Municipal Elections as Indigenous Politics in Yucatán, 1976–2018

Contemporary scholarship has often cited the apparent paradox that, for a state with a very significant population of Indigenous language speakers, Yucatan has seen comparatively little large-scale Indigenous activism. Drawing examples from the history of local interventions in twentieth century road construction, this paper argues that the historical structure of municipal politics in the state effectively supplants many of the functions of an organized Indigenous movement. Rural Yucatan is divided into over a hundred small municipalities, most of which have electorates that are predominantly Indigenous. On the surface, this resembles a deep tradition in which political and social identity revolves around the local community or kaj. But as I will demonstrate, the contemporary structure of rural politics in the state also reflects the confluence of more recent factors including Revolutionary era agrarian reform, electoral practices established during the long period of PRI dominance and strategic uses of the regional press by rural actors. What results is a system in which Indigenous political actors are able to exercise a significant degree of leverage over the development of public infrastructure, even as it promotes competition between Indigenous communities over scarce public resources.