From the Sierra to the Industry: Indigenous Women, Cross-Feminism, and Popular Music in the Collaboration between Mon Laferte and Mujeres del Viento Florido

Introduction

In this paper, I analyze the inclusion of Indigenous women’s identities and their representation in the music industry through a collaboration between the Regional Women’s Band “Mujeres del Viento Florido” (Women of the Flowery Wind) and Chilean singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer Mon Laferte. I focus on the micro-documentary “SE VA LA VIDA”^[1] (Life Slips Away) and examine its implications regarding: (1) the audiovisual narration and the role of the landscape and nature; (2) the stories of the women portrayed in the video and how discussions of gender in Indigenous feminisms challenge the assumption of the subordination of women based on their association with nature, questioning the colonial idea of dominating nature; and (3) the lyrics written by Mon Laferte for the song “SE VA LA VIDA,” their connection to feminism, and their affinities with the broader interests of Mujeres del Viento Florido.

I draw on literature about Indigenous women’s representation in Mexican and U.S. mass media,^[2] feminist ethnomusicology in dialogue with feminisms in Abya Yala,^[3] frameworks from Latina feminist media studies,^[4] and works from Indigenous scholars on artistic production, Indigenous sound studies, and collaborative research methodologies.^[5] By analyzing the micro-documentary “SE VA LA VIDA,” this paper interrogates the production dynamics that shape how Mujeres del Viento Florido appear visually and sonically. It follows the question that as a feminist media studies specialist, Alisson Harvey asks, “how should we represent women across differing locations, histories, and experiences, including the perspectives of Indigenous people, colonial subjects, and those from the Global South, who have been largely excluded from processes of knowledge-building.”^[6] In the case of this collaboration, it reveals both their agency, visible in their contributions to the selection of landscapes, their stories as musicians, and musical proficiency, and the limitations imposed by an industry where key creative decisions often remain in the hands of non-Indigenous teams. These tensions guide the questions I take up later about authorship, representation, and the differing stakes that Indigenous and non-Indigenous women bring to such collaborative projects.

Regional Women’s Band “Mujeres del Viento Florido” was established in 2009 in Santa María Tlahuitoltepec Mixe, Oaxaca, Mexico to provide a space where Indigenous women musicians can safely compose, teach, perform, and promote music based on Oaxaca’s philharmonic band traditions.^[7] It has also been a safe space for me to research this tradition, travel through the Serrano region,^[8] and collaborate with them. Since its inception, the band has faced numerous challenges: breaking down gendered barriers in a field traditionally led by men; tackling peer competition among women musicians fueled by the colonial patriarchal system; searching for resources to fund the ensemble and provide professional music training; soliciting opportunities for paid musical work; and forming alliances (since 2018) with U.S. and Mexican academics, and (since 2020) with singers from the Mexican-American, Latin American, and Mexican music industries such as Lila Downs, Mon Laferte, and Vivir Quintana.

Mon Laferte began her career successfully in Chile before gaining international recognition in Mexico and is known for her interest in socially engaged music making. She has won 52 awards out of 138 nominations. She is recognized for openly supporting the Latin American feminist movement, expressing her solidarity through concerts, public appearances at events like the Latin Grammy Awards, and by commissioning protest songs, such as “Canción sin miedo” (Fearless Song), written by Vivir Quintana in Mexico, where she resides. SEIS (Six) is Mon Laferte’s sixth studio album under her stage name, released on April 8, 2021 through Universal Music México. With this release, she won the award for Best Singer-Songwriter Album at the 22nd Annual Latin Grammys. “SE VA LA VIDA” is the thirteenth song of the album, explicitly arranged for philharmonic band so Mujeres del Viento Florido could accompany her. In this paper, I argue that the piece deserves scholarly attention because it presents a complex negotiation of how Mujeres del Viento Florido are visually and sonically framed. It also serves as a case study for exploring what Indigenous and non-Indigenous women bring to collaborative work, as well as the intentions behind creating a video that emphasizes solidarity, visibility, and cross-cultural encounter.

Audiovisual Narration and the Role of the Landscape

“SE VA LA VIDA” opens with an aerial shot of the Sierra Mixe landscape, labeled with the caption “SE VA LA VIDA. Mon Laferte ft. Mujeres del Viento Florido.” It shows the mountains covered in green and their closeness to the clouds, as the first rays of dawn spill across the sky. The sounds of a guitar and a glockenspiel introduce the verse and chorus melody of the song for the first time. It then immediately switches to a scene where Laferte is in the studio recording vocals and displaying the emotional intensity characteristic of the singer. These recordings mark the beginning of her collaborations with Mujeres del Viento Florido. The first part of the video displays shots of the town’s landscape, its streets, and some local residents, followed by scenes of the band’s rehearsal space, also the home of Maestra Leticia Gallardo.

Laferte narrates the micro-documentary in first person, providing context for this artistic exchange during the recording of her album in 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. She describes how her team had to record every song at a home studio, and how only later they had the opportunity to travel to Santa María Tlahuitoltepec Mixe, to collaborate with Mujeres del Viento Florido. In her narration, Laferte shares her excitement about meeting the band members and hearing them play the arrangement live for the first time. She points out the importance it had for her to know the place where the band rehearses and creates music, their “safe place,” as Maestra Leticia Gallardo, the band’s conductor, refers to it. At the same time, the images in the music video show clips of the road trip, her team, and their arrival at Santa María Tlahuitoltepec.

The journey through the Mixe mountains, along with shots of the town and an introduction to Maestra Lety’s home environment, is crucial to the video because local images invite us to view Laterte’s visit to Santa María Tlahuitoltepec Mixe in the style of an ethnographic documentary, emphasizing the constructed otherness in a space unfamiliar to Laferte’s typical audience. Simultaneously, as I argue later regarding the band members’ input into including the landscape in the music video, this showcase of the Mixe highlands highlights the significance of territory^[9] to the performers and suggests a desire to showcase the town’s daily life. Focusing on the landscape of the countryside and local lifeways in this and other productions in which the band has been involved has been a way for Mujeres del Viento to center Indigenous peoples’ lifeways and their lands. Thus, the music video creates an ambivalent message by foregrounding a theme common to ethnographic documentaries, which is the exoticism of otherness and, at the same time provides the imagery the band members intend to incorporate as a way of self-representation and a belonging marker to these lands, all of which create a core message only evident for Indigenous spectators at first glance.^[10] Reading this production in one direction or the other, depends of the awareness and position of the spectator, something that Mujeres del Viento Florido continue to inform through their social media.

Cross-border Feminism, Testimony and Musicianship Challenging the Coloniality of Gender and Land Exploitation

After the initial segment, Maestra Lety takes over the narration noting that she expressed disbelief when Laferte’s producer and she personally reached out to her. Clearly, she strongly desire to do so. Next, Maestra Lety highlights the diverse origins of the band members, noting that some come from “the Mixteca,” “the Isthmus” (of Tehuantepec), and “the Sierra”[11] (Sierra Norte of Oaxaca), focus then shifts to the experience of belonging to Mujeres del Viento Florido. Maestra Lety’s discussion emphasizes the need to create a space where they all feel safe making music, and experience joy.[12] In the following scene, she addresses the challenges of “weaving a network of women musicians,” and the confidence she now has about the survival of the ensemble when she can no longer lead it. [13]

The portion of the video emphasizes foregrounding Maestra Lety emphasizes the ensemble members’ need to create a space solely for women, one supportive of their creative and musical goals. It highlights the challenges inherent in establishing a collective endeavor involving women musicians from distinct regions, filiation to several Indigenous peoples, and backgrounds. Finally, the mention of each member’s diverse origins helps us to underscore that the exclusion of such women from musical activity is not limited to a single town in Oaxaca; rather, it is prevalent in many communities. As a result, they have taken steps to create an alternative space and forms of expression.

As Ellen Koskoff notes, “In many societies, women are associated with nature, or natural processes, such as birth, sickness, and death, while men are more often associated with culture, technology, and warfare,”^[14] outlining the symbolic binaries (nature–culture, public–domestic) that shape musical and social behavior. This is one of the problem with women’s music making in the context of Oaxacan wind bands, but I am more interested in the discussion about how this is understood in Abya Yala’s Indigenous communities and this distinction as a colonial legacy, with Western epistemologies establishing these dualisms to justify both domination over the land and patriarchy over women. Indigenous communities read gender hierarchies as colonial violence, since Mesoamerican Indigenous worldviews traditionally understood humanity as interdependent with the natural world and gender roles as complementary and egalitarian. Colonialism thus introduced gender hierarchies by mapping the domination of women onto the domination of nature.^[15] In this sense, we can see an act of solidarity on the part of Mon Laferte and the band members. By discussing the experiences of Indigenous women and providing them a platform to feature the alternative space they have created and incorporating their suggestions about the places in which they shoot the micro-documentary and showing images the landscape, Mon Laferte uses her commercial visibility as a powerful conduit for their voices, amplifying their strategies and artistic projects. This is particularly evident in that “SE VA LA VIDA” video uploaded to Vimeo in mid-2021 has already garnered over 234,000 views.

One of the most striking features of the micro-documentary is the centrality of the landscape. This is one of the creative decisions in which Mujeres del Viento Florido exerted clear influence, selecting the specific mountain locations where their performances with Mon Laferte would be filmed. Attending to this choice is crucial: the aesthetics they introduce are grounded in intimate knowledge of their lands, and the setting functions as a marker of origin; a visual and symbolic locus that, within Serrano musical and cultural imagery, communicates belonging to the mountain region. In this sense, the landscape becomes more than scenery; it functions as an assertion of territorial presence, continuity, and relational knowledge.

The inclusion of the town’s imagery indexes the places where the musicians live, where they exercise forms of sovereignty, particularly for the Mixe musicians, such as Maestra Lety, and where the ensemble itself is sustained. Besides, this is the particular territory they decided to create their alternative musical space and where their personal stories and their trajectory as a band take place, challenging gender exclusion. Read through decolonial and Indigenous feminist frameworks, the band’s choice of landscape in the micro-documentary operates simultaneously as representation, claim, and testimony: an act of placing themselves, visually, musically, and discursively, on their own land.

The artistic collaboration foregrounded in the video consistently engages with feminist themes associated with the solidarity with incarcerated women, demonstrating the artists’ effort to establish a space in the musical world, as well as their protests against the conditions faced by imprisoned women in Chile and Mexico. However, when I asked Maestra Lety Gallardo directly about her stance, she told me that Mujeres del Viento Florido do not identify as feminists. They follow the perspective of Maya K’iche sociologist Gladys Tzul who discusses the possibility of dialogue between Indigenous women and feminist movements, along with the limits of such dialogue, considering feminism’s liberal roots and its focus on individual, rather than communal, emancipation.

I believe there is a radical difference between Indigenous women and feminist movements. This does not mean there are no dialogues; there are, especially regarding the diagnosis of domination. Feminists have proposed research and have diagnosed how domination is exercised and its effects on our bodies. And as Indigenous women, we also have a series of investigations, discourses, and types of conversations where we have also spoken about these things and developed a diagnosis.^[16]

Tzul rejects the imposition of the feminist label, pointing to statements like “Indigenous women say they are not feminists, but they actually are, they just don’t know it yet” as examples of the coloniality inherent in characterizing the Indigenous “other.” My stance as a researcher interested in supporting their causes is to respect their ways of identifying with this or any other struggles they are part of. This is why I describe the video project as a dialogue with feminist ideas instead of a feminist intervention.

After the first half of the video, the band’s sonic presence becomes audible, playing the chorus and verse of the song. The images focuse on Maestra Lety conducting the first notes played by the band in the song in their rehearsal space. During their appearances, band members wear the traditional outfits of their communities, along with the gabán (a wool overcoat) from the Sierra, which they have incorporated into their uniform. The images capture the excitement of the young musicians, who admire the singer and use their cellphones to take pictures and record the encounter. Scenes include Mon Laferte, dressed in the traditional attire of Tlahuitoltepec and her producer Manú Jalil, dancing traditional sones and jarabes[17] of the region with musicians.

The video imagery in this section, including Maestra Lety conducting, as well as close-up shots of band members playing their instruments, acknowledges the performers’ musical skill, both at the rehearsal space and in the mountains surrounded by nature. The effort to represent their musical proficiency and their stories challenging gender expectations combats one of the most significant forms of discriminatory representation affecting Indigenous women in the mass media: issues of class, as Indigenous characters tend to be associated with a very low economic stratum. Video productions typically depict them performing manual labor or service work and/or having low levels of education, turning their characters into buffoons and representing them as naive or foolish.^[18] Added to this is the issue of gender, as Indigenous women in the media tend to perform domestic or service jobs and embody a submissive, obedient femininity.^[19] Also, their beauty is represented only between two poles: either the exoticism associated with pre-Hispanic princesses^[20] or the absence of beauty where an implicit ideal of whiteness leaves no room for an appreciation of their appearance.^[21] In this way, Indigenous women have historically been used as symbols to depict their identity as harmless in mass media,^[22] contributing to cement the prejudices mentioned above.

Thus, when we examine the collaboration with Mon Laferte in the micro-documentary, one could argue that it challenges such ideas by portraying Serrano women as independent, engaged in creative projects of their own creation, and resisting dominance by men. Moreover, we can interpret the rise of transborder and cross-border feminism^[23] in that Mon Laferte as a foreigner in Mexico, establishes solidarity with the band members, foregrounding representations that reassures their musical skill and a “recovery of the value and dignity of Indigenous women, their ways of life, including their aesthetics.”^[24] This approach avoids stereotypical and homogenizing notions of Indigenous women’s identities, and refuses to depict them as “sexualized, feminized, and racialized through the verbal and visual gendered language of mass media.”^[25]

The climax of the micro-documentary occurs when the band performs “SE VA LA VIDA,” in the arrangement made specially for them. Shots of Maestra Lety and the band members alternate and the video ends with Laferte’s reaction of almost tearful joy after listening to the recording. At this point, the narration returns to Laferte’s voice, who concludes the micro-documentary by saying: “I was so moved that it took me several days to process the happiness. Actually, I was very happy. I recall that visit as one of the happiest days of my life.”[26]

Mon Laferte and Mujeres del Viento Florido Shared Musical Activism against the Carceral System

The lyrics of “SE VA LA VIDA” condemn the unjust imprisonment of women in Valparaíso, reflecting the shared musical activism of Mujeres del Viento Florido and Mon Laferte in Chile and Mexico.

Table 1 "SE VA LA VIDA" Lyrics in Spanish and translated into English

Here, we see several levels of discourse:

1. A territorial level, referencing the landscape when the cerro (hill) is mentioned.
2. A spatial level, describing the prison environment as a confined space with small windows, bars, and cement.
3. A collective subject level, mentioning two hundred imprisoned women, forming a circle, including girls, grandmothers, pregnant women, “black sheep” whose lives are ending.
4. Lastly, emotions and attitudes are discussed: pain, pleas, tears, mourning, and songs protesting injustice.

The core of the song’s message protests the injustice of Chile’s prison system. The political resonance of the collaboration between Laferte and Mujeres del Viento Florido becomes clearer when placed in conversation with feminist and Indigenous critiques of the carceral state. As articulated by Kalaniʻōpua Young the prison industrial complex functions as a settler-colonial project that seeks to eliminate or “disappear” Native peoples, poor women, trans and genderqueer individuals, and communities of color, those rendered disposable within racialized and patriarchal state structures.^[27] Although the micro-documentary does not foreground this explicitly, Mon Laferte’s protest against the Chilean carceral system and Mujeres del Viento Florido’s own acts of solidarity with incarcerated women in Mexico gesture toward a shared political horizon. As Maestra Lety Gallardo explained in an interview for CNN Español:

The song references the situation of many women who are imprisoned, often due to a lack of [financial, legal, and emotional] support. It connects us because she [Mon Laferte] was working with women in prison in Chile, and we had the opportunity to perform at Santa Martha (a women’s prison in Mexico City).^[28]

Maestra Lety’s final comment references the fact that on August 2019, Mujeres del Viento Florido gathered with women at the Santa Martha Acatitla prison in Mexico City. Trombonist Hanlly Ruiz wrote an account of this event, which they shared via Google Drive on their social media for the “8M-ujeres del Viento Florido Artistic Days”^[29] in March 8, 2021 as a commemoration of International Women’s Day. I highlight the following excerpt from the meeting because it underscores their recognition of the injustice associated with many prison inmates there:

Many women are here for the crimes of their partners, for being with them at the time of their arrest, for being good scapegoats, for being women from the periphery, for not having education, for being poor, for not speaking Spanish, for having killed in self-defense, for having killed their aggressors, for defending themselves, for being tricked into transporting drugs…^[30]

Along with her account, Hanlly Ruiz also wrote a poem that intertwines fragments of “Canción Mixteca”^[31] with her experience performing in the prison:

Here, paralleling my analysis of “SE VA LA VIDA,” we see the following levels of discourse:

1. A territorial level, referencing the particularities of the “land of the sun” of “Canción Mixteca,” a marker of origin and longing for those who are distanced from their homeland, and the contrast with the “the city of impossible buildings” that is Mexico City, where the prison is located.
2. A spatial level, describing the prison environment as a confined space “inside the walls.”
3. A collective subject level, mentioning two groups: the reference to the “faces of so many women” when talking about the inmates, and Mujeres del Viento Florido band members bringing them music.
4. Lastly, emotions and attitudes are expressed: loneliness, sadness, sorrow, forgotten, silenced, darkness, but also the possibility of feel and dream inside and outside the prison environment.

The poem’s central theme reflects the solidarity that Mujeres del Viento Florido carried with them into the prison, where they performed for the inmates, as well as the emotional need to process the stark realities they encountered there. Alongside Hanlly Ruiz’s poem and written account of the visit, the band shared additional reflections on their social media from other members, articulating their impressions, concerns, and affective responses to the experience. Taken together, these posts situate the ensemble within a broader national movement that seeks to raise awareness about the diverse forms of violence and social marginalization faced by women in Mexico, highlighting how their musical practice intersects with feminist solidarities and public denunciations of injustice.

The shared musical activism between Mujeres del Viento Florido and Mon Laferte is not explicit in the micro-documentary. However, inviting the band members to accompany “SE VA LA VIDA” adds an additional, though understated, layer of meaning to the project: it connects Laferte’s critique of carceral violence towards women in Chile to the band’s own commitment to supporting women facing criminalization and unjust imprisonment in Mexico. This shared transnational concern for women’s rights and carceral injustice underpins the collaboration and situates it within broader practices of musical activism. Understanding this context allows us to read the partnership not only as an aesthetic encounter but also as an alignment of struggles, where Indigenous and non-Indigenous women converge around parallel forms of resistance articulated through music.

Final Thoughts

Analyzing the collaboration between Mujeres del Viento Florido and Mon Laferte through “SE VA LA VIDA” as a song and micro-documentary allows us to see how the ensemble enter digital media, audiovisual production spaces and the music industry negotiating their presence and ways of representing themselves. They do so as Indigenous women and musicians, as well as representatives of their lands, aspiring greater social visibility, and to build broader networks of solidarity. These Indigenous performers engage in dialogues with feminist ideas and feminist movements, even if they do not see themselves as feminists. They position their struggles in the public sphere, demanding space to undertake paid musical labor, the right to co-create visual representations of their territory, and to express solidarity with other women who face violence and unjust imprisonment.

One issue that could be further explored is the production process of the micro-documentary and musical arrangement of “SE VA LA VIDA” to assess to what extent Mujeres del Viento Florido had agency in making artistic and self-representational decisions, and under whose gaze they were observed, especially given that Mon Laferte’s visible team is composed exclusively of non-Indigenous people and men. This prompts us to question the dynamics surrounding the arrangement, recording, and production processes for both the music and the video as well, asking which of their ideas were included, or whether they were simply used as a resource.^[32] In this regard, Stö:lo scholar Dylan Robinson’s concepts of “inclusive music” and “inclusive performance” help us consider how Indigenous performers and artists have been “arranged” or adapted to “fit” into classical composition, or in this case, into the music industry and its interpretive systems, rather than being given space to express their own interests and transformations of their musical traditions.

During the conversations I had with the band members, they mentioned that they helped to select the sequences shot of the mountainside, the landscapes, and provided input on the spatial arrangement of the video, showing their own territorial and relational frameworks, asserting a decolonial logic place, belonging, and women’s autonomy. This intentional grounding of the music video resonates with decolonial and Indigenous feminist thinkers who understand territory as a living space of political agency. It provides the possibility of framing the specific meanings of musical and visual elements of Mujeres del Viento Florido by highlighting their stories and the place that they are transforming to create an alternative space for them to make music. Naturally, deeper forms of collaboration and action with Indigenous women performers are both necessary and urgent. Following Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith,^[33] we must keep discussing and integrating Indigenous principles of collective ownership, the recovery of their oral histories, the highlighting of Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies, and recognizing the need and right of Indigenous performers to oversee creative processes. These are issues that still need to be realized in acts of solidarity since the implicit hierarchies in the music industry are still prevalent in many artistic collaborations, despite the intentions of the singers the band members have worked with.

Obviously, in terms of representation, Mujeres del Viento Florido have effectively carved out new spaces on stage beyond local contexts, gaining significant visibility elsewhere. However, representation in the mass media alone is insufficient if it does not enable Indigenous performers to develop their own profile, artistic projects, and forms of representation. Still, a significant aspect of this case study is the potential for these women to establish an intellectually and creative safe space for collaboration with feminists that expands their cultural and professional boundaries.^[34] Of course, complex issues and misunderstandings emerge in the process, but no definitive path to decolonial action exists beyond mere inaction and passivity.

References

Aguilar, Yásnaya. “Dos trenzas, una historia mixe.” Gatopardo, December 20, 2020.

- “Tsääj. Monolitos.” Revista El País, November, 1, 2020.

- “El efecto Tizoc.” Revista Este País, Blog E'px, July, 4, 2012.

Baez, Jillian. “Toward a Latinidad Feminista: The Multiplicities of Latinidad and Feminism in Contemporary Cinema.” In Search of Belonging. Latinas, Media, and Citizenship. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018.

Cepeda, Maria Elena. ““Beyond “filling in the gap”: the state and status of Latina/o Feminist Media Studies,” Feminist Media Studies, 2016, 16:2, pp. 344-360.

Chávez, Xóchitl. “Tocamos como mujeres: Primer Encuentro de Mujeres indígenas músicos,” in Estrategias creativas de sobrevivencia. Feminismo y arte popular, coordinated by Eli Bartra & Liliana Elvira Moctezuma, pp. 115–25. México: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Unidad Xochimilco, 2021.

Chávez, Xóchitl and Mercedes Payán. “Mujeres del Viento Florido: First Gathering of Indigenous Women Musicians in Santa María Tlahuitoltepec Mixe, Oaxaca.” In Decolonizing Pedagogies entre el Sur y el Norte: Healing, Resistance and Social Change through Music, edited by Marco Cervantes and Liliana Saldaña, pp. 23–53, under the series Critical Issues in Latinx Education co-edited by Margarita Machado-Casas & Yolanda Medina, San Diego State University – Peter Lang New York Press, 2022.

CNN Español. “Mon Laferte estrena el microdocumental ‘Se Va La Vida’.” Last modified June 11, 2021. https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2021/06/11/mon-laferte-estrena-el-microdocumental-se-va-la-vida

Fregoso, Rosa Linda. MeXicana Encounters: The Making of Social Identities on the Borderlands. University of California Press, 2003.

Gargallo, Francesca. Feminismos desde Abya Yala: Ideas y proposiciones de las mujeres de 607 pueblos en nuestra América. Ciudad de México: Editorial Corte y Confección / Ediciones Abya-Yala, 2014.

Harvey, Alison. Feminist Media Studies. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020.

Koskoff, Ellen. A Feminist Ethnomusicology: Writings on Music and Gender. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014.

Mejía, Lisbeth. “Gladys Tzul Tzul: las indígenas no queremos ser llamadas feministas,” El Imparcial, October 24, 2019. URL: https://imparcialoaxaca.mx/arte-y-cultura/gladys-tzul-tzul-las-indigenas-no-queremos-ser-llamadas-feministas/

Molina-Guzman, Isabel. Dangerous Curves: Latina Bodies in the Media. New York University Press, 2010.

Navarrete, Sergio and Rubén Luengas. Etnografía de las Culturas Musicales en Oaxaca. Diversidad y Educación Musical Sustentables. Oaxaca, México: Informe de Investigación. Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología-Gobierno del Estado de Oaxaca. Unpublished, 2013.

Payán, Mercedes. “Primer encuentro de mujeres músicos en la Sierra Mixe, Oaxaca: un espacio de educación musical entre las Mujeres del Viento Florido.” In Estrategias creativas de sobrevivencia. Feminismo y arte popular, coordinated by Eli Bartra & Liliana Elvira Moctezuma, pp. 103–14. México: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Unidad Xochimilco, 2021.

Raheja, Michelle H. Reservation Reelism. Refacing Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Films. Lincoln Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2010.

Robinson, Dylan. Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020.

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. (Third edition.). Zed Books, 2021.

Young, Kalaniʻōpua. “From a Native Trans Daughter: Carceral Refusal, Settler Colonialism, Re-routing the Roots of an Indigenous Abolitionist Imaginary,” in Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, 2nd ed., edited by Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith, pp. 83–96. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2015.

Videos

Mon Laferte Ft. Banda Femenil Regional “Las Mujeres Del Viento Florido” – Se Va La Vida (Micro Documental). 2021. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCIi41fNKDU, 2021.

Footnotes

1. Mon Laferte Ft. Banda Femenil Regional “Las Mujeres Del Viento Florido” – Se Va La Vida (Micro Documental), 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCIi41fNKDU, 2021. Last accessed: November,12, 2025. ↑

2. Yásnaya Aguilar, “El efecto Tizoc,” Revista Este País, Blog E'px, July 4, 2012 and Yásnaya Aguilar, “Tsääj. Monolitos,” Revista El País, November 1, 2020; Michelle H. Raheja, Reservation Reelism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010). ↑

3. Ellen Koskoff, A Feminist Ethnomusicology: Writings on Music and Gender (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014); Francesca Gargallo, Feminismos desde Abya Yala: Ideas y proposiciones de las mujeres de 607 pueblos en nuestra América (Ciudad de México: Editorial Corte y Confección / Ediciones Abya-Yala, 2014); Márgara Millán, Más allá del feminismo: Caminos para andar (Ciudad de México: UNAM, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios de Género, 2014). ↑

4. Rosa Linda Fregoso, MeXicana Encounters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003; Isabel Molina-Guzman, Dangerous Curves (New York: NYU Press, 2010); Maria Elena Cepeda, “Beyond ‘Filling in the Gap,’” Feminist Media Studies 16, no. 2 (2016); Jillian Baez, “Toward a Latinidad Feminista,” in In Search of Belonging (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018); Alison Harvey, Feminist Media Studies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020). ↑

5. Dylan Robinson, Hungry Listening (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020); Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 3rd ed. (London: Zed Books, 2021). ↑

6. Alison Harvey, Feminist Media Studies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020), 3. ↑

7. Xóchitl Chávez, “Tocamos como mujeres,” in Estrategias creativas de sobrevivencia, coord. Eli Bartra and Liliana Elvira Moctezuma (México: UAM Xochimilco, 2021); Mercedes Payán, “Primer encuentro de mujeres músicos,” in Estrategias creativas de sobrevivencia, coord. Bartra and Moctezuma (México: UAM Xochimilco, 2021); Xóchitl Chávez and Mercedes Payán, “Mujeres del Viento Florido: First Gathering of Indigenous Women Musicians in Santa María Tlahuitoltepec Mixe, Oaxaca.” In Decolonizing Pedagogies entre el Sur y el Norte: Healing, Resistance and Social Change through Music, edited by Marco Cervantes and Liliana Saldaña (New York: Peter Lang, 2022). ↑

8. From a state perspective, Oaxaca has been divided into eight geopolitical regions: Cañada, Costa, Istmo, Mixteca, Papaloapan, Sierra Sur, Sierra Norte, and Valles Centrales. Despite the great diversity of Indigenous peoples, languages, and musical practices across regions, as well as the complex exchanges between these distinct geographic areas, I maintain the distinction of the “Serrano region” when discussing musical practices. This is because the Indigenous communities and areas that comprise it—namely, the Zapotec-populated Sierra Norte and the Upper Mixe Sierra—identify with the tradition of philharmonic bands and refer to this music, and themselves, as “Serranos.” See Sergio Navarrete and Rubén Luengas, Etnografía de las Culturas Musicales en Oaxaca (Oaxaca: CONACYT–Gobierno de Oaxaca, 2013), and Daina Sánchez, The Children of Solaga: Indigenous Belonging Across the U.S.–Mexico Border (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2025). ↑

9. Territory is not a geographic container or an inert physical space but a living, relational sphere where Indigenous peoples sustain memory, identity, and collective life. is not a geographic container or an inert physical space but a living, relational sphere where Indigenous peoples sustain memory, identity, and collective life. Particularly, she refers to the “territorio cuerpo-tierra” (territory body-land) category from the community feminism xinka from La Montaña Xalapan, Guatemala, which denounces the incoherence of defending the ancestral territory from resource extractivism without defending women from sexual violence (Gargallo, Feminismos desde Abya Yala, 13). ↑

10. Raheja, Reservation Reelism. ↑

11. “Ella viene de la Mixteca, ella viene del Istmo, compañeras de la Sierra.” ↑

12. “Viento Florido ha sido un espacio en donde nos sintamos seguras, ¿no? De hacer música y disfrutar, que es lo primero. De ahí pues vamos avanzando.” ↑

13. “No ha sido nada fácil tejer una red de mujeres músicos, pero creo que vamos logrando. Y yo, si un día ya me canso, yo sé que otras van a estar ahí.” ↑

14. Koskoff, A Feminist Ethnomusicology, 39. ↑

15. Gargallo, Feminismos desde Abya Yala. ↑

16. “Creo que hay una diferencia radical entre mujeres indígenas y movimientos feministas. Eso no significa que no haya diálogos, los hay; sobre todo sobre el diagnóstico de la dominación. Las feministas tienen una propuesta de investigación y han diagnosticado cómo ejerce la dominación, cuáles son los efectos en nuestros cuerpos. Y como mujeres indígenas también tenemos una serie de investigaciones, de discursos, de tips, de conversaciones donde también hemos hablado de estas cosas y (tenemos) un diagnóstico.” Gladys Tzul Tzul in Lisbeth Mejía, “Gladys Tzul Tzul: las indígenas no queremos ser llamadas feministas,” El Imparcial, October 24, 2019. ↑

17. Son and jarabe are musical genres that are part of a broader tradition in Mexico. During the colonial era, son was associated with peasant music that developed in various parts of Mexico. A jarabe is a son variant, composed as medleys that intersperse fast and slow movements as well as instrumental solo parts. They were initially performed by string ensembles, and eventually orchestrated to be played by wind bands. According to Navarrete and Luengas (2013), the Oaxacan Serrano region is identified as the son and jarabe “musical culture,” having both genres as its main musical forms. ↑

18. Baez, “Toward a Latinidad Feminista.”; Aguilar, “Tsääj.” ↑

19. Baez, “Toward a Latinidad Feminista.” ↑

20. Aguilar, “Tsääj.” ↑

21. Baez, “Toward a Latinidad Feminista.” ↑

22. Molina-Guzman, Dangerous Curves. ↑

23. Fregoso, MeXicana Encounters. ↑

24. Baez, “Toward a Latinidad Feminista,” 58. ↑

25. Molina-Guzman, Dangerous Curves, 10. ↑

26. “Fue tanta la emoción que me costó varios días procesar la felicidad, más bien. Fui muy feliz, yo recuerdo esa visita como uno de los días más felices de mi vida.” ↑

27. Kalaniʻōpua Young, “From a Native Trans Daughter: Carceral Refusal, Settler Colonialism, Re-routing the Roots of an Indigenous Abolitionist Imaginary,” in Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, 2nd ed., ed. Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2015), 43. ↑

28. “El tema habla de la situación en la que viven muchas mujeres que están encarceladas, muchas veces por falta de apoyo. Nos une porque ella estuvo trabajando con mujeres en la cárcel en Chile y nosotras tuvimos la oportunidad de dar una presentación en Santa Martha (cárcel de Ciudad de México).” Leticia Gallardo in CNN Español, “Mon Laferte estrena el microdocumental ‘Se Va La Vida’,” June 11, 2021. https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2021/06/11/mon-laferte-estrena-el-microdocumental-se-va-la-vida↑

29. “Jornada Artística 8M-ujeres del Viento Florido.” Facebook post in the Mujeres del Viento Florido profile: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16UjNaHUZL/ ↑

30. “Muchas mujeres están aquí por los delitos de sus parejas, por haber estado con ellos en el momento de sus detenciones, por ser buenos chivos expiatorios, por ser mujeres de la periferia, por no tener educación, por ser pobres, por no hablar español, por haber matado en defensa propia, por haber matado a sus agresores, por defenderse, porque fueron engañadas para transportar drogas…” Hanlly Ruiz Ramírez, Member of Regional Women’s Band “Mujeres del Viento Florido,” in Mujeres del Viento Florido. “Jornada Artística 8M-ujeres del Viento Florido.” Facebook, [March 8, 2021]. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16UjNaHUZL/. ↑

31. "Canción Mixteca" is a song composed by the Oaxacan composer José López Alavez. Its lyrics reflect the nostalgia of leaving one’s place of origin due to migration, of which the author was a part. It refers to the “Land of the Sun,” the nickname for the Mixteca region. Today, the song has become an anthem for both Oaxaca and for Mexicans living abroad who miss their homeland. ↑

32. Robinson, Hungry Listening. ↑

33. Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies. ↑

34. Molina-Guzman, Dangerous Curves. ↑

    
    

    *Mercedes Payán is a scholar specializing in ethnomusicology and music education. She focuses on Indigenous brass bands in Southeastern Mexico and non-academicized music traditions undergoing academicization, such as mariachi and rock music. Her research, rooted in an anthropological perspective, explores the teaching and learning processes within community-based ensembles. She received a bachelor’s degree in music education from Universidad Veracruzana and a master’s degree in ethnomusicology from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and is currently pursuing her doctorate in ethnomusicology at the University of Texas, Austin. Her work explores themes of decolonization, indigeneity, gender, and the intersection of traditional and popular music. She actively participates in transnational collaborations, including the Red de Mujeres Músicas Transfronterizas (Network of Transborder Women Musicians) and the collective Las Montoneras, which promotes women’s contributions to music.