Openings and expectations

Abstract

This paper examines the factors that determine the types of goals that indigenous movements adopt and the factors that influence whether they pursue political alliances to reach those goals. I divide the goals that indigenous movements pursue into three broad groups: recognition, redistribution, and autonomy. Specific historical and institutional factors in each country shaped how the Mexican Zapatistas and Chilean Mapuche movements understand the duties and obligations of their states and the role that their movements should play in relation to the state apparatus and political parties. I argue that two principle factors, the openness of the political system towards rural leftist groups and the level to which the process of national construction and nationalist mythmaking included rural peasants and indigenous people, explain the differences in the ways the Mapuche and Zapatistas understand the state.