My research examines how poor conditions in the global coffee market and the national mobilization for Indian political autonomy are driving resource use transformation in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico. During preliminary fieldwork, I discovered that the national Indian movement is filtering down to local communities in this region, revitalizing conceptions of community and reconfiguring community-land relationships. I hypothesize that the global economy and national ethnic-political currents are shaping a new attention to locality, and that the consolidation of subsistence economies--a repeasantization--is the centerpiece of a comprehensive political-cultural program in the Sierra Norte. I will also explore, however, way in which the coffee economy constrains community self-determination movements. These questions will be examined through ethnographic research on two regional Indian-peasant organizations, which mediate between the grassroots and wider ambits of political economic power and knowledge, such as, the state, national social movements, and global currents in development policy.