chapter seven millan april 27
TRANSCRIPT
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CHAPTER SEVEN: POLITICS OF TRANSLATION IN MEXICAN CONTEMPORARY
FEMINISM
Mrgara Milln
In this essay, I focus on the analysis of three important feminist publications and publishing
circuits that, in my view, constitute an important part of making visible a feminist politics in
contemporary Mexico. I am referring toFem (1976),Debate Feminista (1990) andLa Correa
Feminista (1991). I will give emphasis to what I call their translation politics, that is, the
concepts of feminism and/or gender they promote give the authors and critics they translate. In
this context, the notion of translation means two things: the choice of theory and authors to be
translated; and the way these align it with the local political context. These choices to translate
and circulate certain theories will be read according to how they participate in a broader political
standpoint, the manner in which they are edited (with other essays, and within a larger editorial
purpose) and in relationship, to their moment of publication, as a means of intervening in the
political arena. By envisioning translation as politics, I argue that this is one-way feminist groupsmake alliances with social movements and political actors. I will address as problematic both the
space opened by the dialogues between women, whether referring to feminist groups and their
agendas, and women who participate in social movements. Rebecca E. Birons (1996) text on
feminist periodicals in Mexico was the main inspiration for this essay, which follows the
framework posed by Claudia de Lima Costa (2003; 2006; and this volume) on
transnationalism/translation as concepts in need of clarification from their global and local
meanings.
Construction of the polyvalence of the Feminist Subject
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Is it pertinent to talk about Mexican feminism, if we consider feminism as being
transnational, universal? It is essential for contemporary feminism to be able to see its
unavoidable placement, its relation to the national, and colonial/ postcolonial geopolitical
relations; its political context and its belonging to a political culture, in relation to which it
defines itself. It is from such location that we can discover the operations behind the translations
underlying the dissemination of feminism as a contemporary critical theory.
Feminism, as a theoretical and practical corpus, departs from experience in an awakening
of deconstruction of gender representation and rules. Yet, feminism is also implicated in the
paradigm of the Enlightenment involving progress, development and social change. Its criticaldiscourse is linked to the ideals for a socialist and liberal emancipation, but also to other
experiences and symbolic meanings of emancipation. Feminisms subjects have also undergone a
process of de/centering their own critical discourse, from a gender oppositional frame, to more
dialogic differences among women and their contexts.
The deconstruction of the subject by post-structuralism also applies to the feminist
subject. Woman as a global tale, a subject anchored merely in sexual difference, gave way to
women as the interaction of body/culture/race/age/sexual orientation, and more vectors,
permeating the concept of gender with meaning. Questioning the national and local feminisms
makes a lot of sense because of the nations internal contradictions, and the relationships of
hegemony/coloniality among the nations within the global system. This problem has been
pointed out in different ways, like the need for a multiracial or multicultural feminism, or the
need to decolonize feminism.
Theory, applied in questions of translation, is open to the constant
signification/appropriation of the reader/translator. However, careless appropriations, which
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have no concern for the historical specificities and features, and are insensitive to the debates
which constitute their contexts, result in a flattening of the difference and heterogeneity(Lima
Costa 2003: 256). The place of the enunciation is important for a more complex understanding of
the elocution, as well as of its subject. This is essential for an intercultural feminist dialogue,
which must be conscious of the hegemonic places of the feminist enunciation.
Magazines, journals and editorial production must be considered as cultural/political
interventions. They bring together groups that enable public discussion of a set of topics while
also producing frameworks to understand them. As feminism(s) is a multilocated practice,
feminist publications are especially relevant in shaping communication between different kindsof practices, as well as between local and global perspectives. Feminist magazines and journals
are a privileged place from where to articulate the complexity of the relationship between
feminist theory and activism, and national politics (Biron 1996). This relationship between
theory and politics is also a relationship between the transnational character of the academic
dissemination of theory, and its local processes of translation/appropriation/re-elaboration. Costa
(2003) clearly poses the tension between the metropolitan theories and their peripheral
translations/ appropriations. Underlying this is the problem already established in Latin America
(or Latino/America): does the South produce theory or is it merely the inspiring element for the
theory of the North (metropolis Center). Under this scheme, the North and the South can
reproduce themselves as the internal borders between academia, scholars, intellectuals, and
subaltern social movements.
Nelly Richard (2001, quoted by Costa 2003) calls attention to the organization of the
phenomenon of translation, anchored in a material-discursive apparatus. Feminist magazines
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and journals are part of such apparatus as translators/ disseminators of theories, serving as
cultural mediators.
In Mexico, feminism has not entered academia the way it has in the United States. There
are no women studies or gender studies majors at the B.A. level, and it is only since the nineties
that the first formal academic spaces appear. The Interdisciplinary Program for Gender Studies,
or PIEM, at the Colegio de Mxico (1986), and the University Program for Gender Studies, or
PUEG, at the UNAM (1992), are both enclaves that have gradually developed gender studies
and, more recently, the cross between gender studies and other disciplines and interdisciplines. It
is important to also mention the social sciencespostgraduate field of study on women,
at theUniversidad Autnoma Metropolitana, also created in the nineties.
Feminist magazines and journals reach a restricted audience. They are not part of the
common bibliography of the university curricula in the social sciences; they affect more literary
studies within Humanities, and even then, they are still marginal. Very few male authors
recognize and/or refer in their work to feminist theoretical criticism. It is in this context that I
will broadly locate the development of Mexican feminism, and the better-known publications
that appeared within it, taking stock of their translation politics in the context of the national
political scene.
Feminism as vanguard: from therapy to politicsIn the seventies, the world experienced the boom of feminism. The cultural revolution of
that decade, together with the emergence of the guerrilla movements in Latin America, offered
the referents for a radical, militant and avant-garde feminism. The awareness of the need for a
movement for womens liberation was, many times, parallel to that of national liberation, and the
socialist option. At the time, however, the main political parties and the leftist groups only
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partially recognized feminist struggle, many times considering it as petite bourgeois
connecting it, if not subordinating it, to political revolutionary change.
Mexican feminism in the seventies1 was clearly fashioned as a vanguard politics: radical
middle class academic and intellectual women seeking emancipation, and especially
understanding feminism as a change in their own lives. This required both a self- consciousness
generated in the small group, and also public, symbolic, exemplary action. While political
intervention was considered necessary, political participation was, to say the least, problematic.
The politics of feminism was happening in the form of symbolic manifestations, discussions and
publications. Discussion happened around questions positing the relationship between feminismand politics. Centrally developing was the counter-cultural aspect of feminism, as well as the
condemnation of violence against women and their sexual objectification.
A review of the publications of the time clearly illustrates the spirit of the militant left that
nourished Mexican feminism and which would rapidly overflow. The effervescence of the
feminist groups of that decade and the discussions among themselves and other groups, were the
testing grounds of the movement. Intellectuals, socialists, autonomists, anarchists,
institutionalists, heterosexuals, lesbians and homosexuals, were the identifying postitionalities
operating in Mexican feminism in dialogue with feminist theory, specially Anglo-Saxon, and
with Mexican political culture and its specific referents: an authoritarian state which exerted its
power through the double sided coin of repression and cooptation.2
The main feminist publications in those years were three:La Revuelta (1976), Cihuat
(1977) andFem (1976). They all appeared as a result of the atmosphere created by the official
celebration of the International Womans Year in 1975, which favored, on the one hand, the
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institutional opening towards groups of organized women, and, on the other, the activation of
independent organization by anti-officialist women.
Feminist groups of the times criticized, at the same time that they shared, many of the
schemes of the traditional left: radicality, authoritarianism and hierarchy as part of a common
political culture. Feminism criticized subordination, both of womens demands within the
political discourse and of women themselves in the everyday political practice of the leftist
organizations. Many times, however, they were reproducing, within their own feminist groups,
the authoritarianism and the concentration of power that they were criticizing.
Historical feminism, the name now given to the feminism of those years, performedemblematically symbolic actions; performative actions, where a group of women would burn
brassieres, and would protest the celebration of Mothers Day, or would manifest against the
Miss Universe contest. They published a series of foundational writings belonging to the feminist
theoretical horizon. Marta Acevedos article Women fight for their liberation. Our dream is in a
steep place, published in the cultural supplement ofSiempre! Weekly, in 1970 reviewed the
feminist gathering that took place that same year in San Francisco. This text made its mark on
Mexican feminism of the era, showing the impact of U.S. feminism.
The three afore mentioned publications were published by established groups, which
found in publishing a practice that brought them together, a space from where to dialogue
internally and with other womens groups.
Fem, the only one of these Guatemalan publications which is still being published, was
founded by renowned art and literary critic Alade Foppa, who was disappeared in her own
country in 1980, and Margarita Garca Flores, journalist and chief editor ofLos Universitarios.
They both put together a great team of women writers and creators. Their first issue featured
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Elena Poniatowska, Elena Urrutia, Margo Glantz, Nancy Crdenas and Marta Lamas, among
others: women who would become the cream of Mexican feminist thought.
Fem is the oldest feminist magazine in Latin America. Its format, just like its contents,
defines it from the beginning as a magazine addressing a broad readership, with a poetic-literary
mark, cultural analysis, and reviews of movies, theatre and such. Its editorial policy includes
writing by males such as Carlos Monsivis and Toms Mojarro, among others. It published
vindicatory essays of women who became part of the feminist genealogy, and a few translations
as leading articles.
La Revuelta,by contrast, was produced by intellectual and militant young women, undera radical and social feminism. It developed its theoretical approach from a basic principle of
feminism: the personal is political. The meetings of the small group offered the material for the
writing. The newspaperLa Revuelta was distributed outside factories. It was an effort of an
erudite middle-class feminism to get out of itself and become involved with social struggles. The
CollectiveLa Revueltapublished its newspaper for nine issues, to then start a collaboration with
the newspaperUnomsuno, which lasted until 1982.
Cihuatwas a political bulletin; the means of information for the Coalicin de Mujeres
Feministas (Feminist Women Coalition), which would repeatedly denounce the situation of
oppression and exploitation of Mexican women, as well as persuading women to form a part of
organized struggle. There were only six issues; the last in 1978.
Fem is the media for a constant nucleus of Latin American cultural criticism. During its
first 15 years, it brought together a large group of womens voices, intellectuals and creators.
Because of the length of its publishing life, as well as its contents, it offers a broad and ambitious
vision of feminism in Latin America. Polyvalent, it maintains a clear political definition without
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being affiliated to a specific group, developing a theoretical preoccupation without locking itself
in the academic world. It connects with women authors and feminist movements of its time. It
presents few translations and functions more through its unpublished original essays and with a
large number of testimonial writingand interviews.
It also translated texts from a feminism that left its mark on contemporary cultural criticism3,
like its 1984 issue about the Chicanas, with a text by Cherrie Moraga, and in 1985, with a text by
Rosi Braidotti.
The seventies synthesized the libertarian spirit of the sixties, as far as a cultural
revolution. It was also a time of great politicization in Mexico: the ascent of the independentsocial movements -critics of state corporatism-, and the development of the guerrilla proposals.
The feminist movement was discussing its relationship to the leftist groups and to the
wider movement of women. This process continued to define itself as the destabilization of the
model of politics as a relationship between the vanguard and the masses. In this process of
self-definition of feminism, two needs developed not without certain contradictions: the need to
depart from ones own experience, of taking the personal to the terrain of politics, and the need
for feminism to act in partisan and institutional terms. Finally, this decade let us see that to
change life also meant to change what we understood as politics.
The subject of this feminism has been constructed on various fronts: the small group, the
partisan militancy, the struggles of the independent union movement, the academic world, the
mass media, the art world, the institutional sphere. A multiplicity of groups and people were
opening spaces, doing the hard work of the mole that builds subterranean bridges which would
become the base for cultural transformation in the long term.
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The interaction between the global and the local was clear in this decade. Many testimonials
refer to the organizing impetus that awakened women when the first of four womens
conferences, organized by the UN, was celebrated in Mexico City in 1975. Spaces were opening
for various reasons: the official institutional spaces and the anti-establishment independent ones;
they were all disputing the same flag, that of women.
The local referents of Mexican feminism in the seventies were, on the one side, a left that did
not assume feminism as a central aspect of its project, and that thought of women as a
subordinate sector in the strategic struggle. On the other hand the authoritarian state aligned
women as a sector, imposing the discourse of development assigning gender tasks for thenation: family, reproduction, moral values. Feminism also walked hand in hand with the lesbian-
gay movement, which finally constituted itself in the following decade as an autonomous
movement, in dialogue, conflictive many times, with heterosexual feminism.
The authoritarian Mexican State developed a political system which was nourished by a
revolutionary and populist discourse, hegemonizing the historical and symbolic process of the
Mexican Revolution to define the Mestizo Nation, excluding anything that did not fit with the
institutional revolutionary project of development. Facing such a state, Mexican feminism
decided, just as the left did, to define itself as an independent movement. At the same time,
feminism happened outside the leftist political parties, maybe with the exception of Trotskyism,
which was also marginal within the left. The feminist groups, like the leftist ones, divided and
rearticulated themselves in relationship to the state, prefiguring the dilemma between the official
versus independent and the institutional and the autonomous, which later became even more
complex with international funding and the proliferation of non-governmental organisms in the
nineties.
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Feminism as politics
During the last two decades, Mexican feminism shaped itself into a politics that transformed
current policies at the federal and state levels, constructing a strategy of alliances for its public
interventions. Particularly in the decade of the eighties, what we observe is a significant micro
organization of women through civil associations and NGOs.
In the urban and peasant contexts, women acquired visibility structuring specific demands
within the organizations of unionized women. The two most important independent
organizations among the indigenous peasants appeared in 1982, at the First National Womens
Congress celebrated in Mexico City, and in 1986, at the First Congress of Peasant Women fromCNPA and from the Coordinadora Plan de Ayala. TheRed Feminista Campesina (Feminist
Peasant Network) was founded in 1987, as was the Red de Promotoras Rurales (Rural Women
Promoters Network). Women in the education field, maquila workers, domestic workers, those
belonging to the popular urban movement, they all discussed and articulated their standpoints,
while working against violence and for health benefits. A plural subject of feminism became
visible through the organization of women on these various fronts, at the same time that the
interaction between classes and the media reached its potential and found a vehicle through the
NGOs.
The strategies of alliances and political participation were also modified: the National
Womens Movement demanded that the State to participate by assisting women victims of
violence. The Guidance and Support Rape Center (COAPEVI) was created in 1987. As a result,
organized women in public institutions started to open spaces for the development of policies
related to women. Feminism moved from vanguard positions to social responsibility actions,
negotiating with the State for spaces, and broadening feminisms political arena.
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In 1989, the Mexican State created both the Specialized Agencies on Sexual Crimes
(AEDS) and the Center for Support of Victims of Sexual Violence (CTA). In 1987, the State of
Guerrero established the first Ministry of Women's Affairs in the country. And, of course,
women were part of social programs like Mujeres en Solidaridad(Women in Solidarity) del
Programa Nacional de Solidaridad (PRONASOL), which was the official program for social
development during the Salinismo period4, and an antecedent to the current Secretara de
Desarrollo Social, (or SEDESOL, which is the Ministry of Social Development). On that fact,
Esperanza Tun (1997) states, There's no doubt feminist women are facing today the typical
logic of formal politics in the public setting which considerably differs from thedynamicsdisplayed before by them in the field of conceptual and cultural development of
feminism, and in the politicized spaces of daily life and, not without resistance, they have
accepted to participate or support various projects sponsored by the StateHowever, within this
attitude liesthe difficulty to consider the successes of the movement, whether it's a genuine
legitimate concession in the generated force or a cooptation manipulated by the feminist
demands" (109).
A glimpse of the NGOization of feminism (Alvarez 1998) and of civil society in general,
became clearer during the next decade of the nineties, but only because of what had began in the
eighties. Poverty, citizenship, equality, legal advice, and civil rights were added to the issues of
violence and health. The more articulated politics of feminism around denouncement and the
struggle against violence came with the campaign for a risk-free maternity, joined to the axis of
democracy. The nineties were an eclosion in terms of the causes of the social movement: from
the use of language to multicultural rights. The lesbian and gay movement, which also broadened
its organization and visibility, started strategies to modify the current legislation, and in that way
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broadening the definition of family to families, of implementing changes to the inheritance
rights, and of legalizing same-sex civil unions which were was recently approved in Mexico
City, in November 2006.
Feminist platforms during those years show growing complexity, there are conferences for
the valorization of domestic labor, but also campaigns like Taking Back Spaces, Access to
Justice for Women, as well the founding of the first feminist political association, DIVERSA,
which requested its electoral register.5 The Law for Assistance and Prevention of Family
Violence became instituted in 1997, in 1999 the Instituto de la Mujer, or Institute of Womens
Affairs for the Mexico City government started functioning, and in 2000, the First NationalConsultation on Womens Rights was fostered.
Feminist politics is a sketch of a complex crisscross of actions, demands and interventions
representing a social subject increasingly more diverse, and capable of structuring demands, both
general and specific. The political dimension of feminism is more and more an intervention in
the general order of things, exceeding sectoral approaches and demands for equality. 6
A new relationship seems to have been established between theory and the movement,
defying notions like theoretical feminism and popular feminism, giving way to a more
complex discussion within feminism itself, and among feminist groups from different political
tendencies. These developments are founded on the cultural and symbolic capital which, for
Mexican feminists, has represented the massive incorporation of women into education and
labor, as well as the interaction of organized women who have been working with poor women
in both urban and rural settings since the eighties. Feminist practices under NGOs has followed
two tendencies: one, dominated by the Centers directive bringing development to the rural
and poor areas, which are also the indigenous regions; and the other one, which is trying to break
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through class and cultural fences that separate Mestizo women from Indigenous women, and
redefining up to a certain point, the enlightened basis of the Mestiza feminism. While the first
tendency behaves in assimilationist terms when facing poor and indigenous women, the second
tendency starts recognizing the cultural differences, and the critique of the capitalist model
implicit in indigenous cultural forms.
Parallel to these feminist practices it, internal discussions within militant feminist groups
keep developing around the need for autonomy, given the tendencies towards institutional
participation and funding sources. The dilemma of being outside or being inside the system
showed itself especially at Latin American feminist gatherings and congresses during thenineties. It was difficult to reach an agreement in relation to policies of alliances, and even in
terms of setting feminist priorities.
NGOization comes with the trans-nationalization of feminism, as analyzed by Sonia
lvarez (1998) for whom it is clear that the field of action for organized feminism in NGOs, and
participation ting in the institutional settings of politics, like parties, states, institutions and
multilateral organisms, broadens the degree of thinking of gender as a global agenda. After the
boom, however, the NGOization of the feminist movement a critique follows asking how the
local feminist agenda must fit the requirements of the global agenda through the priorities of
funding. Moreover, the distance between the regional - global existence, and local recognition
becomes visible as Alvarez states: the Latin American feminist field of study, which had a
very broad reach in the nineties, started to be progressively diminished by unequal relationships
of power among women (Alvarez 1998).
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Feminist Magazines from the NinetiesFrom the nucleus that gave birth toFem during those two decades, two publications
emerged which would mark the path of hegemonic Mexican feminism. When I call these
publications, and the critical mass from which they emerge, hegemonic, I am suggesting it is
the better known and recognized feminism inside and outside of Mexico,7 present in national
politics, at the international lobby, and intheoretical discussion, and not the same one developing
within the rural social movements and the popular sectors8.
In 1986, a group of feminist women summoned by Marta Lamas, presented a project to
the newspaperLa Jornada, with the intention of creating a supplement that would be an organ
for debate within feminism, as well as for opening feminism to the rest of society. The
newspaper took in the project, but when they were structuring it, differences occurred between a
morejournalistic sector, and a more intellectualone. The supplement stayed under the editorship
of Sara Lovera, and it kept an informative profile, while in March of 1990, Debate Feminista
appeared, under the direction of Marta Lamas.
Debate Feminista is, by far, the theoretical journal of Mexican feminism. Edited by
anthropologist and activist Marta Lamas, it continues with the collective work that its director
was practicing before: being the main translator of feminist theory produced in English, French
and Italian. Lamas had already published an important article9 in 1986 which came with the
translation presented by the journalNueva Antropologa of the influential text by Gayle Rubin,
The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex, published in English in thecompilation Towards an Anthropology of Women, editedby Rayna Reiter in 1975.
Debate Feminista, at 300 pages, and appearing twice a year, has the shape of a book,
presenting a state of the art featuring monographic essays on feminist topics. In the issues
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published during these sixteen years, the journal magazine has consolidated a theoretical profile,
which intends to foster open reflections on certain local and transnational issues: democracy,
otherness, law, body and subject, cities, writing, politics, queerness and a continuous intent to
broaden the spectrum of the debate by, impacting social reflection through feminism, going
beyond it, and building bridges.
Debate Feminista has been the journal that introduced contemporary feminist authors in
academia and in the directives of the movement: Teresa de Lauretis, Judith Butler, Adriana
Cavarero, Lia Cigarini, Nancy Fraser, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray. It presents an open structure
in the sense of constantly offering a space from another place, dedicated to views not openlyfeminist, and publishing male authors in most of their issues.
It keeps a very organized yet flexible structure, allowing sections such as, From the
Couch, confirming the interest for a psychoanalytical perspective. Some texts that appear in
From the Left, From the Everyday, or From another Place, opens a space for interviews,
testimonials or denouncements. There is a space for photography, called From the Glance, and
the Argende (Mexican expression for gossip and/or argument), and a space traditionally
dedicated to political satire in charge of Jesusa Rodrguez and Liliana Felipe, directors of a very
important lesbian cultural critical space in the country. All this comes with the hard nucleus of
the journal, which organizes texts, around a certain subject matter in every issue.
We could characterizeDebate Feminista as a journal of enlightened or educated
feminism, that is addresssing a strongly theoretical informed audience initiated and specialized;
and in political terms, a perspective from the liberal left with an institutional political project.
The feminist sector associated to the journalDebate Feminista is also an intellectual, political
one, with broad alliances.10 The activism of its editor, Marta Lamas, has centered on
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reproductive rights and the legalization of abortion. She is also the director of GIRE, or
Information Group on Reproductive Choice.
For its part,La Correa Feminista, created in 1991, brings together a radical and
autonomous feminism, around the journalists Ximena Bedregal and Rosa Rojas. It is published
by the CICAM, or Center for Research and Training of Women. The orginal objective of
CICAM was to constitute a kind of chain or belt, orcorrea, like its name implies, of feminisms
existing in the different states of the country, trying to systematize feminism and go against the
centralization of information in the nations capital.
Correa Feministas 19
th
issue, in the fall and winter of 1998, was a self-assessment. Inthis issue, they revisited their original desire, and the contradictions of positing an autonomous
and radical kind of feminism, in recognition of social needs to broaden democracy, opposing
the needs of the State to make functional its neo-liberal project, by incorporating aspects of the
demands that feminism had developed (7 years ofLa Correa Feminista). The first seven
issues of the magazine were dedicated to building bridges between feminist organizations in the
states and the center of the country, something like the metropolis and its peripheries, given the
central and centralized character which shapes and penetrates the Mexican political and cultural
structures.
La Correa reestablished its project after asserting that a collective of women is not a
homogeneous one, and moreover, that it contains irreconcilable positions, by stating that []
the voice of the majority sectors with more material and economic power, tended to the practice
of silencing the discrepant voices.
From issue number 7, in 1994, it becomes a magazine of critical reflection, looking for
elements of a radical, rebellious, autonomous and anti-systemic feminism.
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In its 19th issue CICAMannounced the advent ofCreatividad Feminista (Feminist
Creativity) published electronically on the Internet. The themes in the following issues centered
on feminism and politics, democracy, war, autonomy, and development. The electronic magazine
joined itself to a sector of Chilean feminism represented by the writer Margarita Pisano. This site
gave life to a new project, Mamametal, driven more towards artist expression, mainly through
photographs and videos.
Fem continued to appear promptly during this decade, representing what Lamas called
mujerismo (or womanism), committed to feminist writing, interviews, and to documenting
womens movements, and publishing womens literature and poetry.
To complete this panorama of forces and feminisms, we also have to trace the trajectory
ofLa Doble Jornada. From 1986 untill 1998,La Doble Jornada, (or Double Workday), was led
by Sara Lovera. During this time, it circulated its information widely carrying out its mission as a
space for womens networks. From 1998, the supplement became Triple Jornada (or Triple
Workday), under the editorship of Ximena Bedregal and Rosa Rojas, both fromLa Correas
team. The objective ofTriple Jornada was to strengthening the debate regarding the role of
women in the world, which isnt necessarily taking over half the power locates the supplement
within feminism, and closes the circle of debate.
The transition from the seventies to the nineties is marked by social movements and civil
society; the proliferation of NGOs which started their work with peasant, working class and
indigenous women; the de-structuring of the classic leftist paradigm; the end of socialism, of the
cold war, of guerrilla warfare as a means to confront state power. The preoccupation with
democracy grew after the electoral process of 1988.11 The relationship with the institutional
apparatus is one of the most politicized vectors within the social movements, including
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feminism. Paradoxically, the ever-growing presence of the organized civil society and its
connections with transnational organisms provided the conditons for feminism to become a field
of study, a profession, and a stable voice in the political arena.
De-centering Feminism: Neo-Zapatismo and the Difficulty of Mexican Feminisms to Deal with
IndigenousnessIn the political scenario of the early nineties in Mexico, Salinismo had seeped through broad
layers of leftist intellectualism with a certain harmony in direct opposition to neoliberal
globalization as a political inexorability and as a desirable future. The crisis started by the armed
uprisings, which forced a reconsideration of definitions that were commonly thought of as settled
within national culture: violence as a political recourse, the preeminence of the constitutional law
above the rights of the people. The derivations from the movement questioned the whole notion
of an independent and Mestizo nation, which nourished the critical and leftist discourses.
The Zapatista movement opened a controversial space for Mexican feminism: the
articulation of indigenous womens voices was questioned by the feminist movement, especially
because of the central male figure of the Subcomandante and the discourse around the
indigenous women, while other political trends were endorsing and recognizing it. The Zapatista
style of fighting provoked different reactions and opinions. Mexican feminism, through its own
publications, articulated general standpoints on the conflict, although they could not avoid
recognizing the importance of the emblematic actions of the indigenous Zapatismo, like the
Womens Revolutionary Law, the presence of women commanders (comandantas), and the
words of the insurgents. The difficult relationship between feminism and Zapatismo brought to
light issues that had not been seen as problematic within western critical feminist discourse.
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The reception/discussion that Neozapatismo generated in the different fields of Mexican
feminism is another horizon of visibility for indigenous women, as they informnational
feminism. I will only considerLa Correa Feminista, andDebate Feminista, becuase these two
publications generated the most work about feminism and its relationship to and with
Neozapatism.
La Correa Feminista published a compilation of materials and positions in their first
volume,Chiapas: and what about the women? in December 1994. The composition of the
first volume already posed the agenda for an autonomous feminism: violence against women,
decriminalization of abortion, and the absence of indigenous women in the debate aroundautonomies. However, it is in the Introduction by Rosa Rojas, and in Ximena Bedregals article
entitled Chiapas, reflections from our feminism, that the editorial group assumes a critical
position towards the insurgent raising.
One can summarize the central points as follows:
1. Feminism is essentially pacifist. War is part of the patriarchal order. Because of that,
critical feminism has to take its distance from a project that liberates through a themilitary
option, given that such structures are in themselves patriarchal, vertical and authoritarian. For
us, feminism is fundamentally pacifist and antiwar () War, in all its forms and expression has
been a vertebral instrument of power, of (dis)order and the domain of the patriarchal system
Bedregal, 1994, op cit, pp.,43-44. Feminism must question the war machine and its patriarchal
logic, as illustrated by the guerrilla in Central and South America. Women becoming soldiers
must not be seen as an achievement.
There is a differentiation between feminisms criticism of war, and the one that made by
patriarchal liberalism. This last one makes a hypocritical criticism because it recognizes the
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violence in the other but not in its own logic (the violence of the rule of law, the nonexistent
peace, social inequality and extermination). Opposite to this liberal positioning, feminist
criticism would be the profound and radical criticism of the foundations of these deliriums that,
with promises and speeches about regained identities, avenged offenses and definite salvations,
only present us, from the perspective of the powerful ones first, and then, from the dispossessed
onesthe eternal postponement of happiness; and in the name of an assumed superior good,
freedom and life itself are always left out (op cit, p. 46). The discourse and practice of the
EZLN, strengthens the idea that violence can only be fought with violence and that it is valid if
it comes from the forsaken, the dispossessed, the oppressed (47). It acts within the laws of thesystem it criticizes by assuming itself as an army, declare war and appeal to the recognition of
the Geneva Convention
2. Reservations about the Womens Revolutionary Law, considering that: it gives no
guarantee of the subversion of the patriarchal order which prevails in the communities of the
Zapatista territory, in Chiapas and the rest of the country, it will not be more than a partial
declaration of good intentions, as long as women remain as second class humans, precluded by
the masculine authoritarianismwhich women also help reproducefrom being owners of their
bodies, through a free and secondary maternity, as long as their wishes for a good life remain a
secondary issue for some future, as long as they are not the real owners, materially, politically,
socially and symbolically, of their lives, as long as their voice is not a vertebral element in the
construction of daily life (xi).
And further ahead in the text: () in general terms it is evident that it is not feminist in as
much as it only proposes a few claims for women and not a proposal of community from the
experience of the feminine, critical and conscious, criticized and reconstructed From our
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occidental and enlightened urban perspective, if indigenous women are generally invisible, and
with the barrier of war they are directly inaccessible, it is practically impossible to know if such
law is a real product of a womens process opposite to the patriarchal and violent customs, or if it
is a product of the leaders facing the need to incorporate women into traditionally male tasks
and/or to give the idea of a larger democracy () (ibid, pp. 54-55).
This proposal does not see indigenous women as a subject. The invisibility obscures even
their capacity as agency. Are women the ones who stated the Law or is it a strategy of the male
and patriarchal leadership? Women are left trapped in this non-visibility that causes them to be
represented as victims.3. Acknowledging certain aspects of Neozapatism:
However, there would be certain analogies that bring together the critical feminism to
the rebellious movement. The first one is the analogy between natives (indios) and
women, both made invisible, marginal, sharing the not being news. The second convergence
appears in the particular aspects of the Neozapatista discourse, when undressing the fallacy of
the neoliberal model and its promises, and above all, by claiming the validity of rebellion, and
more than that, it has installed hope for difference, for diversity. Elements that should be, for
feminists, nourishment for their imaginations, p.49.
Other attitudes of the EZLN are valued, like the fact that they recognize that they are
talking from a specific locality, without pretending to impose one truth for all. The
communicative wisdom present in the communiqus by both, the CCRI (Indigenous
Revolutionary Clandestine Committee) and Marcos, saying even in relation to this that: From
another logic, and from a symbolic order which is not the order of feminism, it has given us a
lesson we must recognize. Communication like this has been one of feminist utopias for
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communication, lost in the erroneous belief that we can only be listened to if we speak the
others language (), p.51.
The second volume of Chiapas and what about the women?published in December
1995, offered an account of the political climate and of the great civil society mobilization
following Februarys incursion of the Mexican army into the Zapatista zone, searching for the
Subcomandante, destroying a series of communities and cutting off communication with the area
for a month. People had sought refuge in the mountains. This had been the second great
offensive after the first twelve days of open war following the onset of the rebellion. The
womens movement was very active. In February 1995, the First National Womens Conventionwas held. The State Womens Convention in Chiapas had already happened in July of 1994. The
intention around a new national pact is the context for the petition of the sixth question12at the
National Consultation for Peace and Democracy by the EZLN (which happened on August 27,
1995).
The second volume published, poses an answer to the postures ofLa Correas autonomous
feminism, written by Mercedes Olivera in, Feminist practice in the national liberation Zapatista
movement, and in an essay by Bedregal, A dialogue with Mercedes Olivera: Memory and
Utopia in the feminist practice. The first is a vision from Chiapas, through which we can see the
organizational environment around the Zapatismo, and the progress achieved within Zapatismo
itself in relation to indigenous womens participation and the recognition of their voice and
labor; the advancement represented by the mobilization in front of the colonial model imposed
on both male and female indigenous people. For Olivera Bustamante (1995), inside Zapatismo
and its context the possibility of turning feminism into a larger social practice (176) is at stake,
and further ahead, In brief, we feminists from the fields, who have worked in Chiapas, value the
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progress obtained by women in deconstructing and reconstructing their identities as indigenous
women and poor peasants (177).
The differentiated shades of feminism began to emerge. On the one side, urban and radical yet
sectarian and dogmatic, paradoxically interested in the feminism of the difference, yet
uninterested on the differences themselves among women, a sisterhood of patriarchys radical
criticism. On the other hand, the feminism from the fields, mixed with the denied culture of the
forbidden diversity, that of the ethnic groups, worried with identities. The latter, even though it
recognized the patriarchal structures, prioritizes the practice of a broader feminism, making
indigenous women visible as subjects with a social agency. In any case, they themselves (theIndigenous women) will be the ones to decide if to promote or not the feminist character of their
organizations and their movement. We the feminists, from our own role as advisors or members
of the NGOs, let us help women look at themselves (Olivera Bustamante 1995, 184).
Bedregals answer reaffirms the criticism towards belligerence, even coming from the
poor, the idea that, in dialogue with Oliveras text, the refusal to be subordinate to the feminist
imaginary, to rank priorities. My feminismtries to be an invitation to give free rein to the
imagination, to self-validation, to criticism, to being bad and to know we can be worst, to not be
afraid, to have memory and herstory, to feel, to take risks, to name what we want, to invent
freedom and other worlds above the norm(s). To de-generate, means to live outside of gender
(Bedregal 1995, 189). In ranking priorities, what becomes exposed is the priority for a radical
and radicalizing subject, over other ways of building agency and self-validation.
Debate Feminista as an editorial group declared its position to the Zapatista movement in
their editorial section for issue number 9, March 1994. When the war exploded in Chiapas,
many of us asked ourselves what was the feminist perspective on the conflict, starts, and opens
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various positions. There were those who felt sympathy for the movement but felt conflicted by
their pacifist inclinations; those who were more concerned about the situation of the women in
Chiapas who were being displaced by the conflict; those who were more worried about the risk
to the democratic project; those who were enthusiastic about the Womens Law, and those who
were worried by the political strength of the Catholic Church. They also mention that those who
traveled to Chiapas were able to check, after talking to the local feminists, that one thing was
the idealizing chilanga (meaning, from Mexico City) look, and another one, the harsh social
reality. The existence of internal divisions, the rejection of many communities towards the
armed path, messianic, patriarchal and authoritarian attitudes by the Catholic Church and bysome members of the Zapatista army, this all speaks of a messianism opposite to that other path
(that) is the work of the masses
In this issue,Debate Feminista publishes the Womens Revolutionary Law with a
fragment of Marcos letter where he refers to the way the Law was elaborated in March 1993;
they also publish a document sent by the San Cristbal Womens group (or COLEM) on
reproductive rights. The editorial inDebate Feminista exposes here one of the main points of
their feminist political agenda: the criticism of a religious conception of maternity, where a
womans body is considered a divine instrument, and where from the moment of fecundation,
the human being in formation has complete autonomy from the mother () In front of this, they
propose: As Jurez already pointed out, laws cant be based on religious beliefs (p.ix).
The magazine published, the whole text Pastoral document on abortion, written by Don
Samuel Ruiz, and Boveros article on secular thought, emphasizing this way their secular
affiliation, pointing to a critical tension towards Zapatismo.
In their issue number 24, from October 2001, seven years after the 94s editorial, we find
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the result of the reflection provoked on a sector of feminism by the indigenous uprising. Racism
and Mestizaje is the title for various articles that question racism in Mexico, and its role in the
construction of the nation. Articles like Ruizs, La india bonita: nacin, raza y gnero en el
Mxico revolucionario (The prettyIndia: nation, race and gender in revolutionary Mexico)
and Belausteguigoitias, Descaradas y deslenguadas: el cuerpo y la lengua en los umbrales de
la nacin(Without face and without tongue: body and language in the thresholds of the
nation), wish to explore nationalism and the construction of the indigenous feminine. The
volume gathers various articles on Neozapatismo, includes poetry in the Tseltal and Tzotzil
languages, Comandanta Esthers intervention at the Mexican parliament, and a goodphotographic testimonial.
But it is in Hernndez Castillos article, Between feminist ethnocentrism and the ethnic
essentialism on Indigenous women and their gender related demands, that we find a very
critical stance towards Mexican feminism for its ethnocentrism. Hernndez asserts that
indigenous women would find themselves in the middle of an indigenous movement that
refuses to recognize its sexism and a feminist movement which refuses to recognize its
ethnocentrism (Hernndez Castillo 2001, 217).
For Hernndez Castillo the main point is the articulation of indigenous women on gender
related demands, together with the autonomic demands of their pueblos, as a struggle with
many fronts, in which hegemonic feminism does not build bridges. She defines hegemonic
feminism as one that emerged in the center of the country, and was theorized from academia
where the struggle in pro of abortion and womens reproductive rights has been central (207,
footnote 4). Truly, the centering of this hegemonic feminism impedes it from building bridges
with religious sectors that have been reflecting on womens issues and organizing them
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considering their social conditions. The result is a feminist hegemonic excluding agenda which
privileges the demands of the educated urban experience, and ascribed to a notion of individual
rights which doesnt attend the idea maybe forever lost of communality.
Marta Lamas and the Subcomandante Marcos had exchanged letters in relation to the
legalization of abortion, published inLa Jornada, on April 29 and May 11, 1994. The discussion
occured because of an alleged demand by the EZLN that in the reform of the Penal Code in
Chiapas abortion would be decriminalized.Lamas points out that decriminalizing abortion is a
central question in a truly democratic project, in the sense of the respect towards plurality and
individual guarantees (Lamas 1994, 141). But she also clarified that in our countries, womenwith economic means can have sanitary abortions, while poor women have to resort to
interrupting their pregnancy in ways that put them in high risk of death. Which means that the
individual guarantees are delimited by your belonging to a certain social class. On May 11,
1994, Marcos denied that the EZLN was asking for the criminalization of abortion, nor the
reformulation of the penal code, and transcribed the 27 th item in the EZLN demands, where what
is being asked is To remove the Penal Code from the State of Chiapas because it doesnt allow
us to organize ourselves, except with weapons ().
In his response, Marcos stated a figure of speech that he repeats in various communiqus.
The idea that the Womens Law was imposed by the Zapatista women within the EZLN, the idea
that the changes that women are making are happening in spite of the newspapers, churches,
penal codes and, is fair to recognize, our own resistance as males to be thrown to the comfortable
space of domination that weve inherited (Rojas, 1994, 145). Finally, in postscript style, there
are two strong affirmations: that indigenous women have abortions and not by their own choice,
but because of chronic malnutrition, and that they are not asking for abortion clinics because they
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dont even have childbirth clinics, and that carrying firewood up the hills is something that no
penal code considers () (ibid).
This polemic took shape again years later, from December 2002 to January 2003, from
issue number 1362 to 1367 of the weeklyProceso. The discussion began with Javier Sicilia
responding to an article by Carlos Monsivis entitled On Bishops and social geology,
(Proceso, 1362), caused by the bishops recommendation, motivated by the First Summit of
Indigenous Women from the Americas, in December 2002. Gustavo Esteva and Sylvia Marcos,
among others, participated in the polemic. They all shared a theoretical closeness to Ivan Illich
and his important work on vernacular gender and modern sexism.What can one sort out in this polemic? The discussion revolved around reproductive
rights and decriminalization of abortion. For Lamas, () in this debate about gender, which is
also about essentialism, it would be interesting to enter and define the contours of this fair and
free world we think possible, which for me it is not the world from the past nor the one from the
present. A world that recognizes sexual differences without imposing false complementarities
and that favors the development of human potentialitiesin a utopia of a world without
economic exploitation sexual and reproductive rights are a fundamental axis (2003, 59). Sicilia
responds: As you can see, I dont believe in sexual nor reproductive rights in any type of
society. I believe in the proportion, in the person, in the difference, in the duty and the place for
mystery (Sicilia 2003, 59).
From a Christian critical viewpoint of modernity, Sicilia approached gender as a
vernacular ordinance, versus the modern ordinance, where the Roman right is the only measure
of it all. The vernacular, orders the human universe in a proportional manner, through a guide
who moderates mans actions in front of physical and human nature. This proportion implies,
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among many other things, the understanding of maternity as a gift, not as a right () (ibid). For
Sicilia, the loss of such proportionality occurs in the societal development centered in the
economic as the absolute value, where the human being has evicted sacred order from their
life, and it is right there where modern debate on reproductive rights is generated.
Esteva, from another place, responded to Lamas with the distinction Illich proposed
between patriarchy, to speak of domination of men over women in the vernacular conditions
and sexism, to speak of the consequences of the disadvantage that only an ideologically
equalitarian society can impose on their human subjects that are diagnosed as belonging to the
feminine sex () without which a society based on merchandise couldnt exist(Esteva 2003,
60).
Proportionality and difference, equality and capitalism would be the pairs sustaining this
location. "Sylvia Marcos intervened inProceso No: 1367 to point out the importance of listening
to what the indigenous women are saying, from their spiritual and practical location, quoting
Mara Estela Jocn, Mayan, from Guatemala, who states: "What is understood [or 'what we
understand'] from the practice of a gender[ed] approach is a respectful relationshipof balance,
equilibrium what in the West would be called equality" (81). Lamas position is characterized
as colonialist from those three perspectives, and for different reasons. For Sylvia Marcos: The
preoccupation is that the feminist discourse, placed in the urban elite, acts as a colonizing and
involuntarily hegemonic elementProceso 1367, p. 80. For Sicilia, (women) have all the
right to defend their reproductive rights and apply them in their bodies, what they have no
right is to erect them as a supreme value for women (that is why Ive said that her discourse
(Lamas) is colonialist, pretends to make the indigenous women say what they never said
(Sicilia 2003,59). And for Esteva, there is not any notion floating above all of cultures and eras,
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like those who share the economic mentality of modernity try to make us believe, against whose
colonialist breath we need to fight (Esteva 2003, 61).
What is at stake in these three views are diverse essentialisms: Lamas, by establishing as
central and universal the demands of urban women for sexual and reproductive rights; Sicilias
and Estevas, by denying modernity any kind of quality, seeing it as totally dominated by
economic centrality, without any crevices or nor resistances In the middle of the discussion are
the statements of the indigenous women during the Summit, that Sylvia Marcos pointed out: we
have to listen to them carefully, translate them.
The reviewed discussions refer us to a present need among the diverse feminisms inMexico: to develop a position dealing with indigenous women outside indigenismo, a
paternalist and colonialist discourse towards the indigenous, which also implies a series of
theoretical destabilizations of feminism as a critical apparatus. As a condition of openness to the
diversity of the feminine and feminist subject, part of the process is to decolonize its own
assumptions given the absence of indigenous womens voices. This observation is not a value
judgment, but rather an appeal to recognize that classist and ethnic segregation by Mexican
nationalism/indigenismo has created great divisions among women. These divisions are
redefining themselves. The indigenous womens voices are already in other contexts, the ones
that the local and international movement has been openingfields of enunciation for a word of
their own. And by own I do not mean untouched by various discourses. Precisely the opposite,
a word that appropriates itself of a multiplicity of discourses so as to be in the world, and be
born in the world, yet not necessarily coinciding with feminisms political agenda, but rather,
generating its own agenda, anchored in their own life experience and cultural and cosmogonic
horizons.
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The referred discussion around Neozapatismo calls to locally elucidate the specific
meanings of emancipation for the indigenous women, destabilizing univocal and universalist
notions of concepts like feminine liberation. Not to abdicate these concepts, but fill them with
diverse, localized and useful content for a concrete subject. As a whole, indigenous
Neozapatismo showed Mexican hegemonic feminism a vision of indigenous women, less
attached to silence and shadow, as more political players, whole and differential subjects,
conscious of identity politics and their distance from the enlightened feminism of western
modernity. Indigenous womens discourse is everyday more audible, and in it they combine the
claims for social and gender related justice and cultural recognition.The discussion around Neozapatismo also provoked in hegemonic feminism a larger self-
reflection in the nations classist and racist mirror. The nation appears as object of feminist
elucidation, not yet exhausted in its characterization as patriarchal, but in reconstructing the
complex dialogism which constitutes it, and of which we, women, white and colored, are part of.
And most important, it might be that in this intercultural dialogue, hegemonic feminism will turn
to look at itself, expanding, in some cases, the borders that its own location imposes on it, starts
to see more, and by doing so, advances towards a more inclusive conviviality and a more plural
voice.
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NOTES TO CHAPTER SEVEN
1
We specially have to mention four womens organizations: Mujeres en Accin Solidaria, or MAS, (1970),
Movimiento Nacional de Mujeres, or MNM, (1973), and Colectivo La Revuelta (1975), and Cihuat(1977), called
the seed groups, as they were irradiating the feminist seed within the social movements.
2 Mexico was at the end of the political crisis after the 1968 Student Movement, towards which
the states reaction had been brutal. ThePartido Revolucionario Institucionalhad been fifty
years in power. The institutionalization of the Mexican revolution made it possible for a
nationalist and revolutionary rhetoric to work, as well as a repressive and authoritarian practice.
Echeverras six-year period tried to reconfigure the political scene through a democratic
aperture which practiced the politics of cooptation-repression of the opposition.
3 Translations in Social Science and Humanities, from English or another European language into Spanish, in
publishing houses that have distribution in Mexico, take anywhere between 5 to 10 years. For example, the
fundamental text by Gayle Rubin, Womens traffic: notes on the political economy of sex, appears in English in
1975, and its not until 1986 that the magazineNueva Antropologa publishes the Spanish version.4 Salinism refers to Carlos Salinas de Gortaris six-year presidency. Salinas won the 1988 elections opposite to
Cuauhtmoc Crdenas, through an electoral fraud. This government applies a strong neoliberal policy, but with a
social expense, called social neoliberalism. An important part of these social politics were operated through
PRONASOL, and in the countryside, PROCAMPO and PROGRESA, where specific politics are developed for
peasant women.
5Antecedent of the first feminist political party, Mxico Posible, and the currentAlternativa party, led by Patricia
Mercado.
6 Sonia lvarez poses for the nineties a Latin American feminism that used to be a relatively isolated and restricted
movementand now can be more appropriately characterized as an expansive, polycentric and heterogeneous field
of action, which has greatly extended its cultural and political influence (1998, 93).
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7 However, there are a wide variety of feminist expressions that have their own publications,
sporadic most of the times, as well as diverse manifestations, as part of the social movements or
organization of the society as groups.8 Esperanza Tun (1997) refers to feminist women as part of the Womens Wider Movement, describing them as
follows: As far as feminist women is concerned, its worth remembering that they are generally placed among the
sectors of the enlightened middle layers, and usually they are intellectuals developing their activity and postulates in
different areas like the media, the academia, the organizational political work ONG, and the political parties
(107). Hernndez Castillo (2001) characterizes Mexican hegemonic feminism as follows: feminism which
emerged in the center of the country, and is theorized from the academia, where the struggle in favor of abortion and
reproductive rights has been central (207, footnote 4).
9Lamas (1986).
10 Alliances among the different ideologies and political parties that consider the challenge of
feminism in Mexico in the nineties, as pointed out by Lamas, Martnez, Tarrs and Tun
(1995).
11 Elections won by Cuauhtmoc Crdenas, where the system falls during the electoral computation as a way to
make the fraud operative in favor of Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
12 Originally, the National Consultation for Peace and Democracy consisted of five questions.
After a proposal by Daniel Cazs and Marcela Lagarde an explicit question is included about the
need for equality in womens participation.