Bodies, Faith, and Inner Landscapes: Rethinking Change from the Very Local

Patricia L. Price
Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 26, No. 3, Women in Latin America, Part 3 Identities and
Localities: Social Analyses on Gendered Terrain. (May, 1999), pp. 37-59.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-582X%28199905%2926%3A3%3C37%3ABFAILR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R
Latin American Perspectives is currently published by Sage Publications, Inc..

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained
prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in
the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/journals/sage.html.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.

The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic
journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,
and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take
advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

http://www.jstor.org
Tue Jan 1 21:56:21 2008

Bodies, Faith, and Inner Landscapes

Rethinking Change from the Very Local
by

Patricia L. Price

This study of violence, faith, and women's hopes, dreams, and fears in
contemporary urban Mexico draws on qualitative research conducted in a
low-income neighborhood in Guadalajara and is grounded in the quotidian
lives of 19 low-income women.' In their mediation of the impoverished
socioeconomic landscape arising from Mexico's shift to a neoliberalinspired macroeconomic growth paradigm, these women provide vital conceptual insights for the study of the human dimensions of economic change. I
argue that analysis of economic crisis and neoliberal restructuring must go
deeper than the local as it is typically constructed. Specific, sexed bodies,
faith, and inner landscapes of hopes, dreams, and fears-what I call here the
"very local"-must become a legitimate component of Latin Americanist
research and theory.
My empirical findings are part of a larger body of feminist work that systematically returns to sites and themes at the very local, and in demonstrating
that women experience and negotiate gender, class, and race from sites at this
scale they echo those of many other feminist scholars focusing on women in
Latin America. Indeed, it was this sort of feminist empirical work with Latin
American women that inspired me to conduct my field research along similar
lines. Because I share a critical approach to documenting the gendered
dimensions of economic restructuring with a range of feminist Latin
Patricia L. Price is an assistant professor of geography in the Department of lnternational Relations at Florida International University in Miami. She is currently working on ideas of the corporeality of neoliberal discourse and practice in Latin America. She thanks Jennifer Abbassi,
Florence Babb, and Michele Saint-Germain for their insightful reviews of previous drafts and
their suggestions for improvement. The Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International university funded travel to the 1997 meeting of the Latin American Studies Association
in Guadalajara, where a version of this article was presented. The Fulbright-Hays Foundation
(Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, Award #P022A20010) and the National
Science Foundation (Dissertation Improvement Grant SES-9205068) provided support for the
field research conducted in Guadalajara. Mercedes GonzAez de la Rocha, Gail Hollander, Victoria Lawson, Lisa Pmgl, and Ann Varley provided valuable feedback during various stages of
research and writing. This article is dedicated to the women in La Margarita who so generously
shared their time and insights.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 106, Vol. 26 No. 3, May 1999 37-59
O 1999 Latin American Perspectives

38

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Americanists across the social sciences and because many of us have made
use of detailed ethnographic techniques to address our questions, it is hardly
surprising that my empirical data reiterate their findings.
However, I wish to extend this body of work to make an epistemological
point specifically as a Latin Americanist geographer. Human geographers
have insisted that conceptual and empirical research must work across geographic scales if we are to understand how broad processes unfold over space
and time (Massey, 1993; Sayer, 1989; N. Smith, 1993). Indeed, diverse socioeconomic processes of concern to Latin Americanists (e.g., the feminization
of poverty, the new international division of labor, and the reconfiguration of
state-society relations) unfold on global, regional, national, and local levels.
How these processes are initiated, the dynamics of their evolution over time,
and the specific ways in which they play out in different places for different
people are questions that, many argue, must be addressed at multiple geographic levels of analysis. By considering bodies, faith, and inner landscapes
as together constituting a discrete geographic scale, which I refer to here as
the very local, I hope to open up contested terrain concerning the production
of knowledge. Questions of geographic scale involve not just methodological
issues of the level of spatial aggregation at which processes are analyzed but
also contestations of meaning over what counts (and what remains silent) in
constructing knowledge about change in Latin America.

DEBT CRISIS AND NEOLIBERAL REFORM IN PLACE

Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, the 1980s brought a profound shift in outlook on how best to grow and develop. Countries that had for
several decades pursued inward-looking economic policies faced deep problems when, on the cusp of tumbling oil prices, sharply increased real interest
rates, and a generally recessive global economy, foreign exchange reserves
proved inadequate to cover interest payments on external debt (Roddick,
1988; Safa, 1995a). Mexico declared its inability to service its foreign debt in
August 1982, and by 1983 most Latin American and Caribbean countries had
followed suit.
The solutions to the debt crisis, collectively known as neoliberal reforms,
aimed to streamline Latin American states and open their economies to the
eventual benefits of global trade.2The main international actor in this reform
process was the International Monetary Fund, which negotiated on a caseby-case basis with Latin American governments and held the ability to service external debt as its ultimate goal (George, 1988; Green, 1995; Madrid,
1992). Short-term measures to stabilize Latin American economies involved

Price / BODIES, FAITH, AND INNER LANDSCAPES

39

provoking a swift, sharp economic contraction through currency devaluation,

wage freezes, and deep cuts in nondebt government expenses (Bakker, 1994;
Lustig, 1992; Pollin and Zepeda, 1987). These gradually gave way to more
long-term, permanent structural reorientations in the role of the state and the
economy (Sparr, 1994; World Bank, 1993: 326).
INSCRIPTION

Stabilization and structural adjustment, although rhetorically directed at

nonhuman entities such as the "bloated" states and "inefficient" economies
of Latin America, had devastating human consequence^.^ Latin Americanist
scholars commonly refer to the 1980s as the "lost decade" because in that
period, years of social and economic gains, which had accrued largely to
Latin America's middle class, were swiftly erased. The most general setback
involved a rise in the incidence and severity of poverty regionwide (Garcia,
Infante, and Tokrnan, 1989; Lustig, 1995). Whereas in 1980 the proportion of
Latin American households that were poor had dropped to 35 percent from
40 percent ten years earlier, by 1990 their numbers had risen again to 39 percent (Comisi6n Econ6mica para Amtrica Latina [CEPAL], 1995: 47). Falling standards of living occurred directly through rising unemployment,
declining real wages, and inflation and indirectly through the collapse of
human and physical infrastructures, widespread environmental degradation,
and the increasing vulnerability of Latin America's financial sector.
Together, these setbacks left Latin America's human, economic, and physical
landscape littered with crises.
Particularly prior to the 1995 economic meltdown, Mexico was widely
considered by the international community to be the showcase of successful
neoliberal reform (Bello, 1994: 37-42; NACLA Report, 1993: 16- 17). Austerity, structural adjustment, and the shift to an export-oriented economy
were doggedly pursued by Mexico's political leaders despite the obvious
human costs (Lustig, 1992; Needler, 1990). David Hojman (1994: 196) speculates that the Mexican government was able to follow such an orthodox route
because of the increasingly strong presence of highly trained neoliberal-style
economists ("technocrats"), a maturing entrepreneurial middle class, the legislation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the skillful political maneuvering of president Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994).
Through the 1980s, Mexico's deteriorating socioeconomic landscape
was, like that of Latin America more generally, characterized by rising levels
in the incidence and severity of poverty (Lustig, 1995).4 While official
accounts of the growth of poverty found the poor to have increased from 19
percent of Mexico's population in 1984 to 28 percent in 1989, others contend

40

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

that 44 million people (roughly half of Mexico's population at that point)

were living in poverty by the end of the 1980s and that within this group 19
percent to 25 percent could be classified as extremely poor or indigent
(Grinspun, 1993; Moguel, 1994). Carlos Tello (1991: 58-59) found that
between 1981 and 1987, nine out of every ten Mexicans added to the national
population were poor. Finally, statistics gathered on the concentration of
national wealth reveal increasing polarization. In 1977 the wealthiest 20 percent of Mexicans received 50 percent of national income (Tello, 1991: 58),
whereas in 1990 just over 2 percent of Mexicans received 78.5 percent of
national income (Moguel, 1994: 39).
Less state spending, coupled with falling gross national product, lowered
wages, rising unemployment, and slipping purchasing power, had serious
effects on the well-being of most Mexicans. Guillermo Correa and Salvador
Corro (1991) note that official statistics on open urban unemployment2.3 percent in 1990-are too low and put the percentage of Mexico's unemployed economically active population at 15 percent and underemployment
at 40 percent. Those who managed to retain their employment saw the value
of their wages fall precipitously. From 1981 to 1989 the minimum wage lost
56 percent of its purchasing power, a relatively severe decline when compared with the Latin American average (Escobar Latapi and Gonzhlez de la
Rocha, 1991: 5; Lustig, 1992: 68-69; Wilkie, 1995: 424). Scholars speculate
that deteriorating Mexican health and education infrastructures could have
negative human capital consequences spanning several generations (Cordera
Campos and Gonzhlez Tiburcio, 1991;Langer, Lozano, and Bobadilla, 1991).
Finally, Mexico's deteriorating economic and social landscape is linked to
what many observe to be signs of cultural breakdown. Ana Langer, Rafael
Lozano, and Jost Luis Bobadilla (1991: 198) report increased incidence of
mental illness, suicide, accidents, and delinquency. More widely, they find
increased aggressiveness in Mexican society, as illustrated by rising crime
rates, particularly homicide, assault, and robbery (see also Beneria, 1992: 88;
Cordera Campos and Gonzhlez Tiburcio, 1991: 29; Fernhndez Poncela,
1994). Sergio Zermefio (1990) makes a similar argument regarding Mexican
youth and growing involvement with gangs and drug use.
Thus there is a vast empirical literature documenting the negative ways in
which crisis and reform have inscribed themselves on the socioeconomic
landscape of Latin America. Scholars have also documented that this inscription has not been indiscriminate. Low-income women, in particular, have
shouldered the brunt of neoliberalism's shifting of reproductive responsibility away from the state (by cutting subsidies and social welfare delivery) and
toward the household (Blumberg, 1995; Cornia, Jolly, and Stewart, 1987;
Daines and Seddon, 1994; FernAndez Poncela, 1996; Gonzhlez de la Rocha,

Price I BODIES, FAITH, AND INNER LANDSCAPES

41

1995; Green, 1995; Joekes et al., 1988; Lopez Baeza, 1993; Safa, 1995a;
Sparr, 1994; Walton and Shefner, 1994).
As a result of policy-induced macroeconomic constriction in the mid1980s and the regionwide shift to export-based growth, low-income women
in Latin America and the Caribbean work longer and harder than ever before
at paid and unpaid occupations, eat less and increasingly poorly, experience
heightened levels of disease, and enjoy fewer moments of leisure (Babb,
1996; LeVine, 1993; Moser, 1993; Safa and Antrobus, 1992). Not surprisingly, empirical work has uncovered a rising toll of domestic violence
directed at women and children, female and child malnutrition, increased
infant mortality, and a "failure to cope" on the part of women that is manifest
in physical or psychological breakdown (Beneria, 1992; Fernlndez Poncela,
1994, 1996; Gonzilez de la Rocha, Escobar, and Martinez de la 0 Castellanos, 1990; Rocha et al., 1987; Zamora Chavarria, 1994).
Feminist empirical research in Latin America suggests that some women
have in fact become casualties of crisis and reform. Anna M. Fernlndez Poncela (1996), for example, interviewed women in Nicaragua and directly
linked national economic reform to rising unemployment levels and these in
turn to massive psychological overload for poor women: "Possibly the greatest human toll of the adjustment is the deterioration of women's mental
health. . . . The women felt that all doors had been closed to them" (1996:
60-61). Caroline Moser (1993: 194), too, has argued that because of the
increasing pressure on poor women to juggle ever-more-burdensome triple
roles of production, reproduction, and community managing during the
1980s, 15 percent of the women she studied in Guayaquil are "no longer coping, [they] are already casualties and burnt out."
CRISIS AS CATALYST

Crisis, according to Antonio Gramsci (197 1: 1lo), is at its heart a period of

flux when "the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum
there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms." Crisis signals closures,
often brutal ones, as the work of Fernindez Poncela and Moser highlights.
However, crisis also opens the door to new forms of social relations that may
prove less oppressive than preceding ones. In other words, because of its
intensely chaotic nature, crisis offers the opportunity to reshape power relations in wholly different ways. Thus, it is a crucible of sorts-a particularly
malleable field of power (see also Elson, 1992; Watts, 1989).
As I have said, my focus on violence, religion, and inner landscapes is certainly not a novel one. Furthermore, the themes of alcohol abuse, domestic
violence, women's role in popular religiosity, and mothers9agency on behalf

42

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

of their children are not new to the lives of Mexicans. These are durable social
formations that predate economic crisis and reform and will surely outlast it.
However, I place these themes in the context of crisis and note that the nationwide drive to reconstruct Mexico's economy along neoliberal lines has
shifted the array of options through which women have traditionally negotiated domestic abuse, community roles, and mothering. Certainly, the
closing-off of old options (e.g., widespread male unemployment, declining
real wages, and cutbacks in state-provided health and education services) has
resulted in stress and poverty, straining the coping abilities of some past the
breaking point. However, through quotidian efforts to make meaning of crisis
and reform, an array of new options is being navigated.'
In the Gramscian spirit of viewing crises as turning points, it is worth noting that some of the new forms of social relations at various geographic scales
that are being configured are more positive than previous ones. Helen Safa
(1995b), for example, documents that one consequence of economic crisis in
the 1980s in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico was an increase
in male unemployment that encouraged women to enter the labor force in
increasing numbers6 She speculated that as women's contributions to the
household surpassed or replaced male contributions, male control of women
might be challenged. In fact, she found that although the "myth of the male
breadwinner" was still strongly imprinted on the state and the workplace,
women were redefining their gender consciousness and experiencing increased bargaining power in the household-trends that she considers positive reworkings of gender-based social relations.
Scholars have documented other moments of local resistance to and
reworking of oppressive social relations that are linked, at least contextually,
to the multiple hardships wrought by economic crises and neoliberal reform
throughout Latin America. The Chiapas uprising, protesting the Mexican
state's long-standing marginalization of Mexico's indigenous population,
was not coincidentally brought to world attention on January 1, 1994, the
same day that the North American Free Trade Agreement-the legislative
quintessence of neoliberal reform-went into effect (Esteva, 1994; Moguel,
1994). Popular outrage at the ruling party's heavy-handed, undemocratic
practices has resulted in a much more visible role for opposition parties and a
slow but steady erosion of its hegemony (Lawson, 1997; Malkin, 1997). New
social movements, some directly rooted in the opposition to neoliberal
reforms and others coalescing around the environment, sexuality, gender,
race, and democratization, arose throughout Latin America in the 1980s and
the early 1990s (Escobar and Alvarez, 1992; Jaquette, 1994; Jelin, 1990).
It would be difficult to trace these examples of resistance, reworking, and
reconfiguration solely to economic crises and neoliberal reforms. However,

Price 1 BODIES, FAITH, AND INNER LANDSCAPES

43

rising poverty, inequality, environmental degradation, and pressures of all

sorts on Latin Americans are linked to economic crises and neoliberal
reforms, and these can be viewed as opening doors to new actors and new
forms of social relations at all scales (or at least as closing doors to old forms
of social control). If these locally based reconfigurations prove more democratic, more inclusive, or more equitable than previous ones, it can indeed be
argued that crisis and reform have been catalysts for change at many scales.

SCALING-IN TO THE VERY LOCAL

Attention to the scale of the very local expands understanding of social,
economic, and political change. From three sites in the very local-domestic
violence, faith, and inner landscapes of hopes, dreams, and fears-the
women who spoke with me mediated and at times contested the social relations that made up the fabric of their lives.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Domestic violence, enacted largely by men against coresident adult

women and children (but also by women against children and at times against
men), occurs the world over and certainly predates Mexico's economic crk
s i s 7It is difficult to say what specific impacts rising poverty, stress levels, and
male joblessness have had on levels and types of domestic violence enacted
by men against women or by adults against childrem8 However, as Nelly
Stromquist's (1996) work makes clear, domestic violence is a persistent
locus of inequality that poses serious social challenges, even destabilizing the
very meaning and practice of democratization in Latin America.
In the course of my field research in La Margarita, it became clear to me
that at least in this neighborhood, women's bodies were a focus of male anxiety, impotence, and rage. The statements of many women who spoke with me
highlighted that tighter budgets, rising prices, and overburdened schedules
have led to high stress levels for all household members, creating an environment that often erupted in violence. In the Mexican context more generally,
researchers have linked a rise in domestic violence specifically to the
wrenching impacts of Mexico's era of crisis and reform and particularly to
tensions over budgeting ever-shrinking household allowances (Fernhndez
Poncela, 1994; Gonzhlez de la Rocha, 1995; Gonzhlez de la Rocha et al.,
1990). Scholars have also argued that as Mexican males see their primary
gender roles-as protectors and providers for women and children-diminishing, vanishing altogether, or being usurped by the contributions of their

44

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

wives and children, many resort to controlling behaviors that include physical and verbal aggression toward women and children in their households
(Beneria and RoldBn, 1987; Eber, 1995: 234-242; Guttman, 1996: 220;
LeVine, 1993; Rodriguez, 1994).
Women stated unequivocally that male alcohol use was linked to instances
of domestic violence against them as well as their children. About half of the
women I spoke with were experiencing problems with male alcoholism
andlor violence in their households, and all but three had experienced domestic violence at some time in their lives. Incidents of verbal, sexual, and physical aggression against women by their drunken partners abound in the interviews with these women, and alcohol did indeed appear to encourage men's
abuse of their partners. Alicia, for example, was partnered with a man who
broke chairs when he became drunk, picked physical fights with her, and hit
their baby daughter when she cried. Beatriz was partnered with a man who
threw household items when drunk. Carmen graphically detailed the periods
of verbal violence to which she had been subjected nightly when her late husband was inebriated. Gisela, too, linked instances of sexual abuse to her husband's drinking. He would come home late and pull her out of bed by her
hair to fix food for him, and then he would force her to have sex with him.
"He came home in the early morning hours, the macho, the boss," Gisela
said. If she complained about the noise when he gathered his friends in their
home for extended drinking parties, he answered, "You're making your
fucking faces. Whoever doesn't like it can go fuck off." The first thing that
Hilda showed me during our interview was a bruise on her arm that her
drunken husband had given her a few days before.
The women who spoke with me have mediated domestic violence in various ways. Some, particularly the older women, have put up with domestic
violence and experienced relief only upon the death of their husbands. Others, however, have countered their partners' domestic violence with violence
of their own. Alicia recounted that her alcoholic husband frequently flew into
rages, broke chairs, frightened the children, and challenged her to fist fights.
Rather than responding passively, however, she accepted his challenges and
often physically fought with him on the patio, where their children could not
observe them. Beatriz also fought back both verbally and physically: "Sometimes I hate my husband, my hate for him grows and I push him." Once, during a drunken rage, her husband struck one of their daughters with a hose.
Beatriz promptly hit him back with the same hose "so that he could see what it
felt like." She has nicknamed her husband "El Borrachito" (the little drunken
man) and refers to him as such in conversations with her daughters.
One of the ways in which some women's mediation of male aggression
toward them may rework oppressive social relations is through challenging

Price 1 BODIES, FAITH, AND INNER LANDSCAPES

45

cultural images of what it means to be a woman in Mexico. "According to the

stereotypes, the man [in Mexico] is hard drinking and easily angered, promiscuous, callous to all women except his mother, and domineering with his
children. The woman, meanwhile, is abnegada (self-denying), ahorradora
(frugal), do'cil (obedient), and aguantadora (capable of almost infinite emotional and physical endurance)" (LeVine, 1993: 79). Beatriz and Alicia do
not conform to this stereotypical image. Perhaps they illustrate the hypothesis that younger generations of Mexican women are openly challenging and
reworking oppressive gender roles (Beatriz was 32 at the time of our interviews, Alicia was 33). From the way that Beatriz and Alicia told their stories,
they passionately felt empowered by their acts of direct confrontation. While
one may argue that countering violence with violence is perhaps not really
transformative of an oppressive social relation, both Beatriz and Alicia found
their actions meaningful.
In a further example drawn from my interviews, however, one woman's
confrontations with her violent husband have positively transformed the
power relations between them. Silvia's experience with domestic violence
provides a specific illustration of how domestic violence may have escalated,
at least indirectly, in connection with Mexico's economic crisis, restructuring, and reform. Silvia has actively interpreted her violent domestic situation
within a broader framework of community activism and human rights and
has succeeded, by directly confronting her husband, in reshaping the social
relations of domestic violence in her household.
Silvia was 34 years old at the time of our interviews. Having moved to La
Margarita with her husband, Jorge, in 1980, she had become involved in a
political party that was giving out titles to land in the area. However, she had
dropped out of the party because Jorge had begun to hit her. She said that he
had become increasingly jealous and accused her of having affairs with other
men while she was out of the house. "I had a lot of problems [because of my
political involvement]. I couldn't participate any more. He often beat me. I
got out of politics and lost my hopes of owning a piece of land. I was better off
at home."
Some time later, she had become involved with the Uni6n de Colonos
Independientes (Independent Colonists Union-UCI), a grassroots political
organization with several branches in low-income Guadalajara neighborhoods as well as in several other Mexican cities. She had led two of the many
comunidades eclesia'sticas de base (ecclesiastical base communitiesCEBs) in La Margarita for a year and a half prior to our interviews. These
groups are small gatherings of neighbors (approximately 15 people) who
meet weekly to study the Bible, socialize, discuss economic and social

46

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

issues, and engage (along with other CEBs) in municipal-level political lobSilvia views particibying for basic service provision to the neighborh~od.~
pation in the UCI as a way of using her affinity for politics as well as bettering
the community in which she lives. She possesses natural leadership abilities
and is very talented in negotiations with often-intimidating politicians and
bureaucrats. She quickly moved into a position as a leader of two block
groups and serves on the UCI's human rights subcommittee as well. At the
time of our interviews she was earning the equivalent of a little more than
US$100 per month for a formal half-time position.
Silvia's involvement with community politics had brought several positive things into her life: it had allowed her to use her talents, to better the quality of life for the neighborhood in which she lives, and to earn much-needed
income that she directly controls. These gains were offset, however, by a
recurrence of domestic violence. When she accepted a leadership position in
the UCI, her husband began to beat and verbally abuse her again. His violence
ranged from verbal taunts and taking her UCI diploma off of the wall to
breaking her skull. His drinking had increased, and Silvia linked this to frustration over his low and fluctuating income as a garbage picker and anger at
her visibility in the community and absences from home. Silvia directly associated his alcohol abuse with incidents of violence against her. Jorge's drinking and physical volatility were cause for consternation on several dimensions: economically (he incurs drinking debts), psychologically (Silvia
feared that he would sexually abuse her children; he accused her of infidelity), and physically (his beatings led to grave injuries).
Silvia had become involved in the human rights committee several months
before we began our interviews. Through her discussions with fellow committee members, she had begun to understand that "human rights" extended
to her experience of domestic violence. She had shared this knowledge with
her husband and made it clear that she would not take any more physical
abuse from him. Jorge "holds off' now, according to Silvia. "He thinks twice
about hitting me now. He gives me a bit more credit. I'm not just any old
thing, and I'm not alone. The community organization has helped me out a lot
in this area." Jorge has since confined himself to verbal abuse directed at her
political activity. However, Silvia is sure that if she ever left the group her
husband would resume his beatings. "He sees that I'm not alone [now]. I'd be
afraid to leave [the group] because of this."
Mexico's crisis and restructuring and the ensuing pauperization of lowincome urbanites has encouraged grassroots activism such as the CEBs in La
Margarita. Participation in CEBs has "not only. . . affected how women view
their traditional roles, but. . . encouraged women to take up new social roles,
generating an interest in politics where none existed before" (Camp, 1997:

Price I BODIES, FAITH, AND INNER LANDSCAPES

47

90-91). For Silvia, political participation has brought both negative and positive consequences that revolve in part around domestic violence and her
changing interpretations of it. With increased self-esteem and awareness of
women's rights over their bodies as human rights, Silvia has successfully
challenged her husband's violence. Her self-awareness and growing selfconfidence have helped her gather the courage to face a man who once almost
beat her to death. Instead of putting up with violence or responding in kind,
she has reinterpreted her husband's violence in a larger framework of human
rights and challenged it on these grounds.
FAITH

CEBs such as the one Silvia participates in typically hinge on the participation and lower-level leadership of women (Alvarez, 1994; Craske, 1993).
Indeed, the local exercise of Mexican Catholicism, whether activist in orientation or not, draws on and reinforces the central community roles played
by women (Camp, 1997: 114). Although the mainstream Catholic Church
has a rigid clerical hierarchy that excludes women as formal religious
leaders and teaches that women must be subordinate to men, it has in practice established that day-to-day religious participation, along with the religious education of children-the practice of popular religiosity-is the domain
of women (Rodriguez, 1994: 59). Often, aspects of traditional cultureincluding Catholicism-have been seen as bastions of backwardness that
reinforce submissive gender roles and thus maintain women's oppression
(see Parpart, 1995, for a more general discussion). By contrast, I found that
women's faith (whether formally religious or not) constituted an important
site from which women made meaning of economic hardship. Faith provided
a stable basis of identity and solace for some women and a site from which to
transform relations of domination and oppression for others.
Activist-oriented religiosity provides the framework within which Silvia
and many other (although not all) politically active women in La Margarita
engage in community politics. Silvia's religious faith has also given her the
strength to continue her political work despite the high physical and psychological costs that resulted from her husband's resentment of her public successes and private absences. Silvia interprets the purpose of her activism as
ultimately evangelical: "Above all, one must always walk the path of the
word of God, with an evangelical goal." She draws the inspiration to go on
with her political work from a biblical analogy, saying, "I think of it as a
thorny path [similar to the one walked by Jesus]."
Ofelia, a 37-year-old woman who lives around the corner from Silvia, provides another illustration of the importance of faith. Like Silvia, Ofelia has

48

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

emerged as a talented local political leader. She also began as a CEB leader
and was promoted to a part-time paid position with the UCI. In contrast to Silvia, Ofelia did not experience resistance or violent behavior from her partner
in relation to her political activism. Rather, Pedro was proud of Ofelia's
political success and would cook, clean, and care for their children on the evenings that her community duties required her to be away from home. This has
not always been the case, however, and Ofelia linked her ability to rework her
relationship with Pedro to her religious involvement. For example, when I
spoke with Pedro, he said, "I was very macho before, OK? At that point, well,
I just watched her [Ofelia] go [to Bible study]. I was the type of person that
comes home from work and locks himself in his house, and the outside world
could fall to pieces for all I cared."
Ofelia remembered that Pedro would became very angry when he came
home from work and she wasn't there to serve him dinner. "I was like the servant," she remarked. After many months of prodding, however, she persuaded him to go to a Bible study meeting with her. "Prayer changed Pedro in
five months," recounted Ofelia. "It was a very nice turn-around." Although
his coworkers teased him incessantly, calling him "priest" and "seminarian,"
Pedro felt that his religious involvement had helped him raise his children
better and improved his relationship with Ofelia immensely. "At that point,"
recounted Ofelia, "he gave me my place. . . . I have a lot of freedom [now]."
Pedro, too, expressed the more egalitarian nature of their relationship: "[At
times] I become like a little boy, I seek refuge in her, because she is strong
enough to lean on."
Christina Eber's work with Pedranos in highland Chiapas reiterates that
negotiation is an alternative to male rage directed at women's bodies for some
couples. She gives the example of Antonia, whose Catholic Action-based
political activity and catechist training "had encouraged her to confront
exploitation and injustice" (1995: 234). Often, Eber remarks, women such as
Antonia found injustice and exploitation in a patriarchal society that limits
women's options when their husbands' drinking keeps them from doing their
part. However, Antonia's partner, Domingo, was able to reassess Antonia's
role as valuable and indeed central to their survival within an understanding
of his own religious duties. "Over the years," writes Eber, "Domingo has
become a strong supporter of Antonia in her role as a cooperative leader"
(1995: 237).
Like Silvia, Ofelia interpreted her community activism within a religiously grounded framework. She considered her religious beliefs very compatible with her local political endeavors. Indeed, she traced her current
activism with the UCI to her previous deep involvement with the Bible study
group mentioned above. She noted that the focus of this group, expressed in

Price 1 BODIES, FAITH, AND INNER LANDSCAPES

49

prayer and song about helping others and particularly helping the poor, was
very compatible with the goals of the UCI, and she was easily able to transfer
her previous spiritual commitments to the more politicized context provided
by the UCI. Thus, joining the UCI provided a way for Ofelia to apply her
religious beliefs on behalf of others. "Jesus died because of his political activism," Ofelia said. Jesus thus provided an extreme example of self-sacrifice
linked to activism upon which Ofelia modeled her own commitments. Furthermore, she linked sociopolitical struggle directly to a pragmatic, actionoriented religiosity typical of liberation theology (see also Camp, 1997:
85-94):
God, well, he's in heaven, and it's very nice to sit back and look at him, to turn
our heads upward, but God is also here, now, on the ground, and we have to get
into action [she snaps her fingers] to see him, too. It's necessary to work in
order to see him, and this is what I feel that the UCI's vision is. From the word
of God [we must] proceed to social struggle.
Besides her role in organized religion, Ofelia considered a broader dimension of her spirituality pivotal for her commitment to political activism. She
claimed the ability to foresee future events and felt that this power was Godgiven and pragmatically useful. For example, she told me that she had envisioned the hands of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari handing her the title
deeds to pieces of property in La Margarita-an event that had actually
occurred six months afterward. She stated that this vision had provided solace for her during a moment when it seemed that obtaining legal title to their
plots was impossible, and she had continued fighting in part because of her
vision. Her visions put politics in a transcendent holy space, translating symbols of successful activism (the handing-over of title deeds) into images that
gave her the strength to go on in the face of adversity.
INNER LANDSCAPES

Some women in La Margarita are reworking oppressive social relations in

terms of inner landscapes-mental topoi of hopes, dreams, and fears, those
spaces within which women reflect on their lives and plan for the future.''
Gillian Rose (1993) has defined the standard geographic concept of landscape as a visual construction of power relations, one that signifies the interface of man and nature and is often constructed in terms of female passivity,
male desire, and the masculine gaze (see also Porteous, 1990). The inner
landscape of which I speak is, by contrast, not visible; in fact, several women
commented that they spoke of their hopes, dreams, and fears only to their

50

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

daughters, never to their sons or husbands. Finally, this inner landscape is far
from passive; rather, it is a site from which some women have reworked relations of domination and oppression.
The hopes, dreams, and fears that women recounted to me often gravitated
around experiences directly rooted in economic hardship. Yet the solutions
that they envisioned and at times set in motion often went beyond simply
dealing with immediate material want to bettering life chances, particularly
for their children. My findings here closely echo those of Ruth Behar (1993:
esp. 278-297), whose reflexive account of the life and hard times of a Mexican peddler woman point to the ways in which events in daughters' lives tend
to mirror those of their mothers, as well as how the tools (both material and
affective) for coping with patriarchal domination are passed from woman to
woman. Behar terms this relationship mother-daughter mirroring. The life
history of Esperanza, as recounted by Behar, reiterates the importance of the
very local-particularly the link between alcohol and violence-but also
highlights Esperanza's hopes, fears, and dreams as a narrative thread
throughout both Esperanza's life and Behar's account of it. "This motherdaughter mirroring is a key theme in her [Esperanza's] account; often it
seems as though she is collapsing time and through her life giving birth to her
mother's life, while foreseeing the life her daughters have yet to live" (Behar,
1993: 278). Although the tales are at times dark and violent, there is always
the hope that daughters will be able to avoid some of the pain that the mother
experienced.
When I asked women in La Margarita about their hopes and dreams, the
most common answer they gave me centered on ensuring a better life for their
daughters. Achieving these dreams involved both empowering daughters by
providing them education and protecting them from what they saw as a local
environment offering little in terms of acceptable friendships and marriage
partners. This goal was, understandably, most often vocalized by women
who had teenage daughters. For example, Alicia, who had daughters ages 14
and 15 at the time of our interviews, felt that the young men in La Margarita
were largely lazy bums and drug addicts. "They [my daughters] shouldn't let
themselves get together [with these young men in La Margarita] so easily.
They're at the critical age." She would tell them to "think about it long and
hard beforehand because if you make a mistake. . . ." Alicia saw education as
the key to a better life for her daughters. She spoke of her sister-in-law, who
was illiterate, and traced the fact that she put up with a poor and violent husband to her lack of education. This is why Alicia wanted her own daughters
"to know how to fend for themselves, to know how to get ahead. They

Price / BODIES, FAITH, AND INNER LANDSCAPES

51

shouldn't marry young; they should open their eyes and not let themselves be
dominated."
Juana, reflecting on what she now regards as a poor choice of companion
by her daughter Lorena, stressed that "they [young women] should study.
With the crisis so tough nowadays, later it's going to be even harder." Patricia
also stressed the value of education, particularly for her nine-year-old daughter. She wanted all three of her children "to study and get an education so that
their lives aren't so difficult. . . .My daughter wants to be a teacher. I want her
to become what she wants to be. She's studious. . . . I wouldn't like to see her
get married."
Beatriz, who had three teenage daughters, spoke of the care she took in
screening their friendships and reported that she didn't let them go out with
girlfriends as often as they would like. "[These friends] don't look out for
themselves, let alone others." Beatriz knew that she could not afford to send
her daughters to high school but wanted them at least to finish a brief technical degree so that they could have more opportunities and avoid her fate so
that "if what happened to me [marrying an alcoholic man] happens to them,
they can come out ahead." Beatriz's husband, however, was opposed to
spending money on his daughters' education. According to Beatriz, he
argued, "Why [should they get an education] if they're only going to many
and spend their time washing diapers?" Beatriz replied to him that perhaps
they will end up washing diapers, but "if they get one [a husband] like the one
I got, they can deal with it [better than I have]." Beatriz was also concerned
that her daughters avoid domestic service as a source of livelihood. This was
another reason she gave for educating them despite her husband's resistance.
She had refused to take them with her to clean houses when they were
younger so that they would not have this as a model for their future. "I don't
want them to be servants screwing up their backs sweeping and mopping."
Thus Alicia, Juana, and Beatriz emphasized formal education as an
important vehicle for bettering life chances for their daughters. Pancha, a
grandmother raising her daughter's child, Suzy, viewed self-defense for girls
in more literal terms. Pancha feared that because of the age gap between herself and Suzy (ages 58 and 9, respectively, at the time of our interviews), she
would soon die and leave Suzy alone:
The girl . . . she is going to grow up, and I might die. . . . She's in my care, I've
raised her since she was a baby. When she's grown, I want her to know how to
defend herself. I don't want what happened to me to happen to her. . . . I want
her to learn and know what I didn't learn.

52

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Pancha feared that Suzy would be left alone at an early age, as she herself
was, and be forced to depend on a man for survival. "I always think ahead. I
don't want her to suffer, to latch onto a man." This is why Pancha took Suzy to
weekly tae kwon do classes:
I don't want her to be such a fool when just anybody tries to humiliate her. I
want her to have contact with other people. . . . I want her to get ahead. I don't
want her to be helpless in the street. . . . With the little knowledge that I have, I
am going to help her.

CONCLUSIONS:

THE ENVELOPE OF THE PERMISSIBLE

The body has remained a conceptual blind spot in both mainstream Western
philosophical thought and contemporary feminist theory. (Grosz, 1994: 3 )
The absence of the body from social theory is not an unimportant or insignificant lacuna. The absent body implies and poses major problems for the forrnulation of a sociological perspective on the human agent, agency, and human
embodiment. (Turner, 1992: 35)

I have argued for the importance of discussing the corporeal and psychological dimensions of poverty in a systematic, explicit fashion and contextualizing such discussion within a Gramscian interpretation of crisis as turning
point. Consideration of domestic violence, faith, and inner landscapes in the
lives of low-income women in La Margarita highlights how deep the impacts
of economic hardship are.
Equally important, however, is the often silenced dimension of how individuals mediate, contest, and at times rework social relations from these very
local spaces. Both inscription and resistance can be (re)thought from the
scale of the very local. What is needed is an expansion of the envelope of the
permissible regarding the geographic levels across which contemporary
change in Latin America unfolds. I have argued that Latin Americanist scholars could benefit enormously from attempting to push past fixed notions of
appropriate scale of analysis. Scholars must begin to think beyond a local that
is perceived along traditional geographic lines and begin to include bodies,
faith, and inner landscapes as a legitimate scale of analysis and site of resistance, human agency, and identity formation. This lends a feminist dimension to wider claims that the local is a scale of exciting critical potential.
Arif Dirlik (1997), for example, has argued that the local can be viewed both
as a scale-space of inscription and as a scale-space of resistance to global

Price / BODIES, FAITH, AND INNER LANDSCAPES

53

capitalism. In other words, the scale of the local per se is, for Dirlik, a site of
crisis in the Gramscian sense. Dirlik goes on to contend that "the boundaries
of the local need to be kept open (or porous) if the local is to serve as a critical
concept" (1997: 102).
I have shown that contemporary construction of the conceptual terrain of
"the local" excludes the bodies and minds of women and ultimately constrains the way we think about the effects of power and how people mediate,
contest, and rework power relations. Clearly, increased malnutrition, disease,
stress, and violence provide clear examples of the negative, gendered mental
and bodily inscription of impoverishment. Yet, while research on the human
impacts of crisis and reform documents the corporeal dimensions of economic change in Latin America, scholars have not yet spoken systematically
and explicitly of crisis and reform as somatic events.
The different geographic scales on which we situate social analysis are not
givens. Rather, they represent the outcome (and the site) of contestations over
meaning and the legitimation of meaning-making by social scientists. It is
appropriate to ask, then, what the exclusion of the very local means for the
discourse of change. What does the pointed silence on bodies, faith, and inner
landscapes of hopes, dreams, and fears say about what counts as legitimate
knowledge regarding social, economic, and political transformation? What,
could such knowledge tell us about democratization, renegotiated state-civil
society relations, and regional integration?

NOTES
1.From August 1992 to April 1993 I conducted in-depth empirical research with 19 lowincome women residing in a low-income neighborhood, La Margarita, located on Guadalajara's
periphery. I used unstructured interviews to gather qualitative data about life, labor, and household histories. I have changed the name of the research site, and the names of the women I interviewed appear here as pseudonyms.
2. Some countries, however, followed more orthodox reform routes than others (Roddick,
1988). Furthermore, Caribbean countries (along with the Mexican border area) had long pursued
export-led growth strategies, based on the creation of export-processing zones (Fernhdez Kelly,
1983; Safa, 1995b). Finally, Chile's economy had been directed toward a neoliberal-inspired,
export-driven strategy since the early 1970s (Bello, 1994: 42-45).
3. Indeed, from the vantage point of the majority of Latin Americans, these can more correctly be viewed as the true crises. The debt crisis itself was perceived to threaten the stability of
U.S.- and British-based creditor banks.
4. Mexico experienced a further, devastating economic collapse in December 1994 when
the value of the peso was allowed to float freely. By the third quarter of 1995 the peso had fallen
nearly 60percent against the dollar, gross domestic product had fallen by 5 percent, the Mexican
stock market had fallen 56.2 percent in dollar terms, inflation averaged 50percent annually, for-

54

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

eign direct investment had dropped by more than 50 percent as compared with the previous year,
real wages had lost a further 25 percent of their value, and unemployment had reached record
levels (Otero, 1996; Smith, Reed, and Malkin, 1995; Wignall and Betterton, 1995). The negative
financial repercussions for world (and especially Latin American) financial markets did not
compare with those felt in Mexico. This occurred after my research was conducted.
5. The term coping has seemed to me to distract critical attention from the transformative
potential of low-income women's efforts to mediatecrisis and to frame theminstead as mere survival. Thus, my use of the terms contesting, mediating, and resisting in this article represents a
political choice. Survival is certainly a valuable and difficult endeavor, but limiting conceptualization of poor women's actions to coping, survival strategies and tactics, and getting by risks
denying the potentially transformative agency that can be exercised by the poor and by
women-groups that have long been left out of critical approaches that view the proletariat as the
only real agent of change (see Price, 1997).
6. Safa (1995a; 1995b) notes that it was not solely the economic crisis of the 1980s but the
interplay of crisis with a much more country-specific set of historical circumstances that led
women to increase their participation in the labor forces of these countries.
7. It is difficult to say to what extent crisis and reform have exacerbated male alcoholism.
Some scholars speculate that stress arising from increased poverty and male joblessness in the
1980s did lead to higher levels of male alcohol abuse across the Americas (Benen'a and Roldin,
1987; Fernindez Poncela, 1996; Gonzilez de la Rocha, 1994; GonzAlez de la Rocha, Escobar,
and Martinez de la 0 Castellanos, 1990; LeVine, 1993; Moser, 1993; Rodriguez, 1994). Thus,
rising alcohol abuse may constitute an "inscription" of hardship on the male body. However,
male alcohol use has deep roots and, like domestic violence against women, can be traced though
the place-specific negotiations of colonialism, patriarchy, race, and class. (See Eber, 1995; Guttman, 1996; and Stem, 1995, for Mexico-specific historical analyses of these ideas.)
8. My own data, coming primarily from younger women (half of the women I interviewed
were in their 30s or younger; thus their adult lives had begun during the crisis and reform years)
and from a small, nonlongitudinal, nonrepresentative sample, are clearly unsuited to addressing
these sorts of questions. However, as Florence Babb (personal communication, July 1997) has
commented, it is vital that men's control of women through domestic violence be viewed as having long-standing roots in place-specific negotiations of patriarchy. Babb notes that to link
domestic violence too closely to economic crisis and reform "is in some sense to let men off the
hook for what appear to be long-established patterns of controlling women's behavior."
9. The formation, coordination, and orientation of La Margarita's comunidades eclesidsticasde base (ecclesiastical base communities<EBs) were, at that time, heavily influenced by a
Jesuit priest from a neighboring state. Steeped in liberation theology, he had focused La Margarita's CEBs on linking popular education and political activism. The Unidn de Colonos Independientes (Independent Colonists Union-UCI) at La Margarita worked closely with Servicios Educativos del Occidente (Western Education Services-SEDOC). The founding priest left La
Margarita in 1993, and the CEBs are now sustained by the initial community leaders and a new
generation of Jesuit seminarians.
10.The personal commitment to religious faith and the broader spirituality claimed by Ofelia provide another dimension of these inner landscapes.

Price I BODIES, FAITH, AND INNER LANDSCAPES

55

REFERENCES
Alvarez, Sonia E.
1994 "The (trans)formation of feminism(s) and gender politics in democratizing Brazil,"
pp. 13-63 in Jane S. Jaquette (ed.), The Women's Movement in Latin America: Participation
and Democracy, 2d ed. Boulder: Westview Press.
Babb, Florence E.
1996 "After the revolution: neoliberal policy and gender in Nicaragua."LatinAmerican Perspectives 23(3): 27-48.
Bakker, Isabel
1994 "Engendering macro-economic policy reform in the era of global restructuring and
adjustment," pp. 1-29 in Isabel Bakker (ed.), The Strategic Silence: Gender and Economic
Policy. London: Zed Books.
Behar, Ruth
1993 Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza's Story. Boston: Beacon Press.
Bello, Walden (with Shea Cunningham and Bill Rau)
1994 Dark Victory: The United States, Structural Adjustment, and Global Poverty. London:
Pluto Press.
Benen'a, Lourdes
1992 "The Mexican debt crisis: restructuring the economy and the household," pp. 83-104 in
Lourdes Benen'a and Shelley Feldman (eds.), Unequal Burden: Economic Crises, Persistent
Poverty, and Women's Work. Boulder: Westview Press.
Benen'a, Lourdes and Martha R o l d h
1987 The Crossroads of Class and Gender. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Blumberg, Rae Lesser
1995 "Introduction: engendering wealth and well-being in an era of economic transformation," pp. 1-14 in Rae Lesser Blumberg, Cathy A. Rakowski, Irene Tinker, and Michael Montedn (eds.), EnGENDERing Wealth and Well-Being: Empowerment for Global Change.
Boulder: Westview Press.
Camp, Roderic Ai
1997 Crossing Swords: Politics and Religion in Mexico. New York: Oxford University Press.
Comisi6n Econ6mica para AmCrica Latina (CEPAL)
1995 Anuario estadistico de AmCrica Latina y El Caribe, edicidn 1994. Santiago, Chile.
Cordera Carnpos, Rolando and Enrique Gonzilez Tiburcio
1991 "Crisis and transition in the Mexican economy," pp. 19-56 in Mercedes Gonzilez de la
Rocha and Agustin Escobar Latapi (eds.), Social Responses to Mexico S Economic Crisis of
the 1980s. San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California.
Cornia, Giovanni A,, Richard Jolly, and Frances Stewart
1987 Adjustment with a Human Face: Protecting the Vulnerable and Promoting Growth,
Vol. 1. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
Correa, Guillermo and Salvador Corro
1991 "40% de la fuerza de trabajo, en tianguis y otros subempleos; 15% en el desempleo
total." Proceso 781: 20-23.
Craske, Nikki
1993 "Women's political participation in colonias populares in Guadalajara, Mexico,"
pp. 112-135 in Sarah A. Radcliffe and Sallie Westwood (eds.), "Viva ":Women and Popular
Protest in Latin America. London: Routledge.

56

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Daines, Victoria and David Seddon

1994 "Fighting for survival: women's responses to austerity programs," pp. 57-96 in John
Walton and David Seddon (eds.), Free Markets and Food Riots: The Politics of Global
Adjustment. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell.
Dirlik, Arif
1997 The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism. Boulder: Westview Press.
Eber, Christine
1995 Women and Alcohol in a Highland Maya Town: Water of Hope, Water of Sorrow. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Elson, Diane
1992 "From survival strategies to transformation strategies: women's needs and structural
adjustment," pp. 26-48 in Lourdes Benen'a and Shelley Feldman (eds.), Unequal Burden:
Economic Crises, Persistent Poverty, and Women's Work. Boulder: Westview Press.
Escobar, Arturo and Sonia E. Alvarez (eds.)
1992 The Making of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategy, and Democracy.
Boulder: Westview Press.
Escobar Latapi, Agustin and Mercedes Gonzilez de la Rocha
1991 "Introduction," pp. 1-15 in Mercedes Gonzllez de la Rocha and Agustin Escobar
Latapi (eds.), Social Responses to Mexico's Economic Crisis of the 1980s. San Diego: Center
for US.-Mexican Studies, University of California.
Esteva, Gustavo
1994 "Basta! Mexican Indians say 'enough.' " Ecologist 24(3): 83-85.
Fernhdez Kelly, Maria Patricia
1983 For We Are Sold, I and My People. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Fernlndez Poncela, Anna M.
1994 "The lost decade for development." Connexions 44: 16-17.
1996 "The disruption of adjustment: women in Nicaragua." Translated by Bill Steiger. Latin
American Perspectives 23(1): 49-66.
Garcia, Alvaro, Ricardo Infante, and Victor E. Tokman
1989 "Paying off the social debt in Latin America." International Labour Review 128(4):
467-483.
George, Susan
1988 A Fate Worse Than Debt: The World Financial Crisis and the Poor. New York: Grove
Weidenfeld.
Gonzilez de la Rocha, Mercedes
1994 The Resources Of Poverty: Women and Survival in a Mexican City. Cambridge, MA:
Blackwell.
1995 "The urban family and poverty in Latin America." Latin American Perspectives 22(2):
12-31.
Gonzhlez de la Rocha, Mercedes, Agustin Escobar, and Mm'a Martinez de la 0 Castellanos
1990 "Estrategias versus conflicto: reflexiones para el estudio del grupo domtstico en tpoca
de crisis," pp. 351-367 in Guillermo de la Peiia, Juan Manuel D u r h , Agustin Escobar, and
Javier Garcia de Alba (eds.), Crisis, conflicto y sobrevivencia: Estudios sobre la sociedad
urbana en Mixico. Guadalajara, Mexico: Universidad de Guadalajara/CIESAS.
Gramsci, Antonio
1971 Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. Edited by Q. Hoare and
G . N. Smith. New York: International Publishers.

Price 1BODIES, FAITH, AND INNER LANDSCAPES

57

Green, Duncan
1995Silent Revolution: The Rise of Market Economics in Latin America. London: Cassell.
Grinspun, Ricardo S.
1993 "NAFTA and neoconservative transformation: the impact on Canada and Mexico."
Review of Radical Political Economics 25(4): 14-29.
Grosz, Elizabeth
1994 Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Guttman, Matthew C.
1996 The Meanings ofMacho: Being a Man in Mexico City. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hojman, David E.
1994 "The political economy of recent conversions to market economics in Latin America."
Journal of Latin American Studies 26(1): 191-219.
Jaquette, Jane S.
1994 "Introduction: from transition to participation-women's movements and democratic
politics," pp. 1-1 1 in Jane S. Jaquette (ed.), The Women's Movement in Latin America: Participation and Democracy, 2d ed. Boulder: Westview Press.
Jelin, Elizabeth
1990 "Introduction," pp. 1-11 in Elizabeth Jelin (ed.), Women and Social Change in Latin
America, 2d ed. London: Zed Books.
Joekes, Susan, Margaret Lycette, Lisa McGowan, and Karen Searle
1988 "Women and structural adjustment. Part 2: Technical document." Paper prepared for
the meeting of the Women in Development Expert Group of the OECD Development Assistance Committee, Paris, April 18.
Langer, Ana, Rafael Lozano, and Jost Luis Bobadilla
1991 "Effects of Mexico's economic crisis on the health of women and children," pp. 195219 in Mercedes Gonzilez de la Rocha and Agustin Escobar Latapi (eds.), Social Responses
to Mexico's Economic Crisis of the11980s.San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies,
University of California.
Lawson, Chappell
1997 "The elections of 1997." Journal of Democracy 8(4): 13-27.
LeVine, Sarah (in collaboration with Clara Sunderland Correa)
1993 Dolor y alegria: Women and Social Change in Urban Mexico. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press.
Lopez Baeza, Patricia
1993 "The genius of the 'fourth dimension.' " Ceres 24(5): 24-28.
Lustig, Nora
1992 Mexico: The Remaking of an Economy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
1995 "Introduction," pp. 1-41 in Nora Lustig (ed.), Coping with Austerity: Poverty and Inequality in Latin America. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Madrid, Raul L.
1992 Overexposed: U.S. Banks Confront the Third World Debt Crisis. Boulder: Westview
Press.
Malkin, Elisabeth
1997 "State of siege for Mexico's rulers: furious voters may clobber PRI in midterm elections." Business Week, March 31, p. 54.

58

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Massey, Doreen
1993 "Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place," pp. 59-69 in Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, Tim Putnam, and Lisa Tickner (eds.), Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global
Change. New York: Routledge.
Moguel, Julio
1994 "Salinas' failed war on poverty." NACU Report on the Americas 28(1): 38-41.
Moser, Caroline 0. N.
1993 "Adjustment from below: low-income women, time, and the triple role in Guayaquil,
Ecuador," pp. 173-196 in Sarah A. Radcliffe and Sallie Westwood (eds.), "Wva": Women
and Popular Protest in Latin America. London: Routledge.
NACLA Report
1993 "A market solution forthe Americas?'NACLA Report on the Americas 26(4): 16-17.
Needler, Martin C.
1990 Mexican Politics: The Containment of Conflict. New York: Praeger.
Otero, Gerardo
1996 "Neoliberal reform and politics in Mexico," pp. 1-25 in Gerardo Otero (ed.), NeoLiberalism Revisited: Economic Restructuring and Mexico's Political Future. Boulder:
Westview Press.
Parpart, Jane L.
1995 "Post-modemism, gender and development," pp. 253-265 in Jonathan Crush (ed.),
Power of Development. London: Routledge.
Pollin, Robert and Eduardo Zepeda
1987 "Latin American debt: the choices ahead." Monthly Review 38(9): 1-16.
Porteous, J. Douglas
1990 Landscapes of the Mind: Worlds of Sense and Metaphor. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
Price, Patricia
1997 "Crafting meaning from economic chaos: low-income women and neoliberal reform in
Mexico." Ph.D. diss., Department of Geography, University of Washington, Seattle.
Rocha, Lola, Eduardo Bustelo, Ernesto Lbpez, and Luis Zliiiiga
1987 "Women, economic crisis, and adjustment policies: an interpretation and initial assessment," pp. 11-23 in UNICEF (The Americas and the Caribbean Regional Office, Regional
Programme Women in Development), The Invisible Adjustment: Poor Women and the Economic Crisis. Santiago, Chile: Alfabeta Impresores.
Roddick, Jackie
1988 The Dance of the Millions: Latin America and the Debt Crisis. London: Latin American Bureau.
Rodriguez, Jeanette
1994 Our Lady of Guadalupe: Faith and Empowerment among Mexican-American Women.
Austin: University of Texas Press.
Rose, Gillian
1993Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Safa, Helen I.
1995a "Economic restructuring and gender subordination." Latin American Perspectives
22(2): 32-50.
1995b The Myth of the Male Breadwinner: Women and Industrialization in the Caribbean.
Boulder: Westview Press.

Price 1BODIES, FAITH, AND INNER LANDSCAPES

59

Safa, Helen I. and Peggy Antrobus

1992 "Women and the economic crisis in the Caribbean," pp. 49-82 in Lourdes Beneria and
Shelley Feldman (eds.), Unequal Burden: Economic Crises, Persistent Poverty, and
Women's Work. Boulder: Westview Press.
Sayer, Andrew
1989 "The 'new' regional geography and problems of narrative." Environment and Planning
D: Society and Space 7: 253-276.
Smith, Neil
1993 "Homeless/global: scaling places," pp. 87-1 19 in Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, Tim Putnam,
and Lisa Tickner (eds.), Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change. New York:
Routledge.
Smith, Geri, Stanley Reed, and Elisabeth Malkin
1995 "Mexico: a rough road back." Business Week, November 13, pp. 104-107.
Sparr, Pamela
1994 "What is structural adjustment?," pp. 1-12 in Pamela Sparr (ed.), Mortgaging Women's
Lives: Feminist Critiques of Structural Adjustment. London: Zed Books.
Stem, Steve J.
1995 The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Stromquist, Nelly P.
1996 "Gender delusions and exclusions in the democratization of schooling in Latin America." Comparative Education Review 40(4): 404-425.
Tello, Carlos
1991 "Combatting poverty in Mexico," pp. 57-65 in Mercedes Gonzilez de la Rocha and
Agustin Escobar Latapi (eds.), Social Responses to Mexico's Economic Crisis of the 1980s.
San Diego: Center for US.-Mexican Studies, University of California.
Turner, Bryan S.
1992 Regulating Bodies: Essays in Medical Sociology. London: Routledge.
Walton, John and Jonathan Shefner
1994 "Latin America: popular protest and the state," pp. 97-134 in John Walton and David
Seddon (eds.), Free Markets and Food Riots: The Politics of Global Adjustment. Oxford,
U.K.: Blackwell.
Watts, Michael J.
1989 "The agrarian question in Africa: debating the crisis." Progress in Human Geography
13(1): 1-41.
Wignall, C. and S. Betterton
1995 "Report from the fund managers." GT Global Latin American Growth Fund Annual
Report, October 31, pp. 1-5.
Wilkie, James W. (ed.)
1995StatisticalAbstract of Latin America. Vol. 31(1). Los Angeles: University of California
at Los Angeles Latin American Center Publications.
World Bank
1993 Trends in Developing Economies, 1993. Washington, DC: World Bank.
Zamora Chavarria, Eugenia Mm'a
1994 "The precarious situation of Latin America's children." NACLA Report on the Americas 27(6): 37.
Zermeiio, Sergio
1990 "Crisis, neoliberalism, and disorder," pp. 160-180 in Joe Foweraker and Ann L. Craig
(eds.), Popular Movements and Political Change in Mexico. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

http://www.jstor.org

LINKED CITATIONS
- Page 1 of 2 -

You have printed the following article:

Bodies, Faith, and Inner Landscapes: Rethinking Change from the Very Local
Patricia L. Price
Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 26, No. 3, Women in Latin America, Part 3 Identities and
Localities: Social Analyses on Gendered Terrain. (May, 1999), pp. 37-59.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-582X%28199905%2926%3A3%3C37%3ABFAILR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R

This article references the following linked citations. If you are trying to access articles from an
off-campus location, you may be required to first logon via your library web site to access JSTOR. Please
visit your library's website or contact a librarian to learn about options for remote access to JSTOR.

References
After the Revolution: Neoliberal Policy and Gender in Nicaragua
Florence E. Babb
Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 23, No. 1, Women in Latin America, Part 2. (Winter, 1996), pp.
27-48.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-582X%28199624%2923%3A1%3C27%3AATRNPA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H

The Disruptions of Adjustment: Women in Nicaragua

Anna M. Fernndez Poncela; Bill Steiger
Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 23, No. 1, Women in Latin America, Part 2. (Winter, 1996), pp.
49-66.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-582X%28199624%2923%3A1%3C49%3ATDOAWI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C

The Urban Family and Poverty in Latin America

Mercedes Gonzlez de la Rocha; Barbara B. Gantt
Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 22, No. 2, Women in Latin America. (Spring, 1995), pp. 12-31.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-582X%28199521%2922%3A2%3C12%3ATUFAPI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y

http://www.jstor.org

LINKED CITATIONS
- Page 2 of 2 -

The Political Economy of Recent Conversions to Market Economics in Latin America

David E. Hojman
Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1. (Feb., 1994), pp. 191-219.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-216X%28199402%2926%3A1%3C191%3ATPEORC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K

Economic Restructuring and Gender Subordination

Helen I. Safa
Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 22, No. 2, Women in Latin America. (Spring, 1995), pp. 32-50.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-582X%28199521%2922%3A2%3C32%3AERAGS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2

Gender Delusions and Exclusions in the Democratization of Schooling in Latin America

Nelly P. Stromquist
Comparative Education Review, Vol. 40, No. 4, Special Issue on Democratization. (Nov., 1996), pp.
404-425.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0010-4086%28199611%2940%3A4%3C404%3AGDAEIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O