Indigenous Autonomy in Chiapas: The Women Are Missing by Rosa Rojas

1. Presented by Shauna Wimmer Indigenous Autonomy in Chiapas: The Women Are Missingby Rosa Rojas

2. Basis of the movement : “We want autonomy.” • CEOIC: State Council of Indigenous and Peasant Organizations • CIOAC: Council of Agricultural Workers and Peasants • Fighting against the exploitation to which the indigenous people have been subjected by the mestizo society of Chiapas • In Los Altos, meetings and consultations between indigenous communities to “come to a consensus” – autonomy. EZLN as a catalyst • Non-homogenous indigenous peoples: Tzotzil, Zoque, Chol, and Tojolabal • Semi-feudalism of the coffee plantations and domiciled peons to autonomous indigenous communities

3. Declaration of autonomy: Oct. 12, 1994 • Taking action: Seizing town halls, blockading highways, closing schools, shops, and public offices, with the demand that multiethnic councils be implemented. • They began occupying new land, claiming autonomy Autonomy

4. Challenging the validity of elections - Made the councils of the towns Soyaló, Simojovel and Huitiupán step down and instead put in place the councils which the people demanded • Stopped paying taxes to the state, and would not allow unknown people into occupied lands • The plan of indigenous peoples in Chiapas to be autonomous is based on indigenous customs and beliefs (although not ethically and politically homogenous)

5. Presidente Carlos Salinas de Gortari dismissed the idea of autonomy announced by the indigenous people, saying that they see themselves as Mexicans anyway, and that autonomy in Chiapas (next to Guatemala) could lead to secession • He said that Mexicans, not even the indigenous people themselves, would accept that

6. Despite the conceptual leap made by the EZLN’s Law of Women, in the fight to gain autonomy, women have been conspicuously absent. Accused of being manipulated by mestizo women • Inequalities still exist: Women’s committees exist in only two communities of the autonomous municipality of Las Margaritas • Women still cannot own land in any of the autonomous communities • Mill in the ejido Veracruz: Women managed the mill. Began to make money, and held meetings to decide how to spend it. Some men got upset about the women not being home. Eventually the men took the mill and began managing it themselves And the Women?

7. The women “have to do the cooking and make the food, because the men can’t.” – inequality • Antonio Hernández, a native Tojolaballeader, explains that the mestizo society has imposed upon indigenous societies social ills that they have then adopted (such as machismo) • “Men, too, must become educated” about what it means to be equal with women, e.g. helping @ home • People now come to CIOAC when they need something instead of going to state offices “Land, democracy, and social liberation”

8. Hernández: The soil and all its wealth belong to the indigenous people who inhabit the land, and that development must benefit them and secondly the people of the Mexican Nation • When asked about things like oil, which belong constitutionally to the Nation, Hernández asked “Yes, but who is the Nation now?” • With autonomy, the municipalities would go to the hands of the people in municipal councils – ethnically and politically mixed, including mestizos

9. Although some mestizos in many villages believe in and even get involved with the Indigenous movement, some do not want to make concessions • One such mestizo man, Santana Méndez, had plenty of negative things to say about indigenous people, despite the fact that he looks quite native himself

10. Indigenous women face the double inequality of being indigenous as well as female • Nonetheless, women may be able to find some new equality within the indigenous autonomy movement in Chiapas, e.g. the Zapatista Women’s Revolutionary Law Conclusion