602103

research-article2015
GASXXX10.1177/0891243215602103Gender & SocietyIndigenous Women’s Political Participation

INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S POLITICAL

PARTICIPATION:

Gendered Labor and Collective Rights

Paradigms in Mexico

HOLLY WORTHEN
Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca, Mexico

In Latin America, rights to local political participation in many indigenous communities

are not simply granted, but rather “earned” through acts of labor for the community. This
is the case in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, where almost three-fourths of municipalities
elect municipal authorities through custom and tradition rather than secret ballot and
universal suffrage. The alarmingly low rate of women’s formal participation in these
municipalities has garnered attention from policymakers, provoking a series of legislative
reforms designed to increase women’s roles in local politics. However, these initiatives
often miss their mark. Focused on a liberal model of women as individual rights-bearers,
they fail to understand the complex ways in which gendered labor influences political
participation in nonliberal contexts. This article examines a case in which indigenous
women reject such an initiative because it would exacerbate their exploitation within the
local terms of gendered collective labor instead of promoting equality. It thus explains
potential barriers to indigenous women’s political leadership at the local level and sug-
gests ways in which gender equality can be promoted in nonliberal contexts.

Keywords: gender; political participation; indigenous women; labor; collective rights

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Research was funded by the Inter-American Foundation, the

National Science Foundation, and the Association of American University Women.
Instructive comments were provided by Alice Brooke Wilson, Joe Wiltberger, Elizabeth
Hennessey, Abigail Andrews, Shane Dillingham, and Jorge Hernández Díaz. Many thanks
to Joya Misra, Mary Bernstein, and several anonymous reviewers for their detailed read-
ing and helpful comments. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Holly Worthen, Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca, Oaxaca de Juarez,
Mexico; e-mail: hworthen@gmail.com.
GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 29 No. 6, December 2015 914–936
DOI: 10.1177/0891243215602103
© 2015 by The Author(s)

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 Worthen / INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S POLITICAL PARTICIPATION 915

I n February 2009 the government of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico sent a

legal mandate to the small municipality of Yatzachi, a town of 200
indigenous Zapotec inhabitants nestled high in the northern mountains.
The mandate, from the Oaxacan electoral institute, stated that women
must vote in local elections and be considered for the municipal council.
Women were allowed the municipal vote in Mexico in 1947. However,
local suffrage has never become a reality for many indigenous Oaxacan
women, especially those who live in towns like Yatzachi that elect local
officials through custom and tradition rather than secret ballot and univer-
sal suffrage (Dalton 2005). Under multicultural reforms designed to rec-
ognize indigenous people’s collective rights to self-governance, these
“traditional” practices of municipal election—which often exclude
women—have now become law in almost three-fourths of Oaxacan
municipalities (Hernández Díaz 2014).
Like this announcement, attempts to restrict nonliberal practices are
becoming more common worldwide, as countries come to question the
once progressive status of multicultural initiatives that legalized them
(Nicholls and Uitermark 2013; Vertovec 2010). However, in Oaxaca,
Mexico’s most indigenously populated state with the most extensive
implementation of multicultural reforms, these efforts often exacerbate
tension over women’s political roles instead of ushering in women’s par-
ticipation. This is the case in Yatzachi. Instead of embracing the legisla-
tive mandate, the village assembly, composed of 65 men and women who
are heads of households, responded to the Oaxacan electoral institute with
its own official letter. It stated that women willingly reject participation in
the municipal council.
This response is not unusual: Latin American indigenous women are
often wary of government intervention and regularly defend their com-
munities’ rights to alternative forms of governance (Blackwell 2012;
Speed, Hernández Castillo, and Stephen 2006). The women of Yatzachi
are no different. However, I argue that the community assembly’s letter
signed by the women is more than a defense of the community: More
importantly, it represents an internal struggle over the gendered labor
practices that define and construct the alternative political and economic
system on which the community is built.
In Yatzachi, local governance is conducted via “communal systems”
(Patzi Paco 2004) in which local affairs of justice, political organization,
and land use are all resolved internally according to “tradition” and “cus-
tom.” These systems, found throughout Latin America, differ from liberal
systems of political governance: Rights are not simply granted as they are

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916 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2015

in liberal democracies, but rather earned via the enactment of certain

types of labor. The right to participate—opine and vote—in the assembly,
the maximum expression of local power and decision making, is earned
through cargos (town service positions) and tequios (collective work par-
ties for public works). In a type of “authoritarianism based on consensus,”
one is obliged to serve the collective through cargo and tequio, thus earn-
ing the right to usufruct of collective property (Martínez Luna 2010).
In Yatzachi’s communal system, men typically perform the official
labor that counts toward the recognition of political rights. Although
women do important work in their households and the community, it does
not count as “official labor.” Therefore, women are prohibited from
assembly participation because they have not “worked” for the good of
the community. When women do perform cargos and tequios, as in the
case of single women household heads, participation implies extra official
work in addition to the unofficial labor of social reproduction. Therefore,
although most women are theoretically in favor of women’s participation,
the gendered terms of the communal system deter their participation in the
assembly and in formal leadership roles.
Based on qualitative research and analysis of the letter in which women
deny the state mandate to participate in the town council, this article
argues that struggles over gendered labor often importantly determine the
forms of indigenous women’s political participation. This argument con-
tributes to a growing feminist literature that examines forms of women’s
political subjectivity in contexts not defined by Western notions of liberal
democracy (Mahmood 2005; Pathak and Sunder Rajan 1989). While
much of this literature focuses on Muslim women in the Middle East, this
article demonstrates the different conceptions of women’s political par-
ticipation in nonliberal contexts of indigenous communities in Latin
America, raising questions about the misinterpretation of gender relations
based on Western frameworks of political rights.
While studies of indigenous women and rights discourses examine
questions of individual versus collective rights, they often focus on social
movement or civil society discourses and practices. This article fills gaps
in existing literature by providing a detailed study of how alternative
rights paradigms play out in the daily lives of indigenous women (Burman
2011; Pape 2009). In turn, it contributes to literature exploring indigenous
collectivities as sites of “post-liberal” and “post-capitalist” social forms
that offer alternative paradigms of human-nature relationships, govern-
ance, and development (Escobar 2008; Reyes 2012; Walsh 2010).
However, indigenous women have argued that these alternative systems

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 Worthen / INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S POLITICAL PARTICIPATION 917

still produce gender inequalities, raising questions about how to promote

equality within them.

INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

Around 1.7 million Oaxacans (44 percent of the state’s population)

belong to 16 different ethno-linguistic groups (Comisión Nacional para el
Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas 2010). The communal systems found
in most indigenous communities are a result of both precolonial and post-
colonial processes of appropriation and reinterpretation. During Mexico’s
postrevolutionary state-building process, communal systems were toler-
ated via a type of “indirect rule,” whereby forms of indigenous self-
determination were respected as long as villages provided votes for the
ruling party (Recondo 2007). However, in the 1990s the conjunctural
forces of a growing indigenous rights movement, Mexico’s democratic
opening, and neoliberal reforms led to a reconfiguration of the relation-
ship between the State and indigenous peoples. The Oaxacan state gov-
ernment engaged in a series of multicultural reforms designed to legalize
aspects of indigenous people’s collective rights (Postero 2007; Van Cott
2010).1 A key reform was the legalization of the long-held practice of
municipal election by “tradition” (Anaya Muñoz 2005). Currently, 417 of
Oaxaca’s 570 municipalities choose municipal officials via what is now
formally termed “internal normative systems.”
The legal recognition of nonliberal forms of rule in communal systems
has resulted in a growing debate over the role of indigenous women in
local politics. While indigenous advocates argue for election via custom-
ary practices, others insist that recognition of these forms of collective
governance actually legalize practices of discrimination. In particular,
some scholars suggest that women, as the quintessential internal minority,
are automatically discriminated against in multicultural settings (Okin
1999; Song 2005). They posit that political liberalism and individual
rights paradigms are the best ways to ensure women’s political participa-
tion, and insist that multicultural recognition should be either revoked
(Okin 1999) or tweaked to ensure respect for individual rights (Danielson
and Eisenstadt 2009).
Initial data from Oaxaca seem to support these assertions: Only 3.1
percent of municipal presidents are women (ONU Mujeres 2013).
Moreover, women who live in municipalities ruled via internal normative
systems find their participation levels further limited: In only 11.5 percent

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918 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2015

of these municipalities do women serve on municipal councils versus 51

percent in municipalities ruled via political parties (Barrera Bassols
2006). In almost a quarter of municipalities ruled via internal normative
systems, women cannot vote in local elections (Hernández Díaz 2014).
While women’s formal political participation is limited, other scholars
caution against equating the number of women in leadership positions
with the extent and exercise of indigenous women’s local political rights.
Velásquez (2004) argues that measures for evaluating political activity are
different in these nonliberal systems. She demonstrates that indigenous
women in Oaxaca realize other forms of participation, often via informal
cargos that are not necessarily part of the official sphere of the town coun-
cil. Others highlight indigenous systems of gender complementarity based
on worldviews in which feminine and masculine powers balance each
other in a type of equilibrium that translates into separate but equally
important gendered roles (Harris 1978; Sieder and Macleod 2009; Stern
1999). In some cases, complementarity allows for the rearticulation of
gender equality in non-Western terms (Richards 2005); in others, it masks
forms of discrimination and oppression according to tradition and indig-
enous worldviews (de la Cadena 2010; Nash 2001; Vázquez García 2011).
However, over the last several years, the nuances of gender comple-
mentarity and nonliberal forms of political participation have been over-
looked while critiques of women’s roles in Oaxaca’s internal normative
systems have gained momentum. International pressure to promote
women’s rights, as well as an emblematic case of an indigenous woman
denied the right to run for municipal president (Sierra 2009),2 have pro-
moted the creation of new legislation and court rulings based on liberal
understandings of law and women’s individual rights. Specifically, legisla-
tive changes include modifications to the state and federal constitutions to
emphasize indigenous women’s rights to full participation in municipal
elections conducted through internal normative systems. Likewise, court
rulings increasingly annul elections if women have not fully participated
(Worthen Forthcoming). Indeed, the mandate that arrived in Yatzachi from
the electoral institute is a result of such legislative and judiciary actions.
While this legislation officially enables women to contest local elec-
tions on grounds of gender exclusion in electoral tribunals, not all indig-
enous women necessarily welcome this type of intervention. Through a
discourse of paternalistic protection, the Mexican State has tried to dictate
indigenous women’s political subjectivity (Blackwell 2012; Newdick
2005). However, indigenous women have increasingly come to contest
state intervention and the “liberal solution” it promotes, instead positioning

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 Worthen / INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S POLITICAL PARTICIPATION 919

themselves as key actors in the promotion of forms of gender equality

within their communities, often merging their own notions of liberal
women’s rights with collective rights to promote equality (Speed,
Hernández Castillo, and Stephen 2006). In turn, indigenous women have
questioned the very foundations of state-based rights discourses and
articulated different conceptions of communal rights structures lived in
action, not granted from above (Speed 2005; Speed and Reyes 2002).
Women in Yatzachi also reject a liberal solution, and their case evokes
questions regarding how alternative rights systems—namely, rights earned
via labor—can become more egalitarian.

THEORIZING GENDER, LABOR, AND RIGHTS

Feminists have long criticized key tenants of liberal thought, including

individualism, equality before the law, and conceptions of freedom
(Benhabib et al. 1994; Butler and Scott 1992; MacKinnon 1991; Pateman
1988). Arguing that the liberal state apparatus has been formed through
the very exclusions it purportedly attempts to rectify, feminist scholarship
has also sought to demonstrate how the notion of the liberal individual
subject who harnesses internal emancipatory agency is a myth (Mahmood
2005; Pratt 2004). However, the notion of rights has proved problematic
in these critiques.
While scholars agree that liberal rights frameworks perpetuate exclu-
sive universalisms, they simultaneously understand that political claims
based on human rights are an important strategic tool in many feminist
struggles (Brown 2000; Peters and Wolper 1995; Sa`ar 2005). It is because
of their claims to universalism that relying upon notions of liberal rights
can simultaneously challenge them. For example, Butler (2000) posits
that when a person who is not an “authorized” liberal subject seeks
recourse to universal liberal discourses, she creates “perverse reiterations”
that question the foundations and limits of these discourses. Indeed, de
Sousa Santos (2002) argues that by critiquing the universality of human
rights paradigms, a counter-hegemonic rights discourse and practice can
emerge based on non-Western notions of human dignity.
The usage of rights-based discourses has been an important component
of indigenous struggles in Latin America. In a multicultural era, indige-
nous people have used these discourses to posit the importance of collec-
tive rights to land, language, and governance (Postero 2007; Yashar
2005), and, in so doing, have challenged their very foundation. In particular,

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920 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2015

drawing on conceptions of autonomy, indigenous women have argued that

indigenous autonomy can never be realized if women are systematically
oppressed within indigenous groups. They have asserted, via what some
call an “indigenous feminism” (Espinosa Damián 2009; Hernández
Castillo 2010), that the recognition of women’s individual rights is inex-
tricably linked to the recognition of collective rights, positing that one
without the other limits their ability to be full human beings (Gutiérrez
and Palomo 2000; Paredes 2008; Sánchez 2003).
Analyzing the daily practices of communal systems, indigenous leaders
and scholars argue that in many indigenous communities an alternative
nonliberal conception of rights exists (Cardoso Jiménez and Robles
Hernández 2007; Martínez Luna 2010). For example, Speed and Reyes
(2002) argue that in Zapatista communities, practices of communal organ-
ization are about creating a completely different relationship of sover-
eignty. The sovereign is not the State; rather, it lies within the collective.
Thus, rights are not granted from some ontologically imagined sovereign
space “above.” Instead, rights are earned through practice—through acts
of labor—in front of the collective. This alternative expression of rights
and sovereignty runs parallel to state rights’ systems, coexisting as neces-
sary, but ultimately challenging notions of sovereign rule, the role of the
law, and the ability of the “rational” State to ever fully comprehend the
realities it seeks to manage.
If an alternative notion of rights as earned through labor is an important
part of formulations of alternative projects of decolonization and “post-
counterhegemonic” social forms (Reyes 2012), it is necessary to explore
just how the dynamics of labor play out on the ground in these indigenous
collectives. Given that labor is a process foundational to the construction
and articulation of gender relations, how does the formulation of alterna-
tive rights in nonliberal communal systems affect gender equality? Feminist
scholars have long demonstrated that labor is one of the key aspects
through which gendered political rights are created and contested (Olcott
2005). The gendered division of labor into a male productive sphere and a
female reproductive sphere promoted the devaluation of women’s affective
labors and reproduced gender inequalities (Hartmann 1981; Weeks 2007).
Mapped onto political subjectivities, these separate spheres of gendered
labor also served as the foundation for the division between the “mascu-
line” public and the “feminine” private (Phillips 1991).
While this work was largely developed in urban, Western contexts,
research on peasant women in the Global South also emphasizes the role
of labor in producing women’s political subjectivities. Notably, Carney

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 Worthen / INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S POLITICAL PARTICIPATION 921

and Watts (1990) explore the “production politics” (Burawoy 1985) of

rice cultivation upon conjugal contracts and women’s petitioning of gov-
ernment agencies; Hart (1991) examines the roles of women’s collective
labor organization in challenging agricultural employers in Southeast
Asia; and Stephen (2005) explores the way in which Zapotec women in
Oaxaca challenge village hierarchies by forming weaving cooperatives.
Their work supports the idea that “struggles over resources and labour are
simultaneously struggles over socially-constructed meanings, definitions,
and identities” (Hart 1991, 95). Work is also one of the main practices
through which we create notions of belonging (Chari and Gidwani 2005;
Cravey 2005).
The focus on labor as an important subject-producing category and as
an alternative practice in which notions of rights are created in indige-
nous collectivities, in combination with feminist literature on how gen-
dered labor informs the contentious construction of social practices,
demonstrates that labor is important in the study of politics and member-
ship. Likewise, it is fundamental in order to explore the formulation of a
different notion of nonliberal rights and to examine the quotidian strug-
gles over gender equality within indigenous communities.

METHODS

Yatzachi is located in the northern mountains of Oaxaca, about a four-

hour drive from the state capital. I selected this region because it is
famous for the strength of its autonomous communal systems (Aquino
Moreschi 2010) in tandem with high levels of women’s exclusion from
local governance. Yatzachi was selected as an anomalous case study: one
of the few towns in the region in which women participate in cargos and
tequios. Anomalous cases aid in the development of theory by explaining
that which does not quite fit (Burawoy 1991). I use data from 14 months
of ethnographic fieldwork (from June 2009 to August 2010) in Yatzachi,
followed by periodic visits to the town over the last four years, as well as
three visits to the migrant destination of Los Angeles, California, to
explore how this case can generate new understandings of gender, indi-
geneity, and political participation in indigenous communities.
I conducted 65 formal interviews with Yatzachitecos that centered
broadly on gender, migration, and the communal system. To explore
women’s refusal to participate in the town council, I spoke with past and
current town authorities (mostly men) about local governance, autonomy,
and gender roles. I interviewed 10 of the 14 single women who signed the

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922 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2015

letter to the Oaxacan electoral institute, as well as 10 married women,

regarding their opinions about the letter and their understandings of why
and how it was created. Through interviews with five men who were
involved in the assembly in which the letter was created as well as numer-
ous informal conversations, I gathered data on both men’s and women’s
perspectives on the issue.
My positionality as a U.S. woman was initially a disadvantage because
of concerns that I would somehow report information about undocu-
mented immigrants to the U.S. government. Engaging in communal life
through participant observation in daily activities helped build trust. I was
present at several important events that gave greater insight into questions
of alternative rights and gendered labor, including three town assemblies
(one was an election) and patron saint fiestas. Engaging in the predomi-
nately women-led tasks of food preparation and men-predominated
spaces of labor taxation systems provided insight into gendered commu-
nal labor. For analytic purposes, I coded the letter, field notes, and inter-
view transcripts according to the identification of key themes, including
gendered labor, collective labor, citizenship, participation, relationship
with liberal state law, autonomy, and gender inequality.

GENDER AND WORK IN YATZACHI’S COMMUNAL SYSTEM

A gendered division of labor fundamentally organizes Yatzachi’s com-

munal system. As mentioned, men, as heads of household, traditionally
conduct cargo and tequio. The labor performed via these cargos and
tequios is how one earns the right to vote and opine in the village assem-
bly, becoming, in the words of Yatzachitecos, an “active citizen.” Tequio
in Zapoteco is llinlaw, which literally means “working in front of the
pueblo.” Each active citizen performs 24 tequios per year, and activities
include potable water maintenance, street cleaning, and the demarcation
of town boundaries. Cargos are an obligation—they must be performed in
order to use collectively held land and public services. Thirty-four cargos
must be filled annually, but only five of them (the town president, the
syndic, and the aldermen of health, treasury, and public works) are con-
sidered to be the official state-recognized posts of the municipal council
(cargo holder’s names are registered with the state government). They are
the positions of greatest importance, labor, and commitment, often requir-
ing full-time work for the year of appointment.
Traditionally, women have not been “active citizens.” As in other com-
munities in Oaxaca, they are responsible for the labors of social reproduction

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 Worthen / INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S POLITICAL PARTICIPATION 923

in their homes and agricultural fields (Lyon, Aranda Bezaury, and Mutersbaugh
2010; Mutersbaugh 1998). In the village sphere, they participate in many of
the collective labors of rituals and fiestas (Stephen 2005). Although they do
not engage in cargos and tequios, by conducting the labors of social repro-
duction, married women feel that they also do important work for the com-
munity. Sara3 said, “When my husband does his cargo, I [the wife] am the
one who supports him. So I feel that as a married woman I do participate and
contribute to the town.” Indeed, when they do a cargo, men rely heavily on
women to manage agricultural fields or generate alternative income. Ana
emphasized how, beyond the support work for her husband in these intense
moments, she also makes tortillas for town functions, something she consid-
ers to be part of her duties as a good citizen. However, instead of being val-
ued in the same way as men’s labors, women’s labors are not categorized as
“official”—or as labor considered to be part of the obligations of active citi-
zenship. Thus, married women, while they theoretically can attend the
assembly, cannot vote or opine in it. Their participation is mediated through
their husbands in a type of indirect citizenship.
Scholars demonstrate that emigration often promotes women’s political
participation. For example, Andrews (2014) argues that Oaxacan migrant
women become more engaged in the political stakes of local life when they
return to their hometowns. This is due both to men’s continued absence as
well as the importance women now place on improving the conditions
within their villages as an alternative to the harsh circumstances of U.S.
undocumented migration. This is partly true in Yatzachi, as migration has
challenged paradigms of masculine active citizenship. However, what has
more decisively pushed both formerly migrant and nonmigrant women into
local politics in Yatzachi is a population crisis. Over the last several dec-
ades, migration to the United States has dramatically reduced the number
of able-bodied men who engage in collective labor. A crisis of communal
labor has ensued, and the town has turned to the labor reserve of single
women to fill vacant cargo positions, making gendered labor a topic of
debate in attempting to maintain collective practices. Gradually, single or
widowed women have come to engage in active citizenship by conducting
lesser cargos and participating in tequios. This official labor gives them the
right to participate in town assemblies, for the first time creating a space in
which women are representing themselves directly in the town’s most
important political body. Married women, however, remain under the
schema of indirect citizenship. At the time of research, fourteen women
and around fifty men were active citizens in Yatzachi.
In general, both single and married women feel that theoretically,
women’s participation in the assembly is important. When I asked Ana if

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924 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2015

she thinks married women should go to the assemblies, she responded,

“Yes, I think so, because sometimes we have opinions too! And my hus-
band doesn’t share his—let alone my—opinions in the assembly.” A sin-
gle woman, Josefina, was also in favor of women’s participation:
“Sometimes as women we understand things from a different perspective,
and try to resolve problems in a different way than men. There are some
things that we just do better, you’ve got to admit it!” A married woman,
Irma, reported, “There are women that are very capable of being on the
town council. In my opinion, we’ve got to give women opportunities
because we also have the right to participate.”
However, despite the general enthusiasm and support for the idea of
women’s participation in local political life, single women signed the let-
ter to the Oaxacan electoral institute in which they refused to take on the
more prestigious cargos of the town council. I explore this paradox in
what follows.

Responding to the State

The letter emerged out of the annual assembly in which local elections
are held. The municipal president interpreted the mandate from the
Oaxacan electoral institute thus: “If a woman was not on the list of our
upcoming municipal authorities [for the town council], they would
impugn our election.” He saw this as an incursion of the State into the
realm of Yatzachi’s collective rights: “We have our usos y costumbres
[ways and customs], and the government always talks about how they
respect them, but by sending this mandate, they were not respecting our
rights [to local governance].” Josefina recalls the assembly:
The first thing the president did was read the mandate, which said that it
was required for a woman to be part of the town council. Then they said
that the women should give their opinions—what did we think about it?
The president said if women want to, then we should do it, and if not, we
didn’t have to. One woman spoke up and said that personally, she wouldn’t
accept. Others said the same.

The president recommended responding to the electoral institute with a

letter in order to set a precedent that could prevent future government
intervention in local elections. Women were in agreement with the crea-
tion of the letter. Indeed, Carolina recounted, “We created the letter so
that officially the government would see that it wasn’t just that the men
didn’t want this, but rather we, the women, who rejected the mandate.”

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 Worthen / INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S POLITICAL PARTICIPATION 925

Active female citizens who were not present later signed the letter before
it was taken to the Oaxacan electoral institute. The letter is composed of
five numbered points, which I translate here:

1. Women have always been considered for cargo positions, but only
when they include activities that we can do, such as secretary, treas-
urer, school committee, clinic committee, etc. We don’t agree to do
cargos that are part of the town council, the agricultural development
committee, and communal goods, because according to usos y costum-
bres men perform these cargos, given that they are the ones in charge
of directing communal work and tequios, and it is not acceptable to
simply give orders but rather to lead these projects to show how it is
done. Many of these activities are difficult for women (carrying rocks,
picking up cement blocks, repairing water tubes, etc).
2. Women have been named to these cargos in the past, but those that
have accepted the cargo have not performed it themselves; instead they
look for a man to do it, and they obviously have to pay for this service
since all cargos are performed without remuneration.
3. We do not accept these cargos because we have to take care of our
children, because our husbands are those who have to work for our
sustenance and we do not have daycare centers nor do we have paid
jobs for women.
4. If the cargo positions were paid, we would have money to be able to
pay someone to take care of our children and our domestic animals.
5. Probably these arguments will not be valid, unless within your office
there is a worker of indigenous origin that can give you a broader
explanation and help you understand the situation in which we live.

In general, interview data demonstrate that women signed the letter and
spoke up in the assembly not because they are against women’s participa-
tion, but because (1) the official work that women do as active citizens is
undervalued and does not lead to equal terms of participation; (2) town
council positions present extra labor burdens when added onto women’s
work of social reproduction; and (3) active female citizens thus perceive
that the terms of participation in the communal system are unfair.

Devaluing Women’s Work

Although women have moved into traditionally “male” political
spheres, the communal system, while now more inclusive, is still far from
egalitarian. For many women, performing cargos and tequios is often seen
as a burden rather than an opportunity to be a leader in the community.
This is because of the lack of value given to both women’s official and

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926 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2015

unofficial labors. Although single women now do the official labors of

cargo and tequio, men often ignore women’s opinions in the assembly by
arguing that they have not done the same extent of labor for public works
as men. Carolina said:

Most of the time many of us don’t talk in the assemblies, because you
quickly learn that the older men will always say, “No, these girls are just
now starting to engage in town work. They don’t know what has happened
with the pueblo, they don’t know what all we’ve gone through to arrive
where we are today.”

Likewise, the notion of women as physically weaker is regularly used

to devalue women’s ability to engage fully in the terms of active citizen-
ship. A common discourse in the village is that if one cannot do and dem-
onstrate physical labor, one cannot lead. As point one of the letter
emphasizes, leading is not simply giving commands, but actually demon-
strating physical labor in front of others. It argues that women, because of
their lack of physical strength, cannot do these tasks and motivate other
men to join in the work. Women’s inability to do these grueling physical
tasks means that their labor, even when conducted through an official
cargo or tequio task, does not count the same as men’s. Sara recounted
how one man argued that women’s opinions should not count because
they were not going to be contributing equal labor force in the upcoming
tequio project. She recalls, “That’s when I understood that despite how
much I would like to express my opinion, it would never be taken into
account.” Even when performing official tasks, women’s labor is not val-
ued as being the right amount or type that can be translated into full
political rights in the assembly.
Thus, women often have to find someone else to fulfill their cargo,
usually paying that person for his labor. The second point of the letter
emphasizes this, demonstrating that while the tequio and cargo system
has traditionally been based on labor in kind, women often must hire a
substitute. This is especially common for older single women. For
example, Ester, now retired, spent most of her life living in Mexico City
and running a small business in a local market. In conjunction with other
market women, she spent many years organizing vendors and pressuring
the government for better working conditions and infrastructure. A
woman assured of her own economic and political abilities, she returned
to Yatzachi to live in the home that she and her deceased husband built
with their savings. Ester also returned to Yatzachi with the desire to
serve her community:

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 Worthen / INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S POLITICAL PARTICIPATION 927

In an assembly several years ago I asked why they always assigned us the
police cargo when really women should be part of the town council. I told
them that women have the same value as men and we should participate in
the town council. That way they could see what women can do—we could
prove what we’re worth.

Although at that moment the assembly did not accept Ester’s proposal,
she was later nominated for town council posts. Now, however, she has
health problems, and being forced to take on a more important cargo that
would require more physical effort and more hours of commitment is
something she feels unable to do: “If I were younger, it would be different.
But at my age, with all my health problems, it is really difficult. I have to
find someone to do it for me and pay them, because I can’t do the work
myself.” Taking on a town council position is similarly a further financial
and physical burden for her.
However, Ester, as well as others, felt that the question of women’s lack
of strength, especially for the younger women, was a patriarchal excuse to
keep women from holding more powerful positions and is no longer a
valid pretext for women’s exclusion:

I think that a younger woman can be part of the town council. For example,
she could be alderman of health, or the treasury. The alderman of public
works would be difficult because it requires work in the fields, but if she is
young, why not? They say that it’s hard work because they go and cut down
weeds, but nowadays the alderman just tells people what to do. A woman
can do that too: “Hey you—grab that weed eater and start cleaning up over
here!”

However, as Josefina recounts, in the assembly meeting “one woman

spoke up and said that personally, she wouldn’t accept [a town council
position] because they are physically difficult,” a point further echoed in
the letter. Why did women rely on the discourse that so regularly excludes
them from participation? It was a way to reject what they deem to be the
unfair terms of cargo participation, not the cargos themselves: Women
already feel burdened by their labors of social reproduction, making the
addition of a town council cargo overwhelming.
Single women’s active citizenship also does not translate into greater
political equality because the gendered political economy of the commu-
nal system has not shifted. In addition to conducting cargos and tequios,
single women must still perform women’s traditional labors of social repro-
duction, which remain unrecognized and undervalued. This idea is taken up
in points three and four of the letter, which emphasize the other labors of

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928 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2015

social reproduction that women conduct. They argue that women do the
important job of caring for children, a job that has economic value (that in
other contexts is remunerated). By focusing on the way in which women
would (or in this case, would not) be able to monetarily remunerate some-
one to do this childcare labor in their absence, these points demonstrate how
women’s labor is valued in both capitalist terms and in community govern-
ance terms. Someone has to subsidize the “free” labor given to the munici-
pality. If women do not engage in social reproduction, how would men be
able to give of their labors? And if they do official labors, who will take on
their productive and reproductive work in their absence? Ramona said,
“When men go to the municipal offices in the morning, they have a woman
at home who makes them their breakfast. Who is going to make mine?”
Balancing official labors with those of social reproduction is challeng-
ing. This is the case for Carolina. A young mother who was abandoned by
her migrant husband, Carolina was working in a nearby town when she
was named town secretary. As part of her cargo duties, Carolina would
have to be present in the municipal offices every morning and evening and
would have to quit her job. Luckily, her grandparents provided her with
child care and a place to live, but she also had household responsibilities
(washing, cooking, and cleaning) to fulfill. Carolina believes in the impor-
tance of doing town service. She emphasized that the citizens of Yatzachi
“have to participate, and have to give what they can to the pueblo, espe-
cially because there are so few people.” However, she was in agreement
with the letter written to the Oaxacan electoral institute and spoke up in
the assembly because “in my situation, it would be really difficult, and
I’m not willing to do a town council cargo.”

Unfair Terms of Participation and Defending Women’s labors

At the same time that almost all women believe theoretically in the
importance of women’s participation, practically they viewed the terms of
communal participation as unfair. For example, a group of young single
women without children felt it unjust that they are considered heads of
household when they do not yet have a household (i.e., children) who use
community resources. Ana commented, “If single women don’t have a
husband to help them out, and if they have kids, it’s unfair for them to do
cargos.” Single women with children felt somewhat torn: They agreed that
it was a fair expectation that they give time and labor to the community,
but felt that the terms of participation were unfair. For many, this led to
the conclusion that it was actually considerate of men not to nominate
women for town council posts.

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 Worthen / INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S POLITICAL PARTICIPATION 929

Although women in general agreed that their participation in cargos

and tequios is important, they felt opposed to the forced nature of the
mandate from the Oaxacan electoral institute. Instead, women argued that
the town council cargos should be voluntary. Carolina told me, “It wasn’t
in our best interest to agree to the mandate, because they could have
named any one of us to the town council and we would have been forced
to accept.” Minerva, who was not present at the assembly but later signed
the letter, told me that the negation was not about the cargos themselves,
but about their obligatory nature. For her, it was a declaration so that “they
[the men in the assembly] will not force us to do the cargos if we don’t
want to.”
Although the letter was addressed to the state government, it was cre-
ated in the town’s most official and public space: the community assem-
bly. This means that it was a rare opportunity to publicly debate the
question of women’s labor in Yatzachi. As such, it served as a moment
when women were able to emphasize the role and value of their work
within the communal system, an important first step toward identifying
the unequal systems of gendered labor upon which local participation is
based and validated.
However, instead of elaborating this critique further and using it to
promote a change within the system, women grouped together to ensure
that cargos of greater labor requirements would not be forced upon them.
This was not an outright rejection of the cargos themselves, but rather, as
demonstrated earlier, a way to defend the sphere of their labor from fur-
ther exploitation within a communal system in desperate need of extra
laborers. As such, it was a rare moment in which women acted in solidar-
ity in the town. For example, Ramona and Gema, older single women,
bemoaned the fact that women did not jump at the chance of being on the
town council. However, they agreed with the letter out of solidarity with
younger single women: They did not want other women to be placed in a
situation in which a cargo would be overly burdensome. As Irma com-
mented, too often in Yatzachi women think only about their own homes
and labor commitments: “What happens is that each woman does her
work individually. She just looks after her family and house. She doesn’t
get involved with others, and that’s why our town doesn’t prosper.”
However, as with Ramona and Gema, for Carolina the creation of the
letter was the first time that she considered women’s combined interests
when taking a stance in an assembly:

Holly: Since you are one of the few women at the assembly, have you ever felt
like you speak for the interests of all women in assembly meetings?

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930 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2015

Carolina: Sometimes, yes, because sometimes things are unfair.

Holly: Do you have a specific example?
Carolina: The only one I can think of is that of rejecting cargos in the town
council. We spoke and thought as women in that moment, not as general
town citizens, but as women.

Although the creation of the letter was as an act of gendered solidarity,

women have not taken further steps to elaborate a more consolidated critique
of the gendered terms of the communal system. In this sense, the discussion
and subsequent creation of the letter was an unprecedented moment in which
women publicly articulated some of the concerns regarding the unfairness of
the gendered terms of labor and participation in Yatzachi. While the liberal
intervention of the government mandate did not reach its stated goal—
indeed, the outcome was the opposite of what it intended—it did force a
discussion that brought the question of women’s labor, and thus participa-
tion, to the table. This discussion is likely to continue.

CONCLUSION

Scholars have argued that alternative rights paradigms play an impor-

tant role in decolonial struggles and the creation of nonliberal alternatives
in Latin American indigenous communities (Reyes 2012). However, the
Achilles’ heel of some alternative rights paradigms has been the question
of women’s continued oppression in communal systems (Paredes 2008).
This article has contributed to this issue through an in-depth case study
that highlights the importance of understanding labor as a key element of
alternative rights paradigms and women’s political participation in nonlib-
eral contexts. As such, it emphasizes how the question of women’s roles
and political participation in many indigenous communities is not just
about an abstract notion of participation, but rather about the very tangible
and powerful effects of quotidian labor practices. Gendered labor pro-
foundly structures these rights paradigms, lived “in practice.”
Consequently, this article posits that nonliberal systems themselves are
not by nature “bad” for indigenous women, as some feminists would
argue (Okin 1999); rather, the issue centers on the gendered political
economies that structure these systems. In this sense, it supports literature
on gendered complementarity that argues that separate gendered spheres
of labor are not invariably deterrents to greater equality for women
(Sieder and Macleod 2009). However, this only works if separate labored
spheres are given equal value within alternative rights paradigms. In the

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 Worthen / INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S POLITICAL PARTICIPATION 931

case of Yatzachi, this means valuing women’s informal labors of social

reproduction to the same extent as men’s official labors, and qualifying
both as work that counts for the earning of local political rights.
Likewise, this research provides another example of indigenous women
rejecting liberal government intervention into their communities
(Blackwell 2012). In this case, it demonstrates that women are not adverse
to the idea of the importance of women’s participation as espoused by this
intervention. Rather, they are adverse to the terms of what participation
would mean: Being forced to take on town council posts that increase
their labor exploitation within the communal system.
Finally, these findings have implications for those working to promote
gender equality in nonliberal settings. They add to numerous feminist argu-
ments about the undervaluation of women’s social reproductive work and
the role this plays in women’s political marginalization in liberalism.
However, by focusing on how this plays out in nonliberal contexts, this
article also emphasizes the failings of liberal rights paradigms to compre-
hend women’s political participation in relation to alternative forms of
labor and value. This is outlined in the final point of the women’s letter, in
which they posit that the Oaxacan electoral institute will probably not be
able to comprehend the logic behind women’s denial to take on town cargo
posts. Accordingly, initiatives attempting to promote indigenous women’s
political participation in Latin America should explore the alternative
notions of rights that exist in these contexts in order to support indigenous
women’s self-defined struggles of gender equality within communal
systems.

NOTES

1. Although the recognition of indigenous difference and implementation of

multicultural policies in Oaxaca mirrored other multicultural initiatives through-
out Latin America, it was an anomaly within Mexico. The Zapatista movement
sought to promote multicultural legislation on the federal level and was met with
limited success; meanwhile, the Oaxacan state government made its own legisla-
tive advances.
2. For the specifics of international pressure, see the 2012 report by the
United Nations on Mexico’s compliance with the Convention to Eliminate all
forms of Discrimination Against Women: http://www.unfpa.org.mx/publica-
ciones/CEDAW.pdf.
3. Names have been changed for privacy. Interviews were conducted in
Spanish, and all translations are by the author.

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932 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 2015

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Holly Worthen is a professor at the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociológicas

at the Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca in the state of
Oaxaca, Mexico. Her work focuses on gender, migration, development, and
indigenous politics.

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