CHAPTER 12 WOMEN AND GENDER IN MESOAMERICA 469Box 12.5 Women’s Awakening to Gender Oppression“When I started working with the mothers’ clubs in the Catholic Church, it was the first time I re-
alized that we women work even harder than the men do.
“We get up before they do to grind the corn and make tortillas and coffee for their break-
fast. Then we work all day—taking care of the kids, washing the clothes, ironing, mending our hus-
band’s old rags, cleaning the house. We hike to the mountains looking for wood to cook with.
We walk to the stream or the well to get water. We make lunch and bring it to the men in the field.
And we often grab a hoe and help in the fields. We never sit still one minute....
“Men may be out working during the day, but when they come home they usually don’t do
a thing. They want their meal to be ready, and after they eat they either lie down to rest or go
out drinking. But we women keep on working—cooking the corn and beans for the next day’s
meal, watching the children.
“I don’t think it’s fair that the women do all the work. Maybe it’s because I’ve been around
more and I’ve seen other relationships. But I think that if two people get together to form a home,
it should be because they love and respect each other. And that means that they should share
everything.” From Medea Benjamin, trans. and ed., Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman
Speaks from the Heart. The Story of Elvia Alvarado.New York: HarperCollins, 1989, pp. 51–52.them to join the struggle. It was not easy to prevail over their husbands’ resistance
to their involvement. Even revolutionary men made it difficult for their wives to join
in the fight, claiming that women who did this were disregarding the needs of their
children and husbands. On the battlefront, leaders and combatants alike opposed
women’s participation in combat, and instead they gave women tasks such as caring
for the sick, cooking, covering for a male combatant, and preparing a mission.
Women, however, did not acquiesce; they demanded equality of participation and jobs
of greater responsibility.
According to many female insurgents, women had to work twice as hard as men
and be twice as courageous to be allowed into important positions. Eventually, as the
war intensified and women became indispensable, men realized the need to incor-
porate them fully into the fight and opened the way for their participation at all lev-
els. In the struggle to overthrow Somoza in Nicaragua, and in some of the areas
controlled by the guerrillas in El Salvador, women accounted for about a third of
the insurgent forces. Some women were even able to rise to leadership positions.
Many widows, and women whose husbands, fathers, or children had been kid-
napped and disappeared, joined human rights organizations such as GAM and
CONAVIGUA in Guatemala (Figure 12.9); Mothers and Relatives of the Disappeared
in El Salvador; Relatives of Jailed and Disappeared People in Honduras; and Moth-
ers of Heroes and Martyrs in Nicaragua. Women, who constitute the majority of the
membership of these organizations, initially entered to seek economic and emo-
tional support and to gain some leverage by functioning within a group (see Box
12.6). Many of them came from the ranks of indigenous peasant women, illiterate and
humble. The traumas they suffered and their work in these organizations brought
about the politicization of motherhood. These women now stage public protests,