Insurgency, Land Rights and Feminism: Zapatista Women Building Themselves as Political Subjects

Abstract

This article discusses how Zapatista women have built themselves as transformative political subjects that disrupt the racist, classist, and patriarchal nation-state. It underscores the importance of reflecting on Zapatista women, on their struggle for particular demands specified in the Revolutionary Women’s Law, especially the collective struggle for obtaining rights such as to land, to participate politically, and to organize themselves in the armed struggle. Instead of entering into debate over whether Zapatista women are feminists or not, this article recognizes how, besides transforming living conditions, the Zapatistas have organized politically and gone from a process of invisibility, silence, and obedience to one of recognition, speech, and command. In this sense, the struggle of Zapatista women is an example of theoretical and practical ruptures within the history of class, gender, and race struggled in Mexico and the world.