Managing Conflict in Indigenous Lands and Protected Areas in Mexico

This study analyses indigenous land tenure disputes within protected natural areas (Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve and others). It does so by analysing the case of the Comunidad Zona Lacandona (Lacandon Community; Chiapas, Mexico) and the land tenure disputes in which it has been involved during the period 1972-2012. The study argues that the Lacandon Community (LC) has a micro-corporatist relationship with the state and that its creation has brought its beneficiaries (comuneros) into an ongoing dynamic of conflict and cooperation with the state, fellow indigenous landed communities, social and non-governmental organisations and guerrillas. By analysing its relationship with the state and the forty-year long conflict, the study presents the way in which the LC has defended its land rights within institutional channels as well as by means of contentious action. The study also shows how conflict has been dealt with within a political process and contributes to the theoretical understanding of the categories of micro-corporatism and political process as they are employed in those cases where indigenous peoples enter into conflict over land. Data for this study comes from interviews, agrarian archives, public information requests, newspaper articles, and ethnographies on the case study and its wider region.