"Indigenize" As Concept and Practice: A Post-Nafta North-South Mexico Example (North American Free Trade Agreement‪)‬

I HAVE BEEN PONDERING THE PHRASE "ALWAYS INDIGENIZE" for weeks this summer as I traveled through northern and southern Mexico, meeting with workers, indigenous farmers and campesinos, members of autonomous communities and civic groups as part of a project I am doing with a tri-national coalition of organizations from the three NAFTA countries, collecting testimonies from those who have been most affected by the North American Free Trade Agreement for a book I am helping to compile. In the process we have also been strategizing the coalition's next steps and new directions. What does "always indigenize" mean in these contexts? The many exchanges I participated in during these meetings suggested to me that this verb "to indigenize" can be a useful concept for social movement if we gather into it three layers of meaning that have congealed around the word "indigenous." In the case of Mexico, the common sense meaning of "indigenous" refers to the native peoples who are ten percent of the Mexican population, "los indios," who come from over 56 linguistic groups other than Spanish--among them Nahuatl, Mixtec, Zapotec, Tsotzil, Tseltal, Tojolabal, Chol. Wherever they are--in Chihuahua, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Yucatan, Chiapas--indigenous people are the poorest of the poor, the result of a combination of geographical isolation, institutional racism, systematic repression by local elites, and the structural adjustment programs imposed by transnational banks. Indigenous people live in the most remote and least productive rural areas because their lands have been expropriated and their way of life pushed out of the fertile valleys and into the highlands or jungle by cattlemen, timber companies, and a government that eased the process or looked the other way (Barry 176). While it glorifies "Indian-ness" in its nation-building rhetoric, the Mexican government has done little to eliminate the caste-like treatment of the native population by Spanish-speaking elites (Barry 177).