Las Rieleras: Gender, Politics, and Power in the Mexican Railway Movement, 1958–1959

During the 1950s, Mexican railway women, known popularly as rieleras, joined their male counterparts to stage the most militant series of strikes of the postwar era. This study contests a large body of popular and scholarly literature which focuses exclusively on men in the making of the railway movement. Combining oral histories with union and company documents, the author traces how gender notions at work and in the community subordinated women to men, a process which nevertheless helped produce an identity for women based on the railway industry. Women did not challenge the patriarchal order but rather made use of it during the railway movement to mobilize in defense of their own interests as rieleras. These findings suggest that historians must look beyond the electoral arena, as well as beyond the archive, to capture working-class women's participation in postwar politics.