Montesano Montessori, N: A discursive analysis of a struggle

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 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.