Chiapas observed: The ethics of intervention in rural Mexico

This dissertation examines the impact of three outside institutions on indigenous communities in Chiapas, Mexico, between 1945 and the present. I look at the Mexican National Indigenist Institute's (INI) regional programs aimed at improving health and education standards and creating economic opportunities; the anthropological studies conducted by the Harvard-Chiapas Project (HCP); and the Protestant Church's missionary evangelizing in highland communities under the auspices of the Summer Institute of Linguistics/Wycliffe Bible Translators (SIL). This study brings ethical considerations to bear on their respective agendas and changing practices by assessing their field projects. I examine both the implicit and explicit intellectual, cultural, and ideological agendas of these outsiders, how they interacted, and how they changed over time. The scope is both longitudinal and comparative, exploring the gaps between the policies and practices of the INI, the HCP, and the SIL. I also examine indigenous responses and accommodation/resistance strategies to these ongoing incursions.;A critical look at external involvement in Indian communities is both important and necessary. As they have in the past, NGOs, IGOs, and missionaries will continue to interact with local communities and we must learn from their experiences. Certain tensions are bound to exist between the desires of outsiders to help and how communities view their own needs for assistance. By applying recent scholarship on development and anthropological ethics to this case study of Chiapas, I shed light on this tension and demonstrate ways in which we can more successfully balance the needs of local communities, the desires of social scientists, and the goals of national and international agencies.