Writing (about) a Massacre: Acteal 1997-2008 (Mexico)

This article reviews the policies and hermeneutical issues of the Acteal massacre, which occurred on the 22nd of December 1997 in the municipality of Chenalho (Chiapas, Mexico) and took place in the context of an armed conflict that began after the Zapatista uprising of 1994. It examines the different accounts issued by both governmental and non-governmental political actors alongside academic and judicial actors who, in ten years, have established the massacre as being in the paradigm of the persecuting state. An analysis of the controversies and the two-sided story produced on the massacre underlines the discursive battle between those aforementioned governmental and non-governmental actors. Ten years after the fact, noteworthy competition between the victims consisted of a rhetorical inversion, relayed on judicial and media scenes, turning the “material authors” of the massacre into “innocent prisoners”. Moreover, the performative nature of the violence that leans against a subsequent reconstruction of events from concerned actors enables an examination of the evolution of the issue of paramilitarism in Mexico and an analysis of some of the specific features of the Mexican regime in comparison to other Latin American countries.