Abstract
Marisa Belausteguigoitia looks at the struggle for autonomy and citizenship for indigenous women (Zapatistas) in the south of Mexico and the forms of material and symbolic violence they experience. Using the imagery developed by Octavio Paz and studies of subalternity, she analyses the transition of indigenous women from the ‘slits’ of development, through the openings and rips of modernity to citizenship on their own terms, describing it as a process of suture. She analyses the ways in which this struggle for female autonomy, in body and ‘tongue’, creates a particular imagery of indigenous women's bodies and thus development politics.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
For an accurate account of the origins and causes of the Zapatista rebellion see Collier (1994).
The notions of ‘rip’ and ‘rape’, are both representing the ‘openings’ effected at the entering of modernity by subalternity. I am alluding to the notions of ‘rajada’ (ripped) and ‘violada’ (raped) constructed by Octavio Paz in his seminal text, The Labyrinth of Solitude. Specifically I analyse the archetype of ‘La Malinche’, the indigenous slave given to Cortés to translate into Spanish and the relations of the act of translating to the enemy with the one of raping, ripping and betraying. Three operations located in the body and tongue of indigenous women.
In Mexico, the focus on the duality between gender and culture in activist research on poverty and self-development is emerging very slowly. We have had successful gender-oriented programmes like ‘Progresa’ (now called ‘Oportunidades’), but curiously, they did not have a lot of impact. Researchers, academics and bureaucrats, still do not emphasize gender variables, as visible. When asked about the pertinence of considering gender as a separate variable for the sake of the project they totally agree. The problems seem twofold: first, what is considered objective and serious work (in Mexican academia it is still not ‘obvious’ to focus on gender, it lowers the quality of the research); and second, to do with the lack of data and the problems to measure female participation and its impact on macroeconomic patterns.
The San Andrés Accords are the result of the dialogue between the Zapatistas and the government, which began on 21 February 1994 with the discussion of ‘Rights and Indigenous Culture’. It suffered several interruptions, the main one began on 9 February 1995 after a military occupation of communities that supported the Zapatistas or were under the Zapatistas’ control. Talks resumed and ended with the signing of the Accords on 16 February 1996. The Accords made specific reference to the question of indigenous women's rights and culture. These references are inscribed mainly in the propositions of an autonomous and indigenous juridical framework. This autonomous framework certainly challenges the national juridical realm and its forms of governance, inscribing the possibility of a multicultural nation regulated by at least two juridical languages. See CONAI (1996) and Navarro and Herrera (1998).
The most aggressive one corresponds to the project of development involving tourism, the Plan Puebla/Panama, which intends to create a tourist corridor in between the central state of Puebla crossing the southern state of Chiapas into Panama.
The Revolutionary Women's Laws were released to the mass media with the declaration of war by the Zapatistas in early January 1994. The Laws synthesize the demands ofindigenous women belonging to the different ethnic groups integrated under the EZLN. The ten laws refer to: the right to participation in the revolutionary struggle regardless of race, creed, colour or political affiliation; the right to work and receive a fair salary; the right to decide the number of children each woman wishes to have; the right to participate in the affairs of the community and the right to hold authority positions; the right to health and education; the right to choose a partner and not to be forced into marriage; the right not to be beaten or physically mistreated. They also call for rape to be severely punished.
See the communiqués written by subcomandante Marcos and selected in Clarke and Ross (1994).
I refer here to a famous speech that Comandante Esther made in front of Congress in March 2001 to defend the San Andrés Accords. See Belausteguigoitia (2002).
There are of course many other interpretations of Malinche that contest and critique Paz's interpretation, such as those by Chicanas and Mexican writers, which give Malinche a voice and attempt to revert this imaginary of betrayal. See Alarcón (1989) and Glantz (1999).
Parallel to the creation of the notion of the ‘bad woman’ Malinche, Paz locates the double, the ‘good’ woman figure, the Virgin of Guadalupe, that redeem the sins of the ‘bad’ one. This is not unique to Mexico, that narratives for the nation's founding are based on female doubles of sin and virtue.
It is interesting to note that Malinche married Cortés. She gained status as a married woman ‘a signora’ and also inherited, although she had to fight for this right.
This community was displaced from a village called Los Naranjos, due to the occupation of the military in regions that were Zapatista or contained Zapatista sympathizers. Some of the survivors identified the killers as part of paramilitary troops organized by the PRI, the local party that governed the state.
To explore further images of indigenous women as ‘remedial’ supplements of modernity see Chatterjee (1989) and Alarcón et al. (1999).
In the above-mentioned Revolutionary Women's Laws and the demands of indigenous women not to be sold into marriage, to participate in the decisions of the community and education, it is worth underlining that even though the issue of land inheritance was fully subscribed to by indigenous women, it did not form part of the ten Revolutionary Laws.
Nobody could say that the indigenous women's exercise of autonomy, and the consequent accusation of betrayal led to the massacre in Acteal but it definitely played a roll in the perversion, the hate and the actions of ripping and raping.
Specifically through her participation during the ‘Colour of the Earth’ march, and the speech inside the Congress.
The former name for Los Caracoles was Los Aguascalientes, they were created as a space for encounter, dialogue, celebration of civil and international society. There are five ‘Caracoles’ or autonomous regions – Oventik, La Realidad, La Garrucha, Roberto Barrios and Morelia – in Chiapas. There are other contact spaces for indigenous people and civil society outside Chiapas such as Ojo de Agua at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City.
For more on how the concept of ‘place’ may be conceptualized beyond its geographic and physical meaning and may serve the construction of resistance and identity, see Development 45(1) (2002), a journal issue that explores the meaning of place, politics and justice.
These zones of resistance existed prior to this renaming. The changing of the name represents a recall to civil society.
It is important to know that after the failure of the approval of the San Andrés Accords, subcomandante Marcos no longer functioned as the mediator between the Zapatistas and civil society. Marcos was asked to write a specific communiqué to explain the renaming of the encounter zones.
See La Jornada, 10 August 2003.
A number of bodies have been found with exchanged clothes from other bodies, and strangely with only one shoe or unmatched shoes.
References
Alarcón Norma, Caren Kaplan and Minoo Moallem (1999) Between Women and Nation: Nationalisms, transnational feminisms and the state, Durham: Duke University Press.
Alarcón Norma (1989) ‘Traddutora, Traditora: A paradigmatic figure of Chicana feminism’, Cultural Critique, Fall 57–87.
Belausteguigoitia Marisa (2002) ‘The Colour of the Earth: Indigenous women “before the law”’, Development 45(1).
Chatterjee Partha (1989) ‘The Nationalist Resolution of the Woman's Question’, in Kum Kum Sangary and Sudesh Vaid Recasting Women, New Dehli: Kali for Women.
Clarke Ben and Clifton Ross (eds.) (1994) Voices of Fire: Communiqués and interviews from the Zapatista National Liberation Army, Berkeley: New Earth Publications.
Collier George A. (1994) Basta: Land and the Zapatistas rebellion in Chiapas, Oakland: Food First.
Comisión Nacional de Intermediación (CONAI) (1996) Primeros Acuerdos de San Andrés. Mesa 1: ‘Derechos y Cultura Indigena’, Mexico City: CONAI.
Escobar Arturo and Wendy Harcourt (2002) Women and the Politics of Place. Development 45(1).
Glantz Margo (1999) La Malinche Sus Padres y Sus Hijos, Mexico City: UNAM Facultad de Filosofía y Letras.
Navarro Luis Hernández and Ramón Vera Herrera (eds) (1998) Acuerdos de San Andrés, Mexico City: Era.
Paz Octavio (1994) The Labyrinth of Solitude, second edition, Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Belausteguigoitia, M. Naming the Cinderellas of Development: Violence and women's autonomy in Mexico. Development 47, 64–72 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.development.1100022
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.development.1100022