Indigenous Politics and Autonomy

In the following article The Indigenous Movement in Mexico: Between Electoral Politics and Local Resistance we witness some of the issues that indigenous people encounter on a daily basis in their interactions with the state. Most of the research done in this journal piece is in regards to how indigenous communities have interacted with the EZLN the indigenous resistance movement in Chiapas. They have used this organization as the launch pad for various other local organization in other states to form who battle for indigenous rights. These battles are a long drawn out war between indigenous people and the state regarding traditional land rights, political power, and the recognition of indigenous cultures and languages. all of these problems stem from either nationalist ideology of assimilation, corporatist dictatorial control over indigenous political affairs, and the steady increase of neoliberal reforms across the state of Mexico through the implementation of NAFTA and other trade agreements.

In regards to land rights indigenous groups have resisted many neoliberal attempts on privatizing water rights, the monopolization of biomedical plants, and the monoculture practices of large multinational agribusiness corporations. Through the rise of Monsanto and GMO indigenous tribes see this as a threat to the rich biodiversity of their crops primarily corn and beans. New trade acts from the Water Act to the Biodiversity and Mining Rights Act are heavily denounced as neoliberal attempts to privatize water tables underneath the ground for corporate use or the privatization of lands for mining conglomerates. 

Indigenous people have also fought for the recognition of their languages and culture as a fabric of the larger Mexican nation. In theory the and ideologically the state recognizes only one culture and people which is the Mexican people as a mixed race people. Indigenous cultures are seen as relics of a premodern age and thus seen as primitive. They have fought for constitutional changes to not only recognize the diversity of ethnicity in Mexico but recognize indigenous languages as important symbols of cultural continuity and renewed efforts to save these languages. 

Finally the article addresses the seemingly impossible task of politically empowering indigenous people in the public sphere. Thier relations with the three parties are dismal with the PRI using them for years within their corporatist system to control their activities and reinforce a hierarchal system of caciques. The PAN is seen as a instrument of neoliberalism and racism and thus of no use. The PRD the traditional party of the left is seen as a traitor for approving many of the neoliberal reforms the indigenous people fought against. Traditional leftist discourse sees indigenous people as agricultural workers lacking class consciousness not realizing the deep ethnic, cultural, and tribal identities of these people who exist outside the paradigm of marxist class struggle. 

Hernández Castillo, Rosalva Aída and Victoria J. Furio. "The Indigenous Movement in Mexico: Between Electoral Politics and Local Resistance." Latin American Perspectives 33, no. 2 (03, 2006): 115-31, http://search.proquest.com/docview/37717673?accountid=14068.