Indigenous Movements in Mexico: Impasse or Forward Motion?

My first ethnographic study in Mexico was of the people who worked on a gigantic landed estate or hacienda before the revolutionary land reform: they saw themselves as mestizos and often used the disparaging diminutive “inditos ” to refer to people from the neighbouring P’urhépecha indigenous communities of the highlands. Ironically, many of these ex-peones descended from the numerous Africans and mulattos brought into the region to work on the sugar haciendas. But they could not recognise this element in their historical identity, since as migrants to the U.S. they had become antagonistic to Afro-Americans. This is one, less attractive, side of transnational relations. But it is symptomatic of other political effects of globalisation that the new millennium witnessed the birth of black identity politics in some Afro-descendent communities on the coast of Guerrero state. As in the case of Colombia, where black movements have become far more extensive, we could see these new developments as a reflection of the impact that indigenous movements have had over the last couple of decades and in particular of the recognition that indigenous demands have received from national governments and multilateral agencies such as the International Labour Organization and the World Bank. They also reflect the increasingly significant role tha