Lynn Stephen

Sexualities and Genders in Zapotec Oaxaca

towns highlights the importance of historical continuities and discontinuities in systems of gender and their relationship to class, ethnicity (earlier coded as race), and sexuality. The various sexual roles, relationships, and identities that characterize contemporary rural Oaxaca suggest that instead of trying to look historically for the roots of &dquo;homosexuality,&dquo; &dquo;heterosexuality,&dquo; or even the concept of &dquo;sexuality,&dquo; we should look at how different indigenous systems of gender interacted with shifting discourses of Spanish colonialism, nationalism, and popular culture to redefine gendered spaces and the sexual behavior within them. Clear differences between elites and those on the mar-

Women's weaving cooperatives in Oaxaca : An indigenous response to neoliberalism

Fieldwork in the Zapotec textile-producing community of Teotitlán del Valle from 2000 to 2004 suggests that indigenous responses to increased economic globalization and Mexico’s neoliberal economic policies do not always involve solutions of individualization, but can also generate collective efforts. From the late 1980s, textile cooperatives were first organized by women and most recently by men and women to such a degree that by the summer of 2004 about 15 percent of the local households were involved in textile cooperatives. In an attempt to bypass local merchant control of the textile industry and to gain political and cultural rights in their community and in the global market as independent artisans, these women pioneered a new era in gender relations.

The Creation and Re-creation of Ethnicity

areas of intellectual debate about indigenous identity in Latin America are focused on the relationship between class and ethnicity (Roseberry, 1989; Stephen, 1991), the relationship between indigenous ethnic identity and grass-roots political movements (Bonfil Batalla, 1987; Campbell, 1990, 1993; Kearney and Nagengast, 1990; Nagengast and Kearney, 1990; Mejia Pinero and Sarmiento Silva, 1987; Varese, 1988, 1991; Wright, 1988), and the validity of ethnicity as a category in postmodern discourse (Clifford, 1988; Roseberry, 1989; Stephen, 1989). I will use various expressions of Zapotec and Mixtec ethnic identity in Mexico and in the United States to illustrate three general points about the construction and use of indigenous identity that contribute to these debates. First, the form, content, and boundaries of ethnicity are created and re-created in response to specific political, economic, and social contexts, both past and present. Ethnic identities should be seen as a reflection and

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation and the National Democratic Convention

Political conventions usually provide dramatic moments, but the Convencion Nacional Democratico (National Democratic Convention-CND) called by the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberaci6n Nacional (Zapatista Army of National Liberation-EZLN) in San Cristobal and Aguascalientes, Chiapas, on August 6-9, 1994, had the potential to be a turning point in Mexican political history. Rarely has an indigenous political movement convened so many people in armed territory to defend its cause. Six thousand delegates turned out to discuss a wide range of national issues from a left perspective in a show of unity that offered tremendous hope to many. The officially sanctioned (but popularly protested) electoral victory of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary party-PRI) in national elections in August 1994 and subsequent meetings of the CND in 1994 and 1995 demonstrated the difficulties of translating the euphoria of the first meeting into a national political coalition capable of effecting widespread change. In February 1995 the invasion of Zapatista-held territory by the Mexican military resulted in the militarization of dozens of communities, the flight from their homes of thousands of indigenous refugees, and the destruction of the EZLNs installations in Aguascalientes. This event tested the strength of the CND-its ability to defend the gains of the Zapatistas and to continue promoting its agenda for change. Despite the continued low-intensity war in Chiapas and the economic crisis marked by the devaluation of the peso in December 1994, the womens and indigenous sectors of the CND have been successful in consolidating their constituencies and beginning to organize on a national level as the Convencion Nacional de Mujeres (National Womens

Testimony and Human Rights Violations in Oaxaca

Testimony can be an important tool for documenting human rights violations and achieving political and legal credibility when formal institutions for the defense of human rights are incapable of guaranteeing rights and providing impartial justice. The testifier is an active social agent engaged in a personal and collective performative act that can potentially broaden the meaning of truth to advance alternative and contested understandings of history and events. The case of Ramiro Aragón Pérez, Elionai Santiago Sánchez, and Juan Gabriel Ríos, who were falsely charged, tortured, and imprisoned in connection with the social movement in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2006, provides evidence of this function.

Indigenous Transborder Citizenship: FIOB Los Angeles and the Oaxaca Social Movement of 20061

Concepts of citizenship need to be reworked in the context of transborder migration, political participation, and identify formation processes. Here I use the concept of transborder citizenship as a frame for understanding multilayered citizenship among indigenous migrants and immigrants. My focus is on understanding how citizenship is conceptualized, acted upon, and practiced strategically in transborder indigenous organizations located in multiple sites in Mexico and the United States through an examination of how indigenous migrants participate in and support social movements in their places of origin. While much of the coverage and analysis of the Oaxaca social movement of 2006 was focused on the city of Oaxaca and the role of urban Oaxacans, along with teachers in the movement, indigenous Oaxacans in the United States also participated in the social movement through a chapter of the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca, APPO) organized in Los Angeles. My analysis suggests that through their participation in APPO Los Angeles, indigenous Oaxacans who are members of the Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales (Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations, FIOB) successfully created a hybrid of model of citizenship based in part on traditions from Oaxaca, Mexico, which cut across geographic, ethnic, legal, economic, and social borders. I end with a conceptual discussion of how this case illustrates multiple senses of citizenship that build on both indigenous models and those of scholars of globalization.

Expanding the Borderlands: Recent Studies on the U.S.-Mexico Border

Corridors of Migration: The Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600–1933. By Rodolfo F. Acuña. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007. Pp. 408.

Gendered Transborder Violence in the Expanded United States-Mexico Borderlands

49.95 cloth,

Transborder/Transnational Citizenships Migrants and Anthropologists: A Response to Gaspar Rivera-Salgado

26.95 paper. Impacts of Border Enforcement on Mexican Immigration: A View from the Sending Communities. Edited by Wayne A. Cornelius and Jessa M. Lewis. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006. Pp. 175.

Karen Brodkin and the Study of Social Movements Lessons for the Social Movement of Oaxaca, Mexico

52.00 cloth,