Resistance and the rule of law in Mexico

Abstract

Judicial reform and promotion of the rule of law are at the very top of the political agendas of many developing countries. Moreover, in the context of democratization and a growing concern for human rights and citizenshjip, many social groups are prepared to use the law as a means to challenge the State. This article looks at how a group in Mexico used the law to resist the State's attempt to expropriate land for urban development. The law was used as a method of opposition as well as a symbol, by allowing the resistance to be represented in the form of 'rights'. In so doing, the legal discourse exposed deeper concerns for justice, ethnicity and nationhood. The solution to the conflict, however, is shown to bear little relation to either the legal framework which structured the resistance or the legal principles which the confrontation sought to establish.