Decolonizing Vision on Borderlands: The Mexican Southern Borderlands in Critical Review

Abstract

This article critically examines the Mexican southern borderlands, understood both as a concrete borderline region and as a concept constructed by scholars. Building on recent borderlands debates, the article constructs a decolonizing vision, which provokes us to ask: To what extent is the borderlands perspective colonialist? By dividing the world into centers and peripheries, do we automatically repeat the centrist interpretations? Are the habitants of the borderlands thinking they are living in a periphery? By exploring academic literature on Mexican southern borderlands and decolonizing criticisms set forward by the Zapatista movement, the article brings forth epistemological challenges related to colonialist imagery and vocabulary on borderlands, suggesting a decolonizing vision from which to shed a new light to the world political centers and peripheries. This way, the article attempts at bridging critical borderlands studies with the field of international relations.

Keywords:

• borderlands
• decolonization
• Indigenous people
• international relations
• Mexico

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my gratitude to Xochitl Leyva Solano (CIESAS. Mexico), Guadalupe Álvarez (ECOSUR, Mexico), Sami Lakomäki (University of Oulu, Finland), Tiina Seppälä (University of Lapland, Finland), and Laura Junka-Aikio (University of Oulu, Finland) for their insightful comments and revisions on various versions of this article. Thank you also for the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Fábregas et al. (1985) defines the Mexican southern borderlands and/or Mexican southeast region as a territory covered by the states of Campeche, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, and Yucatán. Only the state of Yucatán is not directly located in the international border with Guatemala and Belize, but is considered sea-bordering state and part of the southeast complex of Mexican states.

2 Border Studies has origins in exploring the concrete geographic borders, especially between nation-states, dominant in such fields as geography and IRs. Yet, during the past decades, the field has expanded its definition to include more illustrative borders in its analysis. Borderlands Studies has origins in exploring the remote regions characterized by the border-condition, dominant in such fields as anthropology and history. Yet, during the past decades, the field has also expanded its definition to include more illustrative borderlands in its analysis. For the purposes of this article, I discuss the two fields jointly in order to bridge debates.

3 Especially Newman (2006a, 2006b) and Paasi (2005) explain that the ‘rediscovery' of border and borderlands studies can be evidenced in various axes: in the quantity of studies and publications related to borders, the quantity of established research institutes dedicated to the exploration of borders, the interest of financiers and editorials to publish on borders, and also the very own academic interest to cross own borders to collaborate on contemporary borders. See also the project: ‘Borders of Globalization': http://communications.uvic.ca/releases/release.php?display=release&id=1381 (consulted in February 2014).

4 For example, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR) and el Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social—Unidad Sureste (CIESAS-Sureste). Both institutions have their special focus on the frontier dynamics (Kauffer, 2002).

5 The region of Soconusco located in the southern area of the state of Chiapas remained a longer period of time as part of Guatemala, having being attached to the autonomous state of Chiapas, and the Mexican nation-state, only afterwards.

6 Kauffer (2002) contrasts this vision by arguing that the non-Indigenous reality is poorly represented in the studies on Mexican southeast region. She has also criticized the dominant nature of the state of Chiapas in these studies, as well as the dominant Mexican vision toward this particular ‘borderland region'.

7 It is noteworthy that in English, Turner theory's focus is on the term ‘frontier' (which expands). Many borderlands scholars have sought to take critical distance to this theory (Hämäläinen & Truett, 2011). However, in Spanish, there exists only one word for border and frontier: la frontera.

Additional information

Funding

This work has been supported by a postdoctoral grant from El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR).

Notes on contributors

Hanna Laako

Hanna Laako holds a PhD in Political Science, and more specifically, in World Politics, from the University of Helsinki (2011). Currently she is a postdoctoral researcher in the Program of Postdoctoral Scholarships of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), more concretely in the Centro de Investigaciones Multidisciplinarias sobre Chiapas y la Frontera Sur (CIMSUR) in Chiapas, Mexico.She is one of the founding members of the research collective Bordering Actors (http://www.borderingactors.org/englanti/index_e.html).