ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role of women in two kinds of political organization, one within the cooptive structures of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the second within an independent group. It attempts to show how women's involvement in popular protest is affecting the Mexican political system, both at the grassroots as well as within the institutionalized world of party and electoral politics, and how their participation is affecting their own perceptions of themselves. The chapter examines two organizations used in the fieldwork, such as the PRIs Federation of Colonias Populares of Jalisco (FCPJ) and the independent Organization of Independent Colonias of the east (OICO), which leads to the substantive section on women and their involvement in political mobilizations in urban Mexico. The FCPJ is a member of the PRIs national, hierarchical structure through its membership of Une. OICO is part of a complex structure which organizes popular mobilization predominantly in the north-east of Guadalajara.
