Tesalia Rizzo Reyes

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Building Capacity from Below: Indigenous Self-Governance and Public Investment in Mexico

In 2024, Mexico amended Article 2 of its Constitution to recognize Indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples and communities as subjects of public law, with legal personality and the right to manage their own public resources. Starting in 2025, a new federal fund, the FAISPIAM (Fondo de Aportaciones para la Infraestructura Social de los Pueblos y Comunidades Indígenas y Afromexicanas), transfers money directly to more than 20,000 Indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities to finance infrastructure projects of their own choosing. In its first year, the fund distributed about 12.4 billion pesos.

This project studies what happens when communities, rather than municipal governments, control public investment.

The reform

• Funds go directly to communities, without municipal intermediaries.
• Community assemblies diagnose local needs, choose projects, and elect administrative and oversight committees to manage and monitor spending.
• Eligible projects include drinking water, drainage, electrification, rural roads, housing improvements, and health and education facilities.

Research questions

• Do direct transfers strengthen local institutions of self-government, collective decision-making, and community participation?
• How does community control shape what gets built, and how spending is monitored and accounted for?
• How does community-led public investment relate to economic marginalization, a key driver of migration?

Approach

The rules that determined which communities became eligible for the fund create a natural experiment, allowing us to compare otherwise similar communities with and without access to direct transfers. We combine:

• Surveys of community leaders and residents on how they organize, deliberate, and decide on spending
• Administrative data on transfers and projects
• Satellite imagery to track infrastructure development over time

A field research project, in collaboration with Indigenous communities and local organizations, is planned for 2027.

Papers

• Working paper on the institutional effects of direct fiscal transfers to Indigenous communities (available upon request)

Team

Tesalia Rizzo
Principal Investigator
UC MercedNR Brouwer
UC MercedCésar Martínez-Álvarez
UCLAOliver Meza
Google ScholarPUCOMIT
Community partner

Funding

Supported by a UC Alianza MX Strategic Research Project award (2026–2028), in partnership with UC Santa Barbara and Tecnológico de Monterrey.