Abstract

AQUINO CENTENO, Salvador. Interrogando la costumbre y la legislación indígena: contribuciones y horizontes de la antropología jurídica en Oaxaca. Nueva antropol [online]. 2013, vol.26, n.78, pp.87-117. ISSN 0185-0636.

This article discusses the main contributions to the field of legal anthropology in Oaxaca. It briefly reviews work carried out in the field and discusses its possibilities in Oaxaca at a time when neo-liberal legislative reforms have recognized the custom and usage and internal regulatory systems of indigenous peoples. It argues that the legal processes are embedded in and form part of the socio-political forces in which various actors define what is legal and what is illegal. It also suggests that local concepts of community; human rights; indigenous legal systems; custom and usage; and autonomy and self-determination should be analyzed within the context of particular local power relations and their relationship with wider socio-cultural processes. In assessing the constitutional changes in indigenous rights in Oaxaca, this article proposes new avenues for research and analysis in legal phenomena. Positioning legal changes in historical perspective is necessary if we are to see how different actors at different times have been involved with laws in a kind of continual interpretation and debate of what is law. This article proposes to go beyond the sometimes insurmountable opposition between law and custom.

Keywords : Indigenous regulatory systems; communality; anthropology of law; legal anthropology; indigenous legislation; Oaxaca.

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