Write a reaction paper about the attached excerpt: "25 Years of Mexican Feminism"
PII: S0277-5395(99)00036-9 Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 431–433, 1999 Copyright © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0277-5395/99 $–see front matter PII S0277-5395(99)00036-9 431 Pergamon TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF MEXICAN FEMINISMS Sylvia Marcos Columbia University, New York, New York, USA Synopsis — Globalization has influenced Mexican feminism—its politics are no longer strictly local or regional; but at local level Mexican feminists continue to work towards demarginalising themselves and occupying a more central position in Mexican politics. This article explores the development of femi- nism in Mexico, its origins in earlier political struggles for freedom, and its development from the 1970s according to local demands for women’s rights. In Mexico, particular ethnic and class divisions in society have impacted upon feminism. The demands of Indigenous women are now being heard by the previ- ously middle-class Mexican feminist movement, and this article depicts how the contradictions between feminism and cultural traditions might be reconciled. The issue of co-ordinating women’s rights with hu- man rights is also discussed, and it is argued here that it can be possible to integrate both according to the demands of specific situations. © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. In Mexico, the women’s movement has emerged as a response to the characteristics of the larger social reality. The life of Mexican women is in- scribed within a history that is the product of two cultures: indigenous and Spanish. Mex- ico’s history has tried to integrate that double ancestry in its intents to construct a modern nation. The Mexican Women’s Movement has had to struggle on the one hand with the oppres- sive Catholic double moral that has impinged on the lives of Mexican women and their rela- tionships to their men: in sexuality, family, work, social, and political contexts. On the other hand, the indigenous ancestry has largely been kept “invisible” within the movement as in the larger social arena. Until the recent Zap- atista uprising (January 1994), these ethnic de- mands were hardly present in Mexican social movements. Racism and ethnic discrimination have shaped a socio-economic background where poverty is often related to the physical and cultural signs of belonging to one of the 56 indigenous groups living on our territory (Bis- sio, 1995, pp. 384–387). In the early 1970s, the emerging Mexican feminism focused its goals on women’s rights, borrowing much from the western feminist movement’s demands (Lugo, 1985, p. 445; Morgan, 1985, p. 443). This movement demys- tified the patriarchal double moral in relation to sexuality, asking for access to abortion rights, and debunking feminine stereotypes by which a woman’s identity was made exclu- sively dependent on having a husband and be- ing a mother. Small consciousness-raising groups allowed new critical demands to be ex- pressed and articulated (Morgan, 1985, p. 443). As a consequence, many women started writ- ing, as well as getting involved in theatre, mov- ies, and political activities (Lugo, 1985, p. 445). Most of the women who committed them- selves to the opposition parties of the left were middle class (Neft & Levine, 1997, p. 354). In 1976, the feminist groups started to work in co-ordination with each other and formed the “Coalición de Mujeres Feministas”. This helped the feminist movement to be more clearly defined as a social force. Three de- mands contributed to unify the perspectives prevailing within the different feminist groups (Lugo, 1985, p. 446; Morgan, 1985, pp. 441– 443; Neft & Levine, 1997, p. 354). These were: 1. Voluntary maternity ( maternidad volun- taria ), including the right to sexual educa- tion, to the use of contraceptives, and to abortion on demand. 2. Struggle against sexual violence. 3. Lesbian (and gay) rights. 432 Sylvia Marcos In accordance with these demands, the first law project on voluntary maternity was elabo- rated and presented in 1976 (Morgan, 1985, p. 441). In 1977, the first assistance centre for women victims of rape and sexual violence was created (Neft & Levine, 1997, p. 362). During these early years, the first feminist publica- tions, like FEM and La Revuelta , started to appear (Morgan, 1985, p. 443). Radio pro- grammes on women’s issues from a feminist perspective were initiated in 1980. The femi- nist movement, which had started and grown mainly in Mexico City, spread out to more states of the Mexican Republic (Lugo, 1985, pp. 445–446). In 1979, the Frente Nacional por la Liberación y los Derechos de las Mujeres (FNALIDM) was founded. For the first time in the history of Mexican feminism, the association pulled to- gether women with very diverse perspectives, not necessarily feminists (Lugo, 1985, p. 445; Neft & Levine, 1997, p. 354). Among them were: members of the “Unión Nacional de Mujeres” (Morgan, 1985, p. 442), linked to the “International Democratic Federation of Women”; activists from the left parties; elite women from the P.R.I. (governing party); members of lesbian groups; mothers of the dis- appeared and of political prisoners ( las ma- dres ); trade unionists and factory workers; or- ganised urban poor; and peasants. The main goal of the FNALIDM was to create a political force whose cohesion depended implicitly on the universality of women’s oppression (it was not until years later that the issue of differ- ences among women was more explicitly elab- orated, which allowed the construction of a new kind of feminism) (Chabram-Dernerse- sian, 1992, p. 88; Lugo, 1985, pp. 445–446). This pluralistic collaboration acquired momentum during the eighties (Neft & Levine, 1997, p. 354). Women of the poor urban sectors, fac- tory workers and trade unionists, peasants, and rural migrants living in shanty towns started to co-ordinate their demands with those of the feminist movement (Lugo, 1985, p. 445; Momsen, 1991, pp. 41, 101). A larger women’s movement began to configure. Difficult negotiations marked those years, as the priorities of women living in precarious conditions did not seem to be coincident with those of middle-class women. However, many of the latter were themselves of leftist affilia- tion (Miller, 1986, p. 336) and gradually some of them could start to share the priorities of the poorer women. In the end, the filtering of the properly feminist demands against “ma- chismo” (patriarchal societal rule which seemed to imply that men had all the rights and women all the duties) started to be a sig- nificant issue also for trade unionists, peasants, and urban poor women, who included these debates into their political agendas (Chabram- Dernersesian, 1992, p. 83; Lugo, 1985, p. 445; Neft & Levine, 1997, p. 354). Since then, the main issue within the Mexi- can feminist movement has been—in a nut- shell—how to co-ordinate the rights of the dis- possessed with specific women’s rights. The Mexican feminist groups can all be placed somewhere in the continuum from giving pri- ority only to the rights of women irrespective of class and ethnic issues, and, on the other hand, of privileging the rights of the disadvan- taged irrespective of the rights of women (Lugo, 1985, pp. 445–446). According to some orientations in contem- porary feminism, neither one nor the other pole should predominate (Chabram-Dernerse- sian, 1992, pp. 84–85; Jaggar, 1994, pp. 25–26; Tong, 1993, p. 232). This is what the “position- ality theory” states (Chabram-Dernersesian, 1992, p. 85). The intersections between gender, class, and ethnic demands are not static. Con- sequently, urges and priorities are themselves in permanent flux. In the 1990, we are witnessing the paradoxi- cal appearance of two contradictory phenom- ena. Much of the thrust of the new social movements drives to a recognition and reap- praisal of one of Mexico’s “forgotten” identi- ties: the indigenous (Bissio, 1995, p. 387). In the streets of Mexico, recently, the voices of hundreds of thousands of urban supporters of the Zapatistas proclaimed “Todos somos in- dios” (we are all Indians). In spite of its accu- racy, it was surprising to hear this motto in a country where racism and ethnic discrimina- tion had permeated all social strata, including the social justice and the feminist movements (Lugo, 1985, p. 444). This impulse towards par- ticularities and ethnic and cultural rights coun- terbalances the internationalisation of the women’s movement. Globalization is influencing the way the women’s movement is evolving: its politics are no longer strictly local or regional. With the se- ries of international United Nations meetings Mexican Feminisms 433 on Population and Development that started in Cairo and followed with the Beijing Women’s Conference in 1995, the Mexican feminist move- ment has been facing the interconnectedness with women’s movements the world over. It has had to internationalise its strategies (Mor- gan, 1985, p. 443; Neft & Levine, 1997, p. 17), and negotiate its priorities (Neft & Levine, 1997, p. 354). Although a significant number of feminists distrust the negotiations with the state and the political power structure, a not negligible num- ber of other feminists are rapidly following this pattern of globalizing strategies, aiming for change in the world order concerning gender (Lugo, 1985, p. 446; Neft & Levine, 1997, p. 17). The participation in the “International Women’s Health Movement” is one instance of these ongoing interactions. The foremost contemporary issue that congregates feminist activism is “Reproductive Health” (Neft & Le- vine, 1997, pp. 359–362). This ranges from the right to bodily integrity; activism against all sorts of violence against women; the right to control if, when, and how many children to have; to the right to have a sensual and satisfying sexual experience even beyond menopause. It is important to stress that the ley de las mujeres (Women’s Law), which is a basic doc- ument of the Zapatista insurrection in south- ern Mexico (Miller, 1986, pp. 302–307; Lugo, 1985, p. 444; Morgan, 1985, pp. 442–443), es- tablishes the right of women to decide if, when, and how many children to have, as well as the right of women to “bodily integrity”. This indigenous Women’s Law considers that violence against women, rape, and even the in- tent of rape must be severely punished. It also establishes the right of women to choose whom they want to marry. These indigenous demands, together with