Propietarias a la espera: migración internacional, herencia y género en dos comunidades indígenas oaxaqueñas

Identifier:  TDX:2457

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX2457

Authors:  Martínez Iglesias, María

Abstract:
This thesis analysis why the permanent migration of the sons - the preferred inheritors of family land under the Mesoamerican family model - has shifted inheritance patters to include daughters in some areas of Oaxaca (México), while in others men still maintain their privileges over family land even when they are not present. Based in two case studies conducted in Oaxaca indigenous communities, we argue that daughters, excluded from previous arrangements, have become heirs because they can replace or complement their brothers in the four elements that made men legitimate heirs: residence, provision, care and the capacity of representing elderly parents in community institutions. Along with these new daughters¨ contributions to parents, new social definition of what means to be an adult women has change the assumption that daughters, after marriage, must be dependent only in their husband economic provision. Women, as daughters, still excluded from family property transfers because parents and migrated sons can rebuild cooperation despite the distance; or daughters cooperate only as care-givers but not providing or representing their parents. As long as our research areas are ruled by usos y costumbres and the land tenure is communal, some other debates around the tensions between private-comunal land and law –costum needed to be answered.