Women, Ethnicity and Nationalisms in Latin America

The relationship between gender and nationalism is a compelling issue that is receiving increasing coverage in the scholarly literature. With case studies covering Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia and Mexico, this is the first book to explore these links in the context of Latin America. It includes contributions from Latin American scholars to offer a unique and revealing view of the most important political and cultural issues. The work opens by outlining four dimensions in the relationship between gender and nationalism. These are: the contribution of women to nation building and their exclusion from it by the state and its institutions; the role of women in contemporary ethnic and nationalist movements; the place of the female body in the myths and traditions surrounding the nation; and the role of women in forging the intellectual and artistic culture of the nation. It then provides both theoretical and empirical explorations of these themes, with chapters covering the debate on multiculturalism and gender in the construction of the nation, the struggles of ethnic women to participate politically in their communities and studies of the first Mexican filmmaker, Mimi Derrba and the indigenous heroine Dolores Cacuango from Ecuador.

Contents: Preface; Women and nationalisms, Natividad Gutiérrez Chong. Part 1 Struggle and Independence: Dolores Cacuango and the origin of the mother country; seed for the kichwización of the world, Gabriela Bernal Carrera; Nahua women's struggle: small spaces, enormous restrictions, Elena Lazos Chavero. Part 2 National Building and Identity: Fashioning Indians or beautiful savages: the case of Gaby Herbstein's Huellas, Arnd Schneider; Mimí Derba and Azteca Films: the rise of nationalism and the 1st Mexican woman film-maker, Irene García; Eréndira on horseback: variations on a tale of conquest and resistance, Ana Cristina Ramírez Barreto; The role of the Mayan woman inside the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), Leticia Paredes Guerrero. Part 3 Multiculturalism and the Revival of Ethnicity: Women who know how to talk: gender, women, political participation and multiculturalism in Mexico, Margarita Zárate Vidal; Indigenous women, transnationality and re/narrativized social memory, María Eugenia Choque and Guillermo Delgado-P.; Engendering the 'right to have rights': the indigenous women's movement in Mexico and the practice of autonomy, Maylei Blackwell; Conclusion; Index.

Natividad Gutiérrez Chong is Senior Researcher at the Institute de Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México. She has a PhD from the London School of Economics. Her previous publications include Modern Roots: Studies of National Identity (Ashgate, 2001 - with Alain Dieckhoff).