Kuxlejal politics : indigenous autonomy, race, and decolonizing research in Zapatista communities / Mariana Mora.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mora Bayo, Mariana, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indians of Mexico--Mexico--Chiapas--Government relations.

Indians of Mexico.

Representative government and representation.

History.

Peasants--Political activity.

Peasants.

Political participation.

Social movements.

Mexico--Chiapas.

Indians of Mexico--Mexico--Chiapas--Social conditions.

Social conditions.

Social movements--Mexico--Chiapas--History.

Chiapas (Mexico)--History--Peasant Uprising, 1994-.

Chiapas (Mexico).

Indians of Mexico--Political activity--Mexico--Chiapas--History.

Peasants--Political activity--Mexico--Chiapas--History.

Representative government and representation--Mexico--History.

Chiapas (Mexico)--Politics and government--20th century.

Chiapas (Mexico)--Politics and government--21st century.

Mexico.

Physical Description:

xii, 276 pages : illustrations, map ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Austin, TX : University of Texas Press, 2017.

Summary:

Over the past two decades, Zapatista indigenous community members have asserted their autonomy and self-determination by using everyday practices as part of their struggle for lekil kuxlejal, a dignified collective life connected to a specific territory. This in-depth ethnography summarizes Mariana Mora's more than ten years of extended research and solidarity work in Chiapas, with Tseltal and Tojolabal community members helping to design and evaluate her fieldwork. The result of that collaboration-a work of activist anthropology-reveals how Zapatista kuxlejal (or life) politics unsettle key racialized effects of the Mexican neoliberal state. Through detailed narratives, thick descriptions, and testimonies, Kuxlejal Politics focuses on central spheres of Zapatista indigenous autonomy, particularly governing practices, agrarian reform, women's collective work, and the implementation of justice, as well as health and education projects. Mora situates the proposals, possibilities, and challenges associated with these decolonializing cultural politics in relation to the racialized restructuring that has characterized the Mexican state over the past twenty years. She demonstrates how, despite official multicultural policies designed to offset the historical exclusion of indigenous people, the Mexican state actually refueled racialized subordination through ostensibly color-blind policies, including neoliberal land reform and poverty alleviation programs. Mora's findings allow her to critically analyze the deeply complex and often contradictory ways in which the Zapatistas have reconceptualized the political and contested the ordering of Mexican society along lines of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Book jacket.

Contents:

A brief overview of the first years of the Zapatista autonomous municipalities (1996-2003)

The production of knowledge on the terrain of autonomy : research as a topic of political debate

Social memories of struggle and racialized (e)states

Zapatista agrarian reform within the racialized fields of Chiapas

Women's collectives and the politicized (re)production of social life

Mandar obedeciendo; or, pedagogy and the art of governing

Conclusion : Zapatismo as the struggle to live within the lekil kuxlejal tradition of autonomy.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781477314463

1477314466

9781477314470

1477314474

OCLC:

983786154