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Women of Calakmul

Elisa Lomelí Curiel and Karina Ochoa
translation by Holly Yasui

When I was invited to present this paper at the “Women and Globalization” conference, I felt that to talk about women in the municipality of Calakmul, Campeche would be a worthwhile challenge, since the organizational work that the indigenous and mestiza women carry out in order to participate fundamentally in social movements should transcend local borders and be made visible on the national level.

It’s a bit complicated to share with you the life and struggles of us women who came to the tropical jungles of Campeche only a few decades ago. The southern region of the state is an area recently populated, as a result of the settlement program that brought together people from 26 states, speaking 17 indigenous languages, among which are most notably Chol, Tzetal, and Peninsular Maya or Yucateco.

This particular history of settlement has caused this area to become, in less than three decades, a veritable Tower of Babel , which has unleashed a plethora of difficulties and challenges, but also a broad range of experiences that, without doubt, enrich the collective actions that has been undertaken in the region for the past twenty years.

But the conditions under which we have lived since the decades of the 60s and 70s became complex not only because of the diversity of the population that settled in the new territory, but also because of the shortages and lack of basic infrastructure for the most pressing necessities. This situation forced us women and men who live here (after a period of adaptation) to come up with cooperative strategies in order to generate responses to our demands for attention by the state, thus giving rise to the uniting of various communities around the mobilization demanding an immediate solution to existing shortages (for example, water for human consumption, since in this zone there exists a severe lack of this vital liquid).

Without a doubt, social and political organizing in Calakmul has been arduous but necessary, since we settlers came to a territory whose history and physical-natural characteristics prevented human settlement for centuries. For this reason, there were many circumstances and situations that required organized efforts, in which women had a fundamental role. In this context we founded the Regional and Popular Council of Xpujil (CRIPX) and the Cooperative Society for Agricultural and Fisheries Production S^Cajel Ti Matye´el (Morning in the Countryside), organizations that cannot be understood without understanding one of the most relevant organizational experiences in the region: the establishment of Ecclesiastical Base Communities (EBCs).

The trajectory: from the pastoral way to social demands

Since the appearance of the Ecclesiastical Base Communities (EBCs) in Calakmul in the decade of the 80s, important self-initiating processes have arisen within the towns that were settled in the region just a few years earlier. The EBCs were the motor for coordination at the regional level without which it is impossible to understand certain organizational phenomena that were later forged in the region.

The Catholic Church in Calakmul promoted, from its earlier years, the training of young men and women from various communities. Later it took on the task of encouraging community organizing in each of the new towns.

The organizational structure of the religious community, from the beginning, was under the tutelage of the priest José Martín del Campo, who, upon his arrival in Calakmul, traveled to each of the towns and, with some couples who accompanied him in his work, began to sow the seed that gave fruit in the organization of the communities.

When we began the catechism, the indigenous woman – I don’t know if it’s because of tradition or custom – did not participate. This represented a big challenge for the Church and for all who follow this teaching. The objective was, then, to include women in ecclesiastical work.

With the help of faith, the men accepted the women who participated. Even more, I think that some husbands felt proud that their women were an active part of this process.

The strategies that we used not only created the possibility that, in a short time, the indigenous women became involved in pastoral work, but they also became perceived as fundamental subjects of social and religious activities.

In this sense, pastoral work functioned as a vehicle for gatherings and recognition that the various communities settled in Calakmul shared both needs and shortages (such as water). Perhaps for that reason, it was impossible for the promoters and members of the church to establish a boundary between our people’s ecclesiastical work and political action, since the difficulties of inhabiting the rainforest do not allow us to forget the profound material poverty and oblivion to which the institutions have subjected us.

We adventurers who dared to settle the Campeche jungle soon found out that the possibilities for survival as an individual are substantially reduced. For that reason, we think collectively: the community, the town or group, which increases the options for resolving the most pressing needs.

Thus, the “we” began to form a part of the subjective and concrete repertory of the towns and townspeople.

Paradoxically, the most important contribution of the EBC was not in the spiritual but social.

In this sense, it is important to recognize two important implications of the process initiated by the EBCs:

First, the experience of the EBCs was an organizational precedent that, years later, motivated some of the most relevant social protests in the region. Pastoral work demonstrated that coordination (within and between communities) helped to create solidarity and cooperation.

Second, the increasing participation of women in the religious work created important changes within communities. One of them is the fact that there formed social openings in which the voice of women was valued, as well as enabling women to project themselves as active members in the life of the collectives.

It is worth mentioning that the experience of the EBCs later translated into the appearance of public and social spaces open to the participation of women in the villages. For example, as part of the missionary work, groups of indigenous and mestiza women were organized in various localities that make up the region, and these groups became the motor for initiatives headed by women.

In many places they formed small production cooperatives, in which, since the conditions required it, they had to strip away the religious impetus that initially characterized them.

The different female collectives were self-managed and every six months, their work coordinated through regional meetings that had as their objective the exchange of experiences, problems and ways to resolve them in each community group.

At the beginning of the 90s, Father José discontinued the works realized by the group of catechists, since the Church as an institution could no longer generate alternatives to the social processes that had begun to develop. Thereafter, the pastoral work of the EBCs eventually dissolved to the point of complete extinguishment. Nonetheless, not all was lost.

For example the Cooperative Society S^c’ajel Ti Matye’el was founded as a result of the diverse initiatives that had been started in the communities by the EBCs. In 1992, based on the efforts made in the past, we decided to create the cooperative, focusing our efforts on the opening of mills, shops and later, small tortilla factories.

The goals of this organization went beyond they religious, to work in other areas, though today we still continue to participate in the process of consciousness-raising through the openings already opened by previous experience.

In 1995, the cooperative was legally constituted, which allowed it to receive international grants, given the difficulty of access to governmental support. Today the cooperative coordinates work related to the production and collection of honey; projects for the enrichment of soils; demonstration plots; eco-tourism in the countryside; and since 2002 with the Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature (FMCN), the work of the Center for Indigenous and Rural Farmers of Calakmul (CEFOINCAC) trains community promoters (men and women, young people and producers) regarding topics related to the conservation of forests; the management and control of fires; redistricting of land; strategic community planning, etc.

The straw that broke the camel’s back

This long history of oblivion on the part of the state institutions and PRIista opportunism was a time-bomb that exploded in 1995, when a severe drought affected the region and motivated the mobilization of the inhabitants. With the objective of pressuring the municipal and state governments in order to achieve a partial response to the request for basic services, such as water, hundreds of farmers and indigenous people began a religious procession during Holy Week that culminated in the closure of the Escárcega-Chetumal highway.

Mauricio, a Tzeltal indigenous man from the community of Mancolona remembers:

… through a congregation of Ecclesiastical Base Communities, in various occasions and meetings, the situation in the region was analyzed, regarding the needs, especially of water, and also many communities, regarding land … since our needs were great, it was necessary to protest before the State, in this case, with the Municipal Mayor and the State Governor. Then it was analyzed deeply and it was approved that we carry out a protest. But, so that the authorities would not notice, it was started as a religious procession … after the celebration of the religious procession, we were more or less organized to start the protest … We took the highway. That’s how the people started to protest … the people spent six days, day and night on that highway, demanding the presence of the governor, that he come and see the urgent necessity of all the communities, especially with regard to water. The people were very enthusiastic, and the numbers increased … and ideas began to arise that it was necessary to form an organization so that the demonstration that taken place on principle continue as our history. So later, with many opinions and much discussion, the formation of an organization was approved, that’s how it was and today the organization still exists. (CEAAL, et. al, 2003. Unpublished document)  

In effect, based on this mobilization of April 14, 1995 , the Regional Indigenous and Popular Council of Xpujil (CRIPX) was founded, bringing together 32 communities of the region, with 2,800 members.

As I mentioned earlier, the problem that engendered the first mass mobilization in Clakmul, and the later creation of CRIPX, was the scarcity of water that worsened the precarious conditions of life of all the people. But the problem of water was directly related to the socially recognized work of the women, and for that reason it is not by chance that the initial contingent had a face that was fundamentally feminine.

One of the most memorable events during the protest was

“when one the directors of the process (in the protest) made the Governor of Campeche drink water from a puddle, saying that he should drink it so that he could understand the anguish and feelings of the people who lack this vital liquid. Salomón Azar, who was at this time the governor, couldn’t do anything but drink it, to the surprise and pleasure of the people around him.”

Nonetheless, given the dimensions and the course that the mobilization took, women were little by little displaced from visible participation in the social protest. For the actual negotiation with the highest representative of the state government, Salomón Azar García, the men had already positioned themselves within the process as the legitimate spokesmen of the towns affected by the drought. This, perhaps, happened because until a few years ago, the women of this country did not figure as public subjects of institutional political activity.

I mention this, with all honesty, because in our experience it has not been easy for us indigenous and mestiza women to position ourselves in positions of formal and institutional representation. And with this, I do not mean to insinuate that women do not participate in an active way and make decisions regarding social and political initiatives in our communities and region, or that we are not active agents of change that are generated daily in our communities, rather what I want to emphasize is that there is still much to do in order that we women achieve recognition as full-fledged citizens.

Nonetheless, in order to understand fully the women of Calakmul, it is necessary to put forth some considerations:

About indigenous and mestiza women

As a result of the theoretical trajectory of feminist thinking, debate about the subordination of women has centered on the problem of the distinction between the public and private sphere. This reflexive line is one of the central assumptions in contemporary feminist work, to the extent that it permits the understanding of the disassociation that exists between the sphere of necessities (that is, the private/domestic domain) and the sphere of reason (that is, the public domain), as the dividing line between the subordination and freedom.

In this sense, while the private/domestic is the domain assigned to women (because it represents the realm of necessity and reproduction), that of reason (that is, of production) is associated with the public domain occupied by men.

Nonetheless, various feminist theories, particularly those from the United States , have proposed that the public/private dichotomy corresponds to a value-laden ideological construct more than to concrete reality. And it is true that, far from what could be expected, the women of the rural communities of Campeche , after the settlement and the consequent building of their homes, churches, schools, etc, did not end up relegated to the domain of the private/domestic. On the contrary, as have been shown in previous examples, they were active agents in the collective processes that have been established here.

This is because in Calakmul the boundaries between the public and private are broken by the fact that women do productive labor on a daily basis for the public domain within spaces that are considered private or domestic (as in the case of handcrafts work or the raising of animals in the yards of the houses, the products of which are often directed to local or regional markets). In addition, they carry out reproductive activities, generally related to the domestic space (such as those that guarantee the health or feeding of the family) in public spaces such as health clinics or school lunchrooms, productive cooperatives or work groups.

In other words, production for the public domain takes place in both private and public spaces, and private actions are carried out in public spaces that are constituted into forums of social intervention for women.

Therefore, the division between the public and private domain – specifically proposed by a number of feminist theories – in reality exists within a new domain: the social.

And this is the area in which the most profound and lasting transformations in the territories of Calakmul are taking place, the formation of a public space as the domain in which the social is organized; that is, as the domain where “it is considered normal and it is sanctioned in a broad sense, that which is perceived in the imagination as belonging to the collective.” (Serret; 2001:89)

Thus, there is not only private space, referring to the home and the realm of reproduction; but also public space, but with two different dimensions of action and participation. On the one hand, this is the political or institutional public domain, which is ruled by institutional legality and is expressed, for example, in the Ejido Assemblies, where the greatest amount of deliberation occurs, and in which women rarely appear since in general the owners of land are men.

On the other hand, there is the social public domain, where we women have participated en masse through regional organizations (EBCs, CRIPX, cooperatives, etc.), in groups or collectives of women, and in production cooperatives: bakeries, small tortilla factories, mills, etc.

The political public domain and the social public domain represent two areas of activity that project different conceptions of power and political participation. While in the social public domain power is perceived under conditions of non-domination, the political public domain is perceived as a vision closer to the Weberian concept of power.

That is, in the social public domain, power is understood as a process of deliberation that mediates between interchange and solidarity, and “does not attempt to compel the other, (for which reason) there is not a power over another, but rather a power for something.” Thus, power is defined within a context of communication, and “is achieved through persuasion, by means of which I try to convince that the other accept my arguments, in a debate (…) during which opinions are formed and clarified.” (Sánchez M., 2001: 50-51).

Social action in this public domain corresponds to “the human capacity, not simply to act, but to act in concert.” (Arendt, 1973: 146).

On the other hand, in the political public sphere, the idea of power and domination incorporates elements of Weberian instrumental rationality, in the sense of guaranteeing the obedience of the members of a collective regarding orders that have as their purpose the imposition or maintenance of an existing order. In this case, social action is oriented toward “the representation of a legitimate order” (Weber, 1987: 25).

It is precisely in the social public domain that we women have managed to show our feminine face. Nonetheless, we have to recognize that in the political or institutional public domain, the divides remain enormous, since the logic of institutional power has closed off all possibility of genuine participation by women. For this reason, it is clear to us that the citizenship of indigenous and mestiza women of Calakmul is cut short and that we must fight for full-fledged citizenship that breaks the logic of exclusive power.

As you shall see, we have had some hard lessons on this arduous road. We know that there is still much to fight for. But it is also clear to us that it is not enough to only obtain seats in the legislature or to appear on electoral ballots, since the logic of institutional power has minimized the initiatives headed by the few committed women legislators.

One of the challenges that we have facing us is to fairly value the political action of rural women, which has been sustained in the capacity of power for, as opposed to the hegemonic power over.

In conclusion, it is necessary to mention that the emigration of men to the neighboring country to the north has increased the insecurity and suffering of women in the region. We indicate just three aspects:

a) Women and children are completely abandoned, since until the husband pays the thousands of pesos that he borrowed (for his passage), he sends nothing to the family; for which reason, in some cases, the wife has nothing but a bit of corn with which to survive.

b) The military presence that constantly threatens women, whether or not they have children or are single.

c) When the husband returns to the community, he brings with him a different way of thinking and wants to forget his customs and language. He builds a house in the municipal capital in order to leave his family again, and seek the American Dream, imposing upon the woman the idea of “overcoming” and forgetting her culture.

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