User:Jimenabisso2/Indigenous feminism

Mexico

Feminism is often seen as a movement centred around white, straight, middle-class cisheterosexual women. However, the feminist movement is not an exclusive movement of the Global North, but rather it spreads throughout the world crossing ethnic, racial and territorial barriers. In Mexico, thousands of women have started to raise their voices to demonstrate that feminism varies between each ethnic and social group, so it is important to remove perceptions that limit the practices of each woman referred as a “feminist." Indigenous feminism is a collective feminism, unlike Western feminism that is characterized by its individuality and by its liberal ideology. In Mexico, 7 out of 10 Indigenous women live in poverty and 3 out of 10 in extreme poverty; they are subordinated by their gender but also by their social class and ethnicity.

Hegemonic feminism is challenged for having woven generalizations about "women." In Mexico, a movement different from traditional feminism has had to be created in order to better represent Indigenous feminist women. As they belong to not just one but two minority groups, they are excluded  by non-Indigenous feminist women. This is because the term feminism does not recognize that gender is constructed differently in different historical contexts, as Indigenous women have their own concept of women's dignity. Feminism in Mexico mainly focuses on making universal demands such as eliminating the wage gap between men and women and ending domestic violence. Mexican feminism often fails to denounce colonialism, racism and economic inequalities as sources of segregation and discrimination against aboriginal women.

Suffering, discrimination and indifference led these women to take up arms, raise their voices and demand active participation against ethnic inequalities. Aboriginal women redefined the profiles of culture, community, rights and customs. According to Lugo, this process can be cataloged as the first symptom of Indigenous feminism. With the birth of Indigenous feminism in Mexico, it is proposed to rethink Indigenous people's reality, not only based on their gender identity, but also complementing it with the analysis of their ethnic identity. They demand a transformation of Mexican society and the State, criticizing the nationalism that has led the government and the Mexican inhabitants to rely on patriarchal, lesbophobic and homophobic values ​​that can provoke forms of ethnic violence.

The Zapatista and Women's Revolutionary Law

Predominantly consisting of the Chiapas Indigenous groups, “Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Chol, Tiobal, Zoque, Kanjobal and Mame," the Zapatista movement fought for Indigenous Mexican rights . Women play a large role in the Zapatista army and seek “politics without gender subordination,” and Indigenous rights. Olivera states that “Indigenous peasant women who became integrated as combatants or – in the words of Subcomandante Marcos – ‘support networks’ (bases de apoyo) accounted for one-third of the EZLN [or Zapatista] membership." The Zapatista’s goal is to eliminate race and gender segregation, breaking into a male and mestizo public space where their voices are silenced. The Zapatista movement resulted in the entrenchment of the Indigenous right to self-determination into the Mexican constitution. Simultaneously, the Zapatista championed women’s rights with Women’s Revolutionary Law. Women’s Revolutionary Law holds significance to feminism as it is placed alongside the other EZLN laws. Women’s Revolutionary Law and the Zapatista women “led to the creation of spaces for Indigenous women from different regions to organize autonomously, promoting a shift in the types of activities and discourses that had characterized their organizing trajectories up to the 1990s."