Indigenous Congress Seeks to Break Down the Walls of Racism, Patriarchy and Capitalism Walter D Mignolo and Rolando Vazquez - Al Jazeera
go to original September 28, 2017

With Mexico due to elect a new president next year, the country’s major political parties will soon begin lining up their candidates. Marking a historic moment for Mexican politics, among those competing will be the first woman to represent the country’s indigenous population. (Al Jazeera English)

The First Nations of Mexico have launched a political campaign that has surprised many and that has been widely misunderstood. In the face of the horror of 215,000 deaths in the last 10 years and after 500 years of oppression, the First Nations, articulated in the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), have launched a political initiative constituting an Indigenous Council of Government (CIG), whose speaker, Maria de Jesus Patricio Martinez, will be registered as a candidate for the national presidential election.

Critiques of the established political spectrum were loud: from patronising, misogynic and racist attacks to Patricio Martinez, to calls for the inclusion of the CNI proposal into the ongoing political processes of political parties. All criticism evinced that Western political perspectives are bankrupt.

Why the misinterpretation and criticism? Mainly for two reasons:

First, the fact that the new initiative has been taken after 23 years of disqualification and rejection of both the electoral procedures and the national system of government by the EZLN (Zapatistas). The EZLN have indeed its own forms of governance, known as Juntas de Buen Gobierno (Boards of Good Government). How is it then, that now the EZLN, which form part of the CNI, decides to participate in the new initiative?

Second, the assumption that María de Jesus Patricio Martinez, the CIG speaker, will be just like any other individual candidate in the competition among political parties, in spite of the fact that both the CNI and the Zapatistas refuse to participate in any political party.

The reason lies in the arrogant ignorance that distinguishes the western notions of institutional politics. First Nations' concept of the political is derived neither from Greece nor from its modern European-centered version from Machiavelli through Locke to Marx. The CNI participation in the national presidential election appropriates the tools of the modern/colonial state to advance their own project.

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