The organization Centro de Derechos de la Mujer de Chiapas (Center for Women’s Rights of Chiapas) works to promote a culture of women’s human rights in Chiapas, Mexico as well as other parts of the country. In their mission statement, they state:
“We are the women and people of Mexico who are against the neoliberal capitalist and patriarchal system that now exists in Mexico of municipal organizations and Indigenous communities, peasant and popular, in the state of Chiapas and throughout the country. We are adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle. We are the people in general. We are a free, alternative, and independent media of the national and international press.”
The CDMCH is a collaborative network of women dedicated to human rights, emphasizing gender equality at the intersections of class, ethnicity, and indigeneity. They advocate for women using four main methodologies: Sensitization, Education, Defense, and Organization. Sensitization and Education are two methodologies employed to raise sensitivity and awareness about women’s rights in Indigenous communities. Using an intersectional perspective of gender that includes class, race, ethnicity, and age, the CDMCH reaches three regions of Chiapas to educate the population on women’s human rights. They are dedicated to political activism and community organizing, hosting regular group meetings, events, and conferences, which include education against femicide. They also coordinate press conferences to publicly represent women who speak out against sexual and physical abuse by the government and the military. In addition, the CDMCH organizes women from rural, suburban, and urban areas to actively challenge capitalist exploitation and environmental destruction.
Most importantly, the Center for Women’s Rights of Chiapas advocates for the respect of women’s rights as human rights, as agreed on in the Vienna Conference (1993). The organization works to defend women across social boundaries: women experiencing ethnic, racial, class, or age inequalities, which the CDMH emphasizes cannot be seen as separate from one another in a hegemonic feminism. In order to resist neoliberal patriarchal capitalism, the Center calls out to women from all social backgrounds to advocate for their human rights.
The Center began in 2003 in the Indigenous communities of Norte, Selva, Frontera and Altos. The objective was to educate and encourage dialogue about women’s rights as human rights, and to develop community organizations to defend women’s rights in solidarity. The Center also provides defense for cases in which women’s human rights had been violated. They describe their initial goals as:
“to promote the self-esteem of women through the knowledge and exercise of their rights; […] promote knowledge and respect for women’s rights among social organizations, governmental and non-governmental institutions; […] defend cases of violence, […] promote debate on relevant issues[,] and build a permanent platform for research and analysis of violations of women’s rights.”The Center also works to advance agroecology, or the application of ecological principles to agriculture, in order to recover ancestral knowledge that has been continuously threatened by colonialism and neoliberalism, including medicinal plants. This is done with the goal of allowing women to decide what they want to plant in their gardens in order to create a collective feminist space. Their views are based on a feminist, anti-systemic, anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal political position, which encourages women to assume their own defense. By organizing and working collaboratively in such a way, they seek to “promote […] self-determination and the transformation of the patriarchal relations of […] culture.”
The Center’s work has not gone unnoticed in the region. Recently, CDMCH drew attention from the Zetas cartel, which threatened the workers and their families with violence if the Center did not pay a certain amount of money. Such threats are not uncommon for CDMCH, which has always chosen to publicly denounce these groups rather than submit to their demands.
