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Witness History
I fought for Mexico’s indigenous women to get political equality
00:10:09
In October 2014, indigenous women in Mexico won a landmark victory in their struggle for political rights. It came after years of campaigning by Eufrosina Cruz Mendoza, a Zapotec woman who had been prevented from becoming mayor of her local community....
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Hello, and welcome to Witness History. I'm Jacqueline Payne, and this is the podcast that looks back at a key moment in history that's helped to shape our world. If you've listened before, you'll know new episodes come out every weekday and are just nine minutes long. Make sure you never miss an episode by hitting subscribe and turning on your push notifications. Today, I'm taking you back to 2014, when the lives of millions of indigenous women in Mexico were completely transformed after they won the right to vote and stand in elections.
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Encientos de municipios indigenas, the system of usos y cos tumbres has meant more than 500 years of living in silence, without the right to raise our voices or to express the right to govern and to choose the rulers of our own destiny.
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That's Euphrazina Cruz Mendoza, addressing the Mexican Parliament in the capital, Mexico City. She's an indigenous woman who grew up in the mountainous state of Oaxaca, and she was explaining how local traditions, or usos y costumbres, meant that women were held back and discriminated against because those old practices said women should serve men and look after the children and not hold political positions.
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I probably went up with a lot of fears and my voice trembled. That girl from the mountain was stunned. Standing there in front of the crowd.
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Born into a Zapotec community, an indigenous population in southern Oaxaca, Euphrasina faced a different future to her brothers.
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I have to get up at 3am like my mom, like my aunts, to wait and to serve. I didn't know what it was like to have a voice. I didn't know how a girl laughed. I didn't know how a girl could play because my eyes had never seen it. I saw the daily work of what was said to be the real of a girl becoming a woman. Because you don't grow up playing dolls, you don't even play as a child. You grow up learning to be a woman at 8, 9, 10, 11 years old, because at 12 you're ready to become the wife of a man you don't even know. I had to help my mom make extra tortillas to eat, take care of my brothers, and from there go to the field to work so effectively. We are doing a double work day. It was a normal custom in environments.
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Euphrasina's anger grew at the system around her, especially when she saw how it affected her sister.
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Because at 13, my sister was already the mother of a child, and at 31, she was already the mother of nine children. She learned about the menstrual process after giving birth to nine children. And that is the story of thousands of women in my country and around the world.
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While such practices were not acceptable in the rest of Mexico, Oaxaca had a special law dating back to colonial times that allowed indigenous communities to self govern. Many of these local or customary laws were even stronger than the state's laws with the aim of protecting the community's traditions. But those self same traditions also stated women could not govern or take part in any decision making.
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In my community, women could not participate in being presidents of our communities. We were invisible by a system called uso Sicos Tumbres Tumbre, a town of
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Santa Maria Chiegolani, had no electricity, no hospital, no road, only a primary school. And some girls grew up unable to read or write. She was one of the lucky ones. When a new teacher arrived, Joaquin helped Euphrazina to learn Spanish, taught her she could change her life, and encouraged her to fight for her rights
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at 12 years old. My teacher who inspired me, my teacher who had to walk more than 12 hours to reach my community, and was the one who taught me the first words in Spanish. And that's where my inspiration was born. My dream of one day speaking like my teacher, right. I had to flee my community because my dad was going to marry me when I was 12. But thanks to my teacher who inspired me on that mountain, who taught me that there was another color, that there was another smell. When you're born into so much adversity, there are times when you just need a spark to start questioning.
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She refused to marry against her father's wishes and eventually convinced her parents to let her stay with her uncle in the city of Salina Cruz, four hours away, to continue studying that part of Oaxaca was not governed by traditional laws. And there she began to examine her life at home.
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And I began to question what was happening in my community environment where public space was not for girls or for women. My mom had never sat in the town court. There wasn't a basketball tournament for girls, there was for boys. And that's when I started to question things and started going to those spaces. I became the crazy girl in my community, the girl who hung out with all the boys in town. But I understood that was the price that I had to pay to start changing things.
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After graduating with a master's degree in 2007, Euphrazina felt inspired to change her society. She decided to run for mayor of her hometown. Many people in power didn't want her in government but she was allowed to take part because no one would vote for a woman, would they? Euphrasina won the election, but customary laws meant that as a woman, she was unable to take office.
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And that's when I realized that there was no institution that would embrace us as indigenous women. Nineteen years ago, in the Mexican Constitution, the word woman was not written for us. And what did that mean? We couldn't even vote or be voted for.
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But she didn't give up. Euphrasina began campaigning for women's rights, and in 2010, she became president of the Congress for Oaxaca, helping secure political rights for indigenous women. Four years later, on 2 October 2014, the Mexican Senate approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing indigenous women and men the right to vote and stand for election on equal terms. It meant that women's suffrage, introduced in Mexico in 1953, would override customary laws. The reform was brought in quietly, without any comment from lawmakers. Some said it was politically too sensitive to challenge traditions linked to cultural identity, even when those traditions excluded women from voting or taking office.
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Before this honorable Congress and hundreds of indigenous municipalities in Mexico, the voice of women begins to be heard. In 2010, I changed the constitution of Oaxaca. In 2014, I changed the constitution of Mexico. And also in 2014, the UN adopted my proposal, which says no customs can deny the participation of women in the elections of their communities, to participate or be presidents or whatever they want to be. And that's allowed today in all the indigenous municipalities of Mexico. And women are now part of that decision making in their communities. They can sit at a table, they can participate in churches, they can go to the courts. Today there is parity in my town. 50% women, 50% men. Today there are two secondary schools, there are primaries, and most girls are going to be architects or engineers. Why? Because we broke everything that the world shouted at us. That was our custom. It was what violated us. And it was a system that denied us and made us invisible. And we had to take it away to be named in the constitution of our country. That's why I tell them today, my nieces, my mother's great granddaughter, my sister's granddaughter, to never ask for permission again to be in that public space that my mom and sister and myself were told wasn't for us.
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Euphrazina Cruz Mendoza continues to campaign for the rights of indigenous women in Mexico. She was speaking to me, Jacqueline Payne, for Witness History from the BBC World Service. And if you'd like to hear more of our other stories about trailblazing women, just search for arrested for playing football in Brazil or the murder of Anna Poletskovskaya. We like to know what you think, so please do leave us a review and tell your friends about what you've heard. And don't forget to hit subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Thanks very much for listening and see you next time. Sporting Witness takes you to the events that have shaped the sports world through the eyes of the people who were there.
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We weren't going to ask permission, we were just going to do it. It was so such an amazing feeling. It was incredible. He started to write a story about how we came up with the idea
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for the red and yellow cars. I got to go. We cried a bit, we laughed a bit. It was wonderful.
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There's a magic during those moments that carries your soul. We were truly blessed to be a part of history.
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Sporting Witness subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts.