Launching the Chiapas Solidarity Project in the Year of the Bad Harvest (original) (raw)
Related papers
2010
Several of the chapters (especially 2, 4, 5 and 6) also grew out of larger, multiresearcher projects. In those cases, I benefitted not only from my colleagues' help in developing the questions and methodology, but from their suggestions as the studies went on, and then their acute comments on my texts. For Chapters 2 and 4, support was provided by the National Science Foundation (SBR-9601370,-Rapid Social and Cultural Change in Southeastern Mexico‖), in collaboration with George Collier, Jane Collier and Diane Rus. For Chapter 2, I also inherited the 1974 economic survey forms of my original collaborator, Robert Wasserstrom, which proved invaluable. Chapter 5 was undertaken while I was a visiting fellow at the Center for US-Mexico Studies of the University of California, San Diego (2002-03), and continued with summer support in 2004 from the Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), and then from 2005 to the present from the Centro de Estudios Superiores sobre México y Centroamérica (CESMECA) and the Instituto de Estudios Indígenas (IEI), both of San Cristóbal. In addition to Diane, Ian Zinn worked on the project with us in 2007. For Chapter 6, Diane and I were partially supported for two summers by the Jacobs Fund of Bellingham, Washington, and then in collaboration with James Diego Vigil of the University of California, Irvine, by a pilot grant from University of California/MEXUS and the UCLA Center for the Study of Urban Poverty. Polly Vigil and Carlos Ramos also participated in this second period. Finally, the two oldest chapters (1 and 3) were developed while I worked for the Instituto de Asesoría Antropológico para la Región Maya, in San Cristóbal. Beyond my immediate collaborators, there are many to thank in the community of vii scholars and activists in San Cristóbal for support, advice, or comments on all of my work during the years when these chapters were written. Chief among them are the late Andrés Aubry and Angélica Inda de Aubry, colleagues in the Instituto de Asesoría Antropológica para la Región Maya, where Diane and I worked full-time in the second half of the 1980s, and continued to have a home during the summers from 1990 through 2007. Together with Andrés we developed the model of collaborative community research that we used as long ago as the 1970s. Although as a Campesinista and Zapatista Andrés was firmly opposed to the urbanization and long distance, off-farm migration that are the subject of several chapters hereand constantly questioned us about whether in studying them we were not somehow legitimizing and perhaps encouraging themhe continued to offer support and careful readings of drafts until the end of his life.
The Construction of Peace in the Chiapas Highlands
The indigenous community of Acteal in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, has been subject to both direct and structural violence in the form of the massacre that took place there in 1997 and the impunity that has persisted ever since. In response to the violence, the community has constructed political, social, and cultural alternatives through the movement known as the Las Abejas of Acteal Civil Society Organization. Its reconstruction of the social fabric has included participation in assembies, volunteer work for the collective, exchange of experiences, food production for subsistence, a solidarity economy, and the systematization and sharing of experiences. La comunidad indígena de Acteal en las tierras altas de Chiapas, México, ha sido objeto de violencia tanto directa y estructural a partir de la masacre que tuvo lugar allí en 1997, así como la impunidad que ha persistido desde entonces. En respuesta a la violencia, la comunidad ha construido alternativas políticas, sociales y culturales a través del movimiento conocido como Organización Sociedad Civil Las Abejas de Acteal. Su reconstrucción del tejido social ha incluido la participación en asambleas, el voluntariado para el colectivo, el intercambio de experiencias, la producción de alimentos para subsistencia, una economía solidaria, y la sistematización e intercambio de experiencias.
Chiapas: Indigenous women weaving territories of life in the crossfire
Debates Indígenas, 2022
The Zapatista journey has marked the lives of Indigenous peoples and peasant communities with its teachings of autonomy and dreams of other possible worlds. However, the southeast of Mexico continues to be plagued by extreme poverty and violence generated by criminal economies. In this context, the collective Fases de la Luna promotes educational processes of political training to eradicate violence against women and promote autonomy. By Delmy Tania Cruz Hernández for Debates Indígenas.
2017
By highlighting the various ways in which indigenous women in the colonial city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas manage maternal health and birth care, in this chapter we intend to provide a counter-narrative to the dominant approach which conflates medicalized maternal health with low mortality ratios; regardless of the quality of interventions and the cultural preferences of diverse populations. Our research and practice experience shows that indigenous and non-indigenous women throughout Mexico continue to seek the services of midwives and out-of-hospital care, regardless of the improvements in access to public services. This observation alone raises important questions about the divide between the type of public services available to indigenous and low-income women, and their needs and desires around the lifecycle process of motherhood. This chapter also discusses Luna Maya, established in 2004 as a femifocal birth center and midwifery training program. Luna Maya has provided a saf...
Studies in Political Economy, 1994
If you have come here to help me, You are wasting your time ... But if you have come because Your liberation is bound up with mine, Then let us work together.
Social Strategies and Public Policies in an Indigenous Zone in Chiapas, Mexico
Ids Bulletin-institute of Development Studies, 2004
1 Introduction This article examines emerging forms of participation in a variety of spaces in Chiapas, in the south of Mexico. Situated within a complex socio-political context, relations between marginalised groups, social movements and the government arearticulated through ...
Agrarian Reform and Revolutionary Justice in Soconusco, Chiapas
During the mid-to late 1930s, rural activism surged in the coffee-growing region of southern Chiapas and north-western Guatemala. This article examines the causes and impacts of sustained campesino protests at the grassroots level on the Mexican side of the border. The porous border between the two nations hindered the development of centralised power networks that prevailed in other parts of Chiapas. Campesinos and reformist federal government officials such as teachers and agrarian engineers built alliances that challenged the power of the coffee growers. This article explores the process of negotiation that occurred among campesinos, federal bureaucrats, regional authorities and elite coffee planters in order both to implement and to challenge agrarian reform.
Building the local food movement in Chiapas, Mexico: rationales, benefits, and limitations
Alternative food networks (AFNs) have become a common response to the socio-ecological injustices generated by the industrialized food system. Using a political ecology framework, this paper evaluates the emergence of an AFN in Chiapas, Mexico. While the Mexican context presents a particular set of challenges, the case study also reveals the strength the alternative food movement derives from a diverse network of actors committed to building a ''community economy'' that reasserts the multifunctional values of organic agriculture and local commodity chains. Nonetheless, just as the AFN functions as an important livelihood strategy for otherwise disen-franchised producers it simultaneously encounters similar limitations as those observed in other market-driven approaches to sustainable food governance.
Chiapas Civil Society Organizations
2005
The neo-Zapatista movement of Chiapas, Mexico, is a well-known entity in Latin America and around the world. Since the 1994 rebellion organized by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), Chiapas has been associated with indigenous resistance against imposed neoliberal policies and their strong claim for the recognition of indigenous rights and cultures. What is less known is the crucial role that Chiapas civil society organizations (CSOs) have within the neozapatista resistance movement and in the creation of effective ...