In this extensively revised and updated second edition of her classic ethnography, Lynn Stephen explores the intersection of gender, class, and indigenous ethnicity in southern Mexico. She provides a detailed study of how the lives of women weavers and merchants in the Zapotec-speaking town of Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, have changed in response to the international demand for Oaxacan textiles. Based on Stephen’s research in Teotitlán during the mid-1980s, in 1990, and between 2001 and 2004, this volume provides a unique view of a Zapotec community balancing a rapidly advancing future in export production with an entrenched past anchored in indigenous culture.

Stephen presents new information about the weaving cooperatives women have formed over the last two decades in an attempt to gain political and cultural rights within their community and standing as independent artisans within the global market. She also addresses the place of Zapotec weaving within Mexican folk art and the significance of increased migration out of Teotitlán. The women weavers and merchants collaborated with Stephen on the research for this book, and their perspectives are key to her analysis of how gender relations have changed within rituals, weaving production and marketing, local politics, and family life. Drawing on the experiences of women in Teotitlán, Stephen considers the prospects for the political, economic, and cultural participation of other indigenous women in Mexico under the policies of economic neoliberalism which have prevailed since the 1990s.

Winner, 2025 New Mexico Book Awards, Multicultural Category
Finalist, New Mexico Book Awards, BIPOC Author or Subject Category and First Book Category

Working at the intersection of Latina/o/x cultural studies, sociocultural linguistics, and Chicana feminist studies, Lillian Gorman’s Zones of Encuentro takes an in-depth look at the cultural and linguistic interactions between two distinct Latina/o/x communities in the region: Nuevomexicanos (Hispanic people who trace their presence in the region to colonial times and whose families have historically spoken Traditional New Mexican Spanish, or TNMS) and first-generation Mexicano immigrants (who tend to speak Mexican Spanish). Gorman examines the everyday lived language experiences and ethnolinguistic identities of Mexicanos and Nuevomexicanos together, specifically through the case of mixed Mexicano-Nuevomexicano families. Through an interdisciplinary critical reading of ethnographic data, pláticas (informal conversations that gather family and community knowledge), interviews, articles, and historical memoirs, Gorman analyzes language ideologies, identity formations, and language practices by exploring complex spaces of encounter within Mexicano-Nuevomexicano families. Zones of Encuentro complicates homogeneous notions of language and identity and contemplates what a shared cultural and linguistic homeplace looks like for Mexicanos and Nuevomexicanos in northern New Mexico.