Kathleen McIntyre completed research in Oaxaca City’s Hemeroteca Pública focusing on news coverage and debates surrounding the legalization of Oaxacan customary law back in 1998. The Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) state government of Oaxaca supported customary law in southern Mexico to reduce the growing influence of opposition parties, especially in the Mixteca region. PRI’s hegemony in Oaxaca was beginning to weaken in 1981 when an opposition party and movement, La Coalición Obrera, Campesina, Estudiantil del Istmo (COCEI) won control of the municipality of Juchitán in elections.

Concerned about COCEI’s growth in the Isthmus region as well as another opposition party, Partido Revolucionario Democratica (PRD)’s growth in the Mixteca region, PRI leaders increasingly supported customary law elections in Native communities as a means to weaken opposition parties penetrating into Native communities. With the 1994 uprising in Chiapas and the 1996 attacks in Oaxaca by the Ejercito Popular Revolucionario (EPR) in 1996, Oaxaca’s PRI party feared a similar uprising centered on Native rights and autonomy. To prevent such a movement from developing further, PRI worked carefully to construct a new Indigenous Rights Law which supported self-determination, respect for Native language, and local elections to be potentially controlled by customary law, not political parties.