Género, matemáticas culturales, y arte textil de los Mazahua y Hñähñu

Abstract

This work focuses on traditional textile art and its connections with cultural mathematics and concepts of gender, in the Otopame cultures of the Mazahua and Hñähñu (Otomi).  Using Bishop’s six categories of mathematical activities, we first confirm that there are mathematical aspects of traditional textile art.  An analysis is then made of how one may interpret traditional textile art in the context of female gender identity in the Hñähñu and Mazahua cultures.  It turns out that the expression of female identity in these two cultures connects mainly with cultural identity and family economies.  In particular, Hñähñu gender roles associated with traditional textile art are not associated as exclusively with women as is the case for the Mazahuas and some regional cultures such as the Aztecs and Maya.  The last part contains observations of codices in which we can verify that Spanish locals assumed a distinct social role of women that occurred post conquest.  In this distinct gender role assumption, abilities in traditional textile art, and hence in mathematical skills, were of lesser value than was the case pre-conquest.  The reduced value of such skills coincides with gender roles of conquest era Europe in which women’s abilities in mathematics were explicitly suppressed.