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Contains 13 essays which discuss the experiences of indigenous peoples in their quest for municipal and regional indigenous autonomy. Includes discussion of the ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169).
Drawing on an original survey of more than 5,000 respondents, this book argues that, contrary to claims by the 1994 Zapatista insurgency, indigenous and non-indigenous respondents in southern Mexico have been united by socioeconomic conditions and land tenure institutions as well as by ethnic identity. It concludes that - contrary to many analyses of Chiapas's 1994 indigenous rebellion - external influences can trump ideology in framing social movements. Rural Chiapas's prevalent communitarian attitudes resulted partly from external land tenure institutions, rather than from indigenous identities alone. The book further points to recent indigenous rights movements in neighboring Oaxaca, Mexico, as examples of bottom-up multicultural institutions that might be emulated in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America.
Over the past two decades, Zapatista indigenous community members have asserted their autonomy and self-determination by using everyday practices as part of their struggle for lekil kuxlejal, a dignified collective life connected to a specific territory. This in-depth ethnography summarizes Mariana Mora’s more than ten years of extended research and solidarity work in Chiapas, with Tseltal and Tojolabal community members helping to design and evaluate her fieldwork. The result of that collaboration—a work of activist anthropology—reveals how Zapatista kuxlejal (or life) politics unsettle key racialized effects of the Mexican neoliberal state. Through detailed narratives, thick descriptions, and testimonies, Kuxlejal Politics focuses on central spheres of Zapatista indigenous autonomy, particularly governing practices, agrarian reform, women’s collective work, and the implementation of justice, as well as health and education projects. Mora situates the proposals, possibilities, and challenges associated with these decolonializing cultural politics in relation to the racialized restructuring that has characterized the Mexican state over the past twenty years. She demonstrates how, despite official multicultural policies designed to offset the historical exclusion of indigenous people, the Mexican state actually refueled racialized subordination through ostensibly color-blind policies, including neoliberal land reform and poverty alleviation programs. Mora’s findings allow her to critically analyze the deeply complex and often contradictory ways in which the Zapatistas have reconceptualized the political and contested the ordering of Mexican society along lines of gender, race, ethnicity, and class.
Shannan Matiace looks at political consciousness amongst Indians of the Chiapas in Mexico, tracing how it has developed from the founding of peasants' associations in the 1930s to the recent Zapatista uprising.
The "Indian question" has come to the forefront of political agendas in contemporary Latin America. In the process, indigenous movements have emerged as important social actors, raising a variety of demands on behalf of native peoples. Regardless of the situation of Indian groups as small minorities or significant sectors, many Latin American states have been forced to consider whether they should have the same status of all citizens or whether they should be granted special citizenship rights as Indians. This book examines the struggle for indigenous rights in eight Latin American countries. Initial studies of indigenous movements celebrated the return of the Indians as relevant political actors, often approaching their struggles as expressions of a common, generic agenda. This collection moves the debate forward by acknowledging the extraordinary diversity among the movements' composition, goals, and strategies. By focusing on the factors that shape this diversity, the authors offer a basis for understanding the specificities of converging and diverging patterns across different countries. The case studies examine the ways in which the Indian question arises in each country, with reference to the protagonism of indigenous movements in the context of the threats and opportunities posed by neo-liberal policies. The complexities posed by the varying demographic weight of indigenous populations, the interrelation of class and ethnicity, and the interplay between indigenous and popular struggles are discussed. The volume concludes that the Indian struggles are having a direct impact on the character of democracy, and in the process contribute to the redefinition of Latin American societies as multicultural.
Across the Americas, Indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples have demanded autonomy, self-determination, and self-governance. By exerting their collective rights, they have engaged with domestic and international standards on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, implemented full-fledged mechanisms for autonomous governance, and promoted political and constitutional reform aimed at expanding understandings of multicultural citizenship and the plurinational state. Yet these achievements come in conflict with national governments' adoption of neoliberal economic and neo-extractive policies which advance their interests over those of Indigenous communities. Available for the first time in English, Indigenous Territorial Autonomy and Self-Government in the Diverse Americas explores current and historical struggles for autonomy within ancestral territories, experiences of self-governance in operation, and presents an overview of achievements, challenges, and threats across three decades. Case studies across Bolivia, Chile, Nicaragua, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Ecuador, and Canada provide a detailed discussion of autonomy and self-governance in development and in practice. Paying special attention to the role of Indigenous peoples' organizations and activism in pursuing sociopolitical transformation, securing rights, and confronting multiple dynamics of dispossession, this book engages with current debates on Indigenous politics, relationships with national governments and economies, and the multicultural and plurinational state. This book will spark critical reflection on political experience and further exploration of the possibilities of the self-determination of peoples through territorial autonomies.
An anthropological examination of the globalized discourse of human rights and the local production of cultural identities and forms of resistance in indigenous communities of Chiapas, Mexico.