Power, Community and the State: The Political Anthropology of Organisation in Mexico

Power, Community and the State: The Political Anthropology of Organisation in Mexico. By Monique Nuijten. London: Pluto Press, 2003. Pp. x, 227. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $24.95 paper.

This is an ethnographic account of the conflicts over land in the ejido of La Canoa in the municipality of

Autln (Jalisco). Through a case study of the implementation of agrarian policy, the author identifies the informal "organising practices" that resulted from the interaction between the federal bureaucracy and the ejido's population from 1938 until 1995. Those interested in public policy, agrarian or otherwise, will find in this volume innovative, insightful analysis. A contribution to anthropology and development studies, it also engages with bottom-up and Foucauldian perspectives on cultural history and on the sociology of power and the state.

Nuijten recounts how ejidatarios, with the connivance of agrarian officials, carried out illegal land transactions such as the sale and rental of ejido plots, and the registration of more than one heir. Through these and other informal practices, the ejidatarios and their families achieved land security, a great degree of autonomy to pursue their interests (including migration to the U.S.) and protection from abuses of power. In all these cases, Nuijten convincingly shows, ejido commissioners and federal officials had in fact much less control over decisions than is generally believed. Such bureaucratic flexibility and informal organising practices have had negative consequences for ejidatarios. This is shown through the case of the "lost lands," a few hundred hectares that were in principle part of the ejido's endowment but remained in the hands of a few landowners. Through her account of the ejidatarios' struggle for those lands, their search for influential brokers and the response of officials, Nuijten discusses the mechanisms of power. She contends that brokers and officials were ineffective in pursuing their clients' interests (nothing was achieved in the case of the "lost lands") and yet, because ejidatarios have sometimes succeeded in achieving their objectives, brokers are very effective in generating hopes that conflicts will be resolved in favour of the petitioners. For this reason the state is described as a "hope-generating" machine. Finally, the author shows how the implementation of the liberalizing reforms of 1992 brought no significant change to organising practices in La Canoa.