Limiting Indigenous Autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico: The State Government's Use of Human Rights

Abstract

This headline in the 23 November 1999 edition of the Mexican newspaper La Jornada quoted Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 1 She was observing that human rights can no longer "be considered an imposition of Western values," because many national [End Page 877] governments, such as that of Indonesia, have established human rights commissions of their own. Now that international commissions can work cooperatively with national and local ones, they can avoid the appearance of imposing Western values on unwilling peoples. In this paper, we draw on Robinson's comments to frame our discussion of the current situation in the state of Chiapas, in southern Mexico, because we believe that her words both name a problem we see and suggest a possible solution. In Chiapas, where indigenous groups are trying to assert a measure of political autonomy, the state government appears to be using human rights as "another form of colonialism." But if indigenous groups in Chiapas obtain the political autonomy they need to develop their own understandings of human rights, the optimistic vision articulated by Mary Robinson, of cooperative efforts among groups with different histories and values, may yet prevail.