SemMéxico, Mexico City, December 31, 2023.-In the Zapatista communities, 30 years after the armed uprising there are no cases of feminicide or disappearance of women, because they managed to erode the spaces of violence and machismo, says Sylvia Marcos, member of the Network of Decolonial Feminisms, in an interview that will be published in number 39 of the Cuadernos Feminista CF Magazine.
But it does say: the Zapatistas face “the risks of this Mexico harassed by militarism supported by the State and even more so by organized crime.”
In this special issue of CF, which was born precisely after Zapatismo, it maintains that indigenous Zapatista women solve the problem between men and women inspired by other creative forms, original to the “vernacular genre”, defined by Iván Illich as an adjective from an Indo-European root. that defines “what is very ours”, in a stronger than domestic sense, as Marcos explains in an article published in Factal and titled “The vernacular genre of Iván Ilich” (2011).
The Zapatista rebellion brought together diverse women at the support tables in the San Andrés Larráinzar Dialogues, giving rise to CF to, among other things, recover the diversity and massiveness of the expressions of the movement, which over 26 years, “It always provides renewed energy and opens new veins of reflection,” says the introduction to the commemorative issue in print.
To the question, in an extensive interview, with Dr. Marcos, What is the main legacy of the Zapatistas to the broad movement of feminisms in Mexico?
Sylvia Marcos is specific: the main legacy is the transition in the reconceptualization of the individual subject of feminist struggles – a legacy of dominant thought – to a collective subjectivity “as the women that we are” and “women who fight.”
The Zapatistas have lived all these years in their communal being within an autonomous political movement.
Equality to participate in patriarchal power
In the conversation she had with the journalist Laura Castellanos, a prominent reporter who 30 years ago was the first to speak with Commander Ramona, who now seeks to know how the Zapatistas have contributed with their struggle and experience to contemporary feminisms or feminism 4.0. Sylvia Marcos emphatically states that “precisely we, feminists, are heirs of the “unique” thought, which conceives equality and difference from individual subject positions.
Versions advanced to SemMéxico for the 30 years of Zapatismo this January 1, 2024, in Cuadernos Feministas, a balance is made, from various authors, of what happened with feminism, the struggle of indigenous women and the official gender policy.
Dr. Marcos says that among the Zapatistas, a permanent flow prevails over their identity as women; They are framed by the “everything” of the Zapatista movement, which they neither leave nor reject and to which they proudly belong.
The Zapatistas of course mark the paths of “feminist” struggles in their priorities. They have gone beyond this of feminists in “individual subject”, which, since 1994, has been disconcerting, because for them “only women” has other embodied constructions.
The conversation, broad and conceptual, Sylvia Marcos, Member and founder of the permanent seminar on Anthropology and Gender of the Anthropological Research Institute of the UNAM and member of the permanent steering committee of the Latin American Association for the Study of Religions ALER, also talks about the most notable advances of Zapatista women, in positions of authority as agents, councilors, commissioners, health and education promoters.
And to the question, related to the Zapatista National Liberation Army, which is based on “autonomous power,” what lesson does it give to the electoral and party system convulsed by the 2024 elections?
Sylvia says that the State, partisan system of government is per se hierarchical. That type of hierarchically organized authority would have to be discarded, where “great women – are – accommodated in it…
And she believes: a true possibility of accessing, as women, the spaces that the Zapatistas now have within their movement, would be to fight to reproduce the horizontal autonomous structure in our society, which, at times, appeals to the domains of the “vernacular genre.” ”, he says “which is a hope”, that is, “what is ours”.
Although the Zapatistas, Castellanos tells him, do not incorporate all of our demands into their struggle, and yes they do, they follow their own path according to their priorities, it returns reflection to the issue of autonomy and horizontal organization.
From her experience, as a student and close to the Zapatista communities for three decades, Sylvia Marcos tells the journalist that the women who have lived their Revolutionary Women’s Law, “where what is missing,” have their path very clear.
And it reiterates that autonomy, such as that experienced in Zapatismo, has not only managed to erode those spaces of violence and machismo but is on the way, parallel to the assumption of authority by women, with a hybrid space. This is a modification, and they themselves assure, “it is definitive that there are no cases of feminicide or disappearance of women.
In CF you can read Aída Hernández, about the struggle of Rosario Ibarra de Piedra; to Sonia del Valle Lavín, the first journalist who investigated the murders of women in Ciudad Juárez; to Susana Vidales, about Sonoran feminism; Liz Maier who writes a historical account of abortion in Mexico and the United States; to Paola Fernández, from the feminist group Las Libres, also about the fight for abortion; to Sara Lovera who makes a retrospective reflection on “what happened to the feminist movement and its hegemonic policy of ‘incidence’ in power’; to Rocío Duque, from New York, who asks “And finally, what are we talking about when we say feminism?”
The Revolutionary Law of Women
Published for the first time in El Despertador Mexicano, Informative Organ of the EZLN, Mexico, No.1, December 1993. It was declared that the EZLN incorporates women in the revolutionary struggle regardless of their race, creed, color or political affiliation, with the only requirement of adopting the demands of the exploited people.
First.- Women, regardless of their race, creed or political affiliation, have the right to participate in the revolutionary struggle in the place and degree that their will and capacity determine; Second.- Women have the right to work and receive a fair salary. Third.- Women have the right to decide the number of children they can have and care for. Fourth.- Women have the right to participate in community affairs and hold office if they are freely and democratically elected. Fifth.- Women and their children have the right to primary care for their health and nutrition.; Sixth.- Women have the right to education. Seventh.- Women have the right to choose their partner and not to be forced by force to marry. Eighth.- No woman may be beaten or physically abused by family members or strangers. Crimes of attempted rape will be severely punished. Ninth.- Women may hold leadership positions in the organization and have military ranks in the revolutionary armed forces. Tenth.- Women will have all the rights and obligations established by the revolutionary laws and regulations.
2024-01-01 06:00:00
#years #Zapatista #uprising #autonomy #left #machista #violence #space #Sol #México
