Desacatos. Revista de Antropología Social núm. 12, Expresiones y Sonidos de los Pueblos, Otoño 2003. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), México.

The State, Accumulation, and Oaxaca’s Earthquake Survivors: Three Mechanisms of Inequality

“…Today, social property in the form of ejidos and comunidades still remains a salient feature of the economic base (Binford, 1985; Reina, 2013) as it does in the state of Oaxaca as a whole, which contains roughly 671 ejidos and 621 comunidades (López Bárcenas, 2012: 126–127). Ejidos are agricultural and residential lands distributed during the Mexican revolution’s land reform that are governed by local assemblies (Stephen, 2002).…”

“…While ejido parcels are worked individually, with the proceeds of cultivation accruing to individuals, they are registered as social property (Binford, 1985). Communal lands are precolonial land claims that are locally governed, often according to indigenous norms (López Bárcenas, 2012: 125). Article 27 of the constitution was revised in 1992 to allow expropriation, sale, and lease of social property (López Bárcenas, 2011: 131–136).…”

“…What Arturo Escobar (2010) calls indigenous “relational ontologies,” though in no way interchangeable with a “peasant” worldview, have been nourished by these same social forms of landownership. The Isthmus Zapotec culture of guendaliza’a , obligations to one’s surroundings and neighbors (Altamirano-Jiménez, 2013), exemplifies a “symbolic framework of group experience” (López Bárcenas, 2012: 128). For many Zapotecs, this reflects the district of Juchitán’s legacy of Zapotec autonomy and rebellion against the Mexican state and various foreign powers (Binford, 1985; Rubin, 1997).…”

“…This is evident in the federal and state governments’ denial of regional political autonomy. The national state undemocratically grants extraction and energy contracts to foreign corporations at windfall prices, with little regard for the social and ecological effects on the land’s inhabitants (e.g., López Bárcenas, 2012). Core-periphery hierarchies (Chase-Dunn and Hall, 2019), depeasantization (McMichael, 2012), and racist internal colonialism (e.g., Loza, 2018) combine to marginalize campesino-indigenous communities in the Isthmus from the Mexican polity.…”

“…Communities in the region have also protested since 2016 against a World Bank–supported, federally decreed special economic zone (Ávila and Romero, 2017) now commonly referred to as the Trans-Isthmus Corridor (González, 2019; Portal Automotriz, 2015), which offers transnational corporations tax exemptions in exchange for expanded foreign investment in parts of Oaxaca and Veracruz. Industries like logging, hydroelectric dams, and oil pipelines have further divided the Isthmus’s local population (Rodriguez, 2017, López, 2012; López Gómez, 2016; Ávila-Calero, 2017; Dunlap, 2018b; 2018c). More recently, campesino-indigenous organizations and rights networks have been agitating for the suspension of mineral exploration contracts in several municipalities that were awarded by Mexico’s federal government to mining companies (mostly Canadian) without the prior informed consent of the affected residents (Morosin, 2020).…”