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During the past six decades, rural women throughout the southeastern state of Oaxaca, Mexico, have comprised a significant percentage (currently the majority) of primary teachers. This article demonstrates that this phenomenon is a result of intertwining socioeconomic factors. It examines why expansion of the education system and economic opportunities may contribute to declining enrollment in teacher training programs even though the career remains a viable, and even desirable, choice for certain rural women.A teaching career provides rural residents of the southeastern Mexican state of Oaxaca the opportunity to work in a semi-professional, remunerated position rather than engaging in subsistence agricultural endeavors, low-paying wage labor, petty craft production, or vending. Additionally, it offers the promise of a "better life" for the individual and his or her children, as well as relocation to a larger town or urban area. The career of maestra (woman teacher) has been described as "the most prestigious and probably the most lucrative" occupation available to young rural Oaxaquenas (Pearlman 1981I281). 1 Earlier this century, entry into normal schools (teacher training institutions) was competitive, and demand definitely exceeded available space. Yet recently enrollments at normal schools throughout Oaxaca have declined dramatically. At the same time, population size and levels of education statewide have risen. This indicates that many individuals who previously would have pursued teaching as a profession are earning degrees in other fields, and suggests that teaching in general has become less desirable as a career choice for some Oaxaquenos, including rural women.This ethnographic study of maestras, based on two years of field research in urban and rural Oaxaca, has two objectives. The first goal is to analyze the experiences of and strategies used by a population of rural women who pursued teacher training and certification prior to and after 1984 (when the years of study required for a teaching degree were increased). The second is to explore how recent economic changes, including opportunities for other types of training and employment, may be contributing to a narrowing of the female population that seeks teaching from rural women to poorer rural women.

For decades following the 1910 to 1917 Mexican Revolution, rural maestros (teachers) in the Mexican state of Oaxaca were respected for their “vocation” and the hardships they suffered while working in poor, remote, rural communities where they played an instrumental role in forging a national culture. Since the early 1980s, politicization of Oaxaca's Local 22 of the national educators' union and work stoppages that close schools coupled with teachers' high salaries contribute to negative attitudes toward the profession. Using ethnographic data collected in Oaxaca among teachers and other members of the public, I discuss the support and opposition for federal teachers who practice what was long considered a “noble” profession, and union members' justifications of their labor actions.

Downloaded fromEthnographers face a dilemma once they become privy to sensitive information shared with them in the role of "friend" rather than in the role of researcher. The author explores this topic using as a case study information that emerged when friends in southern Mexico confided their personal experiences with sexual violence, arguing that it may be only through the sharing of confidences that firsthand accounts of responses to violence can enter the ethnographic record. Yet the women's concerns that their experiences might become public knowledge coincide with broader debates of researchers'preservation of informants'privacy, particularly when discussing culturally sensitive topics such as rape.