Women’s Dignity is the Wealth of Yuchitan (Oaxaca, Mexico)

Abstract

Mexico actually is suffering from a severe economic crisis, expressed in a drastic fall in real wages, an extremely high rate of inflation, daily worsening exchange rates for the peso and the following process of general impoverization with the malnutrition of the mass of the population. In Yuchitan, a middle-sized Zapotacan town on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in the south of Mexico, however, these effects of the crisis are not being felt. In this article1 we attempt to explain why people in Yuchitan continue to be as well fed in the same manner to which they are accustomed, holding popular fiestas which are as numerous as before and as well provided with music, beer and food. We maintain that Yuchitan is spared from suffering the general trend of the impoverization of Mexico at large due to the economic crisis because of the unique social position and prestige of women there. Human dignity often seen by society as immaterial has important material consequences affecting the economic. Dignity indeed is not only an ideal but has material manifestations. This knowledge is becoming more acceptable in the social sciences. A growing number of authors argue that the pauperization of large segments of the population particularly in Third World countries is not because of the lack of support in terms of financial assistance or foodstuffs. Nor is it a result of the lack of integration into the world market, as the theory of unequal exchange demonstrates. Neither is it attributable to the lack of identification with western entrepreneurial ideals or the lack of a need to achieve. On the contrary, due to the growing imitation of western patterns of behaviour, of organization, production and consumption enforced on colonial people by mechanisms as described by Fanon in Black Skin, White Mask (1952), many people have lost their self confidence and traditional knowledge which enabled them to live from their own resources and in harmony with their own surrounding nature. Hunger is a consequence of the violent destruction of these people’s ethnic, racial and sexual identity which constitutes dignity.