Challenges and oppositions of the political participation of indigenous women in Mexico

Abstract

This text is the result of a brief analysis that draws some of the conclusions from a previous research project carried out with indigenous Tének women in San Luis Potosí, Mexico in the years 2019-2021. The objective is to reflect on the conditions of violence and vulnerability that women from indigenous peoples face when trying to access political decision-making spaces. Indigenous women, in this long process of training, participation and action, suffer a series of multi-sited violence that makes them invisible inside and outside their communal spaces; it is imperative to address the origins of political violence against indigenous women, without that it is impossible to talk about effective rights. Therefore, these notes expose some of the realities that indigenous women face when raising their voices, exercising their rights, and asking for spaces for political participation, rights that arise from their own knowledge that they have nurtured for years from their cosmogony.