About the presentation: In areas defined by weak or ineffective official states, nonofficial entities emerge to fill those gaps. I argue a simple point that builds on this premise. San Cristóbal de las Casas (SCLC), a single-city, contains an array of non-official state makers whose state-building endeavors transform based on the neighborhoods they occupy. The distinctions between these neighborhoods that would lead to such varying practices are not so easy to draw. The answer does not alone rest on ethnic composition or socioeconomic factors; local geography perhaps plays the largest role but even that alone is not definitive. This case study in SCLC implies that local state building initiatives require only small pushes to take wildly different directions. For example, in La Hormiga, a neighborhood situated on one part of the northern hillside of the city, gangs control territory and wield force with impunity, while across the periférico in Tlaxcala, barrio bureaucrats work cooperatively with the official state to co-produce official structures, creating areas I call “twilight barrios.”
About the presenter: Will Baynard is pursuing a PhD in cultural anthropology at UW-Madison. He focuses on legal pluralism, sovereignty, autonomy, and urban ethnography in Mexico. He is conducting his dissertation fieldwork in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. He also works in northern Mexico with the Tohono O’odham, addressing similar issues in a more rural context. His current project addresses questions of hyper-local autonomy and the negotiated state through the lens of policing and security in the city.
Will earned a B.A. in History with a Spanish minor from Virginia Wesleyan College in 2006. He received a M.A. from George Mason University in International Commerce and Policy in 2008. In 2011, he graduated from Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He practiced law for eight years before coming to UW – Madison. His legal practice began in Alaska, where he worked with Alaska Native Corporations and other business entities. For three years he worked at Wisconsin Judicare, providing legal services to victims of sexual assault. He has appeared in state, federal, and tribal courts. He remains a licensed attorney in Alaska (Inactive Emeritus).
