LA ESCALA POLÍTICA DEL PAISAJE ALUSIONES A UNA COMUNIDAD CHATINA

Abstract

Doing politics is relevant to the stakeholders of any community to agree on issues such as the daily functioning of their local spaces. This article draws on theoretical approaches in cultural geography to demonstrate that the landscapes we observe are the product of the decisions that have been taken to organize their peoples’ territory. This article reviews the concepts of landscape and politics in order to show that their joint meaning is historically expressed at a local scale. The case of the Municipality of San Juan Quiahije in the Southern Sierra in Oaxaca, Mexico, exemplifies that the scale at which the landscape must be intervened by the communities that feel involved in it, is the local one and how this happens depends on their adequate political organization. This also leads to the conclusion that political dynamics at the macro scale (that of nation states and global consortiums), do not aim to reorganize spaces according to the needs of citizens, but only to retain power.