439CHAPTER 12 WOMEN AND GENDER IN MESOAMERICA
On October 16, 1992, Rigoberta Menchú, a Mayan woman from Guatemala, received
the Nobel Peace Prize (on Rigoberta Menchú, see also Box 8.3). Menchú’s selection
drew worldwide attention to women’s contributions to cultural, social, and political
processes in Mesoamerica. It paid tribute to the new woman—indigenous and non-
indigenous—emerging in the region.
On March 28, 2001, another Mayan woman, this time from Chiapas, Mexico, ad-
dressed the Mexican Congress as a representative of the EZLN (Zapatista Army of Na-
tional Liberation). Comandanta Ester had come to speak to Congress about the
poverty and racism that are the legacy of colonization and globalization in Mesoamer-
ica. She spoke before a half-empty Congress because most senators refused to listen
to an indigenous woman desecrate their chambers. Even many journalists emptied
the room when they learned that the speaker that day would be an Indian woman,
and not Marcos, the charismatic mestizo subcommander.
Rigoberta Menchú and Comandanta Esther draw attention to women’s intensi-
fying activism in Mesoamerica in the twenty-first century and to the troubling per-
sistence of poverty, racism, and male dominance in the region. Women’s recent forms
of activism have their roots in over 500 years of ongoing oppression, exploitation, and
forced evangelization. In the face of this legacy, women have borne major responsi-
bility for sustaining families and communities, as well as valued cultural traditions.
While indigenous men were compelled to act as intermediaries for Spanish priests
and administrators, women carried on meaningful cultural traditions in the privacy
of their homes. They prepared traditional foods, transmitted native languages, and
passed on the arts of weaving, embroidery, and pottery-making from generation to
generation. In these contexts women ensured some continuity of the Mesoameri-
can sacred universe while concealing the meanings of their traditions from the sus-
picious gaze of priests and administrators.
Women’s activism takes place in the context of patriarchal national, regional,
and local cultures that have endeavored to confine women’s activities and lives to