A long revolution

The symbolic disputes between the Mexican state and the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) - triggered by the armed uprising of January 1 1994 - show us how two ways of looking at the same facts of the past activate respectively two different types of historical perceptions. These are discursive strategies for (re)reading the past that aim to meet the political demands of each specific group allowing for excessively antagonistic interpretations of the same national history. The analysis of historical and symbolic appropriations led us to highlight the elements of the construction of the collective imaginary of each sector involved in the conflict. In this way we mapped out how traditions and myths were mobilized rhetorically in order to strengthen relations of belonging to the Mexican past.