BUREAUCRATIZING CULTURE: THE SUSTAINABLE RURAL CITIES AND INDIGENEITY IN CHIAPAS

During the last decades, the state of Chiapas, in Mexico, has turned into an important referent for elaborations of concepts as autonomy and resistance, which are used extensively to criticize governmental acts in the state. Reviewing the discussion about the "Sustainable Rural Cities" - a development program during the governmental period 2006-2012 - we point at a connection between these concepts and the emphasis on the cultural importance of the so called sistema de cargos (civic-religious hierarchy), discussed by anthropologists around 1950-1980. If the route of autonomy and resistance have come to cement a path that already existed, in this article we want to explore the possibilities of a topic that practically got lost in the 1970's: bureaucracy. To start off from bureaucracy as a fundamental aspect of social life puts some of the concepts that are conventionally used in Chiapas in a new light, questioning the dichotomy between the governmental/non-governmental, to focus on everyday processes of routinization and renegotiations of the frames of domination.