Modernist visions and the invisible Indian : a history of Mexican governmental thought and Maya resistance.

This thesis is concerned with the different ways in which the Maya Indians of Mexico have come to be both thought of and acted upon. It traces a political and governmental history from the time of discovery until the late 1990’s, uncovering a distinctively modem approach towards what can best be understood as an essentially contested Indian subjectivity. As a means of understanding the current Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, the thesis looks back to previous moments of Indian resistance and seeks to uncover the nature of state/subject relations as they have been experienced by Mexico’s Maya population. On the basis of this analysis it becomes possible to talk of a Mexican ‘governmentality’ that has failed to ‘see’ the Indian in terms other than instrumental and calculative.

Approaching politics and culture from this particular historical perspective allows otherwise subjugated questions of identity and state formation to be explored. Traditional concerns in International Relations, such as national interest or national security, thus begin to look partial and insular as the highly contiguous nature of such projects with the practices of order and freedom are revealed. Mexico’s Indian population, as characterised by the Maya of Chiapas, thus demonstrate how modernity has multiple trajectories and how a narrow and ahistorical approach to current Indian conflict fails to recognise the non-reductive, non-scientific and characteristically human aspect of political resistance that the ongoing Zapatista rebellion embodies.