Rights in rebellion : indigenous struggle and human rights in Chiapas / Shannon Speed

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Human rights and Chiapas in the neoliberal era -- Global discourses on the local terrain : grounding human rights in Chiapas -- Neither rights nor humans : the vicissitudes of local appropriation -- Dialogisms, or, on being and becoming indigenous in Nicolás Ruiz -- Gendered intersections : collective and individual rights in indigenous women's experience -- Assuming our own own defense : rights, resistance, and the law in the red de defensores comunitarios -- Improving the paths of resistance : the Juntas Buen Gobierno and rights in their exercise -- Rights in rebellion : rethinking resistance in the neoliberal global order.

Examines the global discourse of human rights and its influence on the local culture, identity, and forms of resistance. Through a multi-sited ethnography of various groups in the indigenous communities of Chiapas, Mexico-from paramilitaries to a Zapatista community, an indigenous human rights organization, and the Zapatista Good Governance Councils-the book explores how different groups actively engage with the discourse of rights, adapting it to their own individual subjectivities and goals, and develop new forms of resistance to the neoliberal model and its particular configurations of power. Far from being a traditional community study, this book instead follows the discourse of human rights and indigenous rights through their various manifestations. The author offers a compelling argument for the importance of a critical engagement between the anthropologist and her "subjects," passionately making the case for activist research and demonstrating how such an engagement will fortify and enliven academic research.