Suchergebnisse

This article seeks to raise meaningful questions about the role, or wider social function, of the intellectual within state–civil society relations in Latin America characterised by conditions of socio–economic modernisation. It does so by pursuing such questions through a detailed examination of the social function of Carlos Fuentes as an intellectual in Mexico. Through a focus on the social function of Carlos Fuentes, it is possible to distinguish the role intellectual activity can play in the construction and contestation of hegemony in Mexico. Most crucially, the article prompts consideration of the social basis of hegemony and the agency of intellectuals organically tied to particular social forces functioning through state–civil society relations in the struggle over hegemony. Put differently, it is possible to grant due regard to the mixture of critical opposition and accommodation that has often confronted the intellectual within Latin America.

This article develops an analysis of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, active in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico. Taking recent reflections on neoliberal globalisation and resistance as its point of departure, questions are raised about how the EZLN movement is a response to specific historical circumstances in Chiapas; how the EZLN is a response to the restructuring of the capitalist system on a global scale; and how it is probing the social and political found ations of a future order by challenging the legitimacy and authority of the Mexican state. The article proceeds along two main lines of inquiry in order to emphasise the past, present and future dimensions of the EZLN movement. Firstly, the roots of the rebellion are situated within changing relations of production that affected Chiapas in the 1970s, which led to a grow th of radical peasant organisations. The more immediate context of the rebellion is also discussed in relation to the restructuring of capital in Mexico represented by the rise of neoliberalism and increased coercion throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Secondly, the innovative methods of struggle developed by the EZLN are analysed within the categories of counter-hegemonic resistance developed by Antonio Gramsci. Overall, these various aspects of the EZLN are discussed to show how the movement has mounted a critique of social power relations within Mexico as well as the conditions of world order by contesting and resisting neoliberal globalisation.