User:Kay Sanlo/sandbox

Indigenous feminism in the EZLN
Westernization, neoliberal globalization, and the [|Zapatista movement] affected indigenous communities in Chiapas, Mexico in that it prompted the emergence of indigenous feminism. Indigenous feminism has "it's also has its own unique flair. It is an important site of gender struggle that explicitly recognizes the vital issues of cultural identity, nationalism, and decolonization. Their struggle is based in a blend of their unique ethnic, class and gender identities. In Mexico, indigenous women, feminists or not, are deeply involved in the political and social struggles of their communities. Simultaneously to these struggles, they have created specific spaces to reflect on their experiences of exclusion as women, as indigenous and as indigenous women.”

Even though feminism is seen as a result of Westernization, indigenous women have struggled to “draw on and navigate Western ideologies while preserving and attempting to reclaim some indigenous traditions...which have been eroded with the imposition of dominant western culture and ideology." Indigenous feminism is invested in struggles of women, indigenous people, and look to their roots for solutions whilst using some western ideas for achieving these goals.

The women are invested in the collective struggle as the Zapatistas, and of women in general. In an interview with Ana Maria, one of the movement leaders said that the women "participated in the first of January(Zapatista Uprising)... the women’s struggle is 	the struggle of everybody. In EZLN, we do not fight for our own interests but struggle against every situation that exists in Mexico; against all the injustice, all the marginalization, all the poverty, and all the exploitation that Mexican women suffer. Our struggle in EZLN is not for women in Chiapas but for all the Mexicans.

The effects of Western capitalist systems of development and culture makes flexibility in gender and labor roles more difficult than the indigenous cultures historical way of living off of the land. “Indigenous women’s entry into the money economy has been analyzed as making their domestic and subsistence work evermore dispensable to the reproduction of the labor force and thus reducing women’s power within the family. Indigenous men have been 	forced by the need to help provide for the family in the globalized capitalist economic system that favors paid economic labor while depending on female subordination and unpaid subsistence labor. These ideals are internalized by many workers and imported back into the communities.” This capitalistic infiltration harmed Gender role, they were becoming more and more restrictive and polarized with the ever-growing imposition of external factors on indigenous communities. Ever since the arrival of the Europeans and their clear distinction in the views of “home/work, domestic/productive, (soon to become the public and the private” separations and distinctions began to be made, and value began being placed in different forms.

Indigenous feminism also gave rise to more collaboration and contact between indigenous and mestiza women in the informal sector. After the emergence of the Zapatistas, more meaningful collaboration started to take place, and six months after the EZLN uprising, the first Chiapas State Women’s Convention was held. Six months after that, the National Women’s Convention was held in Querétaro; it included the participation of over three hundred women from fourteen different states. In August of 1997, the first National Gathering of Indigenous Women took place in the state of Oaxaca, it was organized by indigenous women and was attended by over 400 women. One of the most prevalent issues discussed in the conventions, was the dynamics between mestizas and indigenous women. Often times it became the situation where the mestizas tended to “help” and the indigenous women were the one being “helped.”

The Zapatistas’ movement was the first time a guerrilla movement held women’s liberation as part of the agenda for the uprising. Major Ana Maria -- who was not only the woman who lead the EZLN capture of San Cristobal de las Casas during the uprising, but also one of the women who helped create the Women’s Revolutionary Law, ‘A general law was made, but there was no women’s law. And so we protested and said that there has to be a women’s law when we make our demands. We also want the government to recognize us as women. The right to have equality, equality of men and women.’ The Women’s Revolutionary Law came about through a woman named Susana and Comandanta Ramona traveling to dozens of communities and to ask the opinions of thousands of women. The Women’s Revolutionary Law was released along with the rest of the Zapatista demands aimed at the government during their public uprising on New Years Day of 1994. “For the first time in the history of Latin American guerrilla movements, women members were analyzing and presenting the “personal” in politically explicit terms. This is not to say, however, that in Zapatista communities women don’t have to fight for equality and dignity. Revolutionary laws are a means, and usually a beginning,not an end. But all in all, the existence and knowledge of the law, even for women who don’t actually 	know what it says, has had great symbolic importance as the seedling of the current indigenous women’s movement in Mexico.” It is important to acknowledge that not only was it a monumental move for so many women to be in the ranks and forefront of a movement, but they also went beyond that and made their own demands. They participated in the collective struggle, but also made sure their struggle was heard, acknowledged, and validated.