Gendered Resistance: How Indigenous Men and Women Defend Territory in Mexico’s Tehuantepec Isthmus

• In Event: 4204 - Theorizing Resistance

Abstract

Drawing on interviews and ethnographic research with grassroots activists opposing a Special Economic Zone in Southern Mexico, this paper shows how mobilizations for defense of territory and natural resources in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec both reinforce as well as transform the atypical matrifocal gender relations of the indigenous towns under study. The political economy literature on environmental violence is often gender-blind, and indigenous women’s roles and experiences in this region’s rich tradition of community activism have been underexplored and undertheorized. To address this gap, my research unpacks how recent Zapotec feminist ideologies intersect with activists’ other social identities to shape the distinct organizational forms through which men and women of different social statuses mobilize for environmental justice and social change.

Author

• Alessandro Morosin, UC Riverside