Indigenous Peoples and the Geographies of Power

Mezcala’s Narratives of Neoliberal Governance

Inés Durán Matute

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780815363156
• eBook ISBN: 9781351110419
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Tracing key trends of the global-regional-local interface of power, Inés Durán Matute through the case of the indigenous community of Mezcala (Mexico) demonstrates how global political economic processes shape the lives, spaces, projects and identities of the most remote communities. Throughout the book, in-depth interviews, participant observations and text collection, offer the reader insight into the functioning of neoliberal governance, how it is sustained in networks of power and rhetorics deployed, and how it is experienced. People, as passively and actively participate in its courses of action, are being enmeshed in these geographies of power seeking out survival strategies, but also constructing autonomous projects that challenge such forms of governance.

This book, by bringing together the experience of a geopolitical locality and the literature from the Latin American Global South into the discussions within the Global Northern academia, offers an original and timely transdisciplinary approach that challenges the interpretations of power and development while also prioritizing and respecting the local production of knowledge.

1 The Local Impact of Political Culture

I spent one morning talking with, but mainly listing to Don Salvador who helped me understand the complexities of being a comunero in Mezcala. He was appointed delegado twice and belonged to the Confederación Nacional de Organizaciones Populares, which represented the popular sector of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI); but he is also a comunero and a fervent defender of the community, of its territory and people. On another occasion, I witnessed a meeting of the Partido Verde held in the plaza, where many attendees listened to the speeches of some representatives. What gained my attention was another committed comunero who was wearing a t-shirt in support of this political party. In fact, later Rocío explained to me that:

Political parties have never been discussed in the assemblies, but that doesn’t mean that some of them do belong to political parties. And here a long time was, the PRI, just like everywhere doing, gathering people. The only thing I think is different from Mezcala regarding political parties is that when it comes to something of the community they take away their banner.

However, comuneros are not exempt from internal contradictions; they are an authority on conflicts, divergences and fragmentations that might be elucidated through the exploration on how they are traversed by the national political culture. In this sense, by political culture I mean—borrowing the definition of Guillermo Núñez Noriega (2006, 377)—the social practices and purports through which social classes interact and give meaning to the ‘processes of state formation’, that shows a public and personal nature. In this regard, the aim of this chapter is to break down the local political structures and identify the consequences of the inherited political culture in the community so as to grasp the functioning of neoliberal governance. For this purpose, I mainly consider the usos y costumbres of its inhabitants,¹ specifically regarding the election of local government following customary law. Thus, in the first part, I develop a brief national and regional historical and political framework, taking the creation of the PRI as a starting point, and I relate it to the arrival of the delegado municipal in Mezcala. After this historical background, I introduce an analysis of democracy in Mexico in the era of neoliberal governance, as well as complicate assertions about the ‘democratic advance’, in relation to the political culture and the formal and informal routes of power within the community.

Then, I describe relationships and patterns of community and state alignment and loyalties where the focus is trained on those holding power to begin delineating the role of marginalisation, discrimination and racism in politics. Accordingly, in the fourth part, the aim is to comprehend the rise and location of the ‘traditional’ authority, and how the inherited political culture is implicated in this. Thus, I describe how this traditional authority was born, and indicate who it comprises and what its function is, moving then to examine its current situation, role and representativeness. This analysis is the first step in understanding the organisation of comuneros that somehow has been crossed by the geographies of power, and thus, reproduced or even sharpened the economic, social and cultural differences that undergird neoliberal governance. Nonetheless, this chapter traces the institutional networks at the local, regional and national levels regarding politics that also bring about the growing participation of new sectors into political communal matters for the purpose of changing their situation.

PNR/PRM/PRI: The Expansion of Clienteles, Caciques and Corruption

To begin to outline the political panorama lived in the community I must briefly mention some of the impacts and transformations in the organisation of the native population since Spanish colonisation. This will remind us to keep a long-term perspective. As is well known, during this time a political system was established in Mexico in accordance with the social structure, in which not all the population was represented and a powerful group was privileged above the interests of the rest of society. As analysed by Roderic Ai Camp (2000), the inherited Spanish culture imprinted experiences and features over our political system. Specifically, the establishment of communal property aimed to group together and confine native people, while giving Spaniards more extensive control over indigenous communities (Warman 2003, 122–3). This procured in indigenous communities such as Mezcala, the manipulation of their resources and people, and the damage to their political and social organisation.

Notwithstanding, as political culture is historically produced in the interface between state and society (Lewis 2012, 48); over time different historical moments made their influence apparent. Mezcalenses, as noted in the Introduction, have not been oblivious to history, moulding and displaying this in practices, values, processes, positions and relations of specific groups. To this effect, in the context of post-Revolutionary social instability and political crisis, President Plutarco Elías Calles (1924–8) created the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR)—nowadays known as PRI—in 1929 to make a move towards a more ‘representative’ system; still succession was bargained over (González 2008, 12) and only a ‘series of puppets’ were positioned (Haber et al. 2008). The creation of this party, nonetheless, brought about political and organisational transformations, which in Mezcala meant the implementation of new political figures: delegados and comuneros. Mezcala, by not being a municipio, presents a singular case of the functioning of usos y costumbres whereby delegados are the party formally integrated into ‘official politics’, and comuneros, although they maintain a degree of autonomy and are recognised more as a ‘traditional’ authority, in fact obey similar processes.

What is more, this party developed a political culture based on client-patron relationships² and a corporatist system (Purcell 1981). In fact, authoritarianism persisted, with the difference that since the creation of the PNR many and diverse power-holders linked to an institution, to the official political party, concentrated power in order to maintain the stability of the state (Purcell 1981; Selee 2011). Corporatist relationships in Mexico based on previous authoritarian and paternalist relationships were adapted having a double function as tools of control and subordination of popular classes and as a means of political participation that, nonetheless, helped to reproduce this kind of political culture (Mackinlay and Otero 2006). In this sense, over time the party renovated the corporatist system in order to bring together and control peasants, workers, militaries and the middle class, allowing them to be partially independent of local caciques but highly dependent on their national equivalents (Purcell 1981). These sectors were ‘integrated into the state by means of state-controlled social corporations’ employing clientelism and division (Olvera 2010, 82). And, actually, these corporations allowed the party to maintain control inside and outside different sectors, and those not willing to become part of them were repressed or excluded (Mackinlay and Otero 2006).

But, since the discontent of popular sectors did not disappear and in fact increased, President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40) changed tactics and his first action was the transformation of the political party into the Partido de la Revolución Mexicana (PRM) in 1938, this time supported especially by peasants and workers. As a matter of fact, with Cárdenas two clientele systems began to operate; on the one hand, national clientelism used the local structures to wash its hands of the growing social discontent, exclusion and repression, in order to institutionalise clients as party members through Confederaciones, to display a false image of supremacy and obtain broader social support and control of localities. On the other hand, local caciques were rewarded with their power and autonomy (Purcell 1981). Andrew Selee (2011) identified this phenomenon as a ‘two-way relationship’, where intermediaries gain power from those below and give benefits to those above, constraining local leaders to comply and remain loyal to upper and party decisions. In this sense, power is constantly negotiated and is seen as a win-win relationship, since it entails complicity and dependence, despite disadvantages and the unequal distribution of power. Moreover, this asymmetrical and vertical hierarchy of patron-client relationships occurs at all levels and it is reproduced from the local through to the national.

In this regard, despite the alleged centralisation of Mexico for much of the twentieth century, localities at that time were important in setting up national politics, transforming the first aspiring political position into Municipios—as they were also the gateway to move upward and to renegotiate the relations of power (Selee 2011). Therefore, as the case of Mezcala reveals, Municipios sought to control localities through the figure of the delegado municipal.³ In fact, even if this political figure was implemented approximately in the 1920s, since the 1950s it began to be elected by the Municipio rather than by the inhabitants, at the same time jueces de barrio declined in importance (Bastos 2011). Furthermore, the delegado municipal did not represent a mighty power; as Rocío explains ‘at the beginning they didn’t even have this strong power like authority, because here we had our own authorities’.

In 1946 a new political change took place replacing the PRM with the PRI to emphasise the institutionalisation of the Revolution, but it remained a ‘mass party’ that continued with a patronage system and followed the same up-down structure of power. The PRI endured as the hegemonic and sole political party and guaranteed its dominance as a result of noncompetition, the corporatisation of society, populist practices, violence, electoral fraud and control over the media. As signalled by Horacio Mackinlay and Gerardo Otero (2006), Mexico is a clear example of state corporatism, that is, with a high level of subordination of different groups to the state, which allows scarce concessions, and is characterised by authoritarianism, patrimonialism and clientelism. Mezcala did not escape this scenario, as some inhabitants joined its clientelist, corporatist and corrupted practices. As Santiago Bastos indicates, their political participation depended on their belonging to ‘the official party’ (2011: 106).

Concurrently, informal power was strengthened in the region; that is, as defined by Selee (2011), ‘a system of hierarchical power relations based on patronage and informal intermediation that serves as an organisational structure linking citizens and groups in society’. Accordingly, in Poncitlán, la familia Montes, labelled with the PRI tag and owners of Montes, a candy company created in 1938, have been the rulers. The founder of the company, Miguel Montes Castellanos (1917–93), was mayor from 1959 to 1961, but even afterwards he did not lose power. In fact, caciques⁴ seem to follow a hereditary process, and show a strong familial support, as analysed below. Besides, in the village this patronage system reinforced the dominance of the PRI via local leaders, as Don Chava, a comunero and past candidate in the elections for delegado municipal (suplente), remembers in reference to the words of the party ‘if you work, convince people and we win, we are going to make you a new delegación [building]’.

The PRI persisted with their corporatist approach to foster industrialisation and modernisation, further incorporate peasants and workers into the structure of power and continue to mediate between the citizens and the state, creating or adapting institutions. In this vein, the hegemony of the PRI and the undemocratic and unequal relations were guaranteed by a system that promoted the sharing of benefits among political leaders and a limited impact of society in politics through clientelism (Selee 2011, 44). Clientelism, thereby, broadly speaking, should be understood as the unequal exchange of private or public goods, favours, patronage, status or power for party loyalty or political support. But, as Tina Hilgers notes, it also ‘involves longevity, diffuseness, face-to-face contact and inequality’ (2011, 568). As later evidenced, these relationships, these ways of interacting, are a result of economic and political inequality and needs that are exploited by a sector to build their social support.

Jalisco was no exception in this national panorama; although for the national elections of 1979, the political support diversified towards the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), at the local level it was more limited (Tamayo and Vizcarra 2000, 66). During these years the PRI ‘officially’ established itself as the hegemonic party in Mezcala since it had dominion over the population and no real political options existed; just as a Don Chava remembers about the 1970s ‘we were all from the PRI … All the people were from the PRI because no other party worked, just PRI’. Besides, before the 1980s in Mexico, the PRI centralised formal power but maintained highly decentralised informal power, as a ‘form of institutionalisation’ (Selee, 2011: 11). In Poncitlán, this was manifest in the excessive power of Miguel Montes, as Don Salvador remembers having to deal with him over issues of the community, expressing that ‘the president told me, not the president, Mr Montes was the one who tajaba el queso [split and distributed benefits] there’ and as also Don Chava shared ‘the mere cacique, he was the one who had m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Preamble
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Local Impact of Political Culture
• 2 The Local Workings of a Global Political Economy
• 3 The Transnationalisation of Informal Power: Setting the Path to ‘Progress’
• 4 Tourism: A Fight to Define Progress
• 5 Identities Across Borders: Legitimising or Challenging Stratifications?
• Conclusions
• Postface
• Index