Abstract

LOPEZ-BARCENAS, Francisco. What shall we do with Native Mexicans? Indigenous peoples and development: between government policy and a "good life". Pap. poblac [online]. 2013, vol.19, n.77, pp.177-192. ISSN 2448-7147.

Why are indigenous peoples still in poverty? This paper suggests that indigenous peoples are not poor, as stated from the official viewpoint. In Mexico, for the last four decades, a policy of extraction has been promoted whereby indigenous peoples have been deprived of their territories and natural resources, subjecting them to the logic of capitalism and, in many cases, pushing them out of their places of origin. The Mixteco people, who call themselves Nuúsavi or Nasavi, are an example of a social group who, based on their own structures, standards and forms of organization, offer different options to gain access to wellbeing, different from government-designed programs, which come to show that development programs designed by the government do not fail because of a lack of funding, but basically because when designed they did not take the specific situation of those to receive the benefit into account.

Keywords : Indigenous; well-being; development; indigenous programs; colonialism; poverty.