Abstract

HAGENE, Turid. Participación en las elecciones de 2006, México, Distrito Federal: Nociones y prácticas en un pueblo originario. Argumentos (Méx.) [online]. 2009, vol.22, n.59, pp.69-97. ISSN 0187-5795.

The principal question to be explored in this article concerns the ways in which the electoral participation in a pueblo originario (native village) reflects the contradiction between the liberal conceptions on which the constitutional elections are based, and the communitarian life world of the natives in the village. The author uses electoral statistics, a survey, and qualitative data about local notions of elections. It turns out that participation in the constitutional elections is about the same in the native village and the entire Federal District, but that the natives vote more than the non-natives in the village, and the native women more than any other group. Electoral participation, however, does not imply that the elections are seen as legitimate. People vote for other reasons, e.g. vote buying, all kinds of benefits to be had, the obligation that many feel, and the notion that your vote may be stolen if you don't use it yourself. On the other hand, strangely, the natives vote less in the elections to traditional and local positions, than in the constitutional elections.

Keywords : original villages; elections; participation; legitimacy; vote buying; gender.