Women, Agrarian Movements, and Militancy

Abstract

Many of the changes that directly preceded the emergence of Chiapas's contemporary social movements took place in the 1980s. The conditions that gave birth to a broad and heterogeneous women's movement included the development of contacts between campesina and indigenous women, social-movement advisers, and local academics. The process took place within a context of intense and violent transformations. A self-critical analysis of the organizational work carried out with indigenous and campesina women in those years reveals that the political goals of the time obscured the subordinate role of women participants in the agrarian struggle that have since become one of the central issues in women-related and women-led political work.