Description

Political discourse in Mexico includes a detailed
discursive analysis of the discourse of President
Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) and that of the
Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (EZLN).
The Zapatista movement broke into rebellion on
January 1, 1994, on the very day that the North
Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was
implemented. The EZLN struggle can be considered a
local response to the global policy shift of the
Mexican government. This study assumed that these
political narratives played a strategic role in a
struggle to gain hegemonic acceptance in Mexico for
the respective national projects which each side
envisioned. Therefore, this volume presents the
design of a theoretical-methodological framework
which integrates a Gramscian view on hegemony with
discourse theory and two main directions in critical
discourse analysis. It presents the historical
context, evaluates existing interpretations of the
EZLN movement and defines the main stakes in the
struggle. While Salinas seeks to establish
republican nationalism and a liberal democracy, the
EZLN struggles for ethnic nationalism and radical
democrcacy.