Hacia la Autonomia

1. Hacia la Autonomia Zapatista Women Developing a New World Melissa M. Forbis ARTICLE SUMMARY & REVIEW Alexandra Enberg 4-25-10

2. “Toward Autonomy” Hacia la Autonomia means, in Spanish, “toward autonomy.” This phrase is a great title for Melissa M. Forbis’ article. The article focuses on the experience over the past decade and a half of the Zapatista women in Mexico and their experiences moving towards the concept of “autonomy” and their interpretation of women’s mobilization and indigenous autonomy. These women are the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and have played a bigger role in influencing the drive for the recognition of Mexico’s indigenous people than they may ever know.

3. The Rise of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) • Mexico’s recognition of its indigenous people: • In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, Mexico’s leaders made progress in recognizing the rights of Mexico’s indigenous people. • In 1992, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari legally recognized Mexico as a “pluricultural nation.” • In order to understand what happened next, it’s important to understand the concept of indigenous and pluricultural: • INDIGENOUS: • Indigenous means “native to” and Mexico’s indigenous peoples are those that have always been from Mexico – in other words, not people who’ve moved there. • There are over 12 million indigenous people in Mexico, but this makes up only about a little over 10% of the population. • PLURICULTURAL: • The second article of Mexico’s consitution defines Mexico as a “pluricultural" nation. This means that the constitution recognized the variety of diverse ethnic groups that make up Mexico and are the original foundation. • In this way, the indigenous peoples of Mexico, as its foundation, are granted many rights to decide things like their own forms of social, economic, political and cultural organization ; the right to preserve their languages and cultures, etc.

4. The rise of EZLN: • Even with Mexican leadership’s recognition efforts in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, on January 1, 1994 a guerilla army made up of mostly indigenous people (the EZLN) rose up in Chiapas with a list of demands including land, health care, education, and justice. • While the Mexican government had verbally recognized the indigenous peoples of Mexico, this uprising finally gave Mexico’s most oppressed people a voice and they were being heard clearly for the first time at the national level. • And while many Mexican leaders would like to say that this is a localized problem, the efforts of the EZLN and the progress and perspective of the Zapatista women have influenced oppressed people all over Mexico and around the world.

5. The Framework of the Zapatista Woman’s Life • It’s important to at least understand a little about Zapatista women’s surroundings because it greatly influences their perspective. • Their daily lives and political mobilization are influenced by their participation in Zapatista-constructed autonomous townships and the EZLN autonomy initiatives. • Within their communities, Zapatista women are negotiating (or living with and defining themselves within) multiple identities: Indigenous, Mayan, Mexican, revolutionary, community organizer, woman, wife, and mother.

6. What is Zapatista Autonomy? • The practice and consolidation of autonomy is critical to the success of the Zapatista movement and is one of the greatest challenges to the Mexican state. • When Mexico recognized the country as multicultural, it was a move away from the government’s antidemocratic stance (where everyone did NOT get a voice). But, it came without putting anything real behind it. There was no move to make big changes in government or the distribution of resources to really help lift up the indigenous peoples. It seemed to many like “lip service.” • The EZLN negotiated the San Andres Accords in 1996, a step that many hoped would signal the hope of building a new nation. However, the Mexican government did not implement the steps and did not move forward fully honoring the agreement. • Instead, because these legislative/juridical efforts were not successful, the EZLN has put forth important steps to “de facto” autonomy – more unofficial, but significant lifestyle/organization steps to move forward. • In 1994, EZLN communities declared themselves communities in resistance. • They founded 32 autonomous townships • They set up an alternate system of territorial governance • While not all the same, the EZLN’s overall autonomy project is establishing a new political order and transforming the relationship of communities to the state.

7. Revolution Before the Revolution • Revolutionary Women’s Law • First went public on January 1, 1994 • The purpose of the Revolutionary Women’s Law? • The purpose was to get women involved in EZLN organizing and to achieve certain goals in: • Education • Decision making • Being able to decide for themselves how many children they want to have (family planning). (This was known as the “revolution before the revolution” because families were able to decide ahead of time how may children they wanted to eventually have.)

8. The Base: Site of Struggle • The women who experience the day-to-day struggle are not in the mountains, but in the milpa. • They experience a triple oppression for being women, indigenous, and poor. • Living in Chiapas- one of Mexico’s poorest states- marginalizes them even further. • Infant mortality is around 65 out of 1000 children born in Chiapas every year. • 37.5 percent of the population in Chiapas is illiterate. • Before 1994, there were few government institutions present and very little infrastructure. • This is a situation that has been characterized as olvido (Oblivion) by the EZLN. • Zapatista women have begun to change their lives and transform gendered relations of power within the framework of autonomy and self- government. • In many ways, women’s struggle within the EZLN is parallel to the overall struggle- it is about “equality,” but with difference.

9. Women on Autonomy • How are women becoming autonomous (what are they doing)? • Many women were “for” autonomy, but that they didn’t know what the “real autonomy” was. • Carmen (a Tzeltal woman in her early thirties with four children) • She is the women’s responsible (representative, literally “person responsible”) of her region and a political authority in the larger zone. “Sometimes we women don’t know how to respond to what autonomy is. But later we figure out that we are doing autonomy by doing the things we do. We know we can speak; we are doing away with the fear, the shame… We are doing our work. It is there that autonomy is formed.” • Lupe (Tzeltal woman in her late twenties) • She was working as a health promoter. “We all know very well about autonomy because we are now working in it… There are women doing the work together with men. Not only men have rights, but the women also have rights to have a cargo (Position of responsibility, which are something one is named to, often based on talents or qualifications- the cargo system is part of an indigenous form of governance.) and that is why the region put women on the councils, so that they could work together with the men… It was with the Zapatistas that we began to organize ourselves because we also began to see our suffering. Before we didn’t know that we also had rights as women. But with our struggle, now we know that we also have the right to participate and to do all the things that the men do as well.” • Access to land on which to carry out projects represents a new type of opportunity to most of these women. Carmen emphasized… “Women also have their collective land, which is a form of autonomy. They now have their own land and are doing projects and not only the men get to do projects.”

10. Many women are learning to administer projects and account for funds involved. • Many women are learning or improving their reading, writing, and math skills; skills of which were never taught to them (or to most men). • Many women focused on their work in collective projects. • Rosa (a Tzeltal woman in her early thirties with three small children) • She said that in her community, Zapata, the women now have collective work- in the milpa and horticulture, raising chickens and bread making. • Rosa explains one of these collective projects… “We sell the vegetables cheaply to ourselves, but it’s not done individually, it’s done as a community.”

11. Lucinda (a single woman) and Rosa (a married woman with three children) • These two women are both health promoters in their late teens. • They travel hours and hours to attend training courses on medical plants, supported by the other women who give them bus fare and a little extra money for snacks from the proceeds they earn selling their collectively planted corn. • This type of work is new to the region. Lucinda explained… “Before we didn’t know how to work collectively, but now bit by bit, we are learning. Now we have collectives, we are working corn, beans, horticulture, these are pure collectives, and the women are learning bit by bit.” • These two women, Lucinda and Rosa, also manage the building of their own health center and coordinate their projects with the male health promoters.

12. Another specific focus in these autonomous regions is women’s health, especially reproductive health and family planning. • Family planning is discussed more frequently, but is not yet widely practiced. • The Catholic Diocese pressured its constituents to only provide family planning for married couples. • This was an act that drew fire from many Zapatistas and feminists, but which was eventually accepted by the communities. • Women health promoters travel and give talks about how it is important for Zapatistas to plan their families, especially living with the threat of state violence.

13. Chepita (a newly married Tzeltal woman) focused on the meaning of autonomy in terms of men’s duties to support their wives. She explains… “The men have the responsibility to look after the house if the woman leaves… The men say they’re ready to do this and that if the women don’t leave, the men aren’t responsible… but not all men help.” • Maria “Since the life there [in the camps] is more equal, at first he [the insurgent she married] supported my work helping the people here. After I had my first baby, his mother told him that my place as a woman was here in the house to make him his food and take care of my son. He told her that I had an important cargo and that it was my right, but bit by bit he changed to bad thinking and began to forbid me from leaving the house because I had to make his food. I told him that I didn’t need to ask his permission, but he threatened to leave me. It was this way for a long time, but I talked to my father and some of the women responsables and we had a community assembly. There we talked about this and he was told that he could not take away my right to serve my community. Then he came back to his clear thinking and asked me for my forgiveness.” • Maria’s story shows that the problems generated when personal and collective responsibilities come into conflict can have positive outcomes. • Women who do participate and leave their houses to organize often have to deal with gossip and jealousy in their communities upon returning. (Even these personal choices can be contentious.) • The Revolutionary Women’s Law states that women are now free to marry a person of their choosing, coming together as equals. • This is the case in the mountains, but the concept is not yet completely accepted by the base, where marriages are often still arranged.

14. The ban on alcohol by the EZLN, which was instigated by women of the communities, was another contentious change. • Since alcohol was usually involved in cases of domestic violence, women argued that a ban was a positive and necessary step toward curbing abuse. • Domestic violence is not always dealt with and underscores the tension between the rights of the individual and the good of the collective. If the man holds a regional cargo or is a community leader, his behavior may be excused.

15. Sustainable Resistence Women are playing a crucial role in keeping the autonomy project going. In 1998, police in Ocosingo randomly fired into a crowd during a peaceful public demonstration against militarization. Guadalupe Mendez Lopez, a 38-year old woman participating in the march, was killed. She became a symbol of the struggle of indigenous women. Many government leaders think that women will sell out for a new stove, a sack of corn or a kilo of beans. Some women do, but most stay on and fight. Women have also been part of trying to protect their communities from military incursions. They have talked about how they are even ready to die for their cause. Thousands of women marched to San Cristobal de las Casas in March of 2000 and actually participated in the takeover of the government radio station.

16. The Continuing Influence of Zapatista Women 2001: Eleven years after the government’s initial step toward the recognition of Mexico’s diversity, a Zapatista woman spoke in front of Mexican Congress. Comandanta Esther, a rural Zapatista woman, still had this message to share: “My voice demanded, and demands, the constitutional recognition of our rights and our cultures.” With the backing of the Indigenous National Congress which is made up of 360 organizations and communities from 18 states in Mexico, Esther’s words echo the continuing discontent of many of Mexico’s indigenous peoples with the government’s promises of multiculturalism and underscore the continued importance of women to the movement.