Drawing on detailed interviews with her protagonists and informed by various peace and conflict frameworks, Vences Estudillo demonstrates how Indigenous women fashioned their shared resistance to oppressive relations and structures into equitable practices and catalyzed social change through the “vernacularization of peace knowledges.” Highlighting the struggles, setbacks, and triumphs of Indigenous women, this ethnographically rich, theoretically nuanced, and empirically grounded book is essential reading for anyone who wants to learn from people spending their life’s energy making the world a better place.
— Jocelyn Thorpe, University of Manitoba
Positioning themselves at the intersection of decolonial epistemology, community feminism, and land defense, Vences Estudillo and the women leaders of CONAMI demonstrate the importance of collective action and intergenerational dialogue in forging a common political project for the achievement of a life free of violence and the recognition of the self-determination of Mexico's indigenous peoples. The Epistemologies of Peace of the National Coordinating Committee of Indigenous Women of Mexico illustrates the diversity of CONAMI's praxis and political thought in a supportive, respectful, courageous, persistent, and deeply reflective manner.
— Dolores Figueroa Romero, Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology
The Peace Epistemologies of the National Coordination of Indigenous Women in Mexico provides an excellent piece of original analysis about how indigenous women in Mexico engage in peacemaking. Relying on extensive participatory action research, the author, Vences Estudillo, accompanied the National Coordination of Indigenous Women and its involvement in peacemaking and conflict resolution. Her decolonial analysis breaks the silences and marginalization that indigenous women are facing. It contrasts indigenous knowledge production about peacemaking and conflict resolution with dominant Eurocentric approaches. This excellent analysis is a must read for anyone interested feminist, intersectional, and decolonial approaches to peace and conflict.
— Marianne H. Marchand, Universidad de las Américas, Puebla
The Peace Epistemologies of the National Coordination of Indigenous Women in Mexico is a necessary book, which brings us closer to an urgent issue in these times of multiple violences: the construction of an integral peace with justice and dignity. It is a text that challenges us in many ways: theoretically, politically, and methodologically, inviting us to destabilize our certainties about peace, feminist activism, and academic research.
— R. Aída Hernández-Castillo, CIESAS; author of Multiple Injustices: Indigenous Women, Law, and Political Struggle in Latin America