We Are the Face of Oaxaca: Testimony and Social Movements by Lynn Stephen (review)

BOOK REVIEWS WE ARE THE FACE OF OAXACA: TESTIMONY AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS. By Lynn Stephen. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013, p. 368, $25.95. The anthropologist Lynn Stephen’s We are the Face of Oaxaca focuses on the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) Movement that emerged as a protest to the state government’s use of excessive force during the 2006 Oaxacan teachers’ strike. APPO, a coalition of three hundred Oaxacan organizations, fought the state government for six months during which twenty-three civilians died, including an American journalist. With over three decades of field research in Oaxaca, Stephen adeptly contextualizes the 2006 APPO movement within a long history of uprisings in Oaxaca, recognizing APPO members’ use of past triumphs and failures when dealing with the state PRIista government. Through the lens of oral history, Stephen offers a new way of looking at how the state engages with native peoples. Stephen’s main contribution is her use of oral testimony interviews (in video and written format). The book is paired with a website (http://faceofoaxaca.uoregon.edu) where readers can further explore the testimonials transcribed in the book. Stephen recorded some of the interviews during the movement itself and some a year or more later, including interviews with APPO members or supporters residing in California and Oregon. By digitizing dozens of interviews, Stephen argues that her testimonials serve as an “alternative archive” to state repression in Oaxaca (116). There was no official truth commission investigation into human rights’ violations and Stephen contends that her interviews complicate the official, sanitized history of the APPO movement. Furthermore, Stephen stresses the importance of oral testimony as a way to recognize historically marginalized groups’ engagement in social movements; in particular , Stephen links the tradition of customary law in native communities of Oaxaca as a catalyst for APPO’s use of oral testimonial performance as a way to challenge the state government. Utilizing Gayatri Spivak and Partha Chatterjee’s conceptualizations of subaltern rights, Stephen suggests that the APPO movement testimonials illustrated a new set of complex, hybrid identities for Oaxacans: urban, indigenous, female, and working-class. The title of Stephen’s work comes from interviews with women who occupied the state government’s radio and television station for three weeks. One interviewee redefined what it meant to be Oaxaqueña: “We are brown, we are short, we are fat, and they don’t think that we represent the people, but we do . . . .We are the face of Oaxaca (158).” The women stated that they represented a more inclusive vision of Oaxaca—a state that is composed of sixteen distinct indigenous groupings— and that the APPO movement challenged the public, mestizo face of Oaxaca by taking over traditionally mestizo male political spaces. C  2015 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 89 The Latin Americanist, September 2015 Stephen further posits that women’s involvement in the movement created a gendered construction of rights. Female teachers often felt relegated to the margins of the union and participating in APPO was a way for women to protest not only the state government’s repression of the teachers, but also stake a claim for women’s respect within the union. In addition to her discussions of political citizenship, gendered constructionof rights, andnewtypesof identityformationforAPPOmembers, Stephen also offers a rich analysis of youth street art that emerged from the movement. Stephen includes pictures of “La Virgen de las Barricadas,” a popular image of the Virgin Mary emerging in November 2006 on posters and walls depicting the Virgin surrounded by burning tires and with a crown of barbed wire, allusions to what was happening in downtown Oaxaca. Stephen also interviewed artists and mayordomos (patron saint fiesta leaders) who created a new image of the much venerated El Santo Niño (little God child). The Santo Niño statue was dressed as an APPO protester and was used in processions in support of APPO, blessing areas under siege by the federal police ordered into Oaxaca in November 2006 by then President Vicente Fox. Stephen argues that the integration of El Santo Niño—an important figure in native communities—suggests the influence of indigenous knowledge and popular...