Conquest by contract: property rights and the commercial logic of imperialism in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (Southern Mexico)

Property rights and contracts were important to the legal foundations of the Spanish Empire from the sixteenth century. The recognition of the property rights of indigenous people was part of the legal foundations of empire, but offered weak protection from the commercial logic of imperialism. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the national and international recognition of indigenous property rights has increased at the same time that indigenous property has been threatened by the expansion of commercial interests in the name of development. Focusing on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (southern Mexico), this article charts the historic tension between indigenous property rights and the expansion of commercial interests, and how, despite new rhetoric about protecting local communities and their natural resources, the shift to ‘sustainable development’ has not changed these dynamics