The Napawika U'mukí (United Women’s Network) is made up of 20 Ralamuli women from 10 urban indigenous communities from the city of Chihuahua in northern Mexico. The network emerged in May 2020 when a group of women, concerned about the exacerbation of gender-based violence (GBV) due to the social and economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, approached the local Gender Unit of the State Commission of Indigenous Peoples (COEPI) to address the issue.
At the time, a researcher with 15 years of experience in collaborative methodology was in charge of the local Gender Unit at COEPI. She started to support these women to better understand GBV in their communities using a "collaborative and committed" methodology called "colabor" ( or “working together”). This methodology is founded on a decolonial and community feminist perspective prominent across Latin America, whereby the researcher involves themselves closely with the communities or organisations they are studying, encouraging their active participation in all stages of the research process. The approach is also centred on a commitment to use research to transform social reality and seek social justice for these groups.
During the first four months of the process, the researcher held participatory, reflective, and culturally situated workshops with Ralamuli women to discuss and analyse the types of violence they experience in their communities because of their gender, ethnicity and social class. By revealing the power relations that occur between genders in their communities, the Ralámuli women were able to co-develop research questions, conduct interviews with their peers and develop intervention strategies against practices that violate women’s rights.
During this time, the researcher also coordinated a series of multisectorial activities attended by representatives of diverse governmental institutions. During these encounters, the women learnt how to report cases of gender-based violence, to file lawsuits, and to seek justice with the relevant institutions. As one of the participants explained:
“The workshops were very useful to us as (women) governors and members of the Network; many women who suffer violence come to us for help and (now) we know where to take them if they need a psychologist or a lawyer”.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare committed to providing every woman in the network with a stipend to undertake ongoing gender-based violence research and sensitization work. The members of the network are now able to accompany and support other women when they decide to file a complaint for gender violence. In addition, they carry out prevention work and training workshops in their communities.
The project’s approach is centred on a collaborative methodology that aims to decolonize the scientific process so that it does not reproduce structural power relations. Workshops were structured using a culturally situated perspective, allowing the participants to approach the issues from their life experience, reflect on the forms that gender-based violence (or “werisoa oliwa ami ju umuki” in Ramamuli) has taken place in their life and how they make sense of these in their own language. They explored the different forms that gender-based violence takes in their lives– from domestic abuse to social discrimination due to their ethnic origin and social class, and how it threatens their individual and collective rights. As one workshop participant described:
“What I realise is that these women here have really learned what it means to be a woman, and I really have learned too. That time (in the workshop), talking about women's rights, believe me, I was so blinded about many things in the world … And here I really congratulate the women who are so prepared to help other people…That day, I started to think about what we talked about… Sometimes we do not think “I am important as the woman that I am, I have my rights.” We even have labour rights, where sometimes we are denigrated. So, I liked that a lot, why? Because these women who are here are examples for those who live in their communities.”
These reflections and analyses reinforced their commitment to actively addressing the problem as they realised the issues they encounter in their community form part of a broader social problem.
Over time, they cascaded the same workshops to learn from and raise awareness about gender-based violence amongst other Ralamuli communities, first working with other women, but later also involving young men and children. In the workshops, Ralamuli women could speak about their struggles because they are also women, belong to the same communities, and are oppressed by the same customary law and traditions. Further, the possibility of telling their stories in their own language and with women who understand their context made them feel more confident and safe. One Ralamuli woman leader described:
“When you speak to them in their native language, it kind of goes into their hearts, (something that is difficult) when it is in Spanish, it stays more in their minds…And some, even those who were quieter, even they answered, right? So, it has been a success for me, and everyone should know about (gender-based violence), all Ralamuli women, and also the men...Now they have the comfort and hope that they can be happy without violence. So, I think that is very important”. (Woman leader)
Some of the key successes of the collaborative work with the Ralámuli Women's Network reside in the project’s commitment to the genuine co-production of knowledge. The context-sensitive knowledge produced through the project also led to the creation and implementation of locally-relevant strategies for the prevention of gender-based violence and ongoing support for women affected. The creation of a formal organisation has enabled the network to anchor the participatory action research work, scale their work, and make it more sustainable through small-scale funding.
Another success of the project has been the women’s participation in co-producing the learning outputs that have derived from the research, including as a documentary film and a book documenting intercultural dialogues on gender from a situated cultural perspective. Working in this collaborative way is a lengthy process, with the project taking more than 3 years to co-produce the book, which was published in June 2023.
This initiative is an example of how indigenous women can set the parameters for and lead projects aiming at improving their lives. They knocked on doors and met with institutions that gave them support. Accompanied by the researcher they were able to collect data to analyse the types of gender-based violence that Ralamuli women suffer in different social contexts and stages of life, and design strategies to address the issues.