Reflections about the negated bodies: contemporary Mayan women in Tahdziú, México

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the stories of contemporary Mayan women, who narrate their daily experiences about sexuality and affective life. From the in-depth interviews applied in the municipality of Tahdziú in Yucatán, Mexico, we conducted a decolonial feminist reading, weaving the categories of gender, social class and ethnicity, in a specific historical and social context. We observe how the patriarchal culture materializes and how subjectivities, roles and identities are configured in the ways of inhabiting the female body. We are interested in giving voice to the Mayan women, who have lived their experiences as a denied and silenced body, and try to understand them in context, based on the understanding of their body as a result of a social historical construct.