The Struggle for the Lands of Sutiaba in the 1950s: Memories of Women Who Made Up the First Female Board of Directors of the Sutiaba Indigenous Community

Abstract

Starting in the 1950s, Leonese landowners, seeking land to cultivate cotton intensively, began to appropriate the lands of the indigenous communities of Sutiaba. When the indigenous people lost much of their lands and rivers, they rescued their ancestral organizational structure to fight for their rights to their lands, resulting in the formation of the “Indigenous Community of “Sutiaba” in 1954. Two days after the formation of the Men's Board of Directors The Women's Board of Directors was formed, made up of 14 women. This article attempts to analyze women's participation in this struggle for land, having as sources; the Book of Minutes from 1954 to 1955 of the Board of Directors and the testimonies of women who belonged to this first female Board of Directors. This is how it is intended to assess the participation of women in the 50s when the most intense struggles took place between the Indigenous Community of Sutiaba and the local and national government and to know the motivations, purposes and activities of this first female board.