Abstract
In Latin America, rights to local political participation in many indigenous communities are not simply granted, but rather “earned” through acts of labor for the community. This is the case in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, where almost three-fourths of municipalities elect municipal authorities through custom and tradition rather than secret ballot and universal suffrage. The alarmingly low rate of women’s formal participation in these municipalities has garnered attention from policymakers, provoking a series of legislative reforms designed to increase women’s roles in local politics. However, these initiatives often miss their mark. Focused on a liberal model of women as individual rights-bearers, they fail to understand the complex ways in which gendered labor influences political participation in nonliberal contexts. This article examines a case in which indigenous women reject such an initiative because it would exacerbate their exploitation within the local terms of gendered collective labor instead of promoting equality. It thus explains potential barriers to indigenous women’s political leadership at the local level and suggests ways in which gender equality can be promoted in nonliberal contexts.
In February 2009 the government of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico sent a legal mandate to the small municipality of Yatzachi, a town of 200 indigenous Zapotec inhabitants nestled high in the northern mountains. The mandate, from the Oaxacan electoral institute, stated that women must vote in local elections and be considered for the municipal council. Women were allowed the municipal vote in Mexico in 1947. However, local suffrage has never become a reality for many indigenous Oaxacan women, especially those who live in towns like Yatzachi that elect local officials through custom and tradition rather than secret ballot and universal suffrage (Dalton 2005). Under multicultural reforms designed to recognize indigenous people’s collective rights to self-governance, these “traditional” practices of municipal election—which often exclude women—have now become law in almost three-fourths of Oaxacan municipalities (Hernández Díaz 2014).
Like this announcement, attempts to restrict nonliberal practices are becoming more common worldwide, as countries come to question the once progressive status of multicultural initiatives that legalized them (Nicholls and Uitermark 2013; Vertovec 2010). However, in Oaxaca, Mexico’s most indigenously populated state with the most extensive implementation of multicultural reforms, these efforts often exacerbate tension over women’s political roles instead of ushering in women’s participation. This is the case in Yatzachi. Instead of embracing the legislative mandate, the village assembly, composed of 65 men and women who are heads of households, responded to the Oaxacan electoral institute with its own official letter. It stated that women willingly reject participation in the municipal council.
This response is not unusual: Latin American indigenous women are often wary of government intervention and regularly defend their communities’ rights to alternative forms of governance (Blackwell 2012; Speed, Hernández Castillo, and Stephen 2006). The women of Yatzachi are no different. However, I argue that the community assembly’s letter signed by the women is more than a defense of the community: More importantly, it represents an internal struggle over the gendered labor practices that define and construct the alternative political and economic system on which the community is built.
In Yatzachi, local governance is conducted via “communal systems” (Patzi Paco 2004) in which local affairs of justice, political organization, and land use are all resolved internally according to “tradition” and “custom.” These systems, found throughout Latin America, differ from liberal systems of political governance: Rights are not simply granted as they are in liberal democracies, but rather earned via the enactment of certain types of labor. The right to participate—opine and vote—in the assembly, the maximum expression of local power and decision making, is earned through cargos (town service positions) and tequios (collective work parties for public works). In a type of “authoritarianism based on consensus,” one is obliged to serve the collective through cargo and tequio, thus earning the right to usufruct of collective property (Martínez Luna 2010).
In Yatzachi’s communal system, men typically perform the official labor that counts toward the recognition of political rights. Although women do important work in their households and the community, it does not count as “official labor.” Therefore, women are prohibited from assembly participation because they have not “worked” for the good of the community. When women do perform cargos and tequios, as in the case of single women household heads, participation implies extra official work in addition to the unofficial labor of social reproduction. Therefore, although most women are theoretically in favor of women’s participation, the gendered terms of the communal system deter their participation in the assembly and in formal leadership roles.
Based on qualitative research and analysis of the letter in which women deny the state mandate to participate in the town council, this article argues that struggles over gendered labor often importantly determine the forms of indigenous women’s political participation. This argument contributes to a growing feminist literature that examines forms of women’s political subjectivity in contexts not defined by Western notions of liberal democracy (Mahmood 2005; Pathak and Sunder Rajan 1989). While much of this literature focuses on Muslim women in the Middle East, this article demonstrates the different conceptions of women’s political participation in nonliberal contexts of indigenous communities in Latin America, raising questions about the misinterpretation of gender relations based on Western frameworks of political rights.
While studies of indigenous women and rights discourses examine questions of individual versus collective rights, they often focus on social movement or civil society discourses and practices. This article fills gaps in existing literature by providing a detailed study of how alternative rights paradigms play out in the daily lives of indigenous women (Burman 2011; Pape 2009). In turn, it contributes to literature exploring indigenous collectivities as sites of “post-liberal” and “post-capitalist” social forms that offer alternative paradigms of human-nature relationships, governance, and development (Escobar 2008; Reyes 2012; Walsh 2010). However, indigenous women have argued that these alternative systems still produce gender inequalities, raising questions about how to promote equality within them.
Indigenous Women’s Political Participation
Around 1.7 million Oaxacans (44 percent of the state’s population) belong to 16 different ethno-linguistic groups (Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas 2010). The communal systems found in most indigenous communities are a result of both precolonial and postcolonial processes of appropriation and reinterpretation. During Mexico’s postrevolutionary state-building process, communal systems were tolerated via a type of “indirect rule,” whereby forms of indigenous self-determination were respected as long as villages provided votes for the ruling party (Recondo 2007). However, in the 1990s the conjunctural forces of a growing indigenous rights movement, Mexico’s democratic opening, and neoliberal reforms led to a reconfiguration of the relationship between the State and indigenous peoples. The Oaxacan state government engaged in a series of multicultural reforms designed to legalize aspects of indigenous people’s collective rights (Postero 2007; Van Cott 2010). 1 A key reform was the legalization of the long-held practice of municipal election by “tradition” (Anaya Muñoz 2005). Currently, 417 of Oaxaca’s 570 municipalities choose municipal officials via what is now formally termed “internal normative systems.”
The legal recognition of nonliberal forms of rule in communal systems has resulted in a growing debate over the role of indigenous women in local politics. While indigenous advocates argue for election via customary practices, others insist that recognition of these forms of collective governance actually legalize practices of discrimination. In particular, some scholars suggest that women, as the quintessential internal minority, are automatically discriminated against in multicultural settings (Okin 1999; Song 2005). They posit that political liberalism and individual rights paradigms are the best ways to ensure women’s political participation, and insist that multicultural recognition should be either revoked (Okin 1999) or tweaked to ensure respect for individual rights (Danielson and Eisenstadt 2009).
Initial data from Oaxaca seem to support these assertions: Only 3.1 percent of municipal presidents are women (ONU Mujeres 2013). Moreover, women who live in municipalities ruled via internal normative systems find their participation levels further limited: In only 11.5 percent of these municipalities do women serve on municipal councils versus 51 percent in municipalities ruled via political parties (Barrera Bassols 2006). In almost a quarter of municipalities ruled via internal normative systems, women cannot vote in local elections (Hernández Díaz 2014).
While women’s formal political participation is limited, other scholars caution against equating the number of women in leadership positions with the extent and exercise of indigenous women’s local political rights. Velásquez (2004) argues that measures for evaluating political activity are different in these nonliberal systems. She demonstrates that indigenous women in Oaxaca realize other forms of participation, often via informal cargos that are not necessarily part of the official sphere of the town council. Others highlight indigenous systems of gender complementarity based on worldviews in which feminine and masculine powers balance each other in a type of equilibrium that translates into separate but equally important gendered roles (Harris 1978; Sieder and Macleod 2009; Stern 1999). In some cases, complementarity allows for the rearticulation of gender equality in non-Western terms (Richards 2005); in others, it masks forms of discrimination and oppression according to tradition and indigenous worldviews (de la Cadena 2010; Nash 2001; Vázquez García 2011).
However, over the last several years, the nuances of gender complementarity and nonliberal forms of political participation have been overlooked while critiques of women’s roles in Oaxaca’s internal normative systems have gained momentum. International pressure to promote women’s rights, as well as an emblematic case of an indigenous woman denied the right to run for municipal president (Sierra 2009), 2 have promoted the creation of new legislation and court rulings based on liberal understandings of law and women’s individual rights. Specifically, legislative changes include modifications to the state and federal constitutions to emphasize indigenous women’s rights to full participation in municipal elections conducted through internal normative systems. Likewise, court rulings increasingly annul elections if women have not fully participated (Worthen Forthcoming). Indeed, the mandate that arrived in Yatzachi from the electoral institute is a result of such legislative and judiciary actions.
While this legislation officially enables women to contest local elections on grounds of gender exclusion in electoral tribunals, not all indigenous women necessarily welcome this type of intervention. Through a discourse of paternalistic protection, the Mexican State has tried to dictate indigenous women’s political subjectivity (Blackwell 2012; Newdick 2005). However, indigenous women have increasingly come to contest state intervention and the “liberal solution” it promotes, instead positioning themselves as key actors in the promotion of forms of gender equality within their communities, often merging their own notions of liberal women’s rights with collective rights to promote equality (Speed, Hernández Castillo, and Stephen 2006). In turn, indigenous women have questioned the very foundations of state-based rights discourses and articulated different conceptions of communal rights structures lived in action, not granted from above (Speed 2005; Speed and Reyes 2002). Women in Yatzachi also reject a liberal solution, and their case evokes questions regarding how alternative rights systems—namely, rights earned via labor—can become more egalitarian.
Theorizing Gender, Labor, and Rights
Feminists have long criticized key tenants of liberal thought, including individualism, equality before the law, and conceptions of freedom (Benhabib et al. 1994; Butler and Scott 1992; MacKinnon 1991; Pateman 1988). Arguing that the liberal state apparatus has been formed through the very exclusions it purportedly attempts to rectify, feminist scholarship has also sought to demonstrate how the notion of the liberal individual subject who harnesses internal emancipatory agency is a myth (Mahmood 2005; Pratt 2004). However, the notion of rights has proved problematic in these critiques.
While scholars agree that liberal rights frameworks perpetuate exclusive universalisms, they simultaneously understand that political claims based on human rights are an important strategic tool in many feminist struggles (Brown 2000; Peters and Wolper 1995; Sa‘ar 2005). It is because of their claims to universalism that relying upon notions of liberal rights can simultaneously challenge them. For example, Butler (2000) posits that when a person who is not an “authorized” liberal subject seeks recourse to universal liberal discourses, she creates “perverse reiterations” that question the foundations and limits of these discourses. Indeed, de Sousa Santos (2002) argues that by critiquing the universality of human rights paradigms, a counter-hegemonic rights discourse and practice can emerge based on non-Western notions of human dignity.
The usage of rights-based discourses has been an important component of indigenous struggles in Latin America. In a multicultural era, indigenous people have used these discourses to posit the importance of collective rights to land, language, and governance (Postero 2007; Yashar 2005), and, in so doing, have challenged their very foundation. In particular, drawing on conceptions of autonomy, indigenous women have argued that indigenous autonomy can never be realized if women are systematically oppressed within indigenous groups. They have asserted, via what some call an “indigenous feminism” (Espinosa Damián 2009; Hernández Castillo 2010), that the recognition of women’s individual rights is inextricably linked to the recognition of collective rights, positing that one without the other limits their ability to be full human beings (Gutiérrez and Palomo 2000; Paredes 2008; Sánchez 2003).
Analyzing the daily practices of communal systems, indigenous leaders and scholars argue that in many indigenous communities an alternative nonliberal conception of rights exists (Cardoso Jiménez and Robles Hernández 2007; Martínez Luna 2010). For example, Speed and Reyes (2002) argue that in Zapatista communities, practices of communal organization are about creating a completely different relationship of sovereignty. The sovereign is not the State; rather, it lies within the collective. Thus, rights are not granted from some ontologically imagined sovereign space “above.” Instead, rights are earned through practice—through acts of labor—in front of the collective. This alternative expression of rights and sovereignty runs parallel to state rights’ systems, coexisting as necessary, but ultimately challenging notions of sovereign rule, the role of the law, and the ability of the “rational” State to ever fully comprehend the realities it seeks to manage.
If an alternative notion of rights as earned through labor is an important part of formulations of alternative projects of decolonization and “post-counterhegemonic” social forms (Reyes 2012), it is necessary to explore just how the dynamics of labor play out on the ground in these indigenous collectives. Given that labor is a process foundational to the construction and articulation of gender relations, how does the formulation of alternative rights in nonliberal communal systems affect gender equality? Feminist scholars have long demonstrated that labor is one of the key aspects through which gendered political rights are created and contested (Olcott 2005). The gendered division of labor into a male productive sphere and a female reproductive sphere promoted the devaluation of women’s affective labors and reproduced gender inequalities (Hartmann 1981; Weeks 2007). Mapped onto political subjectivities, these separate spheres of gendered labor also served as the foundation for the division between the “masculine” public and the “feminine” private (Phillips 1991).
While this work was largely developed in urban, Western contexts, research on peasant women in the Global South also emphasizes the role of labor in producing women’s political subjectivities. Notably, Carney and Watts (1990) explore the “production politics” (Burawoy 1985) of rice cultivation upon conjugal contracts and women’s petitioning of government agencies; Hart (1991) examines the roles of women’s collective labor organization in challenging agricultural employers in Southeast Asia; and Stephen (2005) explores the way in which Zapotec women in Oaxaca challenge village hierarchies by forming weaving cooperatives. Their work supports the idea that “struggles over resources and labour are simultaneously struggles over socially-constructed meanings, definitions, and identities” (Hart 1991, 95). Work is also one of the main practices through which we create notions of belonging (Chari and Gidwani 2005; Cravey 2005).
The focus on labor as an important subject-producing category and as an alternative practice in which notions of rights are created in indigenous collectivities, in combination with feminist literature on how gendered labor informs the contentious construction of social practices, demonstrates that labor is important in the study of politics and membership. Likewise, it is fundamental in order to explore the formulation of a different notion of nonliberal rights and to examine the quotidian struggles over gender equality within indigenous communities.
Methods
Yatzachi is located in the northern mountains of Oaxaca, about a four-hour drive from the state capital. I selected this region because it is famous for the strength of its autonomous communal systems (Aquino Moreschi 2010) in tandem with high levels of women’s exclusion from local governance. Yatzachi was selected as an anomalous case study: one of the few towns in the region in which women participate in cargos and tequios. Anomalous cases aid in the development of theory by explaining that which does not quite fit (Burawoy 1991). I use data from 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork (from June 2009 to August 2010) in Yatzachi, followed by periodic visits to the town over the last four years, as well as three visits to the migrant destination of Los Angeles, California, to explore how this case can generate new understandings of gender, indigeneity, and political participation in indigenous communities.
I conducted 65 formal interviews with Yatzachitecos that centered broadly on gender, migration, and the communal system. To explore women’s refusal to participate in the town council, I spoke with past and current town authorities (mostly men) about local governance, autonomy, and gender roles. I interviewed 10 of the 14 single women who signed the letter to the Oaxacan electoral institute, as well as 10 married women, regarding their opinions about the letter and their understandings of why and how it was created. Through interviews with five men who were involved in the assembly in which the letter was created as well as numerous informal conversations, I gathered data on both men’s and women’s perspectives on the issue.
My positionality as a U.S. woman was initially a disadvantage because of concerns that I would somehow report information about undocumented immigrants to the U.S. government. Engaging in communal life through participant observation in daily activities helped build trust. I was present at several important events that gave greater insight into questions of alternative rights and gendered labor, including three town assemblies (one was an election) and patron saint fiestas. Engaging in the predominately women-led tasks of food preparation and men-predominated spaces of labor taxation systems provided insight into gendered communal labor. For analytic purposes, I coded the letter, field notes, and interview transcripts according to the identification of key themes, including gendered labor, collective labor, citizenship, participation, relationship with liberal state law, autonomy, and gender inequality.
Gender and Work in Yatzachi’s Communal System
A gendered division of labor fundamentally organizes Yatzachi’s communal system. As mentioned, men, as heads of household, traditionally conduct cargo and tequio. The labor performed via these cargos and tequios is how one earns the right to vote and opine in the village assembly, becoming, in the words of Yatzachitecos, an “active citizen.” Tequio in Zapoteco is llinlaw, which literally means “working in front of the pueblo.” Each active citizen performs 24 tequios per year, and activities include potable water maintenance, street cleaning, and the demarcation of town boundaries. Cargos are an obligation—they must be performed in order to use collectively held land and public services. Thirty-four cargos must be filled annually, but only five of them (the town president, the syndic, and the aldermen of health, treasury, and public works) are considered to be the official state-recognized posts of the municipal council (cargo holder’s names are registered with the state government). They are the positions of greatest importance, labor, and commitment, often requiring full-time work for the year of appointment.
Traditionally, women have not been “active citizens.” As in other communities in Oaxaca, they are responsible for the labors of social reproduction in their homes and agricultural fields (Lyon, Aranda Bezaury, and Mutersbaugh 2010; Mutersbaugh 1998). In the village sphere, they participate in many of the collective labors of rituals and fiestas (Stephen 2005). Although they do not engage in cargos and tequios, by conducting the labors of social reproduction, married women feel that they also do important work for the community. Sara 3 said, “When my husband does his cargo, I [the wife] am the one who supports him. So I feel that as a married woman I do participate and contribute to the town.” Indeed, when they do a cargo, men rely heavily on women to manage agricultural fields or generate alternative income. Ana emphasized how, beyond the support work for her husband in these intense moments, she also makes tortillas for town functions, something she considers to be part of her duties as a good citizen. However, instead of being valued in the same way as men’s labors, women’s labors are not categorized as “official”—or as labor considered to be part of the obligations of active citizenship. Thus, married women, while they theoretically can attend the assembly, cannot vote or opine in it. Their participation is mediated through their husbands in a type of indirect citizenship.
Scholars demonstrate that emigration often promotes women’s political participation. For example, Andrews (2014) argues that Oaxacan migrant women become more engaged in the political stakes of local life when they return to their hometowns. This is due both to men’s continued absence as well as the importance women now place on improving the conditions within their villages as an alternative to the harsh circumstances of U.S. undocumented migration. This is partly true in Yatzachi, as migration has challenged paradigms of masculine active citizenship. However, what has more decisively pushed both formerly migrant and nonmigrant women into local politics in Yatzachi is a population crisis. Over the last several decades, migration to the United States has dramatically reduced the number of able-bodied men who engage in collective labor. A crisis of communal labor has ensued, and the town has turned to the labor reserve of single women to fill vacant cargo positions, making gendered labor a topic of debate in attempting to maintain collective practices. Gradually, single or widowed women have come to engage in active citizenship by conducting lesser cargos and participating in tequios. This official labor gives them the right to participate in town assemblies, for the first time creating a space in which women are representing themselves directly in the town’s most important political body. Married women, however, remain under the schema of indirect citizenship. At the time of research, fourteen women and around fifty men were active citizens in Yatzachi.
In general, both single and married women feel that theoretically, women’s participation in the assembly is important. When I asked Ana if she thinks married women should go to the assemblies, she responded, “Yes, I think so, because sometimes we have opinions too! And my husband doesn’t share his—let alone my—opinions in the assembly.” A single woman, Josefina, was also in favor of women’s participation: “Sometimes as women we understand things from a different perspective, and try to resolve problems in a different way than men. There are some things that we just do better, you’ve got to admit it!” A married woman, Irma, reported, “There are women that are very capable of being on the town council. In my opinion, we’ve got to give women opportunities because we also have the right to participate.”
However, despite the general enthusiasm and support for the idea of women’s participation in local political life, single women signed the letter to the Oaxacan electoral institute in which they refused to take on the more prestigious cargos of the town council. I explore this paradox in what follows.
Responding to the State
The letter emerged out of the annual assembly in which local elections are held. The municipal president interpreted the mandate from the Oaxacan electoral institute thus: “If a woman was not on the list of our upcoming municipal authorities [for the town council], they would impugn our election.” He saw this as an incursion of the State into the realm of Yatzachi’s collective rights: “We have our usos y costumbres [ways and customs], and the government always talks about how they respect them, but by sending this mandate, they were not respecting our rights [to local governance].” Josefina recalls the assembly: The first thing the president did was read the mandate, which said that it was required for a woman to be part of the town council. Then they said that the women should give their opinions—what did we think about it? The president said if women want to, then we should do it, and if not, we didn’t have to. One woman spoke up and said that personally, she wouldn’t accept. Others said the same.
The president recommended responding to the electoral institute with a letter in order to set a precedent that could prevent future government intervention in local elections. Women were in agreement with the creation of the letter. Indeed, Carolina recounted, “We created the letter so that officially the government would see that it wasn’t just that the men didn’t want this, but rather we, the women, who rejected the mandate.” Active female citizens who were not present later signed the letter before it was taken to the Oaxacan electoral institute. The letter is composed of five numbered points, which I translate here:
Women have always been considered for cargo positions, but only when they include activities that we can do, such as secretary, treasurer, school committee, clinic committee, etc. We don’t agree to do cargos that are part of the town council, the agricultural development committee, and communal goods, because according to usos y costumbres men perform these cargos, given that they are the ones in charge of directing communal work and tequios, and it is not acceptable to simply give orders but rather to lead these projects to show how it is done. Many of these activities are difficult for women (carrying rocks, picking up cement blocks, repairing water tubes, etc).
Women have been named to these cargos in the past, but those that have accepted the cargo have not performed it themselves; instead they look for a man to do it, and they obviously have to pay for this service since all cargos are performed without remuneration.
We do not accept these cargos because we have to take care of our children, because our husbands are those who have to work for our sustenance and we do not have daycare centers nor do we have paid jobs for women.
If the cargo positions were paid, we would have money to be able to pay someone to take care of our children and our domestic animals.
Probably these arguments will not be valid, unless within your office there is a worker of indigenous origin that can give you a broader explanation and help you understand the situation in which we live.
In general, interview data demonstrate that women signed the letter and spoke up in the assembly not because they are against women’s participation, but because (1) the official work that women do as active citizens is undervalued and does not lead to equal terms of participation; (2) town council positions present extra labor burdens when added onto women’s work of social reproduction; and (3) active female citizens thus perceive that the terms of participation in the communal system are unfair.
Devaluing Women’s Work
Although women have moved into traditionally “male” political spheres, the communal system, while now more inclusive, is still far from egalitarian. For many women, performing cargos and tequios is often seen as a burden rather than an opportunity to be a leader in the community. This is because of the lack of value given to both women’s official and unofficial labors. Although single women now do the official labors of cargo and tequio, men often ignore women’s opinions in the assembly by arguing that they have not done the same extent of labor for public works as men. Carolina said: Most of the time many of us don’t talk in the assemblies, because you quickly learn that the older men will always say, “No, these girls are just now starting to engage in town work. They don’t know what has happened with the pueblo, they don’t know what all we’ve gone through to arrive where we are today.”
Likewise, the notion of women as physically weaker is regularly used to devalue women’s ability to engage fully in the terms of active citizenship. A common discourse in the village is that if one cannot do and demonstrate physical labor, one cannot lead. As point one of the letter emphasizes, leading is not simply giving commands, but actually demonstrating physical labor in front of others. It argues that women, because of their lack of physical strength, cannot do these tasks and motivate other men to join in the work. Women’s inability to do these grueling physical tasks means that their labor, even when conducted through an official cargo or tequio task, does not count the same as men’s. Sara recounted how one man argued that women’s opinions should not count because they were not going to be contributing equal labor force in the upcoming tequio project. She recalls, “That’s when I understood that despite how much I would like to express my opinion, it would never be taken into account.” Even when performing official tasks, women’s labor is not valued as being the right amount or type that can be translated into full political rights in the assembly.
Thus, women often have to find someone else to fulfill their cargo, usually paying that person for his labor. The second point of the letter emphasizes this, demonstrating that while the tequio and cargo system has traditionally been based on labor in kind, women often must hire a substitute. This is especially common for older single women. For example, Ester, now retired, spent most of her life living in Mexico City and running a small business in a local market. In conjunction with other market women, she spent many years organizing vendors and pressuring the government for better working conditions and infrastructure. A woman assured of her own economic and political abilities, she returned to Yatzachi to live in the home that she and her deceased husband built with their savings. Ester also returned to Yatzachi with the desire to serve her community: In an assembly several years ago I asked why they always assigned us the police cargo when really women should be part of the town council. I told them that women have the same value as men and we should participate in the town council. That way they could see what women can do—we could prove what we’re worth.
Although at that moment the assembly did not accept Ester’s proposal, she was later nominated for town council posts. Now, however, she has health problems, and being forced to take on a more important cargo that would require more physical effort and more hours of commitment is something she feels unable to do: “If I were younger, it would be different. But at my age, with all my health problems, it is really difficult. I have to find someone to do it for me and pay them, because I can’t do the work myself.” Taking on a town council position is similarly a further financial and physical burden for her.
However, Ester, as well as others, felt that the question of women’s lack of strength, especially for the younger women, was a patriarchal excuse to keep women from holding more powerful positions and is no longer a valid pretext for women’s exclusion: I think that a younger woman can be part of the town council. For example, she could be alderman of health, or the treasury. The alderman of public works would be difficult because it requires work in the fields, but if she is young, why not? They say that it’s hard work because they go and cut down weeds, but nowadays the alderman just tells people what to do. A woman can do that too: “Hey you—grab that weed eater and start cleaning up over here!”
However, as Josefina recounts, in the assembly meeting “one woman spoke up and said that personally, she wouldn’t accept [a town council position] because they are physically difficult,” a point further echoed in the letter. Why did women rely on the discourse that so regularly excludes them from participation? It was a way to reject what they deem to be the unfair terms of cargo participation, not the cargos themselves: Women already feel burdened by their labors of social reproduction, making the addition of a town council cargo overwhelming.
Single women’s active citizenship also does not translate into greater political equality because the gendered political economy of the communal system has not shifted. In addition to conducting cargos and tequios, single women must still perform women’s traditional labors of social reproduction, which remain unrecognized and undervalued. This idea is taken up in points three and four of the letter, which emphasize the other labors of social reproduction that women conduct. They argue that women do the important job of caring for children, a job that has economic value (that in other contexts is remunerated). By focusing on the way in which women would (or in this case, would not) be able to monetarily remunerate someone to do this childcare labor in their absence, these points demonstrate how women’s labor is valued in both capitalist terms and in community governance terms. Someone has to subsidize the “free” labor given to the municipality. If women do not engage in social reproduction, how would men be able to give of their labors? And if they do official labors, who will take on their productive and reproductive work in their absence? Ramona said, “When men go to the municipal offices in the morning, they have a woman at home who makes them their breakfast. Who is going to make mine?”
Balancing official labors with those of social reproduction is challenging. This is the case for Carolina. A young mother who was abandoned by her migrant husband, Carolina was working in a nearby town when she was named town secretary. As part of her cargo duties, Carolina would have to be present in the municipal offices every morning and evening and would have to quit her job. Luckily, her grandparents provided her with child care and a place to live, but she also had household responsibilities (washing, cooking, and cleaning) to fulfill. Carolina believes in the importance of doing town service. She emphasized that the citizens of Yatzachi “have to participate, and have to give what they can to the pueblo, especially because there are so few people.” However, she was in agreement with the letter written to the Oaxacan electoral institute and spoke up in the assembly because “in my situation, it would be really difficult, and I’m not willing to do a town council cargo.”
Unfair Terms of Participation and Defending Women’s labors
At the same time that almost all women believe theoretically in the importance of women’s participation, practically they viewed the terms of communal participation as unfair. For example, a group of young single women without children felt it unjust that they are considered heads of household when they do not yet have a household (i.e., children) who use community resources. Ana commented, “If single women don’t have a husband to help them out, and if they have kids, it’s unfair for them to do cargos.” Single women with children felt somewhat torn: They agreed that it was a fair expectation that they give time and labor to the community, but felt that the terms of participation were unfair. For many, this led to the conclusion that it was actually considerate of men not to nominate women for town council posts.
Although women in general agreed that their participation in cargos and tequios is important, they felt opposed to the forced nature of the mandate from the Oaxacan electoral institute. Instead, women argued that the town council cargos should be voluntary. Carolina told me, “It wasn’t in our best interest to agree to the mandate, because they could have named any one of us to the town council and we would have been forced to accept.” Minerva, who was not present at the assembly but later signed the letter, told me that the negation was not about the cargos themselves, but about their obligatory nature. For her, it was a declaration so that “they [the men in the assembly] will not force us to do the cargos if we don’t want to.”
Although the letter was addressed to the state government, it was created in the town’s most official and public space: the community assembly. This means that it was a rare opportunity to publicly debate the question of women’s labor in Yatzachi. As such, it served as a moment when women were able to emphasize the role and value of their work within the communal system, an important first step toward identifying the unequal systems of gendered labor upon which local participation is based and validated.
However, instead of elaborating this critique further and using it to promote a change within the system, women grouped together to ensure that cargos of greater labor requirements would not be forced upon them. This was not an outright rejection of the cargos themselves, but rather, as demonstrated earlier, a way to defend the sphere of their labor from further exploitation within a communal system in desperate need of extra laborers. As such, it was a rare moment in which women acted in solidarity in the town. For example, Ramona and Gema, older single women, bemoaned the fact that women did not jump at the chance of being on the town council. However, they agreed with the letter out of solidarity with younger single women: They did not want other women to be placed in a situation in which a cargo would be overly burdensome. As Irma commented, too often in Yatzachi women think only about their own homes and labor commitments: “What happens is that each woman does her work individually. She just looks after her family and house. She doesn’t get involved with others, and that’s why our town doesn’t prosper.” However, as with Ramona and Gema, for Carolina the creation of the letter was the first time that she considered women’s combined interests when taking a stance in an assembly: Since you are one of the few women at the assembly, have you ever felt like you speak for the interests of all women in assembly meetings? Sometimes, yes, because sometimes things are unfair. Do you have a specific example? The only one I can think of is that of rejecting cargos in the town council. We spoke and thought as women in that moment, not as general town citizens, but as women.
Although the creation of the letter was as an act of gendered solidarity, women have not taken further steps to elaborate a more consolidated critique of the gendered terms of the communal system. In this sense, the discussion and subsequent creation of the letter was an unprecedented moment in which women publicly articulated some of the concerns regarding the unfairness of the gendered terms of labor and participation in Yatzachi. While the liberal intervention of the government mandate did not reach its stated goal—indeed, the outcome was the opposite of what it intended—it did force a discussion that brought the question of women’s labor, and thus participation, to the table. This discussion is likely to continue.
Conclusion
Scholars have argued that alternative rights paradigms play an important role in decolonial struggles and the creation of nonliberal alternatives in Latin American indigenous communities (Reyes 2012). However, the Achilles’ heel of some alternative rights paradigms has been the question of women’s continued oppression in communal systems (Paredes 2008). This article has contributed to this issue through an in-depth case study that highlights the importance of understanding labor as a key element of alternative rights paradigms and women’s political participation in nonliberal contexts. As such, it emphasizes how the question of women’s roles and political participation in many indigenous communities is not just about an abstract notion of participation, but rather about the very tangible and powerful effects of quotidian labor practices. Gendered labor profoundly structures these rights paradigms, lived “in practice.”
Consequently, this article posits that nonliberal systems themselves are not by nature “bad” for indigenous women, as some feminists would argue (Okin 1999); rather, the issue centers on the gendered political economies that structure these systems. In this sense, it supports literature on gendered complementarity that argues that separate gendered spheres of labor are not invariably deterrents to greater equality for women (Sieder and Macleod 2009). However, this only works if separate labored spheres are given equal value within alternative rights paradigms. In the case of Yatzachi, this means valuing women’s informal labors of social reproduction to the same extent as men’s official labors, and qualifying both as work that counts for the earning of local political rights.
Likewise, this research provides another example of indigenous women rejecting liberal government intervention into their communities (Blackwell 2012). In this case, it demonstrates that women are not adverse to the idea of the importance of women’s participation as espoused by this intervention. Rather, they are adverse to the terms of what participation would mean: Being forced to take on town council posts that increase their labor exploitation within the communal system.
Finally, these findings have implications for those working to promote gender equality in nonliberal settings. They add to numerous feminist arguments about the undervaluation of women’s social reproductive work and the role this plays in women’s political marginalization in liberalism. However, by focusing on how this plays out in nonliberal contexts, this article also emphasizes the failings of liberal rights paradigms to comprehend women’s political participation in relation to alternative forms of labor and value. This is outlined in the final point of the women’s letter, in which they posit that the Oaxacan electoral institute will probably not be able to comprehend the logic behind women’s denial to take on town cargo posts. Accordingly, initiatives attempting to promote indigenous women’s political participation in Latin America should explore the alternative notions of rights that exist in these contexts in order to support indigenous women’s self-defined struggles of gender equality within communal systems.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Joya Misra, Mary Bernstein, and several anonymous reviewers for their detailed reading and helpful comments.
Research was funded by the Inter-American Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Association of American University Women. Instructive comments were provided by Alice Brooke Wilson, Joe Wiltberger, Elizabeth Hennessey, Abigail Andrews, Shane Dillingham, and Jorge Hernández Díaz.
Notes
Holly Worthen is a professor at the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociológicas at the Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Her work focuses on gender, migration, development, and indigenous politics.