Land, conflict, and political process: the case of the Lacandon Community, Chiapas, Mexico (1972–2012)

Abstract

This contribution analyses how indigenous land disputes have taken place within a political process and the political responses to land tenure disputes. It does so by analysing the case of the Comunidad Zona Lacandona (Lacandon Community; Chiapas, Mexico) and the land tenure disputes in which it has been involved during the period 1972–2012. The paper argues that the Lacandon Community (LC) has a micro-corporatist relationship with the state and that its creation has brought its beneficiaries (comuneros) into an ongoing dynamic of conflict and cooperation with the state, fellow landed communities, social and non-governmental organisations and guerrillas. By analysing its relationship with the state and the 40-year long conflict, the paper presents the way in which the LC has defended its land rights within institutional channels as well as by means of contentious action. The essay also shows how conflict has been dealt with within a political process and contributes to the theoretical understanding of the categories of micro-corporatism and political process as they are employed in those cases where indigenous peoples enter into conflict over land. Data for this paper comes from interviews, agrarian archives, public information requests, newspaper articles and ethnographies on the case study and the region.

Keywords:

• land conflict
• political process
• micro-corporatism
• Comunidad Zona Lacandona
• Lacandon Community

The author wishes to thank Mexico's Conacyt for funding this research, and two anonymous reviewers and Dr. Ramiro Flores Xolocotzi for their valuable comments.

Notes

¹The Lacandon rain forest is located in the eastern part of Chiapas, in the Usumacinta river basin, contiguous with Guatemala's El Petén region and the Yucatán peninsula (O'Brien 1998, 4).

²This paper makes an empirical contribution to the understanding of the Lacandon Indians, the LC and Lacandonia as it is based on extensive fieldwork in the archive of the ministry of land reform in Chiapas and Mexico City, the agrarian national registry (RAN) and its Chiapas office (RAN Txt), as well as the general agrarian archive (AGA). Further evidence was obtained from semi-structured interviews with comuneros, Public Information Requests (PIRs) and newspaper articles.

³Schmitter (1974, 93) defined corporatism as a system of interest representation in which its constituent units are organised in a limited number of unique categories that are compulsory, non-competitive, functionally differentiated, hierarchically organised, and recognised and sometimes created by the state. Constituent units are given representational monopoly within their respective categories in exchange for observing control in the election of leaders and in articulating demands and support.

⁴Recent theorists of corporatism have developed a framework that allows for the analysis of the operation of corporatism at different levels: macro-, meso- and micro-. The common feature of corporatism at its different levels is precisely the ‘fusion’ of the processes of interest-representation in policy formation, and the participation in policy implementation (Cawson 1986, 106, Williamson 1989). In micro-corporatism, public policy is agreed through direct negotiation with the individual actor and is implemented through actors agreeing to undertake certain tasks in exchange for grants or other incentives (Cawson 1986). This bipartite arrangement refers to situations where authorities negotiate policy directly with those ‘groups that have something to offer to the state’ (Hayward 1979, 37, in Cawson 1986, 5). In micro-corporatism there is no intermediary layer between the actor and the state. State interventions can only be achieved directly, and their enforcement is only possible if there is a degree of government control over the actor's interests (Cawson 1986).

⁵Mexico's 1917 Constitution established different principles of land tenure: ejido allotment, ejido allotment extension, new centres of population (NCPE) and ‘recognition and titling of communal lands’. The latter, established in 1927, was a procedure that returned land to its ‘original’ communal owners under the assumption that they were dispossessed or subject to disentailment (Kouri 2002, Ferry 2003).

⁶The land reform programme (1915–1992) granted ejidos to heads of households (ejidatarios) who ‘hold usufruct of land rights, either as individuals or collectively’ (O'Brien 1998, 185).

⁷In April 1984, a census, conducted after comuneros burnt the settlement, reported eight individuals eligible for ejido land allotment.

⁸Since 1974, Liberation theologians from San Cristóbal's Catholic diocese with the advice of Maoist activists built up coalitions of indigenous (Choles, Tseltales, Tojolabales, Tsotsiles) ejidos. Following a strategy of socio-political growth along the lines prescribed by the agrarian legislation, in 1975, ejidos united in uniones (Unión de Ejidos Quiptic Ta Lecubtsel). In 1980, this organisation and five others united to create the Unión de Uniones Ejidales y Grupos Campesinos Solidarios de Chiapas (UU) –representing 140 ejidos in 13 municipalities of Chiapas – which joined nation-wide peasant organisations (De Vos 2002, 281). Later, in 1988, UU adopted the form of ARIC Union de Uniones Ejidales y Sociedades Campesinas de Produccion Rural de Chiapas (ARIC UU), representing 95 ejidos and 26 ranches (Legorreta 1998, 200). In 1994, with the Zapatista uprising, the organisation had to choose between rebelling against the state and continuing to negotiate; this dilemma led to its fracturing into ARIC Independiente y Democratica and ARIC ‘Oficial’ (Harvey 1998, Legorreta 1998, Orive and Torres 2010).

⁹The LC's first land invasion case refers to Najá's complaint (1st May 1973) against the ejidos El Jardin, El Sibal and Lacandon (RAN Txt 1/05/1973). In 1981, the Community requested the help of the Governor of Chiapas in evicting groups of smallholders that purchased land in the region and were threatening to expel the Lacandons with firearms (RAN Txt 111/160 1981). On 7 March 1985, communal authorities complained that ejidatarios of Lacanjá Tseltal were farming on LC's land. Later in the 1990s, it brought criminal charges of invasion against the ejido Cintalapa (RAN Txt 15/02/1990). In that year, Metzabok requested the President's intervention to stop the ejido Damasco from invading its lands (RAN Txt 10/06/1990). It also filed a legal complaint against the ejido El Tumbo because it claimed that members of the ejido were working on Metzabok's lands (RAN Txt 21/08/1990).

¹⁰Some acquired land rights before 1972, others after 1972; some have preliminary resolutions, whilst others have partially overlapping plots, completely overlapping plots or private properties.

¹¹ Compañía Forestal de la Lacandona, SA, was created in 1974 and disolved in 1991 (O'Brien 1998, 76, De Vos 2002, 93–134).

¹² Corporación de Fomento de Chiapas, S.A. de C.V.

¹³She analyses conservation strategies in Lacandonia and the problems in the management of the MABR.

¹⁴MABR; Lacan-Tún, Chan-Kin, Yaxchilán, Bonampak, Najá and Metzabok.

¹⁵Sierra Cojolita, El Cartón, Flor de Chismática, Las Cruces and El Taller (Semarnat/Conanp 2007).

¹⁶With different emphasis, environmental policy has been the responsibility of: SEDUE (1982–1992), Secretaría de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca (Semarnap 1994–2000), and Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (Semarnat 2000–2012). In 1992, the Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente (Profepa), Mexico's environmental attorney, was created. In 2000, the Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas (Conanp) was established as the agency responsible for the management of protected areas.

¹⁷O'Brien (1998, 161–4) presents the history of the Chajúl Station and the roles of Mexico's government, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Conservation International, the Pulsar Corporation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

¹⁸On comuneros' and ejidatarios' participation in conservation initiatives, see Mendoza and Dirzo 1999, Bray et al. 2003, Kosoy et al. 2008.

¹⁹Settlements Nuevo Tila, Nuevo Flor de Cacao, Nuevo Jerusalén, San Jacinto Lacanjá, Nuevo Progreso and Lázaro Cárdenas.

²⁰Nuevo Tumbalá, San Jacinto, Lacanjá Tseltal, Cintalapa (extension), Nuevo Tila (extension), Nueva Flor de Cacao, Nuevo San Lázaro, Loma Bonita, Nuevo San Gregorio, Ojo de Agua or Nuevo Progreso.

²¹Sinaí, Campo Cedro, Puerto Rico, El Jordán, La Palma, Galilea, Africa, Asia, Rancho Cintalapa, San Gabriel, San Sebastián, San Pedro la Aurora, Salvador Allende, Chumacerro, San Alegra, San Gregorio, Chapultepec and Altamirano.

²²Mexico, Brazil, South Africa and Colombia have adopted land policies that resemble the World Bank's market-assisted land reforms (MALR). It has been suggested that the Agrarian Accords inaugurated a new policy in Mexico towards agrarian conflict as trust funds were created to provide interest-free loans to facilitate the purchase of property for landless claimants (Bobrow-Strain 2004); however, there is evidence of government-backed land purchases throughout the 1970s and 1980s (Calleros-Rodríguez 2010).

²³For instance, in April and May 2002, Conservation International (2003, 29) provided training for the management of the communal reserve La Cojolita (O'Brien 1998); in 2003, lagoons and rivers were monitored through Conservation International and the USAID presented in Mexico City as ‘Estrategia Selva Lacandona Siglo XXI’ on 26 June 2003.

²⁴ Comisión Intersecretarial para resolver los Asentamientos Irregulares en la Selva Lacandona y la Reserva de la Biosfera Montes Azules en el estado de Chiapas.

²⁵In February 2005, settlers of Nuevo Centro de Población Montes Azules agreed before SRA to vacate its lands in MABR and relocated to a new town near the city of Palenque; however, since the 200 hectares they were promised were not titled and public services not in place, on 21 March 2011, settlers blocked a highway in protest (Cuarto Poder 22 March 2011).

²⁶Nuevo Tila and El Desempeño.

²⁷Ojo de Agua, Nuevo Progreso, Alfredo V. Bonfil, Nuevo Tumbalá, Nuevo Jerusalén.

²⁸Ibarra, Ixcán, Santa Martha Corozal, Guadalupe Trinidad, Candelaria, Santa Lucía, Ojo de Agua San Jacinto, La Sultana, Pichucalco, Guanal, Agua Azul, San Jerónimo, Las Tacitas, Amador Hernández, Perla de Acapulco, San Francisco, El Limonar, Perla Blanca, Laguna Santa Elena, Nuevo Chamizal, San Antonio Escobar, Nuevo Tenejapa, El Zapotal, San José, El Calvario, Loma Bonita, 13 de Septiembre, Nuevo Tila, Nuevo Jerusalén, Nuevo Tumbalá, Flor de Cacao, San Jacinto Lacanjá and Ojo de Agua.

²⁹Nuevo Tumbalá, Viejo Velasco, San Jacinto Lacanjá, Chamizal, San Antonio Escobar, Cintalapa, Limonar, Niños Héroes, Nuevo Tila, Nuevo Progreso, Nuevo Jerusalén and Flor de Cacao.

³⁰San Javier, El Silencio and La Confidencia.

Additional information

Héctor Calleros-Rodríguez is a political scientist with research interest in indigenous peoples, human rights and social conflict over natural resources.