueblos’’ or the revolutionaries as Indian, the
Zapatistas nonetheless base the legitimacy of their claims for restitution on
the corporate forms of land tenure granted to indigenous communities under
the Spanish Crown and Church.
45 Many indigenous rights activists in Mexico use the term ‘‘indianist’’ instead of
‘‘indigenist’’ precisely to di√erentiate their movements from the policies and
practices of indigenismo, or indigenism. Indeed, Indianist movements define
themselves against the indigenist reform movements of the 1940s, 1950s, and
1960s that sought to integrate indigenous populations through cultural assim-
ilation. For the remainder of this chapter, I will use the term ‘‘indianist’’ to
describe contemporary movements for rights by indigenous peoples unless I

328 Notes to Chapter 6

 am referring to government-sponsored movements, in which case I will use the
term ‘‘indigenist.’’
46 Araceli Burgette Cal y Mayor is an Indian rights activist with the Independent
Front of Indian People (fipi). Magarito Ruiz is a Tojolabal Indian, a senator to
the Mexican Congress for the state of Chiapas, and also an Indian rights activist
with fipi.
47 Southern indigenous communities who participated in the revolutionary war
did demand the right to self-government in addition to their land rights; Article
27 represented a partial response to these demands. Indian activists suggest,
however, that something akin to autonomy rights early on in the revolution
would have fully recognized the complex nature of indigenous identity, includ-
ing the supracommunal aspects of indigenous identity suppressed by colonial
and postcolonial governments. Territorial rights to historical domains would
have recognized larger indigenous social formations by granting broader politi-
cal, religious, cultural, and economic control over extensive areas of land (Bur-
guete interview, August 1994; Sarmiento interview). Sergio Sarmiento is a Mex-
ican sociologist with the National Autonomous University in Mexico City
(unam).
48 ‘‘Al pueblo de México:/Hermanos mexicanos: Somos producto de 500 años de
luchas: primero contra la esclavitud, en la guerra de Independencia contra
España encabezada por los insurgentes, después por evitar ser absorbidos por el
expansionismo norteamericano, luego por promulgar nuestra Constitucion y
expulsar al Imperio Francés, despues la dictadura porfirista nos negó la aplica-
ción de las leyes de reforma y el pueblo se rebeló formando sus propios líderes,
surgieron Villa y Zapata, hombres pobres como nosotros.’’
49 Indeed, Gamio, in a poetic, two-page introductory chapter to Forjando Patria,
theorizes the indigenous tribes in the Americas as foreshadowing Latin Ameri-
can nations: ‘‘There were small patrias: the Aztec, the Maya-Kiché, the Inca . . .
which perhaps later would have joined together and fused into the embodiment
of great indigenous patrias, such as those formed in China and Japan during the
same period. It could not be thus. When Columbus arrived with other men,
other blood, other ideas, the crucible that was unifying the [indigenous] race was
tragically overturned, and the mold in which Nationality was being made and
Patria was being crystallized broke into bits’’ (Gamio, Forjando Patria 5).
50 ‘‘Somos los herederos de los verdaderos forjadores de nuestra nacionalidad, los
desposeídos somos millones y llamamos a todos nuestros hermanos a ques se
sumen a este llamado como el único camino para no morir de hambre ante la
ambición insciable de una dictadura de más de 70 años.’’
51 Also, though this first communiqué is free of any of the explicit vanguardist
rhetoric associated with the Central American movements, the ezln General
Command does order their troops to ‘‘advance to the capital of the country,
defeating the Mexican federal army, protecting in its liberating advance the civil
population,’’ calling on Mexicans to join them in this e√ort. Thus, although the

Notes to Chapter 6 329

 Zapatistas later insist they are not interested in taking power over the central
government, this initial communiqué certainly suggests political power as a
possible goal of the insurrection.
52 The ideological a≈nity between the ezln and the Central American liberation
movements is further demonstrated in the ezln’s ‘‘Revolutionary Laws,’’ first
published in the ezln’s o≈cial newspaper El Despertador Mexicana on 1 De-
cember 1993. In both structure and content, these laws bear a deep resem-
blance to the Historic Program of the fsln (fsln). Though the ezln’s ‘‘Laws’’ are
more detailed and up to date than the fsln’s Program—for example, ezln law
permits women to hold land titles and guarantees them reproductive freedom—
both stress the importance of national sovereignty, particularly with regard to
natural resources, the need for economic independence from foreign interest,
the commitment to collective agriculture, and the importance of women’s par-
ticipation in the revolution. A law protecting the rights of indigenous people is
glaringly absent, given that there are revolutionary laws covering taxation,
women’s rights, agriculture rights, urban reform, workers’ rights, industry and
commerce, social security, and justice.
53 There are almost as many Mexican organizers, advisers, participant anthropolo-
gists, sociologists, ethnobotanists, biologists, and so forth working with indige-
nous peasants in Chiapas as there are Zapatistas in the Lacandón. Those I spoke
with who had been working among the Zapatista bases on di√erent governmen-
tal and nongovernmental projects professed to having been surprised by the
uprising and the existence of the ezln. Though some of these proclamations
may have been necessary dissembling in light of government repression, I
believe most were genuine, as many of those interviewed expressed distress at
not having noticed. Though she herself worked in the highlands, interviewee
Reyna Mogel told me she had a colleague who had sought therapy: ‘‘She felt so
betrayed! She worked in the jungle with these people for fifteen years, and not
one of them told her anything. Thank God that didn’t happen to me’’ (Mogel
interview). Alfonso Carrión told me that during his first visit to Zapatista terri-
tory for the cnd, he shook hands with masked Zapatista leaders who greeted
him with ‘‘Hey, Poncho, how are you, brother?’’ Nevertheless Carrión said he
did not feel betrayed. Instead, like any lifetime politico, he was preoccupied with
analyzing the shortcomings of his own organization, which had obviously failed
to address the needs of the constituency he worked among. Though Carrión has
worked for two of the most successful cooperatives by all accounts (cnoc and
Pajal-Yakactic-uu), he spent the entire interview examining the mistakes made
by each of these.
54 Though there are similarities between Central America and Chiapas—geogra-
phy, climate, crop production, racial demographics, government repression,
and oligarchic interests—there are also considerable di√erences between them,
most fundamentally in the area of land tenure. Whereas in Central America
oligarchic interests came to own as much as 80 percent of the arable land in

330 Notes to Chapter 6

 their respective counties prior to the revolutionary movements of the 1970s and
1980s, in Chiapas, by the 1990s, more than one-half of the arable land was in
the hands of comuneros and ejidatarios. After decades of struggle with large-
scale ranchers and their government cronies, the Zapatista base living in the
Lacandón jungle had succeeded in obtaining legal titles to the lands they had
cleared. It is also worth noting that Chiapas is not exceptional, as other southern
states in Mexico—Guerrero, Hidalgo, Oaxaca—share many of these characteris-
tics.
55 Alfonso Carrión is a member of the Labor Party (pt), and a technical adviser for
the National Coordinator of Co√ee Growing Organizations (cnoc).
56 ‘‘Aqui estamos, nostros, los muertos de siempre, murieron otra vez, pero ahora
para vivir.’’
57 Using a language of Marxism-Leninism mixed with syncretic indigenous Chris-
tianity, ccri tells the Mexican workers that a triple oppression hides behind the
‘‘mask’’ of neoliberalism (230). Mexican workers ‘‘die’’ three times in the ‘‘fac-
tory of the nation’s history’’: once from poverty because of unjust wages; once at
the hands of government-run unions that betray their class interests; and once
at the hands of ‘‘traitors’’ selling the country’s natural resources on the backs of
laborers. Just as the worker dies three deaths in the present, his life is restored
three times in the future: once when the value of his labor is justly recognized;
once when the worker walks hand and hand with the peasant; and once when
the worker embraces ‘‘all of the people to march together on a new and better
path. Faceless, the worker lives and dies three times’’ (230). Once again the
Zapatistas extend the terms of their own exclusion as Indians, death and face-
lessness, to the entire working class, as well as the terms of the entire country’s
possible redemption: ‘‘Justice! Liberty! Democracy! These are the three keys to
unlock the three chains’’ (231).
58 See, for example, the following communiqués: ‘‘Oferta del PFCRN,’’ 11 January
1994 (78–80); ‘‘Requisitos para los Mediadores,’’ 18 January 1994 (82–83);
‘‘Reconocimiento al Comisionado,’’ 18 January 1994 (94–95); ‘‘Dicen Algunos
Miembros del ezln,’’ 26 January 1994; ‘‘Al CEOIC,’’ 6 February 1994 (122–
24); ‘‘Al Frente Cívico de Mapastepec,’’ 8 February 1994 (131); ‘‘A la CNPI,’’ 8
February 1994 (133); ‘‘A la CNPA,’’ 8 February 1994 (133–34); A la CONAC-LN,’’
14 February 1994 (145–47); ‘‘El inicio del Díalago,’’ 16 February 1994 (155–56);
‘‘A las ONG’s,’’ 23 February 1994 (163–68); ‘‘Al CEOIC,’’ 17 March 1994 (193–
95). After the first National Democratic Convention, held in the Lacandón on
6–9 August 1994, and the national elections, held on 21 August 1994, in which
the pri won by more than 50 percent of the vote, the form of address of the
ezln changes tone. Disappointed by the pri’s victory, the ezln takes a more
recalcitrant tone in their communiqués, beginning most of them simply with
‘‘the ezln declares.’’
59 Current electoral law in Mexico does not allow independent candidates to run
for any level of elected o≈ce. To run for any o≈ce, from the lowest municipal

Notes to Chapter 6 331

 o≈ce to the o≈ce of the presidency, any candidate on the ballot must be a
representative of a registered political party.
60 They rejected the government’s o√er, stating that the terms o√ered by the gov-
ernment once again reduced the scope of their demands: ‘‘The bad government
tried to limit the demand for autonomy to the indigenous communities, leaving
intact the centralist power scheme that magnifies, to the level of dictatorship, the
Federal Executive Branch. The real demand for autonomous municipalities was
pushed aside by the government’s response [to our demands]’’ (262).
61 The Zapatistas named their site after the revolutionary convention of 1914 in
which Villistas and Zapatistas participated, once again evoking the parallelism
between the two movements and reinscribing their struggle as national and
historic in scope (Knight, The Mexican Revolution 256–63).
62 The event was historic. Sergio Sarmiento, a sociologist whose areas of expertise
are twentieth-century Indian and agrarian movements, referred to it as ‘‘ep-
ochal’’: ‘‘the cnd symbolizes, for the first time in [Mexican] history, the Indians
summoning the rest of the nation, summoning us, the ladinos, to the project of
remaking the nation, to form a new constituency together’’ (Sarmiento inter-
view).
63 Sympathizers in these municipalities took over the municipal o≈ces and re-
structured town governance according to indigenous practice rather than mu-
nicipal law. The peso devaluated the next day, and though Zedillo immediately
blamed the Zapatista o√ensive, it became apparent the two events were unre-
lated as the extent of national fiscal insolvency was revealed.
64 The first question, for example, asked if the participant agreed the sixteen
‘‘principle demands of the Mexican people are land, housing, work, food,
health, education, culture, information, independence, democracy, liberty, jus-
tice, peace, security, battling corruption, defense of the natural environment’’
(ezln 34). As these sixteen demands were, in e√ect, an expanded version of the
initial eleven Zapatista demands, an a≈rmative answer would suggest the
Zapatista demands were essentially national demands. An a≈rmative answer
would also have the e√ect of making the ezln the participant’s representative
before the Mexican government. The second question asked if all forces in favor
of democratization should form a broad citizen’s front. The third asked if the
participant believed in the need for fundamental reform to the political process,
listing a number of specific reforms to broaden electoral rights. This question
was particularly relevant to the stalled negotiation process, as the list of sug-
gested reforms comprised precisely the political issues that government repre-
sentatives refused to discuss with the ezln (Monjardin interview). An a≈rma-
tive answer would once again bolster the ezln’s demand to negotiate the terms
of national democratic enfranchisement. The next two questions asked the
participant to give his or her opinion on whether or not the ezln should be-
come a political force. The final question asked if women’s full and equal par-
ticipation in civic life should be guaranteed.

332 Notes to Chapter 6

65 Specifically, over 90 percent of the participants voted in favor of questions one,
two, three, and six, though participants were divided on questions four and five
(Gilbreth 3). The six questions asked in the consulta were:

1. Do you agree that the principle demands of the Mexican people are land,
housing, work, food, health, education, culture, information, independence,
democracy, liberty, justice, peace, security, fighting corruption, and defense
of the environment?
2. Should the distinct Democratic Forces unite in a broad citizen’s front, in
social and political opposition, to fight for these 16 principle demands?
3. Should we Mexicans initiate a profound political reform that guarantees
democracy? (Respect for the vote, a trustworthy voters registry, impartial and
autonomous electoral organizations, free citizen’s participations, including
nonparty and nongovernmental participation, recognizing all the political,
national, regional and local forces equally.)
4. Should the ezln convert into a independent, new, political organization?
5. Should the ezln join other organizations, together forming a new politi-
cal organization?
6. Should we guarantee the equal participation and presence of women in all
the posts of representation and responsibility in civil and government orga-
nizations? (ezln 34)

66 In a subsequent letter reflecting on the results of the consulta, Marcos charac-

terized the experience thus: ‘‘The great lesson, the most important instruction
of this Consulta is that we can organize ourselves to speak and to listen, that
without the guardianship or permission of anyone we are able to construct the
mechanisms for dialogue. The results of the Consulta answer that we can, that
there are tens of thousands of human beings willing to work and search for the
road to a better world, a world that no one promises us or gives us, a world we
can construct as we want it and not as Power wants it to be’’ (Marcos, ‘‘La
Consulta’’ 2).
67 The success of the consulta in pressuring the government to negotiate in good
faith was due in no small part to the role played by the ac in organizing it. As the
coalition of ngos that had organized the observations of the presidential and
federal elections, the ac gained a tremendous amount of national prestigious
for its thorough organization of observers at electoral sites, as well as for their
impartial reporting of results across Mexico’s states. Thus the ac not only had
the organizational structure in place for conducting the ezln’s nationwide
referendum but also had the respect of the left, right, and center of Mexican
politics. Moreover, Zedillo e√ectively owed the national and international legit-
imacy of his presidency to the ac, as it had validated the election results.
68 Exercising a clause in the congressional law governing negotiations allowing
each side to invite advisers to the dialogue, the ezln brought 274 indigenous
and nonindigenous ‘‘advisers’’ to the first session, for a total of 308 delegates

Notes to Chapter 6 333

 (Gilbreth 3). The Zapatistas invited indigenous leaders from national Indianist
organizations, such as fipi and anipa; representatives from cooperative orga-
nizations in Chiapas, such as Luis Hernández Navarro of cnoc; and a coterie of
experts on autonomy in Mexico and Latin America, including Hector Díaz
Polanco, who assisted in drafting autonomy laws for Nicaragua and Brazil, and
Gustavo Esteva, who formally advised the autonomy movement in the neigh-
boring state of Oaxaca (Hernández Navarro interview, September 1996). (Her-
nández Navarro is a founding member of cnoc, a journalist, and an ezln
adviser for the negotiations process.) The advisers so outnumbered the actual
Zapatista representatives that the government representatives protested, threat-
ening to break o√ negotiations. Since the congressional law did not stipulate the
number of advisers each side could invite, the government representatives had
no legal recourse but to retaliate by quickly assembling their own group of old-
school indigenista experts (Hernández Navarro interview, September 1996). In
the end, a total of 496 delegates attended this first session of negotiations
(Gilbreth 3). Thus the Zapatistas maximized the space for democratic participa-
tion even within the negotiation process, once again articulating the particu-
larity of their situation with the national panorama through their political aes-
thetics of form mirroring content.
69 For example, participants in sessions on jurisprudence and political representa-
tion in the government insisted on the need for redistricting municipalities to
ensure indigenous majorities capable of electing indigenous representatives to
the national Senate. This position directly contradicted the ezln’s long-stand-
ing opposition to assuming political o≈ce (Rojas and Gil Olmos, ‘‘Se requiere
un Congreso Nacional’’ 9). There was also considerable disagreement with the
ezln’s position on autonomy, which began with the statement ‘‘The indigenous
peoples have the right to decide their forms of governance in accordance with
customary law and within a framework of unconditional respect for human
rights and the rights of minorities’’ (9). Representatives from other Indianist
organizations vociferously objected to the inclusion of the phrase ‘‘uncondi-
tional respect for human rights’’ on the grounds of its Western, individualist
bias. No resolution was reached on the latter issue, and instead the disagree-
ment was entered into the public document produced by the forum (9). On the
former issue, however, a consensus around redistricting was reached, and the
Zapatista protocol was amended before ratification in the final plenary session.
70 For a detailed discussion of the Pluriethnic Autonomous Regions (raps), please
see Araceli Burguete Cal y Mayor, ‘‘Regiones Autónomas Pluriétnicas . . . y sin
embargo se mueven.’’ Also see my article ‘‘Who’s the Indian in Aztlán? Re-
writing Mestizaje, Indianism, and Chicanismo from the Lacandón.’’
71 The communalists agreed with regionalists on the need for the legal protection
to form autonomous municipalities, as well as on the need for the legal protec-
tion for municipalities to join together when appropriate; however, they rejected
the idea of regional assemblies as untenable in the current political climate, and

334 Notes to Chapter 6

 as potentially stifling of communal di√erences in forms of governance among
Mexico’s fifty-six ethnicities (Burguete interview, April 1996; Morquecho inter-
view). (Gaspar Morquecho is a member of the conpaz, a coalition of ngos
based in San Cristobal that formed in January 1994 to advocate the peaceful
resolution of the conflict. They have played a pivotal role in organizing the
Zapatista events discussed in this chapter.) For an analysis of the history of the
two distinct historical trajectories within the indigenous movements that have
produced these two basic positions on autonomy, see Julio Moguel, ‘‘Diálago en
Sacamch’en: Tercera llamada.’’
72 Comandante David spoke at this plenary, calling it a ‘‘festival of the word’’
precisely because of the contentious discussion taking place. Once again, this
reenactment of the comón writ large was not the silencing of di√erence but the
venue for publicly discussing di√erences among indigenous groups (Gil Olmos
8).
73 Father Ituarte is a priest a≈liated with the San Cristobal Diocese and with its
Human Rights Center Fray Bartolomé de las Casas.
74 The San Andres Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture would allow indige-
nous municipalities to dispense with the party system in electing local o≈cials;
however, these accords have yet to be implemented, and this right to indepen-
dent candidacy would not extend to nonindigenous municipalities.

7. Epilogue: Toward an American ‘‘American Studies’’

1 The lynching of black men in the South during these two decades is the most
profound example of how these multiple limits on black masculinity overlap.
On 28 August 1955, Emmett Till allegedly ‘‘whistled at a white woman.’’ For
exceeding the bounds of permissible black male sexual behavior, for transgress-
ing the discursive sexual order, this fourteen-year-old boy was lynched, the
material ‘‘check’’ on his masculinity even before he became a ‘‘man’’ in age. As
juridical sanction of this policing of black masculinity, an all-white jury acquit-
ted the two white men accused of lynching the boy.
2 Thus it is appropriate to discuss, at this juncture, the infamous biography by
Bruce Perry, Malcolm: The Man Who Changed Black America. According to Perry,
Malcolm X’s parents, for all their posturing of black nationalism, lacked race
pride. He portrays them as currying favor with local whites while distancing
themselves from local blacks. He portrays Malcolm X’s father as a do-nothing, a
swindler, and a womanizer. Perry tells us that his investigations suggest that the
Klan never visited the Littles’ home in Omaha, that Earl Little burned down his
own house in Lansing to avoid eviction, and that he may have died ‘‘attempt[ing]
to board the moving streetcar because some irate husband was after him’’ (12).
What ‘‘really happened,’’ beside being inaccessible, is far less important than
Malcolm X’s memory of the events, and the political interest that inflects his
reconstruction of events. Malcolm X purposely resists this type of racist stereo-

Notes to Chapter 7 335

 typing precisely by positing another kind of history. Indeed, the power and the
danger of Malcolm X’s Autobiography lies, in part, in his refusal to accept these
categories, this racist inscription of his life, even while he illuminates and
explores the contradictions in black consciousness that are the result of this
racism.
3 Regardless of these di√erences between Retamar’s Ariel/Caliban and Malcolm
X’s mascot/homeboy, I will read these categories of subjectivity as homologous
in the service of understanding the links between Malcolm X’s and Che’s quests
for revolutionary subjectivity.
4 In my use of ‘‘mimetic consciousness,’’ I am borrowing from Homi K. Bhabha’s
discussion of ‘‘colonial mimicry.’’ Bhabha has suggested that ‘‘colonial mimicry
is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a di√erence that is
almost the same, but not quite’’ (‘‘Of Mimicry’’ 126). Thus mimetic consciousness
would imply the e√ect colonial mimicry had on the colonial subaltern. The
colonized subject is hailed by the agents of colonialism to mimesis, incited to
imitation. The well-interpellated colonized subject, then, responds to the hail
with mimetic consciousness, with the desire for reform into the ‘‘recognizable
Other.’’
5 Other examples of this self-censoring are the moments in the text when he
richly details his zoots, or their e√ect: ‘‘O√ the train, I’d go through that Grand
Central Station afternoon rush-hour crowd, and many white people simply
stopped in their tracks to watch me pass. The drape and the cut of a zoot suit
showed to the best advantage if you were tall—and I was over six feet. My conk
was fire red.’’ You can almost sense Malcolm X still smiling over the sheer shock
e√ect he had on those white folks, when he follows with an unconvincing ‘‘I was
really a clown, but my ignorance made me think I was ‘sharp’ ’’ (78). Even his
description of his first conk, which he uses to poignantly demonstrate the
devastating e√ects of internalized racism and self-hate, contains a certain hu-
morous build up and makes clear the comradeship and genuine a√ection be-
tween him and Shorty. And while I would agree with bell hooks, in her article
‘‘Malcolm X: Consumed by Images,’’ that Spike Lee wrongly portrays Malcolm
X as paranoid and alone at the end of his film X, I would disagree with her
assessment that Lee glorifies Malcolm Little’s days as Red. Lee successfully
captures the sheer beauty and joy of those days conveyed in Autobiography even
as Malcolm X tries to portray this period as self-deprecating preparation for
salvation of his soul.
6 For an example of how black cultural practices in this period were encoded as
the excess of humanity, see Norman Mailer’s infamous essay ‘‘The White
Negro.’’
7 Sophia functions as the ultimate marker of excess in the logic of mimicry.
Malcolm X tells us, ‘‘To have a white woman who wasn’t a known, common
whore was—for the average black man at least—a status symbol of the first
order’’ (66–67). Possession of a white woman should mark the black man’s

336 Notes to Chapter 7

 slippage from the ‘‘not quite white’’ male to the ‘‘not quite/not white’’ male if,
after all, a white woman is a ‘‘status symbol of the first order.’’ However, by
accepting Sophia as his girlfriend, Malcolm X participates in the fetishization of
black male sexuality as the excess of mimicry because, presumably, Sophia is
drawn to him (and white men are threatened by him) because of his sexual
excess. Sophia’s presence as his girlfriend marks Malcolm X as the sexual excess
of the phallus that Sophia—and white men—lack.
8 The sailors’ riots against Chicano, black, and Filipino zoot-suiters in Los An-
geles in June 1943 were the most blatant demonstration of this disciplining of
excess. For four days, sailors and army personnel on leave from local bases
systematically rampaged neighborhoods, beating up and undressing zoot-
suiters with impunity. Los Angeles police responded by arresting the victims,
and local newspapers blamed the zoot-suiters for the violence. Newspaper ac-
counts claimed that the attacks were not racially motivated, insisting that the
attacks were against costumes and not minorities (Acuña 256–59). Unwittingly,
these newspaper accounts were half right, since, for the sailors, stripping the
zoot-suiters of their excessive dress functioned symbolically to strip them of
their ever-threatening excess sexuality.
9 For a feminist critique of the deployment of a conventional family as model for
the African American community, see, for example, Hortense J. Spillers,
‘‘Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.’’
10 Malcolm X answered a question from a white audience member at a Militant
Labor Forum on 7 January 1965 in the following way: ‘‘I’m the man you think
you are. And if it doesn’t take legislation to make you a man and get your rights
recognized, don’t even talk that legislative talk to me. No, if we’re both human
beings we’ll both do the same thing. And if you want to know what I’ll do, figure
out what you’ll do. I’ll do the same thing—only more of it’’ (Brietman, Malcolm X
Speaks 197–98). In the end, it is Elijah Muhammad’s failure to conform to the
highly moralized and gendered category of the patriarch that so deeply troubles
Malcolm X, leading him to be perceived as dangerous to the noi by Muham-
mad.
11 Malcolm X’s attempt to bring charges of human rights violations on behalf of
black Americans against the United States in the United Nations precisely
threatened the U.S. claim to modernization and its attendant civil discourse.
Such charges would inscribe the United States in the ‘‘barbarity’’ of the ‘‘under-
developed’’ world that it set itself against. Also, if the U.S. government was not
even going to treat its own self-reliant Muslim citizens as equal, then certainly it
would not treat self-reliant nations as equal.
12 Butler suggests that ‘‘gender is . . . [a] performative accomplishment which the
mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and
to perform in the mode of belief ’’ (Gender Trouble 141). If Malcolm X, along with
white and black audiences, believes in his performance as substance (that is to
say, if he is inside rather than outside ideology), he also comes to appreciate the

Notes to Chapter 7 337

 impact of publicly performing this gender category as a mode of belief. In other
words, not only does Malcolm X believe in the ‘‘authenticity’’ of his manhood,
but he also, or rather simultaneously, understands how threatening this man-
hood as a mode of belief is to whites and how enabling it is to blacks. Thus he
performs it publicly at every opportunity. Malcolm X’s acute understanding of
the importance of his performance of full masculinity is recognized by him in
his understanding of himself as ‘‘bogey-man’’ in contrast to Martin Luther King
Jr. and explains the disjuncture in the di√erent perceptions of Malcolm X that I
cited in the passages at the beginning of this section of the chapter.
13 See, for example, Malcolm X’s discussion of the ‘‘true nature’’ of men and
women (Autobiography 226), or his comment about the one woman he trusts,
Sister Betty, having tricked him into marrying, ‘‘maybe she did get me’’ (232).
14 West points out that even Malcolm X’s oft-quoted distinction between the
‘‘house Negro’’ and the ‘‘field Negro’’ ‘‘fails as a persuasive description of the
behavior of ‘well-to-do’ Black folk and ‘poor’ Black folk. In other words, there are
numerous instances of ‘field negroes’ with ‘house negro’ mentalities and
‘house negroes’ with ‘field negro’ mentalities’’ (51).
15 It is interesting to consider the representation of the rape/betrayal of Malinche
as the displacement of the violence that is sutured over by mestizaje as national
origin story. To transcend the di√erences of the heterogeneous population of
Mexico in its formation as a nation-state, it is necessary to place the memory of
the violence on Malinche and contain it precisely in her marginality.

338 Notes to Chapter 7

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 Index

Acheson, Dean, 293 n.4 Autobiography of Malcolm X, 26; autho-

Act for International Development, 25 rial voice in, 265, 273, 276; and colo-
Agency, 7, 9, 12, 38, 162–64, 168–71, nialism, 263, 268–69, 272–77, 337
179, 190, 287–90. See also Butler, nn.10–11; consciousness in, 266–73,
Judith; Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y 289–90; and masculinity, 266–67,
así me nacío la conciencia: authorial 274, 276–77, 337 n.12; representation
voice in; Zapatista Army for National of subaltern in, 33, 267–74, 336 n.5,
Liberation, communiqués of: author- 338n. 15; subjectivity in, 263, 265–78
ial voice in Avendaño, Amado, 244
Agrarian reform. See Mexico; Sandi- Aztlán, 279; queer, 13, 15. See also Na-
nista National Liberation Front agri- tionalism: Chicano
cultural policy
Alarcón, Norma, 65 Baker, Houston, Jr., 265, 276
Alfred, Helen, 292 n.3 Baran, Paul, 292 n.1, 297 n.18
Allianza Civica (ac), 245, 333 n.67 Bartra, Armando, 325 n.38
Almond, Gabriel, 26 Bartra, Roger, 325 n.38
Althusser, Louis, 30, 110, 176 Bastos, Santiago, and Manuela Camus,
American studies, 152; U.S. exceptional- 311 n.7
ism in, 14, 262–63 Batalla, Bonfil, 319 n.10
Anzaldúa, Gloria, 261–62, 280; Batista, Fulgencio, 68, 82, 300 n.6
Borderlands/La Frontera, 281–87 Beverley, John, 156–58, 310 nn.5–6, 311
Arbenz Guzman, Jacobo, 68 n.8
Area of People’s Property (app), 114, Bhabha, Homi, 268, 272, 291 n.1, 300
127, 129, 140, 141, 306 n.20 n.3, 336 n.4
Arrighi, Giovanni, 23 Blauner, Robert, 54
Asociación de Mujeres Nicaragüenses Boas, Franz, 153
‘‘Luisa Amanda Espinoza’’ (amnlae), Boom writers, 153
136 Borge, Tomás, 92
Association of Rural Workers (atc), 113, Brenner, Robert, 128
122, 125, 136, 147 Bretton Woods Conference, 8, 18–21,
Asturias, Miguel Angel, 310 n.6 292 n.3
Atlantic Charter, 18 Bukharin, Nikolai, 18
Burgos-Debray, Elizabeth, 156, 171–72 336 nn.4 and 7, 337 nn.8 and 10; sex-
Butler, Judith, 154, 163–64, 168, 179, uality and gender under, 42; as
276, 288, 337 n.12 trauma, 34–35
Colosío, Donaldo, 243–44
Camus, Manuela. See Bastos, Santiago, Columbus, Christopher. See Colon,
and Manuela Camus Cristobal
Capitalism, 19–20, 42, 51, 55, 128, 154, Commission for Concordance and
176–79, 184–86, 278–79, 298 n.22; Peace (cocopa), 245, 247
and nationalism, 105–6; and subjec- Communism, 4, 23, 24, 44, 97, 98, 302
tivity, 30–31, 40 n.15
Cárdenas, Lázaro, 214–16, 219–20, 322 Consciousness: collective, 70–78, 95–
n.24 98, 130–32, 289–90; discursive bi-
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 48, 53– nary of, 24–25, 28–31, 52, 56–59, 70,
56 80, 83–89, 97, 103–4, 131; and mas-
Carmichael, Stokely, and Charles Ham- culinity, 70–78, 95–98, 130–35, 268;
ilton, 54 and mestizaje, 225, 282; and na-
Carrión, Alfonso ‘‘Poncho,’’ 228–31, tionalism, 91, 100, 104–7, 135; pre-
330 n.53 modern, 39–41, 65–67, 89, 91, 93,
Caste War of 1847 (Mexico), 320 n.14 98–104, 108, 132–33, 140–47, 270;
Castro, Fidel, 68, 74–78, 81–82, 84, 92 and race, 104–5; relation to concien-
Center for the Study and Investigation cia, 10–11, 154–90, 260–61; revolu-
of Agrarian Reform (ciera), 137, 142 tionary, 6–7, 9–12, 65–67, 71, 78–
Chatterjee, Partha, 144–45, 291 n.1 80, 90, 111, 115, 200, 266–73
Chile, 49, 56, 298 n.20 Constitution of 1857 (Mexico), 203–4
Chinchilla Stoltz, Norma, 308 n.2 Constitution of 1917 (Mexico): Article
Churchill, Winston, 18, 292 n.2 27, 5, 206, 215, 219–22, 226, 320
Cienfuegos, Camilo, 75, 84 n.16, 329 n.47
Colás, Santiago, 151–52, 155 Convenio 169 de la OIT, 248
Cold War, 4, 13, 14, 36, 45, 152 Coordinadora Nacional des Organisa-
Collier, George, 215, 324 n.33 ciones Cafetaleras (cnoc), 243, 330
Collins, Joseph, 306 n.17 n.53
Colon, Cristobal: Diario de navegacion, Cuba, 25, 27, 56. See also Castro, Fidel;
86–87, 301 n.11 Guevara, Ernesto ‘‘Che’’; Pasajes de la
Colonialism, 4, 7–8, 14–24, 27, 34–36, guerra revolucionaria
41–47, 49–59, 64–65, 86–88, 96,
100, 105–7, 109–10, 144–45, 154, Davis, Ossie, 264–65
160, 174–76, 180–82, 188–90, 199– Deere, Carmen, 130, 132
205, 211, 212, 219, 221, 233, 239–42, Democracy. See Zapatista Army for Na-
293 n.4, 299 n.1, 300 n.2, 301 n.10, tional Liberation: and democracy
310 n.11, 317 n.1, 318 nn.6–9, 322 Dependency theory, 13, 47–59, 103–4,
n.25, 324 n.32; internal, 48, 54, 263, 263, 297 nn.18 and 20
278–79 (see also Dependency theory); Development, dependent, 10, 53–56
and mimicry, 5, 6, 268–77, 292 n.1, Development, discourse of: and capital-

358 Index
 ism, 19–20, 42, 51, 55, 293 n.7, 298 Escobar, Arturo, 22, 23, 109, 110, 219,
n.22; and colonialism, 17–24, 27, 42– 293 n.6
47, 49–59, 64–65, 109–10, 144–45; Esteva, Gustavo, 22, 333 n.69
consciousness in, 24–25, 28–31, 52, Ethnic studies, 14, 262
56–59; critiques of, 5–6, 13, 47–59; ezln (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion
history of, 17–18, 23–27, 29, 43, 45, Nacional). See Zapatista Army for Na-
57–58; and labor, 15, 21, 31, 51, 298 tional Liberation
nn.21–22; and Marxism, 110; and na-
tionalism, 4–5, 17–18, 45; relation Falleto, Enzo, 48, 54
to discourse of revolution (see Revo- Fanon, Frantz, 189–90, 297 n.18
lution, discourse of: relation to Faribundo Martí National Liberation
discourse of development); and sub- Front, 111, 227, 229, 310 n.5
jectivity, 6–10, 13, 22, 24–25, 27–28, Ferguson, James, 110, 296 n.15
31, 34, 36–38, 52, 56–58, 63, 109, 131, Fernandez, Justino, 321 n.18
263–64, 293 nn.5–6; theory of his- Feudalism, 298 n.22
tory in, 5–6, 38, 55–56, 97, 111 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance
Díaz, Polanco Héctor, 91, 318 nn.6–7, Council, 234
333 n.68 fmln. See Faribundo Martí National
Diaz, Porfirio, 204–5, 224. See also Mex- Liberation Front
ican Revolution of 1910 Foquismo, 31–32, 110–11. See also Dias
Diaz, Rosendo, 121 de la selva; Pasajes de la guerra
Dias de la selva (Mario Payeras): and revolucionaria
colonialism, 100, 106; consciousness Forum on the Reform of the Mexican
in, 9–10, 65–67, 91–98, 108; and State, 249, 252
masculinity, 91–92, 96, 100, 108, Fox, Vicente, 252
152, 259, 265; and modernity, 67, 94, Franco, Jean, 64, 88–89, 94, 300 n.4,
97; relationship to dependency the- 301 n.14
ory, 103; representations of jungle in, Frank, André Gunder, 53–54, 297 n.20,
93–98, 100–101, 165–69; represen- 298 n.22
tations of subaltern in, 33, 91, 93, 98– Frente Faribundo Martí de Liberación
108, 152, 164–66, 177–78, 269, 302 Nacional. See Faribundo Martí Na-
n.16, 315 n.22; subjectivity in, 9–10, tional Liberation Front
66, 91–108, 152, 165, 267, 303 n.17 Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacio-
Dos Santos, Theotonio, 53, 54 nal. See Sandinista National Libera-
Dussel, Enrique, 48 tion Front
fsln. See Sandinista National Libera-
Echeverría, Luis, 213–16, 219, 324 n.34, tion Front
325 n.38 Furtado, Celso, 53, 54
Economic Commission for Latin Amer-
ica (ecla), 48–49 Gamio, Manuel: Forjando Patria, 206–
egp (Ejercito Guerrillero de los Pobres). 12, 220, 224, 225, 321 nn.18, 21, and
See Dias de la selva 23, 322 n.25, 329 n.49
Engels, Friedrich, 17, 305 n.15 Gandhi, Mohandas, 144

Index 359
García Canclini, Néstor, 52 Hewitt de Alcántara, Cynthia, 47, 297
García Márquez, Gabriel: One Hundred n.18
Years of Solitude, 94, 165, 301 n.14 Hidalgo, Blanca, 244
George, Susan, and Fabrizio Sabelli, 20, Hidalgo, Miguel, 225
46 Hilbert, Sarah, 322 n.25
Gómez-Peña, Guillermo, 280 Hilferding, Rudolf, 18
Gramsci, Antonio, 87 History: in discourse of development,
Great National Consultation for Peace 5–6, 38, 55–56, 97, 111 (see also Sub-
and Democracy, 245–46 jectivity: in discourse of develop-
Guatemala, 91, 111, 227; colonialism in, ment); in Marx, 96–97, 111;
100, 105–7; U.S. involvement in, 26, revolutionary model of (see Subjec-
68, 158. See also Dias de las selva; Me tivity: in discourse of revolution); and
llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nacío subaltern, 52, 65, 109, 223, 224, 232,
la conciencia 236–38, 290 (see also Me llamo
Guatemalan Patrullas de Autodefensa Rigoberta Menchú y así me nacío la
Civil (Self-Defense Civil Patrols conciencia: authorial voice in; Rivera,
[pacs]), 161 Tomás: . . . y no se lo trago la tierra;
Guerrero, Vicente, 225 Zapatista Army for National Libera-
Guerrilla Army of the Poor. See Dias de tion, communiqués of: authorial
la selva voice in)
Guevara, Ernesto ‘‘Che,’’ 9, 11, 13–15, 33, Hobson, J. A., 21
63, 64, 91–94, 97, 107–8, 141, 160, Huntington, Samuel, 26
284, 300 n.6; The Diary of Che Hurston, Zora Neale, 113
Guevara, Bolivia: November 7, 1966– Hybridity, 52; in Autobiography of Mal-
October 7, 1968, 90; Guerrilla Warfare, colm X, 277–78. See also Indigenismo;
67, 78, 85, 135; O Cruceiro, 69; Verde Mestizaje
Olivio, 69. See also Pasajes de la
guerra revolucionaria Identification, 276, 317 n.3; alternative
Gugelberger, Georg, 155, 161, 163, 309 processes of (see Zapatista Army for
n.3, 310 nn.5–6 National Liberation, communiqués
Guillen, Rafael. See Zapatista Army for of ); through silence, 195–97. See also
National Liberation: Subcomman- Butler, Judith; Silence: politics of
dant Marcos Indians: assimilation of, 220–23, 233,
Gupta, Akhil, 293 n.5 319 nn.11–12, 320 n.17, 322 n.24 (see
also Indigenismo; Mestizaje); and
Haiti: Revolution of 1787, 292 n.3 colonialism, 200–205, 239–40, 318
Haley, Alex, 270, 271 nn.6–9, 320 n.14; representations of
Hamilton, Charles. See Carmichael, (see Subaltern: representations of );
Stokely, and Charles Hamilton silence of, 192–97
Harvey, Neil, 214, 326 n.40, 327 n.41 Indigenismo, 47, 107, 196, 197, 200,
Hayes, Samuel P., Jr., 293 n.7 203, 206, 212, 279, 320 n.15, 328
Hernández Castillo, Aída, 317 n.5 n.45; historical, 202, 205; relation-
Hernández Navarro, Luis, 240 ship to mestizaje, 210–12. See also

360 Index
 Gamino, Manuel: Forjando Patria; Keynes, John Maynard, 20–22, 24–27,
Mestizaje 48, 294 n.10
Institutional Revolutionary Party (pri), Knight, Alan, 205, 319 n.13, 320 nn.15
11, 198, 218, 225, 230, 240, 255; and and 17
corporativist model of government, Kristeva, Julia, 78
206, 219–21, 223, 231–33, 328 n.43;
defeat by Partido Acción Nacional Labastida, Francisco, 252
(National Action Party [pan]), 251–52; Labor: in discourse of development, 15,
development policy of, 199, 200, 214, 21, 31, 51, 298 nn.21–22
219, 220, 256, 282. See also Indi- Laclau, Ernesto, 53, 196, 254–56, 298
genismo; Mestizaje n.22
Instituto Historico CentroAmericano Ladino/ladinization, 175, 177, 178, 183,
(ihca), 112, 307 n.23 184
International Bank for Reconstruction Larrain, Jorge, 17, 26, 35–38, 49, 292
and Development (ibrd), 19, 25. See n.1, 294 n.10, 295 n.14; subjectivity
also World Bank: history of in, 39–41, 104
‘‘International Meeting for Humanity Latin American studies, 14, 152; and
and against Neoliberalism,’’ 191–96, ethnic studies, 262; and Latino stud-
249 ies, 15
International Monetary Fund (imf), 19, Lenin, V. I., 18, 22, 295 n.14, 297 n.18,
20, 23, 47, 152, 213, 275, 292 n.3, 323 304 n.7, 307 n.26; and imperialism,
n.27 54–55; ‘‘Resolution on the National
Interpellation, 154–55, 157, 162–63, Question,’’ 105–6; ‘‘Speech on the
168, 172–73, 175–77, 180, 182–84, Agrarian Question,’’ 127, 306 n.19
187, 189, 287–88, 316 n.26. See also Lerdo Law of 1856 (Mexico), 203–4
Althusser, Louis; Butler, Judith Leys, Colin, 26, 56, 294 n.10
Ituarte, Father Gonzalo, 248 Leyva Solano, Xóchitl, 240–41
Literature: role in revolutionary move-
Jara, René, and Hernán Vidal, 163 ments, 13, 63–64, 290. See also
Jevons, William Stanley, 17 Rigoberta Menchú y así me nacío la
Johnson, Lyndon B., 27 conciencia: authorial voice in;
Joseph, Miranda, 315 n.23 Zapatista Army for National Libera-
tion, communiqués of: authorial
Kant, Immanuel, 64, 97, 299 n.1, 300 voice in
n.2 London, Jack, 72–73
Karim, Benjamin, 264–65 López Monjardin, Adriana, 250–52
Kazanjian, David, 291 n.2 López Portillo, José, 213–16, 219, 324
Kearney, Michael, 310 n.6 n.35, 325 n.38
Keller, Evelyn Fox, 300 n.2 Luxemburg, Rosa, 18, 297 n.18
Kelley, Robin D. G., 269, 270
Kennedy, John F., Jr., 3–5, 25–26; Madrid, Miguel de la, 213, 217, 218, 327
and Alliance for Progress, 26, 27, n.41
294 n.8 Magna Carta, 249

Index 361
Malcolm X, 13–15, 33; relationship to 152–54, 162–64, 166–90, 260–61,
Guevara, 263–67, 269, 270; relation- 286–87
ship to Payeras, 265–67, 269. See Menchú, Rigoberta, 12, 13, 89, 92, 152–
also Autobiography of Malcolm X 54, 193, 223, 288; interview in Fem,
Mallon, Florencia, 319 n.12 169; relationship to Guevara, 169,
Marshall, A., 17 170; relationship to Payeras, 168–70,
Marshall Plan, 23, 294 n.10 177–78, 183. See also Me llamo
Martí, Faribundo, 227. See also Fari- Rigoberta Menchú y así me nacío la
bundo Martí National Liberation conciencia
Front Menger, K., 17
Martí, José, 261 Mestizaje, 12–15, 196–97, 200, 214,
Marx, Karl, 17, 22, 31; and colonialism, 220–21, 252–53, 278–87, 301 n.11,
35–36, 292 n.1; A Contribution to the 322 n.25, 338 n.15; consciousness in,
Critique of Political Economy, 37; Pre- 225, 282; relationship to indi-
capitalist Economic Formations, 96– genismo, 210–12. See also Gamio,
97; and race, 36; subjectivity in, 37– Mario: Forjando Patria; Indigenismo
40; teleology in, 39, 111 Mexican National Co√ee Institute
Masculinity: and consciousness, 70–78, (inmecafe), 218, 324 n.35, 326 n.39
95–98, 130–35, 268; and national- Mexican National Congress, 244
ism, 14, 34–35, 41–43, 66, 71, 73, 78– Mexican Workers Confederation (ctm),
82, 84, 88–92, 96, 100, 108, 131, 220
135–36, 152, 259–67, 274, 276–77, Mexico: colonization of, 200–205; Con-
300 n.7, 335 n.1, 337 n.12 stitution of 1857, 203–4; Constitution
Maximilian, Ferdinand-Joseph (em- of 1917 (Article 27 on agrarian reform),
peror of Mexico), 225 5, 206, 215, 219–22, 226, 320 n.16,
McMichael, Philip, 323 n.29 329 n.47; debt crisis in 1982, 213–14,
McNamara, Robert Strange, 45–47, 57– 217, 219; Lerdo Law of 1856, 203–4; oil
58, 296 nn.16–17 and agricultural policy in 1970s and
Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me 1980s, 13, 203–4, 214–22, 323 nn.30–
nacío la conciencia (Rigoberta Men- 31, 325 n.38, 326 nn.39–41, 330 n.54,
chú): authorial voice in, 153, 155, 157– 332 nn.32–35, 333 n.36; Revolution of
58, 160–62, 167–71, 182, 188, 223, 1910, 14, 197–98, 205, 219, 224–27,
260, 310 n.6, 314 nn.17–18, 316 229, 253, 321 n.18, 328 n.43
nn.25–26; capitalism in, 176–79, midinra. See Sandinista National Lib-
184–86; colonialism in, 174–76, 178, eration Front agricultural policy
180–82, 188–90; conciencia in, 10– miplan. See Nicaraguan Ministry of
11, 154–90, 260–61; and gender, Planning
180–81, 183–84; representation of Modernization/modernity. See Subjec-
subaltern in, 152–54, 157, 161, 162, tivity: in discourse of development
167–90, 260–61, 286–87, 315 n.24; Modernization theory, 26–28, 103–4,
as representative testimonio, 155–62, 294 n.10, 298 n.22. See also Rostow,
172, 308 nn.1–2, 309 n.3; secrecy in, W. W.; Stavenhagen, Rodolfo
172–74, 314 n.21; subjectivity in, 11, Mogel, Reyna, 330 n.53

362 Index
Mohammed, Elijah, 273, 337 n.10. See Nicaraguan Ministry of Agriculture
also Nation of Islam (midinra). See Sandinista National
Moran, Rolando, 90, 91, 153 Liberation Front agricultural policy
Moreiras, Alberto, 152–53, 158–59, 173, Nicaraguan Ministry of Planning
308 n.1, 314 n.21 (miplan), 115, 116, 126
Morelos, José María, 225 Nicaraguan National Assembly, 136
Morgenthau, Henry, 20 Nicaraguan Union of National Opposi-
Morrison, Toni, 153 tion (uno), 140
North American Free Trade Agreement
National Confederation of Popular Or- (nafta), 3, 12, 218, 322 n.25, 327 n.41
ganizations (cnop), 220 North Atlantic Treaty Organization
National Democratic Convention (cnd), (nato), 23
243–46, 252
National Indigenist Institute (ini), Parsons, Talcott, 177
222 Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria (Er-
National Indigenous Forum (fni), nesto ‘‘Che’’ Guevara): and colonial-
246–49, 252 ism, 86–88, 263; consciousness in,
Nationalism: a√ective ties of, 120; black, 10–11, 65–67, 70–78, 83–89; and
261, 278, 279 (see also Autobiography masculinity, 66, 71, 73, 78–82, 84,
of Malcolm X; Colonialism, internal); 88–89, 108, 152, 259–65, 300 n.7;
and capitalism, 105–6; Chicano, 261, and messianic imagery (see subjec-
278, 279 (see also Anzaldúa, Gloria; tivity in); representation of subaltern
Rivera, Tomás; Rodriguez, Richard); in, 33, 70, 76, 81–89, 108, 152, 164–
and colonialism, 144–45, 291 n.1, 317 65, 269, 270; subjectivity in, 9–10,
n.1; and consciousness, 91, 100, 104– 66–90, 167, 263, 267
7, 135; and discourse of development, Payeras, Mario, 9, 11, 33, 63, 64, 66–67,
4–5, 17–18, 45; and masculinity, 34– 89, 90, 141, 152, 153, 160, 164, 259,
35, 41–43, 80; and race (see Gamio, 261, 274, 276–77, 282, 284; Los
Manuel: Forjando Patria; Indige- Pueblos indígenas y la revolución
nismo; Mestizaje); reactive (see Ros- guatemalteca, 91, 99, 103–8; relation
tow, W. W.: reactive nationalism) to Guevara, 90–95, 97. See also Los
National Peasants Confederation (cnc), dias de la selva
220, 221 Perry, Bruce, 335 n.2
National Revolutionary Union of Pink, Louis Heaton, 292 n.3
Guatemala, 169, 229, 308 n.2, 310 Pinochet, Augusto, 109
n.5. See also Dias de la selva Plan de Ayala, 221, 328 n.44
National Union of Farmers and Ranch- Prebisch, Raúl, 49
ers (unag), 113, 143, 146 Pye, Lucien, 26
Nation of Islam, 269, 272–75
Nehru, Jawaharlal, 144 Quesada Pastrán, Freddy, 137
Nicaragua, 10, 114; 1981 agrarian re-
form law, 126–36, 140. See also Sandi- Rabasa, José, 199
nista National Liberation Front Ramirez, Ricardo. See Moran, Rolando

Index 363
Requerimiento (Spanish), 87–88, 100, Rights and Culture, 197, 199, 223,
160–61, 164, 324 n.32 248–49, 252, 335 n.74
Retamar, Roberto Fernández, 86–88, Sanchez, Javier, 243–44
267, 297 n.18, 301 n.11, 336 n.3 Sandinista National Liberation Front,
Revolution, discourse of: consciousness 56, 310 n.5; history of, 110–11; rela-
in, 6–7, 9–12, 65–67, 71, 78–80, 90, tion to counterrevolutionaries, 138–
111, 115, 200, 266–73; relation to dis- 40, 143, 307 n.22
course of development, 4–8, 12–15, Sandinista National Liberation Front ag-
38, 63–64, 120, 128, 197–98, 221– ricultural policy, 9, 10, 13, 33, 111–18,
22, 259–60, 291 nn.1–2, 294 n.8, 303 n.4, 304 nn.5–6, 9, and 10, 306
301 n.10 (see also Subjectivity); subjec- nn.16, 17, 18, and 20, 307 nn.21, 23,
tivity in, 7, 9–10, 13, 16, 29, 31–32, and 25; consciousness in, 111, 115,
43, 67–68, 80, 261–62. See also De- 130–35, 140–47; and credit policies,
pendency theory 122–24; failure of, 141–47; and mas-
Revolution of 1776 (U.S.), 14 culinity, 131, 135–36, 259; pricing pol-
Revolution of 1910 (Mexico), 14, 197– icies of, 124–25, 137–38;
98, 205, 219, 224–27, 229, 253, 321 representation of subaltern in, 10, 33,
n.18, 328 n.43 111–47, 152; resistance to, 125–26,
Ricardo, David, 303 n.1 129; social wage measures in, 118–
Rincon, Robeldo, 244 22, 305 n.13; subjectivity in, 10, 111–
Rivera, Tomás, 261; . . . y no se lo trago 13, 126, 130–36, 141–44, 146–47,
la tierra, 287–90 152
Rodríguez, Ileana, 63, 67, 78–81, 301 Sandino, Augusto C., 227
n.8 Sanford, Victoria, 308 n.2
Rodriguez, Richard, 261, 262, 280; Sardiñas, Lalo, 82, 84
Days of Obligation, 283–87 Sarimento, Sergio, 332 n.62
Roosevelt, Elliot, 18 Say, Jean Baptiste, 303 n.1
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 18–19, 22, 292 Scott, James C., 146, 304 n.8
n.2 Seed, Patricia, 87–88, 160–61
Rostow, W. W., 8, 26, 48, 294 n.9, 295 Shakespeare, William: The Tempest, 86–
nn.12–13. See also Stages of Economic 87, 301 n.11
Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto Shils, Edward, 26
Ruiz, Bishop Samuel, 242 Silence: politics of, 191–97, 212, 223,
Rus, Jan, 161 235–38, 242–43, 252, 256, 260, 285.
See also Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty;
Sabelli, Fabrizio. See George, Susan, and Subaltern: agency of
Fabrizio Sabelli Sklodowska, Elzbieta, 313 n.13
Sachs, Wolfgang, 22 Smith, Adam, 22, 32, 303 n.1
Saldívar, Ramón, 288–89 Sommer, Doris, 172–74
Salinas de Gotarí, Carlos, 213, 218–22, Somoza, Anastasio, 114, 117, 120, 122,
226, 230–31, 242–43, 249, 255, 322 130, 303 n.4, 304 nn.9–10
n.25, 327 n.41 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 64–65,
San Andres Accords on Indigenous 171, 190, 192, 194, 260, 299 n.1

364 Index
Stages of Economic Growth: A Non- Rigoberta Menchú y así me nacío la
Communist Manifesto (W. W. Rostow), conciencia, 11, 152–54, 162–64, 166–
26; and colonialism, 34–36, 41, 44; 90, 260–61, 286–87; in Pasajes de la
and Marx, 31, 35–37, 295 n.11; protes- guerra revolucionaria, 9–10, 66–90,
tant ethic in, 32–33, 43; reactive na- 167, 263, 267; relationship to subjec-
tionalism in, 33–35, 41, 50, 58, 100, tion, 30–31; in Sandinista National
131, 135; and subjectivity, 27–37, 41– Liberation Front agricultural policy,
45, 52, 102, 132–33, 209, 263–64, 275 10, 111–13, 126, 130–36, 141–44,
Stavenhagen, Rodolfo, 50–52, 53, 56, 146–47, 152; in Stages of Economic
103, 297 n.20. See also Dependency Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto,
theory 27–37, 41–45, 52, 102, 132–33, 209,
Stoll, David, 153, 159, 308 n.2 263–64, 275; in Zapatista Army for
Structural functionalism. See Modern- National Liberation, 199, 213, 223–
ization theory 57, 260–61, 286–87
Subaltern: agency of, 12 (see also Me Sweezy, Paul, 297 n.18
llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nacío Szulc, Tad, 294 n.8
la conciencia: authorial voice in;
Zapatista Army for National Libera- Testimonio, 11, 151, 152–64, 168, 170,
tion, communiqués of: authorial 172, 310 nn.5–6, 311 n.8, 313 nn.12–13
voice in); and history, 52, 65, 109, Trotsky, Leon, 139
223, 224, 232, 236–38, 290; repre- Truman, Harry S.: Point Four Program,
sentations of, 10, 33, 70, 76, 82–89, 8, 22–25, 27, 58, 293 n.7
91, 93, 98–108, 111–47, 152–54, 157,
161–62, 164–97, 223–57, 260–61, Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional
267–74, 286–87, 302 n.16, 315 nn.22 Guatemalteca. See National Revolu-
and 24, 336 n.5, 338 n.15 tionary Union of Guatemala
Subjection, 31, 42. See also Butler, Ju- Unión des Ejidos (ue), 242
dith; Subjectivity Unión des Uniones (uu), 242; uu-Pajal
Subjectivity, 6–8, 287–88; in Auto- Yakactic, 230–31, 330 n.53
biography of Malcolm X, 263, 265–78; Union of Nicaraguan Agricultural Pro-
and capitalism, 30–31, 40; and colo- ducers (upanic), 120. See also Sandi-
nialism, 34–35, 64–65; in depen- nista National Liberation Front
dency theory, 58–59; in Dias de la agricultural policy
selva, 9–10, 66, 91–108, 152, 165, United Nations, 20, 170
267, 303 n.17; in discourse of de- United Nations Monetary and Financial
velopment, 6–10, 13, 22, 24–25, 27– Conference. See Bretton Woods
28, 31, 34, 36–38, 52, 56–58, 63, 109, Conference
131, 263–64, 293 nn.5–6; in dis- United States, 28, 32; role in develop-
course of revolution, 7, 9–10, 13, 16, ment discourse (see Bretton Woods
29, 31–32, 43, 67–68, 80, 261–62; in Conference)
Mario Gamio (Forjando Patria), 206– urng. See National Revolutionary
12; in Jorge Larrain, 39–41, 104; in Union of Guatemala
Karl Marx, 37–40; in Me llamo usaid, 152

Index 365
U.S. House Special Committee on Post- Zapatista Army for National Liberation,
war Economic Policy and Planning, 3–4, 11, 12, 109, 262, 278, 288; cit-
293 n.4 izenship model of, 12, 196, 223–27,
U.S. Treasury Department, 19, 20 229, 256; and colonialism, 199–200,
317 n.2; Commandante David, 191,
Varese, Stefano, 328 n.42 335 n.72; consciousness in, 200, 270;
Vidal, Hernán. See Jara, René, and Her- and democracy, 229–31, 237–41,
nán Vidal 243–53, 256; and gender, 240–42;
Vietnam, 25, 27 and government negotiations, 242–
Vilas, Carlos, 115 53, 332 nn.60–64, 333 nn.64–68, 334
Villa, Pancho, 224–25, 229 nn.69, 71–74; history of, 197, 213–14,
Villaverde, Concepción, 91 227–28, 256; and modernity, 196,
256–57; structure of, 198–99, 330
Wallerstein, Immanuel, 18 n.53; Subcomandante Marcos, 213,
Walras, L., 17 214, 223, 237, 245, 246, 333 n.66;
Warman, Arturo, 219, 325 n.38 subjectivity in, 199, 213, 223–57,
Waters, Mary Alice, 300 n.6 260–61, 286–87; use of mestizaje,
Weeks, John, 119–20, 305 n.11 12, 212–13, 224–26, 231, 233, 253–54,
West, Cornel, 277–78, 338 n.14 278, 279
Wheelock, Jaime, 139–40 Zapatista Army for National Liberation,
Williams, Gareth, 162, 313 n.12 communiqués of, 11, 13, 15, 223–33,
Wilson, Woodrow, 18 329 nn.51–52, 331 nn.57–58; autho-
Work Plan for 1985, 139–41. See also rial voice in, 233–39, 245–46, 253,
Sandinista National Liberation Front 260; ‘‘Declaration from the Lacandón
agricultural policy Jungle: Today We Say Enough!’’ 224–
World Bank, 5, 23, 45, 47, 57, 152, 213, 28, 242; ‘‘Mandar Obedeciendo,’’
218, 275, 296 n.17; history of, 19–21 237–39; ‘‘Second Declaration from
World War II, 18 the Lacandón Jungle,’’ 243, 325 n.37;
representation of subaltern in, 191–
Yúdice, George, 156, 170, 310 n.5 97, 223–57, 260–61, 286–87
Zedillo, Ernesto, 242, 244–56, 249–50,
Zapata, Emiliano, 224–25, 227, 229, 251–53, 332 n.63
320 n.16

366 Index
maría josefina saldaña-portillo is an
associate professor in the English Department and
Ethnic Studies Program at Brown University

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Saldaña-Portillo, María Josefina.
The revolutionary imagination in the Americas and the
age of development / by María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo.
p. cm. — (Latin America otherwise)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-8223-3178-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn 0-8223-3166-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Revolutions—Latin America. 2. Economic develop-
ment. 3. Latin America—Economic policy. I. Title.
II. Series. jc491.s25 2003
338.98—dc21 2003009458