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The hidden, shameful presence -- The imposition of identities -- Identities, localities, globalities -- Schools as alienating institutions -- Rituals of daily life: past sorrows, present prides -- Straddling the tracks: Mexican farmworkers and the politics of identity -- Conclusions

This paper focusses on the negotiations in which many subaltern peoples engage within contexts of unequal power relations in colonial settings like eighteenth-century Peru. The trial and 'confession' of Micaela Bastidas, an indigenous mestizo and wife of the Inca rebel Túpac Amaru II, allows for an analysis of the complexity of her subjectivity and agency, both as products of colonial impositions and Andean notions of gender complementarity and power. As a woman, wife of a noble curaca and member of a conquered indigenous population, she defied rigidly bipolar colonial ethnic and gender norms. Skilfully engaging in 'rituals of subordination' through the manipulation of discriminatory colonial expectations, Micaela refused to share what was expected of her, subverting colonial gender and power hierarchies, albeit momentarily.

Las nociones de ciudadanía e identidad comunales presentes entre los migrantes Hñähñu de Florida e igualmente practicadas en las comunidades indígenas del Valle del Mezquital, Hidalgo, no se definen solamente por las responsabilidades de trabajo (faenas) y participación activa en cargos y contribuciones de los ciudadanos desde los dos lados de la frontera. Estos sólo explican parcialmente el sentí do de pertenencia y responsabilidad cívica hacia la comunidad de origen. Los procesos deliberativos presentes en las Asambleas Generales en busca de consenso —un proceso de democracia directa— son también elementos clave en la apropiación, cimentación y defensa de identidades y proyectos que a su vez refuerzan el sentido de ciudadanía comunal participativa.

This article analyzes the role that communal values and structures play in facilitating women's ability to cope with the economic uncertainties brought about by the large-scale emigration of men from their communities. By focusing on a women's producer cooperative among the indigenous Hñähñu people in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico, the article reveals how the members of this cooperative have responded to global forces in local ways that allow them to preserve their communal ties and even strengthen their position in their indigenous community, while at the same time selectively appropriating 'modern' elements of technology, international marketing, and banking.