On January 1, 1996, the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberaci6n Nacional called for the creation of the Frente Zapatista de Liberaci6n Nacional (FZLN), a national civil Zapatista organization that would build a new kind of political movement (EZLN, 1996). This new organization would be built from the ground up by citizens committed to carrying out Zapatista political principles such as mandar obedeciendo or "rule by obeying." As Neil Harvey (1999) points out, the organizing principle of the FZLN was not to win positions of political power but rather to organize so that the government would implement its collective decisions. Instead of being a vanguard that would represent the masses, the FZLN was to become, as the founding member Javier Elorriaga put it, the collector and organizer of the people's proposals (interview, Mexico City, January 13, 2000). The goal was to create a new kind of political consciousness that would act as a counterweight to the corruption and clientelism that have been the legacy not only of the Mexican one-party political system but also of unions, social movements, and the Mexican left (Camp, 1993). When the EZLN communiqu6 appeared calling for the creation of the FZLN, it was widely believed that peace was at hand. The San Andres Accords between the EZLN and the Mexican government were about to be signed, and the EZLN was planning to incorporate its forces into the FZLN as its demilitarized insurgents returned to civil political life. As the founding member Sergio Rodriguez remarked, the FZLN was supposed to be the airport where the airplane full of EZLN soldiers would land in civil society (interview, Mexico City, February 10, 2000). Soon after the accords were signed on February 16, 1996, however, it became clear that the Mexican government was not going to implement the accords on indigenous rights and culture any time soon (Hernandez Navarro, 1999a). Subsequently, the executive branch rewrote the law on indigenous autonomy, employing the discourse of Indian rights but omitting any meaningful content. Therefore, the members of the FZLN faced the problem of building an independent political organization, since the government's lack of compliance with the accords

Zapatismo and Urban Political Practice

The municipal elections on November 8, 1998, in Huehuetla (in the northern mountains of the state of Puebla, Mexico) were especially intense. The results, in which the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI) triumphed by a margin of 485 votes, indicated that participation had been much greater than on previous occasions.1 Just a simple glance around at the last strokes in the campaigns of the two large competing parties made one thing evident: the people wanted to vote. They really wanted to vote. And many of them, as later could be determined, surely bet on a change, for a switch in the local political power. In effect, for the last nine years, the Independent Totonac Organization (OIT), an indigenously based civil organization, and the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) shared the municipal government of Huehuetla. Their alliance overthrew the power of the PRI in two consecutive elections, although in the second the winning margin began to narrow. 151

One Vote Is Worth More Than a Thousand Words: Ethnic Identity and Political Change in Huehuetla, Puebla

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