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93 4 The indigenous peoples of Mexico are currently living in a fluid legal and political period. Increasing numbers of indigenous communities are revitalizing and redefining their local legal systems,1 while living under shifting federal and state legal systems that for the most part are moving toward more strictly defining indigenous rights and focusing on the granting of universal, individual rights rather than collective rights. At the federal level, the most important legal reform for indigenous peoples has been the 1992 agrarian legislation,2 which has encouraged , but not required, the privatization of ejidos and agrarian communities.3 In addition, in 2001 the Mexican congress and the legislatures of seventeen states approved a series of constitutional amendments known as the Indigenous Law (Ley Indígena), which severely limit the recognition of collective rights to land and natural resources, and the right of indigenous communities to regional affiliation.4 Nevertheless, in Chiapas, thirty Municipios Autónomos Rebeldes Zapatistas (Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities in Rebellion) have existed since the mid1990s , and elsewhere in Mexico other indigenous communities and organizations are experimenting with ways to carry out the spirit of the 1996 San Andrés Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture.5 These communities are declaring control over territories, implementing their own justice systems, and attempting to rebuild cultural, educational, and health institutions. Even communities that have not declared themselves autonomous are experimenting locally and regionally with ways to increase their autonomy over their justice systems (see Sierra, this volume). Each of these arenas of justice—federal, state, and local indigenous—is gendered in its structure and interpretation. During the 1990s, many women and some men were deeply involved in questioning the gender inequalities reflected in federal, state, and local law in relation to indigenous peoples. Women were Women’s Land Rights and Indigenous Autonomy in Chiapas Interlegality and the Gendered Dynamics of National and Alternative Popular Legal Systems LYNN STEPHEN Chap-04.qxd 4/7/07 10:55 AM Page 93 involved in the process of formulating the San Andrés Accords, in attempting to operationalize autonomous municipalities in Chiapas, and in the revitalization and interpretation of local indigenous rights. The women’s questioning of the reforms to the federal and state constitutions, as well as debates about what local indigenous rights should be allowed to continue, has covered a wide range of issues including domestic violence, forced marriage, equal participation in political arenas, housing, education, jobs, medical care, and land rights. Although these areas are important and have been documented by an everincreasing crop of feminist anthropologists and others, here I shall focus on women’s land rights. I have chosen women’s land rights to highlight the complex and often contradictory legal landscape that has emerged for indigenous women as they become increasingly active in defining the legal systems under which they live. Their participation has become so important that some Mexican researchers (Hernández Castillo 2001; Sierra 2003) are now writing about what they call “indigenous feminism”—a form of feminism that attempts to protect ethnic rights and women’s rights all at once, often by building alternative popular legal systems. Even though many people have counterposed ethnic or indigenous rights as collective and women’s rights as individual, indigenous women activists do not see this dichotomy and emphasize that both ethnic and gender rights potentially bunch together collective and individual rights. Some indigenous women have used the discourse of collective indigenous women’s rights as a way to begin to counter losses, stated in terms of individual rights, that they have either already experienced or are likely to experience through the 1992 agrarian legislation. They feel that they are best able to defend their “individual” rights as women through being part of an ethnically or locally based collective; through this membership they seek equal rights to men in areas such as political leadership and decision making and access to land. They have had more influence on local indigenous rights than on national law, which can often undermine their collective rights in a way that leaves them with no material or political base. Some indigenous women have pursued strategies that revolve around staking claims to local indigenous rights that are not harmful to women, or strategies that involve alternative popular legal systems in the practice of indigenous rights. Through a case study from two indigenous communities in Chiapas that are attempting to consolidate local forms of justice and law that vary significantly from national law, I show how, in...

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