Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Mexico: Social Movements, the State, and Contradictory Forms of Inclusion and Dispossession

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Neoliberal multiculturalism has emerged as an important concept to understand the politics of race and the policies of the state, social movements, and indigenous peoples in recent decades. As a country with an important history of indígenismo, the Mexican state has developed an extensive governmental apparatus for the purpose of engaging, controlling, and dispossessing indigenous peoples. In this panel we consider the contradictions and tensions between indigenous peoples and the practices of the multicultural state in a neoliberal era. With perspectives on different struggles in different parts of the country, this panel explores the dynamics of Mexican statecraft in a context of the generalized emergence of neoliberal multiculturalism in Latin America and the Caribbean. We consider the different nuances of multicultural practices and the contradictory forms of inclusion that they foster. The panel focuses in particular on how neoliberal multiculturalism has served as a state response to powerful indigenous activism.

Sub Track

• Afro-Latin/Indigenous Peoples

Session Organizer

• Eric D Larson, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Chair

• Ricardo F Macip Ríos, Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades "Alfonso Vélez Pliego" (ICSyH, BUAP)

Discussant

• Carmen Martínez Novo, University of Kentucky

Individual Presentations

• Neoliberal multiculturalism and the suppression of indigenous insurgency in 1990s-era Mexico - Eric D Larson, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

• Puchiwuin Limaxcanin Huehuetla: sovereign possibilities at the crossroads of neoliberal multiculturalism - Korinta Maldonado Goti, University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign

• La camisa de fuerza del 169 - Ricardo F Macip Ríos, Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades "Alfonso Vélez Pliego" (ICSyH, BUAP)

• La consulta previa como símbolo dominante del multiculturalismo neoliberal: significados contradictorios de los derechos indígenas en México - Rodrigo A Llanes