The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) rose up in Mexico’s southeastern state of Chiapas on January 1, 1994. The Zapatistas’ process of consolidating territorial autonomy and stance of radical refusal are a challenge and threat to the Mexican state and neoliberal governance practices. At the center of that autonomy process are changes in gender equity and gendered relations of power that are crucial to the gains of the project. This multi-sited ethnography of that process takes place in a zone of contact where local practices and struggles for indigenous rights, autonomy, and women’s rights meet with solidarity and opposition. My dissertation follows two strategic lines of inquiry. First, women’s bodies have been central to both nation building and to alternative forms of nationalism and tradition. In Mexico, indigenous women have been the raw material of these projects. The EZLN included questions of gender and women’s equity from the beginning of the movement. This contrasts with other social movements of the past few decades in Latin America, and with the conventional wisdom that it is necessary to elide gender contestations and challenges to patriarchy in order to make gains as a movement. I argue that the overall struggle has not in fact been undermined, but strengthened. I examine the extent to which Zapatista women have forged new subjectivities (affirming both gender equality and collective cultural difference) in defiance of local patriarchal control, gendered state violence, and of discourses that characterize them as victims of their culture. Second, I argue that the analysis of these changes in gendered relations of power reveals how the Zapatista autonomy project is integrating difference without reverting to previous models of belonging premised on assimilation or the recognition of difference solely at the individual level. The EZLN rejected a solution based on ethnic citizenship in favor of indigenous autonomy and collective rights; their autonomous governance offers important insights into state power and its effects, and into strategies and alternatives to inclusion in the neoliberal project. / text

This dissertation focuses in the phenomenon of partner violence in Mexico. It examines the causes of partner violence at multiple levels of analysis. At the micro level it examines characteristics of individual victims, the family and the relationship. At the macro level the focus is on the legal and social structures that define domestic violence and the State's response. Throughout the analysis, the State plays a central role as the set of institutional arrangements that define the rules of the game and that determine the possibilities for change and the potential roles and effectiveness of key players including the feminist movement. Throughout the analysis I examine the confluence of forces that influence the State's attempts to reduce individual women's risk of partner violence through its legislative, judicial and police powers in a historically defined situation characterized by pervasive structural patriarchy. A major objective is to asses the influence of the pervasive patriarchy in the system on individual women's risk of partner violence. The approach adopted in this dissertation is based on the assumption that patriarchy is a social system that permeates social institutions and that becomes internalized and part of the normative everyday reality that structures individual's interpretations and motivations. This research demonstrates that, on average, the structural gender inequality between Mexican men and women is high. This inequality is revealed through qualitative and quantitative analyses that demonstrate empirically the influence of the patriarchal system both on individual experiences of partner violence, and on the State's response. Adopting a feminist post-structuralist approach to the analysis of the State's role, the research reveals inconsistencies between the discourses and practices of the Mexican State regarding partner violence. By analyzing administrative family violence legislation, I determine whether the Mexican State has in fact made substantively meaningful attempts to challenge patriarchy and to end violence against women in the family realm. The family violence legislation has two often inherently contradictory purposes. On the one hand the objective is to protect the family as a core social institution. The second, which is often in conflict with the first objective, is to protect women from abuse by their partners. This dissertation demonstrates that these conflicting objectives and the embededness of patriarchy throughout the social help explain why certain branches of the Mexican State tend to strengthen patriarchy and reify women's subordinate position in the family. The way in which the State interprets and implements family violence legislation reveals the inability and/or unwillingness of the State to protect women's rights and highlights the patriarchal assumptions pervading the State's actions. Finally, this research looks at feminist and women's movements and NGOs to determine whether they have been effective in influencing the State to adopt measures to guarantee women a life free of violence. I looked not only for their influence on the legislative level, but also surveyed the role they continue to play in implementing antiviolence laws. / text