Dissident Women Indigenous AUTONOMY in the Sonora-arizona militarized zone of conflict.

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Dissident Women Indigenous AUTONOMY in the Sonora-arizona militarized zone of conflict

Transcript of Dissident Women Indigenous AUTONOMY in the Sonora-arizona militarized zone of conflict.

Page 1: Dissident Women Indigenous AUTONOMY in the Sonora-arizona militarized zone of conflict.

Dissident Women

Indigenous AUTONOMYin the Sonora-arizona

militarized zone of conflict

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Militarized zone of conflict‘operation secure mexico’

U.S. Soldiering Mexico-U.S. Binational Corridor

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hemispheric dominanceCommandeering the Mexican Army

from south Texas—Mexican Soldiering in Mexico-U.S. Binational

Corridor

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“The hegemonic feminist agenda has focused on demands for voluntary maternity, recognition of reproductive rights, and the struggle against sexual and domestic violence. While it is true that indigenous women voice many of these demands, in their case they are always accompanied by economic and cultural demands, products of the racism and exploitation that have configured their gender identities. Aida Hernandez Castillo, Dissident Women

“O’odham border rights activist [Ofelia Rivas] handcuffed and threatened by police”

Infoshop News, March 20, 2007

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For indigineous women in the binational Sonora-Arizona corridor… dissident activism is focused on gaining land-based rights, self-determination, empowerment of the community as well as dismantling oppression from patriarchal violence from all sectors of the nation-states and indigenous societies.

‘Democratic’ masculinist governments and organizations—nation-state and indigenous-- oppress indigenous women through capitalist, religious, and masculinist systems. ‘Usos y costumbres’/’traditional ways’-- often violently dispossess, and denationalize us from homes, community, lands, natural resources, knowledge-systems, ecologically sustaining economies and land-based, decision-making, and enduring cultures.

Globalization’s containments and violent, toxic flows cause forced assimilations and forced migrations. These work together to contain and restrict us into unstable, unhealthy, and often hostile rural and urban labor—the global assembly line naturalized in colonias, barrios, streets, tunnels, dismemberment, poverty, and death at younger and younger ages.

This dilemma is further complicated by intensified militarization in IB (International Boundary) communities, where soldiering technologies are binational and hemispheric in conception and implementation.

• Their

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These classed and racedgender biases are embedded within state &state-influenced indigenous agendas in the Sonora-Arizona corridor and social movements. Our status as indigenous women is bound up in our gender as a racialized-classed and homogenized violable body. We are inherently webbed with and informed by historically specific land-based political, economic and cultural claims.

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Indigenous women dissidents do not want to integrate into mainstream feminist and social movement cultures— rather, to fight the forces of integration and assimilation which only bring state violence imposed by nation-states, corporations, and ‘custom’/ ‘tradition’ by both the state, as well as traditionalism—in the form of patriarchal ‘democratic’ indigenismBound up in masculinist states and police apparatus.

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http://www.borderplanning.fhwa.dot.gov/borderregion2.asp

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‘Supra national grids & interlocking systems’--http://www.borderplanning.fhwa.dot.gov/railroads.asp

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http://www.borderplanning.fhwa.dot.gov/borderregion1.asp

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Teresa leal~~ Hemispheric & Trans hemispheric organizer-opata-mayo—sonora, mexico—el proyecto las comadres

MEXICO-U.S. bi-national military industrial complex— ”North American ‘Bhopal’”~~76+ maquilas – 78,000+ indentured• Lead poisoning & children & Asthma• Diabetes mellitus• Sexual violence & dysplasia & cervical cancer• Tuberculosis & deficient waste water infrastructure• Water quality & management• BERYLIUM & BRUSH CERAMICS, INC.• EMERGENCY EVACUATION MAPPING & PLANNING

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Lori thomas-lunaakimel o’odham—gila river alliance for a cleanenvironment

• Stericycle, inc.—chemical and medical waste incineration

• Romic environmental technologies, inc.—chemical biological waste incineration

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Ofelia rivas~~hemispheric human rights & militarizationt’ohono o’odham—”the O’odham voice against the wall”(190 direct google links)

• Militarization

corporate toxic dumping• Indigenous migrations—binational & hemispheric• Sacred sites• Unjust detention of north American indigenous workers• Autonomous indigenous rights• indigenous issues are not the same everywhere• Community-led and sanctioned decision-making• women’s elder societies in decision-making

• http://www.youthoutlook.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=eb55546c48d2d99bf8f96c2057c0d60f

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Sonora-az Indigenous women’s cooperativesDe-oxygenating masculinities militarize and masculinize autonomous text-message & net dissidence space, they also deprive the local of gendered analysis of local issues

Ofelia Rivas and O’odham elders

organize protest against toxics polluter, CEGIR/Centro de Gestion Integral de Residuos from dumping at Ali Jegk. A village of the O’odham in Quitovac, Sonora, Mexico.

• AIM organizers hold an impromptu ‘Border Indigenous Justice Summit’ on the U.S. side in O’odham lands, against wishes of O’odham elders.

• Militant masculinities of AIM activists, U.S. Border Patrol & Mexican Federal soldiers de-oxygenate local voices & strategies for peaceful demonstration & ceremony. Shooting breaks out. Ofelia’s brother in the crossfire trying to help elders get safely to Ali Jegk.

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Email and text message :

• “I send this to the organizers of this so-called summit. Ofelia”

It’s a great injustice to the O’odham that actually live along the border communities and cross the border. The planning of the Border Summit did not involve any of these communities and the communities are not aware of this meeting happening.

[…]It’s a GREAT Injustice .[…] Had the

organizations planning this meeting communicated and worked directly with the communities or representatives from these communities this could have been scheduled at a different time that would allow the people to be represeneted.

Ofelia RivasThe O’odham VOICE Against the Wall

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Dora Hernandez, teresa leal, & margo tamezforo social fronterizo--border social forum

juarez, chihuahua, mexicoOctober 13-15, 2006

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border social forumbinational indigenous womens’ panel

a costly lesson– marginalized by BSF organizers

• Binational indigenous women—anti-globalization, anti-capitalism, anti-masculinity critiques & bi-national indigenous women's’ solutions

• Building solidarity and organizing strategies among women in urban colonias-barrios, communities and rural ejidos, comunidades and reservations

• Health, labor, housing, food, livelihoods

• Elders and children

• Technology

• Isolation imposed by systems

• Economic strategies for women-run cooperatives

• Develop transnational allies to develop technologies, economies, and resources to disrupt violence

• Transborder training on militarization of the binational communities

• Johannesburg indig women’s talking papers

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dora hernandez rosas (mazaguas), Colonia del Torres --Nogales, sonora Dora worked hard at the BSF to speak to the issues, yet her work was undervalued, and underutilized by the organizers. They used my cousin’s now famous picture as the banner, an indigenous Jumano-Apache youth slaughtered by the U.S. Marines, yet relegated ‘pueblos indigenas’—gendered critiques-- to the fringes. Gender which go under-analyzed within the movement; ours were not incorporated into the final report that will go to the u.s. & world social forums. Dora, her body freighted with cancer, was ill but in good spirits when the forum started. She was determined to make the long journey.

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Email –an alternative space to strategize with specific solidarities and autonomies prioritized

from: Teresa LealTo: Margo TamezSubject: phone battery low

“[…] it has to happen now so we do not have to go on making these sacrifices or having to work under agendas that counter our principals, yet that give us a chance to seek funding to do what needs to be done.”

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Lori thomas-luna (akimel o’odham)Text Messaging & cyber net war(80 direct google links)Indigenous & Corporate Masculinities—THE WALL of DON’Ts

“Save the date! Rally sat March 24th 12pm near Romic 56th st so of chandler blvd bring ur signs & nondisposable cups h2o will b provided TY Lori R”

Romic & Tribal PoliticiansBuild Road-Block—De-oxygenating GRACE’smobilization

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Teresa Leal(Opata-Mayo)

Trans-border Cyber-Net Solidarities

“Biotechnology, Globalization and Social Justice”, collaborative forum with binational indigneous activists (70 Google direct links)

This mural from the Colectivos was used in a flyer inviting the public to a workshop on Food Sovereignty in Tucson last year. Carlos Marentes and I shared the forum in order to introduce the issues and updated resources connected to issues of right to know and identify the food sovereignty . The policy, the consumer campaigns, the chemicals, the health an, economic and environmental impact of latest threat to the social movements. How we are now beginning to organized around these concerns. .

“ We Must go on with our allies and re-build this corridor, re-coordinate an autonomous way among O’odham, Yaqui, Opata, Mayo, Jumano-Apache, Seri, Ak-Chin, Navajo, Lipan-Apache

Cocopah, Yuma, and Mohave. We have something to say, and we will not be paved over and over-run by those who would oppress us and exclude our voices. We are voices against the walls.”

Teresa Leal & Margo Tamez

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Dissident womensonora—arizona corridor

and trans-border autonomous indigeneities

• These new gender demands have been expressed in different forms and question equally the essentialist perspectives of the indigenous movement and [both Mexican & U.S.] feminism’s generalizing discourses—which emphasize the right to equality without considering the way in which class and ethnicity mark the identities of indigenous women.

• At the forefront of the indigenous movement, these new voices have struggled for the recognition and elimination of the inequalities that characterize gender relations within their communities and organizations. At the same time, they have revealed the dichotomy between tradition and modernity that is reproduced by the official indigenous movement –and to a certain degree the autonomy movement as well—according to which there are only two options: stand by tradition or embrace modernity.

• Indigenous women claim their right to cultural difference while demanding the right to change those traditions that oppress or exclude them.”

--R. Aida Hernandez Castillo