This is a part of the article series Decolonial Praxis: Going Beyond Empty Words, edited by Fernando David Márquez Duarte, Dulce Alarcón Payán and Javier Daniel Alarcón Mares. Editorial and Translation Assistant: Lorenia Gutiérrez Moreto Cruz.

Indigenous groups have been historically oppressed by the colonial system and afterwards by the neocolonial capitalist system and have been marginalized from public decision-making. This research analyzes how the process of public consultation to Indigenous groups in Baja California, Mexico on political representation functioned to ignite critical consciousness and political participation of Indigenous peoples, even if the goals of the consultation were to comply with a court resolution only, without the goal of really achieving any of this. The consultation ultimately led to the pollical mobilization of Indigenous peoples in defense of their right to political representation, and calling out Indigenous identity faking by “pretendians”. By encouraging discussion and dialectical interactions, the consultation served as the space where Indigenous peoples developed critical consciousness to advance towards their self-determination and emancipation from neocolonial oppression in non-formal spaces. The research was conducted with a qualitative methodology, through the case study of the process mentioned in Baja California. I used participatory observation, conducted a semi-structured interview, as well as bibliographic and hemerographic review to gather the data for this article. The analysis of the case is based on theoretical and epistemological approaches of decoloniality, critical pedagogy, critical consciousness and participatory democracy.

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For this research, it is necessary to know the context of the right to participation and political representation of Indigenous peoples in Mexico, since Indigenous peoples have historically been marginalized from public decision-making and the political arena. In this regard, in December 2017 the Superior Electoral Court of the Judicial Power (TEPJF) modified agreement INE / CG508/2017 of the General Council of the National Electoral Institute (INE) to strengthen measures in favor of Indigenous peoples, establishing that in the 13 federal electoral districts with the highest percentage of Indigenous population political parties have to present only Indigenous people. This measure was not well taken by political parties, since parties such as PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática) challenged it, however this challenge did not proceed, since the plenary considered that INE can establish guidelines to make constitutional principles effective (such as the rights of Indigenous peoples), through the implementation of affirmative action (Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación 2017). This, although it was an important advance, is insufficient since there are currently 300 federal electoral districts in Mexico, and Indigenous candidacies were secured only in federal electoral districts that have 60% or more Indigenous population. (Vázquez Correa 2020). However, in January 2021, the General Council of the National Electoral Institute (INE) modified the criteria for the registration of candidates for federal legislators, establishing that all parties must present only Indigenous people in the 21 districts with the highest percentage of Indigenous population, of which eleven must be women. (Redacción 2021b), as well as nine other Indigenous candidates must be nominated through the plurinominal route, to achieve a total of 30 Indigenous members in Congress; this is a positive change that increases the possibility of Indigenous political representation. This measure has served as a decisive precedent for states to establish affirmative actions at the local level for political representation of Indigenous groups, as in the case of the guidelines established by the State Electoral Institute of Baja California (IEEBC), as a result of the public consultation carried out for Indigenous groups in Baja California.

Gender parity in Indigenous candidates, as established by INE in 2021 and in the reform of the LGIPE of 2020 is extremely important, since although machismo has decreased in the last 20 years, there are still many Indigenous communities in Guerrero where it is still very latent, as the feminist and Indigenous activist Martha Sánchez Néstor has stated (Lamas 2016). This is also supported by Indigenous activists Celfia Duarte (Pirinda Indigenous group) and Itzel Jarquin (Chontal Indigenous group), who declared that in some Indigenous communities of Michoacán and Oaxaca women are prevented from owning a home and/or business, they are prevented from accessing positions of Indigenous authority, and from having higher education (Márquez Duarte 2020a, 2020b).

Likewise, it is important to point out that in order to guarantee the efficiency of the political representation of Indigenous peoples, candidates must prove qualified self-adscription; to have this criterion, Indigenous persons seeking candidacy must meet two requirements: having provided community services in a free and disinterested manner (not as part of the work of a paid public office) or held traditional authority positions in Indigenous communities, as well as having a document issued by a traditional authority and recognized Indigenous organization that establishes that the person is, indeed, Indigenous and specify to which group it belongs (Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación 2017).

On the other hand, there are rights that depend for their effective execution on state governments and state legislation. In this case, for the right of Indigenous peoples to political representation and participation to be exercised, affirmative action in this area must also be a reality at the local level, both in local congresses and in ayuntamientos (equivalent to city councils). That is why in the reform approved in April 2020 to article 26 of the General Law of Electoral Institutions and Procedures (LGIPE) it was established that Indigenous peoples have the right to elect their representatives in municipalities according to their internal procedures, in accordance with the provisions of article 2 of the Constitution. This reform also specifies that the progressive implementation of gender parity in the election of Indigenous authorities must be ensured, as well as the right to elect representatives to municipalities with Indigenous populations (Vázquez Correa 2020).

Theoretical Framework

The focus of the theoretical discussion is to elaborate how critical consciousness is central to political mobilization and participation, explaining what happened in the case of the Indigenous consultation in Baja California, organized by IEEBC in the subject of political representation. As a form of theoretical context, the approaches of decoloniality and critical interculturality are relevant to this research, since they provide the basis for the analysis of public consultation as an exercise of critical consciousness development of Indigenous peoples in Baja California (BC), complemented with participatory democracy approaches that allow analyzing how participatory exercises are constituted as exercises of citizenship and democratic formation in a critical way. To begin to discuss the approaches of interculturality and decoloniality it is necessary to understand where they come from. Both decoloniality and interculturality arise as a response to the colonial oppression that was imposed by western countries on "developing" countries. For this article, "Abya Yala" is used to refer to Latin America, as a decolonial way of calling it, this term was created by the Puna/Guna Indigenous peoples who reside in what is now Panama and Colombia (Del Valle 2015).

It is important to discuss that decoloniality and interculturality criticize the different "colonialities" imposed in Abya Yala, such as the coloniality of power, knowledge, being and nature. The coloniality of power manifests itself in the establishment of a discriminatory and oppressive state structure, where black and Indigenous peoples are the most oppressed, using race as the basis of asymmetrical and violent power relations. The coloniality of knowledge refers to the position that western knowledge is the only valid and superior, marginalizing other epistemic rationalities, knowledge and saberes. There is also the coloniality of being, which is exercised by dehumanizing all people who do not fit the western colonial model; this coloniality gives rise to the form of nation-state that is in all the countries of Abya Yala, which have historically oppressed Indigenous groups, as well as black peoples, dehumanizing them and categorizing them as uncivilized and inferior. A final form of coloniality is that of Mother Nature. This coloniality destroys and appropriates all life (animals, plants, rivers, hills, seas, etc.) justifying itself on the oppressive and unsustainable premise that all life is there for the elites to exploit for their benefit (Quijano 2000, 2015; Walsh 2008). The colonialities approach is directly relevant because coloniality of power imposed a form of Nation-state structure that was designed to marginalize the groups that were deemed as inferior, intertwining with coloniality if being. This structure and hierarchy violently left out Indigenous peoples from not only public-decision making but also from being rights-bearing subjects formally and in practice, so much that Indigenous peoples were not considered as rights-bearing subjects when Mexico became an independent country, and at the same time severing their communitarian relations between Indigenous peoples. Coloniality of knowledge was imposed with the power structure of the colonial Nation-state, which was perpetuated after the independence of countries that were colonized. Only white men, both European and directly descended from Europeans, had access to formal education. Moreover, the colonial powers that invaded the Abya Yala erased all the forms of knowledge that Indigenous societies had, by destroying the temples and cities of Indigenous societies, by burning codices and manuscripts of incredible value and knowledge from different Indigenous societies, and by prohibiting the governance structures and public decision-making process of Indigenous societies. Both of these intertwined processes part of coloniality of knowledge, have led to the marginalization of Indigenous peoples from formal education, as well as dissolving their unique political organizations, structures and decision-making processes, which explain the lack of political mobilization, political participation, and political consciousness of Indigenous peoples in Baja California, before the Indigenous consultation. Finally, coloniality of Mother Nature allowed colonial elites to take and ravage the lands of Indigenous peoples, further imposing a disconnection from their communitarian organizations, structures and land-based practices.

Another way in which coloniality of being manifests is assimilation, which for centuries has sought to impose a homogeneity based on the image of what is established by western modernity, destroying all other cultures and perpetuating oppression in subaltern people. These structures imposed in the countries of Abya Yala, remained after the independence from the European empires, strengthening an oppressive State structure exercising an internal colonialism (González Casanova 2006), where wealthy white elites exercise power, control and exploitation on most people, especially Indigenous groups. This has led in several countries to a simulated interculturality, which goes against the essence of it, that is; a critical interculturality that questions the differences and inequalities imposed by western colonial regimes; that seeks the construction of societies with real equality recognizing the differences of sociocultural groups, to empower groups that have been historically oppressed (Ferrão Candau 2010, pp. 147, 152). This reflection is important for this work, since one of the main results of this research is that, while the exercise of public consultation for Indigenous peoples in BC emerged as a form of simulated interculturality and assimilation by political institutions, it encouraged Indigenous groups in Baja California to further develop their critical consciousness and begin to raise their voices and resist marginalization in public decision-making processes. Indigenous peoples that participated in the consultation were motivated to mobilizing politically in a more organized and solid way, managing to take public spaces, and visibility, thus resisting marginalization.

To complement the theoretical discussion, it is important to discuss participatory democracy, which can be defined as the set of participatory instruments that go beyond representative democracy, since it contemplates greater direct political participation (Márquez Duarte 2018). Some of the factors that are considered in participatory democracy are the importance of the local context, the horizontality in political decision-making, and the transcendence of participatory instruments (such as referendum, plebiscite, among others) (Ramírez Nárdiz 2016). The public consultation is also considered as a participatory instrument. So, the model of participatory democracy can be explained as one in which there is a maximum input– which is citizen participation – required, where the outputs not only include public decisions, but also the development of capabilities of individuals that allow them to exercise this citizen participation (Pateman 1970, p. 43), becoming a virtuous circle of participation generating participation. This is extremely important for this research, since a main argument of this work is that the public consultation exercise has functioned as a space for capabilities development and critical consciousness in Indigenous groups, which in turn has fostered this virtuous circle of fostering participation and mobilization.

Finally, it is crucial to complement the discussion with critical consciousness development. The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1970) within his proposal of critical pedagogy, develops the concept of concientização, which can be understood as critical consciousness; this process develops when oppressed individuals become........

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