Motherhood and power: the production of a women's culture of politics in a Mexican community

This article examines women's conversations and speeches in political groups as demonstrating how they understand the fit between their role as mothers and their emerging role in the political arena in a Mexican community. In the late 1970s Buena Vistan women organized their own political groups. Images of the mother as redeemer channeled their demands for political authority in a time of political and economic crisis. This article argues that by drawing on traditional constructions of gender relationships, women's organizations produced an alternative definition of legitimate politics and established their own place in the public political arena. [Mexico, gender, politics, social movements, ideology]