book talk
lan state has long been kept
weak by design, undermined
by tight-fisted oligarchy and,
more recently, by parallel
powers linked to military and
narcotrafficking interests.
If this neoliberal polyarchy
fails to keep a social contract
with the Guatemalan people,
it is because the democratic
transition of the mid-1980s
was engineered by the mili-
tary as a counterinsurgency
strategy—it was designed to
save face before an interna-
tional chorus of lenders and
human rights critics, not to
save Guatemalans. It is no
Citizens have improvised a wide array of
coping strategies to deal with everyday
life in Guatemala City.
historical accident that the
state’s civilian institutions are
as weak, underfunded, and
vulnerable to infiltration by
organized crime as they are.
And because the state has
betrayed the vast majority
of its population over and
over again throughout the
past two centuries, it is little
wonder that citizens turn to
ad-hoc, “privatized” survival
strategies in order to carve
out some semblance of func-
tional lives.
The editors of Securing
the City are to be applauded
for working to shatter com-
mon narratives that pin the
blame for Guatemala’s urban
violence on “delinquents,” ur-
ban gangs, rural lynch mobs,
or other such bogeymen.
The work also dismantles
the imagined boundaries
between city and country,
62  ReVista  spring | summer 2011
and for this it merits praise.
It would be a stronger book
if it included contributions
on some of the most integral
features of the post-conflict
landscape: narcotrafficking
and parallel powers; the chal-
lenges of postwar policing;
the proliferation of foreign-
funded NGOs; or perhaps the
adoption industry, that con-
troversial commodity chain
connecting not only country
to city, but city to world.
That said, one book can-
not be expected to stand in
for an entire field of inquiry;
other writers must rise to the
city’s formidable challenge.
Guatemala City’s is a “beauty
of witches,” as Paul Theroux
writes, and despite the capi-
tal’s violence and inequality
it remains a vital, fascinating
locus of Central American
life past and present. “The
city is not dead,” as Levenson
notes in her contribution to
Securing the City, and though
its epitaph has been written
many times over, it is the
responsibility of scholars, ac-
tivists, and policymakers alike
to refrain from consigning it
to a premature death.
Kirsten Weld is the Florence
Levy Kay Fellow in Latin
American History at Brandeis
University. She is currently
completing a book manu-
script on the 2005 discovery
of Guatemala’s National
Police Archives.
Indigenous Lands
A Review by Theodore Macdonald
Mexico’s Indigenous
Communities: Their Lands
and Histories, 1500-2010,
by Ethelia Ruiz Medrano,
(University Press of
Colorado, 2010 ).
Mexico’s Indigenous Com-
munities: Their Lands and
Histories, 1500-2010 lives
up to its ambitious title.
In only 291 pages of dense
near-encyclopedic history,
Ruiz Medrano orders an
enormous corpus of facts
and arguments to provide
a Post-Conquest review
of indigenous land loss
and imaginative efforts
to control it. The lengthy
bibliography includes
original findings from
Seville’s Archive of the
Indies, builds on major
writers on Mexico’s social
and economic history,
cites comparative cases
from other part of Latin
America, and the details
the author’s ethnographic
research of contemporary
land struggles in Guerrero
and Oaxaca. The text does
not engage the reader in
an “easy read,” but rather,
provides a reference work
that will be useful for years
to come.
Running through this
history are two threads.
One is the persistent
indigenous effort to engage
Spanish and, later Mexican,
authorities in negotiations
over land and principles
of land rights. Here the
author’s emphasis lies in
interactive indigenous
agency with State agencies,
not simple resistance and
certainly not passive ac-
quiescence. As the 510 year
history progresses, the In-
dians, of course, lose nearly
all of their land and most
control over its resources.
However, the period is
punctuated by dignified
arguments substantiated by
primordial land claims. The
manner of this indigenous
argument—primordial evi-
dence expressed symboli-
cally and visually—is the
book’s second thread. The
Pueblos use codices, maps,
and other symbolic visual
devices, in many cases ob-
tained by the author, that
serve, as Ruiz Medrano
consistently emphasizes, to
“negotiate” land rights with
local authorities and the
Crown.
These are not simple
reactions or spontaneous
protests, but patterned
exercises of agency to
demonstrate land claims.

The Indians did, after all,
lose most of their lands,
but the book illustrates an
imaginative flow of persistent
legal actions and changing
concepts of law. While the
author appropriately lays the
blame for land losses on the
locus of power—Spanish and,
later, Mexican governments—
the text is pleasantly free of
blame on the current bête
noir—neoliberalism— which
has replaced “dependency
theory” as the “explain all”
that often masks the com-
plex interrelations and
understandings that provide
a modicum of indigenous
agency.
The first two chapters
review legal and land tenure
history of the 16th to 18th
centuries. They provide a
detailed review of, on the one
hand, a “clash of civilizations”
in which, at least from the
perspective of the Spanish
Crown, there is basic respect,
illustrated by complex legal
arrangements created to
order relationships. Likewise,
we see arguments accepted
and based on indigenous
history and geography, as
illustrated by the complex
codices (which would be
far more impressive if the
original colors had been
printed). However much the
negations are imbalanced by
the Christians’ invocation of
God-given powers through
such tools as Papal Bulls,
there is a sense that, at the
highest levels diplomacy as
well as power is at work. On
the other, somewhat more
soiled, hand, local level Span-
ish behavior was a simple
series of efforts to increase
personal wealth, exploit
indigenous labor, and obtain
permanent land holdings. It
is easily and cynically argued
that the Crown’s relatively
benevolent behavior was
little more than an effort to
weaken the increasing pow-
ers of the colonial elites. With
that in mind, the book could
have been improved through
more discussion of the many
legal and philosophical de-
bates that took place in Spain
during this period. Nonethe-
less, Ruiz Medrano presents
the progressive demise of
formal Colonial land rights
in a manner that parallels
Charles Gibson’s classic study
“The Aztecs Under Inca
Rule” while taking the reader
far closer into specific cases
and, again, showing how
communities continued to
document individual cases
through the ingenious use of
dramatic codices and maps
as evidence.
The Colonial period intro-
duced diseases that may have
been the most devastating to
Mexico’s indigenous popula-
tion, but Ruiz Medrano’s
next chapter shows that the
revolutionary and liberal
19th century was perhaps the
most destructive to the social
fiber and lands that held
that cloth together. Much of
what occurred was seen as
liberating the Indian from
his childlike protected status.
Though realized in a some-
what schizophrenic and on/
off manner, the Pueblos were
provided with opportunities
for local governance and a
degree of local legal control.
But Ruiz Medrano empha-
sizes that “…as a result of
legislation passed first by the
Cadiz Cortes government
and then by successive liberal
and conservative national
governments, [the Indi-
ans] lost the protection the
monarchy had given them by
virtue of their special juridi-
cal status. With the abolition
of a special Indian court,
the Indians were henceforth
placed on the same legal
footing as other social and
ethnic groups, divested of
the protection of a “paternal-
istic” monarchy—however
much such protection would
have been confined to the
realm of legislation.” 19th
century Indians were now
independent “citizens,” not
subjects clustered in commu-
nities. But while they could
no longer be thrown to the
lions, they were left rela-
tively unarmed to face the
wolves. Again Ruiz Medrano
chronicles imaginative efforts
to overcome that weakness,
but the outcome proves little
substantive indigenous self-
determination in arenas such
as land and land rights.
The most insidious
freedom of the 19th century
granted to the Pueblos was
the freedom from themselves,
particularly with regard to
what was seen as suffocating
and anachronistic customs
of land tenure. Communal
lands, with their inability
to alienate individual plots,
were inconsistent with the
liberal Enlightenment no-
tions of freedom to “im-
prove” ones individual self.
So communal lands are
provided with legal mecha-
nisms whereby individuals
can convert usufruct hold-
ings into private properties.
As with the US Dawes Act
of that time, the individual
acquired not simply his own
lands, but he would help
to break up his neighbors’
drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline  ReVista 63
book talk
lands as well. The idea that
such new freedoms could be
used simply to shift lands
to non-indigenous peoples
was certainly not lost on the
Pueblos, and Ruiz Medrano’s
long review of their efforts to
retain Ejidos is testimony to
indigenous resourcefulness.
The final chapter reviews two
cases—one from Guerrero
and another from Chiapas.
Each features a strong local
indigenous figure that draws
on history and visual imagery
to inspire local citizens.
What comes across in this
richly detailed book is the
sense that while great losses
have occurred, they have not
come at the price of indige-
nous dignity nor the destruc-
tion of the many argu-
ments made though careful
manipulation of indigenous
symbols. As such, the sym-
bols are useful negotiating
tools as well as a mirror onto
which indigenous peoples
project a sense of sense of self
and history.
Theodore Macdonald is
a Fellow at the University
Committee on Human Rights
Studies, and a Lecturer in
Social Studies at Harvard
University. In 2009, he co-
edited the volume Manifest
Destinies and Indigenous
Peoples (DRCLAS/Harvard
University Press). He also
undertook the ethnographic
research and subsequently
served as witness for the
plaintiff in the precedent-
setting 2001 indigenous land
and natural resource rights
case, Awas Tingni vs. Nicara-
gua, heard, and determined
in favor of the community,
before the Inter-American
Court of Human Rights.