Florida International University Gender and Sexuality Mesoamerica Essay Write a two page paper on : must use references attached an YouTube videos Consi

Florida International University Gender and Sexuality Mesoamerica Essay Write a two page paper on : must use references attached an YouTube videos

Considering the readings by Carrasco, Marcos, and the films on Menchú and “The Mission,” answer the following questions in essay format:

1) Explain the non-binary Mesoamerican view on gender and sexuality. (See Marcos)

2) How does the Virgen de Guadalupe and Rigoberta Menchú represent the two major dimensions of religious life in Mesoamerica: walking and transculturation? (See Carrasco)

3) After watching the “Mission,” consider the problems with the male-centric Catholic approach to religious leadership versus the more inclusive Mesoamerican view?

– Use at least three academic sources. You may use outside sources, but make sure to use at least two from the course’s module. Cite them and include examples from your sources.

– Cite correctly and use MLA style.

– Follow essay format: introduction, body, and conclusion.

– Check your grammar and composition with our FIU’s writing center.

For help submitting your assignment to Turnitin, review the how to submit a Turnitin Assignment page.

https://youtu.be/-WndkHH4new

Rigoberta Menchú – Nobel Prize
Rigoberta Menchú: Indigenous Rights in Guatemala
The Mission FSR, Inc
Mesoamerican Women’s Indigenous Spirituality: Decolonizing Religious Beliefs
Author(s): Sylvia Marcos
Source: Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion , Vol. 25, No. 2 (Fall 2009), pp. 25-45
Published by: Indiana University Press on behalf of FSR, Inc
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/fsr.2009.25.2.25
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JFSR 25.2 (2009) 25–45
MESOAMERICAN WOMEN’S INDIGENOUS
SPIRITUALITY
Decolonizing Religious Beliefs
Sylvia Marcos
Using documents, declarations, and proposals from the 2002 First
Indigenous Women’s Summit of the Americas, Marcos discusses
the ways in which indigenous women are simultaneously working
for social justice and creating an “indigenous spirituality.” This
indigenous spirituality differs not only from the hegemonic influences of women’s largely Christian, Catholic background but
also from more recent influences of feminist and Latin American ecofeminist liberation theologies. Marcos draws on her work
with women in Mexico’s indigenous worlds and systematizes the
principles that have emerged from a distinctively indigenous cosmovision and cosmology. As the author shows, native women’s
fight for social justice is also a “de-colonial” effort in which indigenous women in the Americas are actively recapturing ancestral
spiritualities in order to throw off the mantle of colonial religion,
gender oppression, and elitism.
The indigenous women’s movement has started to propose its own “indigenous spirituality.” Documents, declarations, and proposals that were generated
at the First Indigenous Women’s Summit of the Americas, as well as at other key
meetings that have gathered since, reveal an indigenous spiritual component
that differs from the hegemonic influences of the largely Christian, Catholic
background of the women’s respective countries. The principles of this indigenous spirituality also depart from the more recent influences of feminist and
Latin American ecofeminist liberation theologies. Participants’ discourses, live
presentations, and addresses brought to light other expressions of their religious background. Catholicism—as a colonizing enterprise—has deeply permeated the indigenous traditions of the Americas, making it almost impossible to
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26
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 25.2
separate “pure” indigenous religious traditions from Catholic images, rites, and
symbols. Analyzing writings that stemmed from the 2002 summit allows me to
delve deeper into the epistemic characteristics of native religions that set them
radically apart from contemporary Christianity, revealing the initiative and expressions currently emerging from the indigenous women’s movement in the
Americas.
Drawing on several years of interactions and work with women in Mexico’s
indigenous worlds, my intention in this essay is to systematize the principles
that have begun to emerge from a distinctive cosmovision and cosmology.
Religious references to indigenous spirituality are inspired by ancestral traditions re-created today as the women struggle for social justice. The inspiration for their social justice activism is often anchored in these beliefs, which
stem from ritual, liturgical, and collective worlds of worship that, though often
hidden under Catholic Christian imagery, reflect a significant divergence from
Christianity, revealing their epistemic particularity. Working, as some authors
have suggested, from the “cracks of epistemic differences,” I characterize the
indigenous women’s movement as undertaking a “de-colonial” effort. These
women are actively recapturing ancestral spiritualities in order to decolonize
the religious universes they were forced to adopt during the historical colonial
enterprise.
The First Indigenous Women’s Summit of the Americas was a United Nations meeting that took place in December 2002. It was promoted and organized by a collective of indigenous leaders of international reputation, such as
Rigoberta Menchú, Myrna Cunningham, Calixta Gabriel, and other regional
indigenous women from communities in the Americas. They were joined by

Walter Mignolo coins these phrases in “From Central Asia to the Caucasus and Anatolia:
Transcultural Subjectivity and De-colonial Thinking,” Postcolonial Studies 10, no. 1 (2007): 111–20.

Historically, identification with “indigenous” ethnicity, traditions, languages, and attire has
elicited elite derision throughout the Americas. The emergence of active indigenous movements all
over the Latin American world, however, has opened new spaces for “positive” discrimination. In
other words, political and economic spaces now exist that have been reserved for indigenous identities. As a middle-class intellectual and university professor who never suffered the discriminations
and offensive behaviors to which the indigenous peoples have been constantly exposed since European conquest and colonial times, my ethical stand is to refrain from either “speaking on behalf” or
taking advantage of any preferential treatment now available. It happens sometimes though that I
am assimilated to my indigenous friends, and when this is the case, I feel extremely honored.

Although Rigoberta Menchú is a controversial figure within the pan-Mayan movement, her
initiatives on behalf of indigenous struggles in the Americas are significant. Her strategies are sometimes questionable, but she has undoubtedly become an icon of the capacities of indigenous women
to transcend the suffering, limitation, and discrimination that result from not only their gender but
also their class and ethnicity. Texts from the summit reveal her Mayan philosophical background and
allow us to better understand situations in which her involvement has been criticized. Elsewhere,
I explore how feminist theoreticians and/or religious scholars have analyzed her contributions. See
Sylvia Marcos and Marguerite Waller, eds., Dialogue and Difference: Feminisms Challenge Globalization (New York: Palgrave, 2005), 151–52.
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Marcos: Mesoamerican Women’s Indigenous Spirituality
27
Pauline Tiongia, a Maori elder from New Zealand. The meeting hosted approximately four hundred indigenous women representing most countries and many
indigenous communities. In attendance were women from remote and isolated
places, such as the delta of the Orinoco River in Venezuela, where there are no
roads, and the Amazon River basin.
Prior to the summit, the organizers arranged a series of focus groups designed by the Centro de Estudios e Información de la Mujer Multiétnica from
Nicaragua’s indigenous university, the Universidad de las Regiones Autónomas de la Costa Caribe Nicaraguense. The focus groups’ methodology aimed
at bringing together indigenous women representatives of the whole region to
foster discussions on five main areas of interest: (1) spirituality, education, and
culture; (2) gender from the perspective of indigenous women; (3) leadership,
empowerment, and indigenous women’s participation; (4) indigenous development and globalization; and (5) human rights and indigenous rights. During the
group meetings, women shared their thoughts, perspectives, and experiences
concerning spirituality, gender, education, empowerment, development, and
their relationships to international funding and cooperation agencies. These
discussions, which were transcribed and lightly edited, constituted the basic
documents for the summit meeting.
The importance of research being both led and designed by the same subjects (objects) of research inquiry cannot be overemphasized. Asymmetrical
power relations between urban women and indigenous peasant women are
evident throughout the Latin American continent. Urban woman have access
to higher education, professional positions, and economic resources, and usually they are whose voices, proposals, and projects for research find support.
The summit, however, selected its participants from a pool of strong indigenous

There are numerous definitions of the term indigenous. For example, Linita Manu’atu, writing on Tongan and other Pacific islands peoples, notes that “indigenous refers to the First Peoples
who settled in Aotearoa (New Zealand), United States, Canada, and so on.” Maori people refer to
themselves as Tangata Whenua: “First Nations or simply the People” (“Katoanga Fiaba: A Pedagogical Site for Tongan Students,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 32, no. 1 [2000]: 73–80, quotations on 80). According to Kay Warren and Jean Jackson, writing in their introduction to Indigenous
Movements, Self-representation, and the State in Latin America ([Austin: University of Texas Press,
2002], 11), “indigenous . . . is itself, of course, a historical product of European colonialism that
masks enormous variations in history, culture, community, and relations with those who are considered non-indigenous.” According to the United Nations, “indigenous communities, peoples, and
nations are those groups who have a continuous history that originates from earlier stages to the
presence of the invasion and colonization. Groups that develop in their territories or part of it, and
consider themselves different to other sectors of the society that are now dominant. These groups
are today subaltern sectors and they are decided to preserve, develop, and transmit to the future
generations their ancestral territories and their ethnic identity. These characteristics are fundamental to their existential continuity as peoples, in relationship with their own cultural, social, institutional, and legal systems” (“Movimientos étnicos y legislación internacional,” Doc. UN, ICN.41
Sub.2/1989/33 Add. 3 paragraph 4, in Rincones de Coyoacan 5 [February–March 1994], Convention
n. 169 of the ILO of United Nations).
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28
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 25.2
women who were already functioning in leadership roles: senators, regidoras,
congresswomen, heads of social organizations, and leaders of political grassroots
groups. All these women had many years of experience exercising political and
social influence and leadership. The summit offered them a space where they
could express their experiences and priorities in their own voices, without the
mediations and interpretations of the area’s elite and hegemonic institutions.
As I mentioned, one of the main themes of the summit was “gender from the
indigenous women’s vision,” a much-debated issue that has sometimes created
barriers between mainstream feminism and the indigenous women’s movement. I had the privilege of being invited to be one of the few “non-indigenous”
women participants at the meeting and to serve as a consultant for their gender
and empowerment documents. The organizers knew of my research on early
Mesoamerican cosmology and activist work and expressed the desire to hear the
opinion of a feminist who has respect for indigenous cultures.
The theme of indigenous spirituality was transversal, intersecting with
every other issue addressed at the summit. It was so prominent that a study of
summit documents, voted on by consensus, reveals the priorities of the contemporary struggles, concerns, and agendas of indigenous groups in the Americas.
The documents set indigenous spirituality as an origin and a motor for the recreation of collectivities and for the emergence of a new pan-indigenous, collective subject in which women’s leadership is emerging and potentially growing,
defining the women as outspoken, strong, and clear agents for change.
As recently as a few years ago, the term indigenous women was a pejorative
that indigenous peoples themselves had never used to name a self-constituted
identity. Now, indigenous women denotes a collective subjectivity, a social actor
that indigenous women themselves have created through their political and
spiritual practices. As workshop leader and consultant to indigenous women’s
organizations from several ethnic groups of Mexico and Latin America, I have
witnessed their ties, their collective identification, and the strength of their spiritual and cosmological references.
The Modernity of Ancient Spirituality
The Latin American continent has long been known as a stronghold of Catholicism. Even today, the Vatican counts Latin America as one of the regions
boasting the greatest numbers of Catholics in the world. Among indigenous
social movements, claiming the right to develop and define their own spirituality is a novel attitude, yet one that indigenous people voice with increasing

During the past twenty years, the Catholic population has been decreasing consistently.
Today in Mexico, roughly 82 percent of the population identifies as Catholic in contrast to 96.5
percent two decades ago. Among the impoverished and dispossessed of Mexico are many Catholics,
among whom stand sixty-two distinct indigenous groups in the country.
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Marcos: Mesoamerican Women’s Indigenous Spirituality
29
intensity. Beyond claiming a right to food and shelter, a decent livelihood, and
ownership of their territory and its resources, the indigenous are turning an
internal gaze toward their traditional culture. They are also daring to question
the most ingrained sequels of Catholic colonization and rejecting the contempt
and disdain with which the Catholic majority views their spirituality, beliefs, and
practices. An example of the mainstream Catholic perspective toward the indigenous peoples appears in the “Message of the Bishops to the Summit” below.
Despite conflicting perspectives held by scholars and other commentators,
indigenous social movements are the most visible transformational force in the
Latin American continent. Indigenous peoples no longer accept the image that
was imposed on them from the exterior. They want to create their own identity; they refuse to be museum objects. It is not a question of reviving the past.
Indigenous cultures are alive, and the only way for them to survive is to reinvent themselves, re-creating their identity while maintaining their differences.
Anthropologist Kay Warren offers insights into the genealogy of the pan-indigenous collective subject. What Warren calls the “pan-Mayan collective identity”
was forged out of the peoples’ need to survive the aggressions of the state in
Guatemala. As distinct ethnic groups were threatened with cultural annihilation, their guides, philosopher-leaders, formulated a collective identity drawn
from their inherited oral, mythic, and religious traditions. As Warren explains,
the bearers of cultural wisdom began to set forth an “assertion of a common past
which has been suppressed and fragmented by European colonialism and the
emergence of modern liberal states. In this view, cultural revitalization reunites
the past with the present as a political force.” Whatever the possible explanations for the genesis of this pan-indigenous collective social subject might be,
it engenders a political collectivity, and one of its central claims is often based
on its own self-defined “indigenous spirituality.” Indigenous women are claiming this ancestral wisdom, cosmovision, and spirituality, but theirs is a selective
process and they are contesting issues within tradition that constrain or hamper
their space as women. Meanwhile, those who have an enhanced position as
women within their spiritual ancestral communities are held onto dearly, with
the community ensuring their survival.
Addressing the Mexican Congress in March 2002, Comandanta Esther, a
Zapatista leader from the southern state of Chiapas, expressed the concern of
indigenous women in this way: “I want to explain the situation of women as

This theme resounds around the world with other indigenous peoples. See the Maori claims
in Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (New York:
Zed Books, 1999).

José Gil Olmos, interview with Alain Touraine, “Mexico en riesgo de caer en el caos y caciquismo,” La Jornada, November 6, 2000, 3.

José Gil Olmos, interview with Yvon Le Bot, “Moderno y creativo el movimiento de indígenas en América Latina,” La Jornada, March 26, 2000, 3.

Warren and Jackson, Indigenous Movements, 11.
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Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 25.2
we live it in our communities, . . . as girls they think we are not valuable . . . as
women mistreated . . . also women have to carry water, walking two to three
hours holding a vessel and a child in their arms.” After speaking of her daily
sufferings under indigenous customary law, she added: “I am not telling you
this so you pity us. We have struggled to change this and we will continue doing
it.”10 Comandanta Esther was expressing the inevitable struggle for change
that indigenous women face, while also demanding respect for their agency.
They—those directly involved—have to lead the process of change. There is
no need for pity and still less for instructions from outsiders on how to defend
their rights as women. This would be another form of imposition, however well
meant it might be. Comandanta Esther’s discourse should convince those intellectuals removed from the daily life of indigenous peoples that culture is not
monolithic, not static. “We want recognition for our way of dressing, of talking,
of governing, of organizing, of praying, of working collectively, of respecting the
earth, of understanding nature as something we are part of.”11 In consonance
with many indigenous women who have raised their voices in recent years, she
wants both to transform and to preserve her culture. This is the background
of the demands for social justice indigenous women express, against which we
must view the declarations and claims for indigenous spirituality that emerged
from the First Indigenous Women’s Summit of the Americas.
Among the thematic resolutions proposed and passed by consensus at the
summit, the following is particularly emblematic:
We re-evaluate spirituality as the main axis of culture. (Memoria 61)12
The participants of the First Indigenous Women Summit of the Americas resolve: that spirituality is an indivisible part of the community. It is
a cosmic vision of life shared by everyone and wherein all beings are interrelated and complementary in their existence. Spirituality is a search
10
Quoted in Sylvia Marcos, “The Borders Within: The Indigenous Women’s Movement and
Feminism in Mexico,” in Dialogue and Difference: Feminisms Challenge Globalization, ed. Sylvia
Marcos and Marguerite Waller (New York: Palgrave, 2005), 81–113, esp. 103.
11
Ibid.
12
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