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March 2024

Mexico’s Mesoamerican Cleopatras

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By Deborah Van Hoewyk

When you think of Mexico before the Spanish conquest (1521), what comes to mind? All those ruined pyramids? Confusion about who were the Aztecs, who were the Maya, who were the Incas? Maybe you think of Moctezuma, the Aztec (Mexica, to be more ethnically precise) the conquered ruler of Tenochtitlán, the seat of the Aztec empire in what is now Mexico City. Odds are, though, pre-Hispanic women didn’t leap to mind, much less women who ruled the pre-Hispanic world.

The Aztecs didn’t cohere as a political or geographical entity until fairly recently, starting in the late 1100s CE – Tenochtitlán was founded in 1325. They did, however, create a massive empire, subjugating most of the peoples of central Mexico. The Incan Empire arose just a little later, in the 1200s, in the area around Cuzco, Peru, and came to dominate northwestern South America. The Inca were conquered by Spanish forces led by Francisco Pizarro in 1532.

The Maya, on the other hand, date back to 7000-5000 BCE, and started to coalesce into a great civilization around 300 CE, eventually covering southeastern Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala. The Maya did not amass an empire, either; they were a federation of independent city states – large urban centers focused on religious activities surrounded by rural communities that supplied food and other resources. (Those cit-states did set about trying to conquer each other.)

Pre-Hispanic Women and Power

In 2018, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City held a special exhibition, “Golden Kingdoms: Luxury and Legacy in the Ancient Americas,” which presented objects from tombs and items of personal adornment. According to curator Joanne Pillsbury, “Had we organized this exhibition twenty-five years ago, we would have spoken primarily of the regalia of men. Over the course of single generation, thrilling discoveries have revealed the power and majesty of high-status women, deepening and enriching our understanding of ancient American history.”

We know that all three of the major pre-Hispanic groups had women in positions of power. Among the Aztecs and the Incas, they ruled as accompaniments to their husbands. The Aztecs required that a ruler have royal blood; a migratory, non-royal-blooded man could marry an Aztec princess to supply the qualifying royal genetics. The Incan king’s primary wife, the quoya (queen), ruled over all women.

The Maya were different. Of course, they had many queens who were the wives of ruling kings, but – even though rare – there were Mayan queens who wielded power on their own. In Mexico, there were a half a dozen or so, including three in Cobá, in Quintana Roo in the Yucatán; two in Palenque, in Chiapas; and one in Toniná, also in Chiapas. In addition, there were three female regents in different Mayan city states in Chiapas – regents ruled until their sons were old enough to ascend the throne, and depending on the age of that son, often served as the de facto ruler for years afterwards.

The Maya were different. Of course, they had many queens who were the wives of ruling kings, but – even though rare – there were Mayan queens who wielded power on their own. In Mexico, there were a half a dozen or so, including three in Cobá, in Quintana Roo in the Yucatán; two in Palenque, in Chiapas; and one in Toniná, also in Chiapas. In addition, there were three female regents in different Mayan city states in Chiapas – regents ruled until their sons were old enough to ascend the throne, and depending on the age of that son, often served as the de facto ruler for years afterwards.

Gender Relations among the Maya

Generations of archeologists, anthropologists, and historians have interpreted Mesoamerican life through the eyes of the Catholic Spanish conquistadors: a Euro-centric gender hierarchy, realized in the male superiority/female domesticity model. It wasn’t easy to even think that the Maya might have had independent queens, while clearly the Aztecs and Incas had only queen consorts, “help-meets” to the male kings, matching the Spanish model.

During the Classic Mesoamerican period (300-950 CE), particularly between 500-700, the Maya were started expanding their reach, usually through warfare. Alliances to control warring parties could be achieved through marriage, giving the bride who concluded the alliance power over the court. Times of war are times of social change, and women began to play more significant roles in upper-class life in general, participating in religious rituals and connecting with the supernatural.

A more fundamental force supporting women’s power was that “the Classic Maya concept of gender was based on a complementary, or balanced, relationship of masculine and feminine.” According to anthropologist Erika Anne Hewitt, now a Unitarian Universalist minister in Maine, and other anthropologists, Mayans thought of gender as “inclusive and reciprocal”; Mayan art seems to assume that the foundation of society is the female-male pair, which brings together different capabilities needed for life. The higher you go in the social scale, gender becomes “exchangeable” – males are shown with female traits and females take on male traits, depending on what their roles required. For kings and queens, this is reflected in the hieroglyphic inscriptions on tombs and monuments. In these inscriptions, identifiable people are mentioned with a string of “appellative phrases” – prescribed sequences of names and titles.

Ordinarily, a woman is identified with the glyph for a female, but for women who ruled independently, no such glyph appears in her appellation. Inscriptions for prominent women who were not independent queens applied the term na bate (warrior) “to accommodate their sharing of status or occupancy of roles that were traditionally masculine.” Moreover, in Mayan art that portrays high-status males conducting rituals, the men wear skirts; portraits of male rulers often included other feminine traits or symbols. It is possible to argue that, without this acceptance of gender fluidity, the Maya, like the Aztecs and Incas, might not have had queens.

The Queens of Cobá

Researchers from INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico’s national anthropology institute) have identified a dynasty, beginning c. 500 CE, of 14 rulers of the Mayan city-state Cobá – the dynasty lasted until almost 800 CE. The research was complicated, given the deteriorated state of the stonework throughout Cobá. Most of the information was gleaned from study of stelae, stone slabs that recorded important events and the rulers who oversaw them.

Ix Che’enal was a most probably the daughter of Yax Yopaat, king of Dzibanche, a nearby state to which Cobá was no doubt sent to Cobá to rule as Dzibanche desired. She held the high title of kaloomte, higher than the title of her husband, K’ahk Bahlam, and was queen for a short period; based on study of two stelae, she ruled from 565 to 574. At that point, she may have abdicated to her husband; in any event, he succeeded her.

Lady Yopaat is thought to have ruled c. 600-40 CE; she is called a “warrior queen” because she apparently strengthened Cobás position as a regional power, although whether that eliminated the subordination to Dzibanche is unclear.

Lady K’awiil Ajaw (also known as Ix Kʼawiil Ek) was born in 617 and ruled Cobá from 642-82; also a warrior queen, she attacked and subjugated the nearby city of Yaxuná. She promptly built a “white road” (sacbeob) connecting it with Cobá. The white road curves its way through the jungle, connecting the smaller settlements between Cobá and Yaxuná. She commissioned two stelae (#1, #5) in which she is standing atop and is surrounded by captives, a common configuration for stelae showing rulers. She is shown with 14 captives, more than any queen – and most kings as well. There are 5, perhaps a few more, stelae showing her, and she is shown wearing a belt from which hangs a jade net skirt and jade masks, a garment usually shown only on men.

The Queens of Palenque

Palenque flourished through the Early Classic and Classic periods of pre-Hispanic culture, from about 250-900 CE. It is an astonishing place to visit – tourists have been coming to Palenque since 1841, when John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, author and artist respectively, published Incidents of Travel, which covered Central America, Chiapas, and the Yucatán.

Yohl Ik’nal (also Lady Ol Nal) started her 22-year reign over Palenque in 583 CE, when she was 33. She was the daughter, or perhaps the sister of King Kan Bahlam I, who had died without an heir. Like Prince Philip of England, Yohl Ik’nal’s husband never became a king.

Under her rule, Palenque expanded as she built new complexes of buildings. She repelled invaders bent on subduing Palenque, and her reign was considered peaceful and prosperous.

Yohl Ik’nal had two children, a son and a daughter. When she died, she was succeeded by her son Aj Ne’ Yohl Mat, who was apparently an ineffective ruler, bringing on powerful attacks from Kalakmul – both he and his father were killed in 612, and the main temple of Palenque was destroyed,

Lady Muwaan Mat (aka Lady Sak K’uk’), Yohl Ik’nal’s daughter, became queen in 612, and ruled until her son, K’inich Janaab’ Pakal took the throne in 615, at the age of 12. Muwaan Mat (there is some debate as to whether she is the same person as Lady Sak K’uk’) had to lead Palenque through the chaotic aftermath of the Kalakmul attack, a task made more complicated by the destruction of the temple – religious rituals to ensure Palenque’s survival went on hiatus. Muwaan Mat’s son Pakal, however, ruled until his death in 683; he built the Temple of Inscriptions, ushering in a period of prosperity and progress for Palenque.

The Queen of Toniná

The latest of the Mexican Mayan queens was Lady K’awiil Yopaat, daughter of king K’inich Tuun Chapat, who died in 762; he was succeeded by “Ruler 7,” thought to be Lady K’awill Yopaat, who ruled from 762 until her death in 774. She was another warrior queen, making war on and defeating Palenque in 764.

November 2023

Zapatistas and the Modern World

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By Brooke O’Connor

As November brings our minds to politics, we see wars and conflicts around the globe. It’s easy to think, “It’s far away from me,” or “It’s not my business,” but political unrest is around the corner in every culture.

In Mexico, we see how uprisings with the Zapatistas played out not so long ago. Those uprisings are continuing to affect important historical and cultural areas of Mexico.

Who Are the Zapatistas?

The Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista National Liberation Army, or EZLN) is a guerrilla group in Mexico. It was founded in 1983 and named after the inspiring peasant revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, who led the Liberation Army of the South during the Mexican Revolution (1910-21). Zapata’s forces fought for land reform, with the goal of reclaiming communal lands (ejidos) stolen by large agricultural haciendas (encouraged by the national government).

On January 1, 1994, the Zapatistas initiated a rebellion from their base in Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state. They aimed to protest against economic policies that they believed would harm the indigenous population of Mexico. This uprising later transformed into a powerful political movement, advocating for the rights and empowerment of Mexico’s marginalized indigenous communities.

Background

The Zapatista movement has a fascinating history that should be better known. Although they say they were founded in 1983, it was in the early 1990s that they started to gain followers. From their base in the Lacandón rainforest in eastern Chiapas, they called on Mexico’s indigenous people to rise up against the one-party rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

The Zapatistas wanted greater political and cultural autonomy for indigenous people in Chiapas and the rest of Mexico, and specifically to reform land ownership and distribution. The reason for their rebellion was a series of economic reforms introduced by the Mexican government to prepare for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which would link Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The Zapatistas believed that these reforms would make indigenous people even poorer, especially a land reform bill that would privatize communal farms.

The Rebellion

On January 1, 1994, NAFTA came into effect. On that very day, the Zapatistas took control of four towns in Chiapas. Led by the charismatic Subcomandante Marcos (Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente), they called on indigenous people from all over Mexico to join their cause. The rebels bravely held these towns for several days, battling with Mexican troops before retreating into the surrounding jungle. Over a hundred lives were lost during these initial clashes.

The impact of this uprising was far-reaching, as it quickly spread to other parts of Chiapas. In the following years, insurrections erupted in adjacent and nearby states – Veracruz, Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Puebla. Numerous indigenous communities supported the EZLN throughout this time. In fact, many municipios (roughly equivalent to a US or Canadian county) even declared themselves autonomous from both the state and federal governments, demonstrating their solidarity with the Zapatistas.

In 1994, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari started peace talks, but the conflict with the EZLN was not resolved by the time Ernesto Zedillo became president later that year. In February 1995, President Zedillo tried to use military force against the EZLN and even issued arrest warrants for Subcomandante Marcos and other important Zapatistas. However, these actions were unpopular, so Zedillo changed his mind and resumed negotiations with the EZLN.

The talks continued until February16, 1996, when both sides signed the San Andrés Accords. These accords included plans for land reform, indigenous autonomy, and cultural rights. The Mexican government, unfortunately, showed no signs of initiating any of the agreement’s provisions, and the EZLN broke off talks on August 29, requiring that the government fulfill their obligations under the Accords before talks could resume. The Mexican government offered a new agreement that basically ignored the San Andrés Accords, despite the government’s declaration that it had fulfilled the Accords. In December of that year, Zedillo rejected the agreements.

In the meantime, the government was also involved in a secret war against the rebels. They provided weapons to paramilitary groups who fought against the Zapatistas and their followers, often targeting innocent civilians to punish them for supporting the rebels. On December 22, 1997, in the tiny village of Acteal, Máscara Roja (Red Mask) a paramilitary group called aligned with the PRI, massacred 45 people, including pregnant women and children. The victims were members of a pacifist group called Las Abejas (The Bees), attending an indigenous Catholic prayer meeting. Las Abejas supported the Zapatistas, and espoused the group’s rejection of violence.

The Political Movement

Despite occasional conflicts, the Zapatistas eventually moved away from using weapons and instead focused on peaceful political actions. At the local level, they established administrative systems within the villages they controlled. Over time, they also created various local centers of government called caracoles (snails – the Zapatistas specifically meant conchas; conch shells magnify sound, both incoming and outgoing). According to Subcomandante Marcos, the caracoles are an interface between the Zapatistas and the larger world; they are

like doors which allow entry to communities and allow the communities to exit; like windows so that people can look inside and so that we can see outside; like megaphones to project our words into the distance and to hear the voice of the one that is far away. But above all to remind us that we should watch over and be responsive to the totality of the worlds that populate the world.

On a national scale, in 1999, the group organized the National Consultation on Indigenous Rights and Culture. Thousands of individual Zapatistas carried out the National Consultation by visiting indigenous towns and villages to conduct discussions of the issues driving the San Andreas Accords. On March 21, 1999, the EZLN held a national poll on indigenous rights. Approximately three million Mexicans participated in the voting, and the overwhelming majority supported the implementation of the San Andrés Accords.

Since the 1990s, amid many political twists and turns, Zapatismo has evolved into a global social movement that has gained strong support from progressive groups in the United States and Europe. The new Zapatismo movement promotes indigenous rights, cultural diversity, and standing against globalization and capitalism. Instead of focusing solely on class struggle, they believe in the power of building broad coalitions and grassroots movements to challenge the neoliberal world order. Unlike resorting to armed conflict, their strategy revolves around capturing the attention of the international media, earning them the title of the world’s first “virtual guerrilla” movement.

How Does This Affect Mexico Today?

Ironically, this anti-globalism movement has formed strong connections with foreign organizations over the years, ties that have been crucial for the EZLN’s survival. International organizations have been generous in providing donations and platforms for selling products, such as coffee, in a manner that they claim offers an alternative to globalism without exploiting indigenous communities.

These connections with other worlds beyond Mexico has led the Zapatistas to take a stance on various issues, including gender identity, the Ukraine-Russia conflict, COVID policies, rail lines in Norwegian Sami territory, and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Maya Train project.

While their autonomous strategy has aimed to address local needs like healthcare and education, its effectiveness in improving the situation remains a subject of debate. Chiapas, including the Zapatista territory, continues to face extreme poverty. Moreover, the absence of federal troops has made the area quite appealing to human and drug smugglers, which is ironic considering the international connections involved.

Paradoxically, Subcomandante Marcos could well be considered the most extraordinary tourism ambassador the state has ever had. Before 1994, there were some tourists and foreign residents in Chiapas, but the media coverage attracted even more curious or idealistic people. They came not only to experience the rich native cultures but also with the hope of encountering someone wearing a black Zapatista pasamontaña (balaclava).

Moral of the Story

The only constant is change, and only sometimes does what seems to be a noble cause yield the results a movement sought initially. The author believes that the only way we can effectively initiate change is within ourselves first, then within our homes, and slowly, within our community through example and concern for our fellow man. Maybe then we can eliminate the endless death and destruction that war and uprisings bring because of political differences.

2020, March 2020

The Zapatista Women

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By Jan Chaiken and Marcia Chaiken

The Zapatistas are an organized activist group in the Mexican state of Chiapas, east of the state of Oaxaca and bordering on Guatemala. They perhaps are best remembered for their military occupation of numerous towns in Chiapas and hostile takeover of city squares in 1994 during their march to demand changes from the federal government in Mexico City. Currently, however, they are a peaceable, grassroots leftist movement that works in cooperation with the federal government of Mexico and the state of Chiapas.

The Zapatistas are recognized for developing successful local structures for political, economic, and cultural autonomy. Their adherents are mostly indigenous people (primarily Mayan), although the leader of the movement from the beginning (then known as Subcomandante Marcos) is not indigenous Maya. The Zapatistas went public and began taking control of territory in Chiapas on the day that NAFTA went into effect in 1994, as a symbolic way of emphasizing their opposition to globalization and their anticipation that NAFTA would have deleterious effects on rural and indigenous communities – an assessment which turned out to be basically correct.

From their founding in 1983 until they went public in 1994, the Zapatistas gradually built their membership, organizational structure, and laws that would govern their operations. In December 1993 they enacted their “Revolutionary Law of Women,” which was the foundation for the role of women in their movement. This 1993 law provided that women, without regard to their race, creed, or political affiliation, could hold positions in battle or leadership according to their desire and ability. The law stated that women would have equal pay, access to employment and land; could decide how many children to have; had first preference (along with their children) for medical attention; could select their partners; were not obligated to marry; and were protected by legal provisions against assault and maltreatment.

Although these idealistic assertions seem forward-looking even today, they were in marked contrast with the actual status of indigenous women elsewhere and represent continuing aspirations for activist Zapatista women in their own communities. Elsewhere in Chiapas and many other Mexican states, indigenous women are normally prevented from owning or inheriting land. They are typically forced into arranged marriages at young ages and often have 10 or more children.

Still, at the turn of the millennium, over half of indigenous women had no knowledge of contraception and a larger proportion had no access to contraceptives. Obtaining an abortion was very difficult and, if done, often fatal. As among many other indigenous groups in North America, domestic violence was widespread and the disappearance of many women without explanation was relatively commonplace.

According to historians, the participation of women as Zapatista guerrillas far exceeded their role in any other revolutionary or political movement in Latin America. Two women, Comandanta Ramona and Comandanta Susana, were top-ranking and well-known figures in communicating between the armed forces and the pueblos being run by the Zapatistas. By 2004, women constituted a third of the armed forces of the Zapatistas, and half of the support personnel. The influence of a handful of women in key leadership roles transformed the lives of women in the movement. Working within the Zapatista structure enabled the women to free themselves from the misery of their previous ways of living, to take on a wide range of responsible occupations, to select when and whom they marry, to have 2 to 4 children, and to fight for better conditions of health, literacy, education and justice for their communities, particularly women.

Initially the focus of women’s participation was to support the revolution, but gradually the Zapatistas took on a statewide and national mission of ending economic gender inequality, dismantling patriarchy, fighting violence against women, and investigating the disappearance of women. At the national level in Mexico, the Zapatistas have taken an unwavering anti-capitalist stance and are committed to local solutions to problems. For example, alcohol is prohibited in Zapatista-controlled villages — a measure that has reportedly substantially reduced domestic violence.

Beginning in 2018, the women Zapatistas have expanded their horizons by sponsoring international “gatherings of women who struggle.” Their invitation to participate in the 2019 gathering stated, “We fight against discrimination at home, in the street, at school, at work, on public transportation, against both those people we know and those who are strangers. . . . [Some] want to tell us we’re asking for it, that we are at fault for dying. No, we aren’t simply dying, we are being raped, murdered, cut up and disappeared. Anybody who faults us is sexist, and even women can demonstrate sexist thinking.” They are highlighting and addressing a problem that persists not only in Chiapas, not only in Mexico, but among indigenous women in numerous countries. Activists have established the social media hashtag #MMIW (missing and murdered indigenous women) to bring attention to this violence.

In the run up to the 2019 international gathering in Chiapas, the US president issued an executive order to establish a task force on missing and murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives. It stated that there is an ongoing and serious problem of missing and murdered indigenous people in the US, especially women and girls. Federal studies in the US have shown that native women are killed at a rate 10 times the national average. Other studies have made clear that men who rape, assault and murder indigenous women in the US are more likely to be white than Indian. Simply convening a task force to talk about these statistics is unlikely to bring about any change.

Twenty years ago pioneering collaborations between US city police, county sheriffs, tribal police, tribal councils and victim service organizations were making progress toward establishing networks that endangered women could access and escape violence. The amount of federal funds needed to foster these local collaborations was minimal and served primarily to validate and bolster these services. When the US federal administration changed, the funds and focus were withdrawn. It is about time that, heeding the cry of the Zapatista and other indigenous women, federal, state and local governments collaborate to provide access to services so desperately needed to save lives.