Communal interest and political decision making in an emerging Mexican indigenous movement

Abstract

Consensual decision making has traditionally been a defining characteristic of debates within Mexican indigenous communities. But in a modern socio-political context where inter-community alliances are perceived as necessary for economic and cultural survival, hitherto isolated communities have to converge in regional movements and reassess the bases and implications of this type of decision making, especially the interests that should be pursued by these decisions. Based on an ethnographic study of the internal dynamic of an emergent indigenous movement in the Mexican state of Guerrero, the Consejo de Pueblos Indigenas, it appears that the qualitative shift between intra- and inter-community decision making resides less in procedural changes than in the symbolic redefinition of the “community” within which consensus has to be achieved.

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