113

Mobilizing Indigenous Video:

the Mexican Case1
Laurel C. Smith

Department of Geography
Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Abstract
This article introduces the organizational practices and cultural politics that have shaped
the emergence of indigenous video production in Mexico. The first section provides an
overview of an innovative program of the Instituto Nacional Indigenista that was
designed to connect indigenous organizations with video technologies and the skills to
use them. Then it traces the way in which key actors gradually relocated this program by
establishing an NGO with very similar goals in the southern state of Oaxaca. The next
section takes a look at a different but related NGO that is based in both Chiapas and
Chicago. It outlines this bi-national NGO’s intersections with the Zapatista movement,
and indicates how it networks with other allies that are also dedicated to enabling and
exhibiting indigenous video productions. The third section considers the challenges of
disseminating indigenous videos made in Mexico, and in an effort to remedy such limited
distribution, this section also outlines the ways in which university instructors can access
and use two particular productions. The article’s conclusion argues that indigenous videos
are important tools for reworking the production and circulation of authoritative knowl-
edge concerned with indigenous geographies.
Keywords: indigenous movements, Mexico, NGOs, cultural activism

Resumen
Este artículo presenta las prácticas y políticas culturales que han dado forma a la aparición
de la producción del video indígena en México. La primera sección provee un bosquejo de
un programa innovador del Instituto Indigenista Nacional que fue diseñado para conectar
las organizaciones indígenas con tecnologías de video y las habilidades para usarlas. Luego
se remonta a la forma en que unos actores claves progresivamente reubicaron este programa
a través de establecer una ONG con objetivos similares en el estado de Oaxaca. La
próxima sección examina otra ONG, relacionada pero distinta, basada en Chicago y
Chiapas y describe cómo esta ONG binacional se relaciona con el movimiento Zapatista,
e indica cómo establece conexiones con otras dedicadas a permitir y exhibir las producciones
de videos indígenas. La tercera sección considera los desafíos de la diseminación de videos
realizados en México y, como esfuerzo de remediar tal distribución limitada, se perfilan las
maneras a través de las cuales los profesores universitarios pueden acceder y usar estas dos
producciones específicas. El artículo concluye en que los videos indígenas son herramientas
importantes para rehacer la producción y circulación del conocimiento autorizado acerca
de las geografías indígenas.
Palabras clave: movimientos indígenas, México, ONGs, activismo cultural

Journal of Latin American Geography 5(1), 2006

114 Journal of Latin American Geography

Introducing Indigenous Video

El video indígena implica un compromiso de hacer retratos fieles y dignos a
cómo ellos se conciben a sí mismos, que la imagen sea resultado de la manera en
que quieren presentarse, y que sean ellos quienes controlen la manera en que la
sabiduría, la espiritualidad y el conocimiento que estas imágenes conllevan se
puedan dar a conocer a través de dicho medio de comunicación (Monteforte
2002: 25).2

Filoteo Gómez Martínez, a young Mixe video maker from the southern Mexican
state of Oaxaca, recently noted that: “Hay formatos de VHS, mini-DV y DVD, pero no
hay un ‘formato indígena’ de video.”3 His observation underscores how indigenous video
is much more than the result of individuals who self-identify as indigenous planning and
directing video shoots, recording with camcorders, and/or editing taped footage. As
Guillermo Monteforte, a proponent of indigenous video who lives and works in Oaxaca,
notes (above) indigenous video entails a compromiso [commitment] to permitting local
actors to control the ways in which their cultural knowledge is conveyed to viewers. In
other words, indigenous video is characterized by a particular methodology, one that is
tempered by the desire to initiate and sustain respectful and reciprocal relationships with
the indigenous peoples, places, and practices captured by a video camcorder’s lens.4 To
distinguish their productions from other visual media, most indigenous video makers
(and their advocates) point to the community-centered focus of their work; although
very few talk about how the video-mediated visions of some community members may
potentially conflict with the interests of other community residents. And many indigenous
media makers situate their endeavors within territorially-based struggles for cultural self-
determination and economic self-sufficiency. Given such political positioning, indig-
enous video comprises a spatial strategy. If and when accessed, video technologies can
amplify indigenous actors’ analyses of the economic processes and cultural practices
shaping their socio-spatial locations, and those of their communities.
Indigenous video also comprises a media genre largely delimited by specific institu-
tional and organizational channels designed to decolonize the identification and articula-
tion of indigenous geographies. This essay offers a short review of the representational
practices, cultural politics, and organizational relations that comprise some of the most
active manifestations of indigenous video in Mexico. It argues that examining why and how
indigenous videos are made and mobilized provides valuable lessons about the hybrid
geographies of conflict and cooperation that shape Latin American indigenous move-
ments. The essay unfolds in the following three sections. The essay unfolds in the follow-
ing three sections. The first section sketches the institutional emergence of indigenous
video in Mexico and then traces its subsequent (and partial) institutional exit in the form
of the NGO Ojo de Agua Comunicación Indígena. The second section further illustrates the
geographical entanglements that enable, exhibit, and embody indigenous video produc-
tion in Mexico with a look at another NGO, the Chiapas Media Project/Promedios de
Comunicación Comunitaria (CMP/Promedios). The third section outlines the challenges of
distributing indigenous video and then suggests how a geography instructor might mobi-
lize two easily-accessed videos. Finally, a conclusion offers a few more reasons why we
should utilize indigenous video in our classrooms.
Advocating Indigenous Video in Mexico
Despite the oppositional cultural politics that generally characterize such efforts,
indigenous media making is often “a product of relations with the governments respon-
sible for the dire political circumstances that motivated the mastery of new communica-
 Indigenous Video in Mexico 115

tion forms as a means of resistance and assertion of rights” (Ginsburg 1993, 559). This
has most certainly been the case in Mexico where the representational practices of
indigenous video have been co-produced by the place-centered politics articulated by
influential indigenous activists, and by intellectual currents that informed institutional
reform during auspicious moments (Wortham 2002, 2004; Smith 2003, 2005). In 1989,
Arturo Warman, a key voice in Mexican critical anthropology (Warman 1970), was
named director of the Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI).5 During his tenure, Warman
embarked on an institutional directive that emphasized decentralization through the
transference of “more functions and control over institutional resources and programs to
indigenous peoples” (Wortham 2002, 137; Warman 1989). At the same time Warman set
out to reconfigure INI, the institution was momentarily flush with resources stemming
from Solidaridad, President Salinas de Gortari’s social development programming meant
to offset structural adjustment policies.6 Warman, who was keenly interested in visual
anthropology, along with the director of INI’s Achivo Audiovisual Etnográfico, took this
opportunity to introduce an innovative program called Transferencia de Medios
Audiovisuales a Comunidades y Organizaciones Indígenas (TMA). This initiative gave rise
to four extended workshops given between 1989 and 1994 in an INI installation just
outside of Oaxaca de Juárez, the capital city of Oaxaca. Through the TMA, about 85
individuals representing 37 indigenous organizations from throughout Mexico were trained
in the workshops and equipped with basic video technologies (e. g., a simple super-VHS
camcorder, two VCRs, tripod, and monitor).
Shortly before Warman and several of his colleagues were ousted from INI by
political opponents, they made arrangements to set up a Centro de Video Indígena
Nacional (CVI) in Oaxaca de Juárez. When the CVI was inaugurated in May 1994, its
principal designer and founding director was Guillermo Monteforte, an Italian-Canadian
media professional who had been a key figure in the orchestration and administration of
the TMA program.7 With Monteforte’s guidance, the CVI became a site for creative and
collective activity. It offered indigenous activists post-production equipment for editing
audio and images, technical assistance, further workshops, and a place to stay and make
phone calls while in the city. By the end of 1996, dozens of video productions had
emerged from the CVI; exchanges between the CVI and the Smithsonian Institution’s
National Museum of the American Indian had been implemented; media fellowships co-
financed by the MacArthur and Rockefeller Foundations had been solicited and secured
by four indigenous video makers from Oaxaca; and these four individuals, along with a
few others associated with the CVI, had attended several inter-American indigenous film
and video festivals, often serving as instructors for related video production workshops.
Shortly after the CVI’s establishment, Monteforte had begun lobbying for the center’s
transference to indigenous leadership. In May 1997, he was finally able to step down as
the director of the CVI. Taking his place was Juan José García, who had begun his career
in communications with a politicized cultural organization and an INI regional radio
station located in his community, and then further honed his video making skills at the
CVI.8
After leaving the CVI, Monteforte continued to undertake video productions
under the aegis of a small non-governmental organization (NGO) he founded with
García and others, almost all of whom were CVI employees or volunteers. This group of
eight individuals (half of whom had received their audiovisual training through the CVI)
sought to facilitate the access and informed use of video technologies by indigenous
actors, as well as to foster the distribution (locally, regionally, nationally, and beyond) of
indigenous video productions. Eventually this media collective came to be called Ojo de
Agua Comunicación.9 Buoyed at the start by a media making fellowship and an Ashoka
116 Journal of Latin American Geography

Association social entrepreneur award (both given to Monteforte—see note six), this
group existed in a symbiotic relationship with the CVI. Ojo de Agua provided the human
resources, and the CVI (with García still as its director) housed most of the production
and editing equipment. This arrangement began to dissolve at the end of 2000, when a
Macintosh G4 computer and non-linear editing software arrived in Ojo de Agua’s office,
making it possible for the NGO to do its own editing. The reciprocity between the CVI
and Ojo de Agua ceased in the spring of 2002 when García resigned from the CVI.10
Ojo de Agua has produced a highly-respected corpus of videos, often at the behest
of other NGOs and/or government agencies. Although its members remain dedicated to
their primary objectives of training, distribution, and production, their position within a
flexible labor force of knowledge producers contracted to authoritatively represent
indigenous (and other marginalized) communities somewhat stymies their service goals.
For example, in July 2002, José Luis Velázquez Díaz11 approached Ojo de Agua about
producing television programs for the Secretaría de Educación Publica (SEP) and the
Instituto Latinoamericano de la Comunicación Educativa (ILCE).12 Velázquez was pro-
ducing a series titled Pueblos de México, México Multicultural for the SEP’s Coordinación
General de Educación Intercultural Bilingüe,13 which was earmarked for inclusion in
Telesecundaria and Telebachillerato curricula broadcast through the ILCE-SEP-supported
satellite-mediated education system run by Edusat (see note eleven). When Velázquez
offered Ojo de Agua the opportunity to produce nine ten-minute programs, each of
which would focus on a different indigenous group, members struggled over whether or
not to accept. They were leery of the format. Just imagine, they joked, the impossibility
of capturing the widely-diverse Zapotec language and culture in ten-minutes without
causing uproar among Zapotec organizations! Nonetheless, the chance to reconfigure the
categories with which indigenous peoples are so often represented, in tandem with the
possibility of earning a very enticing salary (about $60,000 MXP for each segment), led
the group to take on the mission. Velázquez and his institutional liaisons were pleased
with the quality of the programs made by Ojo de Agua. And in the summer of 2003, Ojo
de Agua was asked to produce fourteen more programs, which are linked (in the opening
credits) to the outreach campaign of the recently established Consejo Nacional para
Prevenir la Discriminación.14 Although the Pueblos de México, México Multicultural series
televises indigenous peoples’ voices, dreams, and achievements, its complex institutional
entanglements complicate Ojo de Agua’s compromiso with their partners in visualization.
One of the programs the group produced, Policía Comunitaria, explores how a
collection of mountain communities in Guerrero have coped with indiscriminant vio-
lence in the surrounding countryside.15 Drawing upon these communities’ traditions of
justice, members of an unpaid police force comprised of men selected by local authorities
and armed with rifles began to patrol the area regularly and to oversee the public work-
oriented punishment of those apprehended for unacceptable behavior. Although this
system has made the region much safer, since the video was recorded in 2003, actors
involved in this community police force have been protesting their unfair treatment by
state authorities, at times occupying the central plaza in front of the state government
building. Members of Ojo de Agua believe, more than ever, that the video Policía Comunitaria
should be shown widely to rally support for the communities’ arguments and initiatives,16
but not all the other author(itie)s listed in the standardized credits that open and close
each Pueblos de México, México Multicultural program agree. SEP has refused to broadcast
the program, and insisted that Ojo de Agua not disseminate the program by way of video
festivals. Apparently, bureau officials are reluctant to be seen as championing an armed
cause that so clearly challenges a state government with charges of corruption and
negligence. Ojo de Agua decries these restrictions and declares that the images in their
 Indigenous Video in Mexico 117

videos belong to the people and places represented in them. But all the NGO has been
able to do about this disagreement over institutional versus cultural-creative control is
provide the organizers and promoters of the community police forces in Guerrero with
copies of the video to distribute as widely as they can. Despite the dispute, Ojo de Agua
continued working for Velázquez and the SEP. Not only did the series offer the NGO
some security, but it also contributed greatly to the group’s professionalization. The work
enhanced members’ technological skills;17 and the income allowed the group to purchase
new and necessary equipment, such as a truck, another Macintosh G4, and a higher-end
digital video camera.
Situating the Chiapas Media Project/Promedios de Comunicación
Comunitaria
By the mid-1980s, severe economic crisis and extensive pressure from outside
multilateral loan agencies forced the Mexican state to foster a new climate of decentrali-
zation. Neoliberal economic policies intensified the need for foreign investment, which
encouraged the Mexican state to modify its policy of outright repression of non-state-
sponsored popular movements. This has allowed for increased collective action outside
deeply entrenched patterns of state corporatism-clientelism.18 In particular, the restruc-
turing of the Mexican state has permitted (some) indigenous organizations to extend
their geographical reach. To undertake this extension, they draw on transnational reli-
gious institutions, fortify linkages with campesino movements, and/or forge new connec-
tions with NGOs of various shapes, sizes, and concerns.19 This complex and highly
contingent (on often-exclusive personal and organizational relationships) expansion of
indigenous collective action, which really gained momentum in the mid-to-late 1980s,
impacted state policy in the 1990s by helping to make indigenous rights a national
political issue. Building on this momentum, the Zapatistas brought the Mexican state to
the bargaining table in the mid-1990s. They continue to catalyze collective action cen-
tered on achieving cultural-political autonomy for the 10 million or so indigenous peoples
who comprise 10-15 percent of Mexico’s population.20
Vital to the Zapatistas’ efforts is the moral encouragement and financial aid of the
collection of international agencies, NGOs and committed individuals that Subcomandante
Marcos refers to as the movement’s “third shoulder.”21 One such ally is the Chiapas Media
Project/Promedios de Comunicación Comunitaria (CMP/Promedios). This NGO grew
out of Alexandra Halkin’s experience producing a documentary about a joint U.S.-
Mexico humanitarian aid caravan to a heavily militarized Zapatista region of Chiapas in
1995.22 Through conversations with people living in Zapatista communities, she learned
about their disappointment in never seeing the footage recorded by journalists and re-
searchers and their interest in accessing and using communication technologies so they
might mediate their own messages. Upon her return to the U.S., Halkin started to
investigate how she might facilitate Zapatista communities’ access to video technologies.
Soon she was working with Tom Hansen (now with the Mexico Solidarity Network) and
Guillermo Monteforte (then the director of INI’s CVI). By the end of 1997 they scored
funding from the U.S.-Mexico Fund for Culture23 for a project that in 1998 brought
together an international collection of youth (indigenous and not) trained in media
making and took them, and a delegation of observer-supporters, to Zapatista communi-
ties, where they gave video workshops.
Although CMP/Promedios no longer features a youth group component, it re-
mains focused on its mission of equipping Zapatista communities to produce their own
visual media. In pursuit of this aim, CMP/Promedios has provided technology-transfers
and workshops similar to those developed during the TMA and given at the CVI, and
118 Journal of Latin American Geography

initially, with CVI-trained media makers as instructors. Currently, Halkin coordinates

CMP/Promedios as a bi-national partnership. From Chicago, she solicits grants from
foundations and travels to universities, community centers, and museums in the U.S.,
Europe, Latin America, and Australia where she presents and discusses the organization’s
videos.24 CMP/Promedios also has two offices in Mexico – one in Chiapas with three
personnel, and another more recently-opened office in Guerrero staffed by one. These
offices liaise with other NGOs and agencies operating in the same regions, organize
workshops, and oversee video productions. Determined eventually to hand-over a self-
perpetuating project to the Zapatistas, CMP/Promedios has established media centers, in
four of the five Zapatista administrative centers (caracoles), equipped with various com-
munication technologies, satellite internet access, and trained community members. In a
variety of ways, these centers enhance communication among the caracoles. In addition
to jump-starting media centers, the organization’s website (www.promedios.org) indi-
cates the diverse catalogue of videos that have been produced by, and in conjunction
with, the Zapatistas. Topics range from the recent restructuring of the Zapatista system
of governance to fair trade and women’s collectives.
Monteforte has not been directly involved in CMP/Promedios projects since
1999, when he realized that he was overcommitted and was forced to choose between
the burgeoning projects in Chiapas and Oaxaca. Although Monteforte decided to devote
his time and energy on Ojo de Agua, relations between the two NGOs have not been
severed. Indeed, their efforts to facilitate and undertake community-focused and
collaboratively-orchestrated video projects often intersect. They most notably coalesce
within the realm of the Consejo Latinoamericano de Cine y Comunicación de los Pueblos
Indígenas (CLACPI), an umbrella organization with representatives from several Latin
American countries. Created in 1985 by a group of anthropologists and filmmakers
concerned with ethnographic films about indigenous peoples, CLACPI now primarily
brings together organizations and institutions that seek to enable indigenous self-repre-
sentation. It has organized seven film and video festivals showcasing such visual work
and providing video training workshops in various locations. Since the eighth CLACPI
festival will take place in Oaxaca (May-June 2006), Ojo de Agua is largely responsible for
coordinating and administering the festival and the workshops and mobile screening
tours associated with it. And CMP/Promedios has been central to the task of rallying
resources for these events.25 In addition, these two NGOs have networked together to
channel the work of indigenous video makers to other video festivals, such as the one
organized and hosted every couple years by the National Museum of the American
Indian.26 They have also helped indigenous media makers connect with fellowships and
further training opportunities. Such funding and exhibition outlets, however, have caused
problems with their auteur format. Given its celebration of individual authorship, this
model is an awkward fit for the complex and intensely-collaborative process of produc-
ing indigenous video (see Halkin forthcoming; Wortham 2004).27
Distributing indigenous video
Most indigenous video makers assert that their target audience consists of indig-
enous communities. Despite these assertions, however, when extensive time, energy and
painstaking care is taken to cull through hours of footage, edit it, and then insert a title,
subtitles, and/or credits, a video is intended to be viewed by as many unfamiliar people
as possible.28 This is particularly the case if the video was produced with a media grant
from a transnational foundation. Regardless of their ambitions, almost no indigenous
video maker has the resources to sponsor screenings, either in their communities or far
from home, and/or mass produce her or his videos. Distribution requires (among other
things) access to recording and projecting technologies and reliable transportation. Fortu-
 Indigenous Video in Mexico 119

nately, resources devoted to the exhibition of Mexican indigenous video in the Americas
have been funneled through the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI).
Given its mandate as an educational institute, the NMAI has by and large focused on
screenings in metropolitan places of scholarship.29 Accordingly, folks with a penchant for
film festivals, a fondness for museums, and/or a university course concerned with Latin
America have comprised the largest audiences for indigenous videos. On the one hand,
many media makers and the NGOs within, or with which, they work have found these
“transnational circuits of exhibition” frustrating because they direct the circulation of
videos far from the indigenous communities where these videos have been recorded. On
the other hand, festivals provide recognition of indigenous cultural activism in the form
of selection, screening and maybe awards. Such exhibitions provide public venues for
further cultural performances capable of eliciting support for indigenous causes, espe-
cially when indigenous media makers have the opportunity to present their work and
further explain their hopes for transformation (Wortham 2002, 322-3).
Exhibition does not, however, automatically imply distribution. For instance, it is
difficult to buy copies of the well-traveled and highly-acclaimed videos made by Ojo de
Agua or their associates. While purchase requests can be conveyed to the office of Ojo de
Agua by email or telephone, delivery is complicated by the challenges of exchanging of
non-Mexican money and procuring the permission of video makers without a telephone
who may live outside the city. Plus, immediate needs (such as paying rent) often dictate
that Ojo de Agua members allocate their labor along project-delivery lines that leave little
time, energy, or money for follow-up tasks such as distribution or audience assessment.
Geographically-specific versions of this inability to address the problems of distribution
beleaguer every media group affiliated with CLACPI—except for CMP/Promedios. De-
termined to make Zapatista media production sustainable, Halkin designed CMP/
Promedios to include an international marketing and sales component. Not only does the
income from video sales made online, after screenings at universities, and at scholarly
conferences allow CMP/Promedios to continue providing technical assistance, but it also
pays for the satellite internet connections at each of the four Zapatista media centers.30
The CMP/Promedios website features about thirty different videos that are avail-
able for purchase (at very reasonable prices) with English, Spanish, or French subtitles.
All videos are shorter than an hour and most of them are about twenty minutes or less.
This short format is handy for incorporating an introduction to a video, its viewing, and
some discussion into a university class period. Like any video, a CMP/Promedios produc-
tion is most useful when fully contextualized with assigned readings, class lectures, and
discussions prior to viewing. I recommend following a general introduction to the politi-
cal, cultural, and territorial forces that have given rise to the Zapatista movement (which
stretches far beyond the EZLN), with a discussion about the importance of NGO aid
and academic advocacy to the movement. One way of doing this is asking students to
read an English translation of the “video” Subcomandante Marcos recently released
(summer of 2004) in the form of eight online comuniques that reflect upon the accom-
plishments, blunders, and continued reconfiguration of the Zapatistas.31 This collection
provides insight into the Zapatistas movement a decade after it burst onto our television
screens and computer monitors. It also segues nicely into a conversation about video as a
spatial strategy and maybe a lecture that situates the institutional emergence and exit of
indigenous video as a symptom of changing state-society relations in Mexico and/or
other Latin American countries.32 Students can next be directed to the website of CMP/
Promedios and assigned Halkin’s (forthcoming) essay on how this NGO surfaced and
some of the challenges it faces and sometimes surmounts. Then it is time to screen a video
or two.
120 Journal of Latin American Geography

Water and Autonomy is a recent (2003) fourteen-minute CMP/Promedios video

that examines, from the perspective of a recently established Zapatista community
named Emiliano Zapata, the processes and practices commonly collected beneath the
rubric of development. This video consists of interviews with Zapatistas who share their
thoughts on water management woven together with scenes of residents and NGO
personnel working together to build a water tank for the community. Additionally,
interspersed throughout the video, are textual-statistical observations (e.g., twelve per-
cent of the world’s population uses eighty-five percent of the world’s water) that briefly
fill the screen.33 Each time, the sound of trickling water emphasizes these dire figures,
which can be revisited during subsequent class meetings in order to link Zapatista struggles
to access and control resources with our own and our students’ water use. Similarly, re-
viewing scenes wherein women specify whose labor patterns and quality of life is im-
pacted most strongly when water is not readily available illustrate the gendered nature of
water resource acquisition and management. And the video’s analysis of the regional
development Plan Puebla Panama, in tandem with a text noting that even though the
state of Chiapas has the highest average rainfall, half of the indigenous people in Chiapas
live without clean drinking water, helps reveal how development initiatives are engi-
neered within Mexico (and elsewhere) to benefit commercial concerns to the detriment
of the rural regions where raw materials such as water are located. The video Water and
Autonomy also shines a spotlight on the social costs of government assistance (e.g., for
building water infrastructure), and the Zapatistas’ refusal to pay them. Not only are
government-funded projects commonly delayed and/or gutted by corruption, but all too
often institutional resources only reach obedient clientele and this may cause or intensify
conflicts that divide communities (or pit them against one another).
Defending the Forests, an earlier (2000) eighteen-minute video produced by the
Guerrero division of CMP/Promedios, demonstrates that indigenous video need not
always focus on people who self-identify as indigenous. This video introduces the Orga-
nization of Campesino Environmentalists (OCE) and examines how it has been fighting
since 1998 to achieve local control of sustainable logging in the Sierra Petatlán, a moun-
tainous region in central Guerrero. From the eerie images and unsettling editing at its
start, the video conveys the terror and uncertainly instilled by the militarized force that
has brutally opened this region to rampant exploitation by the lumber industry. It also
vividly illustrates the environmental damage wrought since the 1970s when a corrupt
governor sold lumber concessions and began to build roads in the region. Through testi-
monies, viewers learn how some people gradually realized the devastating ecological
impact of clear-cutting forests and came together as the OCE. They successfully put an
end to these illegal practices, only to suffer brutal violations of their human rights as a
result. At the center of this video is the case of OCE members Rodolfo Montiel and
Teodoro Cabrera who were wrongfully imprisoned and tortured for their role in ousting
the transnational lumber corporation, Boise Cascade, from the region (Camacho 2004). I
suggest that after students view this video, they be directed toward internet resources
that allow them to update and flesh-out this story even further. They can consider how
this case received further international attention in 2000 when Montiel received the
Goldman Environmental Prize, which contributed to Montiel and Cabrera’s release from
prison a year later by order of newly-elected President Fox (although they were not
cleared of the false charges that put them there). Sadly, however, the Goldman prize
could not protect one of their defense lawyers, Digna Ochoa, who was murdered in
highly suspicious circumstances after repeated death threats. Furthermore, brutal oppres-
sion of members of OCE and their families continues to this day.34 In addition to clearly
illustrating what contemporary caciques are and do, the video Defending the Forests provides
 Indigenous Video in Mexico 121

ample material for subsequent class lectures and discussions about the powerful, but
patchy influence of environmental and human rights discourses, and the transnational
advocacy organizations that mobilize them in the defense of people like Montiel and
Cabrera.
Concluding thoughts on where to go with indigenous video
Indigenous videos provide valuable and previously inaccessible insights on the
local, regional, and global forces shaping and sustaining indigenous (and other marginalized)
communities in Latin America. Furthermore, incorporating such a perspective into our
teaching, and when possible our research, contributes to the decolonization of the
production of authoritative geographic knowledge. More specifically, the use of video
allows indigenous actors to contest colonialist geopolitics of knowledge that identify and
position indigenous peoples as unsuitable subjects for undertaking analysis. Such amplifi-
cation augments the authority of indigenous communities to identify and utilize their
own geographically-specific measures for defining wildly abstract and yet deadly material
matters such as ownership, need, and well being. Studying these efforts and their impacts
brings analytical attention to the interstitial spaces where differentially-located actors
and their cultural practices of knowledge production mutually (but unequally and only
partially) constitute one another (cf. Bravo 2000; Hale 1997). Contemplating indigenous
video is a helpful prelude to critically examining other visual technologies (such as those
used for mapping) with which data based on local knowledges can be rendered and
mobilized in the interest of those who previously have not had a voice in planning
development and resource extraction initiatives.35

Notes
1
This article, which benefited from the comments and questions of anonymous review-
ers, emerged out of a project funded by a Dissertation Research Grant # SES-0136035
from the National Science Foundation’s Science and Technology Studies Program. It is
perhaps even more important to acknowledge that without the kind and patient generos-
ity of the people whose work and experiences are explored here, it would not have been
possible to undertake this project. I am also grateful for David Robinson’s thoughtful
guidance and support.

2
Indigenous video implies a commitment to making dignified and faithful portraits of
how they [indigenous communities] conceive of themselves, so that the image represents
them as they wish to be presented, and so that they can control the way in which their
wisdom, spirituality and knowledge are made known through this means of communica-
tion (Monteforte 2002, 25).

3
“There are VHS, mini-DV, and DVD formats, but there is no indigenous video format.”
Lest this comment be taken as indication of naïveté, I should note that Filoteo Gómez
Martínez made this comment, largely in jest, during the first session of the Tercer Encuentro
Internacional de Cine y Video Etnográfico, “Antropología de las Diferencias: Miradas
multidisciplinarias desde el cine, video y otras tecnologías de comunicación” in Xalapa,
Veracruz (November 21-25, 2005), where his video Dulce Convivencia/Sweet Gathering was
screened and discussed. It is my understanding that, far from confusing media formats, he
intended to highlight the haziness of media genres.

4
At the 2005 AAG meeting in Denver, I had the pleasure of participating in a panel
centered on indigenous methodologies. During this session, organizer Renee Pualani
122 Journal of Latin American Geography

Louis (an indigenous geographer from Hawai’i) identified these three ‘R’s—respect,
reciprocity, and relationship—as hallmarks of indigenous methodologies. I am most
grateful for her timely summation and for the thoughtful interventions of other folks
who participated in the discussion.

5
The Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI) was the federal agency in charge of researching
indigenous communities and orchestrating and overseeing outreach programs aimed to-
ward these communities. In the Spring of 2003, INI was reconfigured into the Comisión
Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas (CDI—http://www.cdi.gob.mx).
González (2004) provides a succinct resource for introducing students to critical anthro-
pology as a response to decades of indigenismo and as a contributing factor to today’s
“zapatismo.”

6
Jonathan Fox observes that “with Solidarity funding, INI transformed itself from a
service provider into an economic development agency” (Fox 1994: 189; quoted in
Wortham 2002: 132).

7
Some insight into Monteforte’s career can be glimpsed with the following three webpages:
http://www.nativenetworks.si.edu/eng/rose/monteforte_g.htm,
http://www.ashoka.org/fellows/viewprofile3.cfm?reid=96419, and
http://www.mediaartists.org/content.php?sec=artist&sub=detail&artist_id=609.

8
An interview with García is found in a recent issue of American Anthropologist (Brígido-
Corachán 2004). Some aspects of García’s media-making career are summarized on these
two webpages:
http://www.nativenetworks.si.edu/eng/rose/garcia_j.htm#open;
http://www.mediaartists.org/content.php?sec=artist&sub=detail&artist_id=669.

9
Although the group is known as Ojo de Agua Comunicación, or more commonly just
Ojo de Agua, it is legally recognized in Mexico as a sociedad civil (i.e., an NGO with profit-
making aspirations) under the name Comunicación Indígena.
In much of rural Mexico, an ojo de agua is a spring-fed source of life-sustaining water
whose location is often sacred. Members chose this particular name because of their
belief in the value of visual media such as video and their determination to serve as
conduits for its access and use. A brief introduction to Ojo de Agua with links to
information about their recent activities is featured on the National Museum of the
American Indian’s Native Networks website, http://www.nativenetworks.si.edu/eng/
rose/ojo_de_agua.htm#open. Ojo de Agua’s own website is http://www.laneta.apc.org/
ojodeagua/. Please bear in mind that it has not been updated in five years.
The following sketch of Ojo de Agua is based upon my dissertation project
(Smith 2005), which entailed extensive ethnographic inquiry into the emergence and
geographic entanglements of this organization. I greatly appreciate the good humor and
kindness with which its members suffered my observation and participation.

10
After García’s resignation, the CVI was shut down and then reopened almost a year
later, in a drastically downsized location staffed by one person with much less experience.

11
José Luis Velázquez Díaz was part of INI’s TMA team toward the end of the program’s
existence. During that time he and Monteforte produced a short-lived television program
called Video Indígena Visiones that was broadcast on semi-public ‘cultural channels’ in
 Indigenous Video in Mexico 123

Mexico. Like Monteforte, by the late 1990s Velázquez had left INI to produce videos in
a more independent manner, what we might call free-lance.

12
Established in 1956 in Mexico City under the auspices of UNESCO and Mexico’s
Secretaria de Educación Publica (SEP), the Instituto Latinoamericano de la Comunicación Educativa
(ILCE) is an international organization concerned with comtech-mediated education.
Working under contract with the SEP, the ILCE is in charge of coordinating the pro-
gramming broadcast on Edusat, Mexico’s educational television satellite system. For a
brief but helpful introduction to these entanglements, see http://members.tripod.com/
~ILCE/pagina4.htm#. Calderoni (1998, 4-5) offers a more detailed evaluation of Mexico’s
Telesecundaria initiative. And a more general examination of educational television in
Mexico is found in Chávez (2004).
This was not the first time that Ojo de Agua produced programs for the
ILCE. Toward the end of 1999, Velázquez was coordinating an educational series
called Los Pueblos Indígenas de México that was supported by INI and the ILCE. He hired
Monteforte as the Executive Producer of two twenty-seven minute programs that
were to address the concept of autonomy, as it pertained to indigenous communities.
Ojo de Agua’s two video productions, Nuestro Pueblo and Nuestra Ley, were completed
by mid-2000. In February 2005, Nuestra Ley and Nuestro Pueblo were listed within the
Hacia una nueva sociedad division of programming that is broadcast via Edusat on Channel
13—Formación Continua, which is dedicated to long distance and institutional training.
They are classified as programs that are geared towards general education on the secundaria
and media superior (mid-stage of undergraduate studies) levels. In addition to being
broadcast nationally, these two videos have also garnered international acclaim during
their (relatively speaking) wide-circulation through circuits of international exhibition.
For a glimpse of the videos’ travels, see http://www.nativenetworks.si.edu/eng/
orange/1852.htm and http://www.nativenetworks.si.edu/eng/orange/1862.htm.

13
According to the official history of the Coordinación General de Educación Intercultural
Bilingüe (http://eib.sep.gob.mx/index.php?seccion=1&id=30), this recently established
division of SEP embodies President Fox’s administration’s effort to incorporate bilingual,
intercultural education (as opposed to the more simplistic and teleological model of
bicultural, which has historically mapped the one-way street: indioàmestizo) at all
educational levels, not just the primaria.

14
Another product of the Fox administration, the Consejo Nacional para Prevenir la
Discriminación was established in late April, 2003. See their website for further details:
http://www.conapred.org.mx.

15
The violence characterizing this region is exacerbated by an illicit drug and extensive
militarization, purportedly in the name of a U.S.-supported war on drugs, although the
Mexican army’s presence has been distinguished by extensive abuse and impunity. Further
details can be found in the report “Military Injustice: Mexico’s Failure to Punish Army
Abuses” published by Human Right Watch (http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/
mexico/index.htm#TopOfPage and cf. Menjívar and Rodríguez 2005). See also two
video-mediated examinations of these matters produced by the Chiapas Media Project/
Promedios (discussed below), Reclaiming Justice: Guerrero’s Indigenous Community Police
(2002) and Eyes on What’s Inside: The Militarization of Guerrero (2004). Both of which are
available for purchase at www.promedios.org.
124 Journal of Latin American Geography

16
Even more specifically, according to Guillermo Monteforte (email communication,
December 17, 2005), the aim of this video is to “have people know the story from the
point of view of the communities and the police members themselves, and to counteract
widely disseminated misinformation that the Community Police are a bunch of armed
hoodlums and guerillas trying to control the area.”

17
As Monteforte further explained (email communication, December 17, 2005), working
with the SEP series “has taught some of the members to work in the intense television
production pace while maintaining quality and commitment that are true to Ojo de
Agua’s mission.”

18
This is not to say that these patterns have disappeared altogether (Hellman 1994).
Indeed, many observers note their replication in the practices and policies of NGOs (e.
g., Arellano Gault 1999; Miraftab 1997).

19
Sarmiento Silva (2001) offers an overview of how the restructuring of the Mexican
state permitted many indigenous organizations to extend their geographical reach, and
Hernández-Díaz (2001) provides a detailed study of how these patterns have unfolded
in Oaxaca.

20
For a handy overview of Mexico’s indigenous population see the the Perfiles Indígenas
website (www.ciesasistmo.edu.mx/ciesasweb/perfilnacional.html). And for important
reminders that not all indigenous communities approach the Zapatistas the same way,
nor do they all embrace the Zapatista movement, see Stephen (1997) and Hernández
Castillo (2001).

21
Marcos elaborates on the Zapatistas’ “third shoulder” in the third communiqué in an
eight-part series published as an online “video” in August 2004 (see http://
www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html or
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/2004/marcos/amessageAUG.html).

22
This sketch of CMP/Promedios benefits greatly from conversations with Halkin over
the last two years, as well as her chapter titled “Outside the Indigenous Lens: Zapatistas
and Autonomous Videomaking” in the forthcoming book Global Indigenous Media: Cultures,
Practices, and Politics.

23
Created in 1991, the US-Mexico Fund for Culture brought together financial support
from the Rockefeller Foundation, Mexico’s National Fund for Culture and the Arts and
the Bancomer Cultural Foundation. When CMP garnered funding in 1997, 65 cultural
and bi-national projects were funded. They are listed at: http://www.rockfound.org/
display.asp?context=1&Collection=4&DocID=64&Preview=0&ARCurrent=1). For
a glimpse of today’s US-Mexico Fund for Culture, see http://www.fidemexusa.org.mx/

24
A list of some of the foundations that have supported CMP/Promedios may be
reviewed on the outreach and support page of the organization’s website
(www.promedios.org). Most recently Halkin was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship
for the collaborative project “Latin American Indigenous Video Initiative,” and CMP/
Promedios received a grant from Honor the Earth Foundation (http://
www.honorearth.org/) that allowed Francisco Vázquez (of the Chiapas office) to
 Indigenous Video in Mexico 125

present CMP/Promedios videos in October 2005 on the Pine Ridge and Lac Courte
Oreilles Reservations, in South Dakota and northern Wisconsin respectively.

25
One can read about CLACPI and its festivals on their recently-revamped website:
http://www.clacpi.org. For further insights, see Himpele (2004a,b), Smith (2005:
238-322), and Wortham (2002: 325-36).

26
To learn about the Smithsonian’s festival, see
http://www.nativenetworks.si.edu/eng/blue/nafvf_03.htm.

27
The cooperation among a variety of differentially-located actors that underlies
indigenous cultural activism is particularly visible in another Chiapas-based initiative,
the Proyecto Videoastas Indígenas de la Frontera Sur (PVIFS), which has worked closely
with Ojo de Agua and CMP/Promedios. Unlike these two media NGOs, however, the
PVIFS is embedded within a government-funded research institution, the Centro de
Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social—Sureste. Founded in 2000 by Xochitl
Leyva and Axel Köhler, who studied visual anthropology together at the University of
Manchester, the PVIFS is as dedicated to revamping scholarly practices of inquiry
through lessons learned from indigenous media production as it is to imparting video
recording and editing skills. To more about the PVIFS and Leyva and Köhler’s admirable
goals, see the following website, which is available in both Spanish and English, http://
www.ciesassureste.edu.mx/PVIFS/pagina_principal.html.

28
Indeed, Halkin (forthcoming) points out that most raw footage recorded by the
Zapatistas is not intended for circulation outside of the caracoles. See also the comments
of the indigenous video makers from Mexico quoted in Ciuk (2005), as well as those of
Crisanto Manzano, a Zapotec videomaker from Oaxaca, on the NMAI webpage devoted
to him (http://www.nativenetworks.si.edu/eng/rose/avella_c.htm#open). For
analyses of the ways in which indigenous video makers’ emphasis on community
audiences often differs drastically from the directions in which their videos travel see
Wortham (2004) and Smith (2005).

29
There are three exceptions (that I am aware of) to this general observation about the
efforts of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). The first was a 1998
tour Erica Wortham organized while working for the NMAI, wherein Native American
film makers traveled through Mexico (see Singer 2001). There were two subsequent
tours in the United States, also sponsored by the NMAI. In March 2002, the Eye of the
Condor brought indigenous media makers and an important advocate from Bolivia (see
http://www.nativenetworks.si.edu/eng/blue/eotc.htm and Himpele 2004a,b). In April
2003, the Video Native Mexico tour brought Guillermo Monteforte and several of his
indigenous media making colleagues (see http://www.nativenetworks.si.edu/eng/blue/
vmi_03.htm). Both of these tours sometimes stepped outside of scholarly institutions
to include screenings at community centers serving Spanish-speaking immigrants, as
well as a casino complex in Wisconsin. See also note 21 about CMP/Promedio’s move
in this direction.

30
Currently, this distribution model is beyond the reach of Latin American indigenous
media organizations because of the reasons mentioned above: lack of recording equipment
and/or the time or skills for reproducing materials, generally unreliable postal service,
and difficulties of currency exchange. There are additional, even more basic, problems
126 Journal of Latin American Geography

such as inadequate facilities for archiving video materials. Fortunately, however Halkin
and her colleagues at CLACPI are working to acquire the resources to establish a digital
archive that will also serve as a distribution center and produce profits for the involved
indigenous media projects. See note twenty-one.

31
See note 18.

32
For a handy overview of indigenous video production in Mexico, see “Mapping
Mexican Media: Indigenous Community Video and Radio,” prepared by NMAI personnel
Amalia Córdova and Gabriela Zamorano (http://www.nativenetworks.si.edu/eng/
rose/mexico.htm#open). To learn about indigenous video in Bolivia, students can read
Himpele (2004a,b) and visit http://www.nativenetworks.si.edu/eng/rose/cefrec.htm.
For some insight into a similar initiative in Brazil, Video in the Villages, see their
website (http://www.videonasaldeias.org.br/abertura/index.html).

33
At one point in the video, the World Water Forum 2000 is cited as the source of these
figures. An interesting exercise would have students investigate this and subsequent
World Water Forums via the internet.

34
To learn about the Goldman Environmental Prize, which is awarded annually to
ordinary people with extraordinary commitments to protecting natural resources, and
the reasons why it was awarded to Montiel, see http://www.goldmanprize.org/
index.html. Students can learn about Digna Ochoa’s heroic and sadly shortened career
at http://www.amnestyusa.org/women/defenders/digna.html. And the violence
continues unabated. Another member of OCE, Felipe Arreaga, was imprisoned in July
2005, this time due to long-delayed accusation that he was implicated in the murder of
a cacique’s son (see http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/mexico/
3321.html). Two sons of Albertano Peñaloza, another member of OCE were recently
killed when their father was attacked (see http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/
N20157524.htm). In August 2005, Peñaloza, Arreaga, and Arreaga’s wife (leader of
Organization of Women Ecologists of the Sierra of Petatlán) were presented by
Greenpeace Mexico, Amnesty International and the Tlachinollan Mountain Human
Rights Center with the Sierra Club’s Chico Mendes Award (see http://
www2.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impreso/web_columnas_sup.detalle?var=24467).

35
The number of resources that are useful for moving post-video-viewing classes in this
direction is growing (e. g. Human Organization 2003; Knapp and Herlihy 2002; Offen
2003).

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