The Tragedy of Success: Mexico's National Indigenist Institute (INI) in Highland Chiapas

At first blush, it is ironic that the administration of Mexican president Miguel Alemán (1946-52) created Mexico's Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI). Since 1940, Mexico's ruling party had turned its attention to the industrializing cities and relegated agrarian reform and Indian development to the back burner. Yet beginning in 1951, the INI opened dozens of Indigenous Coordinating Centers throughout Mexico and was hailed as the hemispheric leader in indigenista policy. Beginning in 1970, the INI's multiple critics claimed that the regime used the INI to colonize and politically control Indians, but a close look at the historical record reveals more complex motivations and outcomes. This paper focusses on the INI's pilot Coordinating Center, which commenced operations in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, in 1951. It will discuss the Mexican state's motivations for launching a major indigenista project at this time, and interrogate whether the INI met its objectives. The presentation will conclude with two counter-intuitive conclusions: first, that the INI's success in increasing agricultural output in indigenous Chiapas did little to pull Indians out of the cycle of poverty, and second, that the INI's success in its education and rural health initiatives led to its ultimate failure as a tool of political manipulation.