“High Tension”: An ethnographic monograph about an indigenous social resistance movement fighting for and through electricity.


30 April 2022

The aim of the project is to write and publish an ethnographic monograph on the Civil Resistance Organisation “Luz y Fuerza del Pueblo”, from the state of Chiapas, in southern Mexico. It is a social movement with about 80,000 activists, mainly indigenous and campesinos, which struggles to provide electricity access for the poor. This monograph contributes to the debate on the relations between energy poverty and poverty. It provides an evocative glimpse into what minorities from the Global South can do to access energy. And finally, it suggests that the governance spread across the grid is not necessarily the central state’s governance.

“Oh yesssss! I’m so happy!”. This was my very first reaction when I read that my project had been selected for the grant 🙂 The grant represents in fact an essential support, allowing me to rely on the help of professionals (transcriptions of interviews, editorial design, stylistic editing) to make my publication project feasible and compatible with my (strict) work schedule. Furthermore, it was encouraging to see that researches such as mine, which deal with issues that are not exactly mainstream and concern minority groups, could also benefit from this kind of aid.

Umberto Cao, French National Centre for Scientific Research
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A scene showing a community gathering in
“High Tension” An ethnographic monograph about an indigenous social resistance movement fighting for and through electricity (pdf)
Umberto Cao 2024

Umberto Cao provides a summary of his FPRN-funded project, including his objectives, methodology, findings and recommendations.