1 Aftermath of the Politics of Recognition: Community Exclusion And
Aftermath of the politics of recognition: community exclusion and essentialism in an urban setting Jorge Hernández-Díaz1 Introduction The Mexican national policy, known as indigenismo or política indigenista, oriented towards homogenizing the population was, for quite some time, very successful. In particular the State implemented public policies to transform the cultures of indigenous groups through efforts intended to integrate, acculturate or assimilate the indigenous population. Until well into the 1970’s indigenismo was not openly questioned. Indigenous organizations that opposed the, until then, predominant State policy, sprung up in the 1980’s and 1990’s. These indigenous organizations put forward the proposals that would later constitute what are now known as the politics of recognition, or of the right to cultural difference and demands of acknowledgement of juridical pluralism, that is, economic, political, cultural and social claims that are sustained on collective affiliations, whether ethnic or national. This article relates two processes: on the one hand the growth of the metropolitan area of the city of Oaxaca and on the other the coexistence of two different electoral systems in the state of Oaxaca. I center my focus on the way that the coexistence of different systems is expressed in the municipalities that now constitute the metropolitan area of Oaxaca City. Oaxaca was the first state of the Mexican republic to acknowledge local norms as legal procedures of electing municipal authorities. The state has 570 municipalities, of which 418 elect authorities through a system of common law popularly known as usos y costumbres2. A great majority of the municipalities with high proportions of indigenous population are included in this category, but many other with low proportions of an indigenous speaking population have likewise adopted this system for electing their local authorities.
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