ABSTRACT
In Mexico’s federal system, the municipal government is where top-down political structures and bottom-up perspectives of affected communities meet to negotiate the development of mining projects. Using a most similar systems comparative research design, this chapter examines stakeholder engagement processes in two rural municipalities in Southern Mexico where mining companies faced community opposition. The chapter argues that Mexico is lacking in stakeholder engagement processes. Instead, municipal governments are tasked with supporting, mediating, or eschewing the opposition of affected communities, including local community assemblies. Local divisions, such as ethnicity, farming vs. non-farming vocations, and the interactions between community-level agrarian governance and the municipal government, are crucial to understand how affected stakeholders negotiate with, or oppose, mining projects. Therefore, we determine that the lack of public policies of stakeholder engagement, as dictated by the federal system of Mexico, ultimately exacerbates social-environmental conflict. The failure of MSE in Mexico and the divergent outcomes of mining resistance engage with the handbook’s question of how MSE can identify and minimize risks and negative impacts, both in the short and long term, to the benefit of affected communities.
