Latin America is one of the most unequal continents in the world. This inequality translates into marked limitations in the possibilities of having a decent life for a high percentage of the population. Within the groups that are affected, women are undoubtedly even more so, because, in addition to shared economic and social inequalities with other vulnerable groups, they face discrimination based on gender. In Latin America, political protest has been undertaken by women who wish to denounce and abate the injustices of which they are victims. These struggles have been analyzed by different thinkers. For the most part, feminist theories deal with the struggle of women against the oppressive behavior of patriarchy from the State or society. Others highlight the ability of women to contribute to social changes from socially accepted roles such as mothers, daughters, wives. These approaches ignore the difficulties experienced by female activists within the political mobilization. In this essay then we seek to document, analyze, and theorize about the patriarchal practices suffered by women activists - qua women- within the social organizations in Ciudad Juárez, as well as the forms of resistance they have opposed.

El amanecer del año 1994 nos sorprendió con la aparición pública del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional. Más de dos décadas después empezamos a percibir la fuerza, dimensión e importancia que han tenido las mujeres -su voz, su lucha- no sólo en la organización del movimiento armado y civil que desde entonces sigue sin cesar; sino también en la articulación del pensamiento y la teoria en que sustentan y que sostiene su actuar. La política que se articula en las comunidades zapatistas, en este sentido (y otros aún por descubrir), ha reafirmado y cuestionado las luchas feministas del mundo y de América Latina. En particular, ha hecho visible lo prescindible que es la idea de las oposiciones, de las disyuntivas excluyentes. En vez de ello, ellas proponen pensar en dos nociones básicas: “todo está en par” y “el mundo parejo”. Como haré ver en este texto, estas dos cosas están a la base de su creación de una vida colectiva, de una política de lo común. Si esto es así y si pensamos que lo común es “la posibilidad de una política en femenino” entonces veremos que la zapatista es una subversión en femenino.The uprising of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional surprised us all in the dawn of 1994. More than two decades later, we are starting to fully appreciate the force, dimension, and importance that women —their voices, their struggle—has had not only in the organization of the social and armed movement that is still very vigorous in Chiapas, but also in the theoretical and practical articulation of their thinking and acting. The politics that are currently in play in the Zapatista communities has reinforced and questioned the feminist struggles all over the world and in Latin America. In particular, it has made visible how thinking in terms of oppositions or exclusive dilemmas is and should be dispensable. We should rather start thinking in terms of “everything being in pair” and “an even world”. I will contend that these two notions support their construction of a collective life, of a politics of what is common. If this is true and if we think that what is common opens the possibility of politics in feminine, then it makes sense to think of the Zapatistassubversion as feminine.