Experts Criticize State Plan to Certify Indigenous Crafts

A proposed Mexican law intended to recognize the rights of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples has drawn criticism over the power it would give the state to define and regulate Indigenous crafts and communities.

The issue arose during a lengthy discussion of the initiative at the National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH. The session, titled “Indigenous Rights or Republic of Indians?”, was organized by researcher Bolfy Cottom at INAH’s Directorate of Historical Studies. Daniela Lucio, a specialist from the Faculty of Law, addressed the proposal’s treatment of intellectual property linked to Indigenous artisans.

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Is this law a recognition or is it really an attempt to regulate certain things that go off on a tangent? In the end, the state will decide the value, not the consultations, not the peoples.

Lucio said the bill would create a royalty fund from craft sales, but the government, rather than the artisans, would administer the money. She also criticized a provision under which the state would certify whether a product qualifies as a craft, determine its category and assign its value. “Is this law a recognition or is it really an attempt to regulate certain things that go off on a tangent? In the end, the state will decide the value, not the consultations, not the peoples,” she said.

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The initiative is riddled with ‘the state may, the state may,’ so it becomes unclear whether these are rights or obligations.

Anthropologist Giovanna Gasparello said the proposal contains more than 450 articles, most of which she described as “fluff.” She argued that it would give the state authority over the administration of Indigenous peoples. “The initiative is riddled with ‘the state may, the state may,’ so it becomes unclear whether these are rights or obligations,” she said.

Gasparello also pointed to a contradiction between the bill’s promise to promote the free determination and autonomy of Indigenous peoples and its plan for the government to decide which communities qualify. A government ruling would place them in a National Catalogue of Indigenous Peoples. “A catalogue is an extremely colonial tool,” she said. The discussion also noted that the bill would recognize the Bastón de Mando, an ancestral Indigenous practice now included in political events, a practice the article says began with Andrés Manuel López Obrador and continues under Claudia Sheinbaum.

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A catalogue is an extremely colonial tool.