Kuxlejal Politics: Indigenous Autonomy, Race, and Decolonizing Research in Zapatista Communities

Mariana Mora 

November 14, 2018

Event Description

Over the past two decades, Zapatista Indigenous community members have asserted their autonomy through everyday practices in their struggle for lekil kuxlejal, a dignified collective life connected to a specific territory. Mariana Mora spent more than ten years researching in Chiapas, working with Tseltal and Tojolabal community members to design and evaluate her fieldwork. The result of that collaboration is a work of activist anthropology, revealing how kuxlejal (or life) politics unsettle key racialized effects of the Mexican neoliberal state.

Speaker 

Mariana Mora is Associate Professor/Researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico City. Her research focuses on struggles against continuing colonization as a part of state formation in Latin America, including in Indigenous regions in Mexico.

Cosponsors

Co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies, the Chicana/o Studies Program, the Center for Race and Gender, and the Latinx Research Center.