I am studying the change in political status and the rights of the indigenous people of Chiapas after the Zapatista rebellion in 1994, as well as after the agreement on the San Andres Accords in 1996. I am very interested in the causes, scale, scope, and effectiveness of the San Andres Accords, which was signed by the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) and the Mexican government in 1996. The San Andres Accords were demands of the Zapatistas to increase the rights and recognition, among other things, of indigenous people of Mexico.
On February 16, 1996, in the town of San Andres de la Larrainzar, the …show more content…
The Accords promise many important rights and protections, including: the recognition of indigenous people in the Constitution, along with their right to self-determination within the constitutional guidelines, more political representation and participation at local and national levels, full access by indigenous people to justice and full respect for human rights, recognition and respect for indigenous cultural traditions, state promotion of adequate education and training of traditional and modern knowledge, guarantee of basic needs of indigenous people, support for indigenous women and children, opportunity for more production and employment, and the protection of indigenous migrants in and out of Mexico (San Andres Accords). Basically, the Accords determine that indigenous people in Mexico exist in the present day and deserve and demand their …show more content…
First, we need to know who the Zapatistas are and what their movement, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), stood for. Named after Emiliano Zapata, an indigenous leader and eventually one of the most famous Mexican revolutionaries, the EZLN fights against similar issues that Zapata did, like large landlords, foreign-owned big business, and the oppressive regime that kept indigenous people in poverty. The Zapatistas were a group of rebels based in Chiapas that took on the motives and challenges of smaller, less organized groups of people, of whom were mostly indigenous, and sought to move away from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The Zapatistas have been present since the 1970s, however, they did not gain much more than regional attention until