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NEWS & LETTERS, April - May 2008Chiapas women meetChiapas, Mexico--Several thousand women gathered in the Indigenous Zapatista community of La Garrucha to participate in the first meeting of Zapatista women with the peoples of the world. At the heart of the meetings were more than 200 Zapatista women--comandantas, members of Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee; insurgentas; representatives of different regions of local governments; Good Government Councils; health and education promoters; agrarian agents; and others. These grandmothers, who became Zapatistas two decades ago, told what life was for Indigenous women in the years before the 1994 rebellion and the subsequent formation of autonomous communities in resistance. They spoke of the slave-like conditions women faced and shared experiences of the first clandestine work with the Zapatistas. Before the rebellion, they worked on the Revolutionary Laws of Women (RLW) to workout what they were fighting for. They included the right of all women to: participate in the revolutionary struggle, work and receive just pay, decide the number of children they will bear, education and primary medical care, choose their spouses, live free of violence, and that rapes and assaults will be severely punished. This meeting was a living resume of 14 years of struggle to make the RLW a living practice against the opposition of Mexican Federal, state, and local governments. These women were joined at the meeting by young women and girls from the post-rebellion period to share the experience of this creative labor under a series of themes including: how Zapatista women lived before and how they live now, and how they organized themselves to achieve their rights and sustained themselves in the struggle. They had rejected the government schools and set up their own which were bi-lingual, in the indigenous tongue and Spanish. Their education combined mental and manual labor--the theoretical and practical. They became their own teachers and taught a new generation of students. They set up their own government councils. Of course, sexism has not disappeared. But it's the self-activity of the Zapatista women, not the practice of machismo, that has become the point of departure. While the Zapatista women were the center of this three day meeting, hundreds of Indigenous women and men arranged housing and prepared the food. Men could not participate directly in the meeting, though they could listen. Besides a number of international observers, other crucial groups were Mexican women from other parts of Mexico including the capital. I traveled with a busload from Mexico City, of all ages and occupations. With me, they saw the rich, creative participation of Indigenous women in Chiapas as an important moment, one to share with many companeras, friends and groups back home. --Eugene Walker |
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