Indigenous Empowerment or State Instrumentalization? The Formalization of Indigenous Justices in Michoacán, México

Abstract

Resumen El reconocimiento formal, o la formalización de las justicias indígenas en México, ¿ha empoderado a las comunidades indígenas con más derechos de autonomía? Este artículo intenta responder a esta interrogante mediante un análisis del Estado de Michoacán. Analiza dos fases distintas del proceso de formalización. Primero, la inclusión y legislación de formas “indígenas” de justicia dentro del sistema legal michoacano; y, segundo, la primera experiencia de poner en operación la reforma a través del Tribunal Comunal Purépecha entre 2007 y 2009. Sobre la base de este análisis se sugiere que lejos de empoderar a las comunidades indígenas, el proceso de formalización legal ha restringido su autonomía para ejercer sus distintas formas de justicia.

“The pandemic came to teach us how to eat”: COVID‐19, mutual vulnerability, and native corn in Oaxaca

“…Although ideologies of national identity have frequently justified the displacement of Indigenous people, Indigeneity has been an important symbolic reservoir from which the Mexican state has strategically drawn—this is regularly done through the language of revivalism (Rodríguez‐Aguilera, 2022; Saldívar, 2011). Anthropologists have noted revivalist trends in various arenas of Mexican public life, such as in healthcare (Duncan 2017) and justice (Aragón Andrade, 2017). The production and consumption of Mexican food and drink have been especially fertile for revivalist projects, as Gálvez (2018), and Bowen (2015), Matta (2021) have shown regarding cocineras tradicionales, Mexican cuisine, and mezcal, respectively.…”

From the Transatlantic Slave Trade to Contemporary Ethnoracial Law in Multicultural Ecuador

“…I follow Tanya Hernández (2013:13-14) when she explains that the concept of "customary law and practices" she works with is not aligned with what anthropologists have sometimes called "traditional law" when referring to the indigenous legal systems in Latin America that happened to clash with the settler colonial and postcolonial state's legal regimes, but that the contemporary multicultural state eventually accommodates, within certain limits (Andrade 2017;Sieder and Barrera 2017;Stephen 2008;Thomas 2016;Velasco 2017). Instead, the concept of "customary law" useful here points to the set of values, beliefs, and practices the colonial and postcolonial states use to systematically ground their decisions and interventions to implement, reproduce, and administer a particular socioeconomic and racial order for the long-standing benefit of identified White and White-mestizo elites in multiracial and multiethnic societies.…”

Evaluating the usefulness of contemporary ethnoracial law for Afrodescendants in Latin America through the examination of court cases and the appreciation of the state’s processual nature

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