Subordination and rebellion: Indigenous peasant women in Chiapas ten years after the Zapatista uprising

The aim of this analysis is to examine the most significant shifts in gender identity that have occurred among indigenous women in Chiapas since the appearance there of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation during January 1994. These changes can be characterized by two contradictory developments: on the one hand, events have reproduced and reinforced, to a greater or lesser extent, the situation of subordination in which peasant women lived before. On the other hand, events have encouraged not just the political participation of peasant women, but also their rebellion against the subordinate position they have been assigned in the gender, class and ethnic hierarchies. Such rebellion, it is argued here, entails an increasing consciousness of oppression, and, above all, the willingness to struggle for a different form of gender relations and social organization in rural Chiapas.