The Zapatista rebellion in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas was launched by its principal protagonists because of their perceptions of decades of neglect by the Mexican government. Zapatista leaders also linked the rebellion, which began on January 1, 1994, to the onset that same day of NAFTA. Considerable attention has been given to the specific social and economic conditions of Chiapas since the outbreak of the rebellion. However, notwithstanding the importance of the" regional question" in scholarship on the formation of modern Mexico (eg, Katz 1988; Knight 1986; Reynolds 1970), insufficient attention has been paid to the broader question of whether whole regions of Mexico, and the southern region in particular, may endure new difficulties as a result of NAFTA and globalization.

Our purpose is to contribute to the literature that does examine contemporary Mexico's regional inequalities as a fundamental aspect of its relations with NAFTA and globalization (eg, Bulmer-Thomas et al. 1994; Castañeda 1996; Collier 1995; Oliveira and García 1997). We ask whether NAFTA and, implicitly, the subsequent creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) out of the Uruguay Round of the GATT negotiations, should be considered a basis for believing that southern Mexico will be damaged significantly by the newly liberalized and globalized economy. Will Mexico's South benefit from such political and economic restructuring as much as its central and northern regions? Or is southern Mexico destined to become a more distant periphery of the rest of a liberalized, globalized, expanding Mexico, either within its traditional framework or within some reconfigured version? The chapter is necessarily an exercise in analysis, projection, and creative