Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Based upon a gramscian perspective, this paper seeks to explain how the relationship between the State and civil society generates a type of national project that impacts all its territories. Refering to mexican postrevolutionary experience, it is pointed out that development conditions in each territory and in the entire system are affected by the structure of interactions between the local power groups and the State's central power groups.

This article proposes that the Latin American debate on local development can be enriched by incorporating an institutional analysis of business performance, something that has a long tradition in social sciences. In particular, the author suggests conducting such an analysis on the basis of rules, norms, conceptions and meanings revealed in the observable actions of entrepreneurs. In line with this perspective, an observation guide for obtaining data on this type of performance is suggested.

World Bank «recommendations» on agrarian matters in Mexico were duly instated in legislative reforms approved in 1992. These changes aimed to provide legal security to large investors, real estate developers, and transnational corporations, through various mechanisms such as the disincorporation of land held under social systems and its conversion to private property. The PROCEDE and PROCECOM programs have been pillars of this process, to date granting certifications and property titles corresponding to just over 90% of all agrarian units in the country. A reiterated demand of the indigenous movement, which gathered momentum especially following the Zapatista uprising, is the modification of Constitutional Article 27, particularly in reference to the recognition of the collective right held by indigenous peoples over their lands, territories and natural resources. An important legal reference to which the indigenous movement has alluded is ILO Agreement 169, ratified by the Mexican government in 1990. In 2006, Mexico’s House of Representatives discussed a legislative proposal regarding a new Federal Agrarian Law, in which it was proposed that common-property lands (ejidos) and communities that so wished could adhere themselves to the established procedure so their properties would be declared Indigenous Lands. However, it was not instituted as a new tenure system, and the legal definition of territory as spelled out in ILO Agreement 169 was also not taken into account. In the present essay we attempt to offer some elements that contribute to an analysis of the legal scope of this proposal.

Carmen Legorreta's book is inserted in a stream of works on Chiapas that have placed history as the support to understand current events. Review Desafíos de la emancipación indígena. Organización señorial y modernización en Ocosingo, Chiapas (1930-1994). María del Carmen Legorreta Díaz. México, CEEIICH-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2008

The issue of land regularization in the Lacandon Jungle, Chiapas, has attracted intense interest from various actors in recent years. Non-governmental, local and national organizations, journalists and even organizations beyond Mexico's borders have closely followed the issue from different points of view throughout the last decade. Review Regularización de la propiedad en la Selva Lacandona: cuento de nunca acabar.Gabriel Ascencio Franco Tuxtla Gutiérrez, UNICACH, 2008

This article applies a legal anthropology approach to exploration and development of new research practices in the human rights field, based on the experience accumulated in recent years by the Inter-American Institute on Human Rights. The process has included the review and reorientation of research trends in this theme, with the purpose, on one hand, of steering toward departure from the privileged role held by analyses of rights violations, in favor of the incorporation of other paths of exploration that address variations in their promotion and protection. And, on the other hand, to favor an adequate balance between the legal perspective and the political and social perspectives of phenomena related to human rights and democracy. The article presents frameworks on the development of legal anthropology and approaches to human rights research, as well as examples of some applications that have implied adaptations in the definition of the object, in methodological applications, and in types of results, as well as a reflection on the meeting point between these two traditions.

Understanding has not been developed to date regarding the right to consultation as a citizen right that implies prior and informed consent by citizens regarding issues affecting them, and in particular as a collective right of indigenous peoples, including the indigenous peoples of Mexico. The intention of this document is to argue the need for recognition of this right and to discuss how territorial rights of indigenous peoples have been affected in practice due to lack of consultation. In this same sense, an analysis is presented with references to the International Labor Organization (ILO) Agreement 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples in independent countries, and to Mexico’s Constitution. Finally, a proposal is presented regarding consultation of indigenous peoples.

The study of indigenous communities in the search to describe their normative systems, in Mexico at least, illustrates that the issue of property is central to understanding the content of these systems. Anthropological thought, on the other hand, leaving aside social structure, in this case non-ownership of land, wants to find the explanation of the particular type of regulation of these communities in “the sense of community belonging.” Analysis of the norms related to control over land illustrates that this community feeling must be explained at the same time, and that can only be done based on study of the particular social relations of a non-capitalist agrarian society. On the other hand, it cannot be emphasized enough that the content of community regulatory norms is what explains the survival of the community, and in the same manner explains the stubbornness and strength with which the wise persons of these societies insist on conserving their way of life —in other words, their norms— to reproduce themselves as communities intending to survive outside capitalist society, which they see as an enemy to that survival. In summary, the proposal states that the content of the norms observed in these communities cannot be explained without addressing the forms of control over land. The community attitude, that sense of belonging, is a necessity for the reproduction of their lives, primarily determined by control over land.

This text explores the question of the ethics that should prevail in anthropological pursuits, a topic which, despite philosophical undertones, is an underlining issue in anthropology, particularly in the way in which it approaches the study problem. The article attempts to identify a possible relationship between ethics, anthropology, human rights and politics, in light of «the problem of the other,» with the purpose of positioning it within the Mexican context, based on the postulates of Enrique Dussel in his Introducción a una Filosofía Latinoamericana de la Liberación. What relation exists between ethics and anthropology? What should be considered ethical behavior of an anthropologist? Is just one ethic possible or must we consider several, given cultural diversity? Are human rights—as a proposal of values—universal, or is that impossible? Do ethics exist for politics, given this diversity?

This document aims to demonstrate a set of macrosocial problems regarding the construction of religious human rights and the human rights of indigenous peoples in the international and national spheres, and how they are or are not considered by national authorities, not only in resolving religious disputes, but also protecting the religious human rights of indigenous peoples. From this perspective, and in light of ongoing religious conflicts, the document also looks at how political and social rights are exercised by indigenous peoples, and whether said rights are taken into account by the administrators of justice.