7 - RECONCILING INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS, COMMUNAL RIGHTS, AND AUTONOMY INSTITUTIONS

Summary

As much as the Chiapas-based Zapatista insurgency has to teach about political rhetoric, the motivations behind collective action, and instrumental communalism, the indigenous rights phenomena in Oaxaca may be more informative about how individuals negotiate the tensions between individual and group rights day in and day out. In the end, the Zapatistas drew important attention to the indigenous rights agenda, but seem to have became utterly preoccupied by internal strategic concerns. The Oaxacan movement, by contrast, never achieved the unity of purposes or collective strength of the Zapatistas (see Chapter 2), but advocates there have grappled directly, even daily, with how to enact indigenous group rights in the modern world community by community.

It may be possible from a theoretical perspective to put individual rights on one side of the ledger and collective rights on the other. But one of the most basic lessons of Oaxaca's experience with usos y costumbres is that these neat categories break down in practice, creating enormously messy grey areas. The case of Santa Ana del Valle, where migrants are disenfranchised from elections but must serve the community, even if from abroad, is a great example of how difficult it can be for communities to navigate this complex and fraught terrain. While the situation was clearly an affront to the individual rights of migrants in Santa Ana del Valle, there were credible communitarian rights claims being made as well.