Rural catholic women in religious groups: experiences in identity formation in rural Mexico
Rural catholic women in religious groups: experiences in identity formation in rural Mexico

Summary/Abstract: In this article I describe the behavior of rural Catholic women in the intersection between associations of the faithful and religious fiestas, as a node in which these women’s membership in the community is configured and reproduced. As part of this process I give a synthesis of their gender, religious and community identities. The conceptual and ethnographic elaborations on which my analysis is based come from a research study in the field of feminist anthropology. The perspective from this particular field allows me to describe the way in which membership in religious groups for the women whose experience I reveal here has been closely linked to their membership in the community and their gender positions that, based on their bodies and sexuality, make it possible for them to develop certain powers. These powers are consistently characterized by subordination to and dependency on those occupying positions of authority in their contexts of interaction, in the framework of a rural locality in the southwest region of the Mexican state of Tlaxcala. The conclusion I reach emphasizes that these women find themselves in a paradoxical and contradictory situation, since they develop identities that are strongly characterized by protagonism at the individual level, and this is empowering for them, but it is based on limited powers that make it difficult for them to move on to political positions that would empower them beyond the individual sphere.

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