Pantelhó: History‐Making and Identity in Highland Chiapas

This article examines history-making, the creation and re-creation of history, in Pantelho, Chiapas, Mexico, and the context and consequences of multiple histories for Indigenous and Ladino relations. For the past 200 years Indigenous and Ladino in Pantelho have struggled for land and political power. Throughout these struggles history-making has played an important role in the crafting of identin, mobilizing and unifying support, and legitimizing courses of action. It represents, in Antonio Gramsci's terms (1971), a war of position, a struggle for hegemony which participants have made into two fundamental conflicting positions�Ladino and Indigenous�based on a long history of exploitation and conflict. This article describes the dynamic of their history-making and opposition as played out in the local context and within the larger apparatus of government power in Mexico