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George A. CollierStanford University

Democracia en tierras indigenas:Las elecciones en Los Altos de Chiapas (1991-1998)

Juan Pedro Viqueira and Willibald Sonnleitner. coordinadores (Mexico,D.F.: Centro de Irrvestigaciones y Fstudios Superiores en Antropologi'a

Social, Kl Colegiode Mexico, and Instituto Federal Electoral, 2000)

Two questions have been intertwined in Mexican public life since the January 1, 1994Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas challenged the Mexican political s\stem in the name ofindigenous peoples: Would the ruling part) of many decades, the Partido RevolucionarioInstitucional (PRI), allow a transition to democratic pluralism in national politics? And whatmight be the role of indigenous peoples in such a transition? The election of Vicente Fox ofthe Partido Accidn Nacional (PAN) to the Mexican presidency in 2000 has answered the firstquestion affirmative!). The place of indigenous peoples remains unresolved, caught betweenthose who welcome indigenous politics as part of the pluralism that makes up contemporar)Mexico and those who decr\ indigenous political practices as antidemocratic, tainted bytribalisms. bossism, and corruption.

Democracia en tierras indigenas. published just before the 2000 presidential elections, arguesthe case in favor of democratic pluralism as \ iable both within indigenous communities andfor their role in the national political process. Implicitl), the book argues against the positiontaken b\ the Zapatistas, of disdain for the existing political parts s\stem as so corrupt that onl\substantial political reform can cure it, including granting indigenous peoples the autonomy togo\ern themselves.

Democracia en tierras indigenas grows out of a collaboration between scholars of Chiapas andMexico's Federal Flection Commission to study electoral processes and practices in one of themost indigenous areas of Chiapas as a wa\ of helping bring about fair and transparent electionsin 2000. The authors undertook case studies of politics and electoral practices in severalcommunities of the largcK-indigenous federal electoral district 05 —the central highlands ofChiapas. The\ compiled electoral statistics for federal, state, and local elections and by-elections in 1991, 1994, 1995, 1997, and 1998 and anal) zed these b> comparing trends in thislargels indigenous district to those throughout the state of Chiapas. And the\ invited the partic-ipation and commentary of those responsible for elections at the local level.

The view o\' indigenous political practices as incompatible with "Western' liberal democrac)criticizes indigenous "usos y costumbres" (customary practices) as allow ing ethnic politicalbosses to stifle dissent corruptly in the guise of exercising traditional authority. Viqueira andhis collaborators argue against this view, that there was nothing "traditional" at all in suchabuses of power in some of the highland Chiapas communities. For example, during the 1970sand the 1980s, in the name of preserving "customary" religion, authorities drove out thousandsof citizens from Chamula. Such strong-arm practices reflected corrupt state and nationalpolitics of the era in which PRI power holders stopped at nothing to control the "vote" thatendorsed their continuing grip on power. In the Chiapas highlands the) often worked through

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community members put into power by paternalistic state and federal Indianist programs.Furthermore, the abuses of the past have given way to increasingly open and fair democraticpractices in indigenous communities, as in the state of Chiapas and in Mexico as a whole sinceinternational scrutiny pressed electoral reform on the country after the questionable 1988presidential elections.

Case studies and electoral statistics from 1991 through 1998 bear out the authors' argumentthat party politics have become integral to indigenous life in Chiapas and have channeledpluralism into a course that has potential for addressing political issues through the electoralprocess rather than through armed conflict. As background, the book pulls together anexcellent overview of indigenous politics over the past century. The 1991 elections were thefirst in which the results were not patently rigged in several indigenous communities whereauthorities were in cahoots with PRI political bosses; and opposition parties registered at leasta showing in the Chiapas highlands as well as elsewhere in the state. The 1994 elections, inwhich national-level political parties agreed to accept the outcome of a reformed electoralprocess, were probably the fairest in twentieth-century history in Mexico as a whole, eventhough they were won by the PRI's Ernesto Zedillo. In Chiapas, where the Zapatista rebellionhad inspired the ousting of corrupt PRI authorities in dozens of municipalities, the 1994 presi-dential and gubernatorial elections clearly reflected the breakdown of PRI hegemony, withopposition votes, primarily for the left-leaning Partido de la Revolucion Democratica (PRD),equaling or outnumbering support for the PRI in about half of the state.

Subsequent local and slate elections in Chiapas have had more equivocal results because oflow voter turnouts fueled in part by Zapatista calls for abstention among its supporters.Nonetheless in indigenous communities, as in the state as a whole, voting patterns reveal anewfound and widespread democratic pluralism that was unthinkable in the heyday of the PRI.

Against this optimistic scenario, the authors caution, are sobering realities. Electoral politicscan work, but only insofar as parties accept the rules of the game of democratic pluralism. Notall in Chiapas do so. The long history of elections rigged by power holders continues to fueldoubts about electoral outcomes. After the PRI won the state gubernatorial elections in 1994,supporters of Amado Avendafio, the PRD gubernatorial candidate, set up a shadowgovernment in protest. The Zapatistas, who challenged the legitimacy of the existing politicalparty system, called on their supporters to abstain from local and district elections in Chiapasin 1995 and 1997. They went so far in some instances as to forcibly prevent election officialsfrom administering the ballot. Voter apathy in by-elections also plays a role. Low voterturnouts permit losers to challenge the legitimacy of winners elected by a corresponding!}small proportion of the electorate. The authors show that these are problems in the state as awhole, and not just of the indigenous sector.

There are other shortcomings in Chiapas. Voting often reflects collective decisions as to howto vote, and practices that limit the secrecy of the vote also undercut individuals' exercise ofchoice. Women have a long way to go in terms of free exercise of their vote and politicalparticipation. Current electoral laws do not permit local authorities to share municipal postswith representatives of the electoral minority. This is an important shortcoming because itundercuts the sharing of power in multi-party councils that many indigenous communitiesexperimented with successfully as a way of resolving internal conflict after the Zapatistauprising. More fundamentally, the authors argue, while democratic pluralism has taken root in

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Chiapas, full electoral freedom requires greater respect for human rights and higher levelspfsocioeconomic well-being than currently prevail in Chiapas.

Democracia en tierras indigenas does not directly address the merit of political reforms suchas those contemplated by the Zapatistas in the name of indigenous autonomy. Focusing onrecent electoral politics in the central highlands of Chiapas, the book does not examine thepolitical practices of Zapatista autonomous communities in eastern Chiapas. The message ofthe book is nonetheless clearly that democratic pluralism can work for indigenous Chiapasvv ithin the existing state and federal legal framework. The 2000 elections, in which anopposition coalition won the state's governorship for Pablo Salazar Mendiguchia, seem to bearthis out.

Yet it is important to note that anomalies sometimes verging on magical realism continue tolurk beneath the surface of the democratic pluralism in Chiapas. The authors note that partyaffiliation at the local level does not always mean that adherents share their national party'spolitical ideology. In practice, the disconnection may become bizarre, as in Zinacantan (thecommunity I study) in 199.S when PRD loyalists in several hamlets switched their affiliationen masse to the PRI, while former PRI power holders switched to the PRD; or in Chamula,where all the households of one hamlet registered simultaneously with the PRI and the PRDso as to be able to claim political patronage from both. Despite reforms to increase the trans-parency of electoral outcomes, questionable practices continue, such as transporting ballotboxes over long distances for counting. Perhaps such anomalies pale when we compare themto electoral practices in the 2000 presidential elections in Florida, or to recent local electionsin San Francisco where a ballot box reportedly washed up on the California coastline."Democracy" under Western neo-liberalism can disguise many realities.

The authors are to be congratulated for an original approach to politics in Chiapas. This is thefirst study to examine electoral politics within indigenous communities and as part of thestate's broader political landscape. Appendices include tables of election results broken downby municipality and party for the local, state, and federal elections in the 1991- 1998 period.Maps depicting the regional variation of electoral outcomes also add weight to the book'sanalysis and conclusions.