Indigenous Law and Identity Politics in Mexico: Indigenous Men's and Women's Struggles for a Multicultural Nation

In this article I want to approach the debate on multiculturalism in Mexico as these are circulating around debates and discourses of indigenous rights, emphasizing the tensions that exist among gendered perspectives on identity politics within the indigenous movement and also among Mexican intellectuals. This debate became very important in the Mexican political agenda after a proposal for a law on indigenous rights was discussed and passed by Congress in April 2001. As has happened in other geographic contexts, "women's rights" have been used by feminist and not feminist intellectuals and politicians attempting to disqualify indigenous cultures and traditions and to oppose indigenous peoples' demands for autonomy. 1 Indigenous women have played a very important role in confronting these uses of a discourse about indigenous women's rights as arguments against indigenous cultural rights more generally.