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

Kuxlejal Politics is an in-depth ethnography that explores how Zapatista indigenous community members have asserted autonomy and self-determination through everyday practices. It uncovers how Zapatista kuxlejal politics challenge key racialized effects of the Mexican neoliberal state, focusing on governing practices, agrarian reform, womens collective work, and the implementation of justice. Mariana Mora's research demonstrates how the Mexican state has refueled racialized subordination through ostensibly color-blind policies.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 13 December 2017
Publisher: University of Texas Press

Over the past two decades, the Zapatista indigenous community has asserted its autonomy and self-determination by employing everyday practices as part of their struggle for lekil kuxlejal, a dignified collective life connected to a specific territory. This in-depth ethnography, spanning over ten years of extended research and solidarity work in Chiapas, was collaboratively designed and evaluated by Tseltal and Tojolabal community members, contributing to the activist anthropology that emerges. The result of this collaboration, a work of activist anthropology, unveils how Zapatista kuxlejal (or life) politics challenge fundamental racialized effects of the Mexican neoliberal state.

Through detailed narratives, rich descriptions, and testimonies, Kuxlejal Politics delves into central spheres of Zapatista indigenous autonomy, encompassing governing practices, agrarian reform, womens 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 intended to counter historical exclusion of indigenous people, the Mexican state inadvertently perpetuated racialized subordination through ostensibly color-blind policies, including neoliberal land reform and poverty alleviation programs. Moras findings enable her to critically analyze the intricate and often contradictory ways in which the Zapatistas have reimagined political and contested the ordering of Mexican society along lines of gender, race, ethnicity, and class.

Weight: 452g
Dimension: 228 x 154 x 22 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781477314470