“From the Heart of a Woman”: Yucatec Maya Women as Political Actors

In the early 1990's Yucatecan women achieved apolitical prominence unparalled in any other Mexicanstate. Included among the politically prominent womenwas a notable cohort of indigenous Maya women. The national and regional context ofdemocratization reforms in Mexico explains much of thewaxing and waning of Yucatecan women's politicalsuccess. The common use of essentialist definitions ofgender and the employment of gender in the strategy ofpolitical actors, however, was also central tounderstanding women's political success. Genderidentity, but not indigenous identity, proved to be asignificant factor in women's participation in regionalpolitics. The title of this paper refers to the campaignslogan of a Maya woman politician,“from the heartof a woman,” (but not “from the heart of a Maya woman”) who thus claimed hergender identity but not her indigenous one. Some reformsbenefiting women were achieved in the early 1990's.Despite women's electoral victories there was opposition to women expressed through sexual insult. Bythe late 1990's women's public political prominence haddiminished in Yucatan.