Obstacles facing women’s grassroots development strategies in Mexico

Review of Radical Political Economics 33 (2001) 441– 460 www.elsevier.com/locate/revra

Obstacles facing women’s grassroots development strategies in Mexico Christine E. Ebera, Janet M. Tanskib* a

New Mexico State University, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, P.O. Box 30001, Department 3BV, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA b New Mexico State University, Department of Economics, P.O. Box 30001, Department 3CQ, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA Received 29 December 1999; accepted 19 July 2000

Abstract Women in the indigenous township of San Pedro Chenalho´, Chiapas have responded to economic crisis and structural adjustment in Mexico with cooperative survival strategies. While women have obtained a certain level of empowerment through these strategies, they have also faced severe obstacles to the development and success of their grassroots initiatives. This article examines the transformative potential of the women’s collective projects, analyzes the obstacles they face, and considers the implications of the case of Chenalho´ for other marginalized communities facing similar impediments to grassroots development. © 2001 URPE. All rights reserved. JEL codes: J16; J12 Keywords: Mexico; Women’s grassroots development

1. Introduction In response to the economic crises that have accompanied increasing globalization, trade liberalization, and structural adjustment programs, Mexican women have used a variety of individual and household-based survival strategies. Women’s responses include informal economic activities, such as producing or buying and selling items like food, firewood, Tel.: ⫹1-505-646-3821. E-mail: [email protected]. * Corresponding author. Tel.: ⫹1-505-646-2113; fax: ⫹1-505-646-1915 E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Tanski). 0486-6134/01/$ – see front matter © 2001 URPE. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 4 8 6 - 6 1 3 4 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 1 0 2 - 4

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agricultural products, weavings, embroidery work, or imported goods. Women sell these items on the street, in informal market places, or from the home. Other strategies include subcontracting, trading fieldwork for part of a neighbor’s harvest, taking children out of school, buying less food or not seeking health care, and migration of family members to cities, other states, and countries in search of employment. These strategies may enable a household to eke out an existence, but at the cost of increasing the burdens on women and children, and without challenging existing economic and social structures. As women have become aware of the costs of survival strategies to themselves and their children, they have organized collective projects which move beyond survival to transform consumption relations within households and the public sector “so as to put more resources at women’s disposal and enhance women’s dignity, autonomy, and bargaining power” (Elson 1992:42). In this article we explore the collective strategies of women in San Pedro Chenalho´ , an indigenous township in Chiapas, Mexico. San Pedro Chenalho´ is a mostly indigenous municipality in the mountainous central highlands of Chiapas, the southeastern state in Mexico where the armed uprising, led by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), occurred in January 1994. The population of the township is 30,680 (Viqueira 1995: 25) and the dominant language is Tzotzil, a Mayan language. Chenalho´ is located thirty-seven kilometers from San Cristo´ bal de Las Casas, the urban center of the highlands. From this political and economic center nonindigenous people (called Ladinos) have dominated the region since colonization. Following the Zapatista uprising, a strong base of support developed in Chenalho´ for the Zapatista movement. Today the township has two municipal governments, one that is “autonomous” and loyal to the EZLN, and another that remains affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the ruling party in Mexico. Our discussion of women’s activities in Chenalho´ is based on anthropological fieldwork and applied work with cooperatives in which Eber has been engaged since 1987. Details about women’s cooperative activities since the Zapatista uprising are based on interviews with individual women and taped group discussions with two cooperatives: Tsobol Antzetik (Women United), a weaving cooperative, and Mujeres Marginadas (Marginalized Women), a baking cooperative in a Zapatista support base. These interviews and discussions took place in the summers of 1996, 1997, and 1998. This paper is part of a larger research project (in progress) in which Eber and Tanski examine the effects of globalization and structural change upon women in Mexico and in Chiapas. Through their grassroots1 projects, women in Chenalho´ are surviving economic crises, challenging oppressive social relations and conditions, and becoming conscious of themselves as women. Despite their transformative potential, women’s collective projects in Chenalho´ face a variety of obstacles, including women’s untenable work load and male dominance; resistance from traditionally minded family members; internalized oppression; limited technical skills; limited access to markets; lack of credit; the lack of a social justice

1 In this article we follow Buystydzienski and Sekhon’s (1999: 9) definition of grassroots as community-based initiatives that emerge or work at the local level to address issues of practical concern to the constituents, and that are generally committed to bettering the lives of local people.

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ethic in the global marketplace; and political repression and the low-intensity war. In this article, we also examine these obstacles to women’s grassroots development efforts. We use a feminist political economy perspective in our analysis of women’s grassroots strategies in Chenalho´ for several reasons. First, feminist studies of peasant societies conclude that women in these societies play a much larger role in agriculture and householdbased production than previously recognized (see Deere 1995). Rural women generate income through marketing activities, artisan production, and wage labor. During the period of economic crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, both rural and urban women intensified their varied income-generating activities. We argue that women’s labor in Chenalho´ not only makes a significant contribution to the well-being and economic productivity of their households, but is also crucial in developing alternatives to the model that the Mexican government and the global economy have attempted to impose on them. Second, a feminist perspective makes evident the values that underlie neoclassical economic theory (Strassman 1997) and, thus, the values that drive the global economy. Economists working within the neoclassical framework seem to assume that individualism, self-interest, and competition are “natural” values that need not be questioned. By taking women’s grassroots initiatives seriously, we show how women in cooperatives in Chenalho´ hold different values, for example, cooperation, reciprocity, and community. We also demonstrate how they are building upon these values to both confront the negative aspects of globalization, and to lay the groundwork for viable alternatives to global capitalism. Third, we use a feminist political economy perspective to interrelate gender, ethnicity, and class in order to understand the multiple levels of indigenous women’s oppression.2 This perspective also enables us to recognize the many obstacles women face in their struggle to confront, as well as to create alternatives to, typical forms of integration into the global market. The first section of our paper gives a brief overview of how macroeconomic policies and economic crises have affected the Mexican population. The second section describes women’s collective strategies in San Pedro Chenalho´ , and the transformative potential of these strategies for women’s lives. Section three enumerates and analyzes the obstacles facing women in their collective production methods. Our conclusion considers the implications of the case of Chenalho´ for the potential to create viable models of economic development in other marginalized and factionalized communities.

2. Macroeconomic policies, crises, and women Since the mid-1980s, the Mexican government has been directing the total restructuring of the Mexican economy. This restructuring has taken place in response to the debt crisis and International Monetary Fund (IMF) guidelines, but also in response to the internal limits of

2 See, for example, Mies (1986), Bronstein (1982), Yelvington (1995); the readings in Bose and Acosta-Bele´ n (1995) and Visvanathan, Duggan, Nisonoff, and Wiegersma (1997); and the RRPE special issue on Women in the International Economy, Vol. 23, Nos. 3 & 4 (1991).

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Table 1 Trends in income distribution in Mexico (1984 –1996)

1st quintile 2nd quintile 3rd quintile 4th quintile 5th quintile Gini coefficient

1984

1989

1992

1994

1996

4.35 8.65 13.82 21.87 51.30 .429

4.39 8.47 13.19 20.4 53.56 .469

4.28 8.39 12.85 20.29 54.18 .475

4.35 8.31 12.74 20.08 54.53 .477

4.79 8.84 13.29 20.45 52.63 .456

Source: Banamex, March 1999.

import-substitution industrialization (ISI).3 In the mid-1980s, the Mexican government began to privatize parastatal firms, deregulate markets and prices, liberalize trade, devalue the currency, reduce social spending, and promote foreign investment and exports on the basis of export-oriented industrialization (EOI). In the 1990s, the focus has been on further deregulation, privatization, and reliance on foreign investment and exports. While certain macroeconomic indicators have often been hopeful (e.g., high GDP growth rates, strong growth in exports, and relatively low levels of inflation), data on income distribution and poverty reveal a darker picture. The average real wages for the entire Mexican work force in 1995 were 69.7 percent of their 1980 level. In August of 1998, real average incomes in the manufacturing sector (including salaries, wages, and benefits) were 82.9 percent of the average in 19.93 (INEGI 1998). In January 1999, the real income of employees in retail establishments (the importance of which has increased since 1982) was approximately 81.2 percent of the average for 1994 (INEGI 1998). The average4 nominal minimum daily wage in January 2000 was 35.2 pesos (approximately $3.50 US); this represents a real minimum daily wage that is only 30.4 percent of its 1980 level (INEGI 1998, Zedillo 1999, SourceMex 1/12/00).5 While the majority of households currently have daily incomes that are greater than the minimum wage (at least according to official statistics), the minimum wage is still a yardstick by which a household’s

3

ISI reached its limits in Mexico due to many factors, including Mexico’s inability to continue importing due to uncompetitive export prices, and because of the highly unequal distribution of income and high percentage of the population living in poverty by the end of the 1960s and early 1970s. This inequality severely restricted the purchasing power of the population. 4 There are officially three different minimum daily wage rates which correspond to three different geographic zones. Zone A (which includes Mexico City) has the highest rate, 37.9 pesos ($3.98). Although the minimum wage is a legislated wage floor for the formal sector, there is no enforcement of this wage in the informal sector. 5 The daily minimum nutritionally-sound food basket in Mexico City in May 2000 for one adult costs approximately 16 pesos. Add another 33.0 pesos for electricity, gas, water, and urban bus transportation for a total of 49 pesos minimum cost of living. This cost of living does not include items such as rent, medical expenses, clothing, and personal necessities; hence, 1.4 minimum wages are necessary to simply survive (Tanski, personal interviews).

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Table 2 Poverty estimates in Mexico (1984 –1999)

% of the total population: Living in extreme poverty Living in extreme ⫹ Intermediate poverty % of the rural population: Living in extreme poverty Living in extreme ⫹ Intermediate poverty

1984

1989

1992

1999

15.4 42.5

18.8 47.7

16.1 44.0

28.0 43.0

25.4 53.5

27.9 57.0

25.7 54.9

na na

na ⫽ not available. Source: Poverty data from INEGI-CEPAL 1993, cited in Banamex 1998, and Banamex 1999.

income is often measured.6 In 1998 approximately 42 percent of the employed urban population received the equivalent of less than two daily minimum wages, that is, less than $10 US per day (INEGI 1998). Along with falling real wages for the majority of the Mexican population, class differentiation sharpened, due in part to worsening income distribution during the years of adjustment and trade liberalization (see Table 1). Between 1984 and 1994, the bottom 40 percent of the population saw a reduction in its income share from 13.0 percent to 12.7 percent, while the top 20 percent increased its share from 51.3 percent of national income to 54.5 percent. Although the Gini coefficient fell between 1994 and 1996, it increased 2.476 in 1998 due to the sharp increase in extreme poverty (Banamex 2000). The percentage of the total population living in extreme poverty (when the total income of the household is less than the value of the food basket) increased from 15 percent in 1984 to 28 percent in 1999 (see Table 2). The percentage of the total population living in poverty (extreme and intermediate)7 was estimated at 43 percent in 1999 (Banamex 1999). Rural poverty has been historically higher. Approximately 54.9 percent of the rural population in 1992 lived in poverty (extreme plus intermediate). Although the official open unemployment rate was 2.8 percent in 1998, the lowest figure in five years, when various levels of underemployment are considered the level of underemployment is as high as 25 percent (Banamex 1997:295). Calva (1995) estimates that the number of people unemployed (or who emigrated) grew from 1.4 million in 1982 to 10.4 million in 1992 (Calva 1995:168), reflecting the diminishing ability of the economy to absorb

6 In 1996, approximately 3.0 percent of Mexican households (each with an average of 4.5 people) received an income equivalent of one minimum wage or less, 13.5 percent received an equivalent of one to two minimum wages, 16.9 percent received an equivalent of two to three minimum wages, and 15.6 percent had an equivalent of three to four minimum wages. Thus, 49.0 percent of Mexican households in 1996 subsisted on less than the peso equivalent of $12.80 U.S. per day or less. 7 Intermediate poverty is defined as a household income which is above what is necessary for the basic food basket but less than twice that amount. See Banamex (1999).

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the increasing labor force. In the manufacturing sector, considered the most “dynamic” sector of the economy, the number of wage workers was lower in 1997 than in 1993 (INEGI 1998). Economists have shown that in Latin America increasing global competition, trade liberalization, and the adoption of structural adjustment programs have had unequal effects on national populations (see, for example, Lustig 1995). The poor and middle class are the most likely to be negatively affected. Women face disproportionately negative consequences from the adjustment strategies which have been implemented (Acosta-Bele´ n and Bose 1995; Alonso 1989; Arizpe and Botey 1987; Benerı´a 1992; Feldman 1992; Tanski 1994). Structural adjustment policies affect women in the aggregate in many ways. Falling real wages, the elimination of food subsidies, and rising prices reduce women’s spending power as food providers. Rising prices affect the purchasing power of women’s wages more negatively than men’s, since women are concentrated in low-wage jobs. In recessions, women’s employment prospects in higher-waged manufacturing jobs tend to deteriorate; also during recessions women’s jobs are likely to be threatened more than men’s because many women are employed in less-skilled occupations easily replaced by machines. Further, women tend to be involved in temporary or part-time work, often because there is no other work available to them (United Nations 1985:10). In Mexico, rates of unemployment are higher for women than for men in Mexico (Tanski and Eber 2000). It is estimated that 61.5 percent of employed women have no unemployment benefits (Gonza´ lez Marı´n 1997). Also, increased participation in income-generating activities in both the formal and informal sectors lengthens the work-day of women, since it is upon their shoulders that domestic work falls most heavily (Tanski and Eber 2000). Not only do trade liberalization and structural adjustment fail to take into account the processes of social reproduction and maintenance of human resources, they also increase the burdens on this unpaid reproductive economy. Cuts in public expenditure on health care, education, and social services often increase the workload on women, since the reproduction and maintenance of human resources is nonremunerated work in which women are more intensively involved than men (Elson 1992). At the same time, cuts in social spending undermine the ability of women to contribute to productive activities. The cuts often weaken their economic position by limiting their income and their opportunities, and also by burdening their health with elevated levels of stress and exhaustion. Even when macroeconomic perspectives treat reproduction, they fail to disaggregate households to examine the different positions of women and men within them, thereby ignoring the implications of households as sites for the subordination of women.8 In the case of San Pedro Chenalho´ , Chiapas, few women work in wage labor. Those who do generally receive less than the minimum wage because the minimum wage is not enforced in Chiapas or because they work in the informal sector, for example as servants.9 The majority of women in Chenalho´ are involved extensively in nonremunerated work. Tradi-

8

For an in-depth analysis of the effects of structural adjustment on women in Mexico, see Tanski and Eber (2000). 9 Very few indigenous women in Chenalho´ are employed. Women who are employed usually work in government programs as teachers or health promoters. Some women receive a wage as servants in the homes of non-indigenous women in the head town. Some are also clerks in stores owned by these women or their families.

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tionally, indigenous women’s work has been household based, and includes tasks such as food preparation, caring for children and small animals, collecting water, and weaving cloth for clothing and other household uses. Women also work in the corn and bean fields; however, field work has been traditionally defined as men’s work. Most women marry at a young age and have large families; parents depend greatly upon children’s labor in both households and fields. Women in Chenalho´ work under conditions that dramatically limit their opportunities to advance their economic status. For example, in 1990, 78 percent of households in Chenalho´ had no electricity and 92.3 percent did not have drainage for sewage. Only 3.3 percent of households had running water in their homes. The majority of women must haul water from distant water sources.10 In 97.8 percent of the houses women cook with firewood (INEGI 1990). Lack of clean accessible water and the fact that women cook with firewood inside their homes have grave health consequences for women and their families. In Chenalho´ the rate of maternal death (death of a woman during pregnancy, childbirth, or within 42 days after) is many times higher than the national average, and ranks second to death caused by diarrhea and intestinal infections (Freyermuth Enciso, Garza, and Torres 1997). Child mortality is also high in Chenalho´ . In a census conducted in a hamlet of Chenalho´ , 45 women reported losing 75 children from malnutrition and various easily preventable diseases (Eber 1995:74). In addition to poor living conditions, markets, transportation, health care facilities, and other social services are a long distance from women’s homes (INEGI 1997). Trade liberalization and structural adjustment policies have only made economic conditions worse for most women in Chenalho´ . Agriculture has become an increasingly less viable means of subsistence due to cutbacks in subsidies, reforms to Article 27 of the constitution,11 and a reduction in credit to small farmers. Other factors affecting agriculture include the elimination of the Conasupo,12 increasing competition from imports leading to price declines, and the dismantling of agricultural cooperatives in the context of the low-intensity war. Also, poor infrastructure continues to inhibit marketing products from indigenous regions. All of these conditions have forced women and their families to find alternative means to earn cash to survive13 (Tanski and Eber n.d.).

10

The majority of households in Chenalho´ are located several kilometers away from the San Pedro River, one source of water for household use. Some hamlets located near the municipal center of the township have holding tanks that are fed by water piped in from distant mountain springs. Communal holding tanks or ponds which collect rainwater are located in most hamlets. Rainwater is also collected in clay pots, although rainfall is scarce during April and May. 11 Article 27 of the 1917 Mexican Constitution constituted Mexico’s agrarian reform law which placed upper limits on the size of landholdings, and laid the ground for the redistribution of land to landless peasants. Most of the land distribution was carried out by the administration of President La´ zaro Ca´ rdenas. The 1992 reform of Article 27 effectively terminated land distribution (Tanski and Eber n.d.). 12 Conasupo was the national government’s food-buying and distribution company. 13 For a more in-depth description of the ways in which globalization and structural adjustment have affected the people of Chenalho´ , see Tanski and Eber (n.d.).

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3. Collective responses and their transformative potential in San Pedro Chenalho´ As poverty has deepened and milpa14 production has become increasingly less viable, more and more members of civil society15 have become involved in alternative social groups, either through becoming affiliated with religious organizations or joining artisan or agricultural cooperatives. In these groups, people from Chenalho´ have been able to work with others to overcome economic hardships, capture a degree of independence, and somewhat redirect outsiders’ interests to serve their own desire for decentralization and autonomy.16 Women began to join cooperatives in the 1960s as a way to circumvent the exploitative markets that dominated craft sales up until that time. Before the women had access to cooperatives, the only outlets open to women to sell their weavings were stores operated by non-indigenous people in San Cristo´ bal de Las Casas. Shopkeepers purchased the weavings for a small fraction of their value, and then later sold them to tourists for a large profit. The first cooperatives were sponsored by the government (Morris 1991). Women who joined these cooperatives benefitted by receiving higher prices, but were not involved with the business aspects of these groups. As the economic crisis deepened in the 1980s, households became increasingly dependent for survival upon the cash, however little, that women provided (Rus 1995). More and more women began to turn to producing artisan goods for the tourist market. In a census conducted in 1987 and 1988, Diane Rus (1990) found that as many as 60 percent of women in some hamlets of the neighboring township of Chamula were involved in producing artisan goods. Cooperatives have proliferated since the 1994 Zapatista uprising. One important social context in which women are creating cooperatives are Zapatista support bases (hamlet-level groups ranging from 25 to 200 men, women, and teenagers who meet weekly to apply the Zapatista agenda to their local realities). Zapatista support bases are located in 38 of Chenalho´ ’s 99 hamlets, and approximately 11,000 people belong to these bases. Another approximately 4,000 people in Chenalho´ belong to Civil Society Las Abejas, a group of Catholics committed to social justice through nonviolent means. Las Abejas has support bases in 25 communities. Grassroots economic projects (such as baking and weaving cooperatives) have become an important aspect of women’s work in both Zapatista and Las Abejas support bases (see Eber 1999) Women’s cooperative production has transformative potential in the ways it challenges both existing gender ideologies and domination by indigenous elites and the PRI. Women express this transformative potential by: (1) seeking greater autonomy in small decentralized

14

Corn and bean plots. “Civil society” in Chenalho´ refers to citizens who do not support the PRI. The civil society sector consists of about half of the township population. 16 Class differences remain substantial between non-indigenous people and indigenous people. However, within indigenous communities class distinctions have not been as salient a characteristic of social relations; most people have little land and few opportunities to earn cash. Nevertheless, since the 1940s, a small group of indigenous men in Chenalho´ and in other highland townships have become rich through representing the PRI’s interests in their township (Rus 1994). A critique of these men has intensified within the Catholic Liberation Theology movement and the Zapatista movement (Eber forthcoming). 15

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cooperatives, which the women themselves manage; (2) preserving and strengthening their cultural heritages within their communities; (3) obtaining greater political awareness; (4) participating more extensively in the political affairs of their communities; and (5) attempting to create alternative economic development strategies. Below we briefly discuss women’s activities in these areas. 3.1. Autonomy through decentralized cooperative production Based on their experiences with the government and due to intensifying political repression, women in civil society know that social justice concerns are not an integral part of the PRI’s economic programs. Women in Chenalho´ ’s cooperatives are wary of representatives of both governmental and nongovernmental agencies, since these representatives (although often wellmeaning) have dominated women, and have sometimes used women artisans for personal gain (Eber 2000; Tanski and Eber n.d.). In their cooperatives, women prefer a decentralized structure which allows them greater autonomy. Working in their homes and meeting infrequently provides protection to women in their work, as well as keeps them keenly aware of whose interests are being served by the programs that the government agencies or nongovernmental groups would draw them into. From their perspective, their cooperative structure also fits well with their lives, because it does not drastically unsettle the gender ideology in indigenous communities which associates women with proximity to home and with household-based labor. Women in cooperatives use attributes that make them appear conservative—working in the home and confining their movements to areas around their homes—to create and sustain alternatives to the domination and control of power brokers in and outside their communities. 3.2. Preservation of cultural heritage In their cooperatives, women also strengthen their cultural heritages within their communities by engaging in dialogues about the changing meanings and purposes of their people’s traditions (Eber 1999). Their adaptivity challenges stereotypes of women as bulwarks of tradition. At the same time, women in Chenalho´ ’s cooperatives defend many traditions that to outsiders seem to perpetuate their subordination. For example, women in Mujeres Marginadas, the Zapatista bakery, and Tsobol Antzetik, the independent weaving cooperative, have decided to defend traditions such as arranged marriages, and labor-intensive work such as weaving their families’ clothing and making ritual foods. Women say that these traditions undergird respectful and reciprocal social relations. Women’s defense of traditions seems to reflect socialization into traditional gender roles, and thus appears to be an impediment to social equality/justice. However, women are analyzing the roots of their own oppression within the context of valuable cultural traditions that they share with their kinsmen.17

17 For a discussion of reasons why women defend traditions that appear to make them subordinate to men, see Eber (1999).

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3.3. Greater political awareness Women’s increased political awareness and participation in political affairs argues persuasively for the transformative potential of cooperatives. In co-ops women create spaces for personal growth as well as new political and social roles for themselves in their households, communities, the national economy, and to an extent, the world economy. In group meetings women reflect upon the social injustices that they face at the personal level, as well as those suffered in the society at large. They discuss issues such as why there are no health clinics or other services in their communities, why the government never takes their peaceful protests seriously, and why their children have to work instead of going to school like non-indigenous children. Women’s weekly meetings in cooperatives also enable them to express solidarity with other women. In these groups women create networks of support that are unique in the history of Chenalho´ in the sense that they reduce any tendency for women to be isolated in their homes, and they extend women’s support networks beyond kinship relations, the traditional context within which women live out their lives. In the context of working with nonkinswomen, friendships have developed. 3.4. Increased political participation In their group meetings women also reflect on the Zapatista agenda for women’s rights and economic progress, and assess ways in which these have meaning for their lives. Women members of Zapatista support bases were crucial in formulating the demands that became part of the San Andre´ s Accords.18 In relation to the economy, women demand the right to receive loans, support for commercial activities, and land in agrarian distribution. Zapatista supporters make a strong ideological link between their economic projects and a world-wide movement of oppressed people to be free from domination. The Tzotzil phrase Zapatista supporters use to describe the movement for democracy and autonomy is “Ta jpastik sk’op ta sventa sunul Mexico xiuck sunul banamil” (We are struggling to unite all Mexico and the world). Through their reflection on their own lives and on the Zapatista agenda, women have placed social justice at the center of their cooperative work and visions of development. This vision unites local ideas (about an enduring connection to lands and ancestral traditions) with an inclusive understanding of progress which is dependent upon the freedom of all people from oppressive social relations.

18

The San Andre´ s Accords were signed on February 16, 1996 by representatives of the EZLN and the federal government. These accords outlined joint proposals for a new relationship of respect and cooperation between indigenous communities and the federal government, including political autonomy and self-determination for indigenous pueblos. For a translation of the accords, see http://www.criscenzo.com/jaguar/sanandre.html (distributed by Jaguar Books, Clearwater, Florida).

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3.5. Grassroots economic alternatives Women’s cooperatives in Chenalho´ also represent an economic alternative to structural adjustment and increased globalization. While the forces of globalization would have peasants in Chenalho´ either produce cash crops or migrate to work on large farms which produce cash crops (Tanski and Eber n.d.), the cooperative structure focuses on local development, using technology which is more appropriate for local communities. The cooperative structure also allows for local control over resources and production.

4. Obstacles to growth of grassroots development strategies The grassroots initiatives that women in Chenalho´ are pursuing involve a profound social transformation. Encompassing as they do a critique against all forms of domination, including economic, political, and cultural, these economic strategies amount to an alternative understanding of development built upon local conceptions of meaningful work and social relations (Gutierrez 1973). Admittedly, the women’s current grassroots efforts are survival strategies; as yet they do not constitute models for development per se. For these efforts to be models of viable economic development for the indigenous communities, several obstacles would have to be overcome. Obstacles exist in different forms on several levels, from the local to international. Viable solutions require recognizing both the problems and solutions at all levels. 4.1. Women’s untenable work load and male dominance Even before women began to join cooperatives, they worked longer hours than can be healthfully sustained. Cooperative work has added to women’s work and stress. Women cooperative leaders, especially, experience exhaustion from the addition of organizational work to housework, childcare, fieldwork, and weaving for household use or for sale. Married women leaders with children face the greatest obstacles and the most stress. Women in one Zapatista support base decided that only single or divorced women should be leaders, as it was just too difficult for mothers to provide for child care and meet other demands on their time while away at meetings. These women also said that it was too soon to push their kinsmen to take over some of their work so that women could be leaders. Women in Mujeres Marginadas worked out a complementary relationship with their kinsmen, such that the men would contribute support in the form of providing firewood to bake the bread, repairing the oven when needed, and selling the bread. Solutions such as these, combined with the rewards women receive through co-op work (e.g., cash earnings, raised self-esteem, improved business skills, and a sense of solidarity between women and between men and women), often compensate for the additional work and stress that co-op work entails.

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4.2. Resistance from traditionally minded family members Despite their important cash contributions to their households,19 many women stay out of cooperatives due to the disturbance that it often causes among family members (Eber and Rosenbaum 1993; Eber 1999). Many townspeople, especially male elders, criticize women who travel outside of their communities to attend meetings and who speak their minds in community assemblies. Women who do so are often the brunt of rumors and gossip. Even younger men in Zapatista and Las Abejas bases may resent women’s changing roles, and may try to control their spouses’ or sisters’ movements and activities. Sometimes men’s resistance takes violent forms as occurred when Rosa Go´ mez, an indigenous woman from Jitotol, Chiapas, was killed with a machete by her spouse. He reportedly resented her frequent trips to meetings to discuss women’s issues, even though she participated with her spouse in a peasant organization (Herna´ ndez Castillo 1998).20 Women’s increasing access to cash income is also something that their spouses may resent. While women continue to uphold their core identities through weaving and food preparation, men can no longer rely to as great an extent on milpa farming as a central aspect of their identities. Faced with this imbalance in traditional ideas about gender complementarity in work, women sometimes bring their spouses into cooperative work as advisors, mediators with outlets, or as “body guards” to protect them while carrying receipts. In general, spouses have been supportive of their weaver spouses, but at one time or another most have shown resentment to their spouses over their greater potential to earn cash. 4.3. Physical and psychological suffering related to racism and poverty Indian women in Mexico are triply oppressed by race, gender, and class. Grinding poverty and racism erode health and well-being, and sometimes make women doubt their personal worth. Given this legacy in Chenalho´ , it is remarkable that the majority of women in the township get up before dawn everyday with the conviction that it is possible to provide a better life for themselves and their families. Nevertheless, at different points in their lives, most women and

19 Studies suggest that increased income under women’s control has a positive impact on children’s welfare (Tripp 1981:15–22; Mencher 1988:99 –119). These studies conclude that women devote more of their incomes than men to the household’s daily subsistence and nutrition (Jaquette 1993:52). Although such studies have yet to be conducted in relation to cooperatives in Chiapas, it is clear that the increased income benefits women’s families. 20 Up until very recently (January 2000), domestic violence was not considered a crime in Mexico. Experiences women have had with domestic violence and reprisals for political participation have compelled them to seek support from other women, and to create formal women’s organizations. Grupo de Mujeres (the Women’s Group) began in 1989 in San Cristo´ bal de Las Casas through a collaboration between indigenous and nonindigenous women formalized in Colectivo de Encuentro entre Mujeres - COLEM. Since its inception, the group has focused on educating women about their legal rights, responding to the needs of women migrants from rural areas to San Cristo´ bal de Las Casas, and investigating women’s health and welfare issues such as reproductive health and domestic and political violence (Freyermuth Enciso and Ferna´ ndez Guerrero 1995). Since the rebellion, the Women’s Group has documented 50 cases of violence against women in Chiapas linked to political reprisals. K’inal Anzetik is an NGO in San Cristo´ bal which has also taken a leadership role in organizing women to confront male dominance.

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men are oppressed by their own and others’ physical and psychological suffering. Many men have sought release in alcohol, and have taken out their grief, despair, and anger in violent outbursts directed at their kinswomen. Women, too, have used alcohol in these ways (Eber 1995). Internalized oppression expressed in fear and low self-esteem can block women and men from becoming involved in activities and organizations to improve their lives. 4.4. Limited technical skills Even with the access to markets, women lack many of the technical skills to compete in the global marketplace. These skills include basic ones such as literacy, numeracy, and the use of postal services, and more advanced ones such as learning how to create business plans to increase and maintain earnings, and to use computers. Nongovernmental organizations have been assisting women to develop these skills (Castro Apreza n.d.). 4.5. Limited access to markets Lack of access to markets, especially fair trade ones, is another formidable obstacle to realizing the transformative potential of cooperatives. Infrastructural changes need to occur in the communities at many different levels (e.g., roads, electricity, telephones and other forms of telecommunications, including fax machines and internet hookups) in order to facilitate this access. Women also need to increase their contacts outside the community for commodity outlets. Language barriers between local indigenous communities and outside (including international) markets must be overcome. Also desirable would be a decreased monopolization over markets by middle-persons and merchants, both indigenous and nonindigenous. Access to fair trade markets will have to expand enormously, and the fair trade network will have to increase its capacity to respond to marginalized producers, in order to be part of a viable solution to widespread poverty. For example, women in weaving cooperatives in Chenalho´ run the risk of waiting many months to receive pay even from fair-trade companies. These companies themselves struggle to keep afloat in the competitive global marketplace. Attempts to connect Tsobol Antzetik (a weaving cooperative in Chenalho´ ) to Pueblo to People, a respected alternative trading organization (ATO), are an example of these risks. In the fall of 1996, Pueblo to People sold a quantity of table runners from Tsobol Antzetik and, within a month of the order, it ordered five times as many more. Unfortunately, Pueblo to People was unable to pay its producer groups in a timely manner, and after three months the women had not yet received payment for the first order. While the weavers said that they thought that they could wait three months to be paid, they could not produce a large order without cash to buy the thread for it. High winds had destroyed many of the corn crops in Chenalho´ during this time, and many of the women needed to use whatever cash they could find to buy corn. They never filled the order for Pueblo to People, and as a result lost this outlet.21

21 Pueblo to People went out of business soon afterward. It had a long history of serving Third World craftspeople, but it was unable to resolve many of the problems that plague ATOs, cash flow being one of the most pressing. See Eber (2000) for an in-depth discussion of Tsobol Antzetik’s recent efforts to obtain fair markets.

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4.6. Lack of credit As the example of Pueblo to People shows, cash-flow is a constant preoccupation and obstacle that cooperatives face. After the problems related to filling the order for Pueblo to People, a loan fund, started through donations from U.S. supporters, was created to tide the women over in similar situations and to help them establish new income-generating projects. The loan fund softens some of the worst effects of the inequitable marketing relationships in Chiapas; however, it is, at best, a stop-gap measure. Structural adjustment reforms implemented since the mid-1980s have led to government cutbacks to small entrepreneurs, and especially to those without sufficient collateral. And since women do not have titles to land in Chenalho´ , they have no collateral. Relying on private banks is also impossible for women’s cooperatives, since lack of collateral is again an issue; however, even if women did have collateral, at interest rates which average 40 percent per month, few Pedranas would be able to benefit from such loans. At the same time, efforts by the Mexican government’s National Indigenous Institute to provide marketing assistance to weavers, like their intervention in coffee sales, has ceased. Microcredit programs, such as the Grameen Bank and Trickle Up, provide small loans to unemployed or underemployed people (see Smith n.d.). Such programs might very well be a means by which the poor and assetless women of the cooperatives in Chenalho´ could get access to much needed credit. Beginning as a small credit program in Bangladesh in 1976, Grameen became an independent national bank in 1983. The research that led to the initiation of the credit program revealed a gender dimension to poverty: it drew attention to women’s key contribution in household livelihood strategies among the poor, and their greater tendency to devote their incomes to family, rather than personal, welfare. While the bank began lending primarily to men, in the early 1990s women constituted over 90 percent of bank borrowers (Kabeer 1994:231). Over 2.5 billion dollars have been disbursed to over 2 million families, with a cumulative repayment rate of 98 percent. The Grameen Trust has funded replication projects worldwide, one of which is the bank in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas. It was established in 1997, and as of February 1999 had 221 borrowers, all of whom are women. The repayment rate is 100 percent and the total amount disbursed so far has been $12,876 U.S. (Grameen Foundation 1999). While this bank provides significant help for low-income women, access to Grameen credit services still implies substantial mobilization activities on the part of women, which by themselves are difficult to implement given language and other constraints. 4.7. The lack of a social justice ethic in the global marketplace In the late 1990s, cooperatives in Chiapas survived only through external support from nongovernmental agencies and church and solidarity groups in the United States and other countries (Castro Apreza n.d.; Rovira 1996: 199 –236; Eber 2000). Social justice is a core value of the economic relations that members of civil society are creating in their democracy and grassroots initiatives. Social justice is also of concern to the groups that support these initiatives. A serious gap exists between the values that motivate these two constituencies and the values that drive the globalization of the marketplace. The fair trade movement has

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come to fill this gap through its commitment to integrating issues of justice with trade (Grimes 2000). Alternative Trading Organizations (ATOs) not only fill a void between poor producers and politically-conscious consumers of First World countries, they also create a sense of community that women in Chenalho´ find supportive and to which they can relate more easily than the fierce competition that is typical of the global marketplace. Anthropologists and traders also mediate between poor producers and First World consumers. Taken together, these alternative market relationships generate exchanges of over $1 billion, thus sustaining the life chances of traditional producers and promoting the survival of their cultures. While these exchanges are interim measures, not viable in themselves as long-term solutions, they contribute to a hybridization of cultures in an ambiance of global universalism (Nash 2000). Nevertheless, the fact remains that few such alternative outlets exist for women’s grassroots production in Chiapas. 4.8. Political repression and the low-intensity war While women have been attempting to diversify their outlets and seek greater autonomy, political instability and violence in Chiapas has caused market demand to shrink, and has forced some women to give up cooperative work or has discouraged others from joining co-ops. Political repression of women in cooperatives did not begin recently. In Amatenango del Valle, in the 1980s, two women were murdered for leading a craft cooperative, and one woman for challenging the male-dominant civil-religious hierarchy by running for township president (Nash 1993). Currently, violence toward women in Chenalho´ has been exacerbated by the spread of the low-intensity war, a major component of which is the creation, support and maintenance of paramilitary groups in communities with large Zapatista support bases. Constrained by their truce with the EZLN and international public opinion, the Mexican military works through paramilitaries to repress alternatives to the PRI (Inda and Aubry 1997; Global Exchange 1998). With the military build-up and the proliferation of paramilitary groups, repression of women has intensified. Many indigenous women have been victims of rape and physical assault (Eber 1997; Herna´ ndez Castillo 1998:138). Throughout Chiapas prostitution and suicide, both previously uncommon in indigenous communities, have become a part of life (La Jornada January 27, 1997). By 1997, paramilitaries had a stronghold in seventeen of the sixty-one hamlets in Chenalho´ . During that year more and more members of civil society and even PRI supporters had to choose between fleeing for their lives or assisting paramilitaries to oppress others in their township. Under these conditions, thousands of people fled their homes to refugee camps in and around Polho´ , the center of the autonomous township. By the end of 1997, the number of townspeople in internal refugee camps reached almost one-third of the township population. Despite civil society’s efforts to restore peace in Chenalho´ , on December 22, 1997, in Acteal, Chenalho´ , 45 members of Las Abejas were massacred by the paramilitary group The Red Mask. Opponents to democracy in Chenalho´ view cooperatives as seedbeds of Zapatismo, even though many women in cooperatives are not Zapatistas. Women in the Zapatista cooperatives are at greater risk because their more radical ideas and practices anger their opponents

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even more. For example, Zapatista base members make strong statements about the allocation of community resources by refusing to use the water that comes to their hamlets from a distant water source via tubes financed by the PRI (Tanski and Eber n.d.). During dry periods, women and their families walk several kilometers to the river for water and to wash clothes. Zapatista base members also stopped paying their electricity bills, and refused any handouts from PRI, such as corrugated tin to construct better roofs. The low-intensity war has created an ambiance of fear and suspicion that makes it difficult for people to trust each other. Even within and between cooperatives, women sometimes distrust other women who have different political positions. Awareness of this obstacle has encouraged many women to work only with other women who share their same political commitments. For example, Mujeres Por La Dignidad (Women for Dignity) is a relatively new weaving cooperative of women Zapatistas from four highland Chiapas townships. The women in this cooperative must struggle to transcend language and cultural differences, but do not have to contend with the problems that might arise from political differences.22

5. Conclusion We have focused on women’s grassroots efforts in Chenalho´ , Chiapas, to provide empirical evidence of three key themes in feminist political economy. First, women’s production in cooperatives illustrates the important role that rural women play in generating income for their households and communities in the context of economic crisis and globalization. Not only do women make a significant economic contribution, their production is also crucial to developing grassroots economic alternatives to structural adjustment policies. Second, women’s efforts in Chenalho´ illustrate the influence of motivations and values in creating models of development. Women in the Chenalho´ cooperatives orient their production to collective well-being, and conceive of development as a total social phenomenon. They are skeptical of self-interest and competition as primary motivations for development. Last, women’s grassroots projects in Chenalho´ highlight the multiple levels of oppression indigenous women face in Mexico. Patriarchal attitudes and structures in society and in the household combine with widespread racism, class oppression, and violence. The violence that women

22

Since 1997, Mexican military positions (bases, camps, checkpoints, and barracks) have increased from 197 to 300 (La Jornada, April 23, 2000). In August 1999, 15,000 additional Mexican troops took up positions in the oil-rich Lacandon jungle, 6,000 allegedly to plant trees. Despite denials by the Mexican energy secretary and the director of the state-run oil company, PEMEX, that there are any substantial oil deposits in the Lacandon jungle (ibid.), respected oil experts have provided evidence for current oil drilling by foreign companies and plans for further exploration in Chiapas (Andre´ s Barreda and Rolando Espinosa 1999). At this writing in May 2000, the Mexican government is increasing the number of troops in Chiapas, and is repositioning them in Chenalho´ and in the Lacando´ n jungle, areas with strong bases of support for the EZLN. The government justifies its incursions into communities sympathetic to the EZLN by claiming that government presence is necessary to prevent violence stemming from “inter-ethnic feuding.” The government’s actions blatantly disregard recommendations made by Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, that the military be reduced as a sign of the government’s good faith (ibid).

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have experienced in the context of the current war, which represents the strong arm of globalization, is gendered, classed, and racist. Through their grassroots economic initiatives, women keep a space open for dialogue about equitable and just solutions to the economic and political problems in Chiapas. However, for their collective efforts to succeed, concerned individuals and groups, including co-op members, must bring social justice issues into dialogues about development, and push for their inclusion in international trade agreements (Nash 2000). Chenalho´ may appear to be an extreme case due to the low-intensity war there, but political turmoil is increasingly common in marginalized areas of the world in the throes of globalization. States throughout the world often resort to military force to repress resistance to their economic agendas (Elkins 1992). Indeed, increasing militarization in Chiapas is closely tied to Mexico’s greater integration into the world economy (Eber and Tanski n.d.) The experiences of women in Chenalho´ point to key changes that must occur for development to proceed with respect for human rights and women’s rights. In addition to integrating social justice issues into development, these women’s experiences argue for making economic policies and initiatives flexible enough to respect the local knowledge bases and experiences of communities where culture and tradition remain integral to identities. They also show the benefits of developing alliances between groups such as cooperatives, fair trade companies, trade unions, and environmental groups. Successful social movements in Latin America in the 1990s have tended to be those of small grassroots organizations with relatively narrow, concrete goals, that have joined forces with others in wider political organizations (Hellman 1997:18). However, in Chiapas the fear and suspicion that the low-intensity war has created, and the stalemate between the government and the Zapatistas, make the prospect of creating stable and broad-based alliances extremely difficult. Peace with justice must come to Chiapas and other similar embattled areas of the world in order for people to develop humane solutions to their economic problems.

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