Development and the good life in the High Mixteca Region: the case of a peasant organization in Oaxaca.

Abstract

The article presents results from a broader study that analyzes with the conceptual and analytical tools of ethnography and oral history, the encounter, contribution and divergence between different visions and epistemological and material forms of the rural world, represented by an intervention with the projects from development agencies, government and other actors, and the conception of the good life in the ethnic Mixtec group, contextualized through the process of the Center for Integral Peasant Development of the Mixtec Region (Centro de Desarrollo Integral Campesino de la Mixteca, CEDICAM), a peasant-indigenous organization that has the objective of environmental restoration in the Mixtec territory and the promotion of sustainable agriculture. It concludes that the capacity and permanence of the local peasant organization has been possible due to the constant negotiation with the visions and interests of its financers, supplied with various styles, intervention models, and visions of development, fostering in its work a mixture between the Mixtec vision of the good life and that of western development. This negotiation takes place on a western hegemonic asymmetrical civilizing terrain, not equitable for other worldviews, which determines and imposes quite different rules for the actors involved.