"Today we are able to grow": Rarámuri indigenous women and their identity construction at university

Abstract

After addressing the frame of reference, this article describes the experiences of Rarámuri women as university students, with the objective of identifying and explaining the ways in which these women articulate university education and the construction or reconstruction of an ethnic and gender identity. My hypothesis is that they redefine and revalue, as they do with their ethnic identity, their gender identity through these academic experiences. I carried out this research using ethnography as a method. I found that grant institutions and aid programs encourage and perceive the image of Rarámuri women as responsible for recovering their traditions, but also of learning a specific culture dictated by institutions. Rarámuri women are also autonomous beings who actively interpret and respond to their situation, as they assess their historical conditions as women, which now determine interethnic relations in the university, and this leads me to conceive them as feminists.