The War Against the Binnizá Body-Territory: Modernization of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and New Forms of Violence Against Women

Abstract

The objective of this article is to demonstrate that the new forms of violence against women characterizing the Zapotec communities of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec are intimately linked to the modernizing project and the para-state front. The implementation of megaprojects in the region has led to an increase in femicides and an updated sophistication in their execution. It appears that the intent of this cruelty against female bodies is to transmit a message that perpetuates the rupture of the communal fabric, while establishing a pedagogy of cruelty essential to the historical project of capital accumulation. Through a qualitative and ethnographic methodology based on participant observation, workshops, and in-depth interviews with Binnizá women—and within a theoretical framework articulating feminist studies, body studies, and critical medical anthropology—this research reveals that modernization has eroded productive lands and fragmented communal coexistence, creating environments that displace previous states of tranquility. The results demonstrate that the rise in violence, frequently perpetrated with firearms by criminal groups in collusion with state and corporate interests, has transformed the female body into a territory for public exhibition and outrage. Furthermore, evidence shows that this context of territorial occupation is embodied by women through conditions of political etiology. Finally, the study concludes that gender in the Isthmus is an effect of the technological deployment of modernity, where these ailments operate as testimonies of how territorial conflict is embodied within women’s health.