¡VIVAS NOS QUEREMOS! Feminist Activism in Hip-Hop Culture in México: Batallones Femeninos and Mare Advertencia Lirika Linda Daniela Villegas Mercado Department of Gender and Cultural Studies Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences University of Sydney A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctoral of Philosophy at the University of Sydney 2019 1 DECLARATION I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person nor material which to a substantial extent has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma of the university or other institute of higher learning, except where due acknowledgement has been made in the text. Linda Daniela Villegas Mercado March 2019 2 ABSTRACT 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. 3 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. 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own intellectual freedom and financial independence materialised during my Doctoral research period in Sydney, Australia and my fieldwork in México. I owe this enriching experience to numerous and dearest family members, friends, mentors, colleagues, books, films, music, and furry friends in both sides of the world. First, I am profoundly grateful to the whole crew of Batallones Femeninos and Mare Advertencia Lirika who shared with me their time, space, struggles and feminisms. This thesis would not have been possible without you. I respect immensely your artistic work, your social commitment and your joie de vivre. I also wish to thank the extended sorority network that gave us shelter, shared experiences and opened my eyes to new enriching ways of living among women during the SiempreViva tour in Torreón, Ciudad Juárez, Tlaxcala and Chihuahua. I would like to specially thank Julia Monárrez, academic from El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Ciudad Juárez and Rosalba Robles, academic from Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez (UACJ). Thanks so much for your time and academic support while doing my ethnography in Ciudad Juárez. My thesis could not have been possible without your academic work and professional insights. I would like to express my special thanks to my supervisor Professor Catherine Driscoll who since the very beginning supported my research and has been very encouraging throughout the whole process. Thanks so much for your professionalism and kindness. A special gratitude to the Gender and Cultural Studies Department (GCS), for their support during the Work in Progress sessions, specially to Professor Meaghan Morris, Professor Elspeth Probyn and Dr. Jane Park. I appreciate so much your interest on my work and constant critical feedback. I also wish to thank a number of friends from the department who have been 5 very supportive during this adventure. César Sánchez-Avella, I treasure your friendship, you´ve been very important to me in this journey; Rachel Cole, thanks so much for your smiles, love and engaging with my work, thanks so much for the proofreading! ; Jan Filmer, thanks for our lunch conversations about mapping Sydney and constant support; Portia Tshegofatso Loeto, miss our photos and your elegance! ; Karma Chahine, thanks for our book conversations! ; Majdi Warda and Lakshita Malhotra, Decolonial team thanks so much for your critical thinking, miss you girls! I also gratefully acknowledge the financial support for this thesis that came from both the University of Sydney International Research Scholarship (USydIS) and the Postgraduate Scholarships to Study Abroad from the National Council on Science and Technology (CONACYT). Furthermore, I would also like to acknowledge with much appreciation the crucial role of Professor Mónica Cejas who encouraged to study my PhD overseas. You have been very influential in my academic work, since you were my supervisor in the Master of Women Studies in the Metropolitan Autonomous University, Xochimilco UAM-X in México. All my affection to my friends in México and overseas that kept in touch during this long period of Doctoral research. Thanks so much for your long distance support, I appreciate it so much. I would like to thank Luis Ángel, Paulina Pezzat, Marvin Mesinas, Anna Touati, Beatriz Hernández, Alejandro García, Julia and Belem Gonzalez, Enrique Hernández, Nayeli Díaz, César Rodríguez, Nadia Hernández del Río. I want to thank all the worldwide friends I made during my stay in Sydney. Specially Claire Fensome, Camilo Haley, Omid Tofighian, Rosa Cienfuegos, Samantha Silva, thanks for your support, smiles, conversations and insights. 6 A special and warmly gratitude to my lovely Kwannie Krairit, whom I met in the GCS at Sydney University and became my dearest friend. Thanks so much for your support through all the thesis project and our manga and anime endless conversations. A lot of gratitude to my Paul Esber, I am so grateful we have accompanied each other through all this last stage of our PhD´s. I am very proud of you, Dr Esber and I want to thank you for all your love and support. Let´s have more adventures together! ¡Te amo mucho! This journey would not have been possible without the support of my family. I want to dedicate this thesis to my grandmother Aurora Ávila Tufiño, who passed away on September 2017, while I was in Sydney. You always encouraged me in all of my pursuits and deeply inspired me. This is for you, for the construction of our memory and women´s fight. To my mum Linda Elizabeth Mercado Ávila, thanks so much for our everyday thoughtful conversations and your infinite love; my aunt Laura Mercado Ávila, my uncles Julio Mercado Ávila and Ricardo Mercado Ávila. Also I want to thank my grandfather Miguel Villegas who kept in touch with me from far away Anchorage, Alaska, always with good sense of humour and new adventures to share. To all the women who fight, in every corner of the world! Daniela Villegas 7 NOTES ON TRANSLATION All of the translations from Spanish to English in this thesis are the author’s unless otherwise stated. 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract Acknowledgements Notes on Translation Introduction 10 Chapter 1: We are Bad, but we can be Worse • Daughters of the Década Perdida 29 • Hip-hop Generation Feminism: an intersectional approach 34 Chapter 2: My Life in a Suitcase: a feminist ethnography • Positioning Myself/Locating the Self 46 • A Feminist Ethnography 53 • Mapping the Route 61 • Braiding Sorority Networks 80 Chapter 3: Batallones Femeninos • Taking the floor in Juaritos 86 • Kolectiva Fronteriza: from Juaritos to Ciudad Monstruo, 107 constructing autonomy and sorority networks • Disruptive bodies on the stage 140 Chapter 4: Mare Advertencia Lirika • The interwoven of the personal and the collective 153 • “Not only words in the air” 185 • “What you do not name, does not exist” 197 Conclusion 221 Appendices 227 References 236 9 INTRODUCTION In 2012, I was finishing my Master’s degree in Women’s Studies in México with a dissertation focused on an analysis of Remains of the Day (2005-2007), a photographic series by Mexican American artist Daniela Edburg. The images portrayed oneiric landscapes juxtaposed with the shocking placement of dismembered body parts of young fair-skinned women, wearing clothes that associated them with a middle-class, urban background. At the end of my project, I concluded that Edburg’s images, a mixture of sublime landscapes and abject, dismembered female bodies’ result in a grotesque visual composition.