ABSTRACT
This chapter considers that Mezcalenses have multiple identities and might live and interpret them differently, and also assume and use them depending on interactions, relationships and context; identities constantly interplay across space and among different communities. Mezcalenses have organised themselves within and across borders, incorporating discourses and redefining the conception of territory, membership, community, identity and politics. In Mezcala, indigeneity has been constructed entailing the internalisation of hegemonic discourses, and thus, the propagation of self-discrimination and racism. The community is recreated as a cross-border interaction experiencing a simultaneous process of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation, and thus being Mezcalense means constantly crossing multiple boundaries. In the 'democratic' era of neoliberal governance, Mezcalenses have been driven to be part of a transnational process of informalisation accentuated by the fact of being stereotyped subjects equated with profits rather than rights and having scarce channels of action.
