Stephen Lynn_Womens Land Rights

7/30/2019 Stephen Lynn_Womens Land Rights

1/12

\ ; e s- ,;L- (j... . rOv"i.-Decoding Gender

Law and Practice inContemporary Mexico

EDITED BYHELGA BAITENMANNVICTORIA CHENAUT

ANN VARLEY

FOREWORD BYMAXINE MOLYNEUX

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESSNEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, ANO LONOON


2/12

lIBRARY OF CONGRESSCATALOGING-IN-PUBLlCATfON DATADecoding gender : law and practice in contemporary Mexico / edited by HelgaBaitenrnann,Victoria Chenaut, and Ann Varley.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical reerences and indexoISBN-13: 978-0-8135-4050-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)ISBN-13: 978-0-8135-4051-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)1. Womcn-Legal status, laws, etc.-Mexico. 2. Sex and law-Mexico. 3. Indians 01

Mexico--Legal status. laws, etc.-Mexico. I. Baitenmann, Helga. JI.Chenaut, Victoria.Il!. Varley, AnnKGF462.W62D432007346.7201'34----dC22 2006031255

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record tor this book is availabletrom the British Library.

This collection copyright 2007 byRutgers, The State UniversityIndividual chapters copyright 2007 in the names 01their authors

AH r ghts reservedNo part 01this bookmay be reproduced or uti lized in any lorm or byany means,

elcctronic or mechanical, or byany inlormation storage and retrieval systern, withoutwritten permission Irorn the publisher. PIease contact Rutgers University Press, 100[oyce KilmerAvenue, Piscataway, Nj 08854-8099. The only exception to this

prohibition is "fair use" as defined by U.S.copyright law.Manufactured in the United States 01Amrica

1

2

3

4

CONTENTS

Tables viiForeword ixMAXINEMOLYNEUX

Acknowledgments xvlntroduction. law and Gender in Mexico:Defining the FieldHELGABAITENMANN, VICTORIA CHENAUT,AND ANN VARLEY

PART ONEDiscourses on Law and SexualityLove, Sex.and Gossip in legal Cases fromNamiquipa, Chihuahua

ANA M. ALONSOSins, Abnorrnalites, and Rights: Gender andSexuality in Mexican Penal CodesIVONNE SZASZ

The Realm outside the law: Transvestite SexWork in Xalapa, Yeracruznoso CRDOVA PLAZA

PART TWOGender at the Intersection of Lawand CustomWornen's land Rightsand Indigenous Autonomy inChiapas: Interlegality and the Gendered Dynamics ofNational and Alternative Popular legal SystemsLYNN STEPHEN

v

1

43

59

75

93


3/12

4

Women's Land Rights and IndigenousAutonomy in Chiapas

Interlegality and the Gendered Dynamics of Nationaland Alternative Popular Legal Systems

LYNN STEPHEN

The indigenous peoples ofMexico are currently living in a fluid legal and politi-cal periodo Increasng numbers of indigenous communities are revitalizing andredefining their local legal systems,' while living under shifting federal and statelegal systems that for the most part are moving toward more strictly definingindigenous rghts and focusing on the grantng of universal, individual rightsrather than collective rights, Atthe federallevel, the most importantlegal reformfor indigenous peoples has been the 1992 agrarian legslation," which has encour-aged, bu t not required, the privatization of ejidas and agrarian ccmmunites.:' Inaddition, in 200I the Mexican congress and the legislatures of seventeen statesapproved a series of constitutional amendments known as the Indigenous Law(LeyIndgena), which severely limit the recognition ofcollective rights to land andnatural resources, and the right ofindigenous communities to regional affiliation.!

Nevertheless, in Chiapas, thirty Municipios Autnomos Rebeldes Zapatistas(ZapatistaAutonomous Municipalities in Rebellion) have existed since the mid-1990S, and elsewherein Mexicoother indigenouscommunities and organizationsare experimenting with ways to carry out the spirit of the 1996 San AndrsAccords on Indigenous Rights and Cultures These communities are declaringcontrol over territories, implementing their own justice systems, and atternptingto rebuild cultural, educational, and health institutions. Even communities thathave not declared themselves autonomous are experimenting locallyand region-allywith waysto increase their autonomy over their justice systems (see Sierra,this volume).

Eachof these arenasof justice-federal, state, and local indigenous-is gen-dered in its structure and interpretation. During the 1990S, many women andsorne men were deeply involved in questioning the gender inequalities reflectedin federal, state, and local Iaw in relation to indigenous peoples. Women were

93


4/12

94 LYNN STEPHEN WMEN'S LAND RIGHTS IN CHIAPAS 9Sinvolved in thc process of formulating the San Andrs Accords, in attemptng tooperationalize autonomous municipalities in Chiapas, and in the revitalizationand interpretation of local ndgenous rghts, The women's questoning of thereforms to the federal and statc constitutions, as welI as debates about whatlocal indigenous rights should be alIowed to continue, has covered a wide rangeof issues including domestic violence, forced marriage, equal particpaton inpolitical arenas, housing, education, jobs, medical care, and land rights.

Although these areas are importantand have been documented byan everincreasing crop of feminist anthropologists and others, here 1shal l focus onwomen's landrights, 1have chosen women's land rights to highlight the complexand often contradictorylegal landscape that has emerged for indigenouswomenas they become increasinglyactive in defining the legal systems underwhichtheylive. Their participation has become so important that sorne Mexican researchers(Hernndcz Castillo 2001; Sierra 2003) are now wri ting about what they call"indigenous feminism"-a form of feminism that attempts to pratect ethnicrights and women's rights all at once, often by building alternative popular legalsysterns.Eventhough many peoplc have counterposed ethnic or indigenous rightsas collective and women's rights as individual, indigenouswomen activists do notsee this dichotomy and emphasize that bothethnicand gender rghts potentiallybunch together collective and individual rights.Sorne indgenous women have used the discourse of collective indigenous

women's rights as a way to beginto counter losses, stated in terms ofindividualrights, that they have either already experienced or are likely to expericncethrough the 1992 agrarian legislation. They feel that they are best able to defendtheir "individual" rghts as women through being part ofan ethnically or locallybased collective; through this membership they seek equal rghts to men in areassuch as political lcadcrship and decision making and access to land. They havehad more influence on local indigenous rights than on nationallaw, which canoften undermine their collective rights in a way that leaves them with no materialor political base. Sorne indigenous women have pursued strategies that revolvearound stakingclaims to local indigenous rights that are no t harmful to women,or strategies that involve alternative popular legal systems in the practice ofindigenous rghts. Through a case study from two indigenous communities inChiapas that are atternpting to consolidate local forms of justice and law thatvary significantlyfrom national law, 1show how, in their strugglesto be includedin land rights, indigenous women are an important part ofmakingMexico's justicesystcm more inclusivewith regard to ethnicity and gender.

IsMexico a Multcultural Nation? The San Andrs Accords and the2001 National Legislation on Indigenous Rights

The Zapatista rebellion of 1994 initiated a nationwideprocess ofreassessing therelationship between the Mexican state and indigenous peoples. There were

two rounds of peace talks that ended optimistically in February 1996 with thesgning of the SanAndrs Accords by the Mexican government and the zapatstaNatonal Liberation Army (Ejrcito Zapatista de Liberacin Nacional, EZLN).The San Andrs Accords recognze the rights ofindigenouspeoples: "to developtheir specific forms ofsocial, cultural, political and economic organizaton": "toobtain the recognton of their internal normative systems for regulation andsanction, insofaras they are not contraryto constitutional guarantees andhumanrights, especially those of women"; "to freely desgnate their representatives,within the community aswel l asin their municipal government bodies,as wellas the leaders of their pueblos indgenas, in accordance with th e institutionsand traditionsof each pueblo"; and "to promote and develop theirlanguages andcultures, as well as their political, social, economic, religious, and cultural customs and traditions" (San Andrs Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture1999, 35) The Accords further specify that the Mexican Constitution should"guarantee the organizat ion of their own elect ions or leadership selectionprocesses within communities or pueblos indgenas," "recognize the procedures of cargo systems and other forms of organization,methods of designationof representatives, and decision making by assembly and through popularconsultation," and "establsh that municipal agents or other [local municipal]leaders be elected, or, when appropriate, named by the respective pueblos andcommunities" (ibid.).

The euphoria following the signing of the San Andrs Accords was shortlived, whcn it became evident that President Ernesto Zedillo's administrationhad no intention of implementing them. Not until 2001 did the Mexican Congress approve the so-calIed ndigenous Law,a greatly watered-down verson ofthe original San Andrs Accords, which lef t most of the specifics as to howindigenous autonomy might be realized to individual state legislatures.

With regard to worneri 's land rights, the ndigenous Lawmirrors the 1992agraran legtslation, which greatly limits women's rights. Where, underthe 1971Agrarian Law,ejido land rights were considered a family patrimony and wivesand consensual partners were fi rs t in line to receive land use r ights if maleejidatarios died, in the 1992 Agrarian Lawdecisions regarding individual parcelization and privatization of plots are made by the ejido assembly, not by families.Spouses and unmarried partners have no voice orvote in that process, as maleejidatarios may petition ejido assemblies to permit them to privatize and selltheir plotsor engagein jointventures with their land. If a male ejidatario shoulddecideto sell his parcel, his wife, unmarried partner, or children, have the rightof first refusal-but onlywithinthirtydays ofwhen the land isput upforsale. Andmost rural women do not have sufficient income to purchase Iand, should it bepu t up for sale by their husbands or partners (Stephen 1993).

Another change in agrarian legslation affectingwomen is that ejido rghtsneed no longerstay within the family. Ejidatarios can bequeaththe land to anyonethey wish, andthe heir has no obligationto support the ejidatario's dependents


5/12

96 LYNN STEPHEN WOMEN 'S LAND RIGHTS IN CHIAPAS 97(Deere and Len 2001, 152; Bai tenmann, thi s volume). As summarized byCarmen Diana Deere and Magdalena Len (zoot,155): "With the end ofland distribution bythe state, and disntegration of family patrimony on the Mexicanejidos, women's access to land willlargelydepend on inheritance practices andon their abili ty to part icipatein the landmarket as buyers."

Insorne communities in Chiapas, where most nonprivatelandholdings arein the form ofejidos, women's bestchanceofobtainingaccess to landis throughemerging popular legal systems. Here, indigenous autonomy is being implemented outside state law,in the forro 01local ndgenous and revolutionary law(such as the 1995 and 1996 Deelarations of Autonomous Municipalities inRebellion and the 2003 creat ion of Juntas of Good Government providinga regional structure of government and justice for the autonomous rnunicpalt ies). The creation 01rghts at the margin is also gendered. By combining individual and collective rights and reconfigurng local governance structures,communities in Chiapas are providing new gendered models for how to createflexibility in local indigenous rights and governance structuresthat can giveindigenous women more broadly defined land rights than those afforded themin current nationallegislation.

Indigenous Rights, Revolutionary Laws, and Gender IustceFrom 1994 to the present, indigenous women have appealedto have theirdemandsineluded in legal processes relating to indigenous rights. Women began byparticipating in sessions focused on indigenous wornen'srights aspart of the riegotiation of the San Andrs Accords. Theywere involved in a range ofworkshopsand congresses, and by the mid-rqqos had begun to create the ir own spaceswithin the two most important national indigenous rights organizations,theNational Assemblyfor Autonomy (ANIPA) and the National Indigenous Congress(CNI). By 1997, women had created their own national network, the NationalIndigenousWomen's Coordinating Council (CNMI) (Blackwell zoo). The creationofa national indigenous womeri's network, the ongoingparticipation 01womenin the two major national networks for indigenous rights, and the women's participation in international congresses have signficantly elevated the voices andconcerns 01indigenous women in regional, national, and international politicalspaces.

In these varied politicalspaces, indigenous women have demanded citizenship rights in a variety ofarenas-family, community, organization, and nation.Theyhave attempted to intgrate concerns 01ethnicity and genderwith natonalism and have pressed or a broader understanding of self-deterrnination andautonomy. Although not without sorne degree of conflict (see Stephen zoor),indigenous women have by and large been successful in maintaining unity intheir national and regional struggles (Blackwell 2006; Sierra 2002). These

struggles inelude economic autonomy (access to and control overthe means ofproduction, ineluding land), political autonomy (basic political rights), physicalautonomy (the rght to malee decisions concerning their own bodies and theright to a lile without violence),and sociocultural autonomy (the right to asserttheir identities as indigenous women) (Hernndez Castillo1997, 112).

Por exarnple, at the founding congress 01the CNMI in Oaxaca, over sevenhundred women representatives participated alongside a grassroots committeeof women from the EZLN. They demanded the fulfi llment of the San AndrsAccords, the demilitarization 01indigenous zones 01Mexico, multilingual andmulticultural education prograrns, education for women, women's right to manage projects and resourcesaimed at them, reforrn ofArtiele 4 01the Constitutionto ineludeequality between men and women and the recognition ofa multiethnicsociety, parity for women in all representational bodies, and "aneed to change[A)rtiele 27 of the Constitution so that i t enables women to have the r ight toinheri t land through direct relat ionship and through the respect we have forMother Earth and natural resources" (Gutirrez and Palomo2000,70).

Indocuments produced bywomen in the CNI and ANIPA, as wel las in theCNMI, the physical and psycnologcal integrity 01women's bodies and reproductive decision rnaking were linked to the right to land, property, and participationin political decision making. Women in these organizational spaces demandedrights to land, bu t it becameevident that indigenous land rights in general andthose ofindigenouswomen in particularwouldnot beincorporatedinto nationallevel discussions ofrevolutionary laws.Indeed, the SanAndrs Accords,the initialproposal for legislating the accords, and the 2001 Indigenous Law completelyfailed to address land rights in general , and women's land rights in part icular,accepting instead the terms ofthe 1992 agrarian legislation.

The followingexample illustrates this point. In October1996, the EZLN andthe Comisin de Concordia y Pacificacin, or COCOPA (the National Comrnission of Concord and Pacification), composed 01representatives from Mexico'sthree leading political parties, announced that a joint commiss ion had beenforrned to monitorthe implementation 01the SanAndrs Accords. TheCOCOPAdeveloped a legislatve proposal endorsed by theEZLN, in which women's rightswere stated as ollows: "[Indigenous peoples] have the right .. . to apply theirown normative sys tems in the regulat ion and solut ion 01interna l confl ict ,respecting individual rights, human r ight s, and the digni ty and integri ty 01wornen." The proposal recognzes the right ofindigenouspeoples "to elect theirauthorities and exercise theirown forms 01internal government in accordancewith their norms .. . guaranteeing the equal participationofwomen" (Lajamada.[anuary 13, 1997). The draft thus subtly addresses the political participation ofwomenwhere "traditionally" it hasbeen overlooked, and also discourages nternal forms ofconflict resolution that donot respect women's rights. Land rigbts,however, are not addressed.


6/12

98 LYNN STEPHEN WOMEN'S LAND RIGIITS IN CHIAPAS 99

Analyzing the question ofland nghts in national-level discussions of indigenous women from 1994to the present, one must conclude that the most promisingpol it ical arena for this struggle is within the women's indigenous autonomymovernent, and especially at the locallevel, wherealternative popular legal systems and governance structures are challengng state law. One such place is ineastern Chiapas.

Women's Land Rights in LaRealidad and Guadalupe Tepeyac:Zapatista Popular Lawand Indigenous Autonomy

[ust how much indigenouswomen understand about the 1992agrarian legislationor the 2001 Indigenous Law and how these affect their rights to land variesgreatly from one place to another. Arelated question ishow much nationallawsactually matter at the locallevel, because local practicesallow other avenues forwomen's access to land and/orbecause the local governance system has declareditself autonomous and set up its own rules for access to land, as in the Zapatistaautonomous regons. There, women's engagementwith land and resource rightsis deeply informed bylocal and regional context. Women's relationship to landrights is mediated through local ethnic relationships and through belonging to acollectivity that serves as a basis for grant ing them rights that increasingly aredeclared equal to those of men. Local understandings of land rights are givenmeaning in daily life through the struggles to claim and maintain control ofejido land in the face of military occupation bythe Mexican army and throughalternative local legal systems, which in many cases have now coexisted for adecade with state law-a case of sustained interlegality.

The majority ofland held in nonprivate status in Chiapas isin ejidos. In1990,1,405,025people, or 43.7percent ofthe state's total population, lived on approximately two thousand ejidos (Stephen 2002, 63; INEGI 1995,3). Ejido formationhas been an importantand contentious process in the agrarian history ofChiapas,and i t cont inues to be so today, as Zapat is ta ej idos challenge national law byasserting theirown local indigenous laws and systerns ofgovernance.

The Tojolab'al communities of Guadalupe Tepeyac and La Realidad wereformally constituted as ejidos in 1956and 1966.Ejidomembers had migrated tothe arca a decade or more ear li er . Most of the ejido founders had worked assharecroppers for ranchers who lived at the outer edges of the Lacandon iungle.Inhopes ofa new beginning, they moved to nationallandswith the expectationofbeing able to make an independent living rasngcattle, corn, beans, and cofee . Although women were arnong the pioneers who eleared the land, bui lthouscs, and worked harvesting coffee, very few were formally given ejidatariastatus (Stephen 2002, no-m; Rovira1997,SS). Women were seldom present atejido ussemblies, even though they worked the land alongsde men during thecoffee harvests and were in charge ofsmall-scale commercialization.

Althougha majorityof those with formal ejido rights in these two cornmunities were men from the t ime the ejidos were formed until the mid-1990S,women historically developeda sense ofthe landas belongingto their familiesand seem to have identifiedelosely with the struggle to obtain land, keep it, andimprove it.

Porwomen like ComandantaTrinidad from the Zapatistaejido ofGuadalupeTepeyac,one's parents' transformationfrom peons who worked as sharecroppersto independent ejidatarios was of rnajor significance. She remarkedof the orgnsof her ejido: "We don't have a patrn now. Welooked for a better life withouta patrn and we found our land, Wecontinued to be poor, but we had our products. When wewould brng ou t products to LasMargaritas, they bought them ata very bad price. They told us, 'Your coffee is no good. ' And because we werereal ly poor , we sold i t to them cheaply. . . . I decided to become a Zapat is ta sothat our communities can improve" (Ziga and Bellinghausen 1997,340-341;Stephen 2002, 103),

The statement by Comandanta Trinidad, and those of other EZLN womenIhave interviewed, suggest that these women see landas an integral part oftheirstruggle for community improvement. Many women from these two communities were, in the early 1990S,EZLN insurgentes (trained soldiers living away fromtheir communities in training camps), milicianos (mobile reservists who live intheir communities, receive training, and participate in armed actions), or basesdeapoyo(civilians who support Zapatismo, carry out Zapatista social programs inmedicine, health, and agriculture, and provide material support for the EZLN).The Zapatista struggle for land ineludes keeping control of ejidos, expandingavailable land, and maintaining political control of ejido governance.

In Guadalupe Tepeyac and LaRealidad, the traditional structure of governance has been the ejido, in conjunction with ten to fifteen years of participation in regional peasant organizations such as the Independent Federation ofAgricultural Workers and Peasants (CIOAC), Ejido Union of the jungle (UninEjidal de la Selva), and the collective associationARIC-UU(Asociacin Rural deInters Colectivo-Unin de Uniones)." By the t ime agrar ian legislat ion wasreformed in 1992, the EZLN was firrnly entrenched in Guadalupe Tepeyac and LaRealidad, and many ofits supporters were women. Through the cover ofa regionalorganization called the Independent NationalPeasant Alliance "Emiliano Zapata"(ANClEZ), the EZLN held a rally in Ocosingo aganstthe 1992reforms to Artiele 27and agrarian legislation. Four months later, the EZLN held another rally (seeStephen 2002, 237-238). During this time and afterward, ejidatarios in bothcommunities discussed how to counter the 1992agrarian reforms, as they discussed the formulation of new revolutionary laws for Zapatista communities.Men, women, and children attended the rallies and were also involved incommunity-wide discussions about the formulation ofthe new laws that carne toform an alternative grassroots legal system. This alternative popular legal system


7/12

100 LYNN STEPHEN WOMEN 'S LAND R IGHTS IN CHIAPAS 101

had a much wider level of local participation in its formulation than had the1992 agrarian reforms or the 2001 Indigenous Law.

As the governance structure of these communities changed to accommodate the secret presence of the EZL'\!, the local political culture began to changeas well. In sorne communities, women were encouraged to speak up at secretmeetngs, to meet on their own, and to undertake important leadership roles.By the time the EZLN went public in 1994, the local political structure in LaRealidad and Guadalupe Tepeyac had already been transformed with regard to gender and age roles. AII men, women, and children were strongly encouraged toattendcommunitymeetings, and these were no t over until everyonewho wantedto had spoken. Women organized around specific tasks, ncludng health, education, community defense, and food procurement.

After communities in Chiapas carne under attack from the Mexican Army(and, in the case ofGuadalupe Tepeyac, relocated for almost eight years, from1995 to 2001), local gender roles for women carne to inelude front-line confrontatons with soldiers, communicating with reporters and oregners aboutthe urgent needs of the community, and traveling to San Andrs Larranzar,San Cristbal de las Casas, and elsewhere to support and protect EZLN delegatons during peace talks, forums, and other events. They considered all theseactivities part and parcel of the efforts to protect ej do lands from mil itaryincursions. This context is key to understanding the perspective of womenin Guadalupe Tepeyac and La Realidad on land rights and changes in localgovernance.

From the late 1980s until 1994,two parallel governng structures existed in.thesc ejidos. The traditional ejido governance system coexisted with the clandestine structure of the EZLN. In one, women had little presence at assemblymeetings. In the other, women were actively encouraged to take on leadership(see Stephen 2002, 135,179-210).

At a broader level, those committed to the Zapatista strugglewere engagingin a process o creating their own laws and their own system of land use, whichin sornecaseschallenged the established ejido structure. In late December 1993,the EZLN published a number of "revolutionary laws" in its underground newspaper El Despertador Mexicano, including the Revolutionary Agrarian Law andthe Women's Revolutionary Law.Although the Women's Revolutionary Lawhasbeen widely analyzedwith regard to its gendered implications, the RevolutionaryAgrarian Law has received much less attention.

Revolutionary Agraran LawIn order to establish a generallaw for land redistribution, the EZLN issued theRevolutionary Agrarian Law. Several characteristics make thi s law differenttrom the 1992agrarian reforms with regard to gender.

First, th e law specifically rnentions the r ights of women, whi le the state'sagrarian laws are only implicit ly gender neutral-and, in practice, profounellydiscrirninatory:

First . This law isvalid over the entire territory of Mexico, and isfor thebenefit of all poor peasants and farm workers in Mexico, regardless oftheir political affiliation, relgous creed,sex, race, or color. .. .

Sixth. PRIMARY RIGHT of application [forexpropriated land] belongs tothe coIlectives of poor landless peasants anelfarm workers, men, women,anel chilelren, who eluly verify no t having land or [havingj land of badquality. . . . (Womack1999,253)Second, women have the same obligations as men in terms of working the

land. Land must be worked collectively and used to produce necessary foods,and may no t be individually monopolized.

Fifth. The lands affected bythis agrarianlawwillbe redistributed to landless peasants and farmworkers who apply for it as COLLECTIVE PROPERTY Iorthe formation of cooperatives, peasant societies, or farms and rancningproduction collectives. The land affected must be worked collectively. . . .

Eighth. Groups benefited by this Agrarian Lawmust dedcate themselves preferentially to the collective production of foods necessary forthe Mexican people: corn, beans, rice, vegetables, and ruit , as well C1Sanimal husbandry for cattle, pigs, and horses and bec-kceping, and [tothe production] ofderivative products (milk, meat, eggs, etc.) . . . .

Twelfth. Individual monopolization of lane! and means of proe!uctionwill not be permitted. (ibid., 253-254)In practice, land expropriated by the EZLN has been available to women.

Following the Zapatista rebellion, land invasions between ]anuary 1994 and thesummer of 1996 resulted in the seizureof up to fifty thousand hectares (Stephen1998, 19). In addition, a lanel t rus t run by the Ministry of Agrarian Reform inChiapas negotated two hundred and forty thousand hectares of land for fiftyeight thousand beneficiaries in a prograrn allowing them to purchase the land(ibid.).

Mydscussions with men and women about land use rights, forms of product ion, and gender roles in Guadalupe Tepeyac (in 1994) and La Realidad(in 1995, 1996, and 1997),suggest a hybrid legal system melding the older ejidostructure and the new rcvolutionary agrarian law that argues for colIective production and women's access to land rights. This legal system can be viewed asboth a revis ion to customary law and an ernerging popular legal system thatrelates to nationallaw (through ejidos). The Zapatista legal system reinterpretsnational and locallaw through a process that we rnight cal! an everye!ay form ofstate-buildlng "from the fringes of the territorial state, by subaltern grnuJls who


8/12

102 LYNN STEPHEN WOMEN 'S LAND RIGHTS IN CHIAPAS 103

had formerly been excluded from participation in the na tiona l community"(Nugent1997,308). Unlike the situation in the Chachapoyas region ofPeru in the1920Sand 1930S described by David Nugent (1997)-where modern nationhoodequated with individual rights and prvate property, and economic developmentwas conside red a form of liberation-in La Realidad and Guadalupe Tepeyac,Zapatista laws insist on collective production and possession asa way ofliberatingthe community from the model of individual property rights and productionimposed by the 1992reform to Article 27(see Stephen 2002,62-80). Ejidatariosin t he se two communities see rnodern nationhood, as delivered through theneoliberal economic model of the 1980s and 1990s, as having further margnalized thern, Their strategy for being taken seriously and rentegrated comesthrough alternative legal systems and state-building at the margina IncorporatIng women into alternative legal and political structures that militate againsta neoliberal model has been an important and contentious part of the Zapatistaexperience,

In 1994, Major Eliseo discussedwith me the difficulties of getting both menand wornen to convert to collective production. He also emphasized securityconcerns.LYNN STEPHEN: How is it, trying to convince people to change from an individ

ual way offarming to a collectivemodel?MAJOR ELlSEO: lt isreally hard. Think aboutwhat happens. They al!have a lot of

individualismo They say, what is m ine, is m ine, 1 can't give i t to someoneeIse. It is really hard to challengethis idea. Wehave to challenge our peoplethis way,even people in our own army, giving them the idea, showing themwhat can happen with time. Part ofthe communities we have organized thisway because of the war. Because when i t i s time to go to war we can't haveene person here, and another persan there and another person there.Because that way they [the enemy] can enter very easily. Wehave people allworking in one place together so that there is better security. Anywomancan arrive towork and know that therewillbe peoplearound. Soweare carrying this idea ou t little by little. . . . In one ejido sometimes therc would betwenty peoplewho would workcollectively andthe majority would be working individually. When they [the individual farrners] saw that it worked [thecollective] then another ten would join. And that is how the town was won.

LYNN STEPHEN: In the collective work that you are doing, are the women participating in agriculture? In planting?

MAJOR ELlSEO: Wornen also participate. They have thei r own collective work,Ofcourse they are no t working in the corn fields, bu t do other work. Theydo vegetable farrning collectively, bakerics, collectively. There are doingsmall thngs, bu t they are learning. , . .

LYN N STEPHEN: And is this as difficult to implernent as it is to get the men towork col!ectively?

MAJOR ELlSEO: Yes, because the women have whatwe said-individualism. Whattheyhave they don'twant to giveto everyone else. But lttle bylittle thisideais changng. And finally people are convinced, the whole town is convinced,That 's how it is. Little bylit tle, but this takes time. It isn't goingto happenovernight. . . . You have to keep t ryng varous t imes in order to succeed.That 'show it is. That is the way that we are fighting for the land.My conversationwith Major Eliseo suggested that the EZLN was atternpting

to irnplement certain parts of their Revolutionary Agrarian Law, particularlywith respect to encouraging collective forms of production. What th e conversation also reveals, however, is that collectivzation was not just an economicstrategy; it would keep people together in one place and provide safetyin numbers. In addition, structuring ejido agriculture collectively served as an organizing strategyfor the EZLN.

One other aspect of the conversation isworth noting. Although bothwornenand men are organized collectively to the extent possible, according to MajarEliseo, there are differences in the type of eolleetive work men and wornen do.According to him, women did not work in the cornfie lds, bu t did vegetablefarming and worked in bakeries and other small scale projects. I do no t know ifEli seo was referring to al ! a reas or only one specific place; he did not tell mespecifieallywhere he was from. Later conversatonswith men and women fromLaRealidad suggest that women did go ou t to the fields andthat sorne were alsoworking plantingcorn and harvesting coffee. Gender roles can vary quite signifieantly from one Zapatista base community to another, or evenwithinone community, particularly in relation to age, Perhaps because Guadalupe Tepeyac andLaRealidad were early strongholds where men and women were socialized overa l ong period of time to Zapatista laws and thinking, they show more flexibilitythan elscwhere.?Aceording to interviews I conducted in 1995-1997,wornen in LaRealidad were involved in collective production projects focused on corn, vegetables, and animal production. Women worked together on a plot of land toproduce food (this process of organizaton had in faet started before the 1994rebellion). At the same time, ejidatarios and their families attempted to continueworking their ejido lands asfamily units,bu t found it increasinglydifficult, gventhe low-intensitywar. Thus, changes in local understandings of land rights thatmight have allowed women to extend their use ofland and perhaps be allocatedmore land were in part lirnited because o security eoneerns.

In the summer al 1996, women in LaRealidad deseribed to me their experiences al working together in collective agrcultural projects. They described walkng together to and lrom their field as a sourceof pleasure, bu t also otension: theystayed together ou t offear. After describing the collective projeets,


9/12

104 LYNN STEPHENWMEN'S LAND RIGHTS IN CHIAPAS 105

women also explained their attempts to continue growng coffee on their family'sejido plots. After the army's invasion in February 1995, the ejido land that hadserved asa refuge was difficultto access. Mara (a pseudonym) said the following:

When the armycarne to take this community itwas the ninth of February1995,and we fied, we ran away. . . . Wefied, we ran to our ejido land. Wewent to one s ide and set tled there. Then the arrny carne afterus andscreamedat us that weshould return to our community, that they wouldn'tdo anything. Theysaid they carne lar peace. Theysaid they hadn't come tobother people. . . .

.. . We didn't come back. But the next day we carne back and westarted to yell at them.We ran t hem out with all 01 the women. A group of women stood

and wescreamed at the army to leave, that they get ou t 01here. The armydoesn't belong here in our community. We are the owners he re. Weare in charge ofthe communi ty . The army belongs in the city, in theirbarracks. . . .

.. . We can't do our work. For example, we have coffee fields that areoff this road. But we can't even walk there, because the Mexican army isgoing back and forth, watchingus tosee what weare doingto make surewe dori't do anything. They say they won't do anything to us, but thenthey will come and they will betray usoMara's narrative gives us sorne insight into how she thinks about ejido land.

She describes it as "our land," asserts "Weare the owners here" and describes themajor role that women played in removing the army trom the community's lands.Her sense of collective ownership and use othe land isapparent. Atthe time, hereveryday experience involved bothworking collectivelywith other women to produce corn and vegetables as well as attempts to check on the coffee fields her family holds through her husband's rghts in the ejido. Although the land is formallyregstered in her husband 's name as an e ji da ta ri o in the eyes of the Mex ic angovernment, in Mara's eyes the coffee fields belong to her as much asto him.

Conversations with rnen during this same trip revealed that most formallydesignated ejidatarios were men, and that land was still officially titled to menoSorne men interviewed continued to s tate tha t , in the ejido o La Realidad,women ganed rights to ejido land aswidows if their husbands had been ejidatarios or as single mothers. While all men over the age 01eighteen, whether singleor married, could have access to ejido land, married women and single womenwithout childrenover the age ofeighteen could not, according to theseejidatarios.Women and sorne younger men, however, debated this interpretation. Theyemphasized wornen and men workng together in collective agrculture, no tindividual ejido rghts for meno

Because th e EZLN has no t dealt directly with governrnent officials at theejido level since 1994, there has been no process that would have allowed thecommunity to officially change the designation o who has e ji do r ight s. And itseems that there are still differences of interpretation within th e community bygeneration and gender. For people who carne of age in the Zapatista organizational and rebellion process between 1988 and the present, legal reality is morelikely to be nforrned by Zapatista revolutionary law and legal practices then byMexican nationallaw. The communities o Guadalupe Tepeyac and La Realidadhave been governed by Zapatista principies since th e late 1980s, and probablylonger. At thirty-five years of age in 1996, Mara had spent almost a dccade ofher life being socialized in the revolutionary ideology, laws, and political structures of the EZLN. For her, legal and political reality has most likely been definedby that experience.

Her community deelared itseif part o the autonomous municipalityof SanPedro Michoacn in 1996. The consolidation of EZLN autonomous municipalit i es from 1996 to the present has involved: the demarcation of terri tory; theestablishment and acceptance o a new normative framework; a series o rebellious actions that refuse to recognize governmental bodies; elections for andinstallation of parallel authorities and governments; and th e creation o locallevel governing structures in charge o polcng, tax collection, andthe civil registry (Burguete Cal y Mayor 2000). The consolidation of Zapatista autonomousmunicipalities and other units comes directly from the government's refusal toimplement the 1996 San Andrs Accords that i t s igned. In communities likeGuadalupe Tepeyac and La Realidad, this situation has triggered an cngoingprocess of establishing autonomous and parallel government institutions andprocesses that seek to implement the San Andrs Accords locally.

In August 2003, the Zapatistas announced the creation of f ive caracoles(literally "shells" bu t meaning "houses") as seats for fiveJuntas o Good Governmento LaRealidad is the site o onesuch junta. Each o the five juntas includeson e or two delegates from each of the already existing autonomous councils ineach zone. Currently there are thirty Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities inRebellion feeding i nt o t he f ive juntas. The funct ions of the juntas inelude,among other things: monitoring projects and community works in ZapatistaAutonomous Municipalities in Rebellion; monitoring th e implementation oflaws that, having been accepted by the communities,function within th e jurisdiction of the ZapatistaAutonomous Municipalities in Rebellion; caring for theZapatista territory that they manage (Servicio Internacional para la Paz 2003).At the celebration far the new juntas in 2003, Tojolab'al Comandanta Estherwho addressed the Mexican Congress in 2001 urging i t to implement the SanAndrs Accords--eaptured the sentiment of other women and men who haddecided to implement their own systems o government and justice, including


10/12

106 LYNN STEPHEN WOMEN'S LAND RIGHTS IN CHIAPAS 107

the Revolut iona ry Agrarian Law. Address ing Mexico's indigenous peoples ,Esther argued that

now,we have to exercise our rights ourselves, Wedon't need to ask permission from anyonc, especially politicians.. '. We cal! on you all toapply the San Andrs Accords. It's t ime to act and to apply indgenouspeoples' autonomy al! over the country. Wedon'tneed toask for perrnssion to form our autonomous municipalities. just l ike we are doing andpracticing-we don't ask for approval. (Comandanta Esther2003)In communities, such as LaRealidad and Guadalupe Tepeyac, that have a

tradition ofejidoforms of government as wel la s a newer tradition as part of anAutonomous Municipality in Rebellion, gender roles and women's perceptionsof their land rghts are in f lux. I found l it tl e evidence to suggest that women'sexperience and strategies are focused on obtaining individual use rights to ejidoparcels, Because many, like Mara, have committed to creating an alternativesystem of agricultural production and use rights based on collective ownershipand access, their emphasis is l ikely to continue to be on supporting a broaderstruggle for community land rights, and for their rights ofaccess aswornenwithinthat struggle. The primary vehicle they have identified for achieving their goalsi s the implernentation of the San Andrs Accords at the nationai Ievel by theMexican governrnent, In the meantime, their strategy isto live ou t the accordsin their local communities. By adopting this strategy, wornen are fusing the colJective struggle for ethnic rights (i.e., indigenous rights) to land and politicalcontrol, wth efforts to create individual rights for wornen that grant themequality with meno

Indigenous Women's Land Rights: Where To?Indgenous women in Mexico are increasingly rnakng themselves heard at local,regional, and nationallevels. In the 19905, the combination of the new agrarianlegislation and nonimplementation of the San Andrs Accords legal!y undermined wornen's rights to land and natural resources. At the same time, growingnational movernents for indigenous rights, the ernergence of a national indigenous womeri's network, and local experimentation in ntegrating women intolocal Iorrns of governance, communalland access, and systerns of justice suchas those highlighted aboye have created an optimistic juncture for expandingindigenous worneri's access to land. Indigenous rights organiz ing is l ikely toprovide the most fruitful avenue for indigenous women to increase their accesslo land, rather than relying on changes in nationallegislation that might allowthern to becomeprivate land owners. The fact thatMexico recognized multiculturalisrn at the sarne time that it implemented a neoliberal economic regimelimited the material base for the reproduction of indigenous culture and surely

limits possibilities for indigenous women as well (see Mattiace 2003b, 153-154);thus, although 1 do not doubt the importance of legislating the San AndrsAccords and retormng agraran legislationto extendwomen's land rights in relation to ejido land,1believe thatthe kindsof experiences1describein LaRealidadare crucial to expandingwomen's access to land and natural resources.

The other lesson frorn the recent experience of the Zapatista autonomousmunicipalities in Chiapas is the importance offorging the exercise and practice ofindigenous rghts outside state control while at the sametime continulng effortsto change the Constitution, the laws, and their regulation. The exercise of rghtsoutsidethe control of the state is crucial to the everyday experience of thosewhoseek them, such as the women discussed here. Situations of interlegality--of thecoexistence ofmultiple systems of law-are quite commonthroughouthistory andcan become important arenas of social change,

In many cases, constitutions and laws at federal and state levels are changedin response to a soc ia l movement in whch persons are already defying the lawand living their lives as if they already had the rghts theyseek (see Speed 2006for another Chiapas example, and Sierra, this volume). Socialmovements demonstratethelrnportance of persistence and practice through time in making lawsmatch reality, Both legal and social movement strateges involving the exerciseof rights are important. Perhaps th e Mexican state 's resistance to legislatngindigenous autonorny has ultimately helped to legitimize the practice of alternativepopular legal systems.

The other reason to be optimistic in Mexico is the existence of a nationalindigenous women's network that isdedicated to getting wornen's rights enforcedin the process ofgrantng indigenous autonomy. This networkprovidesa nationalsounding board for a wide range of local experiences and provides indigenouswomen leaders from different parts ofMexico with a chance to share and learnfrom one another 's experiences while also working together to advance theircauseat a national and internationallevel. Through this network, pushing for collective ethnic rights andworkingto ensurewomen'sequalrights withinethnicallyor localiy based collectivities is a strategy being experimented with throughoutMexico (see Speed, Hernndez Castillo, and Stephen 2006; Hernndez Castillo2002C). Land and natural re source use rights are fundamental for Mexico'sindigenous wornen, and the stakng of c la ims in these a reas bywomen in theindigenous rights movement can provide an opening for a ll rural women toreclaim rights they lost in the 1990s, and perhaps even to expand them.

NOTESI. Local indigenouslegalsystems are sometimesterrned usos y costumbres, or "new" usos

y cosDumbres asin the ZapatistaRevolutionaryAgrarian Law.2. The 1992 agrarianlegislationincludes:the reforrntoArticle 2701the Mexican Consti-tution; the Agrarian Law and its (1993) regulations: the Forestry Law, the Law 01


11/12

National Waters; and laws establishing or revamping the Office 01 the AgrarianOmbudsman (Procuraduria Agraria), the agrarian courts, and the National AgraranRegistry. lt also ineludes the rules and regulations pertainingto the 1992land titlingprogram (see Baitenmann, this volume).

3 For a definit ion 01ejidos, see Bai tenmann, this volume. Other lorms 01rural landarrangements held in nonprivate or socia l tenancy are the agrarian communities(comunidades agrarias). This land const it ut es a s igni fi cant par t 01 the holdings 01indigenous communit ies and is based on historica l c la ims, usualIy dating to preColumbianor colonialtimes. Inmany cases, these lands are known as comunales(communallands). The1992agrarian Iegislaton permitsagraran communities to turn intoejidos; once this occurs, land can then be individualIy parceled and prvatized.

4 This "law"cntails reforrns to Articles 1,2.4, lB.and IIS01the Constitution (DiarioOficialdelaFederacin. August14.2001).5 The San Andrs Accords were signed in February 1996by the Mexican government

and the EZI.."!. Foran analysis 01this complex process, see Hernndez Navarro (199B).6. SeeStephen (2002. 126-145);Mattiace (2003a. 2003b); LeyvaSolano (2003, 161-164);

LeyvaSolano and Ascencio Franco (1996).7 Discussions with Mrgara Milln in December 2003 revealed similaritiesconcerning

gender roles in LaRealidad and in San Miguel Chiptic, where Milln has been conductingfieldwork Iorsevera! years.

10B LYNN STEPHEN 5IndigenousWomen, Law, and Custom

Gender Ideologies in the Practice of [usticeMARA TERESA SIERRA

In this chapter, 1show how gender ideologies constitute disciplinary mechan isms in the form of rules and customs guiding social practices, limiting thepossibilities for the emergcnce of new dscourses about rights. The practice ofjustice and conflict resolution in indigenous regions offers us a space in whichto analyze these processes, since it reveals how norms derived from differentjudicial systems-the state system and the indigenous system-shape socialbehavior and legitimate the subordination o wornen, What happens in thecourts also enables us to reconstruct the strategies women have developed tochallenge these models and ideologies and to redefine the relationship betweenthem. 1focus on the practiceof justice in local and regional spaces of th e Nahuacommunities of the Sierra Norte de Puebla. seek to demonstrate, on the basisof legal interactions, how gender ideologies influence the alternatives availableto nd igenous women for set tl ing controversies and containing violence. 1briefly describe the indigenous organizations that exist in the region of Cuetzalan and the discourse of rights that these organizations are promoting, in orderto documentthe changes, however small, that can contribute to the building ofa pluraljustice embracing the principie of gender equity.'

The court is a place where a socety 's gender norms, values, and ideologiesare revealed, for, in airing disputes beforelocal authoritiesor mediators, peopleappeal to gender norms and thus shed l igh t on the conflicts perrneating therelationship between the sexes. Aswell as being spaces par excellence of legaldiscourse, courts are also spaces of performance (Turner [986) and spaces orcultural product ion, where cul tura l meanings are act ivated and negotated(Merry 1995). They are therefore privileged sites for the analysis of social prac-tices and their representations.

Comparative research in different regions o Mxico reveals the higl1 incidence ofdisputes brought to the indigcnous authorities that involvc womcn.

109


12/12

Documents

Stephen Lynn_Womens Land Rights