It is impossible to understand the growth of indigenous and peasant women’s participation in contemporary social movements nor the rise in their gender specific demands, without recognizing their history of struggle and resistance since colonial times (Gall and Hernández 2004) as well as the multiple dialogues of the last several decades that have influenced their political identities. Campesino (peasant) movements, guerilla movements, theology liberation movements, rural feminisms, international organizations as well as government programs, have all contributed to creating political spaces for peasant and indigenous women. Each of these contributed various elements to help construct a culturally specific gender based agenda for change, that rearticulates or rejects various elements of discourses about the rights of women.
The voices of these women began to be heard in the beginning of the 1980s, as part of a broader series of social mobilizations and struggles of urban and rural women participating in popular movements (labor, urban popular, peasant). They began to develop a criticism towards the inequalities and injustices they suffered as women. The women’s campesina movement was part of this pioneering process where a popular feminism in its rural form was constructed.