Feminist Activism in Hip-Hop Culture in México: Batallones Femeninos and Mare Advertencia Lirika

In a Mexican political context permeated by drug-related violence, organised crime, and violence against women and feminised bodies, young women with different class and ethnic backgrounds are using hip-hop culture to denounce the government and create consciousness in relation to feminicide in the country. This thesis focuses on the work of the female rap collective Batallones Femeninos (Women’s Battalions) which originated in the frontier of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and of Mare Advertencia Lirika, from the southern state of Oaxaca. Immersed in heavily male-dominated hip-hop culture, the female rappers in my research emerge as openly feminist artists and position their feminisms with reference to very particular geographical contexts, and class and ethnic backgrounds. In the case of Batallones, their feminism is informed by specific experiences in el barrio (the hood), of Juárez and Mexico City, the influence of autonomous Zapatismo, and their travels through the country. Mare’s feminism is also influenced by her travels, but mostly by her identity as a Zapotec woman and the practices of comunalidad, characteristic among the indigenous groups of her hometown, Oaxaca. Both these artists generate networks, mainly among women, that allow them to travel, produce their music, and organise their concerts and workshops. I define these networks as redes extendidas de sororidad (extended sorority networks) by which women from different backgrounds, regardless of their autonomous or institutional feminist locations, support Batallones and Mare in the fight against feminicide, in consciousness-raising towards women’s autonomy, and in questioning the foundational myth of mestizaje as the Mexican national identity. Travelling was at the core of my fieldwork during the feminist ethnography reflected in this thesis. I accompanied the members of Batallones and Mare on their music tours and while they conducted workshops in different locations in México. During these travels, I immersed myself in Batallones’s and Mare’s historical contexts, either at the desert Juárez frontier or in rebellious Oaxaca. In this way, I had the opportunity to experience first-hand the construction of redes de sororidad, the key role played by their located geographic problematics, and the impact of broader social movements on their work as well as the impact of their feminist hip-hop on their own communities and redes de sororidad. In this thesis, and in the work of my participants, feminist hip-hop becomes a space for dialogue among women from different class, ethnic, racial backgrounds, and a space for articulating the possibilities for an enduring feminist autonomous consciousness