In her Zapotec village in Mexico, women aren't allowed to vote, attend town assemblies, or hold elected office. But Eufrosina Cruz decided to run for mayor anyway.
The all-male town board tore up ballots cast in her favor in the Nov. 4 election, arguing that as a woman, she wasn’t a “citizen� of the town. “That is the custom here, that only the citizens vote, not the women,� said Valeriano Lopez, the town’s deputy mayor.Rather than give up, Cruz has launched the first serious, national-level challenge to traditional Indian forms of government, known as “use and customs,� which were given full legal status in Mexico six years ago in response to Indian rights movements sweeping across Latin America.
“For me, it’s more like ‘abuse and customs,�’ Cruz said as she submitted her complaint in December to the National Human Rights Commission. “I am demanding that we, the women of the mountains, have the right to decide our lives, to vote and run for office, because the constitution says we have these rights.�
The "use and customs" law was enacted in 2001 as part of a series of reforms after the Zapatista uprisings. But, especially given the major role Zapatista women played in the revolution, it's important to note that it's not (as the Newsweek headline implies) as if indigenous rights and women's rights are diametrically opposed. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Rebecca Solnit attended this year's encuentro (or "encounter"), where Zapatista women speak about the state of the movement. She quotes one woman as saying:
...Now, women aren't as mistreated by husbands and fathers. Now, some husbands support and help us and don't make all the decisions -- not in all households, but poco a poco. We invite all women to defend our rights and combat machismo."
An account from the 2006 encuentro describes the daily lives of Zapatista women this way:
Despite the long list of responsibilities that is the work of women, there is still an overwhelming lack of respect for the labor and needs of women in indigenous communities. The assembly expressed the ongoing struggle for the space of women in their communities. One of the barriers to women’s balanced position in their communities mentioned by the representatives was a lack of public visibility and public performances. “We staying in the house because we have to work and we work alone. When we work [in public positions] they laugh at us, but there are those of us that have fought despite all.�
Like Eufrosina Cruz. Here's hoping she gets the right ruling from the Mexican Human Right Commission, and makes the Zapatista women proud with another run at public office.
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Good for her!
Woot! Mujeres unidas!
This is sadly not an uncommon scenario. I took a whole Womens' Studies course at university on how it's a common trait of revolutionary movements to embrace women, use the hell out of them while everyone's fighting the good fight, then send them back to their patriarchal roles after the fight is over. This happened dramatically in Ireland while they were trying to break free of English rule. Women were at the front of the barricades, then when Ireland became independent, it was back under the thumb for them.
This is sadly not an uncommon scenario. I took a whole Womens' Studies course at university on how it's a common trait of revolutionary movements to embrace women, use the hell out of them while everyone's fighting the good fight, then send them back to their patriarchal roles after the fight is over. This happened dramatically in Ireland while they were trying to break free of English rule. Women were at the front of the barricades, then when Ireland became independent, it was back under the thumb for them.
Crud, sorry for the double post. :(
(I posted these comments on another site related to this story, just a little background)
I lived for several years in Mexico, one year in Oaxaca. While the rest of Mexico hardly knows clean government, democracy, and prosperity, the state of Oaxaca is truly another world.
The state is dominated by a party machine run by the PRI(the old dictatorial party that most of Mexico has finally rejected), that controls every level of government, public services, and the unions. They have a hand in almost every private business, from cement factories to stalls in village markets. Even beggars on the street or subsistence farmers barely feeding their families are controlled by the party. Everyone has to pay off the machine or face retaliation. Journalists are often killed and the one independent newspaper, Noticias(not a political rag, just a daily paper with non-PRI owners) is published in a neighboring state and transported in unmarked trucks.
Opposition politicians are killed or are "disappeared" almost weekly by secret police and militias. (More...)
Perhaps because this story is getting some international attention these women will have time to escape to another state or to leave Mexico altogether.
Also most of the indigenous societies in Oaxaca are traditionally matriarchal* with women as the leaders of families. The alleged rules against women voting were probably created by the PRI party machine to retain control and have nothing to do with any revolutionary movement or indigenous traditions.
Furthermore most rural villages would not have enough males between 18 and 60 to hold an election. Those very few who could afford to stay would be officials of the party or a union. To help feed their families, most men leave the villages for Mexico City or the US. *Most strongly and famously the Tehuanas
I'm sorry Airamana, that was absolutely not my experience when I was living in a Mixteca Community in Oaxaca, and I frequently travelled to Zapotec areas with the project I was working on, or anything that I studied in my sociology classes at university. Whilst in the homes and families it is almost certainly women who have control, they face immense challenges in the outside space which is entirely controlled by men. Women will frequently run the family finances and farm the land, but men remain in local government and under the traditional system each will perform a year long duty for the village that is quite seperate from national or state politics. Men will generally return from the North or the US in order to fulfil this duty, which causes further problems when they return to their female run families attempting to assert their authority & conjugal 'rights' and frequently with sexually transmitted diseases.
Women would come into public spaces for feast days and to collect their monthly payment from the government and to attend the locally run women's group. They also ran a daycare centre for younger children and were most definitely present in the education system, particularly reaching the younger children. Women's roles have been very much defined for centuries, with little political interference. Traditional indigenous culture is not universally patriachal, and there are some exceptions, but certainly women do not have the right to vote, and those who are in the public space are often intimidated into leaving, abused and frequently sexually assaulted.
What is the whole "use and customs" thing about? I tried searching the web (in English because my Spanish is nowhere near good enough to search otherwise) but the only thing that came up was this particular story.