Indigenous Peoples and the Formation of Contemporary Mexican National Identity: Culture, Power, and Resistance Raul Eduardo Barclay Contreras A thesis submitted in satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Government Department of Government University of Essex February 2015
16
Embed
Indigenous Peoples and the Formation of Contemporary Mexican National Identity: Culture, Power, and Resistance [EXTRACT]
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
Indigenous Peoples and the Formation of Contemporary
Mexican National Identity:
Culture, Power, and Resistance
Raul Eduardo Barclay Contreras
A thesis submitted in satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Government
Department of Government
University of Essex
February 2015
Indigenous Peoples and the Formation of Contemporary Mexican National Identity: Culture, Power, and Resistance
Raul Eduardo Barclay Contreras
Abstract
This thesis contributes to our understanding of contemporary Mexican national identity by charting the role indigeneity has played in instituting the dominant ‘Mestizo’ identity, as well as the efforts of indigenous peoples to secure social, cultural, and political recognition through the construction of an indigenous identity outside the Mestizo frame.
Marxist, sociological, functionalist and deliberative approaches to this domain of inquiry furnish us with many useful insights, but they also suffer from some problematic features, in particular, economic reductionism, determinism, subjectivism and foundationalism. Drawing on the Essex School of Discourse Analysis and Lacanian psychoanalysis as articulated in the ‘logics approach’ (Glynos & Howarth 2007) I seek to synthesize key elements of these approaches (while also avoiding some of the pitfalls) in a detailed study of the way indigenous peoples and movements have deployed culture in their efforts to resist and contest the dominant ‘Mestizo’ identity frame.
The substantive part of the thesis comprises four chapters. I show, first, how contemporary, dominant Mexican national identity is a product of concerted efforts over extended periods of time to transform a heterogeneous country into a unified and homogeneous ethnic nation. This hegemonic identity – ‘Mestizo’ identity – articulates elements from Mexican post-revolutionary discourse, including associated indigenous symbols. However, I go on to show how the mobilisations and events spearheaded by the EZLN from 1994 to 1996 crystalized a moment of possibility because it created a space in which indigenous peoples could contest the Mestizo regime and articulate distinctive political demands for recognition and representation. Indigenous peoples started to develop a set of local, autonomous and independent cultural practices from the ‘bottom up’, with the aim of securing social, cultural and political recognition. The final two chapters comprise a detailed qualitative case study of one such practice of resistance. Access to the Ñomndaa indigenous group in Guerrero has made it possible for me to chart the development of a specific type of cultural resistance exercised primarily through radio broadcasting in a municipality of Guerrero, showing how this spurred broader counter-hegemonic efforts to contest the Mestizo imaginary. Central to this resistance movement were practices enacting logics of cultural re-valuation and consciousness-raising, which in turn elicited harsh governmental counter-tactics. In the final chapter I show how the indigenous people sought to embed these logics of re-valuation and consciousness-raising into the local provision of elementary school education. In sum, I argue that a critical analysis of national identity discourse and indigenous practices of resistance as a function of logics can help us better draw out the social, political, and ideological dimensions of national identity construction processes.
3
1. Introduction
Mexican society has experienced considerable transformations in its social, political and
economic structures and practices over the course of the last four decades. These
transformations are often understood to be part of a process of “democratization”, which
helped to include previously excluded sectors of Mexican society in an active participative
role in the social, cultural, economic and political life of the country. Such transformations
can be understood as “politico-electoral” transformations, where the hegemonic political
party PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) lost its first state government election in 1989
and its first presidential election in 2000. They can also be understood as “economic”
transformations, where a state-driven economy was transformed into a free-market-
neoliberal economy; or “social” transformations, where the business class substituted the
political elite at the top of the social hierarchy. However, despite all these
transformations, one thing remained constant: the Mestizo configuration of Mexican
national identity.
This thesis aims to explore the different social, political and ideological practices
that resisted and contested the Mestizo discourse of national identity in the name of an
alternative indigenous political and cultural identity. It argues that indigenous people
continue to develop and reproduce a set of local, autonomous and independent practices
in different social domains with the aim of contesting the discourse of national identity
and achieving political agency.
Mexican national identity, as it is conceived today, is a hegemonic articulation of
different factors and symbols, which is a product of the country’s history and social
composition. The current conception of Mexican identity was constructed through a post-
revolutionary discourse that incorporated indigenous symbols, revolutionary identity, and
other imaginaries, such as the Mestizo imaginary, to construct a long-lasting articulation
4
that unified a heterogeneous country into a homogenous ethnic nation. The so-called
“Indian problem” was tackled historically by an agency constituted in the 1940s, called
Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI) (National Indigenist Institute). The INI was responsible
for the creation of “indigenismo”, a social and scientific paradigm that was constituted by
a set of government institutions and policies, and which shaped the national conception of
Indians and instituted them simultaneously as both a social problem and an obstacle to
reaching modernity (Taylor, 2009). In this way, the indigenous identity was shaped by non-
indigenous social scientists in order to configure a homogenous nation under mestizo
nationalism. The Mestizo is characterized as a mixed race (Indigenous/European)
descendant from the ancient indigenous cultures, but who has evolved over time through
a process of race mixing into a modern Western individual, proud of his indigenous past
but Western in every aspect of his social and political life.
From the 1970s, “Indigenismo” as a political programme began to attract more
vocal critical attention. Increasingly seen as a thinly disguised political devise for social
control, this period witnessed a series of attempts to create a more “just” and
“democratic” perception of indigenous identity, but always from the perspective of non-
indigenous actors. During this period, vocal criticism of the indigenous peoples’ place in
Mexico´s social, cultural and political spectrum notably increased. This was triggered by
the fact that “throughout the 1980s and 1990s the PRI [government] increasingly resorted
to forms of dominance and coercion to project an increasingly dwindling form of
hegemony. It is within this that crisis of hegemony unfolded” (Morton, 2003, 648). A series
of events from 1994 to 1996, however, created a moment of possibility when the
indigenous people began to articulate political demands for respect, recognition and
representation, in an attempt to create a new collective indigenous identity that could be
representative of the indigenous and contest the Mestizo hegemonic identity discourse.
Indigenous mobilization in the social and political arena started to have tremendous
impact at both national and international levels. A form of neo-Indigenismo took place,
advocating self-determination, respect, and acknowledgment as well as spaces in the
5
social and political ground to continue practising different social, religious, cultural and
political beliefs (Morris, 2001).
This social and political mobilization produced a series of accords in 1996: the San
Andres Agreements between the EZLN (National Liberation Zapatista Army) and the
government, and the COCOPA (Concord and Pacification Commission) accords. Then, in
2001, under President Vicente Fox, the accords were “acknowledged” by the Mexican
Congress “recognizing” indigenous cultures and languages at the constitutional level.
However, the constitutional recognition was watered down, changing or omitting issues of
indigenous autonomy raised in the accords, including, for instance, issues around access
to indigenous mass media. Instead, congress added into the document on several
occasions the statement that “the Mexican nation is one and indivisible” (Hernandez,
2002). No other secondary laws where amended in order to enforce the changes made to
the Constitution. As such, cultural, social and political practices continued unaltered and
discourses of “modernization” and “social progress” continue to be articulated now from
within the neo-liberal political project. A few years later, in 2003, Fox closed down the
debilitated INI and created a small agency called CONADEPI (National Council for the
development of Indigenous Communities) which does not have a “clear institutional
mechanism through which it might mediate between indigenous peoples and the State”
(Taylor, 2009, 111).
With this turn of events, and the so called “acknowledgement” of the San Andres
Agreements, the mobilization and discussion about indigenous rights has almost
disappeared from the national arena, thereby marginalising important indigenous
concerns. Indigenous symbols certainly have a presence in national monuments, and their
language (Nahuatl, Amusgo and so on) appears etched on national buildings and murals.
However, meaningful social and political space has been denied (Morris, 2001), provoking
struggle for the recognition of their different cultural, political and social practices.
Such indigenous socio-cultural and political struggles have been studied by
different scholars using diverse theoretical perspectives, which I have found helpful to
6
characterise as Marxist, Sociological, Functionalist and Deliberative perspectives. This
large corpus of literature has provided considerable insights regarding indigenous people’s
political and social struggles, offering explanations for the exclusion of indigenous people
from the social and political arena and the exclusion of indigenous cultures from the social
field; offering reasons for the lack of success in the constitution of national pan-
indigenous alliances; and accounting for the different pathways followed in pursuit of
political recognition.
Nevertheless, there are some important areas that the existing literature has not
yet addressed in a satisfactory way, in particular the way different indigenous people use
particular cultural traits in the resistance and contestation of the discourse of national
identity embodied by the Mestizo. A focus on such cultural practices can help us
understand how such practices of cultural resistance are “spilling over” to other areas of
the social in order to develop new sets of political practices which, in turn, look for the
constitution of an independent indigenous culture and political identity. Likewise, they can
help explain how those practices confer political agency to indigenous people in their
every day practices. The basic argument of this thesis is that indigenous people are using
cultural traits to resist and contest the discourse of Mestizo national identity in their quest
for social, cultural and political recognition and representation. It argues that indigenous
people are developing independent, local, autonomous cultural practices of resistance
with clear potential to link up with one another into a movement that unifies and
promotes them all.
In making this argument I rely on the “logics approach” (Glynos & Howarth 2007),
which seeks to operationalize the ontological presuppositions of Political Discourse
Theory. Hence, this contribution looks at the development and construction of discourses
and the signification and institutionalization of social and political practices that, in turn,
shape society and politics. These elements will allow me to explain the constitution of a
hegemonic political and cultural identity, the connotation and significance that were given
to certain elements like indigeneity, and the meaning of certain practices of resistance.
7
I apply a qualitative research methodology through the analysis of primary and
secondary literature. As part of my research strategy I also conduct an in-depth case
study, focussing on the municipality of Xochistlahuaca in the state of Guerrero. The first
part of this in-depth case study is focused on the communitarian radio station, “Radio
Ñomndaa”, and the second part is based on the study of elementary schools’
implementation of “Dual Immersion” as a multicultural education, also in the community
of Xochistlahuaca. This in-depth case study approach will allow me to elucidate and
examine the different practices of resistance and its articulation in the quest for cultural
recognition and political agency.
In what follows, I will provide a guide for the development of this thesis’
contribution and rationale. With this purpose in mind, I will, first, develop and explain the
place of this research with reference to existing literature on the topic of indigeneity, with
a specific focus on the issues of indigenous social and political struggles and mobilization
in Mexico. Then, I am going to provide a brief summary of the insights found in the
existing theoretical accounts as well as this thesis´ main argument and research questions.
Finally, I will present a summary of the chapters of this thesis, which, in turn, will provide
the overall structure and argument.
1.1. Place and Significance of the Research
In this section I explain the reasons why I have concentrated on this particular topic of
research as well as its contributions to issues of indigeneity and socio-political inclusion.
To do so, I will explain the context surrounding this research in regard to existing studies
of issues of indigeneity and political mobilization.
In the 1990s, Mexico underwent a voracious process of structural change, which
had a profound effect on the country’s political, economic, and cultural institutions. These
changes opened up political space to several previously excluded groups, allowing them to
8
participate in the social and political arena and articulate their own particular demands.
One of these groups was the now well documented and studied EZLN (National Liberation
Zapatista Army), who advocated the political, social and cultural inclusion of indigenous
groups within the structures of the Mexican state. This social and political movement and
its social and political impacts have been widely studied from several different theoretical