Interview # 6

Name: Dra. Natividad Gutierrez Chong

Position:Profesora de la UNAM

Place:Mexico City

Date:January 19, 2018

Observations:

  • The interview started on time.
  • We talked about two topics: a) the databaseSICETNOGutiérrez Chong founded/created and b) her research on indigenous politics in the last 20 years.
  • About her research.Gutierrez Chong has written many books about indigenous politics not only referring the Mexican case but other cases in Latin America. And Gutiérrez Chong has criticized the relationship between the indigenous communities and the current but also the past Mexican governments, specially from the PartidoAcción Nacional (PAN): Vicente Fox (2000-2006) and Felipe Calderón (2006-2012). About Felipe Calderón’speriodshe has written a bookentitled: El Indigenismo del PAN y el festejo del bicentenario del Estado Mexicano.In our conversation she resumes: the type of relationship the different indigenous leaders have had with the State has been authoritarian, hypocritical, and utilitarian (seeking advantages only for government officials in the medium and long terms)
  • About the SICETNO. It was created during 2003, because they wanted to gather all kinds of indigenous organizations -because the indigenous communities organize for social, cultural, and political reasons, they do-. ‘So, we wanted to gather all these organizations.’Gutierrez Chong said. We have not updated the SICETNO page in the last 18 months, and this is due to the lack of funding. Through this process, we have many anecdotes, here is one: SICETNO started as an excel document, is how we collected all the information. We had two programmers. The first programmer said: you should have all this excel information in CAPS LETTERS, without spaces, without commas, etc. this as a part of making this website available to the public, we thought that was a lot of work putting this information in the way the programmer was asking. It took months, but we finally did it. This first programmer left the project and a second programmer came. He saw the information delivered, and asked us: what is this? We explained, and he replied, you did the wrong thing. We were shocked, numbed, surprised. This second programmer explained the whole process in a pedagogical way, we did this again. And this time it worked. But it took months, I can tell you that.SICETNO is a team of 10 people (2 full time professors, assistants and becarios ‘those students doing internships’)The financial resources came from UNAM, CONACYT, and the European Union. During this time, we have discovered the following:
  • The lack of information not only for the case of Mexico, but in the entire region. To gather statistics, precise data is a very complicated even a titanic endeavor in Latin America.
  • One indigenous group that is very well organized is the Mapuche in Chile. The way they organize is very coherent and systematic. They haveorganized themselves for many decades despite of the lack ofrecognition from the Chilean State. There is an interesting case right now: The Mapuche indigenous peoples vs IKEA.
  • From this database, Gutiérrez Chong has published 2 books (Gutiérrez Chong gave me two samples)
  • We will keep in touch for future collaborations. Gutiérrez Chong is interested in attending Norlarnet conference this year in Oslo. We may organize a panel on indigenous affairs.