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This paper analyzes differential trends in rural depopulation and repopulation in nine municipalities of Mexico's Mixteca Alta region, in the southern state of Oaxaca, based on census data and interviews carried out in 2019. From 1950 to 2000, the study area experienced a substantial loss of population, linked essentially to out‐migration to Mexico City. However, from 2000 to 2020, four of the municipalities regained population, while the remaining five continued losing residents. This repopulation is explained by a declining but still positive natural population growth combined with less out‐migration and slightly more in‐migration, linked to growing return migration. However, in‐migration is too small to meaningfully explain the transition from massive depopulation to repopulation, meaning that concepts such as counterurbanization and rurbanization are not easily transposed onto the study area, as they centre their attention on the in‐migration of former urban dwellers. The paper thus highlights the importance of population retention—explained by local tertiarization, the possibility of commuting to nearby small cities, and the weakening of traditional pull factors—as key to understanding rural repopulation in the study area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper offers a brief overview that seeks to make a series of approaches to an undeniably complex topic: the struggle of indigenous peoples in the context of colonialization processes worldwide, national and local scales. This survey first characterizes, systematizes, and relates the efforts made by some 350 million people worldwide (including more than 15 million indigenous people from Mexico) to safeguard their unique historical and cultural identity in the face of their respective mainstream society over the past sixty years. This will provide a basis to look at the challenges that a country like Mexico faces in preserving the spatial or territorial matrix that guarantees the sustenance and survival of these peoples, and their beliefs, traditions, ways of life, and deep knowledge regarding the conservation and regeneration of natural resources for the benefit of all of human society. At this level of analysis, this study seeks to gain deeper insights into strategies for preserving and regenerating habitat used by an ancestral Zapotec community living in the Chinantla Highlands region, in the northern mountain ranges of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The paper concludes by highlighting the strengths of a historical memory that hews to epistemological categories utterly different from those prevailing in Western culture in the day-to-day engagement of these cultures with their land and their natural surroundings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This papers aims at examining the importance of adopting energy democracy and energy justice principles in carrying out energy projects in Mexico. These concepts have gained international relevance in recent years due to the climate change and the energy transition; however, they have not been adopted to evaluate the feasibility of Mexico’s energy projects. In this context, this research analyzes the Eurus wind farm in the state of Oaxaca, which was recognized for complying with Mexican regulations and paying particular attention to environmental and social impacts, as well as governance issues; even it has gained international recognition. Nonetheless, from its construction to its current operation it has had conflicts with the communities. The main findings are that when analyzing this project under the crucible of energy democracy and energy justice, we found several negative impacts and deficiencies in its development, the reason being the absence of these principles when evaluating this energy project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Direito e Práxis is the property of Editora da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (EdUERJ) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Tellus is the property of Revista Tellus and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The subject of transnational migrant governance is even more important when migration involves groups who are excluded and marginalized in the country of residence as well as in the country of origin. This is especially the case for indigenous Mexican migrants who have no full citizenship and no economic opportunities in Mexico and who are illegal and socially discriminated against in the United States. Therefore, the central question addressed by this paper is how indigenous migrants actually face these challenges and whether they organize and construct their own community governance as an answer to social exclusion and marginalization in ways which go beyond conventional "state" or "market" forms of organisation. Based on data collected from ethnographic research in Los Angeles, I argue that indigenous migrants from Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca build their own governance structures through a well institutionalized community based on a diverse network of migrant organizations, which open up wide transnational sociocultural and political spaces that connect their urban community in Los Angeles with their rural communities back in Oaxaca. Here, in contrast to other migrant groups, they apply their traditional indigenous community governance approaches, called usos y costumbres and tequio y cargo, as a means of sustaining identity and belonging, sharing social and economic capital and securing an independent toehold in the host nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to antivenoms in cases of snakebite continues to be an important public health issue around the world, especially in rural areas with poorly developed health care systems. This study aims to evaluate therapeutic itineraries and antivenom accessibility following snakebites in the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas in southern Mexico. Employing an intercultural health approach that seeks to understand and bridge allopathic and traditional medical perceptions and practices, we conducted field interviews with 47 snakebite victims, documenting the therapeutic itineraries of 54 separate snakebite incidents that occurred between 1977 and 2023. Most victims used traditional remedies as a first line of treatment, often to withstand the rigors of a long journey to find antivenoms. The main obstacles to antivenom access were distance, poor antivenom availability, and cost. Standard antivenom treatment is highly valued and sought after, even as traditional beliefs and practices persist within a cultural framework known as the "hot-cold" system. The findings are crucial for informing future enhancements to antivenom distribution systems, health education initiatives, and other interventions aimed at mitigating the impact of snakebites in the region. Author summary: Every year, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are killed, disabled, or disfigured by bites from venomous snakes. Snakebite is especially dangerous in rural areas of the global south, where victims often must travel long distances to clinics or hospitals to receive antivenom treatment. What sorts of obstacles do snakebite victims face in their search for antivenom? And why do people choose traditional remedies, such as homeopathic treatments, even though these have limited evidence of effectiveness against snakebite envenoming? To answer these questions, we conducted field research in rural areas of Oaxaca and Chiapas states in southern Mexico in 2023, including interviews with 47 snakebite victims. In line with other studies, we found that the main obstacles to antivenom access are distance, cost, and scarcity of antivenom supply. And by listening more closely to victims' accounts of their therapeutic itineraries, we have a better understanding of why people might choose traditional remedies for snakebite. These reasons include long-established cultural frameworks about the causes of illness and the need to alleviate pain to withstand the long journey to conventional treatment. By taking an intercultural approach, which emphasizes mutual respect and understanding between Western and indigenous health belief systems, we can improve access to antivenom, health education initiatives, and other interventions aimed at mitigating the impact of snakebites in Mexico and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of petrographic analyses of 41 new pottery thin sections from San Lorenzo. The resulting compositional data provide an important new context for evaluating the disputed status of carved vessels previously identified as imports to the site. By comparing local and Oaxaca highlands pottery, the disputed vessels are shown to be (a) compositionally distinct from San Lorenzo pottery and (b) similar to highland pottery. San Lorenzo was not just an exporter but also an importer of pottery vessels, a finding relevant to consideration of San Lorenzo's role in the production and exchange of ceramics in Early Formative Mesoamerica. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of human out-migration on long-standing commons institutions in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca. Local communities have been increasingly engaged with national and international markets for wage labour, with many losing a significant percentage of their resident populations. This paper shows how demographic and cultural change is impacting the two social institutions-cargos and tequios-that underpin the highly autonomous form of governance the region is famed for. The loss of able-bodied men and women has meant that these customary systems are struggling to remain operational. A number of responses and institutional adaptations have been introduced by community authorities, including the forging of translocal ties that show potential for reducing the vulnerability of affected villages. While migration was temporary or circular from the 1970s to the 1990s, more permanent forms of migration have come to dominate since that time. Such a shift undermines adaptation efforts at the community level. Within this context, the lessons for commons theory are discussed, while a new layer of complexity is added to the body of work examining the consequences of rural depopulation on Mexican village life and landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary social movements operate not only as actors in local affairs, but as nodes in interlinked social networks that often cross myriad borders. This paper offers an ethnographic account of one such movement based in Oaxaca, Mexico--the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). Incorporating the notion of "meshworks," this paper demonstrates not only how the APPO exhibits definitive characteristics of a meshwork, such as being self-organized and highly heterogeneous, but also how these very factors have been both the movement's greatest strength and the source of some of its greatest internal tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commons scholarship has done a poor job of studying drivers of change, their impact on commons institutions, and how these institutions and other social arrangements are responding to such change. This paper examines the multiple impacts that demographic and cultural change through human out-migration is having on a commons regime in a high-biodiversity region of Oaxaca, Mexico. The findings suggest that the region's forest communities face an uncertain future. While change through out-migration can undermine traditional governance systems and erode social and cultural reproduction, innovative institutional adaptations and the existence of strong transnational ties may help reduce community vulnerability. Within this context, the paper discusses the implications for land use and forest biodiversity, and in doing so adds a new layer of complexity to the body of work examining the consequences of rural depopulation on Mexican forest landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Typological descriptions of understudied languages reveal intriguing crosslinguistic variation in descriptions of events of object separation and destruction. In Lowland Chontal of Oaxaca, verbs of cutting and breaking lexicalize event perspectives that range from the common to the quite unusual, from the tearing of cloth to the snapping apart on the cross-grain of yarn. This paper describes the semantic and syntactic criteria that characterize three verb classes in this semantic domain, examines patterns of event construal, and takes a look at likely changes in these event descriptions from the perspective of endangered language recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protestantism has grown rapidly among Latin America’s indigenous population since the 1980s. Despite Protestantism’s attractiveness to indigenous people, the literature has historically regarded it as incompatible with indigenous culture. Recent scholarship has moved beyond this assertion, focusing instead on the complexities of conversion and the paradoxes associated with it. Most scholars now argue that Protestantism can be compatible with indigenous culture. It is unclear, however, how Protestant institutions came to have a compatible relationship with indigenous culture. Indeed, Protestant churches/clergy continue to eschew many of the practices associated with indigenous culture. In this paper I address this question by examining the work of Protestant missionaries. I choose missionaries as my point of analysis because they were crucial in establishing Protestantism in the region, and thus the base point from which it is defined, practiced, and altered. As a case study I examine mission work in Oaxaca, Mexico. I argue that missionaries have changed both their conversion strategies and tactics for dealing with indigenous traditions. These changes make it easier for indigenous people to convert to Protestantism without rejecting key parts of their culture, and in a few cases by even embracing it. I examine two conversion strategies—group targeting and church planting. I also analyze three tactics missionaries use to negotiate indigenous customs considered ‘pagan.’ I choose tequio, village fiestas, and language politics because they have historically been sources of conflict between converts and their Catholic neighbours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuadernos de Desarrollo Rural is the property of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, we examine a Terminal Formative-period (150 bc–ad 250) bundled offering from the site of Cerro de la Virgen, located on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. The offering was emplaced below a prominent public building in the site's ceremonial centre and contained five stone objects, including a rain deity mask, a fragment of a second mask, a figurine of a deceased ancestor and two miniature table altars, as well as nine small ceramic vessels. Considered together as a ‘sacred bundle’, the stone objects collectively reference agricultural fertility, rulership and ancestor veneration, which we interpret to be a metaphorical invocation of a fundamental tenet of prehispanic Mesoamerican religious belief—the sacred covenant. The offering also played an active part in founding the community of Cerro de la Virgen, connecting its residents with the divine, the ancestors and the outside world and constituting differences in status among its members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diarrheagenic E. coli (DEC) strains are one of the most important etiology factors causing diarrhea in children worldwide, especially in developing countries. DEC strains have characteristic virulence factors; however, other supplemental virulence genes (SVG) may contribute to the development of diarrhea in children. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the prevalence of DEC in children with diarrhea in southwestern Mexico and to associate childhood symptoms, SVG, and pathotypes with diarrhea-causing DEC strains. DEC strains were isolated from 230 children with diarrhea aged 0–60 months from the state of Oaxaca, southwestern Mexico; clinical data were collected, and PCR was used to identify SVG and pathotypes. Antibiotic resistance profiling was performed on DEC strains. 63% of samples were DEC positive, single or combined infections (two (21%) or three strains (1.3%)) of aEPEC (51%), EAEC (10.2%), tEPEC (5.4%), DAEC (4.8%), ETEC (4.1%), EIEC (1.4%), or EHEC (0.7%) were found. Children aged ≤ 12 and 49–60 months and symptoms (e.g., fever and blood) were associated with DEC strains. SVG related to colonization (nleB-EHEC), cytotoxicity (sat-DAEC and espC-tEPEC), and proteolysis (pic-aEPEC) were associated with DECs strains. E. coli phylogroup A was the most frequent, and some pathotypes (aEPEC—A, DAEC–B), and SVG (espC–B2, and sat–D) were associated with the phylogroups. Over 79% of the DEC strains were resistant to antibiotics, and 40% were MDR and XDR, respectively. In conclusion aEPEC was the most prevalent pathotype in children with diarrhea in this region. SVG related to colonization, cytotoxicity, and proteolysis were associated with diarrhea-producing DEC strains, which may play an essential role in the development of diarrhea in children in southwestern Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the relationship between religious affiliation and the ways that the notion of 'respect' ( respeto) is used in common discourse in rural Oaxaca. Drawing on the ethnographic example of indigenous Zapotec villages in the Sierra Juárez, I examine how Protestants and Catholics employ the term to justify their attitudes towards each other and towards the norms of communal life. Both consider 'respect' an important value in social relations, but in significantly different ways. Catholics conceptualise 'respect' mainly as a hierarchical value central to which is the villagers' subordination to the authority of customs and communal leaders. For most Protestants, however, respect is a horizontal notion that is associated with freedom of religion and the right of individuals to distance themselves from local traditions without being socially excluded or marginalised. The differences between these two perspectives are reconciled by a mutual acknowledgement of the need to 'reciprocate' respect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assistive conservation approach includes strategies for conserving community-based lands based on a complex combination of traditional and modern scientific knowledge. It enjoys broad legitimacy and seems promising for conserving territories with autochthonous populations. However, as a novel strategy, it has been applied mostly to societies and environments that are fragile in conservationist terms. This paper critically analyses the evolution of environmental discourses on nature conservation, assesses their related strategies and methodologies, and shows how emerging discourses have been assimilated to produce a qualitative shift from 'top-down' to 'bottom-up' models of environmental management, but without eliminating considerable dependence. It reviews earlier critiques of the protected areas approach associated with this emerging concept. Finally, it revisits the evolution of an important early case of assistive conservation, La Ventanilla ( Oaxaca, Mexico), to assess processes of dependence and this emergent strategy's potential to face challenges of environmental degradation. It concludes that, over time, this concept makes local ecologies more vulnerable to social and environmental degradation, especially as traditional management institutions once responsible for ecological integrity become obsolete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the abstract theorizations of scholars of transnational social movement networks--as exemplified by Hardt and Negri's Multitude--in this paper I argue for the power of grounded, material engagements with the practices of protest of social movements to transform not just political spaces, but our theoretical landscapes. I compare the practice of setting up and maintaining encampments in the Oaxaca and Occupy movements to argue that the spatial dynamics of occupation in a tent city fuels the distinctive style of participatory politics of the assembly, providing a creative means to transform confrontation into cooperation. A point of departure for this comparison is my assertion that the political difference made by these social movements lies not just in whether or not they achieved their political goals, but in the kind of intervention that the physical fact of occupying a public space entails in normative understandings of politics and public spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will present preliminary findings from a larger research project, with the objective to uncover the historical socioeconomic significance of being a racial other in Oaxaca, Mexico and its relevance in shaping Mexican national identity. The paper will analyze activities and observations of cultural missionaries in Oaxaca during the 1920s and 1930s. Cultural missionaries were appointed by the Secretary of Public Education (SEP) to create schools throughout Mexico, focusing on the modernization of marginalized communities through formal and social education. This initiative was intended to resolve socioeconomic disparities and incorporate sectors of the population into the national framework that had been excluded prior to the Mexican Revolution in 1910. While these efforts were predominantly implemented in indigenous communities located in the northern part of Oaxaca, I argue that observations from cultural missionaries related to social and educational conditions are indicative of a particular construction of Mexican identity that promotes mestizaje. The exclusion of morenos, or Afro-descended Mexicans from this state sponsored initiative suggests that blackness along with indigenity is otherized, with the primary difference being that morenos lack visibility [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on gender violence has been conducted since the sixties. The problem has been conceptualized and documented, although not necessarily looked after. Oaxaca stands out as one of the states where women are more likely to be attacked. This paper analyzes gender violence in Ayutla, a Mixe community of Oaxaca. Data were gathered through quantitative and qualitative methods. The main results are: psychological violence is the most common one; numerous cases of incest and ravishment occur; economic violence generally involves men totally abandoning women; local and State authorities exercise institutional violence by neglecting women s charges. The paper analyzes women's discursive strategies to re-signify their rights, and a successful case of rape within marriage which strengthened the struggle for such rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper examines 'protocols'-instructions that inform project recipients about how technology is to be used. Our case study of 'heifer-care' protocols associated with a microdairy scheme raises two questions. First, we ask how these protocols effect a disassembly of social relations within the village-'poisoning' them, as coop members put it. Second, we raise the question of persistence: namely, how were village participants in the microdairy cooperative able to continue for over fifteen years despite a failure to produce milk and the deleterious effects upon village social relations? To address this paradox, we examine protocols from the standpoints of both science and technology studies (STS) and labor-process studies(LPS). STS supply a 'boundary object' concept that helps to explain protocol persistence; LPS provide a theory of alienation that furthers our under-standing of how protocols alienate labor-via a spatiotemporal dislocation of value-and shape coop members' subjective experience of development. By joining these theories, we hope to provide insights into the operations of protocols and suggest a theoretical liaison between STS and LPS that would provide STS with a better theory of subjective experience and LPS theory with an improved poststructuralist framing. As a matter of praxis, we also show how coop members recognize, in time, the mechanisms through which value is dislocated and respond by reworking their engagements with NGOs to capture a share of the value produced by their labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the social context of music and musical instruments in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica through the detailed analysis of a late Terminal Formative period (a.d. 100–250) burial from the site of Yugüe in the lower Río Verde Valley of Oaxaca. The burial contained a sub-adult male interred with an incised bone flute and a plaster-backed iron-ore mirror. The Yugüe flute is the earliest reported bone flute from Mesoamerica and is incised and carved to create the bas relief image of a skeletal male figure. Based on the instrument's archaeological context and elaborate incising, we argue that the flute was categorized in pre-Columbian ontology as an animate object that actively participated in ceremonial action at Yugüe. While the nature of such ceremony remains unclear, the incising on the flute indicates that the instrument was capable of making manifest ancestral and divine forces affiliated with rain, wind, and agricultural fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the USA has experienced large-scale and continuing immigration from around the world, especially Latin America and, within Latin America, from Mexico. One dimension of these transnational processes is dietary change. In this paper, we qualitatively assess the effects of migration from Oaxaca, Mexico to central New Jersey on the ecology and economy of dietary patterns. We explore multiple factors at the micro and macro levels. Data come from focus groups held among Mexican migrants in New Jersey, and in Oaxaca among people from their sending communities. Economic constraints and lack of culturally appropriate foods are larger barriers to healthy eating than lack of knowledge about appropriate diets. We end with recommendations for nutrition education and interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrace agriculture in Latin America has existed for millennia. It is the result of local, traditional knowledge on slope management, and has adapted to social and environmental change. Agriculture is being affected by climate variability, i.e. random changes of inter-annual variation of temperature and precipitation. This variability has increased with climate change, affecting food security and increasing poverty over peasant communities that rely on rainfed agriculture. For agriculture adaptation to climate change, most research attention has been paid to agroecology and agrobiodiversity management, while the role of agriculture terracing has been less studied as an adaptation strategy. The objective of this paper was to determine how terrace management contributes to the agriculture adaptation to climatic variability in peasant communities in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca. Located in southeast Mexico, this is a very diverse region in terms of geology, landforms and biotic resources where terrace agriculture has been practiced for at least 3400–3500 BP. Mixteca Alta is higher than 2000 m.a.s.l. and the climate is temperate with seasonal summer rainfall. The research method was qualitative, ethnographic and participative, using semi structured interviews as primary tool. The results of interviews were grouped in four categories: climate changes and their impact on the agriculture calendar; productive systems; characteristics of terraces for agriculture; and social and economic problems of peasant communities. Interviewees indicated that the main changes have been on quality and quantity of the precipitation, specifically a decrease in total rainfall but an increase in rainfall intensity, a delayed onset of the rainy season and an early start of the midsummer heat. These changes have resulted in a delay in maize sowing and in an increase in the potential exposure of crops to frost. Early cultivation of traditional cajete maize (using residual soil moisture) in terraces was acknowledged as an efficient practice facing these changes. Interviewees recognized that terrace flat terrains, with deeper soils and higher residual soil moisture than sloping soils, allowed for coping with climatic changes and water scarcity. Cajete maize is part of the cultural heritage of the indigenous communities in this region, but is being negatively affected by a double exposure: to climate change and to adverse agricultural policies that favor large scale market agriculture and neglect family farming. However, in a context of [End Page 142] intense climate change processes, this traditional farming practice is an important staple source for the rural population in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Excavations at the site of Río Viejo in coastal Oaxaca, Mexico, yielded evidence of intensive cotton thread production during the Early Postclassic (a.d. 975–1220). Spindle whorls were recovered in relatively large quantities in and around houses at Río Viejo, indicating that thread production was interspersed with other household activities and residents likely produced enough thread for local use and for export. Measurements of coastal spindle whorls show that the Río Viejo thread was unique compared to other coastal and highland sites in Oaxaca and Mesoamerica beyond. I argue that this uniqueness may in part stem from the particular variety of cotton that they were spinning, but also might reflect an interregional demand for their thread. The whorl data are presented in multiple ways to compare to other sites where intensive thread production has been proposed. Here, I discuss the problems inherent in whorl calculations and make a call for more standardized recording, ideally with volumetric density measures. In the final section of the paper, I use mortuary data and other lines of evidence to re-evaluate the ethnohistorically-documented relationship between women and textile production. In coastal Oaxaca, the evidence suggests that thread production was not linked to specific gender identities in a way that is marked archaeologically. Instead, adult members of households in coastal Oaxaca materially emphasized a shared group identity over any specific gender-based identities. The production of thread was a broadly shared household-level practice that involved multiple producers, which both created and reinforced social bonds between residents and provided Early Postclassic residents with secure and comfortable access to highland goods, paving the way for the more developed thread production industry in the Late Postclassic period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the community conservation movement in Oaxaca, a bioculturally diverse state in southern Mexico, with a particular focus on indigenous and community conserved areas (ICCAs) as an emergent designation over the last decade. Design/methodology/approach – A survey of indigenous and mestizo community conserved areas in Oaxaca was conducted in 2009 as part of a broader inventory of the ICCAs of Belize, Guatemala and Mexico. Findings – The survey revealed 126 sites of community conservation in Oaxaca covering 375,457 ha, 14.5 percent more than the 327,977 ha included in nationally decreed Protected Natural Areas in the state. A total of 43 sites are certified community reserves comprising 103,102 ha, or 68.7 percent of the 150,053 ha included in the 137 certified sites recognized nationally. The diversity of Oaxaca's ICCAs, which have emerged creatively in variable cultural, ecological and historical contexts throughout the state, provide an opportunity to assess the effectiveness of community conservation efforts. Originality/value – Mexico is one of the few countries that have an extensive inventory of ICCAs that could be incorporated into an international registry being formulated by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a diachronic analysis of obsidian procurement patterns during the Postclassic period in the Lower Río Verde region of Oaxaca. The study is based on x-ray fluorescence (XRF) and visual analysis of obsidian artifacts from excavated household contexts at Early Postclassic (a.d. 800–1100) Río Viejo and Late Postclassic (a.d. 1100–1522) Tututepec (Yucu Dzaa). We report the presence of at least six sources of obsidian imported to the lower Río Verde region in the Early Postclassic, whereas during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries of the Late Postclassic, the local assemblage was dominated by obsidian from Pico de Orizaba and Pachuca. Changes in obsidian procurement patterns in the lower Río Verde region through time are interpreted in light of sociopolitical change at the local, regional, and macroregional scales. The study represents the most detailed analysis of Postclassic period obsidian exchange yet reported from Oaxaca. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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Copyright of EMPIRIA: Revista de Metodología de Ciencias Sociales is the property of Editorial UNED and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Oaxacan migration has grown in recent years, yet there are still many questions about its overall pattern and how it relates to Mexican migration in general. This paper has two goals. First it summarises Oaxacan migration and notes the importance of remittances and internal as well as international movement. Second, it compares Oaxacan movement to general patterns of Mexican migration. While Oaxacan migrants look much like migrants from other parts of Mexico, there are important differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper presents some reflections about pedagogical and conceptual approaches to intercultural education (in middle high and high schools) in Mexico. The propositions under discussion are expressions of an emerging educational discourse between the highest levels of government and the self-management initiatives of the indigenous pueblos and communities of Oaxaca. En esta aportacion se reflexiona en torno a la construccion discursiva y los planteamientos pedagogicos y conceptuales de propuestas educativas interculturales de nivel medio superior y superior, como expresiones de un discurso educativo emergente negociado y articulado en el vertice de la educacion intercultural oficial y su encuentro con iniciativas autogestivas de pueblos y comunidades indigenas oaxaquenas. En particular, se analiza y discute la tendencia a la apropiacion etnica de la institucion escolar en Mexico, haciendo especial enfasis en dos aspectos centrales. En primer lugar, se contextualizan los proyectos escolares alternativos de Oaxaca en los escenarios sociales y politicos contemporaneos y en el tipo de vinculaciones que plantean con el aparato educativo oficial, en un marco reivindicativo de los derechos indigenas. Se subraya en este primer aspecto la dimension politica de interculturalidad que subyace a tales proyectos. El segundo aspecto central corresponde a algunos de los retos comunes en las esferas pedagogica y curricular, a los que subyacen diferencias conceptuales de fondo sobre la interculturalidad, la cultura y la diversidad cultural. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Objectives: Little is known about the interface of traditional (generally plant based) medicines and of commercially available pharmaceutical (and related) products. Here we provide a case study to understand how and to what extent traditional and modern medicine have been integrated in an indigenous community and whether these two categories offer a meaningful model for understanding medicine selection. Consequently, this paper explores the use and knowledge of medicinal plants and patent medicines among laypeople living in a rural Mazatec indigenous community in Oaxaca, Mexico. Methods: This paper is based on field study over a period of approximately 20 months using participant observation, unstructured and structured interviews including freelisting. The medicinal plant species and commercially available pharmaceuticals were assessed using published biomedical information. Main outcomes: The local ethnopharmacopoeias, emic concepts of illness, epidemiology, and case studies on therapeutic choice were documented. We found that self-treatment is the most common first therapeutic choice. Many of the plant species used by Mazatecs have recognized therapeutic properties, in some cases in vivo and in vitro studies point to well defined pharmacological effects, and in a few cases clinical evidence is available. Likewise, people commonly use patent medicines that are effective in the treatment of the most common health conditions. However, we also documented the medicinal use of some toxic plant species (Aristolochia spp.) and of some patent medicines that are held to be unsafe in developed countries (sodium metamizole). Conclusions: When looking at a complex pluralistic medical system an approach that goes beyond the externally imposed dichotomic categories of traditional and modern medicine can be very useful to shed light on other dimensions that underlie the local use of medicines. With the increasing integration of the Mazatecs with the outside world, the concomitant use of both types of resources is constantly changing and helps the Mazatecs in their struggle for health. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper presents the first description in some detail of aspects of the phonetic structures of the highly endangered Lowland variety of Oaxaca Chontal, including measurements of the characteristics of the vowels and a survey of the principal features of the consonant system. Particular attention is paid to the series of glottalized obstruents and sonorants, which vary a great deal in their manner of articulation and the nature and timing of the accompanying glottalization. The relative frequency of different realizations of the glottalized obstruents mirrors the cross-language frequency of glottalized consonant types. Glottalized sonorant realizations cannot be predicted from their position in the syllable. Individual speakers frequently vary when producing consecutive repetitions of the same word. Such a large range of variation may be partly due to an ongoing process of language attrition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper a statistical analysis of seismoelectric ULF signals prior to the M7.4 Guerrero-Oaxaca earthquake (EQ) occurred at the Mexican Pacific coast on 14 September 1995, has been performed. The signals were simultaneously recorded at three monitoring stations from the last months of 1994 until July of 1996. The nonlinear time series methods of Higuchi fractal dimension (HFD) and detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) have been used. In the three data sets we found some complex dynamical behaviors that seemingly reflect a relaxation-EQ preparation-main shock-relaxation process. In particular, clear spike-like anomalies in both DFA and HFD-exponents some months before the main shock are revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]