Nation-State Building in Mexico: The Challenge of the Indian Minority | South-Russian Journal of Social Sciences
Nation-State Building in Mexico: The Challenge of the Indian Minority
Vol. 21 (2020) No. 2, Political Institutions and Processes
Vol. 21 (2020) No. 2
Political Institutions and Processes

Nation-State Building in Mexico: The Challenge of the Indian Minority

Kretov S.M.
Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University) under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation
ORCID ID 0000-0003-0577-0509
PDF (Russian)
https://doi.org/10.31429/26190567-21-2-79-96
https://doi.org/10.31429/26190567-21-2-79-96

How to Cite Array

Kretov S.M. (2020) Nation-State Building in Mexico: The Challenge of the Indian Minority. South-Russian Journal of Social Sciences, 21 (2), pp. 79-96. DOI: 10.31429/26190567-21-2-79-96 (In Russian)
Submission Date 2020-05-04
Accepted Date 2020-07-18
Published Date 2020-11-11

Copyright (c) 2020 Станислав Михайлович Кретов

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The article deals with the policy of the Mexican ruling elites towards the Indian minority in the context of their acquisition of political subjectivity. The question has been asked about the genesis of this internal political challenge, its manifestations and the possibility of changing the model of national-­state building. In order to answer this question, the development of a latent conflict between the Indian minority and the State and its transition to armed form in the 1990s were considered, the peculiarities of the Mexican system of political representation have been analyzed, and the main directions of state policy on the «Indian question» at the present stage have been highlighted. The main analytical tool used is the typology of nation-­state construction strategies of H.Linz and A.Stepan. It has been hypothesized that the Mexican political tradition is holding back the transition to a strategy of inclusion of the Indian minority based on the recognition of their collective rights, and that the ruling Creole elites lack the political will to reform ethnic and national policies. The study concluded that the strategy of nation-­state building in Mexico has historically been shaped between the poles of inclusion (assimilation) and exclusion (segregation) in the absence of a purposeful ideological distinction between the nation and the demos; however, in the recent period, the segregation component has increased.

Keywords

Mexico, Indian community, Creole elites, national-­state building, management of ethnocultural heterogeneity

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