We should all be aware of how racism is experienced and particularly how we Indigenous and Afro-descendant women experience it. We have to start naming racism and making it visible because it is structural and historical. If we don’t [name it] it becomes a vicious cycle which, just like violence, we won’t be able to get out of. So instead of silencing it, we have to start naming it.
Costa Chica defender (2023)
On 27 January 2025, the collective Mujeres Colibrí, Defensoras de la Vida (Hummingbird Women, Defenders of Life) presented their research on the multiple forms of violence experienced by Indigenous and Afro-descendant women in the state of Guerrero, Mexico, to state representatives and local media.
The study, carried out between 2021 and 2024, documented how structural violence and institutional racism impacts women’s access to health and justice services and working conditions. The report estimates that racism and violence affects 60 per cent of Indigenous and Afro-descendant women in Guerrero, who are subject to multiple forms of exclusion, degradation, and discriminatory treatment – with often lethal consequences.
The collaborative research project, which covered 23 municipalities in the Costa Chica and highland regions of Guerrero, included the participation of nine Indigenous and Afro-descendant women’s organizations from eight of the municipalities and academic researchers from the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS – Research Centre and Higher Education in Social Anthropology) and the Autonomous University of Guerrero (UAGro).*
Obstetric violence against Indigenous and Afrodescendent women
In hospitals and health centres, they treat you as if you don’t matter just because you can’t talk the way they [doctors and nurses] talk. So many women don’t want to go to the hospital. They tell me they don’t want to go because they are made to feel ugly. I tell them that it is their right to go to the health centre to be treated, regardless of how they speak, the language they speak, or how they are dressed. Many women prefer to be attended to in their communities because they don’t want to be looked down upon.
Defender and traditional midwife, San Luis Acatlán municipality, (2023)
Guerrero is sixth amongst Mexican states in maternal mortality. This problem has been exacerbated by forced cesarean sections and pressure on pregnant women to give their consent to leave hospitals if they refuse to undergo this procedure. Monolingual Ñu’u savi, Mè’phàà, and Ñomndaa women are frequently denied access to interpreters in hospitals in Guerrero. Obstetric violence and racism combine to endanger the lives of Indigenous and Afro-descendant women when they try to access maternity healthcare. Valeriana Nicolás, from the Casa de la Salud de la Mujer Indígena y Afromexicana (CAMIA – Clinic for Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Women) in Ometepec, underlined that obstetric violence and maternal mortality disproportionately affects Indigenous and Afro-descendant women, reflecting the structural and institutional racism that characterizes the Mexican state and society in general. As she argued, majority Indigenous and Afro-descendant regions lack obstetric services, and autochthonous knowledge and practices –such as traditional midwives– are systematically excluded from state reproductive health services.
No justice for Indigenous and Afrodescendent women
It hurt us very much when they took a girl in the Yoloxóchilt and Cuanacaxtitlán area, they took her life by force, they took her from her car and took her out at night and raped her and killed her. The family mobilized. We, the CAMIA [Casas de la Mujer Indígena o Afromexicana], were afraid, but we went and joined them, we marched, we went to the town hall, to the institutions. But the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) did nothing.
Defender from San Luis Acatlán (2023)
The relatives of the girl who was killed said that another girl had been killed before, in the centre of Cuanacaxtitlán. She was a hardware store worker, they killed her and less than eight days later they killed another one. They grabbed her, caught her on the road, picked her up, took her by force, raped her and killed her. The people rose up, but the town council didn’t care, nor did the MP. They went all the way to Chilpancingo, they set up a road blockade, they tried everything, but there was no justice (…) The police came in with a dog and everything, at the last minute. The girl disappeared on Monday and then around Thursday afternoon, the guy turned up. He gave himself up alone, his mother handed him over to the authorities because he was part of the group that participated, and they arrested him, they took him to Cuanacaxtitlán, they wanted to kill him but the [National] Guard said no, they intervened and took him away. But now they have released him. So, justice doesn’t exist, the MP doesn’t take it as feminicide, they give it another name: (…) attempted homicide, not feminicide.
The report also found that Indigenous and Afro-descendant women face revictimization and discrimination in the justice sector. A lack of interpreters means judges tend not to denounce sexual aggression or femicides, perpetuating these forms of violence. Asunción Salinas, from the collective Mujeres Afromexicanas en Movimiento (MUAFRO – Afro-Mexican Women Moving Forward), emphasized that Afro-Mexicans remain invisible, despite recent constitutional reforms to recognize them as collective subjects of rights. Salinas said that dominant stereotypes of Afro-Mexican women meant that they were seen as able to put up with all kinds of violence, including femicide.
Exploitation of children in Guerrero
Children are exploited for labour as they go down to Ayutla to study in secondary and high school. What the children’s parents do is ask permission from people who live in the centre of Ayutla for their children to stay with them. [They ask families in Ayutla] to give them a roof over their heads and a meal at home while they study, but in exchange they offer their [child’s] domestic services in their home, to clean their house. The key thing here is that [those families] exploit the children for work, they no longer allow them to do their homework when they promise to help them. So, there is this kind of racism that happens, and it is not only in communities in the Na’savi zone, but also in the Me’phaa communities that come down to study.
Defender from Ayutla (2022)
Mujeres Colibrí’s report also covered child labour, documenting how Indigenous and Afro-descendant girls and boys often work as unpaid domestic servants in houses in Guerrero’s municipal capitals so that they can access education, given the lack of schools in many villages in Guerrero’s highlands. Amongst other findings, Mujeres Colibrí documented how Ñu’u savi, Mè’phàà, and Ñomndaa women face multiple forms of violence within their rural settings of ejido lands (tracts of common land) including exclusion, eviction, displacement, and the violent enforcement of traditional gender roles.
From reporting to action
At the presentation of the report in Guerrero’s capital, Chilpancingo, Mujeres Colibrí called on representatives of state institutions to act on their findings. They demanded the prevention and eradication of all forms of violence against Indigenous and Afro-descendant women, in line with their human rights as individuals and communities. They also called for public policies to be designed with a clear anti-racist, intersectional, and intercultural approach. They stressed the need for data and censuses that show women’s ethnic and racial identities (as stipulated by the UN’s CEDAW agreement), which would make the inequalities confronting Indigenous and Afro-descendant women more visible. The report also called for municipal policies for the prevention, care, and eradication of gender and ethno-racial violence against women, and effective training for government officials to ensure they uphold the rights of Indigenous and Afro-descendant women.
After the presentation of the report, Congresswoman Leticia Mosso Hernández, President of the Guerrero state legislature’s Commission for Gender Equality and part of the governing coalition of President Claudia Scheinbaum, met with Mujeres Colibrí and other women’s collectives, together with other members of the commission. They agreed on a common platform to take forward demands for gender equality policies that recognize the specific challenges faced by Indigenous and Afro-descendant women and the conditions in their regions and municipalities. This is a first step towards tackling the systemic racism identified in the report. The Mexican government has dubbed 2025 as the “Year of Indigenous Women”, and the members of Mujeres Colibrí are hopeful that at least some of their key demands will be taken up by state legislature.
For more information on the project and the work of Mujeres Colibrí see: https://defensorascolibri.org
*The project was financed by Mexico’s Secretary of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (SECITI) under its National Strategic Programme (PRONACES).
