The Ambivalent Revolution Summary

In January of 1994, rebellion broke out in the Southern Mexican state of Chiapas. An indigenous group calling themselves the Zapatistas - after the renowned hero Emiliano Zapata – attacked following Mexico’s entrance into the North American Free Trade Agreement, condemning the “political corruption, local bossism and officially sanctioned violence” of the government and demanding social justice. Despite the period immediately before the outbreak of rebellion having been heavily studied, events of the twentieth century leading to the armed uprising remains unknown. In The Ambivalent Revolution, Stephen Lewis sets out to fill in the gaps by analyzing “Chiapas’s revolutionary and post-revolutionary experiences through the lens of the rural schoolhouse.” In doing so, he argues that the 1921 Ministry of Public Education (SEP) became the
Despite the large timeframe of the text, Lewis provides a comprehensive yet detailed social history of Chiapas. Using the schoolhouse of rural Mexico as the central point of focus, the author describes the struggles associated with the SEP and the federal reforms implemented through it as well as addressing the issue of Mexican indigenismo during the time period. The inability of the government to successfully set up a functioning infrastructure for the SEP in the highlands coupled with the corruption of local elites caused the SEP to fail in its mission to modernize the indigenous peoples of Mexico and form a single national identity based on secular values. However, ideological battles and class struggle would play a significant role in shaping Mexico and would carry over, resulting in the 1994 Zapatistas rebellion. The Ambivalent Revolution becomes an important text in understanding the relationship between rural indigenous communities and the federal government between 1910 and 1945 and the role education policy and the SEP played in building the