P’urhépecha Women: Word, Territory, and Autonomy Defenders

Abstract

This article addresses the role of P’urhépecha women in Cheran, a Mexican geostrategic area where, through an uprising on April 15th 2011, they recovered the territory occupied by organized crime and drug trafficking that had devastated a third of the forests. With this action, P’urhépecha women also recovered the communication system of community sociocultural structures for their antisystemic autonomic project and their uses and customs. By using ethnographic methods, interviews, oral history, and territory-body mapping for gender-based analysis, this qualitative study aims to understand the relationship between indigenous feminism and communication for the construction of alternative modernities.