Abstract

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.

Keywords: autonomy, community, indigenous movement, recognition, utopia

community utopias as hope for the future among the purhépechas

This article shows how organizations and projects in contemporary Indigenous communities are structured around imaginaries of a desirable future. Here the idea of utopia suggests potential, enabling an understanding of the effects of reaffirming ethnic belonging within the community. The concept of utopia as a guide to the future is discussed with regard to its limits, reach, and explanatory power as a category. The empirical subject matter is forty years of experience of a Purhépecha community that has been fighting for recognition.

Keywords: community, utopia, recognition, autonomy, Indigenous movement.

Recognition as an unattainable horizon

In Mexico and Latin America, since the seventies of the twentieth century, the xxIn the early 1990s, independent indigenous and peasant organizations burst forth with clear ethnic demands and the defense of their resources and tangible and intangible heritage. Since then, in defending and claiming particular aspects such as their territory, language, communality or knowledge, from different fronts it was considered that they were going against the general trends of integration, so that their demand for recognition would be practically an unattainable horizon. At the beginning of the 1980s xxGuillermo Bonfil (1981) described the struggle of Latin American indigenous organizations to transform their reality as utopian; in that book and in his later work (Bonfil, 1990) he does not assign a negative connotation to the term, but rather links it to possibilities, projects and visions of the future (Bonfil, 1981:44-45). Based on the documents, declarations and different expressions of intellectuals and indigenous organizations, Bonfil (1990) highlights the profound character of ethnic demands in the face of the discourses obsessed with the modernization of the country.

From another, totally opposite perspective, among the first critics of the movements of ethnic demands in our nation, was Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, the theoretician of Mexican integrationist indigenism, who considered that the ethnic struggle "leads to a dead end" (1983: 342), as opposed to the demands as proletarian "which is the only one that opens possibilities of development in a foreseeable future" (1983: 343). Due to their particular conditions, such as seeking to overcome their colonized condition, indigenous movements and organizations would be a clear example of utopian movements. For authors such as Bonfil, these utopias show a great historical density that has allowed them to define agendas and action programs in the last five decades.

Currently, there is no longer any discussion about the legitimacy of the demands for recognition of the native communities and peoples and thanks to the modifications to the national legislation, but above all to the international agreements signed by the Mexican State (such as 169 of the International Labor Organization), oit), important progress has been made in this area. However, their full recognition, as native nations with full autonomy, is still a long way off. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that their mobilization and integration proposals have had an impact on different aspects of their social organization and way of life.

To discuss these issues I take as an empirical reference the Purhépecha communities of Michoacán, in particular the community of Santa Fe de la Laguna, whose experience dates back more than 40 years, and the project of the Purhépecha Nation. From then to date - including the decisive year of 1994, when the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN, Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (ezln), which repositioned the indigenous issue at the center of the national political agenda, indigenous peoples and organizations have traveled through multiple paths, gaps and organizational avenues and have encountered different obstacles and return paths (such as their complex relationship with the Mexican State and political parties, full of nuances and covering a wide range from alliance to rejection and confrontation), which has led them to constantly rethink their organizational strategies, objectives and methods of struggle. There has not been a single indigenous organization, but rather a great diversity of attempts to build unions, councils, coalitions, coordinators, etcetera.

As happens with all movements that seek to shape their future, although they have achieved important changes, not all the results have been as expected, and some have even turned out to be the opposite. In highly differentiated and unequal societies, such as ours, the demand for recognition by subjects that have been historically segregated and subordinated due to their different qualities would seem to be an unattainable horizon or a utopia.2 In this claim is manifested the will to maintain themselves as communities despite the pressures and adversities they face on a daily basis. If indigenous communities maintain themselves as collective subjects in a highly adverse context such as that offered by extractivist and predatory neoliberal capitalism, it is thanks to their firm will to preserve and project a collective way of life that, despite tensions, conflicts and internal divisions, maintains certain features of a collectivist utopia, always in tension with the modernizing and individualistic projects that appear both inside and outside the community.

Contrary to classical interpretations (Durkheim, 1973; Töenies, 1979) that define the community as a form of organization distinct from or opposed to the contract society, I consider that communities exist only as a project that seeks to be realized in modernity. In this sense, they are concerned not only with their present conditions, but also and fundamentally with their future. As agents of their own history, they imagine possible futures and execute actions, in the present, focused on achieving that imagined future. These actions, in some way, condition the social relations of the present and lead, on occasions, to reinterpret their past and rethink their history.4

Placing at the center actors with the capacity to modify their destiny means accepting that all the community arrangements we know are the product of the concurrent imaginative action of those who form part of social collectives and who try to forge their own future, although we must recognize that these imaginaries are shaped by historical references. Otherwise, it would be difficult to understand that some communities show principles of organization -not completely attached to those promoted by the hegemonic capitalist system- that are the work of the imagination of collectives that desire a different future. This is the case of those that develop alternative forms of consumption or production, or those that invest, to their limits, time, work and material resources in religious ceremonies. Since these are ongoing processes, understanding them presents us with the challenge of apprehending what is under construction and not only what exists.

The young professionals who promoted the ethnic movements starting in the 1970s installed the idea that there is no predestination or a single linear time, but that the future can be built and the present can be modified through action. They are young people with radical ideas that question the repetition of cycles and give great weight to organization and collective mobilization. However, these future-oriented actions do not have a causal relationship with what appears later, nor are they thought of in a cumulative way. At times, tradition is discarded, at others, customs (or "el costumbre", such as respect, the willingness to serve or the rotation of positions) are used to build and support political organization. In their conception, time does not pass in a linear fashion, but advances in several directions. They turn to the past and to lived experiences to legitimize their claims, but they also question the living conditions of the present, a product of that past, and define new possibilities for building the future. The Christian regime of historicity (Hartog, 2022) that establishes the linearity of time is questioned, with the messianic future as the desirable horizon that definitively surpasses the past and the present. If we consider that Indian utopias (and others of subordinate groups) confront the projects of capitalist modernization (the utopias of the elites), which emphasize individualism, technological progress, environmental depredation and dispossession of the commons, we can say that the present would be the result of a struggle of utopias or projects for the meaning of the future.

Utopia, utopias and the commitment to the future

In order to advance in the discussion it is necessary to specify the use I am making of the concept of utopia. As a bet on the future, and after observing some of its consequences, utopias, despite all their transformative or revolutionary content, can have absolutely negative contradictory consequences. Critics such as Lewis Mumford (2015), after a review of very different examples, have highlighted the disastrous consequences of utopias. Other liberal authors, such as Karl Popper (2017) or Isaiah Berlin (1992), have been responsible for highlighting the negative aspects, the dystopian effects (such as authoritarianism, the cancellation of individual freedoms and social closure) of social movements because it is generally thought that, due to the selfish nature of human beings, utopian proposals tend to lead to closed and authoritarian systems (Berlin, 1992).

Similarly, those ideologies that propose that there are structural forces, such as the market or power, that shape subjects and their will and that are what really govern us, are also dystopian expressions, insofar as they determine human agency. These ideologies are responsible for pointing out to us that any decision we make is already mediated or intervened by those circumstances and relationships that we consider normal or natural. Consequently, any attempt to transform the prevailing conditions of life will end up producing the opposite of what was intended.4 On the other hand, using the term "utopian" as an adjective to qualify the unrealizable or failed projects, because they were unattainable from the beginning, has also been a way of discrediting the transformative potential of the projects undertaken by subordinate groups to change their living conditions.

However, in the search for a better life, the possibility of more egalitarian and less violent societies remains valid. Moreover, authors such as David Harvey (2000) and Fredric Jameson (2009) or David Valentine and Amelia Hassoun (2019), point out that, after the fall of the Soviet Union and under the globalizing neoliberal regime, a renewal of utopianism was observed precisely because the new world order posed unexpected challenges for subaltern groups. Because the future is permanently under construction, but uncertain, authors such as Karl Mannheim (1987) and Paul Ricoeur (1989) have pointed out that utopias have two faces, one positive and the other negative. Generally what is observed is one of these facets. To overcome this exclusionary dichotomy, Michael Gordin, Helen Tilley and Gyan Prakash (2010: 6) have proposed that, in reality and for methodological purposes, utopia and dystopia form a unit and should be taken as such. For the same reason, to remain only with the negative image of utopias also means ignoring the transformative potential of imaginaries, dreams and ideals of change or the search for a better life, present in the movements of subaltern groups, which Ernst Bloch (2006), among many other expressions of hope, considers as possibilities of utopia.5

It is not a question of idealizing any action coming from the indigenous organizations that we will present here, but rather of understanding the processes of community formation in an era adverse to communalism and in which market values and individualism stand out above all. At various times, indigenous movements have been seen as representatives of a radical change, a true revolution in society; however, in practice, what we observe are transformations of a slow or reformist nature and very much associated with problems suffered on a daily basis. To consider a transformation movement occurring in adverse circumstances and causing only changes in living conditions without achieving a major structural transformation would seem to be a misinterpretation of the concept. utopia. Hence the importance of reconsidering the notion of utopia in absolute terms and think rather of possible utopias, realizable or micro-utopias, with achievable goals and in more limited spaces (Vieira, 2020). This would be another methodological qualification to the term.

In this regard, Robert Nozik (1988: 300) had already pointed out that we should consider Utopia as a framework in which utopias (realizable, possible) occur: "Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are free to unite voluntarily to pursue and try to realize their own conception of the good life in the ideal community, but where no one can impose his own utopian vision on others". Ricoeur explains that to speak of utopias always refers to the possible: "a field of other possible ways of living" (1989: 58). This possibility that is constructed to confront an adverse reality also questions power and in Gramscian terms would be a way of constructing a counter-hegemonic discourse from subalternity.

In this sense, Arjun Appadurai (2013) proposes that, in order to approach the subject of the future, we must consider as the object of ethnography the "politics of possibility" (imaginary) as opposed to the "politics of probability" (realistic), as a way of approaching the ongoing projects of subaltern groups. It proposes to study ethnographically the strategies, goals and achievements of subaltern movements because they are the evidence of the politics of possibility in the present time.

Thinking in terms of possible utopias offers us elements to reflect on and understand other particular ways of living, other life projects that are in gestation and that some collectivities are building or are already underway today. Utopianism, because it arises from the imagination, contains a reflective dimension that challenges "reality" and power, and another ethical dimension from which its transforming impulse is derived. Therefore, I consider that the concept of utopia can be useful both to reflect on certain behaviors and social arrangements, to confront it with the objectives of social movements, as well as to evaluate the effects of certain proposals promoted with the intention of transforming living conditions, creating other social arrangements whose effects have not been as expected. As an explanatory category, utopia is present in some forms of organization that seek to realize the ideal of living well or improving the situation in everyday life.

In addition to the two methodological precisions we have already pointed out -important to transcend the philosophical discussion and the mere use of the term utopia as an adjective and explore its analytical potential-, it is necessary to specify, as proposed by Jameson (2009), that the term went from having a spatial reference (a non-place, as in the classic utopia of Thomas More) to having a temporal one, a desire or ideal of a better world or life to be achieved. Possible or realizable utopias imagine that the "future" is not something that is totally out of our hands, but, on the contrary, what is contingent or uncertain can be responded to or confronted by organized, planned and, above all, alternative action to the existing order. The "bet on", the thought-out or last-minute decision, the "day dream" or the "wish to be otherwise", all these and other artifices (such as those encompassed by magic, divination, anticipation or mathematical prediction), just like utopia, are ways of intervening and pretending to shape the uncertain or nebulous future. But in carrying out this operation or, more precisely, in becoming involved or actively participating in a project of this nature, one affects the present and everyday life, which is already the result of the action and which constitutes the starting point of ethnographic work. The discussion of utopias as bets for the future has entered the anthropological discussion, in the studies of time, temporalities and futures.

The commitment to the future has been at the center of the work of indigenous organizations in Michoacán since the 1970s, when they directly intervened in the transformation of their living conditions. However, regional and even local problems are so different and sometimes so contrasting that it is practically impossible for a single organization to represent the interests of all groups and to be recognized by the majority of peoples and communities; therefore, it is difficult to speak of a single future. It is important to consider that although in recent decades there has been a proliferation of apocalyptic discourses, coming from the scientific field, related to climate change and environmental depredation, it is necessary to recognize that there is no single future for all of humanity, but that it is possible and necessary to think of diverse futures, which are constructed in interaction with local histories, present conditions and the stakes that communities place on the future.

In this paper I propose that the actions carried out in the present time (which are those recorded by ethnography) are conditioned by their particular history and are those that delineate their projection into the future. At the same time, the images or "utopian" imaginaries that clearly appear with the movements of ethnic vindication condition the actions of the present. I take as ethnographic referents those devices such as organizations and projects through which they try to shape their future. That is, the way in which they hope to maintain themselves as viable societies seeking to be recognized as they present themselves.

Following her exhaustive review of the anthropology of time, Nancy Munn (1992: 115-116) points out that up to that time "anthropologists had seen the future in patches and pieces (shreds and patches), in contrast to the attention given 'to the past in the present' [...]". Also Rebecca Bryant and Daniel M. Knight (2019) lament that, in contrast to the great attention given to the past, little or almost no attention has been given to the future. These authors do develop an entire proposal for studying how the future intervenes or expresses itself in the social action of the ethnographic present. They discuss six ways in which the future orients the present: anticipation, expectation, speculation, potentiality, hope, and destiny (Bryant and Knight, 2019: 3). For its part, historical ethnography, which recognizes the presence of the past in the present time, does not consider the problem of temporality and assumes that historical and ethnographic events occur in natural time, when what we observe ethnographically (as I will argue below) is an overlapping of temporalities: local historical time (where past and future converge) and the time of the observer. More similar to what Reinhart Koselleck (1993) proposes with the metaphor of temporal strata (past futures) that manifest themselves in the present. In this sense it is important to note that, just as in the present time there are seeds of messianic time, as pointed out by Walter Benjamin (2007:76), in every utopian movement there are also seeds of messianism. This is precisely what gives the external observer the impression that the indigenous communities do not want to change. The quest to close the gap between what is wanted and projected for the future (preserving the community and communal resources, improving living conditions) and the unpredictable and uncertain that the time of neoliberal modernity offers (market expansion, individualism, agribusiness and depredation) become, in these movements, a transcendental objective.

Organizations: from the Emiliano Zapata Union of Communal Farmers to community councils

After 40 years since the beginning of their political mobilization for recognition, the case of Santa Fe de la Laguna shows us how the different temporalities that coexist in the local space are interwoven or interfere; and that the pursuit of utopias or the bet for the future generates new imaginaries of possible futures that will influence the present and the past. An ethnographic stamp that shows us the effects of utopia, as well as the manifestation of different temporalities in the ethnographic present was the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the beginning of their movement for the defense of their communal lands, on November 11, 2019. This inaugural moment also marked the beginning of what is considered the indigenous emergence in Michoacán and the struggle for recognition. In 1979, indigenous women and men, who did not belong to any official organization, marched through the streets of Morelia, the state capital, closed the main avenue and set up camp for several days in front of the Government Palace, which had a strong impact on Michoacan society. Never before had a group of indigenous peasants challenged the government in such a way. Until then, Michoacan society, practically in its entirety, had been tightly controlled by the corporate structures of the official party. In general, any manifestation of nonconformity, whether for political, religious or community boundary reasons, was resolved through repression or the integration of the nonconformists into the corporate structures of the official party.

Forty years ago, the Santa Fe communal farmers' movement presented itself as an independent peasant movement, led by a group of young radicals who, with a clear orientation towards a socialist utopia, had decided to confront what they considered their class enemies and agents of capitalism: the cattle ranchers of the neighboring town of Quiroga, who had invaded part of their communal lands and threatened to continue invading, in the face of the immobility of the communal authorities of that time. They were part of a peasant organization, the Unión de Comuneros Emiliano Zapata (ucez), with a clear revolutionary left (Marxist) discourse, whose main objective was the struggle for land and whose slogan: "Today we fight for land and also for power", reflects this well.6 Their ideals of change and radical transformation of their community were the product of their training as teachers and professionals in teacher training colleges and public universities, in addition to their training in the guerrilla struggle. Some of the leaders of the indigenous communities, who participated in the ucez were trained as guerrilla fighters in Cuba and North Korea and participated in the Revolutionary Action Movement (sea). They were aligned with the international communist movement that sought to establish a socialist society and maintained links with clandestine organizations and Central American guerrillas. Their dream for the future was to advance the construction of socialism and implant it in Michoacan communities. By the end of the 1980s, the movement was weakened by the strong struggles between leaders and factions that appeared within the organization and in the indigenous communities themselves (Zárate, 1993).

The 2019 anniversary, in which I was present, can be considered a synthesis of how the community represents itself politically. What appears is a strong presence of the immediate past, but also elements of its historical identity as well as its projection as a collectivity.it was quite significant that it was not held in the center of the community nor in the space of the old hospital, where celebrations are usually held, but in the place where two community members were killed when the community occupied and recovered the lands that the cattle ranchers of the neighboring town of Quiroga had invaded, at the edge of the national highway that goes from Guadalajara, Jalisco, to Morelia, Michoacán. It was also a staging of the contemporary Purhépecha identity, that is, how the community members represent themselves today, as opposed to 40 years ago. To show their empowerment, they closed the national highway for nine hours, from 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., with the help of the local police and without threats of repression, and hung a large Purhépecha flag across the entire width of the road. The celebration began with a march led by local authorities from the center of the community to the site where the ceremony was to take place. At the place of the fallen, after the arrival of the contingent and before starting the civic event, a ceremony was held that combined elements of different religions and different temporalities, with incense, speeches about the ancient religion of the indigenous people, the one that, it was said, was destroyed by the colonizers, The ceremony included incense, speeches about the ancient religion of the indigenous people, which was said to have been destroyed by the colonizers, the vindication of Mother Earth, an invitation to the participants to sow some seeds, remembrances of the fallen comrades in that place and the recitation of the rosary (due to the refusal of the priest to give the mass that had been programmed in that place). Afterwards, the civic event began with honors to the flags of the Purhépecha nation and the Mexican nation, the national anthem was sung in Purhépecha by the students and teachers of the local high school named after Elipidio Domínguez Castro, the murdered Purhépecha leader who headed the movement of the eighties, and the first stanzas of what is expected to be the Purhépecha anthem were presented. At the end, the ceremony took place in a pavilion located on the road with the guests, who recalled the years of the movement, their first actions, their former comrades, as well as their importance to understand the current movement for the claim of autonomy, led by the community of Cherán. In the speeches, what stood out was the validity, 40 years later, of the movement for ethnic vindication.

The flag and the act, organized by the local authorities, was a warning to the Quiroga town council that they will not cease in their demand for the recovery and defense of all their communal lands. To which was added their demand for "direct budget" and recognition of their governments by "usos y costumbres", which was finally achieved, after another mobilization, closure of the national race and intrusions in the town council meetings in 2021.

If we think about the consequences or effects of this utopian movement in the present time, some of them intended and others totally unexpected, we can list among the most significant: 1) that the non-conformity (poverty and exclusion) in which the indigenous communities lived was exposed to the public light. Until before this movement, it would seem that the communities lived in a great calm, content with their living conditions. It definitively questioned the corporativism and immobilism of the peasant organizations that had been the support of the presidentialist regime. At the heart of their demand was to maintain for future generations the communal ownership of the land and its natural resources. It was shown that the community was not something backward, but that it could be considered as a way of life to be preserved, maintained and protected, even projected into the future; that is, a way of life different from that offered by the capitalist market and individualism.

2) It placed the issue of the agency of collective subjects in the public debate, which is expressed in the fact that they must now be consulted when it comes to carrying out projects that have a direct impact on them. They are definitively presented as collective subjects, active and with life projects. In all the proceedings, mobilizations and public actions they always claim to be "the community", that is to say, as a whole, a definitive step in the process of recognition. It highlighted their particularity in relation to other actors and trade union and class movements. This became clear, since the 1980s, with the discussion and mobilization against the intended installation of a nuclear reactor on the land of Santa Fe de la Laguna. This movement, which linked the indigenous community with broad sectors of the regional civil society, meant a certain crisis with the most radical members (with a clear Marxist orientation) of the movement, even with its leader who had a class discourse that ideologically coincided with the leaders of the Sindicato Único de Trabajadores de la Industria Nuclear (Nuclear Industry Workers Union) (sutin) in support of the installation of a nuclear reactor on community land.

3) It also provoked a rethinking in the field of ideas (both academic and political) of the way in which the State and its project of nation was conceived, which, although it had emerged from a revolutionary movement, large layers of society (marginal groups) no longer saw themselves represented in it. In this project, indigenous communities were grouped under the socioeconomic category of "peasants", although they did not present themselves as peasants, but as an indigenous community. What was the nation if not a multiplicity of peoples and cultures? For the first time, the State was forced to listen to and negotiate with indigenous groups outside of official corporatism.

4) After a period of extreme agitation and violence in which an attempt was made to install an authoritarian communal regime, which manifested itself in arbitrary expropriations of land and houses and threats to certain families, which led to a strong and violent conflict between factions, by the 1990s the communities returned to tranquility, but with new arrangements. The most important effects for the community were the following: the fear of protesting and complaining was lost; the importance of taking action was demonstrated; the relevance and power of communalism in a time of great authoritarianism and extreme polarization. The communal government was reinforced and renewed, as the assembly of all the communal members and the center of all important decision-making, in which the families, neighborhoods and halves that make up the community organization are represented. In a certain sense, gender and generation relations were redefined without dissolving the local social organization, which is based on gender complementarity, but on the contrary, reinforcing it. Although the representation to occupy a position is familiar and the one who assumes the responsibility is always the head of the family, now it can also be the wife and mother of the family, in addition to women and young people can attend the assembly. The role of the community representative or president of the Commissariat of Communal Property was redefined and, from now on, the position must be held by the person who is absolutely committed to the defense of the community and its natural and material patrimony.

In the nineties and in the face of the weakening of the class discourse and the fall of the utopia that was the socialist world, the horizon shifted and the future was glimpsed in terms of diversity. There was a rethinking of the stakes for the future, no longer strictly agrarian, but expanded towards the ethnic and the vindication of the Purhépecha as a whole. Demands for remunicipalization or the creation of an autonomous multiethnic region appeared (Ventura, 2003: 187). The new organizations will have a clear ethnic discourse, such as Caminos del Pueblo or the Frente Independiente de Comunidades de Michoacán (Independent Front of Michoacán Communities) (ficim) (Máximo, 2003). The Purhépecha Nation project materialized in the Organization of the Purhépecha Nation (onp) (Zárate, 1999: 246; Jasso, 2012: 119-120). This organization appeared in the public light in 1991, launching a manifesto against the reforms to article 27 of the Constitution, prohibiting the sale or trade of communal lands and warning that any communal owner who sold his land would be expelled from his community and territory (Máximo, 2003: 584; Dietz, 1999: 369). Their discourse basically had two axes: communal autonomy and the defense of natural resources, especially forests. As an organization made up mostly of professionals from various communities with a clear discourse and political affiliation, it was soon weakened. The utopia of remunicipalization was postponed. The onp first fragmented due to disputes over the control of resources from external financing that, as a civil association, should be destined to community projects. Then, because its leaders were never able to escape from partisan dynamics, it was diluted until it became insignificant in the political panorama. Through this political organization, in the nineties and with the impulse of the Zapatista uprising, the autonomy of the communities was sought through remunicipalization, which was not achieved.

At the end of the first decade of the xxi and in the face of the advance of organized crime, an attempt was made to activate coordination between community authorities and community patrols to defend themselves. Several meetings were held between community representatives, but no progress was made in terms of organization or coordination for defense. After the movement of the Cherán community in 2011, which led to the recognition of its government by uses and customs, its governing council and its own police force, the main demands of the rest of the communities have gone in this direction: to receive their budget directly (without going through the treasury of the municipalities) and the recognition of their government by uses and customs (which means having their own uniformed and armed community police, as well as deciding whether to allow the intervention of political parties and ballot boxes). This achievement has been reflected in more than 50 communities in the region and others are in the process. Advised by different groups of lawyers, the organizations currently spearheading these efforts are the Supreme Indigenous Council of Michoacán (csim) and the Frente por la Autonomía de Consejos y Comunidades Indígenas (or Frente por la Autonomía), led by the lawyers' collective Emacipanciones (EC). Both organizations aim to achieve the autonomy of the communities and advance in the consolidation of the Purhépecha Nation. In addition, they support the demands and mobilizations of the communities in the face of any type of conflict.

So far this century, claims for the recognition of their customs and traditions have been based on the International Labor Organization's Convention 169 (ILO Convention 169).oit) and the right to have their own government and a police force to guarantee the security of the population. It is interesting to observe how the communal past, by influencing the utopian projects, ended up imposing itself and how the communal discourse and logic provoked a process of purification of what was considered positive or viable in communal life, of what had been perverted, disrupted or had become of particular interest and had to be modified. But it also pointed out the clear limitations of radical thinking. Those proposals that disdained community history, such as anti-clericalism, the violence of armed groups, the discourse that only through violence could change be achieved, and also the "all or nothing" proposal of the radical leaders, which led to clear divisions, were discarded. The reorganization of the local government, the role of the assembly, the commitment of the authorities to the community and the defense of its patrimony were accepted.

Undoubtedly, communities are increasingly diverse and plural, as a result of the implementation of various modernization projects, although they maintain mechanisms of service (such as cargos) and cohesion such as ritual exchanges that carry a strong history. This is where the new bets of the communitarian utopia appear, now represented in the new forms of government of the communal councils, in charge of administering the direct budget and offering the services that the municipality used to offer, such as security, education, health. It is in this case that both the legal recognition of certain autonomy and the government by uses and customs find clear limits because within the same community and between communities there coexist different and sometimes conflicting ways of conceiving autonomy. Pluralism and the diversity of interests and community projects represent a challenge for the achievement of the utopia of a political community.

Projects

From the eighties onwards and in parallel with the weakening of the ucezIn the early years of the Purhépecha Nation, different organizational initiatives and future projects of a more ethnic nature appeared, one of them being the idea of the Purhépecha Nation. The process of reinvention of the Purhépecha nation or people was consolidated through actions and discourses of a vindictive nature and towards the search for autonomy. Gradually, but steadily, actions began to be carried out in the communities that sought to maintain effective control of their institutions and ways of relating to the State, companies and civil society organizations.

The utopia of the Purhépecha nation was originally manifested in the creation of a series of symbols that, in the early eighties, seemed somewhat strange to the majority of the population, but are now widely accepted and diffused. Such as the flag, the coat of arms, the Purhépecha New Year celebration, the very term "Purhépecha" instead of the colonial Tarascan, and the motto "Purhépecha". (juchari uinapikua)that have practically become institutionalized. A whole new utopian project conceived by professionals and intellectuals that emerged from the communities themselves.

The Purhépecha Nation project or to present itself as a nation is perhaps the most ambitious that has been proposed in the last decades due to the challenges that it intends to overcome. Few indigenous peoples conceive and present themselves as a nation. On the one hand, it is to present themselves and seek recognition as a people or nation that is on a par with any other nation and has the same rights and not as an ethnic minority. On the other hand, to overcome the endemic differences and intercommunal conflicts that, throughout the last century xxThe Purhépechas, which were the first to be created, provoked divisions and confrontations (some of which are still ongoing). As has happened with the formulation of other projects of imagined communities or nations, which seek to overcome colonial relations (Anderson, 2008), it was a group of intellectuals and professionals, self-styled Purhépechas, who defined their existence and formulated the symbols of identity. An imaginary that brings together wills, desires, aspirations; in a word: the identity of multiple actors, even with diverse political, cultural and social projects.

In this process, the adoption of the term purhépecha as the gentilicio to which first intellectuals, artists, authorities, activists, teachers, among others, and then the rest of the society, formerly called Tarascan, have ascribed themselves, has been fundamental to understand how the idea of nation has been endowed with content. The term Purhépecha means common people or commoner and, as a gentilicio, it was not used in pre-Hispanic times, nor in colonial times, nor in independent Mexico. In pre-Hispanic times, what existed were clans and one of the first names used by the conquistadors was michoaques or people of the city of Michoacán (which is of Nahua origin). Only in one colonial source, the relation of Cuitzeo (Acuña, 1987: 81), there is a mention of the term Purhépecha.7 During the colonial period, the conquerors imposed the term Tarasco and this is how it appears in colonial chronicles and ethnographies until the 1980s. Even in those years, the oldest members of the communities continued to use the colonial term Tarasco. Today, this term is rarely used and the vast majority of the population identifies itself as Purhépecha. The use of this term was one of the first things that had to be negotiated with the population and, gradually, it has been accepted. Localities that do not speak the language and that even some decades ago had ceased to consider themselves indigenous, now claim to be Purhépecha and seek to be recognized as such. Even localities that for much of the last century xx were proudly considered mestizo, such as Huecorio, in the Pátzcuaro lake basin, now also claim to be Purhépecha.

For example, the Purhépecha New Year celebration, which has been celebrated since 1982, is fully institutionalized; each year the announcement of the community that will celebrate it is eagerly awaited. There is competition among the communities to celebrate it and since its beginnings a group of principals or "principals" has been formed. petámutis (those who have already taken charge of the celebration in their community or who have promoted and defended the Purhépecha culture and are recognized for their responsible behavior), who make the decisions regarding this festivity (Zárate, 1994).

It is now common for people from different communities to openly recognize that they are part of the Purhépecha nation and that the flag appears in various scenarios and is honored alongside the national flag. The flag, the coat of arms and the motto juchari uinapikua ("our strength") is present in all the civil spaces of the communities, in the communal offices, in the squares, and in the schools they are honored at the same time as the national flag, it is printed in the official documents, as well as in innumerable collective vehicles (cabs, vans and passenger trucks); it leads any political or civil demonstration, even in some religious festivities it is at the front of the groups of dances and dancers.

The community itself has undergone a process of redefinition that goes hand in hand with the Purhépecha. At the same time that the sense of belonging to a nation is being reinforced, cultural traits that were previously considered diacritical to define an ethnic group, such as language, have ceased to be so, and now it is emphasized or appealed to self-ascription, memory and those elements of social or ritual organization that remain in force. From there, new groupings have been added to the Purhépecha nation, as happened recently with the barrios and the community of Santa Clara del Cobre (Pureco, 2021). For the subjects it is very important to show that all their acts have a connection with the past or a historical background. Hence the importance they give to their interpretation of history as a source of legitimacy for their demand for autonomy and belonging to the Purhépecha nation. Once again, history appears manifesting itself in the projects for the future.

For some authors, this is a process of "ethnogenesis", in which the adoption and vindication of the ethnic category is strategic to maintain certain privileges as a political status (Vázquez, 1991). However, for the actors themselves, as they have made clear on several occasions, they have always been Indians and have never ceased to be so, and the adoption of Puehépecha as a gentilicio is a clear rejection of the colonial category of Tarasco. Since the seventies, the ethnic vindication redefined the nature of the relationship between the community and the national society based on the utopia of autonomy and the reconstruction of the Purehépecha nation. It is important to understand that it is not only a resistance movement, but it is also proactive in terms of the objectives and goals it seeks to achieve.

In addition, in the communities that are already receiving the direct budget, there is currently an impetus to develop community projects, as opposed to the productive projects that were favored by the neoliberal governments. After the crisis of official indigenism in the 1970s, the policy of allocating resources to marginalized groups and communities by projects was promoted. This resource allocation policy assumed that the co-responsibility of marginalized groups would be strengthened and that over time they would capitalize and cease to be dependent on public resources. In such a way that multiple groups and communities organized themselves to request or "download" resources, which generated new forms of dependency, clientelism and poverty (Cortés and Zárate, 2019). But also, in some cases, it produced virtuous circles of self-reproduction and growth that do not depend so much on their external economic funding, but on the interest that the community itself has in them in its search to reaffirm itself as acting subjects.

Beyond the distinction typical of neoliberal public administration, which makes a division between successful and unsuccessful projects, there is another more illustrative differentiation between those imposed, external, but which are elaborated in the heat of calls for proposals or specific situations, and those of a communal nature, which express the ideal of what the community wants for itself in the future. Although they are driven by local elites (professionals, activists and other agents), they are projects that are sustained by the consensus and broad support of the community. One example is the Santa Fe de la Laguna educational project. It is an educational project of its own, controlled and designed by the community's teachers and professionals, and it covers kindergarten through high school. This educational project was born as a counterproposal and alternative to the interculturality policies designed by State institutions, which, it has been demonstrated, ultimately only promote ethnic identity, but in a subordinated way. On the contrary, the Santa Fe educational project, as evidenced by studies such as that of Gialuanna Ayora (2012), represents so far an authentic alternative built from the local level, as part of the process of ethnic vindication that the community has undergone. The generation of medium and long-range projects, such as educational, ecological or Purhépecha Nation projects, which imply a certain reorganization within the communities, due to the resources to be invested, represent one of the mechanisms through which the communities try to shape their future.

In communities with a direct budget, the basic concerns have to do with the demand for services: drinking water, drainage, garbage collection, security, maintenance of schools and public spaces. In particular, and given the current circumstances, two projects are considered of vital importance: one is the formation, training and maintenance of a security corps that can confront or at least contain the frequent incursions of organized crime groups in the communities. The other, closely related to the previous one, is to recover or at least stop the expansion of avocado cultivation in communal lands, which has become a real plague for the communities, produced by private businessmen, sometimes associated with groups of hired assassins, who defend and promote deforestation and the expansion of avocado cultivation in mountainous areas. Both projects or micro-utopias have notable difficulties to be carried out because they are confronted with very powerful interest groups linked to neoliberal capitalism, which represents a future totally different from the one pursued by the communities. But, in addition, there are projects promoted by several communities: the two that have appeared in recent times are the construction of a medical clinic of specialties, to be located in the heart of the Purhépecha plateau, and a National Guard barracks that would include the community police or the community police. kuarichasThe current governor promised to build them in these years. All these projects will now be in the hands of the communities themselves, who seek to maintain themselves as viable collective subjects in the face of the fragmenting and inequality-producing tendencies of neoliberal capitalism (migration, day labor, environmental depredation, among others).

To conclude

We cannot fully understand the current relevance and validity of contemporary indigenous communities if we do not consider their future projects, their utopias and plans, through which they are reinventing themselves. Mobilization is one of them, but there are others such as the use of digital technologies, the renewal of local governments, the dialectic between the sacralization and de-sacralization of community rituals, the persistence of narratives that articulate the future as a renewal of the past.

The future has always been in the sights of indigenous communities, explicitly since the 1970s. xxAlthough from the traditional perspectives of the social sciences we have never considered it in this way because anthropology has been dominated by a "realist" vision, in which the use of fixed categories and static models prevails without considering that subjects construct their agency in relation to utopias of better living conditions. When talking about time, there is no realism that is valid, we are faced with imaginary constructions of the past, but also of the "future" and arbitrary cuts to delimit the present.

Considering the diverse temporalities that are expressed in these organizational processes, as we have shown, allows us to overcome some of the criticisms that liberal thought makes of utopian projects such as those of communities, original peoples and nations. This is because any social group that considers itself a community aspires to remain viable in the future, or to a better condition of life, so it must remain in constant movement, generating projects of participation and collective change to shape their living conditions and their future. In this case, persisting has to do with the will to preserve the unity between population and territory. It also allows us to move away from essentialist definitions that consider that contemporary communities exist by themselves. Rather, we should consider that they are the product of the agency of subjects who aspire to improve their living conditions and in doing so affect the present and its images of the past.

In the modern world, defined by global capitalism, living in community, even if it is political, is always a deliberate action of subjects who seek, in some way, to have some control over what the future holds. Since these are ongoing processes, their study or understanding presents us with the challenge of trying to apprehend that which is only under construction and exists in the imagination. Realistic or possible utopias are neither a banal idealization of the movements of vindication and recognition, nor a deviation from the authentic projects of transformation of society, but one of the multiple possibilities of transformation; therefore, their consideration is necessary to understand the processes of contemporary communalization and the construction of alternative futures to the one offered by global capitalism.

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Eduardo Zarate is a research professor at El Colegio de Michoacán. Last books published: Zárate, Eduardo and Jorge Uzeta (eds.) (2016). Languages of political fragmentation. Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán; Zárate, Eduardo (2017). The celebration of childhood. The cult of the Child Jesus in the Purhépecha area.. Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán; Oikión, Verónica and José Eduardo Zárate (eds.) (2019). Michoacán. politics and society. Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán; Zárate, Eduardo (ed.) (2022). Communities, utopias and futures. Zamora: The College of Michoacán.