A World to Be Remade: Sociopolitical Circumstances of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation

Abstract

Social-movement scholars in the 1950s and early 1960s typically argued that fast, unexpected, and extensive changes in a society can frustrate people to the point of joining and supporting movements for social reconstruction. Later scholars noted that political circumstances, especially intra-elite competition and the constitutional arrangements, can encourage the development of social movements by providing them with potential allies within the government as well as invaluable opportunities to organize and act in public.