!Todas somos compañeras! La sororidad como forma de empoderamiento de las maestras oaxaqueñas al interior de la CNTE

Abstract

The union struggle has been, and still is, a key element to understand Mexico’s history. These organizations have taken a systematical fight since the year 1943, which has not met a truce, in order to improve the workers’ conditions. The present research is developed within this context with the objective to identify, from a feminist perspective, the sisterhood relationships that are woven by the militant women from the section XXII of the Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación en Oaxaca, as part of the labor union (CNTE). I turn to the feminist ethnography (Acevedo 2007; Blanco 2012) as a method for writing and transmitting the fighting stories to which I had access through my female partners, as well as my own since I have been part of the labor union. Also, I have participated directly with the teacher’s protest organized by CNTE in the Mexican capital in September, 2013. My methodology is sustained by the one proposed by Teresa del Valle (2017) to access the past from an autobiographic reflection. I build, in this way, a series of stories in which I compile my evocations as historical references to the popular teachers’ movement from the year 2006. Through them, I have identified, following Marcela Lagarde’s (2012) characterization, the ethic, political and practical levels in which the sisterhood relationships are produced as strategies of care, resistance and empowerment among the union activist teachers. The vertebrae of this analysis are composed by the key constructs such as “sorority” (Lagarde, 1997 & 2012), “ethics of care” (Comins, 2007, Lagarde, 2012) and “empowerment” (Azcuy and Palacio, 2008, Magdalena León, 2001). Finally, I suggest that the sisterhood relationships become a way of empowerment for the teacher of the CNTE, since these relationships find the possibility of obtaining power, signaling oppression, reporting abuses and signaling precedent of political participation for future generations.