Indigenous Women, Rights and the Nation-State in the Andes

Abstract

Through a focus on the Andean region, this chapter argues that the rights granted by states — and those fought for by peasants, by indigenous peoples and by women — have not adequately guaranteed indigenous women’s rights. The multifaceted and contested identities of indigenous women have rather been made invisible in the separate rights associated with class, ‘race’² or gender. Indigenous women’s fluid and multifaceted identities remain only contingently and incompletely guaranteed by the legislation and political demands made in Andean countries over recent decades. In other words, indigenous women fall between the edifice of rights constructed by the states and political movements of the region.

The Economic and Social Research Council (grant No. R000234321), the Nuffield Foundation and the American Friends Service Committee generously supported the various research projects on which this chapter is based. A preliminary version of the paper was presented at the 1998 Workshop on ‘Gender, rights and justice in Latin America’. I would like to thank Nikki Craske, Maxine Molyneux, an anonymous reviewer and Pilar Larreamendy for helpful suggestions and comments. Any errors or misinterpretations are my own.