Community forestry and the Paradoxes of Citizenship in Mexico: the cases of Oaxaca and Guerrero.

Hebert, Martin ; Rosen, Michael Gabriel

Resume. Le present article examine la maniere dont le developpement du secteur forestier par le gouvernement mexicain a eu des impacts sur la vie des autochtones des etats de Oaxaca et du Guerrero. L'image du << citoyen autochtone >> gagnant un revenu monetaire, conservant la nature et conscient de ces devoirs envers l'Etat construite a travers le discours de developpement agit comme une norme qui a contribue a faconner les attentes implicites--et parfois explicites--dans plusieurs programmes de foresterie jusqu'a ce jour. Nous examinons la maniere dont ces normes de << bonne citoyennete >> se sont articulees avec les identites, pratiques et aspirations locales dans deux contextes distincts : celui d'une communaute << modele >> de l'etat de Oaxaca, et celui d'un groupe de communautes du Guerrero que les intervenants gouvernementaux voudraient bien voir aspirer a ce modele. Cet examen vise a mettre en relief les rapports complexes, multiples et souvent paradoxaux entre les communautes autochtones et l'Etat dans le contexte du developpement de la foresterie communautaire au Mexique.

Abstract. In this article we examine how the Mexican government's framing of the forestry sector has impacted the lives of indigenous populations in the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero. The image of the income-earning, nature-conserving, and duty-conscious indigenous peasant-citizen constructed through the government's development discourse acts as a norm that has shaped the expectations implicit--and sometimes explicit--in many forestry programs to this day. We examine ways in which these norms of good citizenship articulate with local identities, practices, and aspirations in two distinct contexts: that of a "model" community in Oaxaca and that of communities in Guerrero which the government would like to see aspire to this model. In doing so, we aim to provide a clearer view of the complex, multi-layered, and sometimes paradoxical relationships between the State and indigenous communities surrounding community forestry in Mexico.

Introduction

In the 1950s a committee of Mexican foresters lamented that with each hectare of forest destroyed, a part of the Patria (nation) was lost (Comite de Asesoria Tecnica Forestal [CATF] 1958, 9). This close symbolic association between forests and national essence has certainly not always been part of official discourses in Mexico. In fact, it has been noted that in a country with such a strong peasant heritage, "historically, forests have been considered second-class lands in Mexico" (Texas Center for Policy Studies [TCPS] 2000, 5). Although a mahogany rush occurred in the Selva lacandona of Chiapas from the 1820s on (De Vos 1988), it was not until 1884, as forests in the states of Chihuahua and Durango were becoming important providers of pine and oak to North American markets, that overarching federal legislation regulating forestry in the country came into existence. This situation would change with the presidency of President Porfirio Diaz (1876-80 and 1884-1911) due to a combination of factors: the international demand for wood, rapid population growth in the countryside, near desertification of much-needed productive lands caused by deforestation, and, more generally, the modernizing ambitions of Diaz and his state governors. From this period onward the material and symbolic importance of forests for Mexico's self-definition evolved rapidly.

With the turn of the 20th century, as the Mexican industrial revolution gained momentum, many efforts were made to turn hitherto neglected natural resources into tools of economic and social development. In the state of Guerrero, for example, the "Porfirian" era (1876-1910) was marked by a series of governors for whom the subsistence economy of the large indigenous peasant population was seen as a situation of "alarming misery" (Salazar Adame 1998, 201). The development of the forest industry through the injection of foreign capital was seen, from then on, not only as a means to alleviate the poverty of the campesinos, but also as a way to consolidate the Mexican State itself by becoming a vector for the assimilation of indigenous groups through modernization. The growth of the national economy, the acceleration of foreign trade, the conservation of precious forest resources, as well as the "rationalization" and modernization of the use of the countryside became key themes in Mexican forest policy.

In the present article (1) we will examine how this view of forests has impacted the lives of indigenous populations of the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero and, more particularly, how the development of forestry in these regions has contributed to their relationship with, and sense of belonging to, the Mexican State. This relationship, at once institutional, material, and symbolic, will be addressed through the notion of citizenship. Most of the paradoxes pertaining to citizenship in Mexico that we will analyze here echo more general debates that have been going on for several years regarding the very definition of citizenship. As Turner and Hamilton (1994) noted, a baseline definition of citizenship would present it as "a bundle of entitlements and obligations which constitute individuals as fully fl edged members of a socio-political community, providing them with access to scarce resources" (Turner and Hamilton 1994, xv). However, the definition of citizenship as a system of protection from want, abuse, and general powerlessness through active inclusion in a community is itself contested. The "critical perspective" on citizenship, as Turner and Hamilton term it, argues rather that citizenship "functions, not so much to create emotional solidarity, but to incorporate, through ideological means, subordinate social groups" (Turner and Hamilton 1994, xvi). One could say that both aspects of citizenship are fostered, to some extent, by forestry development programs today in Mexico. This is particularly the case in light of the long history of indigenismo, being the professed goal of assimilating indigenous populations into the "national" culture, as public policy in Mexico (Sanchez 1999). Of course, the intents behind the extension to indigenous people of rights associated with citizenship, such as education or economic opportunities, have varied through time and are complex in nature in postcolonial Mexico (Mallon 1995), and we will only examine here a small part of this complex issue. It has been noted that, until very recently, indigenismo has played a very important part in the structuring of the Mexican state and in the definition of citizenship in that country (Oehmichen Bazan 1999). The "critical" definition of citizenship as an ideological device contributing to the assimilation of minorities surely is a simplification and overlooks some very real benefits of state programs. These benefits are quite visible in the case of Oaxaca discussed below, where significant economic gains have come from participation in forestry programs and integration into the national economy. They are also potentially available in the state of Guerrero, where community factionalism and insecurity are not just ideological devices created to justify state intervention, but very real problems of the basic right to security being denied. However, the data analyzed here, as they reflect a significant heritage of indigenismo in forestry programs, lead us to lean more toward a "critical" definition of citizenship than the baseline one outlined by Turner and Hamilton.

In this article, the choice of the forestry sector is not simply fortuitous. It is a sector in which a number of elements combine to make a particularly telling litmus test for the study of citizenship in rural and indigenous Mexico today. After the closing of the Instituto Mexicano del Cafe (INMECAFE) in 1989 and the associated decline in governmental assistance to small-scale coffee producers, forestry gained in importance as a preferred avenue for the development of so-called "refuge zones" in Mexico (Aguirre Beltran 1992 [1957]). From this point on, the World Bank Forestry Project (1989-93), as well as a number of programs that emerged from the publication of its report (Nahmad et al. 1995), oriented a good part of the government-sponsored development efforts to marginalized indigenous regions. According to one government official:

 [F]rom the 1910 Revolution onward, a high percentage of property
 rights over forests was transferred to ejidos and agrarian
 communities, mostly during the second half of the XXth century. It
 is estimated that today approximately 80% of forests and
 rainforests are communal property and count more than 12 million
 inhabitants, of which around 5 million belong to ethnic groups
 [i.e., are indigenous people]. (Proyecto de Conservacion y Manejo
 sustentable de Recursos Forestales en Mexico [PROCYMAF] 2003 11;
 our translation)

The modernizing discourse that shaped forest policy at the turn of the 20th century played a central role in constituting a template for the ideal "campesino-citizen." This ideal type is the measuring stick that determines whether the five million indigenous people living today in forested areas, touched in one way or another by government forestry programs, are considered complying (or non-complying) citizens. As we will see with the case of San Pedro el Alto (hereafter referred to as San Pedro), Oaxaca, living up to the ideal image of the economically productive and environmentally conscious peasant and developing a forestry culture gives access to significant expertise and some material resources, such as money for machinery, channeled by the state.

Much has been written about the debate over slash-and-burn agriculture. The official condemnation of the traditional indigenous mode of agriculture as "backward" and contrary to the common good surfaced in public discourses from the moment forests became a matter of national economic interest. What will concern us here is more the image of the ideal campesino that emerges from these condemnations than the specific debate itself. This image of the income-earning (as opposed to self-subsistent), nature-conserving, and duty-conscious indigenous peasant-citizen acts as a norm that has shaped the expectations implicit--and sometimes explicit--in many government forestry programs to this day. How, we ask, do these norms of good citizenship articulate with local identities, practices, and aspirations?

We will attempt to shed some light on that question through our analysis of empirical data from contemporary Oaxaca and Guerrero, detailing the complexity and diversity of the articulation between forestry, economic development and norms of citizenship. These data will be presented in two subsequent section, but before we move to the case studies, we must look more closely in the first section at the historical ties between forestry and citizenship in marginal regions of Mexico. Even though there are significant continuities in the image of the "responsible" indigenous campesino that governments have tried to promote over time, the place that rural indigenous people have had in forestry operations has not been static over the last century and a half. To bring context to our case studies, we will examine that evolving position of indigenous people by first looking at the role that forestry played in national integration and state building from the Porfirian era on. That section will also touch on the way in which traditional indigenous use of forest land was, and still is to a large extent, seen by government authorities within the framework of this process of state-building.

After discussing specific cases from Oaxaca and Guerrero, we will address, in the last section, what we have called "paradoxes of citizenship" that might be associated with indigenous forestry today in Mexico. As we will see, relations between indigenous communities and the state can be more or less characterized by perceived contradictions and paradoxes depending on the particular circumstances of each community or region. Nonetheless, it is worth noting right away that the very fact that it is virtually impossible today to think about indigenous forestry in Mexico outside the context of some sort of articulation with the state and its social, environmental, and technical discourses, creates in itself a form of Catch-22 that was felt with more or less acuity by people we met during our fieldwork. This paradox stems from the fact that economic development through forestry is hardly possible without the financial and technical support of the state. That support is generally predicated on a certain compliance with norms, adherence to certain discourses, and participation within an institutional framework, which validates and legitimizes the state. Yet, the marginalization that economic and social development seeks to overcome is itself often an effect of the pattern of development of that very state. Incidentally, indigenous people throughout Mexico are trying to claim more and more autonomy from the state. Is community forestry contributing to closing the historical socio-economic disparity between indigenous and non-indigenous citizens of Mexico, or is it merely changing the contours and the name of that gap? We will now turn to empirical data and context in order to address these questions.

Forestry and Citizenship in Mexico: Elements of Context

As we noted in the introduction, the level at which indigenous populations have been involved in forestry activities in Mexico has changed considerably since the mid-19th century. Three main periods stand out in that respect, all of which have contributed to shape the state's vision of how indigenous populations should and should not behave toward the forest for the common good. From the 1860s to 1940 local campesino and indigenous populations held little place in forest policies. Although it has been noted by Merino-Perez and Seguro-Warnholtz (2005) that in the last six years of that period--corresponding to the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas (1934-40)--the government "did support community resin extraction in central Mexico's temperate forests and chicle extraction in the southeast" (51), these authors have also pointed out that during that period the government "paid little attention to forest development" (51), not to mention the indigenous peasant's place in this development. Throughout the period, indigenous peasants were mostly portrayed as poor wardens of the forest. Francisco O. Arce, governor of Guerrero from 1869 to 1873 and from 1885 to 1893, complained in the Memoria de Gobierno del Estado de Guerrero of 1886 of the poor economics of traditional indigenous slash-and-burn agriculture, called tlacolol, and its destructiveness to the environment. Through the practice of tlacolol:

 The peasant produced a grain [of maize] not worth more than 30 or
 40 pesos, destroying in the process lumber that could have
 produced, in some cases, a utility of 10 to 20 thousand pesos....
 With three harvests the soil will have washed out noticeably; with
 the abandonment of the land, the underlying rock will become
 exposed. (quoted by Salazar Adame 1998, 209; our translation)

Such representation of the effects of tlacolol on forests led to efforts to limit the extension of traditional agriculture to specific areas, such as the bottom of valleys (Salazar Adame 1998, 210). Even though these efforts were rarely successful, their underlying logic was clear: indigenous populations were to be kept away from forest resources if these resources were to provide any contribution to the national economy. "Education" of peasants was to teach them how not to harm forests, not how to use them "productively."

In the 1940s, readily accessible forests near Mexico City were becoming less and less productive due to over-exploitation. In order to meet the high demand of growing industries and construction, attention turned to more remote areas where the indigenous presence was much more visible, such as the state of Oaxaca (Beltran 1959). From that period on to the 1970s, we witness an attempt at a "top-down" industrialization process in the forestry industry with private and parastatal corporations being offered concessions and monopsony conditions. In these situations indigenous campesinos were often exploited and coerced through arrangements of rentismo. (2) More qualified workers, who worked for a salary, were often imported from other states (Klooster 2003; Merino-Perez 2004). This arrangement was seen by forestry planners as beneficial in at least two ways. First, it would allow mestizo surplus labour, which was becoming a problem around urban centres, to be used productively in the forestry sector. Second, as this period marks the height of indigenismo in Mexico (Aguirre Beltran 1992 [1957]), foresters looked favorably upon the acculturation effect of the employment of remote indigenous populations alongside "qualifi ed" mestizos in industrial production. The perceived need for this kind of acculturation through forestry was expressed quite clearly at times:

 We wish to take this opportunity to reiterate one more time our
 idea that, without any romantic attitudes, the indigenous problem
 should be settled as soon as possible, bringing to aboriginal
 groups all the benefits of Western culture and making it so that
 little by little the difference between the various Mexican groups
 disappears in order to achieve a true national integration.
 (Beltran 1992 [1959], 76; our translation)

The third period in the development of the tie between citizenship and forestry coincides with the green revolution in Mexico and its aftermath. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, communities in various parts of Mexico struggled against the logging companies in their territories. At the same time, the rise of neoliberalism (3) in Mexico and the newfound popularity of "participatory" approaches and NGOs in mainstream development circles (Veltmeyer and Petras 2005, 124) created fortuitous conditions for the end of the concessionary era (Taylor 2001, 62-63). With support from certain government sectors, the communities were eventually able to win an end to the concessions. Community forestry rose out of this struggle and has since been championed as potentially providing "equity, social stability, and better environmental management of local and global forest resources" (Antinori and Bray 2005, 1541; see also Bray, Merino-Perez, and Barry 2005). Though rentismo still exists today, many communities have created community forestry enterprises that allow them some control over their forestry operations (Bray, Merino-Perez, and Barry 2005). In 2001, the Fox government created the Comision Nacional Forestal (CONAFOR), whose policy is now offi cially to support community forestry; it receives financial support from the World Bank to that end (CONAFOR 2003; Klooster 2003; Bray, Merino-Perez, and Barry 2005; Merino-Perez and Seguro-Warnholtz 2005).

While the Community Forestry Enterprises (CFEs) do grant communities a certain amount of autonomy in the management of their resources, the government still controls the allocation of forestry permits. Further, "few CFEs are fully 'self-organized,' ... state and civil society actors have generally played an important role in their formation" (Antinori and Bray 2005, 1540). The support of CFEs also allows the government to place responsibility on the communities for their own "development" and for the protection of the forest. Indeed, indigenous communities that participate actively in these programs are now seen as playing an important role both as protectors of the forest and as contributors to forestry development through CFEs (Antinori and Bray 2005). However, to gain this reputation and the government support that comes with it, they have had to publicly accept government definitions of degradation (Mathews 2002, 2003, 2005) and commit to practicing commercial forestry.

Forestry, National Integration, and Citizenship

Despite the changes we have just highlighted, there seems to be a signifi cant level of continuity in the Mexican government's practice and discourses on forestry through time. These continuities generally relate to the relationship between forestry and national integration. Here we understand national integration not only as physical control of the territory, but also as a series of strategies for natural resource use in the name of national interests. As we will see, these strategies have both symbolic and practical effects.

At the turn of the 20th century Porifirio Diaz perceived foreign capital as key to both territorial and economic consolidation of the nation. He envisioned foreign capital opening up frontier locations by providing necessary infrastructure, thereby encouraging colonization, national business opportunities, and Mexican control of the area challenged by British Honduras, Guatemala, and rebel Maya (Klepeis 2003, 555). While for Diaz consolidation meant attracting foreign capital, post-revolutionary presidents took different approaches. Klepeis contrasts Diaz's centralized governing style with Cardenas's campesino-centred decentralized approach (2003). According to Daniel Klooster, Cardenas's concerns with a "project of consolidating a peasant base of support for the ruling party" (2003, 101) largely affected his treatment of forestry issues. Miguel Aleman's (1946-52) presidency marked the beginning of the import substitution era in Mexican forestry, which meant national control of the resources for the pursuit of national interests. Centralized government control was strengthened, although with a national elite running forestry operations as opposed to foreign interests (Klepeis 2003, 551).

The Second World War saw a more productivity-centred turn in the management of Mexican forests, led by government officials concerned about the dependence on imports and the underutilization of national resources (Merino-Perez 2004, 179). However, it has been argued that this context was less a factor of real productive uncertainty than an opportunity, seized by the Mexican central government, to extend its hold on sectors that had been heavily dominated by foreign capital since the Porfirian era, such as the forestry sector (Vitye 1993, 112). The Mexican forestry policy from the 1950s to the 1970s certainly fits into the general import substitution scheme that structured national development plans at the time. However, contrary to the development of the oil sector, which was certainly considered more strategic for the Mexican national interest, this phase in the development of the Mexican forestry sector left a significant place for private corporations, which were seen as important actors in the modernization of regional economies through their injection of capital, knowhow, and technology in these regions (Wilshuen 2002; Mathews 2003). From the 1940s through to the 1960s, giving favourable conditions on indigenous land to national private capital was seen as necessary to meet the country's material needs and was part of a national development strategy.

During the 1960s and 1970s the state began to intervene directly in forestry as the policy of private concessions "had not even fulfilled the objective of overcoming the trade deficit in forest products" (Merino-Perez and Seguro-Warnholtz 2005, 54). The state therefore began to invest more heavily in forestry, creating state-owned enterprises and taking over private ones that would then take advantage of the concessions.

Communities, academics, NGOs, and even government agencies such as the CONAFOR and SEMARNAT (Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales) are now quite critical of these concessions policies. However, national, economic, and territorial concerns are still relevant in contemporary forest policy. As decades passed, these concerns have been compounded by a re-emergence of the "cultural" dimension in at least two forms. First, from the mid-1970s to the present day, there has been a substantial growth of indigenous and peasant activism in Mexico. As the country became more and more urbanized and industrialized, and as government subsidies shifted from the agricultural sector to the industrial sector, the countryside became a fertile ground for various political movements giving voice to disenfranchised campesinos. Not all these movements centred on the distinctiveness of their indigenous constituents, but a good many did. This was especially the case in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Guerrero, the three Mexican states with the highest percentage of indigenous inhabitants, and also the three poorest states in the country. This wave of indigenous "autonomism" has created an impetus for the development of new discourses on national cultural integration in Mexico. An element of these discourses that is present in community forestry programs is the rallying cry for the development of a national common culture of environmental responsibility.

The second form in which the cultural dimension of forestry came to occupy a significant part of the public discourse on forest management in Mexico from the 1970s onward is more directly influenced by the rise of environmental concerns. At least since the middle of the 19th century, the industrial and productivist models of forest management had been seen as the "modern" way of extracting wealth from this natural resource. But as global activism around issues of rainforest management, biodiversity, and clear-cutting became stronger in the last decades of the 20th century, the Mexican government has had to make conservation a more important element of its forest policies.

The Mexican government has especially emphasized the environmentalist discourse that insists that sustainable forestry demands not only a change in legislation and regulation, but also a change in values and culture. This discourse, ironically, presents some close parallels with the assimilationist discourse that held, from the end of the 19th century onward, that traditional indigenous practices and attitudes were "wasteful" of the forest. Thus, while in the era of Porfirio Diaz, national forestry culture was to be united around images of modernization and profit, in the 21st century unifying images are conservation and sustainability.

The depiction of indigenous land use as destructive and the invocation of this image for hegemonic purposes are not new in Mexican official discourse. Mexican law has often directly reflected the perception that indigenous uses of the forests are unsustainable and nefarious (Merino-Perez and Seguro-Warnholtz 2005). Klooster points out that policymakers in the 1940-58 period "portrayed campesinos as an endless army of ants, driven by poverty and hunger, slowly but tirelessly finishing off Mexico's forests" (2003, 102). From the 1940s on, Mexican presidents chastised campesinos for slashing, burning, woodcutting, as well as erosion and siltation of the developing nation's new dams and ambitious irrigation and hydroelectric projects (Simonian 1995 in Klooster 2003).

For a long time, indigenous land-use practices have been perceived and portrayed as barriers to modernization and development by the Mexican state, and this discourse has often framed the justification for government intervention in the indigenous regions' forestry sector. However, the ever-increasing importance of the conservation discourse has given new currency to this narrative in neo-liberal times. The government, for example, has used this criticism to promote its free-trade agenda by portraying "the existing ejido sector as an engine of environmental degradation, while equating private property and free trade with environmental conservation" (Payne 2002, 103-104). Presently, it seems that the only way for indigenous ejidos and communities not to be labelled "environmental degraders" is for them to comply with the CONAFOR land-use guidelines, which call for the abandonment of swidden (slash-and-burn) agriculture. Mathews paints a very clear picture of the Mexican state's role in and use of a specific portrayal of the use of fire in agriculture:

 Throughout the twentieth century the Mexican state has asserted its
 right to control forests using a variety of justifications.... As
 other policies have come and gone, fire control has remained
 central to official rhetoric. Government officials have vilified
 traditional agropastoral uses of fire, and have sought to convert
 rural Mexicans into willing firefighters. According to these
 officials, fire is uniformly destructive, and agricultural uses of
 fire must be severely regulated and controlled ... This official
 fire discourse flies in the face of voluminous evidence that many
 fires are not destructive, and that they are set for deliberate
 purposes and controlled. In Mexico, the state has justified its
 efforts to control forests and modernize agriculture by
 stereotyping agricultural and pastoral fire users as irrational and
 ignorant. (Mathews 2005, 795-796)

Other actors have also used this perception to justify control over indigenous people's resources. Klooster shows how forestry enterprises portrayed the major cause of forest degradation to be campesinos, poor people who had no choice but to destroy the forest to survive. The solution therefore proposed was scientifi c forestry, which would offer campesinos other economic options and a "campaign of persuasion" "so that people would see the forest as an economic resource, and thus combat and prevent forest fires, and limit domestic use and grazing" (Klooster 2000, 288-289). In this discourse the campesinos themselves are not really to blame, as the problem is shifted to the economic situation in which they find themselves. However, it is also implied that they are ignorant in the sense that they don't see the real (i.e., monetary) value of the forest. Thus, communities have learned that to have "control" over their forests and access to government subsidies, they have to adopt the rhetoric of forest protection and publicly accept government definitions and standards of degradation, such as pine volume and fire control, which are clearly based on a commercial forestry paradigm rather than protection of the environment (Mathews 2002, 2003).

This discussion plays a key role in citizenship, as those indigenous people who seek government funding for social development and good relations with the state are pressured to accept the denigration of their traditional agricultural practices. Further, the state's image as a central unifying structure, and the image of indigenous people as marginal disruptive elements that have to be integrated more thoroughly into this benevolent structure, are reinforced by the discourse of conservation. The institutional conditions of access to economic and technological resources controlled by the state thus become conditions of access to full "citizenship" for indigenous people. These include the abandonment of "destructive" traditions, the willingness to comply with management and conservation "guidelines" imposed along a chain of decreasing sovereignty from the World Bank to the Mexican state to local communities, and, perhaps most importantly, some degree of adhesion to neo-liberal views of governance and to a techno-scientific regime of nature. The two cases we have chosen to examine here contrast in their "progess" or their position on the continuum between compliance and non-compliance. The first, San Pedro, has been the object of forest engineers' attention since at least the 1930s (Hinojosa Ortiz 1958, 105). It is considered by government officials as a model of indigenous community forestry in the Sierra Madre del Sur. The second case, the extension of this same mountain range in eastern Guerrero called the "Montana" region, is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Community forestry is so recent there that it was not possible to study a community that derives any significant part of its livelihood from forestry. On the other hand, the CONAFOR, working with World Bank funding, has been quite active since 1997 in trying to promote indigenous forestry

in the region. In this context, San Pedro is presented as a model to follow. By comparing two realities, both the "model" and the one that the government is encouraging to aspire to the model, we aim to provide a clearer view of the complex, multi-layered, and sometimes paradoxical relationships between indigenous communities and the State that surround community forestry in Mexico.

San Pedro, a "Model" Community in Oaxaca

The state of Oaxaca contains a population of approximately 3.4 million people, covers 95,364 square kilometres, and is one of the most culturally diverse states in Mexico. The community of San Pedro el Alto is found in the southern branch of the Sierra Madre mountain range (Sierra Sur), approximately 100 kilometres southwest of the city of Oaxaca. It is one of the communities with the largest land mass in the Sierra Sur with approximately 30,000 hectares of land, 20,000 of which are forested (Smartwood 2004). However, the community is currently besieged by land disputes with a number of neighbouring communities. The forests are generally pine and pine-oak, and the most commercially valuable species are P. pseudostrobus and P. patula var. longipedunculata (Smartwood 2004). The climate is mainly considered temperate-humid (templado humedo) and the terrain is mountainous (80% of its territory is considered sloped). Most of the communities of the region, including San Pedro, are accessible only by poorly maintained dirt roads that were originally created by the private Compania Forestal de Oaxaca (CFO) (Asesoria tecnica a comunidades oaxaquenas [ASETECO] 2003). In San Pedro, the people describe themselves as Zapotec or of Zapotec descendency, but few of the young people in the community speak the Zapotec language. At the communal level the community is organized according to the Usos y Costumbres, a complex system of rights and responsibilities, based largely on age and in which the general assembly is considered the highest authority. In San Pedro these assemblies, rights, and responsibilities are generally reserved to the men (an issue that we will later return to briefly). Currently, forestry in the community is undertaken by what is often referred to as a community forestry enterprise and is based on and integrated into this Usos y Costumbres system. However, forestry in San Pedro has not always been communally run.

Commercial forestry first began in San Pedro at the end of the 1940s when the community signed a contract with the CFO. While people in San Pedro actively sought out a company to exploit their forests (ASETECO 2003, 37), the exploitative relationship that would develop between the company and the community were partly a result of post-World War II governmental policies and actions.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the government used the claim that commercial forestry was of national interest to legally override campesinos' constitutional rights to control their land and granted regional concessions to companies such as the CFO. Under these concessions, campesinos were only allowed to sell their wood (in any form) to the regional concessionaire. In return to access to their forests, communities such as San Pedro received a few jobs and a small derecho de monte (stumpage fee), which was often deposited into a government trust fund to which they had difficulty getting access. Not only did the government set up unfair trading situations for campesinos, but government agencies such as the Secretaria de Reforma Agraria (SRA) and the Secretaria de Agricultura y Recursos Hidraulicos (SARH) were complicit in the corruption between the companies and the communities (Lopez-Arzola 2005, 112-114). Companies in the Sierra Madre, including the CFO, also high-graded the forests using the "metodo mexicano" in which the companies took the biggest and best trees, depleting the genetic stock. The concessionary period also laid the groundwork for community forestry by training the locals in various forestry practices, by building roads in the forest, and by building roads between the community's forests and the city.

Nonetheless, the injustices of the period led to organized resistance by many communities. Starting in the late 1960s, disputes in the region over working conditions, overexploitation of forests, and broken promises between communities and forestry companies led to work stoppages, communities refusing to sign contracts, and other conflicts. Relations between San Pedro and the CFO became heated in the 1970s, and in 1979 the community even appropriated the company's forestry equipment, at which point the communal authorities were arrested (Lopez-Arzola 2005, 113). In the early 1980s, communities in the Sierra Sur and Sierra Norte united to resist new concessions that had been granted. The concessions were repealed in 1983, and in the next few years some communities began to establish their own community-based enterprises supported by a group of government forestry agents called the Direccion General de Desarrollo Forestal (DGDF) (Lopez-Arzola 2005, 114; Merino-Perez 2004, 70).

San Pedro was one of the fi rst communities in the Sierra Sur to begin both private, and then communal, commercial forestry and is generally considered one of the most successful. One NGO worker described the community as "a bit like the largest pearl in Oaxaca's crown" due to its large and high quality forest and successful exploitation ventures. The community has a large office in downtown Oaxaca for communal business operations, and they have their own full-time forestry engineer who is a member of the community (still a rare occurrence even though, as we will see, it is a practice that the government tries to encourage). Forestry has allowed the community to finance the building of schools, a supplementary health clinic, a doctor and ambulance, transportation services, a new municipal office building (palacio municipal), expensive church renovations, and the creation of jobs for all the men in the community who want them. A few jobs have also been officially created for women and they have created paid work for themselves, such as selling food to workers. The official jobs all pay at least 100 pesos a day (approx. US$10), double the Mexican minimum wage. Most years, some of the profits from forestry are also distributed to all men and women in the community. Therefore, community forestry has undoubtedly benefited San Pedro materially, though it must be noted that "extreme poverty," notably among single mothers, continues to exist within the community, as assessed by a recent community forestry development plan (CONAFOR 2005).

Community forestry has also allowed San Pedro a certain amount of autonomy and has some "culturally progressive overtones" (Bebbington 2004, 411). As mentioned above, the CFE is administered through a system based on, and in fact integrated into, a "traditional" indigenous governance model. All important decisions regarding the enterprise are formally made by the general assembly of comuneros. It seems that community forestry has also decreased (or at least delayed) migration by community members by providing members with viable local livelihood alternatives (see Bebbington 2000, 2004). To the extent that "indigenous cultural identity hinges on sustained and corporate rural residence" (Bebbington 2004, 409), community forestry has therefore contributed to the maintenance of that identity.

However, almost all of these gains depend on their ability to compete in world markets--markets that are increasingly hostile and directly affected by neo-liberal policies (4) such as free trade agreements, low (or non-existent) tariffs, and a high currency exchange rate (Saad-Fihlo 2005; Zertuche 2004). These market conditions, combined with current forestry laws and programs, mean that San Pedro has little choice but to maintain cooperative relationships with federal and state government institutions and compete with other communities for government funds and market share. Participation in the industry has also meant pressure (both overt and more subtle) to change social relations within San Pedro and relations between the community and "nature."

Through their experience with commercial forestry over the last 50 years, San Pedro's men have developed a strong "forestry culture," an important concept within the CONAFOR's discourse. In its official documentation, the commission says that it works toward developing forestry culture by fomenting "a consciousness about the caretaking, preservation and sustainable exploitation of forests" (our translation; CONAFOR 2006). In an interview, a high-ranking official in the Oaxaca state forestry department (Direccion Forestal de Oaxaca) noted that forestry culture is part of the legacy of the concessionary period and considered it a very important factor in the success of certain communities. He lamented that other communities do not have the same forestry culture as San Pedro. CONAFOR and other government officials see the creation of "forestry culture" as an essential part of the CONAFOR's work and they invest resources to that end. In San Pedro, the development of this culture has meant access to forms of knowledge that they were hitherto systematically denied. It has also led to the perception of forests in terms of "sustainable" economic production as defined by techno-scientific "experts," while other culturally specific meanings have been subverted. While officials seem quite satisfied with the forestry culture in San Pedro, they do see room for improvement in other areas.

NGO representatives and government officials agreed that San Pedro should industrialize and diversify production. One SEMARNAT official explained it this way:

 If there is one kind of change (that would be good) right now it is
 in what happens after the management, in the exploitation and in
 the all the needs that they will have to change there forestry
 processes, the need to industrialize their products more and more.
 (Interview; our translation and emphasis)

He portrays industrialization as a need (necesidad) that San Pedro will sooner or later have. The same official also explained later that if they do not industrialize soon, they will be left behind (rezagada) other communities that are moving ahead with industrialization processes. It is interesting to note that San Pedro, which has had one of the most successful CFEs, still feels pressure to move toward another phase of industrialization. This is particularly remarkable when one notes that the community's current efforts at industrialization are not particularly profitable (as seems to be the case in most CFEs). While the sawmill, the most important industrialization effort, does provide some jobs, recent development reports (Centro Regional para la Competividad Empresarial [CRECE] 2005; CONAFOR 2006) show that it is wasteful of forest resources and not profitable. Other industrialization projects, such as a post factory, have been abandoned, at least temporarily. (See also Antinori 2000 for discussion of vertical integration in Oaxaca CFEs.)

The general solution to the CFE's problems, according to these reports and several government officials, is for San Pedro to become more productive, competitive, and efficient in its operations. To do so, they argue that the community should not only try to modernize its technology, but also look at changing the organizing structure of the CFE and community.

 There are some who see limitations in relation to the usos y
 costumbres because they relate it directly to the efficiency that
 it can have in the industries ... if we look at it from the point
 of view of a private company, of course, in comparison it is
 deficient ... one needs to look for a an organizational scheme that
 enables more efficiency in the operation of the enterprise.
 (Forestry engineer for CONAFOR Oaxaca; our translation)

This official links the traditional decision-making and organizational structure (the usos y costumbres) directly to the inefficiency of the enterprise. He also claims that, in comparison with a private company, the communal enterprises are deficient. In San Pedro's communal business office, such comparisons are also heard relatively regularly, as is talk of making the organizing structure more efficient.

A senior CONAFOR official in Oaxaca was particularly honest when asked whether the global competition that he foresaw over the next 10 to 20 years and the need for efficiency would affect communities' autonomy and the way they worked (formas de trabajar):

 Yes, later yes. It implies the displacement of labour, it implies
 finishing with the culture, it implies a series of things. But your
 ... world market. And the market is the market. And logically, yes,
 there are these types of situations. I'm one of the people (who)
 opposes these situations, sometimes, maybe leave them alone to be
 free. But when there is a problem, they should look at the way of
 organizing ... Yes, later, it's a problem from the cultural point
 of view, from another vision and things like that. (our
 translation)

This official is clearly self-reflective and genuinely wants to work with communities to improve their situation. He is very clear that the pressure of a world market that is getting more and more competitive means that the CFEs, such as San Pedro's, are going to have to make serious changes to stay in the game. Current communal culture, values, and organizing structures will have to be transformed or abandoned in order to keep up.

In fact, San Pedro's relative success has already involved important changes in the community that some perceive as problematic. For example, men who work in forestry often see their families only on weekends and during holidays, spending most of their weeknights in work camps, tents in the forest, or the communal office in the city. Very few of those who work in the office say that they actually want to work there. They have been "assigned" by the general assembly and are serving their community out of obligation. While some shrug these things off saying "One gets used to it" (se acostumbra), others see it as a problem for themselves, for their families and particularly for child-rearing. Many also describe much of the work as very pesado (hard) and the work in the forest as dangerous. Serious accidents are still quite commonplace despite increasing security measures for workers.

It is also worth asking what effect forestry has on gender relations. While men are offered jobs in forestry, transportation, and other areas, women have received very few low-paying jobs (primarily in water purification) as well as some spin-off employment (e.g., cooking for workers). As the enterprise is based on the male-dominated community structure, the administration of the community enterprise is all male. In agriculture, which played a larger role in the community before commercial forestry, the family unit is the primary organizational structure of work, and women play an important role in that structure. Although there have been some recent improvements in terms of gender equality in San Pedro, such as the creation of the jobs for women mentioned above and the inclusion of women in the distribution of CFE profits, many women expressed frustration over the machismo and the current imbalance of economic and political power in the community. (5) Currently, gender problems do not seem to be a priority for the community's male leaders.

These leaders are more concerned with the growth of the population and the higher expectations of the more educated younger members of the community. Emigration is also becoming more common, as currently 22% of community's population resides outside of the community (CONAFOR 2005). As comuneros wrestle with these issues, their discourse seems quite similar to that of the government officials. Increasing the CFE's productivity and efficiency and moving toward industrialization are portrayed as central to improving the community. An influential member of the supervisory committee of communal goods (comisariado de bienes comunales) put it this way:

 It's more difficult now because it is more competitive ... products
 that come from Chile, from the United States. The timber, for
 example, right now is at 1,200 pesos per square metre and the
 timber from there comes at 800 or 900 pesos, so the productive
 processes should be more efficient, the machines more efficient to
 be able to produce at a lower cost and be able to be competitive.
 Because if we continue with our current structure that we have ...
 what we produce will be more expensive than what we will sell. (Our
 translation and emphasis)

This comunero articulates very clearly the increasing difficulties of being in a competitive global market. His answer to this problem is that the community needs to alter its structure. Discourse suggesting running forestry operations more like a private enterprise and separating it from the communal structure in order to make it more competitive is commonplace in the community. (6)

While it is hard to predict how the actual changes will take place in the community, there certainly seems to be a tension between communal values and structures and participation in a competitive capitalist market (see Antinori and Bray 2005, 1534-1535). It seems that big changes in order to stay competitive are likely ahead for San Pedro and other forestry communities.

Implementing Community Forestry in the Montana of Guerrero

It is clear that forestry projects set up in Guerrero have an implicit, or even at times explicit, vision of what a community--and its inhabitants --should be in order to become good subjects of development. State interventions in the forest sector in Guerrero, and elsewhere in Mexico, are more than instruments of economic development. They are part of an elaborate social pedagogy that seeks to transform human nature as much as it seeks to transform natural resources. During interviews with the manager of the CONAFOR for the state of Guerrero, it was pointed out to us, right from the onset, that this organization's activities are not limited to the wood resources of Guerrero's forests. This remark meant that in certain zones--the Alto Rio Balsas in particular--such resources are practically exhausted and alternatives to large-scale extractive forestry should be sought. But this discourse also carried a subtext, an implicit recognition that forestry's role is to contribute to changes in deeply ingrained--and in some measure ontologically grounded--attitudes in local populations (he never spoke of "indigenous" people). A conversation about ecotourism as a possible development activity in forested regions of the state, for example, rapidly transformed itself into a judgement of local culture and mores. The manager mentioned the mesophytic forest around the city of Taxco as a potential site for the development of such an activity. "However," he said, pointing in the direction of the Montana with a somewhat exasperated air on his face, "over there, we can't think of ecotourism for now, for lack of security." He made his point further by adding, "Do you really think that tourists will go to a region where there are assaults, muggings, and murders on a regular basis (cada rato)? One has to be crazy to promote tourism or ecotourism over there."

This image of the Montana of Guerrero as a violent region, at the margin of civil life, acquires an explanatory value when it comes, for example, to account for the poor performance of forestry activities and forestry promotion programs in that part of the state, especially when compared with "success stories" like that of San Pedro. According to this informant, these results--or lack thereof--can be explained in good part by the fact that 71% of the lands where forestry would be possible in Guerrero are on ejido or community territory: both forms of land tenure in which indigenous people control access to the resource. According to him, internal divisions in communities, as well as conflicts between these communities and their neighbours, make it very difficult to set up forest management programs. "They just can't agree on things," he said before adding that it is not worthwhile to open a forest road for only a few hectares of forest. Rather, there must be a broad consensus between "owners" (duenos) of contiguous lands to make the building of forestry infrastructure profitable. But in this discourse intercommunity confl icts create a situation in which forests remain fragmented and mostly unworkable. Further, the CONAFOR advisers we have interviewed identified four sources of problems within communities: (1) factionalism, (2) demographic pressures, (3) government administrative errors in land allotment, and (4) lack of concern on the part of local populations for the "commons" in general, and for the forest in particular. In other words, three of the four reasons that, according to this manager, explain the government's lack of success in developing a viable forestry industry in regions with a high proportion of indigenous inhabitants are said to be related to some supposedly common "characteristics" of indigenous cultures and societies themselves.

Communal factionalism is so essentialized in the administrative discourse of the CONAFOR that this element is often cited as an obvious fact, to be counted as one of the "weaknesses of the sector" (debilidades del sector) with which one has to work. The demographic strength of indigenous people, on the other hand, is generally considered one of the strengths of the forestry sector in Guerrero. However, this positive element rapidly becomes problematic in the CONAFOR's discourse, to the extent (as in the third factor identified) that the government did not, according to this informant, respect Mexico's agrarian law when it attributed forested land to indigenous peasants. "According to the agrarian law," he said, "forests must remain under the management of the community as a whole," but because of demographic pressures within communities and poor decision-making by local authorities, these forested lands were allotted to individuals. "In cases where these areas have not been deforested for agriculture or cattle raising yet, we must make the people who live on these lots understand that these lands have to be managed so that their forests are protected for the collective good." But it seems that to the CONAFOR the efforts to make people understand this necessity runs against a certain "essence" ascribed to indigenous peasants in which, according to the subtext of the government manager's discourse, the idea of a collective good is seen as atrophied. Our informant holds that in the countryside of Guerrero, every family is only preoccupied by its own plot(s) and "does not feel concerned" about what is done to the forests. The only territories that matter are those of the plot (for production) and the community (for identity). People that exploit forests in irresponsible ways, with "a mining mentality," he said, "of extraction and not of renewal of the resources, do not even know they are doing something wrong." Other people who are witnesses to this kind of extraction do not feel it is their business and do not complain. "This is what we have to change," he said. "We must foster a culture of responsibility and denunciation." These are, apparently, traits of a desired new indigenous citizen, the subject of development.

Although we have mostly focused here on one interview carried out with a high-ranking CONAFOR official in the state of Guerrero, the positions expressed by this individual are highly homologous to the discourse we can find in the CONAFOR's official literature or the World Bank documents and research that directly shaped the CONAFOR's actions in Mexico. Although official documents are often more oblique in making the points we have just highlighted, they connote the same ideas nonetheless.

It would be a mistake to presume that these desired transformations are pursued through authoritarian means; it is rather a long-term effort undertaken to reform indigenous peasants through obtaining their consent. The direction of desired change, however, remains heavily determined by the founders and managers of the various forestry programs we have been referring to. The ideology framing this relationship emerges as a discourse of assistance and facilitation toward the attainment of a preset, but often implicit, goal. This discourse contrasts with the earlier assimilationist themes, in which the interests of the state were put front and centre. Nowadays, government officials might explain the community-government interaction in the following words, as one of our informants did:

 We know that solutions imposed "from above" by the government will
 not work. We must, however, heighten community awareness of the
 benefits of well-planned forest management. After that it's up to
 the communities to choose. Members of the communities must first
 agree between themselves and decide freely to participate in the
 project. Once the community has decided to participate, the CONAFOR
 will provide the resources. It pays for trips of organized and
 serious communities so that they should be able to visit successful
 community forestry projects in Oaxaca and Michoacan. (Our
 translation)

The CONAFOR also hires an asesor (forest engineer) for the community. One of the most important tasks of this engineer is to convince the community of the validity of the forest management plan he elaborates, using scientifi c data he alone is qualified to gather and interpret. "If the engineer designs a plan and the community doesn't respect it, it's not worth it," says the head engineer for the state of Guerrero. For this reason, the asesor working with a particular community must convince the local authorities and population to "apply the plan" (aplicar el plan).

The way in which resources are channelled within existing forestry programs in the Montana of Guerrero subsidized by the World Bank (through CONAFOR) makes it very clear that local populations cannot have access to these resources without first submitting themselves to the state's pedagogic enterprise. For example, in a regional forum in which the question of forest fires was addressed--a "problem" for which indigenous peasants are often blamed by authorities in Guerrero--a peasant stood up and asked the forest engineer presiding over the meeting if it would be possible for the government to provide tools (shovels, axes, picks) that could be used to control milpa-clearing fires and thus help peasants minimize the potential damage caused by these fires. According to this man, the peasants had sufficient knowledge to carry out this kind of work, and all they needed were a few inexpensive tools. Strangely, the engineer looked somewhat annoyed by this question and answered in the following manner:

 We do offer support to communities. But the most important thing is
 that you invite us, so that we can come and give you a presentation
 to make people realize that they are wardens (duenos) of the forest
 and educate them as to their responsibility in fire prevention. (7)
 Last year, I asked for such invitations, but we have only received
 one. The first priority is to develop a forestry culture, which is
 lacking at the moment.

The pedagogic effort tied to the mandate of developing the forestry sector in the Montana of Guerrero aims to gradually transform the very relationship that indigenous people have with their identity and their environment. The "problems of the past" (read: traditional community dynamics and indigenous modes of relating to the environment), summarized here as a lack of "forestry culture," must be corrected by the adhesion to a techno-scientific view in which nature is seen as a resource to tap, and to a national, rather than communal, identity through shared values of conservation, economic growth, and industrialization.

This promotion of an ideal of citizenship through programs for economic development and for the protection of the forest requires a submission to the authority of the expert. This ideal of citizenship is communicated through discourses that seek to bridge national interests and some imaginary, infantile, indigenous culture constructed as a rhetorical device by development agents. Not only does the ontology implicit in this official discourse deny a "forestry culture" to indigenous people, but it also portrays local cosmologies in a most simplistic way. As an illustration of this, we submit a little fable invented by the forest engineer for the workshop on forest fires mentioned above, which he used to explain the concept of common good to his indigenous audience. It illustrates quite well an instance of instrumentalization of indigenous cultures used in the promotion of government development programs:

 One day, Coyote's tail caught fire. Panicked, he started running in
 all directions, trying to put it out in the sand. In the process,
 however, his tail touched the grass and trees and set them on fire.
 Seeing a little bird carrying water fl y by him, Coyote asked him
 for help. But the bird ignored him and went to put out the fire
 ignited by Coyote. The same thing happens with other animals to
 whom Coyote asks for help, but who would rather go and pour their
 water on the forest fire. Often, says the engineer, we (read: you)
 are like Coyote. We care for ourselves, but not for the forests
 which burn around us. Nevertheless, the other animals understood
 that it was their house that was burning. It is our house that
 burns with forest fires, and we must care about that.

Such episodes point to a certain will on the part of development agents to translate elements of national policy into local modes of discourses. The process is often awkward and presents an obvious instrumentality, but the mere fact of trying to frame forest management policies into such a fable sends a signal that the national government and its agents are going part of the way to bridge the gap between national norms of citizenship--summarized here in the CONAFOR's norms of good forest stewardship--and local normative discourse. Of course, this ideological device obscures the fact that national and local normative discourses do not, and will not, meet halfway in this dialogic exchange. The pedagogic approach that the CONAFOR has adopted in the Montana of Guerrero makes it clear that, through the adoption of community forestry, the Tlapanec, Mixtec, and Nahua communities of the region are to change; they are to learn what economic development means, they are to learn what forest stewardship and environmental responsibility mean. Through that process, they are to learn what being a good citizen, preoccupied by the good of the nation, means.

A step in this process of getting the indigenous communities to adhere to a techno-scientific view of nature and to a national, rather than communal, identity is granting professional titles to indigenous individuals who have, through economic opportunism or personal values, chosen to be further socialized in these discourses by becoming asesores themselves. Given the role of ambassador that a forest engineer must play within communities on behalf of the CONAFOR--but also through the CONAFOR on behalf of the Mexican state and the World Bank--it is not surprising to learn that one of the CONAFOR's priorities in Guerrero is formar tecnicos comunitarios (to train local people to become forest technicians or engineers).

"These engineers," one of the CONAFOR managers for the state of Guerrero tells us, "can do more superior work than engineers that only come [in these remote areas] for the pay. Non-indigenous engineers do not have the necessary knowledge to convince community assemblies, they do not know who is who and what are the quirks of each." These non-indigenous forest engineers, moreover, are often away from the communities to which they are assigned, since the vast majority of them will not move their families to remote regions such as the Montana. On the other hand, technicians who originate in the communities live in these communities and often work in their own native village and "for" their community, a possibility that has signifi cant symbolic weight among Tlapanec people in particular (Dehouve 1989; Hebert 2002).

Conclusion: The Paradoxes of Citizenship in the Indigenous Countryside of Mexico

As we mentioned above, the two cases we presented in this article illustrate two contexts in which the level of development of community forestry and adhesion to hegemonic discourses are quite different. It is interesting, however, to note that even though San Pedro is often presented as a model for other indigenous communities to follow, it too receives significant pressure from technical advisors to push along the industrialization process and change its organizing structure. Another parallel between the cases presented here is that, be it at the first stages of implementation of community forestry programs (as it is the case in the Montana), or in further stages of development in which community forestry enterprises are in operation (as is the case in San Pedro), the practice of community forestry does bring some very real material gains.

Since INMECAFE ceased its operations in Guerrero in 1989, the CONAFOR forestry projects are the most important government programs for the development of productive activities in the Montana. Even though communities have to enter a competitive process in order to receive CONAFOR money and the poorer, more remote, communities are often disadvantaged in a grant proposal process that requires time, paperwork, and travel, the fact remains that the CONAFOR brings a very real hope for economic development in the region. San Pedro, seen from afar, represents this hope realized with its off-community business office in the state capital, and its schools, clinic, and other public services financed with forestry profits. These material gains are quite desirable for the communities, partly because obtaining viable livelihoods in indigenous communities is often important for the advancement of their cultural and political projects (Bebbington 2000, 2004). Indigenous people from Oaxaca and Guerrero are thus often drawn to government-sponsored community forestry projects and willing to enact a certain form of citizenship that will make them eligible to receive resources earmarked for these projects.

However, compliance with the norms of good citizenship defined by the architects of these programs has some limits in the indigenous communities considered. In Guerrero where, given the early stage of implementation of community forestry, these limits are perhaps negotiated more explicitly, the promises of World Bank-sponsored forestry are necessarily weighed up against the promises of other, indigenous-led, development efforts that seek greater autonomy from the state. In recent years, the Montana has seen the rise of an autonomous indigenous "community police," an autonomous judicial system, and the emergence of a regional autonomous governing body (Martines Sifuentes 2001; Hebert 2002). All these initiatives have been condemned by government officials as disruptive to the unity of the state and, thus, illegal (Gutierrez 1998). These autonomous mobilizations, however, fared poorly on the economic front since they were supported by an indigenous coffee cooperative whose performance declined with coffee prices at the end of the 1990s. Thus, indigenous people in the Montana have a strong incentive to comply with the CONAFOR's objectives in order to diversify their economy, but the project of citizenship implicit (and at times explicit) in these programs is far from the only one available to them.

In San Pedro, which has developed a forestry culture and a forestry enterprise coherent with the CONAFOR's objectives, the community's project of citizenship appears to be more closely aligned with that of the government. The community has developed a strong "forestry culture" that has meant the adoption of a techno-scientific and economic view of the forest. Through its CFE, San Pedro has gained important material benefits while maintaining a certain amount of autonomy in the management of its local economy and decision-making structure. However, its commitment to forestry has also created a dependence on an increasingly globalized and competitive timber market. Many in San Pedro, in the government, and in NGOs feel the community needs to increase its efficiency and productivity and to further industrialize if it wants to continue to profit from forestry. There is pressure to become more like a private enterprise, a pressure that clashes in many ways with certain communal values and traditions. In San Pedro, this focus on the profitability of the enterprise may also imply the suppression of other citizenship projects as women struggle to improve their "second-class" status within their community. While community forestry has certainly offered some hope for improved access to the rights associated with citizenship to the people of San Pedro, the definition of this citizenship seems to be becoming narrower and the sacrifices to attain it larger.

Through the use of the World Bank and the national resources it manages, the Mexican state tries to smooth out the several political, economic, and symbolic contradictions raised by indigenous community forestry. One of these contradictions emerges from the historical tension between national interest and community or regional indigenous interest in the management of forests. It is felt when indigenous communities try to leverage the economic gains made from state-sponsored development programs for political purposes such as regional autonomy, as was the case in Guerrero with coffee. It is also felt, as in San Pedro, when the pressure for industrialization and productivity become such that the sacrifices necessary to comply with the exigencies of the state (and the market under neo-liberal policies) start to outweigh the potential returns for the community. There is a substantial state apparatus set in place that seeks to resolve these contradictions through training aimed at indigenous populations seeking to develop "expertise," "consciousness," "forestry culture," and other perceptual frameworks that, once adopted, have a self-disciplining effect on local communities. If a community adheres to the norms of good forest stewardship communicated in these discourses (abandonment of traditional agricultural methods, transition from self-subsistence to a monetary income from forestry, steady move toward industrialization), then substantial material rewards and subsidies are to be obtained. If a community does not adhere to these discourses, then it becomes an exemplar of the "weaknesses" of the forestry sector ("backward thinking," "conflictual," "individualistic"), and becomes marginalized from the development programs. Thus, becoming a "good citizen," in the very narrow neo-liberal sense in which this term is often used in the forestry programs we have described here, is often a matter of economic survival for a community.

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Notes

(1) This article is based on several stays in Guerrero and Oaxaca between 1998 and 2005. The material from Guerrero is part of an ongoing project documenting, from an ethnographic perspective, the social and political dynamics of the Montana region in light of important economic changes that have taken place in that part of Guerrero since the formation of the state in 1849, in which coffee production and forestry have played a significant role. Interviews with CONAFOR officials, participant observation in CONAFOR workshops, analysis of government documentation, and long-term participant observation within communities trying to benefit from government programs have provided the data presented here. The data from Oaxaca were gathered through participant observation in four forestry communities of that state, as well as several interviews with informants from the community of San Pedro el Alto, NGOs, government officials, and local academics carried out between May 2004 and December 2005. This research has benefited from the support of the Fonds quebecois de la recherche sur la societe et la culture between 2003 and 2006.

(2) Klooster describes rentista agreemements in which private companies use short-term permits, relationships of compadrazgo, caciquismo, raw corruption, and direct violence to buy timber at cutthroat prices (Guerrero 1988 in Klooster 2003, 99). According to the CONAFOR, it means renting out their forests for a fixed price without participating in the "aprovechamiento" (CONAFOR 2003). Bray (2005, 335) also describes this type of forestry arrangement in detail.

(3) The policy of concessions, often to "parastatal" companies, did not fit well into the neo-liberal paradigm. However, consequently neo-liberal policies have created difficulties for many CFEs (see Taylor 2001; Taylor and Zabin 2000).

(4) Neo-liberal policies have created particular difficulties for unions of producers, such as UCEFO, of which San Pedro was once a part (see Taylor 2001; Taylor and Zabin 2000).

(5) Attempts at separate economic projects for women with the assistance of a local NGO failed. Respondents blamed fighting amongst the women and conflict between the men and the women in the community for the failure.

(6) It is also interesting to note that this comunero and indeed almost all actors we spoke with in Oaxaca sought to fix the problem by looking inward at the community structure, while throughout southern Mexico and Oaxaca there are movements opposing neo-liberalism, which is directly affecting the conditions under which the community is operating (see Rosen forthcoming).

(7) The subtext of this sentence is that from the government's perspective, the goal is not control of milpa-clearing fires, but rather the elimination of slash-and-burn agriculture altogether.

MARTIN HEBERT

MICHAEL GABRIEL ROSEN

Universite Laval