LAND RECUPERATION AND CONFLICT ON THE MARGINS OF STATE FORMATION IN NORTHERN CHIAPAS1

Abstract

Drawing on a historical and anthropological study of peasant indigenous land recovery and rural conflict, this paper explores the particular forms acquired by the formation, development, and crisis of the post-revolutionary Mexican State in the Maya Chol region of northern Chiapas. A combination of archival and ethnographic research, including local storytelling, on the ejido of El Limar offers a contextualized case study of the State as a contradictory, uneven, and conflictive process of domination and struggle, entailing multiple political, economic, and cultural dimensions. This is thus a contribution to de-centered analyses of State formation, yet a contribution that can only be made by situating local conflicts and relationships within broader political and institutional contexts. The combination of local and global levels of power and domination will be approached by a focus on agrarian law as a common terrain of cultural and material struggle. This focus provides a good analytical thread throughout the historical reconstruction of El Limar, enabling us to describe the combination of legal and illegal means used by differentiated local groups in their attempts to secure greater control over land and then to link such description to an analysis of State formation. The divisions, conflicts, and potential for struggle created through changing and contradictory institutions and legal apparatuses are thus central to the regionally and culturally differentiated construction of regime politics across Mexico.