The ethnographies in this dossier show the frictions, differences and even contradictions in cultural dynamics when traditional ways of organizing life, the longing to recover the past and keep it alive, internal social rules, moral principles, the demands and aspirations of younger generations, external and internal intellectual proposals, learning to organize political struggles and dialogues with the State, the influence of markets, national policies and the multiple paths to achieve the desired futures come together. If there is one tradition worth remembering from the utopian proposals of the last centuries, it is that the subject of change requires the collectivity to develop its capacity for agency towards change, towards the dreamed horizon.

In this paper we show how organizations and projects anchored in the contemporary indigenous community are structured around imaginaries of the desirable future. We take up the idea of utopia as referring to the possible in order to understand the effects of ethnic claims on the communities themselves. As an orientation towards the future, we discuss the limitations and scope of the concept of utopia for its use as an explanatory category. The empirical referent is the forty-year experience of a Purhépecha community that has mobilized to achieve its recognition.