How autonomous schools nurture Mexico's feminist movement

The first day of the 18th cohort of the Women’s Freedom School in Oaxaca City on May 11, 2024. Photo © Daliri Oropeza.

Reportage • Daliri Oropeza Alvarez • May 31, 2024 • Leer en castellano

The circle of women is diverse. Some are older, others are younger. Some are from the city, others are from the mountains or the coast. Some come from different states. There are psychologists, teachers, lawyers, moms, activists, and active learners among them. They came together for the first session of the Women's Freedom School, an autonomous education project in Oaxaca that turned nine this year.

Their motives for joining the circle are as diverse as the women themselves. Thirty women introduce themselves and, as they do so, put the problems of patriarchy into sharp relief. They want to know what freedom is, how to defend themselves, how to strengthen their characters, how to learn about the feminist movement and how to discuss it with their children.

The women talk about violence and how much they want to understand and fight for freedom. They feel helpless in the face of sexual and work-place harassment and want to make sure that these things don’t happen to their daughters. They build support networks to counter the macho violence Mexican women live with. They hope to find footing at moments when they feel lost, to link up with other feminists and to heal. They want to avoid sexual violence. To escape vulnerability. To support other women. 

Naxhielli Arreola welcomes them on a Saturday evening in May, as three fans whirl against the heat. She is one of the coordinators of the School for Women's Freedom (ELM). She explains the five modules that shape the school’s pedagogy: feminist theory, self-awareness for putting theory into practice, physical and emotional self-defense, protest art with music and painting and learning trades through workshops in plumbing, electricity and carpentry. 

"So many women, networks of women, make the escuelita possible," said Arreola, using the term for “little school” commonly used to describe feminist education initiatives. "When you sign up, when you apply, you make it happen. Among the many women who founded the project, two in particular decided that the escuelita would run from a lesbian-feminist perspective." 

Arreola explains that the school was founded in 2015 and that she herself was a student before becoming a coordinator. “Relax, it’s not like someone is trying to convert you to Christianity!” she joked. “As a graduate of the fourth cohort, I can say that I still feel like a strong goddess warrior. And, yes, I still like men." Laughter rippled through the women's circle. The school raises awareness about acts of discrimination and aggression against lesbians, but it embraces other feminist traditions as well.

What’s important is to explore the history of feminisms and anti-patriarchal struggles, says Arreola, in order to understand that feminism is not just one thing, not a single struggle. "Feminism has diverse roots and varied currents," she states.

Eli is older. She spoke during the break before the theory class. With a big smile and bright gray hair, she said her daughter told her about the ELM. "You must be my daughter's age," she said to the group, with a twinkle in her eye. "It's never too late to become a feminist,” she said. “I want to know what freedom for women means." So began the eighteenth cohort.

The ELM has two cohorts every year. This was true even during the pandemic, when activities took place online. For three months, the group meets on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays for theoretical and hands-on workshops with personalized follow-up. Everything takes place at Casa Libertad in the center of Oaxaca City. 

Arreola assures those gathered that freedom can come from autonomy. She’s a photographer who centers her creative work on documenting the feminist movement and has helped to open educational spaces in peripheral neighborhoods as well. Her grandmother is from the Mixtec region and a teacher in Section 22 of the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers. She says that her grandmother has inspired her to defend women's rights.

"The idea of the escuelita is for us to see that we can be autonomous without being individualistic, that we can do that," Arreola said in an interview with Ojalá. "For women, it’s a springboard toward freedom and independence. We reclaim our bodies and knowledge of our strength."

Fruits of freedom

Charlynne Curiel leads the workshop of the Theories of Feminisms unit. She’s a social anthropologist and professor at the Autonomous University of Oaxaca. Smiling, she agrees to an interview about what she has learned over years of teaching at the School for Women's Freedom. 

"2016 was a crucial year for the feminist movement. The movement exploded in size then and the escuelita is part of that wave," said Curiel. "It also reflects women’s rejection of rising violence against women in Oaxaca."

According to the Executive Secretariat of Mexico’s National Public Security System, the state of Oaxaca has the eighth highest number of femicides, with 214 registered between 2019 and 2023. The state of Puebla ranks seventh, with 229 over the same time period. Rights groups say the number of femicides counted by Oaxaca’s Attorney General are low compared to their own counts, as violent killings of women are sometimes classified as homicides and not femicides.

During the escuelita, says Curiel, women came to realize that they were already fighting for their rights in their own lives, even if they didn’t call it feminism. 

"The escuelita forms ‘emotional communities,’ a concept that I like from Myriam Jimeno, a Colombian anthropologist," said Curiel. "Many have survived some kind of violence. By sharing their pain, they heal and also politicize the pain itself."

ELM organizers say that the feminist movement in Oaxaca has grown visibly stronger. There was a solid turnout at this year’s March 8 demonstration, which included protests with graffiti and direct action. In the disobedience art module of the ELM, students use creative means to push against oppression. Their creations often become graffiti or chants at demonstrations. 

Pedagogies that nurture 

The School for Women's Freedom is not the only autonomous project seeking to bring women together and promote feminist pedagogies in Mexico. Further north, in the city of Puebla, there is El Taller [The Workshop], a center for awareness and education that was founded 17 years ago. 

To raise awareness about sexual diversity and feminisms, the women from El Taller created the Escuelita Feminista [Feminist School] in 2012. Gabriela Cortés founded and now coordinates the project. She believes that the feminist movement has created a synergy through the educational work it has carried out. In April, she started teaching the autonomous school’s twelfth cohort.

"It's a little school where we all learn from each other,"said Cortés. She says that the first escuelita began as a feminist reading circle. They’d expected five people to show up, but more than 30 women of different ages came to read texts about feminism and violence written mostly by women.

It was Escuelita students who organized the first SlutWalk in Puebla. This was a solidarity march organized after an attack against a woman in Toronto, Canada, when a cop assaulted a woman and told her that she shouldn’t dress like a whore if she did not want to be sexually threatened. Every year following the first SlutWalk in Puebla in 2011, El Taller has organized the march out of the Escuelita. The protest has a different tone each year, depending on the cohort. At the beginning around 50 people marched, whereas now thousands take the streets for SlutWalk in the notoriously conservative city every October.

The Escuelita offers classes in theory, theater and music and self-defense, and courses on labor and health. The school also helps women learn about different aspects of the feminist struggle: workplace conflicts, mothers of victims of feminicide, forced disappearance, and land defense. 

The autonomous schools have worked to strengthen collective processes. In Puebla and Oaxaca, organizers created an internal protocol in order to attend to students in need. This is important because sometimes what is shared in the escuelitas is extremely sensitive and difficult.

"There are moments when something shifts during the cohort, when things become unsettled and it’s hard to find equilibrium," says Arreola. "Not everyone who participates has psychological or therapeutic support or a network.”

Inspiration and lessons

Feminist schools have also expanded to the north of the country, such as to Ciudad Obregón in Sonora.

Leona is a member of the Sawa collective from Ciudad Obregón who asked me not to use her full name. Last year they held their first feminist school and hope to hold another, after seeing the positive results of the first cohort, which generated striking feelings of unity among women in Mexico’s distinctly macho north.  

"The escuelita was born out of our collective’s desire to support and help women with diverse issues from a feminist standpoint," says Leona. She and other members of the Sewa collective teach classes on different topics every month, including self-defense, legal rights, psychology, abortion and menstrual health.

"We’ve learned that we have to work together and unite," said Leona. "I find it amazing that feminist collectives have been able to come together in Ciudad Obregón, despite our ideological differences."

In Mexico, many other autonomous schools have been created, which nurture feminist currents among younger generations, who are eager to take to the streets. In Mexico City, there is the Comuna Lencha Trans, a political educational space, and the Tierra Violeta Collective in Guanajuato, which holds talks and workshops on a more sporadic basis, to name just two.

What these experiences have in common is the belief that the more people gather to think collectively about feminism, the stronger the connection between reflection and action becomes.