An Indigenous Business Network Rises in Mexico

According to Mexico’s latest census, an estimated 19.4 percent of the population self-identifies as Indigenous. That’s over 23.2 million people. (By contrast, in the United States, which has nearly three times as many people, the Indigenous population is about a third of that amount.) Even so, the emergence of an Indigenous political movement in Mexico is a fairly recent development.

Cecilio Solís Librado, who is Nahua and was born in a small village in the Sierra Norte del Puebla before migrating to Mexico City, recalls that when the Zapatista movement launched its brief armed rebellion on January 1,1994 and released its first “Declaration from the Lacandón Jungle,” they spoke mostly of rural farmers (campesinos). It was only five months later in the second declaration, after Indigenous Mexicans noted that the rank-and-file guerrillas who took up arms were in fact nearly entirely Indigenous, that Zapatista leaders began to “speak more of a movement to claim Indigenous rights.”

[The Mexican Indigenous business network] serve[s] as an economic arm of a broader Indigenous movement.

Today, Solís directs a national Indigenous chamber of commerce known as CIELO, the Federation of Indigenous Businesses and Local Communities, with its main offices in Mexico City. Founded in 2014, today it has over 230 businesses (some of which are featured here) from 33 different Indigenous nations located in 22 different Mexican states.

But what makes this chamber of commerce unique is that of the 230 member businesses, the number owned by a single person is zero.

What CIELO has sought to do is serve as an economic arm of a broader Indigenous movement by helping Indigenous people collectively own their places of employment. While the effort remains modest in scale, it is growing and marks an important initiative that is supporting a vision of a more democratic economy, rooted in the core values of community and solidarity.

An Indigenous Business Network Emerges

Traditionally, while Mexico has always had a large Indigenous population, organizing was done more by economic position—primarily as campesinos—rather than as Indigenous rights. This, Solís noted, began to change in the late 1980s with the formation of the Independent Front of Indigenous Peoples (Frente Independiente de Pueblos Indios or FIPI) in 1988. Solís participated in FIPI and related groups that fought for Indigenous autonomy, self-determination, and collective participation.

The Zapatista uprising in 1994, Solís noted, helped enormously in inserting Indigenous rights into the Mexican political conversation. “It’s one of their great achievements… [but] the political struggle is long and slow,” Solís told NPQ, a realization that led him to look for other vehicles that could advance Indigenous sovereignty.

In the 1980s, at Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM), Solís graduated with a degree in geography and decided to put his studies to use. When mapping the geographic concentrations of wealth and poverty, he noted that he saw that “something was not adding up. Why is there so much natural, cultural, environmental and ecological wealth in Indigenous lands, and yet it is home to the worst poverty?”

By adopting an economic geographer’s lens, Solís realized that great wealth had been taken from Indigenous peoples, an insight that led him to focus on economic development with a focus on “community-owned businesses based on the law, Indigenous autonomy, and self-determination.”

But where to begin? Solís began with a focus on tourism. Why tourism? The rationale was utterly pragmatic.

As Solís pointed out, by and large tourist businesses have the lowest upfront capital cost. Tourism also was a natural fit for many Indigenous communities. He added that the reasoning was very simple: There was unsatisfied tourist demand, and Indigenous communities could provide a type of services for which present supply did not exist.

In 2002, Red Indígena de Turismo de México (RITA, the National Indigenous Tourism Network of Mexico) was formed. Over a decade, it developed into a network of over 80 businesses.

Creating a Broader Federation

RITA was successful and continues to operate to this day, but Solís wanted to build a network that could support Indigenous businesses beyond the tourism industry. In 2014, this led to the formation of CIELO.

Solís left RITA and became president of CIELO, a network that has grown significantly since its founding. The type of businesses that are members, as anticipated, have expanded and now include restaurants, transportation companies, food production, wine and liquor production, fishing, artisanal businesses, wood carvers, and forest products, among others.

CIELO focuses on supporting Indigenous business startups and existing businesses, subject to five main principles: a commitment to benefiting the planet, a commitment to full participation for women at all levels of the businesses, respect for freedom of religion, respect for sexual preference, and a commitment for CIELO itself—individual businesses can make their own choices—to avoid affiliation with any political party.

A particularly unusual aspect of CIELO is that all businesses are collectively owned in one form or another. Solís explained that there are a variety of different structures among network participants. Some businesses are set up as unincorporated, collectively run businesses. Others are set up as membership societies, while still others are set up as various types of cooperatives. CIELO seeks to support the development of businesses that pursue what is often called in the United States a triple bottom line of economic, environmental, and social return.

One of the benefits of this structure is that it serves as an umbrella for member businesses. Often, he noted, legal paperwork rules have gotten in the way of business formation in Indigenous communities. The existence of CIELO obviates the need for this. As Solís put it, “If a community business says it does not want to register with the state, we say, ‘Forward. Let’s go.’”

One of the more ambitious CIELO projects involves supporting three community-based solar power generation businesses based in Indigenous communities.

CIELO can, for instance, ensure that taxes are paid, enabling Indigenous businesses to enjoy the benefits of formal business status without the time and expense of incorporating their own enterprise. In US nonprofit lingo, one could say that CIELO’s role is much like that of a “fiscal sponsor” in the United States.

The federation provides a range of services for members, making small, low-interest loans (typically, for less than $5,000 with a maximum term of three years), as well as assist with design and marketing needs. Members also get governance rights—participating in annual general meetings, for instance. Membership fees are low and optional (a standard organizational ask is 350 pesos or about US $20 per month). The association earns more income from advisory services and marketing fees, but it still relies on foundation grants for over 80 percent of its funding.

One of the more ambitious CIELO projects involves supporting three community-based solar power generation businesses based in Indigenous communities in the three Mexican states of Quintana Roo, Oaxaca, and Hidalgo. These renewable energy businesses, Solís notes, are modest in scale—the anticipated power generation capacity of each would be five megawatts, enough to power somewhere between 2,500 and 5,000 homes, but they mark nonetheless an important expansion of the business network’s reach.

“Many have talked of a just transition,” he said but, “How just is the transition if the benefits do not reach communities?” He observed that Mexico has ideal geography for solar power but the benefits of energy generation should go to the communities where the energy is generated.

Cultural Reclamation and Buen Vivir

Business development at CIELO is a cultural and an economic project. The idea of “cultural reclamation is super-important,” Solís emphasized. “When you reclaim your culture, history, art, traditions, land…then things are different. You can talk about who you want to be, without second guessing yourself.”

For Solís, a cultural foundation allows people to say, “Here we are. We are not coming to ask. We are coming to set forth alternative opportunities—alternatives that serve precisely to make it so people don’t need to migrate and can instead generate jobs.”

Related to this culture building vision, Solís added, is the notion of buen vivir. Literally, the concept means “good living,” but Solís cautioned against simple definitions.

“Buen vivir,” he said, “for communities is green space. It is the river. It is the lake. It’s where you feel good. Live well. At ease. That is how we see it, and that means that there is no universal definition. Each people, each community will see buen vivir in different ways—as different as our different cultures are.”

According to Solís, the work ahead “is to revalue our bodies, our beings, our culture, and our territories.” By doing so, he added, people will come to see themselves “as what they are, a part of Mother Earth.”