Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T11:35:58.814Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Emergence and Development of the Politics of Recognition of Cultural Diversity and Indigenous Peoples' Rights in Mexico: Chiapas and Oaxaca in Comparative Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2005

ALEJANDRO ANAYA MUÑOZ
Affiliation:
Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City.

Abstract

In this article I attempt to explain the differentiated development of the politics of recognition – that is the process of formal recognition of cultural diversity and indigenous peoples' rights – in Mexico, particularly in the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas. I follow an explanatory framework that proposes that the recognition agenda emerges in the context of armed conflict and/or legitimacy and governability crises, and evolves successfully when indigenous actors get access to the decision-making process and form alliances with key political actors. I find that government legitimacy has eroded in both states, and that governability has been severely threatened in Oaxaca and disturbed by armed conflict in Chiapas. However, only in the former have indigenous actors influenced the decision-making process and made alliances with the key decision-makers. This latter finding – fundamental within the explanatory framework followed – begs a further question – why was an alliance between the indigenous and the government elite possible in Oaxaca but not in Chiapas? I go beyond the original explanatory framework and identify a series of structural, contextual and agent-related factors that account for the uneven development of the politics of recognition in each state.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2005 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author thanks the many colleagues who have commented on previous versions of this article, in particular the anonymous reviewers of JLAS.