Indigenous community enterprises in Chiapas: A vehicle for buen vivir?

Abstract

Buen vivir is an indigenous conception of well-being that has recently entered the Latin American debate on development. Overcoming the mainstream Western conception of development based mainly on economic growth, buen vivir emphasizes the importance of indigenous culture, the natural environment, and collective well-being. This article reports on an ethnographic study of self-managed grass-roots economic initiatives created by indigenous Mayan communities in the Mexican state of Chiapas. It focuses on identifying the enabling factors that have supported the emergence of these enterprises and the impact they have had on improving indigenous well-being. The main findings pinpoint the capacity of community enterprises to address a plurality of goals by selforganizing to meet indigenous peoples' unsatisfied needs, which are not only social and economic but also political, cultural, and environmental.