The Quiet Revolution:  Indigenous Women Struggle for Dignity

by Paul Jeffrey

Angelina Gómez was afraid before she read the Bible. A Tzeltal Maya indigenous woman in the southern Mexican village of Amatenango del Valle, Ms. Gómez and other women in her community had long been told women had no right to think for themselves; they should just follow their husband’s orders.

"Some of us didn’t think that was right, so we started meeting, gathering quietly to see if it was true," Ms. Gómez said. "We started studying the word of God, and found women who were brave, who weren’t afraid, like the Virgin María when she went to see her son who had been murdered. Like María, we have to overcome our fears and be brave."

In hundreds of Mexican villages like Amatenango del Valle, life is changing for indigenous women. While the struggle of Mexico’s indigenous people for freedom and self-determination has captured headlines since the 1994 Zapatista uprising, the struggle of indigenous women hasn’t produced much news coverage. It remains a quiet revolution.

There are a few high-profile exceptions. President Vicente Fox’s advisor for indigenous affairs, Xochitl Galvez, an Otomi indigenous woman from the state of Hidalgo, was named by the World Economic Forum in 2000 as one of 100 young global leaders to watch. Ms. Galvez, a successful entrepreneur, is no stranger to struggle. She was fired from her first job in Mexico City because she didn’t have the right accent when she spoke Spanish.

In remote places like the Chiapas village where Ms. Gómez lives, where most indigenous women don’t speak Spanish, economic change has exacerbated historic problems. The agrarian economy of the countryside has undergone dramatic transformation in recent decades with a lot of farming now depending heavily on chemicals which means farmers need more money than labor. So male family members migrate to the cities and coastal plantations to earn cash, rather than remain at home where they were once part of an interdependent family unit.

This new division of labor negatively impacts the lives of women. When the sexes labored side by side in the fields, women earned a share of the harvest. Today it’s the wage earner who increasingly controls the family’s money -- and thus its relationships. This often means more domestic violence.

Because fewer hands are needed for agricultural tasks, women may want fewer children. The desire to exercise reproductive rights is often met with suspicion and violence by men.

When women in Ms. Gomez’ village started meeting three years ago to talk together and study the Bible, several participants were beaten simply for attending the meetings, which were held in the local Catholic church, said Ms. Gomez, who is a Catholic catechist.

"Many men here say that we women shouldn’t leave the house for meetings, that we should stay home making tortillas, washing and caring for the children," Ms. Gómez said. "They say they’re afraid we’ll find another husband, so we don’t have the right to leave home. Yet they leave whenever they want, and tell us that is their right as men and we just have to accept it."

The women’s group in Amatenango del Valle has been supported by the Catholic diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas, which under former Bishop Samuel Ruiz, began to carry out innovative programs of empowerment with indigenous communities that have endured brutal repression in recent years. The coordinator of women’s ministries for the diocese, Dominican Sister María del Carmen Martínez, said the biggest challenge faced by indigenous women in Chiapas is being able to recognize their own dignity.

"There are many programs that work with indigenous people that continue to treat them as children," Ms. Martinez said. "Our challenge as pastoral workers is to overcome that paternalism and encourage women to recognize their own dignity, to develop self-esteem, to see themselves as daughters of God. These women are very religious, and it’s that faith that has kept them struggling through the centuries. We help them discover in that faith that the God of history dignifies them; that Jesus of Nazareth recognizes them; and that with María of Nazareth, they can lift themselves up to be full persons."

Ms. Martínez said the emancipation of indigenous women is a slow process, but an unstoppable one.

"This process has its own unique rhythm," she said. "It will take awhile; there will be setbacks. Yet there is a lot of wisdom in these women. When they find a rock blocking their path, they don’t turn around and go back, but rather patiently figure out how to get it out of their way."

To complement the Bible study, diocesan staff help the women embody the liberation the words convey.

"Studies about how people recover from trauma indicate that movement helps people to release some of it, so we use movement to help the women relax, to open them up, and as a form of prayer that breaks through the traditional practice of praying that has often lost meaning," said the Rev. Delle McCormick, a United Church of Christ missionary from the United States who works as part of the diocesan women’s ministry team. "This has a profound effect in connecting the women with God and with their own bodies, and in helping to release memories of abuse."

Play is important, said Ms. McCormick, who trains the diocesan mental-health staff in using movement with trauma victims.

"Women here don’t play enough," she said. "Freedom to move is important, but indigenous culture has placed rigid limitations on how the women can move in the world."

This movement integrates biblical narrative. If the women dance, they may dance the story of the Samaritan woman who meets Jesus at the well. Whether they dance it or read it, the word is empowering.

"We read passages in the Bible about women, so that they can see themselves in the text, hear women’s names spoken, and understand how God has worked through women in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, all kinds of women" Ms. McCormick said. "They can see themselves in the stories. They get that they have a right to stand up and participate in their families and communities and that they have the right to be treated fairly with justice and equity."

One of the obstacles to the women’s liberation can be the church, which frequently uses exclusively male language for God and continues to demonstrate a concept of power and decision-making that excludes women. The women are fed by the loving labor of women theologians, a force that’s not yet very strong but is emerging more and more every day, Ms. Martínez said.

"We are encouraged by the strength of the women in the villages who, when confronted with this patriarchal system, are nonetheless discerning how to live with hope and joy," she said. "The Gospel strengthens them, as does the company of María of Nazareth, a humble young woman who knew that the God of life wants things to be better for indigenous women, wants to bring down those on top and raise up those who are below."

The Zapatista uprising, which proclaimed such an uplifting of the poor was long overdue, cast indigenous women in a new light for many Mexicans. In remote Chiapas villages, indigenous women came out of their kitchens to claim a new sense of political protagonism. They lined up in front of their homes, wielding sticks and stones and sharp words to chase off the army, at times physically pushing out soldiers reluctant to use their giant assault rifles against the relatively tiny women.

The Zapatista movement has been positive for indigenous women, Ms. Martínez said.

"It has forced Mexican society to be more open and to recognize there are millions of people in this country who are excluded,"she said. Yet she cautioned that leaders of indigenous political movements are usually men who discourage women from having separate groups.

"If you raise questions about this, they’ll pull a woman out of the group and push her out in front to talk," she said. "But she wasn’t part of the process. It’s one thing for women to be an integral part of the process of making decisions. It’s another for her to be put out in front simply because with her indigenous clothing she makes for better photos, for a better image."

Erika Poblano, a Tlapaneca indigenous woman from the state of Guerrero, is a leader of the National Indigenous Women’s Coordinating Council, a group formed in 1996 by women who believed the male-dominated National Indigenous Council didn’t represent them. She said male indigenous leaders are often afraid they’ll be displaced by indigenous women.

"They put obstacles in the way of women advancing, because they’re afraid women might achieve more than them," Ms. Poblano said. "So we always have to explain that we’re not competing with anyone, that we don’t want anyone below us. Yet they continue to argue that we’re dividing the indigenous movement. We’re earning our space. No one has given us anything."

With the election of President Fox in 2000, many Mexicans celebrated the end of the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s 71-year grip on power in Mexico as a harbinger of change to come. President Fox had promised he could end the festering conflict in Chiapas "in 15 minutes."

It proved more difficult. Although President Fox originally backed a sweeping new law on indigenous rights and customs, based on the 1996 San Andrés accords negotiated with the Zapatistas, his own National Action Party helped gut the law. A watered-down version passed the Mexican Congress and was approved by a majority of state legislatures –- though not those with indigenous majorities -- in 2001.

Ms. Poblano said that although President Fox has altered Mexican politics, he continues to see things from a conventional perspective.

"His regime is very machista, and sees women in very traditional ways," she said. His perspective on indigenous affairs is similarly flawed, she said.

"President Fox is a businessman, and he thinks the ‘indigenous problem’ is limited to economic issues, that all the indigenous need is a new television and a new pair of boots," Ms. Poblano said. "He doesn’t really understand the depth of the problem, the degree to which the majority of Mexicans, including the indigenous, are marginalized. Since he hasn’t a clue, he has no strategy."

President Fox’s controversial Plan Puebla-Panama, which would bring maquiladoras –- assembly plants –- to indigenous lands will impact indigenous women, who economic planners hope will trade their mountain villages for life in cardboard shacks in neighborhoods of cardboard shacks clustered around foreign-owned maquiladoras."

Ms. Poblano recalled her own experience of leaving Guerrero at an early age, her family forced by economic hard times to migrate to the city.

"My mother worked as a maid," she said. "Women like her who arrived from the countryside didn’t know how to do anything else. It was a big cultural shock."

Ms. Poblano faced her own struggles as a child.

"You are pushed to erase what remains in you of your own culture, your own self," she said. "Other kids made fun of how we talked Spanish in school. The teachers made us speak Spanish, prohibited us from speaking our mother tongue. I was afraid, afraid of who I was. There was a general psychosis, a mass censure of who we were."

Mexicans love to boast of their pre-colonial indigenous heritage, yet the rush to destroy or assimilate what remains of indigenous culture may indicate that many Mexicans prefer an idealized, folkloric version of history. While the Zapatista’s creative and innovative revolution has forced many Mexicans to rethink how the two Mexicos relate to each other, the country’s economic planners remain committed to what some view as the long-delayed continuation of the Spanish Conquest five centuries ago.

Can the strengths of indigenous communities, including the women in those communities, be incorporated into a truly national project of development in Mexico? Or are the Zapatistas but the last gasp of eventually futile resistance to a globalized melting pot?

Paul Jeffrey is a United Methodist missionary in Central America.

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