Abstract (eng)
The Mexican nation-state is the promoter of a very particular regime of belongingness. The inclusions and exclusions to the national project are marked by stereotypical gendered and racial beliefs that were created in colonial times and further developed in the post-independence and post-revolutionary Mexican project. In particular, the access to ‘Mexicanness’ is marked by the ideal citizen model: the male Mestizo. Within this order, indigenous peoples have been marginalized to the (physical and conceptual) spaces historically delineated for their bodies. In particular, indigenous women have been neglected access to the idea of the nation, as they have had to confront double forms of discrimination around their gender and their race.
In the 1990s, the uprising of the Zapatista movement marked a disruption of the spaces of inclusiveness, as thousands of indigenous men and women called attention on the forms of marginalization that their peoples had been suffering throughout the centuries. This thesis aims at exploring how, since then; Zapatista women have been challenging hegemonic gendered notions of the Mexican nation-state in order to re-negotiate their inclusion and unique place in the nation. We analyzed some of the discursive practices of these women, in order to identify how discursive changes in their (expected) gender and racial performativity have contributed to destabilize these constructions, engaging in a simultaneous process of re-negotiation of the idea of nation.
We identified three thematic blocks. Firstly, we explored the public disruption made through language and place in one of the most symbolic spaces for the Mexican nation-state, as Comandanta Esther addressed the Union Congress on March 28 2001. Secondly, we explored the challenges that these women posed to the Mexican nation-state in a re-conceptualization of the expected gender roles on militarization. Thirdly, we explored the challenges posed on their role as mothers (of the nation) and bearers of tradition, as emerging discourses on women’s rights became to permeate Zapatista rural communities in Chiapas. Ultimately, this work is an attempt to analyze the forms that these women have used to become visible to an exclusive and repressive male mestizo nation-state ideology, highlighting alternative expressions to the expected gender and racial performances that the national project marked on their bodies.