Virtual Chiapas: A Reply to Paulson

Abstract

On reading Justin Paulson's thoughtful critique of my article I am struck by how much of what he says reinforces the case I have made. To be sure, the first section of the essay doesn't address my work at all, but rather offers Paulson's own interpretation of the nature of globalization, neoliberalism and the Zapatista response. But once he turns to my ideas, Paulson argues that I am mistaken in my assertion that the agrarista dream cannot be realized in the conflict zone in Eastern Chiapas because the situation is not a simple case of poor landless peasants facing off against traditional large landowners, i.e. haciendados. Yet the material he offers to refute my view, the aspects of agrarian history he says I neglected to detail, in fact provide further evidence for my reading of the situation which is that it is very complex, often pits one group of indigenous people against another, and frequently degenerates into a 'war of the poor' against one another.