Indigenous autonomy and Latin American state security in contexts of criminal violence: the cases of Cauca in Colombia and Guerrero in Mexico

ABSTRACT

Scholars writing on Indigenous autonomy in the Americas have focused mainly on social movement demands and on the implementation of laws that enshrine autonomy rights. The motives of state officials in enacting de jure legislation on autonomy have received less scholarly attention. In this research note, we examine the Cauca region of southwestern Colombia and the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero. Both regions have similar percentages of Indigenous populations and have experienced high levels of violence and insecurity related to organized criminal groups (OCGs) in recent decades. Territorial autonomy was granted to Indigenous peoples in the 1991 Colombian constitution, while only weak Indigenous autonomy rights were laid out in the 2001 amendments to the Mexican constitution, leaving autonomy to be legislated by sub-national states. We suggest that state security motives may help explain variation in outcomes between these two cases and that more attention needs to be paid to Indigenous autonomy in the context of narco wars and criminal violence. Increasingly these wars are being played out in rural areas throughout Latin America where Indigenous and Afrodescendant peoples reside.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous peoples
• de jure autonomy
• Colombian constitution
• Guerrero, Mexico
• Cauca, Colombia

Acknowledgements

We thank Anella Guzmán, Florencia Olivares, Francisca Koppmann, and Soledad Araya for their research assistance. Special thanks go to Zoe Zabala, whose impeccable work was invaluable to us. We appreciate Giorleny Altamirano, Virginie Laurent, and Teresa Sierra for their suggestions, and, at LACES, we thank two anonymous readers and our Responsible Editor, Wolfgang Gabbert, for his careful reading of our manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Increasingly across Latin America, autonomy and rights granted to Indigenous peoples include Afrodescendant communities as well. We focus here on Indigenous peoples.

2. MCPs encompass political rights, such as consultation and representation; economic rights, including rights to collect taxes and control resources; and cultural rights, such as the affirmation of Indigenous people to protect and reproduce their distinct heritage and enjoy bilingual education.

3. Van Cott (2001) argues that Bolivia (1993–97) and Peru (1993) were failed cases in that Indigenous autonomy was not strengthened in these constitutions.

4. Drawing on the work of Altamirano (2021), we narrowly define state security interests, focusing on territorial control by the central government to meet the state’s security needs, specifically to combat and contain narcotraffickers.

5. IDC (2022) estimates are based solely on media reports covering more visible and ‘large’ displacement events.

6. While Colombia’s overall Indigenous population is about 4.4 per cent, in the Cauca, Indigenous peoples constitute 16 per cent of the population and are concentrated in ten municipalities in the northeast (“Boletines Poblacionales: Población Indígena” 2020). In Mexico and Guerrero, Indigenous people constitute 15 per cent of the overall population, but 84 per cent reside in the Montaña and Costa Chica region (Embriz Osorio, Serrano Carreto, and Fernández Ham 2002; see also IWGIA n.d).

7. The Guardia grew out of the Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del Norte del Cauca (ACIN), a partner organization of CRIC.

8. The second expansion of Indigenous territorial autonomy in the 1991 constitution consisted in the introduction of a new territorial unit: the Indigenous Territorial Entities (ETIs). They were never implemented.

9. Aguirre changed party affiliation in 2010 and ran for governor in 2011 as a candidate of the left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

10. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer who challenged us to consider these questions.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by ANID [Fondecyt Nº11191136; ANID Fondecyt N°1190345]; ANID - [Millennium Science Initiative Program - Code ICN17_002]; and ANID - [Millennium Science Initiative - ICS2019_025].

Notes on contributors

Shannan Mattiace

Shannan Mattiace is Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Allegheny College. Her research interests include criminal violence and security in Mexico, democracy, migration and security, and Indigenous social movements in Latin America. Her work has been published in Latin American Research Review, Journal of Economic History, Mexican Studies/Estudios mexicanos, Journal of Politics in Latin America, among others.

Carla Alberti

Carla Alberti is assistant professor of political science at the Instituto de Ciencia Política, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Her research interests include subnational democracy, indigenous politics, party movements, gender, and illegal economy and violence. Her work has been published in Political Science Research and Methods, Comparative Politics, Governance, Politics and Society, and Qualitative Sociology Review, among others.