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This book originated in a research workshop held at the Institute of Latin American Studies (now the Institute for the Study of the Americas, or ISA) in February 2004. Discussions benefited from the participation of, in addition to the contributors to this volume: Elizabeth Dore, Diane Elson, Juan Guillermo Figueroa, Jane Hindley, Fiona Macaulay, Kevin J. Middlebrook, Caterina Pizzigoni, Patricia Ravelo-Blancas, Sergio Sánchez, Patience A. Schell, Line Scholden, Rachel Sieder, and Katie Willis. We would like to thank Director James Dunkerley, Karen Perkins, and Olga Jiménez from ISA for all their hospitality and support. We gratefully acknowledge funding from ISA, the Embassy of Mexico in the United Kingdom, and the Society for Latin American Studies. Other institutions that have generously supported our work throughout the years include the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS–Golfo) and the Economic and Social Research Council (UK). Revised versions of workshop papers were presented at the 2006 Latin American Studies Association (LASA) congress in San Juan, Puerto Rico. We gratefully acknowledge the support of Viviana Kluger, cochair of the Law and Society Section of LASA. LASA panel participants included Mary Goldsmith and Matthew Gutmann. We owe special thanks to Adi Hovav, editor at Rutgers University Press, who encouraged us enormously by her enthusiastic support of the project from the very start. Thanks also to Marilyn Campbell for guidance during the production process, and to Paula Friedman for her superb copyediting. The volume bene- fited from the helpful and detailed comments made by two anonymous Rutgers University Press reviewers. As social scientists (rather than lawyers), grappling with complex and often changing laws was perhaps the greatest single challenge we faced in this collective endeavor. In searching for clarifications, we benefited from the counsel of numerous friends and colleagues, including Carmen Diana Deere, Ana Gamboa Rosas, Gilbert E. Haakh, and Juan Carlos Pérez Castañeda. Any errors remaining are our own responsibility. We are very grateful to Olimpia Gracia, Regina Henríquez Morales, and María del Rocío Ochoa García for research assistance. We also wish to thank the ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv Prelims.qxd 4/7/07 10:35 AM Page xv staffs at the CIESAS–Xalapa and Mexico City libraries, the British Library, and the many legal archives consulted in Mexico; staff at each provided unfaltering support in response to our continued queries and requests. Special thanks goes to all the Mexican funcionarios judiciales who shared their experiences with us, and to the women and men who opened the doors of their homes, told us their stories, and allowed us to learn from their difficult experiences. Cover art for the paperback edition is by Álvaro Santiago (1953, Oaxaca City). Santiago’s artistic work is part of major international collections, including that of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), the Museum of Latin American Art (Long Beach, Calif.), and the Mexican Cultural Center (Paris). We thank him kindly for graciously allowing us to use his artwork for this cover design. We found his fragmented (and largely androgynous) human figures distributed among a number of panels in a mosaic-like form particularly fitting for the title Decoding Gender. As with the construction of gender, the faces in the painting are, in the words of the artist, “composites of many masks.” As editors, we wish to thank our contributors for their patience with our seemingly unending requests and for the dedication that they showed throughout the process. One contributor characterized our exchanges as a “small seminar on legal matters,” and we have indeed learned much together. We are especially grateful to Maxine Molyneux and Jane F. Collier for their essays framing the volume— but particularly for having been an integral part of the project from the very start. On a more personal level, Helga would like to thank Kevin Middlebrook for his extensive scholarly (and personal) support and advice, and Mariel Baitenmann-Middlebrook, who (at age seven) chose Mary Kingsley for her school project on explorers “because it had to do with women’s rights.” Together, they made my share of the work a little easier and much more meaningful. On her behalf, Victoria would like to thank Valentina and Magdalena Gatti, whose presence and cheerfulness supported the long process of bringing this project to completion. Similarly, Ann would like to thank Alan Mosley for all his encouragement and support (and his good-humored patience about not being able to get near the...

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