Political Autonomy and Cultural Diversity in the Oaxaca Rebellion

Deborah Poole
Johns Hopkins U

For anthropologists, recent political events in Oaxaca will have come as no surprise. Most of the demands and actors have long histories, and the teachers’ strike is an annual event. Similarly, human rights and indigenous organizations have voiced their discontent for many years with the impunity and corruption that characterize Oaxaca’s PRI-dominated state government.

Despite these clear antecedents, what took shape between May and December 2006 was clearly different. The organizations and individuals who came together at the August Foro Nacional to contemplate a new state constitution deployed a familiar repertoire of oppositional demands, including Zapatista programs, liberal ideas of rights, and indigenous Oaxacan understandings of collective responsibility and customary law. Yet the goal this time around was to re-imagine something that would serve as a basis not just for “oppositional politics,” but rather for the juridical re-founding of a new state-form.

The APPO similarly built on the “traditional” form of the popular assembly to attract historically unprecedented support across the class and ethnic divides of Oaxaca. Conceptually speaking, the APPO is clearly a new type of organization; yet one that is grounded in familiar languages of popular democracy, dissent and “rebeldía.”

The challenge then, for anthropology, is to understand the historical roots of these organizational forms and oppositional demands, while also acknowledging the creativity that characterizes political organizations such as the APPO. I suggest the principle of political autonomy, which rests uneasily within Mexican liberalism, and the ideals of cultural patrimony and diversity, promoted by both indigenous organizations and neoliberal multiculturalists, can help provide such understanding.

Autonomy as Tradition

Throughout the pre-revolutionary republican period, Oaxaca was characterized by a liberal political culture that celebrated constitutionalism, private property and the rule of law. At the same time, and for reasons having to do with the regional economy, liberal elites in Oaxaca encouraged the proliferation of local instances of government that often not only fell well outside the legal limits for what might constitute a municipality, but which were also grounded on enduring forms of collective or communal property.

Graffiti shows Oaxaca Governor Ulises Ruiz as a raccoon stealing money from the Guelaguetza, an annual cultural celebration in Oaxaca. Photo courtesy of Deborah Poole

Today almost 60 percent of the state’s territory falls within the juridical regime of collective property, and its 570 municipalities account for over 25% of the municipalities in all of Mexico. More striking still, over one third of Mexico’s indigenous municipalities are located in Oaxacan territory.

Post-revolutionary governments in Oaxaca have sought to turn this ethnic diversity into political capital through innovative cultural policies. Like its neighbors in Guerrero and Chiapas, which also have large indigenous populations, Oaxacan PRI governments have used handouts and violence to curb indigenous political organization. The Oaxacan PRI differs, however, in that government repression has been accompanied by the official celebration of cultural diversity.

Many of today’s cultural programs—including the large and lucrative folklore spectacle of the Guelaguetza celebrated each July in the city of Oaxaca—originated in the 1930s when the Mexican revolutionary state was eager to rein in demands for political autonomy in Oaxaca’s many municipalities. More recent celebrations of diversity, however, speak to Oaxaca’s status as a testing ground for neoliberal multiculturalism in Mexico.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Oaxaca’s PRI-dominated governments worked energetically to forge legislative and political initiatives that would recognize indigenous cultural rights, expand the geographical reach of the state’s cultural programs, consolidate the state’s reputation for tourism, and promote the idea of Oaxaca as what Governor Carrasco Altamirano (1992–98) frequently referred to as “the cradle of cultural diversity in Mexico.”

In July 2006 teachers organized a free “Popular Guelaguetza” where traditionally excluded indigenous representatives participated. Photo courtesy of Deborah Poole

Arguably the single most important product of this cultural initiative was the Law of Indigenous Rights (1995/1998). This law, which received input and ideas from some of Oaxaca’s leading anthropologists, provides an ambitious platform for the recognition of cultural identities, languages, customs and rights. Unfortunately, very little of the law has since been implemented, with the important exception of the right to elect municipal authorities following traditional “uses and customs” (usos y costumbres).

Those communities who opted to run their elections through usos y costumbres are prohibited from also including candidates from political parties on their ballots. Importantly, the legislation attaches no cultural, linguistic or ethnic criteria to the designation of usos y costumbres, and many municipalities that do not (or did not previously) identify themselves as “indigenous” have since opted for usos y costumbres as a way to defend their autonomy vis-á-vis political parties, including the PRI.

Thus, although there is strong evidence that the PRI originally conceived of the legislation as a means to strengthen its historical control over indigenous municipalities, in the long run the notion of usos y costumbres has served to strengthen the same historical traditions of political autonomy that give strength to both APPO and a proliferating number of self-declared “autonomous municipalities.” As a blanket term referring at once to indigenous traditions and to the general non-ethnically circumscribed principle of local autonomy, the concept of usos y costumbres informed much of the discussion at the Foro Nacional where representatives of indigenous and other social organizations outlined their demands for a new state constitution.

“Ulises’ Ruin”

Ruiz’s first year in office was distinguished by a marked escalation in human rights violations, obstruction of justice, overt hostility towards opposing groups and the criminalization of social organizations. In late November 2004, right before taking office, Ruiz attempted a takeover of the opposition newspaper Noticias. In December 2004, the governor proclaimed his zero tolerance for political opposition in the “Pact of Oaxaca,” a document that prohibits public demonstrations as a means to stimulate investment and “development.” In Ruiz’s first nine months in office, there were over 600 arrests of political opposition members. By May 2006, when teachers from Section 22 of the teachers’ union occupied the city’s zócalo, there were 36 recorded political assassinations.

Teachers originally scheduled to perform at the “Official Guelaguetza” participated instead at the “Popular Guelaguetza.” Photo courtesy Jorge Hernández-Díaz

In many ways, then, the city of Oaxaca had already been prepared as a battlefield by the time the teachers began their annual occupation of the zócalo. Indeed, the zócalo itself had been the source of some of the city’s most intense political disputes. Upon assuming office, Ruiz removed the state government offices from the historic city center and transferred his own office to a distant police barrack.

The 19th-century Palacio de Gobierno, considered a symbol of both Oaxacan state sovereignty and the Mexican Revolution, was emptied. The building, which occupies one entire side of the zócalo, was briefly transformed into a museum or “Space of Diversity” administered by Mexico’s largest federal university (UNAM). The rest of the building remained conspicuously abandoned, except when rented out to PRI associates for weddings and other social events.

Four months later—in April 2005—Ruiz unilaterally decided to “remodel” the rest of the zócalo, cutting down 100-year-old trees and replacing cobblestone with pavement and “modern” lighting. The result was a massive popular protest, consisting largely of middle-class Oaxaqueños who had not before been politically mobilized. Radio broadcasts and interviews with participants in this summer’s protests confirm that the destruction of the zócalo and the funneling of state funds into other unnecessary “urban renewal” projects were important factors causing many city dwellers’ to “take to the streets” in support of APPO and the teachers’ union (Section 22).

Popular anger at the Ruiz government was also fed by resentment over the Guelaguetza festival’s highly authoritarian, partisan organization and high entrance fees. Political organizations had organized large demonstrations that were either aimed at or timed to coincide with the Guelaguetza from 2002–04. In 2005 Ruiz deployed massive police force to stop protestors headed for the Guelaguetza auditorium.

In 2006 an APPO-led boycott succeeded in canceling the “Official Guelaguetza.” In its place teachers organized a successful and free “Popular Guelaguetza” at which numerous dance groups performed, including those who had originally been scheduled for the “Official Guelaguetza” and representatives from indigenous communities who had traditionally been excluded from the state-run event.

Cultural projects and legislation of the sort that are contested today by APPO and Section 22 thus go hand in hand with political repression, revealing both the complexity of the Oaxacan state, the deep historical grounds of popular discontent, and the varied emotional and political grounds from which oppositional politics are articulated in Oaxaca.

Deborah Poole is professor of anthropology and director of the program in Latin America studies at Johns Hopkins University. Her ethnographic and historical research in Oaxaca examines issues related to violence, race, visuality and the modern liberal state.