Commentary From Integrationist Indigenismo to Neoliberal De-Ethnification in Chiapas: Reminiscences

by Mercedes Olivera Translated by Carlos Prez Very few members of the younger generation of critical anthropologists that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s remain. Margarita Nolasco, Juan Jos Rendn Monzn, Guillermo Bonfil, and Enrique Valencia, who at that time were students at the Escuela Nacional de Antropologa e Historia (National School of History and AnthropologyENAH), are not with us anymore. In the course of half a century, as liberal modernity and neoliberal postmodernity transformed the nation, the indigenous became other. Indigenismo, which united us in our critique, also changed as it tried to adjust to the rhythms of social processes and developmental models, finally succumbing when it lost its reason for existence. Time scattered our lives, our experiences, and our political positions, but those of us who remain from that generation, Rodolfo Stavenhagen,1 Salomn Nahmad, and I, along with colleagues from more recent generations, have continued to engage with the demands, struggles, and claims of indigenous peoples. We have approached these issues from different perspectives, with different models and different capabilities, in a negotiated or participatory process. Rodolfo and Salomn, coming from an engaged academy, were able to combine theory with international diplomacy and government actions; I, more a part of the social dynamic from belowthe daily life of the communities of Chiapas and Central Americahave accompanied indigenous women of various ethnicities in trying to open up spaces in which women and men could work together as equals (parejos2) and, ideally, without distinctions of gender, class, and ethnicity toward personal self-determination and cultural and political autonomy. So that my reflections do not remain too vague, permit me to say that my frustrating experience as the director of the Escuela de Desarrollo Regional (School for Regional DevelopmentEDR) of the Instituto Nacional Indigenista

Mercedes Olivera is an anthropologist and activist, a researcher at the Centro de Estudios Superiores de Mxico y Centroamrica of the Universidad de Ciencias y Artes de Chiapas, the founder of the Centro de Derechos de la Mujer de Chiapas, and a participating editor of Latin American Perspectives. Carlos Prez teaches in the Department of Chicano and Latin American Studies at California State University, Fresno. The author points out that these autobiographical reflections do not pretend to be an article but were prepared at the editors kind invitation to accompany the essays presented in this issue.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 186, Vol. 39 No. 5, September 2012 100-110 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X12447278 2012 Latin American Perspectives

100

Olivera / COMMENTARY 101

(National Indigenist InstituteINI) in San Cristbal de las Casas in 1972 definitely alienated me from official indigenismo but not from indigenous people. There we3 naively dreamed of giving direction to an indigenista integrationism through training programs that oriented the various activities of the different levels of the school toward ethnic recovery and the revaluation of indigenous cultures and languages (Olivera Bustamante, 1978). After a detour, and fortified by popular Central American feminism, I returned to Chiapas to struggle alongside indigenous people against the system of inequalities, discriminations, and injustices unleashed by neoliberalism. In spite of that and other bad experiences, I believe that it is important to reflect on and try to recover the positive experiences of the past and to rethink our critiques from a distance that allows us to include them in the effects of those integrationist processes, programs, and policies. In this connection, I would like to mention something that happened in 2001. We were in the INI offices in San Cristbal de las Casas commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the Centro Tzeltal-Tzotzil. It was a simple but moving ceremony in which the principal invitees were five old indigenous leaders who had been part of the first generation of INIs cultural promoters. I had been chosenI dont know whyto follow the introduction by the institutes director. After my presentation, one of the old promoters spoke, and at one point in his presentation he directed his comments toward me: You were not in agreement with the INI; you thought everything had to be criticized. But look, there is something about the INI that I hold in my heart. It showed us how to recognize our enemies: the wealthy farmers and large landowners. And we struggled against them until the government gave us their lands. His declaration moved me profoundly. Our criticism had effectively erased our individual and collective successes, which, despite what was questionable about the integrationist policies, had produced a transformation in the lives, consciousness, and hopes of indigenous peoples changes that in many cases were the foundation for further struggles. But this can only be appreciated with the distance that time provides us. At the EDR in 1972, indigenista ideals were overshadowed by populist developmentalism. I advocated a strategy of awakening to historical consciousness for the indigenous people of Chiapas, analyzing the causes of their class and ethnic oppression with the objective of transforming them into actors participating in resistance and proud of a valuable secular culture that, revaluated by themselves, would become an instrument of their liberation. Aside from the circumstances that destroyed our experiment, I now believe, as I have stated in other places, that our opposition to the integrationist dynamic of the state was outside of time and place. The national government fulfilled its function through the INI, and we should clearly have criticized it for its capitalist, exclusive, hierarchical character, favoring the privileged classes and reproducing the excluded poor. The nature of indigenous peoples lives is not only a byproduct of development but also, as Lourdes Arizpe (1978) has said, a problem that the state has created, and therefore it was and is impossible for the state to solve that problem outside of its own boundaries. With the acquiescence of the indigenistas or masked by their theories, no longer being marginal meant no longer being indigenous. Engaging in actions that questioned the state at the EDR was risky because the struggle for ethnic rights, to be consistent (as we intended it to be), was naturally class-based and

102LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

antisystem. But then, the indigenous people arrived at the school believing that the INI was the only door open for attaining individual progress through becoming first a promoter and then a bilingual teacher for the state, which was the career they envisioned. Without changing their thinking, the consciousness raising needed to achieve their liberation in its many dimensions could advance only with difficulty, the more so as part of a state institution that was dedicated to a completely contrary goallinking the indigenous regions to the market and the political party in power. Therefore, looking back, we cannot blame the INI for its blindness or hold it responsible for everything that is happening in the indigenous regions of Chiapas today: the extreme poverty, the collapse of the peasant economy, the disintegration of the family and the sexist subordination of women, the profound social differentiation existing within the indigenous communities, the corrosive transformation of the vital hopes and values of religious attachments, the transformation from peasant to migrant, etc. We need to go beyond the institutions in charge of implementing the policies to examine the dynamics of power and the development models that generate change, which now have transnational dimensions. From this perspective it occurs to me to ask whether the integrationist nationalism of the INI was, in its time, a kind of barrier to the transnational dynamic that has been brewing since the final decades of the 1970s. What was the relationship between the dysfunction and disappearance of the INI and the shift from developmental policies dedicated to national integration to neoliberal developmental policies oriented toward the transnational market and disguised as sectorial policies against poverty? There is no room for the INI or any other government institution that seeks to strengthen nationality, the internal market, and sovereignty at the present moment, which is dominated by a global free market. Multiculturalism has been institutionalized, and the government is not interested in whether the indigenous exist as indigenous; now they are valued as useful commodities, providing cheap and docile labor for the transnational companies like any other poor and unemployed person in the country. INDIGENOUS POLICY IN CHIAPAS AND THE DEVELOPMENT DYNAMICS OF THE STATE In fact, one of the limitations of both the critics and the supporters of indigenismo was not taking into consideration the totality of the social process through which it became a national policy and the meaning of the decisions underlying it. In Chiapas, as in the nation as a whole, there is evidence that, with some local differences, indigenous peoples have always been integrated into the economy and always in a position of subordination to the central power. Public policy with regard to the indigenous has always been determined by those who in the end benefit from their work and their resources. They have been granted only enough space for survival and to silence their protests. Explicit and implicit policies with regard to the indigenous population are essentially in accord with the regime in power and the development policies imposed by the national and international regimes according to their needs, their sense of power, and the pace of economic growth.

Olivera / COMMENTARY 103

We can recall that Hernn Corts and other conquistadores, concerned about the decline of the indigenous population that had resulted not only from the conquest and devastating diseases but also from the slavery imposed by the colonial enterprise, urged the crown to put an end to the extermination that would leave them without tributaries. The New Laws of 1542, which can perhaps be considered the first indigenista measure in the Americas, protected the indigenous paternalistically from some abuses, but they imposed the reducciones, dependency in daily life, and the obligation of believing in the saints and giving tribute in service, goods, labor, and money in exchange for the terrestrial and divine protection dictated by the colonial power. Indigenous revolts against the priests and government officials were cruelly suffocated, among them one that had major repercussions, the Tzeltal rebellion of 1712. Subsequently, the incipient Mexican state imposed legislation on the indigenous that neither took them into consideration nor recognized their culture and their communal structures. Instead the indigenous person was compared individually to any other Mexican. Parallel to the formal juridical equality granted by the state, cultural and racial discrimination functioned as an effective means of separating the indigenous economically and socially from the national society, represented by the coletos (the elite population, which claims to be descended from the Spanish conquerors) of San Cristbal, the city that inherited colonial power and the governing center of the highlands. The national constitution and the Reform laws created barriers to the full citizenship of indigenous people by isolating them socially and culturally. In particular, the laws relating to the distribution of the so-called idle lands legalized the confiscation of huge extensions of communal lands and favored the exploitation of indigenous labor and natural resources. The haciendas and ranches of central Chiapas and the surrounding agricultural and ranching zone, the Frailesca, flourished under this regime. The hacienda and ranch owners, although divided politically into liberals and conservatives, all exploited indigenous and peasant labor. The process of cultural miscegenation contributed to a kind of assimilation of the indigenous into the national society. The weakness of the state in Chiapas, which was divided among numerous local caciques struggling for control, made it necessary for the federal government to impose its centralism through the political class of the neighboring states of Oaxaca and Tabasco. In the indigenous communities the traditional system of political-religious public office persisted with a certain autonomy as a regulator of internal social relations. Besides being discriminated against, the authorities of the communities were weakly articulated into the political system of the state through the municipal secretaries, bilingual mestizos charged with the administration and control of the population. These secretaries came to accumulate great personal power that they exercised in an authoritarian manner by demanding, just as the Church demanded, personal services and payments that represented a heavy burden for the indigenous population. The mid-nineteenth-century indigenous rebellion, a broad revolt against the mestizos affecting the communities of the highlands, is an example of the justifiable rejection of the exclusive national state structure and the racist, discriminatory, and authoritarian policies that had failed to assimilate the indigenous people.

104LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the primary export-led model of economic development consolidated the latifundio regime, which depended on indigenous people for labor on the coffee haciendas as captive peons. The peasant culture was adapted to this regime through debt peonage and the naturalization of patriarchal dependency, which included the right of the first night (see Olivera Bustamante, 1979; Toledo, 2002). The concern of the government and of certain intellectual sectors with the development of the indigenous peasantry, which coexisted with proposals for the disappearance of the indigenous people through miscegenation and racial whitening, was aimed at consolidating the national state, and this consolidation ultimately benefited the emerging agrarian and commercial bourgeoisie in opposition to the local large-landowner political bosses. Thus the policy of assimilation, not only in its naturalized form but also in the forced form of, for example, education in federal institutions, was designed not for the betterment of the indigenous peoples living conditions but for the achievement of progress through a culturally unified nation. Therefore the rural schools created during the administration of Plutarco Elas Calles (19241928) and the educational policy and even the agrarian reform under Lzaro Crdenas (19341940) were important chapters in the development of a domestic market and opened the doors for the capitalist modernization of the country, which accelerated with the administration of Miguel Alemn (19461952). Nevertheless, in various regions of Chiapas the latifundio regime and the ranch culture of the indigenous and Mexican peasantry continued beyond the mid-twentieth century, creating an obstacle to economic development. At the same time, the indigenous communities of the highlands were trapped in backwardness and traditionalism, producing corn and beans for their own consumption and selling some of the surplus locally but without becoming completely integrated into the national market. This occurred even though the indigenous people and often their families, forced by debt, annually migrated to the coastal and jungle estates during the coffee harvest season. Their traditionalism and corporatism, a historical legacy of the unequal development of capitalism in the country, represented an obstacle to the nations economic growth. The welfare-state model of development imposed as a result of the 1949 crisis demanded the expansion of the internal market and government control. For this reason, besides seeking capitalist investment in the economic infrastructure and the development of the industrial sector, the new dynamic of development involved integrating the areas of the nation that were unjustly marginal, such as the indigenous regions. This integrationist indigenismo corresponded to a model of development inspired by John Maynard Keynes after World War II. Between the 1950s and the 1980s, in the indigenous zones of Chiapas, important agents of an integrationist and nationalist developmental policy, including INI directors Alfonso Caso (19481970) and Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrn (19701976) and state governor Manuel Velasco Surez (19701976), worked toward including the indigenous population in the dynamic of economic development. From the perspective of consciousness raising and liberation, Bishop Samuel Ruiz (19602000) also influenced this inclusionary dynamic.

Olivera / COMMENTARY 105

In Chiapas, the process of official integration was achieved in three main ways:
1. The official warehousing of corn and coffee crops through the public corporations Compaia Nacional de Subsistencias Populares (National Company for Popular Subsistence CropsCONASUPO) and the Instituto Mexicano del Caf (Mexican Coffee InstituteINMECAFE), which reduced production for local consumption and the local market at the same time that it stabilized the monetarization of the indigenous economy and created dependence on credit and chemical pesticides. 2. The modernization and integration work of the INI Coordinating Center in the highlands, founded in 1951, and, two decades later, the state governments Programa de Desarrollo Social de los Altos de Chiapas (Social Development Program of the Chiapas HighlandsPRODESCH). Modernizing culturally meant not only speaking Spanish but also learning to read and write in that language. Overall, it meant ceasing to be a peasant and learning to be an entrepreneur through the manipulation of the symbols and representations of mestizo culture, which became aspirations. 3. The reactivation of agrarian reform, which was officially resurrected after more than a decade of peasant struggles (19751986), dealing a mortal blow to the latifundio.

My criticism of indigenismo began to ferment during this period, especially after the Second Inter-American Indigenist Congress in 1954, which is when I first expressed it. The criticism became increasing radical in the 1960s and 1970s, and at the end of the 1970s critical anthropologists were invited to participate in various institutions related to indigenismo. This is when I attempted, at the INI, the experiment I have mentioned and when from a secular position we grew closer to the work of the Diocese of San Cristbal. Of the indigenous students who participated in this failed experiment, 10 of them continued to participate in an indigenous theater group with the financial support of the CONASUPO. This theater group became a means for consciousness raising in formerly remote and isolated indigenous communities. Although it was of minor importance, I mention it here in order to give much-deserved recognition to the creativity and dedication of the actors who through their enthusiasm awakened in their indigenous audiences an interest in learning about alternative life projects. The rest of the students, the majority of them men, became involved in the dynamic of indigenismo as promoters. Subsequently, some of them joined the teachers movement of the late 1980s, which recognized them as bilingual teachers comparable to primary school teachers. During this stage, outside of and far from the major investments of the INI and the PRODESCH, other processes of grassroots liberation occurred that were very important for the indigenous people of Chiapas. One of these was the Indigenous Congress of 1974, which, led by the bishop of San Cristobl, united more than 300 leaders from different regions of the state, especially the highlands and the rain forest. Through their crucial work as consciousnessraising catechists and with the support of the Dominican order and the priests of the various parishes of the diocese, these leaders had in the previous decade revolutionized the traditional religious structures of the majority of the states indigenous communities, encountering some strong contradictions.

106LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

The congress energized the process of consciousness raising by contributing to a revaluation of indigenous culture and calling attention to indigenous peoples ability to participate in the political process through organizing to achieve rights to land and realize a life of justice and peace. It is from this period that, spurred on by the governments corporatist actions, the Unin de Ejidos Quiptic ta Lecubtesel (Quiptic Ejido Union Applying Our Strength for a Better Future), a precursor to the ARIC (Rural Collective-Interest Association) Productores Indgenas Serranos de Chiapas (Chiapas Highlands Indigenous Producers), despite its diverse perspectives and political differences, played an important role in the creation of ejidos (communal farms) in the municipalities of La Trinitaria, Las Margaritas, and Ocosingo. The Xinich Comit de Defensa de la Libertad Indgena (Xinich Committee for the Defense of Indigenous Liberty) of the municipality of Palenque and Yomblej in the municipalities of Chiln and Bachajn both emerged under Jesuit influence to defend the human rights of the indigenous that were constantly threatened by the many caciques of the rain forest. At the same time, the struggles of peasants against the estate owners of the rain forest in the north and center of the state gave rise to independent organizations such as the Organization Campesina Emiliano Zapata (Emilio Zapata Peasant OrganizationOCEZ), the Central Independiente de Obreros Agrcolas y Campesinos (Independent Central of Agricultural Workers and PeasantsCIOAC), and, subsequently, the OCEZ-Coordinadora Nacional del Plan de Ayala (OCEZ Nacional Committee for the Plan de AyalaOCEZCEMPA), the Movimiento Campesino Regional Independiente (Independent Regional Peasant MovementMOCRI), and the Unin General Obrera Campesina y Popular (General Workers, Peasants, and Popular Union UGOCEP). During this period, all of these organizations except for the one belonging to the ARIC maintained their independence from the Confederacin Nacional de Campesinos (National Peasant ConfederationCNC), which because of its corporatist and governmental origin can be considered part of official indigenismo. Also dating to this period was the silent work of revolutionary politicization and organization undertaken by the Fuerzas de Liberacin Nacional (National Liberation ForcesFLN), which subsequently (in 1993) became the Ejrcito Zapatista de Liberacin Nacional (Zapatista National Liberation ArmyEZLN), among the peasant communities of the lowlands and the northern part of the rain forest. It would take a long time to analyze the multiple transformations occurring during this period of indigenista development and its counterpart in the independent peasant movement, but before going on to the next development model I do want to mention some of the consequences of the contradictions between the governments actions and the peasant movement:
1. After several decades and various transformations in the model of indigenismo, there was significant progress in the development and integration of the indigenous into the national market. Unfortunately, this progress was associated with greater inequality and vulnerability, increasing poverty, the corporatism of the ruling Partido Revolutionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary PartyPRI), and increasing differentiation within the indigenous communities. The breakdown of physical isolation led to an ethnic citizenship.

Olivera / COMMENTARY 107

2. The presence and position of the INI exacerbated the racism of the San Cristbal elite. The consistent attitude of the institutions leaders, technicians, and employees established the precedent for a struggle against racism, however, and after the displacements caused by religious conflict this racism changed. There was finally an acceptance of the indigenous as good customers who benefited the businessmen of the city. 3. As a result of its integrationist and culturalist nature and its political limitations and despite its opposition to the latifundio, indigenismo did not intervene in a timely and convincing manner in finding a solution for the agrarian problem, the most important issue at the time for the indigenous population of Chiapas. 4. The INI and the PRODESCH fulfilled their role as agents of the welfare state by making educational activities the focus of their programs. These actions contributed to the emergence of a cadre of elite promoters and teachers who supported the objectives of the INI and were cut off from the interests and dynamics of the communities, often becoming loan sharks and caciques. 5. Perhaps the high point of indigenismo was during the populist administration of Luis Echeverra (19701976). The coordinating centers, which had increased in number to 11 in 1980, encompassed all of the nations indigenous zones, but the indifference of indigenismo to structural problems was confronted with the repression and divisiveness of the federal and state governments with regard to the indigenous and peasant movements of Chiapas. 6. Conceived as a sectarian governmental action, integration, instead of constructing alliances with other actors such as the Diocese of San Cristbal against the latifundio, contributed to social polarization whose costs were paid by the indigenous people. 7. The lack of gender objectives in indigenista policies often increased the subordination of women. Their integration into the educational process was not only partial and slow but in many cases discriminatory, as was demonstrated by the unequal investments in productive projects for men and women.

INDIGENISTA POLICY AFTER THE INI The INIs crisis corresponded to the transformation of the neoliberal model of development that emerged in the late 1970s. The policies emerging from neoliberalism (structural reform, the free-trade agreement, the agrarian counterreform, militarization, and a counterinsurgent developmentalism), although not specifically directed at the indigenous population, have deeply affected indigenous life as a result of the changes that have been necessary to guarantee their survival. Little by little national policies replaced the indigenista bureaucrats culturalist focus as they became agents for this new orientation in the indigenous areas. Examples of this change are the Coordinacin General del Plan Nacional de Zonas Deprimidas y Grupos Marginales (General Coordinator of the National Plan for Depressed Areas and Marginal GroupsCOPLAMAR) during the administration of Jos Lpez Portillo (19761982), the Programa de Certificacin de Derechos Ejidales y Titulacin de Solares (Program for Certification of Rights to Ejido LandsPROCEDE), and the Programa Nacional de Solidaridad (National Solidarity ProgramPRONASOL) during the administration of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (19881994), to which the INI yielded on the national level. The INI first decentralized and then disappeared, to be replaced by the

108LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Oficina de Atencin a los Pueblos Indios (Office of Attention to Indigenous Peoples) and later the decentralized ministries of indigenous communities that operated in the states that had the largest concentrations of indigenous people and the Comisin Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indgenas (National Commission for the Development of Indigenous PeoplesCDI). An attorney general for indigenous affairs was created within the Office of the Attorney General. One might suppose that these offices had personnel specialized in the rights of indigenous communities, in particular bilingual translators who could transcribe legal declarations into the native languages and inform the individuals detained about the status of their cases, as the law provides. In practice, this did not occur and continues to be an important need. Many women have learned Spanish in jail, which facilitates their defense, but the majority of the indigenous prisoners have signed their declarations without knowing what they say. The most significant features of public policy with regard to the indigenous population were the privatization of land through the process of agrarian certification, the reduction to the vanishing point of support for peasant production in favor of export-oriented agribusiness, and the reduction of assistance that directly benefited consumption, thereby accelerating the internal differentiation of the communities and the proletarianization of the peasantry. Indigenous peoples and other marginal sectors have been transformed into very cheap migrant labor for the transnational corporations and companies of the United States and Canada. The welfare payments of the development programs, offering various kinds of support, have functioned as a subsidy to the market, promoting dependency and contributing to a notorious decrease in peasant production. The little that is produced, often by women, is for basic family consumption. At the same time, this focus of the development programs meant that support for the work of the community, the ejido, and the municipality ceased to be a priority. Economic and technical support went to individuals, competitive cooperatives, or nongovernmental organizations. The sectors that were supported were those considered vulnerable: the poor, the old, and women (Oehmichen, 2003). In 1993 President Salinas signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, and after it took effect in 1994 indigenous families were significantly affected by the disadvantageous competition with imported corn subsidized by the U.S. government that it imposed on them. In Chiapas, the effects of neoliberalism, along with the 1990s coffee crisis and the financial crisis of 2008, have been socially and economically disastrous for the indigenous population. I will mention only a few of the most important consequences, drawing on the results of a recent study (Olivera Bustamante, Ramos, and Castro, 2009): poverty among the peasantry has significantly increased (the median daily income per person is less than US$1), especially among the indigenous people of the North and the rain forest (where the median daily income per person is less than fifty cents); migration is seen as the only work alternative other than narco-trafficking for young people; and women, having been forced into very vulnerable situation in the job market (handicrafts and services), have no job security and earn extremely low and insecure incomes. Dependency on welfare programs is important for daily survival and often the familys most significant source of income. Specifically,

Olivera / COMMENTARY 109

the Oportunidades program, directed toward women with school-age children, has become a basic subsistence program in the indigenous regions,4 and this has made women the family providers. The male in the relationship, displaced from that role, is conflicted, steals his womans money to get drunk, forgets to plant the crops, and thinks that he can quietly migrate and abandon his family because Oportunidades will take care of them. The Oportunidades program, by establishing an individualistic dynamic outside of the traditional structure, far from reinforcing the functioning of the municipality, has contributed to the disintegration of family and community networks. Neoliberal policies in Chiapas have also been part of the counterinsurgency war that the government has undertaken against the Zapatistas since they appeared on the scene in 1994. The military strategy of the armed forces has ranged from persecution and harassment to dialogues and unfulfilled agreements, paramilitary aggression as in the Acteal massacre, and attempts to dispossess people of the lands and resources that were taken as a result of the uprising. It has also employed counterinsurgent developmentalismoffering lands, projects, and support of various kinds to entice individuals to leave the movementto alienate the Zapatista army from its bases. The war against the insurgents and against any group that demands its rights is part of present-day indigenous policy. There are other elements that lead to the same ends, such as the governments encouragement of conflicts between the Zapatistas and other political groups, including supposedly leftist parties and organizations like the Partido de la Revolucin Democrtica (Party of the Democratic RevolutionPRD) and the CIOAC. Religious conflicts, although to a lesser degree, are also disruptive elements, along with the massive presence of the military that, in its supposed war against narco-trafficking, controls life in the so-called conflict zone expropriating lands to establish its barracks, contaminating rivers and streams, profaning sacred spots, and contributing to the social violence associated with alcoholism, drug addiction, narco-trafficking, and prostitution. These characteristics and others not mentioned are part of, a cause of, and a consequence of the neoliberal developmental model and of the policies implemented in the modernized indigenous regions of Chiapas. The majority of indigenous people are deeply integrated into the transnational system through the labor market, consumerism, and debt. Many of them may continue to identify themselves as indigenous but without any significant transformation of their subordinated social position in the highly polarized larger society. Many of the young men and women who have had access to a certain level of schooling have migration in their future, since it is highly unlikely that there will be sufficient investment in their devastated and isolated home towns and villages to create decent jobs. Those who are not leavingwomen peasants and artisans who are rooted in their enduring double role in reproduction and production for consumption, along with the men who migrate temporarily to nearby places to be able to pay their debts and solve some of their everyday problemswill probably use their creativity and resilience to continue to live in their towns and villages, where they will continue reproducing with the help of government welfare programs. Possessing minimal skills, marginalized indigenous people will produce new ways of being indigenous as they

110LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

provide a low-paid and docile labor force to the industries in the symbolic and real North of the nation and the United States and Canada. In this panorama it is at least refreshing to think about the possibility that the Zapatistas project of constructing a world in which many worlds fit, in their autonomous networks and municipalities, can construct a proud and dignified way of being indigenous without being poor and marginalized. It will be necessary to work in a united and committed manner, as the indigenous peoples that belong to the National Indigenous Congress (see CNI, 2010) have proposed, to make that utopia a reality. NOTES
1. From my point of view, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, comrade and teacher, through his writings and his consistent political positions, directed us both academically and politically toward a critical anthropology. He and I, along with Eva Verbitsky, Susana Drucker, Carlos Navarrete, Mario Vsquez, Leonel Durn, and Jorge Angulo, made up the ENAHs Miguel Otn de Mendizbal Marxist study group. 2. A word used to translate from their various languages equality between men and women. 3. I am referring to the anthropologists Roberto Varela, Cristian Deverr, and Manuel Esparza and the teacher Jos Blanco, who made up the schools research and teaching faculty. 4. In many communities of the rain forest and the highlands, 95100 percent of women receive the support of Oportunidades in the form of 270 pesos (approximately US$20) bimonthly for every child who attends school. In exchange they must agree to control their fertility, engage in community clean-up programs, provide good nutrition to their children, and attend frequent informational meetings on the body and health.

REFERENCES
Arizpe, Lourdes 1978 Carta abierta al Instituto Nacional Indigenista en ocasin de su trigsimo aniversario, pp. 154155 in INI 30 aos despus: Revisin crtica. Mexico City: INI. Congreso Nacional Indgena (National Indigenous Congress) 2010 Convocatoria a la XXVII reunin ampliada del CNI Regin Centro-Pacfico, del 11 al 13 de junio. http:/ /www.maderas del pueblo.org.mx (accessed May 23, 2010). Oehmichen, B. Ma. Cristina 2003 Reforma del estado: Poltica social e indigenismos en Mxico, 19881996. Mexico City: UNAM/IIA. Olivera Bustamante, Mercedes 1978 Una incursin en el campo indigenista: La Escuela de Desarrollo Regional, pp. 245 253 in INI 30 aos despus: Revisin crtica. Special anniversary edition. Mexico City: INI. 1979Sobre la explotacin y opresin de las mujeres acasilladas en Chiapas. Cuadernos Agrarios 9: 4355. Olivera Bustamante, Mercedes, Teresa Ramos, and Ins Castro 2009 Incidencia de la crisis en la situacin, condicin y participacin de las mujeres marginales de Chiapas:Proyecto de Investigacin. MS, CONACYT-UNICACH, Mexico City. Toledo, Sonia 2002 Finca, poder y cultura en Simojovel, Chiapas. Mexico City: PROIMMSE/UNAM/UEI/ UNACH.