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64 LATINAMERICAN PERSPECTIVESsubjectivity, and studies involving campesino movements, which are based onstructural analysis. These two approaches are also differentiated by their language and literary style.We have tried to reconcile the expressive differencesbetween these traditions.

AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS AND MOREThe 1980s were a time of profound crisis, and many ideas, values, and per

spectives were openly being questioned in religious institutions, the socialsciences and the arts, government agencies, social organizations, and thesphere of everyday life. The economic and political system established at theclose of theMexican Revolution had begun to crack, and the ensuing changescan be understood as an amalgam of events on various levels from the international to the local. In Chiapas the campesino struggles coincided withteacher mobilizations, religious clashes, and the expulsion ofmany familiesfrom several municipalities in the highlands. Complex migratory movementsprofoundly altered the state's demographic composition, land-use patterns,economic structure, and social relations. The forest along the Guatemalanborder was populated by immigrants from various regions of Chiapas andMexico; the cities were surrounded by indigenous settlements whose residents had come in search of jobs or fleeing from conflict in their hometowns.Finally, thousands of Guatemalans sought refuge in the border zone duringthese years.The clashes, agreements, and negotiations that arose from these processescontributed to the political transformation of Chiapas. Meanwhile, the conditions for women-oriented political spaces began to emerge. However,although women participated in the processes thatwould lead to the creationof such spaces, the extensive literature on Chiapas's social movements duringthe 1970s and 1980s pays no attention to their role as social actors (see, e.g.,Paniagua, 1983; P?rez Castro, 1988; Rojas, 1995; Harvey, 2000).

The campesino movement greatly influenced theChiapas political scenario,and agrarian struggles became the hub of social transformation. Inmany partsof the country, its emergence took particular forms in accordance with specificcauses, demands, and enemies (Bartra, 1985: 104-105). From themid-1970s tothemid-1980s, Chiapas social movements were focused on the land, the allocation of credits, commercial subsidies, labor demands, and an end tocaciquismo and repression. The land thus became themost valued and violently disputed economic and symbolic resource, and political acts, demands,discourses, and identities were constructed around it.The first invasions of private rural property (predios) took place during theearly 1970s in themunicipalities of the highlands (San Andr?s Larr?inzar), thenorthern area (Huitiup?n, Simojovel, and Sabanilla), and the central valleys(La Frailesca). At the same time, San Juan Chamula was gripped in a violentclash between community members and indigenous caciques that led to theexpulsion of numerous dissident families. These events, among many others,became thebasis of amassive social mobilization that continued into the followingdecade. Itwas carried out by local organizations that acted spontaneously and

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Garza and Toledo / HIAPAS IN THE 1980s 65

enjoyed the full support of the population. As nationally established campesinoorganizations and other social actors entered the scene, Chiapas's rural movement was strengthened and solidified and the organizations were re-createdto suit regional particularities.Women participated in themobilizations during themost critical moments;they took part inmarches and protests, often faced physical repression, andsupported the directions chosen by their local groups and organizations. Oncethe crisis had been averted, however, theywent back to their daily tasks andmen took charge of the political dynamics. Women usually did not participatein local assemblies (men were in charge of representing their family units2)and were not appointed local representatives.The new social organizations reproduced the gender inequalities present inthe society as awhole and, accepting them as natural, created particular formsof subordination. Their political management fell to small circles of leadersand advisers who were understood to hold a broad view of social transformation and to have the ability to develop strategies, negotiate, and representthe rural poor. The vertical organizational structure and the political projectitself reinforced their leadership. Women who had a limited grasp of theSpanish language and little education had almost no chance of?or interestin?participating in the assemblies, let alone becoming organizational representatives. The main goal being to obtain land, therewas little awareness ofinequalities that were not directly derived from forms of production. Theagrarian movements allowed women to participate as members of thecampesino class but offered them no opportunity forpolitical questioning ofgender inequality.One of the striking aspects of this period was the violence that resultedwhen the state and federal governments proved incapable of responding toconflict in political terms and instead opted for repression. The prolongedagrarian struggle and its radicalization in some areas were to a large extent theconsequence of this government response, which often led to clashes betweencampesinos and landlords supported by armed forces. In Simojovel andVenustiano Carranza, for example, where clashes were both frequent and violent, the local population was organized for self-defense. One strategy was toassign the task of protecting seized property to women, children, and theelderly. The local organization was convinced that, being the weaker sexand by nature as nonaggressive as children and the elderly, women would berespected (Toledo and Garza, 2003). The men, particularly the young ones, hidin thewoods; theywere the ones inneed of protection, for theywere in chargeof the movement. These notions were shared by the local authorities andpower groups (Toledo, 1996) to the extent that, on occasion, the ruse workedand the armed forces retreated. At other times, however, despite the obviousinequality between the local groups and the battalions in charge of evictingthem, casualties were not restricted to the campesino side. The clashes showedthat women were not passive, weak, or incompetent: with sticks, stones,imprecations, and prayers theymore than once managed to stop the evictions.

Many of these clashes, however, ended, aside from evictions, in rapes, beatings, jailings, and murders.



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66 LATINAMERICAN PERSPECTIVESGiven the intensity of these confrontations, the idea began to take shapethat perhaps the informed participation of women might strengthen thegroup, the organization, and the commirnity at large. Independent organizations,

along with institutionalized bodies (and the vast range of social positions thatthis simplistic oppositional classification glosses over) began to try to attractwomen?over half of the territory's population?to their own particular agendas. The issue of Chiapas women's political participation?an issue thatwould eventually become the center of a heated dispute in the times ofZapatismo?was thus closely linked to contemporary agrarian movements.From what we shall call an opposition perspective, the first step was topoliticize women with group interests inmind: help them analyze their reality, become aware of the different social classes, the theft of lands, andexploitation through labor, and reflect on theways inwhich the powerful disguised their interests and the diverse methods of repression employed bysociety and their consequences. This kind of analysis, itwas thought, wouldlead tomore informed political participation and contribute to the success ofcampesino organizations and their struggle.The San Crist?bal diocese had recently identified oppression and exploitationas major social evils, and pastoral intervention was certainly one of themainsources of philosophical change among rural communities. Still, campesinosand campesinas were directly involved in the process. One of themost important processes yet to be researched is theways inwhich they reinterpreted andaltered the received discourses to suit their own interests, logic, and perceptions. Those who became part of campesino organizations created a discoursetied to their own political choices, inspired by the word ofGod, but Catholicfaith also served others as a justification for rejecting such organizations.The Church has never been averse to the conceptualization of the role ofwomen in various social spheres, and during those years its Pastoral de la

Mujer sought to promote the role of campesinas in their families, communities, and organizations from a conciliatory religious perspective. At the beginning of the 1980s attempts were made to revalorize the role ofwomen whilehonoring God's plan for the family, seeking women's active involvement instruggles against exploitation. Catholic nuns began teaching literacy,women'shealth, and the support of cooperatives. They also initiated group meetingsthat undertook the discussion and analysis of reality. Soon the firstquestionsregarding women's submissive position came to the fore (Mujeres Campesinasdel Sur, 1996), and the nuns began a long process thatwould lead to the creation of the Coordinadora Diocesana de Mujeres (Diocesan Organization forWomen?CODIMUJ) in 1994.This religious approach was similar in part to that of other groups nowarriving inChiapas with a social transformation agenda, and all of them contributed to new discourses and practices among the local population. Somecame as part of government agencies seeking to strengthen the state's political infrastructure, while others belonged to political parties or social organizations with Marxist orMaoist tendencies. The participation of these militantfactions was full of contradictions and ambiguities, for they saw thecampesinos as part of a revolutionary vanguard with the power to transformreality and themselves as marginal agents prompting the process of change.The campesinos' demands did not involve these political advisers, and the



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Garza andToledo / HIAPAS INTHE 1980s 67latter's militancy was to be limited tomoral support, consciousness-raising,and organizational orientation. Still, the advisers eventually became interpreters, spokespeople, and representatives for these associations of others.As we shall see, the advisers employed by thewomen's movement inheritedand amply evidenced this ambiguity.During theLuis Echeverr?a (1970-1976) and Jos? ?pez Portillo (1976-1982)administrations, the state pursued a national modernization project centered on the oil and hydroelectric industries and evidenced in a series ofimportant institutional actions. Inmecaf?, Tabamex, Conasupo-Coplamar, andothers were created to give productive and social support to the countryside,reduce the impact of modernization on the poorer social strata, and counteract social unrest. The proliferation and the strengthening of federal government agencies in Chiapas did not automatically translate into the absolutecontrol of dissidence; not only did the agrarian movements continue but thenew situation inadvertently opened up new channels of communication thatintroduced fresh changes and the creation of new identities. Professionals,bureaucrats, and technicians from all over the country took jobs in Chiapasand began interacting with the local rural communities: new ideas, perspectives, beliefs, and knowledge were channeled into the local mix. Varied andcontradictory as they were, these factors helped inspire and validate otherforms of geopolitical participation among organizations in addition to thosethatwere already officially established. They created new types of interactionand in many ways benefited the social movements taking shape in theChiapas countryside.Government agencies had begun developing their own special policiesregarding indigenous and campesina women. There were several reasons forthis, but two of them stand out: on the one hand, the government sought tocontrol the spread of poverty through the establishment of birth control(Garza and Cadenas, 1994); on the other, it sought to extend its base of sympathizers at a timewhen itperceived its legitimacy as threatened. These ideas,woven into the indigenista discourse long espoused by theMexican state, ledto a series of programs directed at rural women. The Partido RevolucionarioInstitucional (Institutional Revolutionary party?PRI) had a long tradition oforganizing women along party lines and used this period to reinforce its institutional mechanisms in the countryside. It created cooperatives of female artisans, midwives' and traditional medicine organizations, and agriculturalprojects involving female-owned land. The party leaders in charge of handicrafts or commercial workshops became the strongest spokespeople in institutional contexts. Although these projects were guided by the logic of the localand federal governments, they certainly helped spread the idea that women'sorganizations were viable and legitimate.The social mobilization of those years was not evenly distributed across thestate or equally intense everywhere, and the ways inwhich organizationswere formed and their actions and impact on a changing Chiapas were quitediverse. Organizations' political outlooks and methods differed widely, andmany of them reproduced old practices (see Garcia et al., 1998). Still, theirpresence opened up opportunities forpolitical participation.The clashes that took place during this period profoundly affected socialspaces, the roles of individuals in them, and theirways of life and representation.



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68 LATINAMERICAN PERSPECTIVESAs a result of the numerous land invasions, many of the regions where privatelandholding was still practiced saw the introduction of communal ownershipof land. In some areas, former employees of the landowners underwent aprocess of campesinization,

and the number of campesinosincreased

alongwith new types of social interaction and conflict. At the same time, part of therural population that had been linked, on a variety of levels, to particular unitsof agricultural production (ranchers, administrators, cowboys, carpenters,house servants, muleteers, merchants, etc.) moved tomunicipal capitals andlocal or national urban areas. In Tuxtla Guti?rrez, for example, several settlements were formed by some of the original inhabitants of Simojovel andHuitiup?n. While some of them were previous landowners and ranch orestate administrators, a large number had been employed on these propertiesbut for one reason or another were not included in the distribution of lands(Toledo, 2002).This intense and violent period of transformation in agrarian structure,accompanied by new discourses and social interactions, re-created campesinoidentity. Many other groups with diverse interests and conflicts mobilizedunder the larger banner of the campesinado, a group whose identity had beenpractically and metaphorically re-envisaged during these two decades. At thesame time, although at a slower pace, theway had been paved for the construction of other identities such as ethnicity and gender.

THE FIRSTWOMEN'S CONFERENCESThe political unrest of the 1970s and 1980s produced a large number ofconferences involving women from central Mexico, Catholics from the ecclesiastical base communities, Guatemalan refugees, indigenous and mestizawomen of various cultures and regions, left-wing militants who had partici

pated in the campesino and teachers' movements, academics, and religiousworkers. Women who had little in common began to get involved in a verycomplex process that eventually led

to apartially shared

vision.The first contacts between women's groups were strongly influenced by the

campesino movement.3 It was the rural organizations that set the basicagenda. The dialogue that developed among these women of different languages, backgrounds, and cultural particularities from different localities and,on occasion, even different countries encouraged the participants to examinetheir personal lives and situations. Initially, general opposition to the state hadloosely linked the members of civil, party, and political organizations withmembers of religious orders and lay groups. Work with and forwomen created closer ties. Years later, some of these original participants joined othergroups and organizations to build a broad and heterogeneous movementbased on their experiences of this agrarian mobilization (Garza, 2000).The advisers to the party and militant organizations, religious workers, academics, and professionals all had their own philosophies and developed themdifferently. Although their goals varied widely, all of them stressed educationas a tool for change or containment. Then as now, the idea that an isolatedpopulation hampered by underdevelopment and ignorance was easily manipulated had become a burden. Despite the fact that new sociocultural approaches



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valued cultural diversity and tradition, the conviction that ethnicity exacerbated the woes of the campesino condition persisted. Itwas believed thatancestral traditions and local loyalties made indigenous people prone to beled by alien interests (whether those of the government, the landlords, orsome other opponent). The education and training of the rural populationthus became a crucial project.While the rural poor were generally thought of in thisway, the situation wasmuch worse forwomen. The experiences of the campesino movement madewomen's subordinate position apparent, and the discourse and actions itemployed against systems of subjugation made no reference to gender inequality.Other women?those who participated as advisers to or supporters ofcampesino organizations, belonged to left-wing political parties, and/or wereemployed by government agencies?began towork with indigenous womenand campesinas. Itwas only natural thatwomen should take care ofwomen?the prevailing view was that sex and biological imperatives were the root ofwomen's problems and thatmembers of the same sexwould approach eachother with greater confidence. But the crucial aspect of this process was not somuch gender similarity as the organizational dynamics that built bridges,understanding, alliances, and negotiations. Common (though not necessarilyexpected) themes were collectively raised, among them the limitationsimposed on women by their having to bear the full brunt of domestic andchild-rearing activities, the control exercised by fathers, grandfathers, andbrothers, the devaluation ofwomen's work and their abilities, the lack of attention towomen's needs, illnesses, and bodies, theways inwhich girls and boyswere socially differentiated, women's active participation in an ideological system that harmed them, and their fears and insecurities.The beginnings were difficult and hesitant; doubt and inertia had to beopenly confronted. Itwas not easy to defend the need forwomen's meetingsagainst those who believed that including women's interests might damagethe larger movement. Some men who had leading positions in the organizationswould participate in themeetings?translating, monitoring the directionconversations were taking, and offering corrections. Itwas especially hard tocombat the general perception that gender issues were a secondary problem.Both women and men, leaders and members, oscillated between gossip,mockery, criticism, suspicion, and downright forgetfulness. Women begantomeet inwhat was sometimes open defiance of certain family members andwere subject to a general lack of support regarding their needs and the collective needs of their budding organizations. There were also times, however,when women were forced to attend meetings and tohave their consciousnessraised against theirwill. Despite all this, thiswork eventually led to the creation of small groups at the local and micro-regional levels and some state,regional, and national meetings.To a great extent the dialogues, negotiations, and disputes encountered atthe beginning established the conditions for a general women's movement.This development was fundamental to the gradual construction of the gendered identities of all participants, both the advisers and the advised, and had

many contradictory consequences. On the one hand, involved Chiapaswomen were able to come up with an agenda that responded to their personalneeds and perspectives and could later engage in dialogue with national and



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70 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESinternational feminist groups without being swept away by outside priorities.4At the same time, certain aspects outlined in the beginning had by thistime become quite problematic: the persistent distinction between adviser andadvised had

perpetuated unequal relationshipsbetween thewomen in spiteof all their efforts to the contrary. Chandra Mojanty's work (1991) explores the

dangers of losing sight of the power relations inwhich the feminist discourseis immersed. Focusing on indigenous and campesina women as subjects provided with the tools they needed to transform their own reality presupposedthe existence of two opposing types ofwomen: uninformed and/or uneducated ones, subject to oppression and exploitation, and educated professionalsin control of their lives and aware of their rights. The latterwere perceived asthe prototype towhich all women essentially aspired, and this gave them thepower to conduct the educational process. Discussions regarding the socialasymmetries between men and women should have involved a critical analysis of the ideas presented by the advisers themselves.Those of us working as advisers?feminists, women's group members,helpers?should have openly addressed the cultural limitations and contradictions in our own environments, opening up what might have been a moreequitable process.5 At the time, however, we saw ourselves as supporters ofthose who, we thought, had the potential to transform our country. Thisblinded us to our own situation, and although our involvement was alreadymodifying our initial views, the demands of our project leftus little room forreflection during these formative years.

PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH AND WORKING WITH WOMENFeminist theory was absent from the first studies involving women in

Chiapas. Consciousness-oriented urban women groups had more influentialpractical results (see Mujeres para el Di?logo, 1983). Local academics madeuse of participatory research (starting with Paulo Freire's work [1974; 1979(1970)]) and cultural approaches to explain the generally nontransformativeresponse of indigenous and campesina women to their social situation. At thesame time, they sought to free them from their false consciousness and havethem develop their potential and better their situation. The participatory techniques proposed the inclusion of nonspecialist actors in the systematization ofexperiences and the production of knowledge, converting the subject into herown object of study. These methods and variations on them provided thecommitted intellectual (a category based on the Gramscian notion of theorganic intellectual ) with ad hoc tools.Discussion of an October 1986 meeting between academics and militants6

will allow us to explore theway inwhich we combined academic research andpolitical activism with women and their situation. During what we called theFirst Conference of Indigenous and Campesina Women of Chiapas, wesought to expand the scope of our research and transform it into a collectiveprocess of reflection by combining popular education techniques with traditionalresearch tools. We used the categories of class, ethnicity, and sex as the basisfor a discussion ofwork, family, community, and reproduction (biological aswell as social and ideological). After debating what we considered the causes



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of the indigenous woman's situation, we met for aweek with 20 indigenouswomen from the areas where we had been carrying out our research. Thosefrom Simojovel and Las Margaritas (places formerly run by ranchers andlandlords, now centers of active campesinomovements and army- and policeled repression) were shaped by violence and conflict over land. The womenfromHuixt?n, who were organized and had close ties towhat would soonbecome the Partido de la Revoluci?n Democr?tica (Revolutionary Democratic

party?PRD), hailed from an ejido formed during the L?zaro C?rdenasadministration. Those from Chenalh? were midwives associated with theOrganization of Indigenous Physicians, a newly independent body that hadsplit from official government institutions. The women from the forest of Las

Margaritas came from ejidos founded in the 1970s and 1980s by immigrantTzotzils and Tzeltals from the highlands and had received the influx of thousands ofGuatemalan refugees during thewar. There were also women pastorsfrom San Juan Chamula and, finally, two experienced health program promoters from La Hormiga, which was made up of expelled and migrantmembers ofmunicipalities close to San Crist?bal. The latter not only joinedthe campesinas but also served as translators and bilingual facilitators duringgroup sessions.The group was quite heterogeneous, including Catholic and EvangelicalChristians as well as traditionalists and representing awide range of ages andwork experiences. We decided to focus on the common threads of class, ethnicity, and sex and organize discussion around these topics. Setting aside feminist theories that explain women's social condition as the result of universalpatriarchy, we based our approach on class structure. This strategy wasemployed by the religious and political activists, and meetings and symposiawith similar goals were organized: the First National Conference ofWomen ofthe Popular Sectors (Mujeres para el Di?logo, 1983), thewomen's round tableduring theNational Plan de Ayala Bureau Conference of 1985 (CNPA, 1985),and the conferences of theMujeres Campesinas del Sur (1996).Some of our sessions were centered on experiences we perceived to berelated to class structures and interpreted

from bothpragmatic

and academicperspectives. At the same time,we presented a series of images created by theCatholic Church, the various social organizations, political parties, officialinstitutions, and budding nongovernmental organizations. The society weportrayed was split into static polar and essentialist opposites: indigenousmestizo, laborer-landlord, exploited-exploiter, oppressed-oppressor, the firstbeing potential revolutionaries and the second reactionaries. The incorporation of sex and ethnicity was not as theoretically well developed as that ofissues of class. We included culture and the body as additions thatwere fundamentally defined by their position in the production chain. We sawwomen's oppression?or at least itsmost tragic consequences?as an exacerbation of their class condition. Looking back on this period, we recognize thelimitations of this approach. And yet poverty and exploitation turned out tobe only some of the issues raised at the conference. In addition to subjects suchas work done for the benefit of landlords, the low prices of produce, and thepoor quality of the land, a revaluation of housekeeping became part of ourdiscussions. Although the division between the private and public sphereswas becoming popular, we presented the two as linked through the social



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72 LATINAMERICAN PERSPECTIVESsystem's dependence on biological reproduction. This view allowed us to geta glimpse of the complex web involving the home, work and theworkspace,communal organization, and politics.Our dialogue regarding the body and reproduction was probably themostenriching, and itcertainly shifted some of our Stereotypie ideas regarding indigenous rural women. One of the events that stood out was the disagreementbetween two Tzotzil women, Anselma, from Simojovel, and Maria, from thehighlands ofHuixt?n. Both were members of campesino organizations, but theirviews on women's political participation and role in biological reproductionwere radically different.Maria thought that having toomany children limitedwomen's political activity, drained them physically and emotionally, and heldthem hostage tomany forms of domestic violence. Anselma, a leader andCatholic pastoral agent, argued that one ofwomen's main political contributionswas the bearing and rearing of children who would become part of the socialstruggle. The government wants to finish off the campesinos, she told us.That iswhy theywant women to stop having children. Still,Anselma had lefther husband; itwas the only way she could find of remaining politically active.The political relevance of this issue,with all its ambiguities and contradictions,would increase over the years and become a complex knot of clashing interests(Garza, 2000). Back then, those of us in charge of leading the discussions decidedto avoid it.Our fear of jeopardizing this nascent union among women led us toend the argument, a move that tacitly approved Anselma's view.Interpretations regarding a given culture's dominant values are based on

many issues. Ours arose from the conviction that indigenous women weresimply conservative in their approach to reproduction and the body?at leastthis iswhat health organizations, family planning programs, and, especially,theChurch told us. Our workshops led us to question this notion. When wediscussed women's image of themselves, we were prepared to use two alternative methods, one in case they identified themselves through theirwork, theother if they chose to do so through their bodies. When our participants statedthatwomen give birth and that itwas their bodies that distinguished themfrommen, we presented them with a human silhouette and asked them todraw on it the body parts they considered significant. The women thought ofthe silhouette itself as an animal; it's far from being a woman. They dreweyes, eyebrows, eyelashes, mouth, teeth, fingers and toes, nails, breasts, reproductive organs, and the pubic area. In theirwords, one needed

a head to think, eyes to see, ears to hear, a mouth to talk, hands to make food,hair to lookpretty,feet towalk and go towork, chak' [ageneric term for thepubicarea] to live and pee and poop. Men use itso thatwe can get pregnant and havekids. . . . e need clothes to cover ourselves and look pretty, earrings and necklaces to adorn ourselves, a shawl to carry the baby, shoes to avoid stepping onthorns or glass, and also so that no microbes get in.They even decided that, in order to be a woman, one had to be baptized.Womanhood, then, involved much more thanmere reproductive capacity. Yetwe advisers needed a lotmore time and work to start taking this seriously.Later on, the work of Sylvia Yanagisako and Jane Collier (1994), which



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strongly questioned the feminist tendency to assume that gender is constructed across time and culture as a function of reproduction, alerted us toour prejudices. At the time, the notion thatwe women were ineluctably tied tobiology remained the operative standard.Our participants surprised us again. They took another silhouette and usedit to represent the male body. While preparing the workshop we hadconsidered bringing up this subject but had decided against it because wewere sure that their conservative leanings would not only discourage themfrom participating but also offend them. None of this happened, and thestubborn notion that rural women are generally conservative in these areaswas evidence of our own prejudices. We decided to use the new silhouette toreplicate the drawing exercise, this time with men inmind. According to the

women, men hada head to figure out how to get money for food, eyes to see, a nose, mouth, andteeth to talk and eat, a hat toprotect themselves from the sun, ears tohear; handsand feetwith fingers, toes, and nails towork, walk, look forwork; awatch toknow atwhat time they startwork and what time they finish; some hair on thebody and the face; decorative boobs, like a sample; thebelly button, thebig gutthat isused forpooping, and here we get the alteration; a penis tokeep his wifecompany, to have children.

Men also required baptism and clothes. The male figure was anatomicallydifferent in order to keep his wife company, but the salient feature was itsinvolvement inwork. Arms, hands, legs, and feetwere instruments used towork the land (belonging to either the self or others) or participate in othersalaried activities. We had taken some time to talk about the differentiationof labor by class and sex, but the male silhouette encompassed the mainpoints and presented many gendered differences. We confirmed that thewomen did not see housework as work and interpreted their agriculturalactivities as help rather than labor. The hair, dress, and accessories served tostate their feminine image, along with jewelry to look pretty and a shawlto carry the baby. Salaries belonged in the male sphere, although thewomen themselves participated in salaried activities. It was men whoneeded a hat and a watch and were directly responsible for [figuring] outhow to get money for food.Our conference was similar to other workshops, courses, and symposiaorganized by political parties, the Church, and other institutions during thoseyears. It exemplifies the kinds of techniques thatwere used with the purposeof building new, more egalitarian social systems. Although we inherited andre-created the division between advisers and advised and had to deal withspecific kinds of tension and conflict, these types of encounters made possiblenew patterns of reflection and interaction. Women's work and political participation were valued, personal expression and evaluation being key elements.An analysis of our workshops also allowed us to explore the beginnings ofacademic involvement with women's organizations, as well as the long andcontradictory process of women's movements in Chiapas. Inspired by the1970s agrarian movements, we sought to support indigenous rural womenand help them to findways of interpreting and representing their demands.



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74 LATINAMERICAN PERSPECTIVESFINAL THOUGHTS

During the past 20 years, Chiapas social movements have grown from earliersocial organizations and intertwined. As we have said, the campesino movement can be seen as the foundation formany subsequent organizations. It notonly revealed problems regarding land possession but also brought to the foremany types of inequalities and conflicts that, in time, created new demands andidentity categories, among them gender. The history of Chiapas is profoundlyrooted in agrarian life; the intense mobilizations of the 1970s and 1980s represented a crack in the collective imagination aswell as social and political relations.Once the struggle for land had yielded results, those who had experienced conflict and mobilization realized that land in itself did not solve all the problems?that poverty and exclusion also required attention. People who had beenexpelled from their communities of origin because of events directly or indirectly related to the agrarian clashes engaged innew struggles the character ofwhich was always traceable to the immediate past. The campesino movementhas been a fundamental referent formany social and political movements thatare still rooted in itsorganizational history. Ifnowadays Zapatistas demand territory and autonomy, it is because they have been nurtured by thatmovement,which, despite its contradictions, remains fertile ground for collective utopias.After agrarian struggle opened up spaces for women's movements inChiapas, thework of indigenous and campesina women (firstas part of generalsocial institutions, then in expressly created groups) has progressively revealeddeep-seated inequalities that are seen as natural not only by rural people butalso by many of the social workers who are politically involved with them. Theinitially subordinate position ofwomen participants in the agrarian strugglebecame one of the central issues inwomen-related and women-led politicalwork. Those who played advisory roles back then had also experienced this

marginalization in their respective areas ofmilitancy and, through their workwith indigenous and ruralwomen, undergone processes parallel to those of theadvised. This was obscured, however, by political goals that at the timewereperceived as essential. The women's groups that formed in later years wouldmaintain their links topast popular organizations, and, because indigenous andrural women made up most of thewomen's movement in Chiapas, many oftheir demands are shaped by their particular interests and views.

Contemporary feminist perspectives based on the notion of gender proposethe examination of daily interactions between women and men, and academicstudies done in Chiapas regarding gender and the trajectory of social movements have attempted to explore this. However, a critical, historical revisionshould also take into account established relationships among women. Class,religion, and ethnicity are pertinent not only to gender divisions but also tothe relationships between the participants in thewomen's movement itself ascertain aspects are reinforced and others questioned.The boundaries between social movements are flexible and sometimes evendisappear. Zapatismo has brought together a variety of groups and organizations, just as the campesino movement did decades ago. Contemporaryindigenous complaints and demands have a strong rural component and harkback to a very recent history upon which they seek tobuild solutions. Some ofthe tensions, clashes, and contradictions are also part of that history.



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Garza andToledo / HIAPAS INTHE 1980s 75NOTES

1. In speaking of the campesino movement or the women's movement we refer not toany unified organization but to the various groups linked by a cultural logic that characterizestheir collective action.

2. Even now, the few women who participate in general assemblies in the Chiapas countryside, including women who identify themselves as Zapatistas, tend to be widows without oldersons to represent them, and they hardly ever express their opinions. A genuine change in genderrelations is still distant.

3. The feminist movement inMexico City had begun to reorganize in close relationship withthe urban popular movement that followed the 1985 earthquake (Tu??n, 1997), while the international feminist meetings that began taking place in the 1970s had extended their influence toLatin America (Nash, 1986). Still, Chiapas's particular context and its history of popular movements are equally important for understanding the adoption of certain ideas and the creation ofothers that expanded the landscape ofwomen's rights.4. For example, whereas urban feminism tends to see birth control as one of themajor toolsin the struggle for equality, many Chiapas organizations have opposed it as a government

attempt to end agrarian reform.5. Bourdieu (2000) and others have called attention to the often mechanical understanding ofthe relationship between the acquisition of social consciousness and social transformation. Thisis a subject worth pursuing in future work involving the kinds of processes discussed here.6. Maria Fernanda Paz, a researcher at the Indigenous Studies Institute at the AutonomousUniversity of Chiapas; Walda Barrios, founder of Antzetik Workshop of that university's Schoolof Social Sciences; and Maria Eugenia Santana, of the Organization of Indigenous Physicians,also closely allied to a pastoral Chiapas organization.

REFERENCESBartra, Armando

1985 Los herederos de Zapata: Movimientos campesinos posrevolucionarios enM?xico. Mexico City:Editorial Era.Bourdieu, Pierre

2000 La dominaci?n masculina. Barcelona: Anagrama.CNPA (Coordinadora Nacional Plan de Ayala)1985 La mujer campesina: conclusions de lamesa de mujeres del II Congreso Nacional de laCNPA. MS.Freir?, Paulo

1974 La educaci?n como pr?ctica de la libertad. Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores.1979 (1970)Pedagog?adeloprimido.exico City: SigloXXI Editores.Garc?a, Mar?a del Carmen, et al.

1998 Las organizaciones campesinas e ind?genas de Chiapas frente a la reforma del Estado:una radiograf?a. Cuadernos Agrarios, n.s., 16: 75-94.Garza, Anna Mar?a

2000 El movimiento de mujeres en Chiapas: haciendo historia. Anuario de Estudios Ind?genas10: 109-135.Garza, Anna Mar?a and B?rbara Cadenas

1994 Anticoncepci?n y derechos reproductivos en los altos de Chiapas. Anuario de EstudiosInd?genas 4: 93-100.

Harvey, Neil2000 La rebeli?n de Chiapas: La lucha por la tierra y la democracia. Mexico City: Ediciones Era.Mojanty, Chandra1991 Under Western eyes: feminist scholarship and colonial discourses, pp. 51-80 inChandra Mojanty et al. (eds.), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington:Indiana University Press.Mujeres Campesinas del Sur1996 Memorias de los encuentros de Mujeres Campesinas del Sur, 1986-1996. MS.



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