All posts tagged Indigenous Peoples

Putting “Teeth” in the Requirement for Consultation with Indigenous Peoples

By Thomas Andrew O’Keefe*

Indigenous groups in Bolivia march in defense of the TIPNIS/ Pablo Andrés Rivero/ Flickr/ Creative Commons License

In no other region of the world have as many countries ratified International Labor Organization Convention 169 – requiring that governments consult Indigenous communities before approving projects that may detrimentally impact them – as Latin America, but human rights due diligence standards adopted by companies involved in investment projects are proving much more effective in guaranteeing adequate and effective consultations rather than government action. This is true even though ILO 169 requires that governments consult with local communities before giving the green light to investment or development projects that affect Indigenous lands, natural resources, and water supplies. 

  • Neither Canada nor the United States has ratified ILO 169, and they were among only four countries that voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) when it came up for a vote in the UN General Assembly in 2007, which endorsed the “free, prior, and informed consent” principle. Colombia was the only Latin American country not to fully embrace the UNDRIP.

Despite widespread ratification of ILO 169 and endorsement of the UNDRIP, Latin America is plagued by social conflicts involving Indigenous peoples who feel they were never adequately consulted. The most infamous example was in 2009 at Bagua in Amazonian Peru, when the administration of President Alan García used lethal force to counter protests by Indigenous peoples opposed to legal changes that facilitated energy, mining, and agricultural concessions on their lands. The violence resulted in the deaths of 34 people (mostly policemen) and hundreds of injured. Many of these social conflicts have delayed the completion of major energy and mining projects throughout Latin America for years, sometimes forcing their abandonment or the revocation by governments of previously granted concessions. The direct financial losses incurred by businesses have been huge, not to mention the damage to corporate branding image.  

  • One reason for persistent conflicts throughout Latin America is that ILO 169 offers no definitive answer as to what happens if an Indigenous community vetoes a proposed project. Presumably that wouldn’t occur if the consultation were effective. But ILO 169 is vague on the precise consultation process a government must follow, leading to wide national variations as to who must be consulted and how. Although the UNDRIP implies that Indigenous peoples have the right to reject a project, its provisions are not considered legally binding by most governments unless specifically incorporated into domestic law. Even in Bolivia, one of the few countries where “free, prior and informed consent” is the law of the land, this did not prevent the administration of President Evo Morales from going ahead with a highway through the TIPNIS reserve in eastern Bolivia over the objections of its Indigenous inhabitants.

The growing importance of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) criteria in corporate decision-making, including the adoption of internal human rights due diligence policies and practices, may finally lead to effective consultation mechanisms that accept the notion that Indigenous peoples have the final say in either approving or rejecting a project that threatens their way of life or will permanently displace them from ancestral lands. For one thing, good faith consultation with Indigenous peoples is now a recognized international human right. More importantly, businesses are not absolved by a government’s failure to fulfill the obligation to consult Indigenous peoples on projects affecting them.

  • Multilateral lending agencies such as the Inter-American Development Bank have developed performance standards that include a consent requirement that must be adhered to by any company seeking their financing for investment projects that may impact Indigenous people. In addition, equity investors with investment risk management concerns are emerging as important guarantors of corporate consultation and consent with Indigenous communities, particularly in the natural resource extraction industry.
  • If the ESG criteria weren’t a big enough stick for private sector compliance, there is also an emerging trend in Europe and at the UN to make human rights due diligence principles mandatory for businesses. For example, France passed a law in 2017 that requires companies with a substantial presence in the country to adopt reasonable vigilance measures to allow for risk identification and for the prevention of severe violations of human rights directly or indirectly from the operations of the companies and their subsidiaries.  Businesses that do not meet their vigilance obligations are liable for damages incurred by victims. These emerging legal obligations encompass not only the foreign operations of corporations but increasingly extend to the entire production and supply chain. 

October 28, 2021

* Thomas Andrew O’Keefe is the President of Mercosur Consulting Group, Ltd and author of the chapter “Human Rights Due Diligence Practices for Adequate and Effective Consultation with Indigenous Peoples” in a forthcoming book to be published by the American Bar Association.

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by clalsstaff on October 28, 2021  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on October 28, 2021

https://aulablog.net/2021/10/28/putting-teeth-in-the-requirement-for-consultation-with-indigenous-peoples/

Ecuador: President Moreno’s Pyrrhic Victory

By John Polga-Hecimovich*

President Lenín Moreno greets an indigenous leader on September 12, 2019.

President Lenín Moreno greets an indigenous leader on September 12, 2019/ Asemblea Nacional del Ecuador/ Flickr/ Creative Commons

Ecuadorean President Lenín Moreno’s agreement with opponents to rescind the austerity measures that sparked the recent crisis has restored calm but leaves his government irreparably weakened. The immediate trigger of the crisis was the president’s announcement on October 1 of a package of austerity measures aimed at reducing the fiscal deficit as part of his government’s $4.2 billion credit agreement with the International Monetary Fund. The key measure was elimination of a $1.3 billion gasoline subsidy expected to result in a 25-75 percent increase in the price of gasoline. Transport unions, student groups, and thousands of members of the country’s largest indigenous organization, the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE), took to the streets, paralyzing roads around the country and demanding Moreno step down.

  • Moreno declared a 60-day state of siege, temporarily suspended the right to freedom of association; and on October 7, flanked by the military high command, said he would not back down against what he called a “destabilization plan” orchestrated by his predecessor, Rafael Correa, and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Perhaps cognizant that a combination of social pressure and legislative and military action removed all three of Ecuador’s democratically elected presidents from 1996 to 2006, Moreno temporarily moved the seat of government from Quito to Guayaquil and imposed a curfew in Quito.
  • CONAIE President Jaime Vargas and other indigenous leaders, encouraged by the United Nations and the Catholic Church, agreed to direct negotiations on October 12. Two days later, the president signed a decree rescinding the austerity measures and reinstating fuel subsidies, and CONAIE decamped. Moreno removed the head of the military Joint Command and the commander of the army, and on October 15 returned to Quito. (He has so far resisted calls to replace Interior Minister María Paula Romo, a possible 2021 presidential aspirant, and Defense Minister Oswaldo Jarrín.)

The crisis has deeply altered prospects for the Moreno presidency.

  • Moreno survived a degree of social protest and political resistance that toppled previous presidents, but he failed to anticipate the popular reaction to lifting energy subsidies, employed a heavy-handed response to protestors, and ultimately backed away from one of the few significant political decisions his government has made. As a result, Moreno lost an opportunity to make structural economic changes and suffered irreparable damage to his political capital and credibility.
  • Indigenous groups and a resurgent CONAIE – after largely disappearing from national political decision-making under Correa – are once again a key national political actor and informal public policy veto player. They not only forced Moreno and the government to reverse course on energy subsidies, but also literally and figuratively earned a seat at the negotiating table. CONAIE appears more unified than it has been at any moment since the early 2000s and may be emboldened to seek further concessions from the government.
  • Correísmo may well be the biggest political loser. Moreno remains in power despite calls from ex-President Correa and his Revolución Ciudadana party to debate the possibility of impeachment and early elections. Correístas were excluded from discussions over the executive decree that restored the gas subsidies. Moreover, CONAIE tweeted a stinging rebuke of Correa, accusing him of opportunism and holding him responsible for the deaths of three indigenous leaders under his government.

Moreno is a lame duck just a little over halfway through his presidency. It is difficult to imagine any policymaking of consequence in his remaining 18 months in office. The government is severely handicapped politically and economically, and the political space for negotiation until elections is almost nonexistent. Moreno’s government is likely to resemble the interim governments of Fabián Alarcón (1997-1998) or Alfredo Palacio (2005-2007), which essentially served as placeholder administrations without ambitious policy agendas. Against all odds, Moreno – with a legislative minority – neutralized Correa and shifted government policy to the right during his first two-plus years in office, which throws his failure to remove the subsidy into sharper relief.

  • Economically, the picture is not much different. The protests forced Moreno to kick the can down the road on energy subsidies, while making it more difficult for the government to close its fiscal deficit. The weight of these necessary reforms will therefore fall to whoever wins the 2021 elections. The failed implementation of this economic reform and subsequent reversal of policy show the limits of Moreno’s political acumen while laying bare the country’s governability challenges.

October 17, 2019

*John Polga-Hecimovich is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of or endorsement by the Naval Academy, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

 

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by clalsstaff on October 17, 2019  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on October 17, 2019

https://aulablog.net/2019/10/17/ecuador-president-morenos-pyrrhic-victory/

Afro-Colombians and Indigenous: From Hope to Invisible Again?

By Luis Gilberto Murillo Urrutia*

Firma de la paz

Signing of the peace accords between the Colombian government and FARC, 2016/ Gobierno de Chile/ Wikimedia Commons/ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jefa_de_Estado_participa_en_ceremonia_de_la_Firma_de_la_Paz_entre_el_Gobierno_de_Colombia_y_las_FARC_E.P._(29953487045).jpg

Colombia’s delicate and fragile transition to peace, a process enshrined in the 2016 peace accord between the government and the FARC guerrillas, has brought some benefits to Colombia’s Indigenous peoples and communities of African descent but has fallen far short of expectations – with troubling implications for those groups in the future.

  • Official figures tend to understate the size and influence of the Afro-Colombians and Indigenous. According to the government, 15 percent of Colombia’s population is of African descent, and 4 percent (from 82 different ethnic groups) are Indigenous. But other estimates, such as that of the Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Sociales y Económicas (CIDSE) of the Universidad del Valle, estimate that Afro-Colombians could be as much as 25 percent of the national population, and Indigenous ethnic groups occupy some 15 percent of the national territory. These groups suffered deeply during the half-century of conflict that the peace accord intended to stop. One of many examples is the massacre of Bojayá, in the predominantly Afro-Colombian department of Chocó, which left more than 100 people dead – mostly women and children who had sought refuge in a church. The Indigenous also suffered great losses.

These historically neglected communities – which numerous observers report experienced a disproportionate deepening of poverty and discrimination during the conflict – saw in the peace accord and its implementation the opportunity to push longstanding demands for full exercise of their rights, especially control over their own territories in places such as Chocó, the Indigenous free farm labor system in Cauca and Nariño, and the ethnic region of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

  • The chapter of the peace accord dealing with ethnic matters, included as a result of the activism and leadership of Afro-Colombian and Indigenous organizations, encouraged those hopes. As accord implementation started, these groups focused on achieving protection for social leaders; the removal of anti-personnel mines from their territories; substitution of illicit crops; protection for, and expansion of, traditional homelands; and various environmental protections.
  • Last March, ethnic organizations reported some advances during the early stage of the implementation of the peace accord, during the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos and, more recently, when President Iván Duque’s government, in the planning process for regional programs and projects, included about US$5.5 billion in the four-year mandatory National Development Plan 2018-2022. If faithfully carried out, which appears doubtful, such expenditures would benefit Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities.

At the same time, however, leaders stated that, of the 13 specific provisions in the accord’s Ethnic chapter, implementation of seven had not even started – significantly less than the accord as a whole. Even more troubling to them, security in their communities has continued to deteriorate.

  • Some 35 percent of citizens displaced since 2016 have been Afro-Colombians and Indigenous. An estimated 40 percent of social leaders murdered have been from these groups, including 11 percent of those promoting manual eradication of coca production instead of forced aerial spraying. Disputes among armed groups with roots in both paramilitaries and guerrilla groups have increased the vulnerability of these communities.
  • Ethnic organizations blame this poor performance on the lack of a fluid dialogue between government and community leaders; the ignorance (willful or not) of the current government to embrace the deals made by its predecessors; and the lack of dedicated budget resources. The government has not convened a meeting of the Special High-Level Authorities of the Ethnic Peoples established by the accord. Afro-Colombian and Indigenous leaders have been largely excluded from critical decisions related to peace process implementation affecting their communities.

Growing challenges to accord implementation further complicate prospects for progress for Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities. Political tensions in Bogotá, the government’s efforts to unilaterally alter implementation, the assassination of social leaders, and – most recently and perhaps most disturbingly – some FARC negotiators’ decision to abandon the accord and take up arms anew, all have dire implications for them. Afro-Colombian and Indigenous leaders – lacking a viable alternative – seem likely to continue betting on the peace process and fulfilling their obligations under the accord. The bottom line, however, remains that the slow, inconsistent implementation and the absence of serious dialogue and coordination suggest that, once again, these important communities may become invisible.

September 12, 2019

* Luis Gilberto Murillo is a CLALS research fellow and former Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development of Colombia, with 30 years of experience in the areas of environment, sustainable development, and peace building.

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by clalsstaff on September 12, 2019  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on September 12, 2019

https://aulablog.net/2019/09/12/afro-colombians-and-indigenous-from-hope-to-invisible-again/

Laudato Si:  Support for the Indigenous of the Amazon Benefits Us All

By Birgit Weiler*

Group of men and women stand behind a banner

Members of the Awajún community mobilize in Peru. / Andina Archivo / Creative Commons

Issuing his Laudato Si encyclical in 2015, Pope Francis put himself on the side of Latin America’s original peoples in protecting the environment in their ancestral lands, in what will be a long struggle to counteract climate change and safeguard the earth.  Laudato Si emphasized that different religions, including the indigenous peoples’, can make “rich contributions … towards an integral ecology.”  Francis wrote:  “Given the complexity of the ecological crisis and its multiple causes, we need to realize that the solutions will not emerge from just one way of interpreting and transforming reality.  Respect must also be shown for the various cultural riches of different peoples … their interior life and spirituality.”   He spoke of their wisdom especially in dealing with the earth and all the living beings.

  • For the Awajún and Wampis in Amazonas Department in northern Peru, their cosmovisión (world view) and traditional religion are an important source of inspiration and endurance in their struggle for safeguarding their living space. In the integral vision of the world they share with other indigenous peoples, all living beings – not only human beings – are considered agents within a single big energy.  Everything is connected – similar to the “integral ecology” mentioned in Laudato Si.
  • Highlighting the urgent need of a “bold cultural revolution,” the encyclical implicitly embraces the indigenous people’s concept of “Buen Vivir,” an alternative way of life based on respect for the earth and on living in relationships of interconnectedness and interdependence. This demands a change in lifestyle reducing significantly our negative impact on our planet; caring for the integrity of the ecosystems and of human life; and a real change in our way of understanding and practicing economy, “progress,” and “development.”

Governments have been slow to respond to these calls – which threaten to disrupt longstanding arrangements between the extraction industry, regulators, and legislators – but there have been some significant public signs of progress.  Last March, for example, the Fourth Constitutional Court in Lima declared that the Awajún and Wampis have the right to approve oil exploration in their ancestral lands, particularly an area known as “Lot 116.”  The court ordered exploration activities to cease and withdraw from the region until full consultation with local indigenous groups was completed.  In another case, in the Iquitos–Pucallpa region, a court ordered that the state consult with respect the indigenous people’s right to a full consultation, forcing the government to step back and begin the process anew.

 Despite this halting progress, the environment and cultures that Laudato Si reveres are under constant and, in some cases, worsening threat.  Illegal deforestation of precious tropical lumber is reaching alarming levels.  An explosion in new oil palm farms, the construction of hydroelectric power stations, and the expansion of roads and other infrastructure to facilitate extractive industries are all inflicting permanent damage.  Scientists have repeatedly pointed out that the ecosystems of the Amazon won’t be able to bear much longer the devastating impact of these activities.  As the Pope wrote, loss of the region’s tropical forests – the biggest lung of our world – and the vanquishing of peoples like the Awajún and Wampis would be a tragic loss for us all.

October 11, 2017

* Birgit Weiler is Director of the Area of Research at the University Antonio Ruiz de Montoya in Lima; collaborates closely with the Vicariate of Jaén (Catholic Church) and with the Awajún and Wampis; and contributes to CLALS’s project on religion and climate change.

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by clalsstaff on October 11, 2017  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on October 11, 2017

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Latin America: End of “Supercycle” Threatens Reversal of Institutional Reforms

By Carlos Monge*

Monge graphic

By Eduardo Ballón and Raúl Molina (consultores) and Claudia Viale and Carlos Monge (National Resource Governance Institute, América Latina), from Minería y marcos institucionales en la región andina. El superciclo y su legado, o las difíciles relaciones entre políticas de promoción de la inversión minero-hidrocarburífera y las reformas institucionales, Reporte de Investigación preparado por NRGI con colaboración de la GIZ, Lima, Marzo del 2017. See blog text for high-resolution graphic

Policies adopted in response to the end of the “supercycle” have slowed and, in some cases, reversed the reforms that moved the region toward greater decentralization, citizen participation, and environmental protection over the past decade.  Latin American governments of the left and right used the commodities supercycle to drive growth and poverty reduction at an unprecedented pace.  They also undertook institutional reforms aimed at improving governance at large.

  • Even before demand and prices for Latin American energy and minerals began to rise in the early 2000s, some Latin American countries launched processes of decentralization (Colombia and Bolivia); started to institutionalize mechanisms for citizens’ participation in decision making (Colombia and Bolivia); and built progressively stronger environmental management frameworks (Colombia and Ecuador). Peru pressed ahead with decentralization and participation at the start of the supercycle, and when it was in full swing, created a Ministry of the Environment.
  • Implementation of the reforms was subordinated by governments’ overarching goal of fostering investments in the extractive sector. Indigenous consultation rights in Peru, for example, were approved in the second half of 2011, but implementation was delayed a year and limited only to indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin.  President Ollanta Humala, giving in to the mining lobby, claimed there were no indigenous peoples in the Andes and that no consultations were needed around mining projects.  Local pressure forced a reversal, and by early 2015 four consultation projects on mid-size mining projects were launched.

These reformist policies have suffered setbacks since the decrease in Asia’s and particularly China’s appetite for Latin American energy and minerals has caused prices to fall – and the value of exports, taxes, and royalties, and public incomes along with them.  The latest ECLAC data show a decline in economic growth and a rebound of poverty both in absolute and relative figures.  The gradual fall in the price of minerals starting in 2013 and the abrupt collapse in oil prices by the end of 2015 reversed this generally favorable trend.

The response of the governments of resource-dependent countries has been “race to the bottom” policies, which included steps backward in fiscal, social, and environmental policies.  Governments’ bigger concern has been to foster investments in the new and more adverse circumstances.  In this new scenario, the processes of decentralization, participation, and environmental management have been negatively impacted as local authorities and citizens’ participation – as well as environmental standards and protocols – are perceived by companies and rent-seeking public officials as obstacles to investments.

  • Peru’s Law 30230 in 2014, for example, reduced income tax rates, weakened the oversight capacity of the Ministry of the Environment, and weakened indigenous peoples’ claim public lands.

The correlation between the supercycle years and the progress and regressions in reforms is clear. (click here for high-resolution graphic).  During the supercycle – when huge amounts of money were to be made – companies and government were willing to incorporate the cost of citizen participation, decentralization and environmental standards and protocols.  But now, governments are desperate for new investments to overcome the fall in economic growth and extractive rents, and extractive companies are not willing any more to assume these additional costs.  Those who oppose the “race to the bottom strategy” are fighting hard to restore the reforms and to move ahead with decentralization, increased participation, and enhanced environmental management, to achieve a new democratic governance of the territories and the natural resources they contain.

April 7, 2017

* Carlos Monge is Latin America Director at the Natural Resource Governance Institute in Lima.

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by clalsstaff on April 7, 2017  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on April 7, 2017

https://aulablog.net/2017/04/07/latin-america-end-of-supercycle-threatens-reversal-of-institutional-reforms/

Peru: Can the Shamans Save the Glaciers?

By Karsten Paerregaard*

huaytapallanaceremony

A ceremony at Mount Huaytapallana during the Andean New Year. / Photo by Karsten Paerregaard.

Peru – one of the countries in the world most vulnerable to climate change – is experiencing a surge in religious ceremonies highlighting the plight of its rapidly shrinking glaciers, but the increased attention has downsides as well.  Peru has 70 percent of the world’s tropical glaciers, which provide most of the country’s fresh water and have been integrally linked to the identity of the Andean people since the Incas.  They are rapidly shrinking, however.  Mount Huaytapallana, a 5,500-meter-high glacier about 300 kilometers east of Lima, has shrunk 50 percent over the past quarter century – with profound implications for life throughout much of Peru.  Shamans in the region, whose ceremonies and offerings have long constituted a critical means of regulating the relationship between society and nature in the Andes, are reviving the practices to draw attention to this environmental crisis.

  • Most participants in ceremonies on Mount Huaytapallana come from Huancayo and other nearby cities in the central highlands, hoping that Huaytapallana will listen to their prayers and bring them good fortune. The Andean New Year on June 24, one of the most spectacular events, attracts more than a thousand people.  They offer food, drinks, candles, and cloths that are burned while the shamans say prayers to Huaytapallana in Quechua.  The event reminds people of the suffering that global warming is causing to the mountain.
  • In the southeastern highlands, Mount Ausungate attracts even bigger crowds. Around the feast of Corpus Christi each year thousands of pilgrims walk up to a sanctuary to pay tribute to an image called Señor de Qoyllur Rit’i (the Lord of the Snow Star), declared an Intangible Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2011.  The image represents Christ, who according the local legend revealed himself at the sanctuary in the 18th century, but it is also a religious relic of a pre-Columbian tradition of worshipping Andean mountain deities.  Dance groups from eight communities of pilgrims, known as naciones, play music and dance around the clock, and men dressed as bears climb the nearby glaciers of Ausungate to set up crosses and until recently set off fireworks.  An estimated 50,000 visited the sanctuary last year.

The glaciers are symbols of both the country’s indigenous past and the damage that global climate change is inflicting.  The growing participation in Andean ceremonies with religious overtones reflects the deepening concern for the profound social, economic, and spiritual implications of the environmental degradation.  It is fueled by a search for alternative answers to problems that global climate change is causing in Peru and that the country’s governments so far have failed to provide.  The surge in interest also, ironically, is cause for concern.  According to the regional government of Junín, responsible for the protection of Huaytapallana’s environment, visitors leave more than four tons of trash on the mountain every year.  The commercialization of the offering ceremonies makes it difficult to hold the shamans accountable for participants’ activities.  At Qoyllur Rit’i, Peru’s Ministry of Culture is in charge of preserving the pilgrimage according to Andean traditions, enhancing people’s awareness of Ausungate’s cultural importance, but pilgrims’ presence on the glaciers remains an issue of continuous dispute.  Shamans and environmentalists are a potentially powerful alliance, but even mitigating the environmental impact of activities by people concerned with climate change is not a simple matter.

February 6, 2017

* Karsten Paerregaard teaches in the School of Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.  He has participated in a CLALS project, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, on Religion and Climate Change in Cross-Regional Perspective.

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by clalsstaff on February 6, 2017  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on February 6, 2017

https://aulablog.net/2017/02/06/peru-can-the-shamans-save-the-glaciers/

Indigenous Prospects in Mexico

American University professor Todd Eisenstadt has turned the conventional story about indigenous peoples in Mexico upside-down.  In Politics, Identity and Mexico’s Indigenous Rights Movement,* Eisenstadt presents evidence that Mexico’s indigenous peoples are at present not best characterized exclusively by the pursuit of communitarian ethnic goals and the defense of their collective rights and autonomy.  Rather, he shows that indigenous people are often preoccupied with their socio-economic conditions and struggles over land tenure and ownership, more than with ethnicity, and in ways largely comparable to non-indigenous Mexicans.

For at least a decade after the Zapatista revolt exploded onto the world stage in 1994, indigenous concerns and critiques of the state helped shape national Mexican politics and public debate.  The 1996 San Andrés Accords underscored the Zapatistas’ analysis of the limits of liberal citizenship and of the negative consequences of neoliberal state policies.  Now, in late 2012, indigenous political possibilities in Mexico appear very different.  The government has still not ratified the Accords; Mexico’s center-left has failed to capture the presidency; and the neoliberal policies of the Calderón administration promise to continue with the PRI’s return to power.  Indigenous social mobilization has been fragmented since the early 2000s.  Localized conflicts have flared up over government efforts to privatize land for outside investment and development, but these have not led to larger-scale indigenous mobilization.  The Zapatistas’ “Other Campaign” has had little impact, and they did not participate in the recent presidential elections.  As regular teacher strikes and the attention generated by the spectacle of the “#YoSoy132” anti-electoral fraud student movement have made clear, the national center of gravity of social protest no longer turns on an indigenous axis.

Eisenstadt’s book sounds a skeptical note about the possibilities for ethnically-based indigenous mobilization in Mexico.  His research underscores that Mexico’s development model does not adequately address the needs of ordinary Mexicans – including of indigenous peoples – at a moment when we should expect more of the same from the Peña Nieto (PRI) administration that takes office on 1 December.  He documents the shift away from primordialist accounts of indigenous identity to friction over control of economic resources – a shift from ethnicity to class – that is seen in some other Latin American countries. While countries such as Bolivia have actively incorporated indigenous nationalisms into state policy and law, Mexico appears headed in the other direction.  This divergence illustrates the elusiveness of the ongoing search for the best balance between collective and individual rights in Latin American countries with large indigenous populations.

* Politics, Identity, and Mexico’s Indigenous Rights Movement
by Todd A. Eisenstadt
Cambridge University Press
ISBN-10: 110700120X
ISBN-13: 978-1107001206

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by clalsstaff on October 25, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on October 25, 2012

https://aulablog.net/2012/10/25/indigenous-prospects-in-mexico/