Las Abejas (the Bees), a Christian pacifist indigenous organization, gets its first book length treatment in English in this volume. Sociedad Civil Las Abejas gained the attention of the international community in 1997, when Mexican paramilitary forces brutally massacred forty-five organization members during mass at a Catholic Church. This ethnographic account of The Bees crosses cultural, political and religious terrain to investigate the dynamics of identity construction, showing how the intersection of local and global trends creates what the author calls a syncretic identity of resistance. Extending the concept of syncretism from its original cultural-religious meanings to new political frameworks, Tavanti produces a dynamic model for the analysis of the production of collective actions and identities. The analysis is developed and extended through investigations into the role of international human rights observers and other international organizations in relation to the emerging identity of this indigenous community in resistance as Tzotzil-Mayan, Catholic-Christian and pro-Zapatista, as well as the influence of local, national and international networks of communication.
Las Abejas offers an indispensable analysis of The Bees and provides valuable theoretical and practical tools for the people and organizations interested in indigenous rights movements, collective identities, actions and resistance to globalization.