Kuxlejal Politics: Indigenous Autonomy, Race, and Decolonizing Research in Zapatista Communities

by Mariana Mora

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.

Genres: Indigenous, Politics, Academic, Nonfiction, Social Justice, Design

288 pages, Paperback

Published December 18, 2017

Reviews

[Denna Bee]

Any time a person asked "yes but does was land back really mean?" toss them this book. It's tiresomly academic at times but I'm grateful Mora captured the wisdom and grace of the Zapatistas. The Zapatistas show strong tangible examples of how to gain autonomy and communal land base law that refutes colonial land grabs and neoliberal policies.

"When you are a council member it is necessary to hold authority, not to be an authority. And in order to hold authority you must possess patience, respect, and a desire to listen and learn. It is not your choice to become an authority; it is because the people have chosen you. The people must be respected, and not be taken for granted. God, which is also the land, and the people, chose you. There are no authorities without people, and without people there is no life. That is why to govern is to obey."

[Scot Potts · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extraordinarily poorly written book about a very important topic