Autodeterminación, autonomía política y federalismo en México

Pensar desde Chiapas los nuevos retos de los gobiernos indígenas locales.

Abstract

In the last decade, claims of self-government have been placed with particular force in many indigenous regions of Mexico. The claims of indigenous self-determination and political autonomy are not new nor have they emerged in the last decade neither; they come from differents institutional and independent processes and impulses of social movements at international, national and local scales since at least the 1950s. In Mexico they were strengthened by the Neo-Zapatista uprising in Chiapas in 1994. However, the recent claims mark important differences from those that precede it in several ways. I would like to highlight some of them: they favor the legal-institutional way to achieve the recognition of self-determination and political autonomy; the scale of claim, dispute and concretization of the recognition of political autonomy is the municipality; the context: a marked increase in violence, associated with organized crime.

Taking the above elements, in this article I will analyze the recent processes and experiences of institutionally recognized self-government in Chiapas, as well as those that still exist at the claim level. The purpose is to advance a broader reflection on democratic governance in local spaces in Mexico based on the case of Chiapas, as well as to reflect on the challenge faced by the recognition policy to achieve plural social coexistence in these local spaces.