Autonomies and the Construction of Communal Economies in Zapotec Villages in Oaxaca,Mexico

Oaxacan Communal Autonomies

Oaxacan autonomic experiences have been in place since the 16^th century colonial era. They challenged 19^th century liberal policies regarding the privatization of communal lands and the nation-building policies of the 20th century (Stephen, 1991; 2002). It was in this historical context that the town of San José began generating strategies to confront the precariousness and uncertainty of territorial possession. It reinforced and intertwined its communal forms of organization with the community-based possession of its territory, creating communal economies based on community work. San José has confronted capitalism and neoliberalism by maintaining its own means of production: labor and land. Neoliberalism, in practice, seeks to undermine the conditions of social reproduction of Indigenous peoples and implements strategies that include territorial dispossession, the dispossession of available communal resources (biodiversity), the conversion of people into labor and, consequently, the suppression of dignified ways of living (Composto and Navarro, 2014).

The community has played a central role in these trajectories of autonomic reconstruction, where subjects have transformed, for example, the concepts of land and territory, social organization, and gender roles, and the concepts and practices of community life so that autonomic experiences have taken on new challenges and meanings. Oaxacan communal traditions (Bautista, 2010; 2022), like those in other Indigenous regions of Latin America, have been nourished by past experiences (Rappaport, 1994; 1998), and they have been renewed as communities face new challenges: migration, the commodification of nature, new regulations on communal property, and the rules of neoliberal democracy.

The suppression of territories, precariousness, and marginalization have led to a renewed political energy in communal reconstruction. The Indigenous community, in fact, is not an immovable framework. On the contrary, it is a process in constant reconstruction where multiple experiences, interpretations, positions, and negotiations can emerge. Processes of communal autonomy are unfinished, incomplete, and in constant transformation. They resurge from experiences of dispossession and reemerge from the growing interest communities have displayed in deciding their own future. For example, in Cherán, communal identities based on communal relations of production reemerged as a basis for the recovery of territory and its use-rights. Such communal mobilizations challenged the policies of subjection fashioned by administrative policies involving forestry, industrial logging, avocado production, and more recently, the criminal gangs whose influence has woven itself into this network of dispossession (Martínez, 2023). In Oaxaca, communities have repositioned the communal political tradition by adding to and reinforcing the extraordinary diversity that characterizes their communal traditions (Curiel, 2015; 2019; Hernandez, 2022).

These processes, which I term “autonomies,” are not explicitly articulated by the subjects as policies of separation or self-sufficiency, or even as autonomies per se. Rather, they constitute practices of community control in matters that are decisive to the permanence and continuity of the collective. These challenges include control of the subsoil and its wealth in Capulálpam (Aquino, 2017), or the mobilizations for territorial possession and control to produce economies, governability, and claims regarding rights in Magdalena Ocotlán (Lugo, 2022). Experiences along these lines have been theorized within the concept of communality (Martínez, 2010; Maldonado, 2015) as an alternative to the concept of autonomy as coined, for example, by the Zapatista communities (Mora, 2015). These daily communal practices go through processes of practical and epistemological creativity. One example is the creation of an enormous diversity of community statutes drafted by authorities and communal assemblies that establish new circumstances, values, and communal principles to resolve issues that afflict people and communities in daily life (Aquino, 2022; Esteva, 2001).

It is in the collective control of land, its use-rights, and political power that communities have found powerful alternatives with which to counteract inequalities. San José has taken possession of its lands, confronted the Mexican state that refused to acknowledge these lands, and positioned itself as an autonomous community, thereby challenging the state, which has failed to recognize San José’s autonomous communal cultures.

Most Oaxacan communities have legal documentation that stipulates their status as ejidos or communal property, and this legal certainty brings a sense of autonomy to the communities. San José, however, lacks any kind of government-recognized documentation that validates its possession of the approximately 7,000 hectares that constitute its communal territory. Still, the community has developed solid autonomic practices and policies. How have they managed to strengthen autonomic arguments and practices? How has San Jose constructed a sense of political difference in the strained context of the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca? What comprises these powerful exercises for autonomy and what are its challenges?

San José has appropriated and reworked the processes of culture and power that enveloped the community over time. They have taken back their jurisdiction as a municipal agency while strengthening their communal economies. Even without legal territorial recognition, San José has maintained a solid communal autonomy.

San José In The Southern Sierra Of Oaxaca ¹

San José can be accessed by a very narrow and rugged dirt road that winds through the Oaxacan Sierra—about 75 km from the highway junction between Oaxaca City and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in La Reforma. It takes approximately six hours and thirty minutes to travel there from Oaxaca City. The town is located in a mountainous area between the regions of Miahuatlán, Tehuantepec, and the coastal portion of Oaxaca, on the very steep slopes of a mountain that the inhabitants of the community identify as Cerro de Aire (Peak of Air). This mountain, in turn, is part of other mountain ranges that form a gigantic territorial vessel of slopes and canyons that the inhabitants identify with extraordinary precision using a variety of names in the Zapotec language. It is a very rugged geographical area of the Sierra Zapoteca of southern Oaxaca in Southern Mexico and belongs to the District of Yautepec. The dwellings of the community’s approximately 500 inhabitants are in a strategic site in the territory, at an approximately 2,400 meters above sea level, from which the community organizes its territory.

In Oaxaca, when communities refer to communal lands, it is usually because they have property titles recognized by the National Agrarian Registry (Registro Agrario Nacional, RAN), which oversees legal recognition of communal property issued by the Mexican state. This is not the case in San José because, as previously stated, the community members do not have RAN-issued documentation legally endorsing their territorial possessions. In the recent past, they obtained a Presidential Resolution that acknowledged their communal lands, which they ended up rejecting because it subordinated their autonomy processes to the interests of the federal government. During my fieldwork, I never heard people in San José employ the term “autonomy” to refer to their organization and political aspirations, but I have heard in conversations that they wish to be a free community—free from subordination and free to make their own decisions.

The inhabitants of San José self-identify as a Zapotec community and are bilingual, even though, in their daily life, they mainly speak the Zapotec language and very little Spanish. During the day, there are very few people on the streets of the hamlet because both women and men travel on foot for several days to work on their “ranchos” (ranches). I will later define the kind of spaces that the inhabitants of San José term ranchos.

The community does not have any bus service or transportation by taxi cab. When people travel to Oaxaca City or the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, they must walk for approximately 45 minutes to a neighboring community where they can board collective transport. The few young people who attend the junior high or middle school walk every day to a school located in a neighboring community. To study high school they must move to even more distant communities. Located in the center of the hamlet of San José are the building of the Municipal Agency, a basketball court, a DICONSA store (a chain belonging to the Mexican government that distributes basic necessities at low costs to rural communities), the 17^th century Catholic temple of San José, a large recently-built hall for community meetings, and an office occupied by the Communal Representation (the authority responsible for territorial management). Deteriorated by inclement weather, these installations nevertheless speak of the great autonomous political vitality of San José, as well as the community’s relationship with forces of culture and power that enveloped them over time, such as the territorial and jurisdictional policies of the Mexican state and the Catholic religion. The community has built these buildings at different times, but the process always requires organization and the mobilization of communal labor. The community designed the legal figure of Communal Representation to carry out innumerable procedures involving territorial possession before the federal and Oaxacan governments.

By “autonomous political vitality” I am not referring to administrative or jurisdictional autonomy but to the political and practical creativity that communities develop when faced with challenges. “Political vitality” refers to the capacities that the community is capable of mobilizing to ensure its own permanence, which requires different types of practices where labor plays a central role. The anthropologists who have theorized communality in Oaxaca have explained little about labor because they tend to approach it as tequio—that is, as unpaid labor that members of the community contribute to the collective. However, all kinds of collective practices in the communities of Oaxaca require labor mobilization—that is, people mobilize their labor force to contribute to communal interests. This labor, in turn, must generate more labor to ensure its maintenance, sustenance, and reproduction.

In San José, most people and families engage in agriculture to produce economies. This construction of wealth sustains individuals as well as the community, likewise enabling them to contribute their labor (i.e., tequio) and goods to the collective by participating in community activities and rituals. The construction of roads, buildings for common use, and the maintenance of the territorial political organization requires the mobilization of labor through the contribution of community cargos (positions) as well as inputs in cash or in kind.

This production of labor through time has ensured the permanence and continuity of San José that I term autonomic. Although a minority of people work outside the community, most residents grow maize, beans, and fruits for local consumption. Their largest income comes from the cultivation of avocados, which people sell through so-called “coyotes,” intermediaries who sell the product in the city of Oaxaca or in the markets of Tehuantepec and Juchitán.

San José is in a forested region characterized by water availability and biodiversity, resources threatened by the uncertainty of land tenure and, mainly, by mining concessions in a large area of the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca. Policies involving the commodification of nature have impacted San José, but the community has developed solid policies to regain control of its territory. While there, I observed the presence of the National Guard, intended to preserve “security” in the region. And yet, several community members told me they do not want the National Guard to remain there.

San José is also in the zone of influence of the megaproject known as the Transisthmic Corridor (Corredor Transístmico), and it is in an area of abundant mineral resources and biodiversity where the federal government has granted mining concessions (EDUCA, 2015). The community believes that the insecurity of land tenure in their territory leaves them unprotected against processes they view as risky to their permanence and autonomy. Migration is low in San José: in 2022, some 50 people worked permanently outside of the community, which has around 350 people over the age of 18. Those who work abroad maintain their ethnic communal membership by sending their contributions in cash or in kind, contributing in this way to processes of communal autonomy.

The structure of community organization in San José is very similar to that of other Zapotec communities in Oaxaca and is primarily based on family networks. Families are made up of parents, their children, and grandparents. When women and men marry, they usually spend the first few years of their union in the main home of either the husband or wife’s family, until the new couple becomes financially independent. New couples also usually build their home next to the main house of either one of the partner’s family. Fathers and mothers pass on the family-owned farmland to their sons and daughters, who begin to work the land at an early age alongside their parents. This scheme of kinship, land possessions, family labor, and land inheritance has been and remains crucial in the autonomous culture of the community of San José.

The cultivation of the land provides food and income for a community that, per the marginalization measurements recorded by the National Population Council (Consejo Nacional de Población, CONAPO), is considered “very highly marginalized.” Additionally, land holdings are linked to the organization of kinship ties among nuclear families, extended families, and the community. The land holdings that the nuclear family inherits from one generation to the next play a fundamental role because labor and land allow for familial reproduction and, therefore, the permanence and continuity of extended families and the community. These relationships between work, families, and the community are central elements of the people’s identity, socio-cultural memory, economic sustenance, and autonomy. In their narratives of territorial possession, women and men often state that their ancestors were the original owners of the land, and they themselves have, in turn, inherited it. These memories create a powerful sense of belonging and legitimacy for these individuals, their families, and the community. They have built, as their ancestors did, a territorial labor scheme based on kinship ties, collaboration, and commitments across different communal arrangements.

Kinship is intertwined in a system of community ties. Women and men usually marry within the community. Marriages with people from other communities are rare. This marriage pattern has allowed the land to remain mostly in the hands of the population of San José since pre-Hispanic times. These kinship ties have also prevented people from outside the community, such as traders, loggers, and businesspeople, from acquiring property, which in turn aids in the protection of lands, rivers, springs, vegetation, and the landscape. In short, this has prevented the kind of community breakdown that has taken place in other regions of Mexico (Rico and Martinez, 2022). Bartolomé (2003) has suggested that relationships, gender roles, and kinship have transformed in Oaxacan communities as a result of migration and governmental policies of agrarian land distribution. Although relations of kinship have changed, the lands are still, with some exceptions, owned and in the hands of individuals and families originating from Oaxacan communities.

Within this ethnic and regional vitality, the permanence of the Zapotec language has played a crucial role in the construction of a sense of difference, while also creating referents for communal belonging. It has further been fundamental to the construction of memory, territory, and the economy. Plots of land, landscapes, experiences, and territorial geography are all represented in the Zapotec language, and the people of San José display specialized knowledge of their territory in their mother tongue. Ninety-five percent of the population is bilingual, although Spanish is usually employed to speak or write to outsiders, such as government officials and businesspeople. These bilingual practices have been central to San José’s autonomous constructions. The ability to speak Spanish has allowed them to question the federal policies that have sought to subordinate them through the suppression of the Zapotec language.

The memory of the ancestral settlement and the use of their native language across generations nurture their self-identification as a Zapotec people. San José’s ancestral origin lies in a Zapotec migration from the Zaachila Valley that took place in pre-Hispanic times, settling the current territory. Gerhard (1986) and Pardo and Acevedo (2013) have pointed out that this migration caused the ancestors of San José to settle on the banks of the San José River and occupy lands close to the Chontal territories. The community shares territorial borders with Chontal communities, but while San José revitalized the Zapotec language, the Chontal groups lost their native language and became monolingual Spanish communities. That said, regional vitality still characterizes these populations. San José itself has built a process of political and economic differentiation in regard to federal policies of territorial recognition.

Ideas Of Autonomy: Ancient History Represented And Narrated In The Present

Memories of the past in relation to the experiences of the present bring a sense of autonomy. The people of San José narrate their ancestral history in terms of a common origin with the neighboring community of Santa María, which the inhabitants of San José call the “Pueblo Viejo” or old village. According to the stories, the Pueblo Viejo was located on the banks of the San José River, but a catastrophe caused by torrential rains and an increase in the river’s flow in the 16^th century colonial era destroyed the Pueblo Viejo, causing part of the community to migrate some three kilometers upstream. Another part of the community migrated several kilometers into the mountains, also upstream. Since this separation, San José began to develop its autonomic process by facing and resolving difficulties involving Santa María, which claimed the lands occupied by San José as its own.

When the flooding of the river subsided, according to the community’s memory, they continued to occupy and cultivate those lands as well as those surrounding the Pueblo Viejo—an area of approximately 7,000 hectares—while the community of Santa María occupied a different area of approximately 14,500 hectares upstream. However, the community of Santa María remained belligerent and continued to claim the lands occupied by San José. This situation became exacerbated when, during the 19^th century, the Congress of Oaxaca determined that Santa María and San José would become a municipality, with Santa María as the municipal seat and San José as its municipal agency. This means that San José was subordinated in the municipal hierarchy to Santa María. It is important to note that municipal agencies can only be represented in the federal and state governments via their municipal capitals, which also administer the meager resources the Mexican state allocates to municipalities. These municipal inequalities, along with the insecurity of territorial possessions, had major consequences in San José’s battles for communal autonomy.

Santa María acquired greater bargaining power with the government in terms of resource management and political power, while San José defended itself by strengthening its community ties to counteract or try to balance the inequalities. For San José, possession of its lands was fundamental for maintaining its sovereignty while it strengthened communal organization in a context of tensions with the Mexican state, which expressed itself in the hierarchical division of municipalities and agencies, and in its failure to recognize the ownership of their lands.

Rancho Culture In San José

The construction of the rancho system is directly related to the sense of communal autonomy because these spaces link knowledge of past territorial possession to social organization and, crucially, to the economic sustenance of the community.

When San José obtained jurisdiction as a municipal agency in the 19^th century, it incorporated this status into its communal organization and used it to strengthen its process of autonomy, even though municipal laws sought to subordinate it to the capital of Santa María. The relationship between the municipal agency and the Zapotec community of San José has been the work of generations. The community intertwined the role of the agency, as an institution of the Mexican state, with communal positions rooted in the kinship system and crucially anchored to its territorial possessions.

Within their territory, there are at least 350 names in Zapotec for cultivated plots, caves, rivers, streams, ridges, names of territorial boundaries with neighboring communities, and names of present and past owners, as well as stories for each plot and place in the territory. The community identify with extraordinary precision the names of plants, animals, climates, hot places, cold places, and temperate environs, as well as places or plots that have been “at rest” for a long time —that is, plots that have not been cultivated so that the land regains its fertility.

During a May 2022 tour of their territory with communal authorities, we walked for about eight hours from the hamlet of San José to the San José River at the bottom of the ravine. This is a portion of the territory where the community has built ranchos. As we walked, the authorities spoke about who the owners of the land were, and narrated and explained the names of places, crops, and the type of agricultural work:

The area described by the interviewee comprises the 7,000 hectares San José has owned since pre-colonial times, and it is where they have established their rancho system. Ranchos are a pattern of land distribution and use that includes parcels, owners, systems of access to water sources, systems of cultivation, paths, and access roads, as well as memories of land ownership. This political geography constitutes the ranchos, a crucial source of their sense of autonomy.

The ranchos are distributed on slopes, ravines, riverbanks, under ridges, and among the dense forest. Each one has owners in possession of documents endorsed by the communal authorities or, in other cases, wills that record the inheritance of their plots. These inheritances and purchases of land have allowed them to maintain possession of their territory since pre-Hispanic times. These are not small property holdings, but possessions that can be sold or lent among the people of San José, while the use-rights belong to those who cultivate them. These economies make the community self-sufficient in terms of food (maize and fruits), as well as income and employment. About 50% of the territory is in the possession of individuals and families, while 50% is common property. The totality of the territory, however, is considered communal. This means that there is no such thing as private property.

The rancho model includes a schedule for land use. From March to May, which is the dry season, growers clean and prepare the land, brushing and felling the weeds that remain on the land as organic fertilizers. They remove tree debris and weeds that could obstruct the germination of corn, beans, and other crops, and burn the plots between April and May, producing organic fertilizer through burning the stubble of plants. The ranchos include small buildings made of wood, with tin roofs and dirt floors. These spaces have cooking facilities and growers spend days or several weeks in their ranches tending to their crops. There, they keep their work tools and protect themselves from the sun and rain, while also using the sheds to sleep and rest. The ranchos are surrounded by plots that belong to nuclear families and are inherited from one generation to the next. These inheritances between families prevent outsiders from acquiring land. Land control is also regulated by the community assembly, since only those who rigorously comply with their community cargos and participate in the community assembly can acquire land and properties. Ranchos are also spaces of memory because the history of those who have worked the land for generations has been recorded in the form of stories told, in the shapes of the landscape, in the preservation of seeds, and in technological innovations.

Food production provides the community with a crucial sense of autonomy. They grow their own food and market their avocado production. They began planting avocados at the beginning of the 21st century, and the crop has become one of the main sources of work and income for families. This production of knowledge has characterized Zapotec communities (González, 2001) and has been central to Oaxacan communal autonomies.

The community has around 150 ranchos in its territory. Their construction has allowed the community to maintain possession of the territory across five centuries while establishing borders with neighboring communities. The ranchos grow avocado, apple, peach, pomegranate, chayote, squash, corn, and beans. San José is self-sufficient in its food production, which is the main support of communal autonomy. Corn is gathered in November, while the harvest of pomegranate and chayote takes place in November and December. Avocado is harvested from May to July and from November to January, peaches in July and August. This balance in production avoids the land specialization that usually occurs in commercial agriculture. In addition to fruit production, the community collects a wide variety of wild edible plants: epazote, onions, pepperleaf, quintoniles, nopales. They produce mezcal with wild or harvested tobalá agaves that grow in the mountains. This economy is intertwined with the operation of community cargos, as is vividly expressed in the following excerpt:

The relevance of this interview lies in the observable relationship between autonomy, territory, and an economic base. The community of San José has built its process of autonomy based on its relationship with the territory as a symbolic and material construction. Its model of communitarian economy is linked to its hierarchical rotation of community roles (sistema de cargos), which in turn is sustained by economic production. Without the production of wealth there would be no process of communal autonomy. The interviewee above shows his expertise regarding his knowledge of the territory while identifying times for planting and production. He lives off his work and that of his family, feels free to cultivate plots inherited from his ancestors, and his technological and territorial knowledge, alongside his communal commitment, constitute his sense of personal and community autonomy. He elaborates his knowledge in relation to his territory, from which he derives knowledge and the moral and ethical norms that constitute him personally and his community. Producing mezcal is a sophisticated process that entails labor, land, and inputs. In the case of the interviewee, it also entails belonging to a community that demands collaboration while also granting rights.

Basso (1996) found similar processes for the creation of wisdom, moral, and ethical norms in other regions of North America when people interact in the places and environments where they live. San José has created its own territorial expertise and communal jurisdiction, as have other Oaxacan communities (Aquino, 2022) seeking to solve their need for territorial control, thus contesting the practices of political and administrative subordination promoted by the Mexican state (López and Espinoza, 2003; Lopez, 2019). These communal autonomies have multiplied in Oaxaca over the past decade (EDUCA, 2019) with, for example, the creation of communal enterprises following different economic lines.

It is relevant that San José has innovated its economy as well as its social organization. Towards the end of the 20th century, San José produced corn, beans, and fruits. However, at the beginning of the 21st century, the community decided to incorporate avocado cultivation into the family and community production model. The challenge they now face is that they market their product via intermediaries or traders who come from Tehuantepec and Oaxaca city. The rationale of the market has arrived in San José in the form of outsiders who wish to acquire their fruit production. In addition, the Sierra Sur region of Oaxaca is located within the Transisthmic Corridor area, which is being developed by the federal government and lies within a zone of  new communication routes between Oaxaca City and the tourist emporiums of Huatulco. The daily presence of the National Guard, the threat of migration, and how to sustain the territory constitute major challenges in the context of the eradication of autonomous institutions promoted by the López Obrador government. However, the autonomous processes of San José are solidly rooted in the past.

Stewardships, Confraternities And Autonomy

The mayordomías (civil-religious hierarchies) and cofradías (religious brotherhoods) of the 17th and 18th centuries disappeared in most of the communities of Oaxaca as a result of the Confiscation Laws of the 19th century and were replaced by other communal alternatives. However, San José maintained its versions of these models and reworked them into a communal model of income production and credit circulation.

The cofradías played a central role in the construction of communal meanings in Oaxaca because they were part of the commons. Not only did they contribute or generate resources for the festivals, they also provided resources to meet the expenses of the municipalities and common needs. Cofradías also functioned as communal funds to access the credit needed to activate the communal and regional economy in Oaxaca (Mendoza, 2010). The Chocholtec communities, for example, flourished because their cofradías allowed for the production and redistribution of wealth. The onslaught of liberal laws, however, ended up eradicating these flourishing groups in most Oaxacan communities and weakened their ability to produce communal economies that redistributed income (Mendoza, 2011). San José, however, supported the mayordomías and cofradías because they enabled the community to generate savings with which to meet their pressing needs and consequently strengthen their autonomy. Contrary to the provisions of liberal laws intended to separate civil organizations from religious ones so as to assign responsibilities to the individual and the citizenry, San José appropriated its municipal agency as a civil institution and intertwined it with religious organization via the mayordomías and cofradías as part of a larger system of community cargos. They created a community assembly that supports both the municipal agency and Catholic religious institutions, and linked these institutions to territorial control over their communal goods via the rancho model. This model of autonomy has proven to be central to San José’s ethnic identity and allowed it to claim its territorial rights in the 21st century.

The communal religious organization of San José includes three mayordomías and cofradías: the mayordomías of San José, of the Holy Cross, and of the Holy Child of Atocha. The mayordomos or stewards are elected by the municipal council and the alternates of the cabildo (that is, the Indigenous local governance system). The cabildo is elected by the community assembly, in which people between the ages of 16 and 65 participate. The cabildo is a community body whose members remain in office for one year, and it is linked to other community bodies such as the assembly, nuclear and extended families, the Communal Representation, and the cofradías.

Figure 1 shows San José’s current cargo model. These community tiers date back to the 16th century and have been adapted by the community to the needs and contexts of San José over time; they sustain communal autonomy. The cabildo chooses people who have not occupied any communal position during the previous year to propose as candidates to the community assembly. The mayordomías mobilize the community in different festive and religious rituals, provide most of the resources and expenses for the festivities, and contribute community work by involving both men and women in the organization of the events. Most of the funding for the celebrations comes from agriculture.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Community Cargo System of San José, 2022.

San José’s economy obtains funds from the cofradías to redistribute toward community needs. Each steward receives money yearly from the cabildo, which must be delivered to the community at the end of the year with an added value of 25%. The steward lends money to anyone who needs it at an interest rate of 25% per annum. These loans are timely because access to credit is very expensive considering the hamlet’s remoteness and the costs involved in time and transportation to Oaxaca City. They also prevent people from falling into speculative dynamics involving loans outside the community. The income from this 25% annual interest rate is employed in works of collective benefit. It is through work and access to credit that the community meets its most pressing needs. At the beginning of the year, the stewards bless the money so it may be productive while avoiding speculative practices; they seek to augur good harvests and ask that people not get into debt.

The loans by the cofradías generate funds from various community actors to finance collective needs. Stewards must cover the expenses of the religious festivities while the financial resources of the funds they administer must be given to the cabildo to meet the needs of the community. The many material and symbolic activities of mayordomías and cofradías contribute to the construction of social connections and bring meaning to the community’s perceived sense of autonomy. Sustained by redistributive and reciprocal communal practices, San José, like countless Oaxacan communities (Greenberg, 2004) has managed to rework colonial institutions such as cofradías and mayordomías to fund autonomic processes. Feeling free to make its own decisions, in 2014 the community created a community statute to register duties, remuneration, and social relations, that is, it registers its own rights. Lacking any recognition for its territory, San José has nevertheless created its own political institutions and economic bases to sustain itself and challenge the Mexican state.

San José has engaged in a battle against both capitalism and the Mexican state. The liberal policies of the 19th century sought to privatize the lands of Indigenous peoples. Large land holdings emerged in Oaxaca, such as in the coffee-growing region of Pluma Hidalgo, where San José is located. In several Oaxacan villages, private properties emerged, while other communities fully privatized their communal lands. The coffee plantations of Pluma Hidalgo employed Indigenous labor, while mango, coffee, and sugar cane plantations emerged in the Cañada region because of the confiscation processes. In the 20th century, although the agrarian reform recognized the communal properties of Indigenous peoples, this process was accompanied by forestry concessions to private companies and parastatal companies, which in turn came to exploit the forests and labor of agrarian communities. In San José, logging companies plundered forests and biodiversity from the 1960s until the 1980s. San José demanded recognition of its lands, but the Mexican government ceded its territorial rights to Santa María, leaving San José without legal coverage. Forestry companies such as Maderas de Oaxaca hired community members as laborers. They also had to pay a minimum tax to the community (derecho de monte) but, in this case, it was Santa María who received it. The company as well as some Santa María leaders took advantage of the wealth produced by timber production and commercialization. San José complained to the government that Santa María was benefitting from the timber trade while wresting territorial control from San José.

Challenges for the community include the possible migration of young people due to the lack of schools, and the difficulty of making a living from the cultivation of the land in an area that is being taken over by the mega-investments of the Transisthmic Corridor of Tehuantepec. San José’s challenge is to sustain its autonomous model in the face of state policies of privatizing biodiversity and converting community members into a workforce, but the key lies in having control of the territory. The mayordomías and its management of money flows are now competing with the loans offered by Banco Azteca. This financial institution is owned by tycoon Ricardo Salinas Pliego; it offers banking services in poor areas and loans to low-income sectors through its countless popular savings accounts in the city of Oaxaca. Mayordomías, however, allow for income to be reinvested in communal needs.

Another federal strategy to undermine communal autonomies is that of social assistance programs. It remains to be seen how the social aid offered by the López Obrador government impacted the management of the mayordomías’ funds. Perhaps people will no longer require loans from the communal funds. How San José handles policies of dependency and government control is an open question.

Conclusions

I have argued that the autonomies of Indigenous peoples have been mainly studied from the perspective of autonomous regimes or self-governments, including a diversity of legal and governance contexts. These discussions have analyzed political mobilizations for Indigenous autonomy in the context of neoliberal multicultural reforms in Latin America over the past forty years. Although these analyses have contributed to the understanding of the challenges, tensions, and contradictions in the construction of autonomous regimes, situations of precariousness and economic production as central elements of autonomy have been left out of these debates. I have suggested that political autonomies require economic support to counteract inequalities and that Oaxacan community autonomies have emerged in contexts of colonialism and patterns of subordination over time.

San José, for example, has built its own autonomic processes in opposition to the processes of centralization that sought to subjugate them, such as the municipal legislation of the 19th century and its conflicts with the current Mexican state, which has failed to legally recognize the lands they have occupied since pre-colonial times. Simultaneously, San José created its own autonomic political strategies by reworking colonial legacies of self-government such as cofradías and mayordomías, adapting them to their own purposes to create models of reciprocity, wealth production, and the establishment of various tiers of community cargos.

The community has strengthened the use of the Zapotec language and the bonds of communal reciprocity between families and the community at large, while creating a solid system of ranchos, mayordomías, cofradías, and festivals. These have allowed them to sustain agriculture and their economy to become, crucially, self-sufficient in their food production. They succeeded in linking the rancho system to the political representation of the community, reconstructing the role of the cabildo and the Communal Representation as the highest community authorities, despite lacking legal recognition of their communal lands. San José contested the municipal and agrarian policies that sought to subjugate its people and built its own autonomous community processes. It has also cultivated an alternative de facto autonomy outside of the state that differs from other autonomous experiences that have opted for a legal path or the reclaiming of ancestral lands.

Communal autonomy processes develop in adverse contexts, in environments where the Mexican state takes on different faces, such as extractivism of biodiversity and minerals, subjection through administrative autonomies, and official governance. However, autonomic communal processes, as processes of transforming local social relations to offer solutions for daily life, have multiplied in the state of Oaxaca through communal property and the recovery of past experiences.