Bread or Chainsaws? Paths to Mobilizing Household Labor for Cooperative Rural Development in a Oaxacan Village (Mexico)

This ethnographic case study of a rural production co-op in the indigenous community of Santa Cruz (Oaxaca, Mexico) documents men’s efforts to enlist women’s participation in men’s co-op projects. Over an eight-year period, men initiated a number of production projects, only to see them fail when women refused to participate. I use data from participant observation, surveys, and interviews to construct gendered time-geographies of agricultural and co-op project labor. These reveal the existence of labor crises, moments in the agricultural calendar when men’s labor is insufficient to cover both household and co-op tasks. Men’s attempts to mobilize women’s labor power were met with women’s counterstrategies of resistance. Ultimately, women established their own co-op production section (bakery) when men opted to incorporate them into the co-op as decision makers. The analysis suggests, first, that development project dynamics are fluid and, within specific circumstances, can enhance women’s social and economic position vis-à-vis men. Second, participation is always partial and contingent and best examined within a context of ongoing negotiations. Lastly, poststructuralist time-geographies may contribute to development analysis when conceived as both material and discursive practices bound to geographic imaginaries.