Abstracts

Julio Alcántara (Bio)

The symbol of the mask

The case of the Zapatista Indigenous Movement from Chiapas, Mexico unravels the anthropological dynamics between the visible and the invisible in Western Culture, since they had to cover their faces with masks in order to be counted with the same dignity as other human beings. The mask gave them a face. While disrupting the order of the visible with uncanny faces, they performed a rite that changes the notion of subjective identity such as Johan Huizinga, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Arnold Van Gennep have pointed out the transformation of human values through the play, the sacred and the rite.