Limiting Indigenous Autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico: The State Government's Use of Human Rights

Human Rights Activism and the (De-)securitization of the ‘Other’

“…While the Mexican state invoked specifically individual human rights to curtail indigenous self-governance and to portray cultural customs as pre-modern and illiberal, indigenous movements since the late 1980s themselves started to draw upon the stipulations provided by international covenants on basic rights to legitimize their claim for recognition of their ethnicity (Speed and Collier 2000: 878 pp., Anaya Muñoz 2009: 46, Mattiace 1997. The EZLN built on this strategy justifying the insurgency through reference to the rights granted to ethnic minorities by international law and the Constitution of Mexico (Bob 2005: 117, 152, García de León 2005.…”

“…Yet the national ideology of mestizaje (engl. racial mixing or miscegenation) has served to neglect the existence of living indigenous peoples, who maintain distinctive languages, cultures, and communities, as well as underpinning a system of political and societal exclusion (Speed andCollier 2000: 883, Yoshioka 1998). This had severe consequences for living conditions, particularly in Southern Mexico, which has long been one of the country's most poverty stricken regions (Bob 2005: 120-121, Stephen 1997.…”

“…Local elites used fraud, repression and intimidation to oppress indigenous and peasant communities who invoked Article 27 to claim their right for land. But official state authorities cooperated with landholders to maintain control of the rural areas and largely ignored the needs of indigenous communities (Speed and Collier 2000: 886, Fox 1996: 1093. Hence, discriminatory state policies, denied recognition, and structural exclusion created an environment where indigenous communities perceived themselves as threatened in their identity.…”

New Directions in Feminism and Human Rights

“…I began to explore the 'social life of rights' (Speed and Collier 2000): the ways in which women activists draw upon but also reshape human rights discourses in accordance with their own visions, lived experiences and, in the words of Bety Cariñ o, their own attempts 'to resist in distinct ways, you know? To not assume for yourself other people's models of living' (Talcott 2008: 230).…”

Introduction: Anthropological Perspectives on Indigenous Resurgence in Chiapas

“…One striking example from recent anthropological work on Chiapas is Aída Hernández Castillo's (2002) analysis of how selective official enthusiasm for "multiculturalist" principles (sometimes backed by the "expert testimony" of anthropologists) has served the defense teams of paramilitaries responsible for murdering women and children and has actually been used to undermine the efforts of indigenous women to change aspects of their own "community culture" that they find degrading and oppressive. Another is equally selective appeals to human rights principles and national rules of "due process" by state authorities to justify interventions against dissident communities and to de-legitimate aspects of indigenous legal practice that might genuinely be considered better adapted to the specific social conditions of their communities (Speed and Collier 2000). It is also true that arguments in defense of "tradition" and for community "autonomy" may be mobilized by community authorities interested in maintaining abusive systems of local boss rule and that protection of the rights of religious and other kinds of minorities has often proved a serious issue (Gossen 1999;Gross 2003).…”