A flower in the hands of the people: Gustavo Esteva explains what lies at the heart of indigenous politics in Mexico - The Nation-State

Surrounding the state

The nation-state is a conglomerate of economic and professional corporations. Each one promotes its products and services and takes care of its own interests. Periodically, the parties bring together all the stockholders--businesspeople, union leaders, professional associations, churches, corporations--to elect a board. Democratic process is conspicuously absent inside the parties. Electoral victories are determined by marketing techniques in a media circus. Once legitimized by the vote, the winners barely take note of people's opinions. That's what leads to disenchantment with the ballot box, which attracts fewer and fewer voters.

We follow with interest the debate on the supposed death of the nation-state, whose central function to administer the economy is evaporating as all economies lose their national character. Macro-national or 'global' structures imitate the design of the nationstate to compensate for its progressive weakening. We are concerned that this process tends to encourage the use of force, while uncertainty and disorder deepen. But that won't turn us from our path, which does not lead to reforms that prolong the agony of those outdated structures of domination and control.

We don't live on Mars. The newly elected, Left-wing presidents of Broil and Ecuador, Lula and Gutierrez, are not the same as George Bush or Mexico's Vincent Fox. The transition we are in is still happening within the framework of the nation-state and the globalized economy. Like the Zapatistas, however, we trust in the exercise of our autonomy and our coalitions. Thus we will build a political force--not a political party--capable of blocking policies and actions of the state or the market. To accelerate the transition we'll promote 'shadow laws' that protect our autonomies from state or market intrusions and slowly reduce the political centre to nothing but administrative functions.

Instead of losing our roots, as globalization encourages, we have opened up to broad coalitions of the discontented across national borders, while always asserting ourselves in our own places. That's bow we have moved from resistance to liberation.

We find it comforting to find a similar spirit in other places. The Congress of Ecuarunari, the largest organization in the indigenous peoples' network CONAIE, broke off its alliance with the Ecuadorian Government and demanded that the members of the Pachakutik movement who held public office resign from the leadership of the movement. Humberto Cholango, Ecuarunari's new president, pointed out: 'We have always been autonomous from all governments, and of course from the current one that has swindled the people by imposing neoliberal policies ... The principles of the indigenous movement are more important than any post of minister or undersecretary, and that Fact can't be revoked.'

At the Latin American conference on 'Indigenous Movements: Resistance and Alternatives' held in Mexico City at the end of May 2003, the participants repeated this message over and over again: 'On the road to self-determination,' said the Mapuche, Jose Nain, 'we do not wish to be inside the state, rather we wish to surround the state.' The indigenous movement, underlined the Aymara, Felipe Qnispe, must have two arms: one framed within the state and the other outside it. 'They say that democracy is not perfect but it is the best system,' commented Felix Patzi from Bolivia. 'We say that the communal system isn't perfect either, but it is better than democracy ... In the communal system political leadership, the administration of justice and decision-making do not lie within an individual or a group, rather in the collectivity. The vested authority is an expression of community decision-making. The system is based on truth, trust and commitment. What is said is what is done.'