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Jane S. Jacquette, editor
THE WOMEN´S MOVEMENT IN LATIN AMERICA Westview Press 1994 ISBN: 0813384885



Participation and Democracy To date, very little has been published on the political participation of women in Mexico. Even the extensive studies of Mexican women's participation in the economy, their strategies for survival and changes in household composition, have paid little attention to how the changes in economic status and conditions have affected the activity and attitudes of women in the public and private spheres.' Women's response to recent liberal economic policy and modernization in Mexican politics remains largely unexplored. Although Mexican women have been active in community organizations and village protests since colonial times, a feminist movement as such emerged only in this century; the movement has become increasingly visible since the 1970´s. In this chapter I examine the political participation of women in Mexico between 1970 and the early 1990´s, paying particular attention to the organizational forms and demands that emerged after the 1982 crisis. I also gauge how feminist ideas have impinged on the Mexican political process. To this end, the chapter is divided into three sections: a historical overview of women's political participation in Mexico after 1916, when the first feminist congress in Mexico took place; two case studies of women's political participation during the 1980S (the women's movement in defense of the vote in Chihuahua [1982 - l986] and woman's participation in the popular urban movements in Mexico City); the principal elements of the feminist agenda in Mexico in the early 1990´s and its impact on Mexican politics.
A Neglected Heritage
The Mexican postrevolutionary political culture was slow to incorporate women into political life. For much of the first half of the twentieth century the political efforts of women in Mexico were aimed at obtaining the basic political rights required for fuller participation; chief among them was suffrage. In a country in which politics had traditionally been the domain of a small male elite, political rights for women were ignored until the late nineteenth century, when they began to be espoused by Porfirio Díaz's opponents, particularly the Magonistas. It took the Mexican Revolution, however, to produce the first small breach in the wall of indifference. The participation of women in this struggle has been well documented. Their combat-related activities represented a profound change in their usual confined roles. In the heat of armed struggle women served as couriers, arms runners, spies, nurses, and in other roles that would have been unthinkable in peacetime. The fact that women participated in the revolution and the acknowledgment of their contributions are important because the revolution became the founding myth of the Mexican political state. The legitimacy of the current Mexican state rests on its official interpretation of the revolution of 1910, which in turn has largely determined the organization of the state apparatus and the political relationships between social sectors during much of the twentieth century. Because they participated in the struggle, women could at least invoke their moral right to be heard when they pressed their social, legal, and political demands. The revolutionary period produced some modest reforms in the legal status of women but no change in their political status. By a decree dated December 29,1914, the Carranza government authorized divorce and remarriage. The Law of Family Relations, approved in 1917, extended to women the right to receive alimony, to manage and own property, to take part in legal suits, and to have the same rights as men in the custody of their children, changes that implied a reorganization of the social relations between the sexes. This period also produced the first of many congresses devoted to women's issues. The First Feminist Congress in Mexico was held in Mérida in January 1916 and considered issues ranging from the function of schools, the importance of secular education, and the need for sex education to the political participation of women. The participants, mostly middle-class women, were divided on the latter issue. The feminists argued that women were the moral and intellectual equals of men and should participate as full citizens. The antifeminists contended that women



were different from men and should never participate in public life, and the moderates suggested that women were still not psychologically ready to participate politically and that political rights should be reserved for men until women could be adequately prepared to exercise these rights. At this point, the demand for the enfranchisement of women came mainly from a small number of radical feminists. In 1917, Hermíla Galindo, a Venustiano Carranza supporter and editor of La Mujer Moderna, and several other women presented their demands for women's suffrage to the all-male constitutional convention meeting in Querétaro. In her arguments Galindo invoked the liberal concept of equality of individual rights before the law. She contended that as active members of society and as taxpayers, women should have full political rights, especially suffrage. For her the equal rights of citizens were a matter of "strict justice." Despite the strength of these arguments, the subject was debated only briefly and the majority sentiment was against it. As Ward Morton suggests, most of the delegates to the convention probably feared the conservative influence of the Church on women voters precisely at a time when social reforms required limiting the Church's power. The 1917 constitution as approved retained intact Articles 34 and 35 of the 1857 constitution, which qualified as citizens all married residents of the republic over 18 years of age and all single residents over 21. Citizenship conferred the right to vote, to run for office in popular elections, and to participate in political activities. The provisions of these articles did not textually deny women's suffrage, but the 1918 National Election Law explicitly limited the vote to registered males 18 years or over if married and 2l if not. Candidates for national office were required to be "qualified electors." This setback limited but did not quash women's participation. During the next decade Mexican women attained greater visibility in the political, economic, and cultural life of the nation. Significant signs of change were the increasing numbers of women in the labor force, in the newly created government agencies, in education, and in women's organizations fighting for political rights. As expected, women were present in greater numbers in government agencies concerned with social welfare and education, functions traditionally considered female tasks. Several Mexican states granted suffrage to women in the 1920´s, affording them the first limited opportunity to participate in electoral activities. Yucatán and San Luis Potosi allowed women to vote in state and local elections in 1923, although these rights were soon rescinded. In 1925, Chiapas became the first state to enact complete equality of political rights for women in local and state elections, extending to them the same political rights as men, including the right to vote and stand for all offices. Its example, however, was not followed by other states until much later. The 1920´s also saw the emergence of women's associations and leagues organized specifically to fight for women's rights. In time this push became more persistent and better-organized. The deaths in 1924 of Salvador Alvarado and Felípe Carrillo Puerto, the two radical Yucatán governors who had championed women's rights, shifted the focus of feminist activity to Mexico City. As in other countries, feminist organizations drew support primarily from urban women of above-average education, professionals, office workers, and schoolteachers. Working-class and peasant women also formed organizations concerned mostly: with labor and economic issues and tended to be affiliated with labor unions or the Communist Party. The Mexican Feminist Council (Consejo Feminista Mexicano), a broad-based organization that sought to lead the women's movement toward socialism, and the Mexican Section of the Pan American League of Women included leading feminists such as Elena Tórres, Refugio (Cuca) García, and Margarita Robles de Mendoza.




Also about this time the first Congress of the Pan American League for the Elevation of Women, held in Mexico City in 1923, sent a petition to the Mexican Congress demanding equal political rights for men and women. However, other events hindered the advancement of this cause. Many women participated actively in the religiously motivated Cristero war against the government, and when President-Elect Alvaro Obregón was assassinated by a religious fanatic who allegedly had been encouraged by a nun, many in power again feared that women voters would be manipulated by the Church. Although the decade of the 1920´s was an important period in terms of women's political participation, the early years of the women's movement were difficult and marked by women's generally unsuccessful efforts to participate politically as individuals or as a group. The organized presence of women gained force during the following decade, in part because political parties began to sense that women's rights could be a useful political issue. The 1929 platform of the newly created Partido National Revolucionario (PNR, or National Revolutionary Party), the government party, recognized, for instance, the need to stimulate Mexican women's involvement in civic activities. For its part, the opposition Partido National Antireeleccionista (Antireelectionist National Party), which ran José Vasconcelos for president in 1929, included women's suffrage in its political platform and a large number of women in its ranks. Although they agreed on the importance of increasing women's political participation, women party activists differed on what form this participation should take. Communist women opposed an autonomous feminist movement and attacked the women of the PNR, accusing them of mounting a bourgeois struggle and putting feminist interests before class interests. For their part, PNR members concentrated on obtaining political gains within the ranks of their own party. This differences were openly expressed at the National Congresses of Women Workers and Peasants held in 1931,1933, and 1934, where the communist women demanded changes for women workers and peasants and the PNR women presented papers on women's suffrage and on the need for a unified women's organization. The debate about whether women should pursue an autonomous agenda or subsume the gender struggle to the class struggle was bitterly divisive, but in spite of their internal differences, these periodic national congresses produced some positive results. Delegates agreed on the need for an eight-hour workday and minimum wages, paid leaves of absence for women before and after childbirth, support for single mothers, punishment for husbands who abused their wives, easier divorce proceedings, and, especially, the creation of jobs for women in general and for prostitutes in particular. They also suggested that women of all ideological persuasions were prepared to rally around the issue of women's suffrage. The ideological rivalries were finally bridged at the fourth congress in Chihuahua in 1935, which incorporated women from both camps and began a tactical alliance among women activists. The resulting organizational structure was used to advantage by the ensuing Frente Unico pro Derechos de la Mujer (Sole Front for Women's Rights).
Women's Organizations Gain Strength in the 1930s
The emergence of the Frente Unico pro Derechos de la Mujer was the most important development for the organized women's movement during the mid-1930´s. Structured as a broad-based organization combining several smaller groups, the Frente Unico included at one point over 50,000 members distributed among some 800 women's organizations throughout the




country. The Frente Unico fought openly for recognition of women's political rights, particularly the vote, pinning its hopes on the reformist presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas. Organized officially in October 1935, the Frente Unico succeeded where earlier efforts to create a unified feminist organization had failed. This first effective mass feminist organization in Mexico united feminists from the Left and Right, liberals, communists, Catholics, and the various factions from the women's sector of the PNR. Its greatest success was in coalescing its diverse supporters around the issue of women's suffrage. Despite class, regional, and ideological differences, the Frente Unico succeeded in large measure due to the leadership of lower-class women in grassroots organizations. Adelína Zendéjas, a militant of the period, recalled,
The activities centered on born leaders (some 150) who had begun the struggle and had become leaders by the respect and recognition of their reason and logic. There were many rural schoolteachers of peasant extraction who were the leaders or agrar- ian leagues in the states. The centers of these leagues were at the municipal and ejido seats, but they radiated out, and mobilization meant that the league reached not only the women who were members, but to all those in the region.
The Frente Unico's agenda concentrated on practical measures to improve the daily life of women and on political demands. It advocated employment centers, the creation of a children's bureau, and reform of the labor law and civil code. Politically it sought the liberation of Mexico from foreign oppression, social and political equality for peasants and indigenous populations, opposition to fascism and war, and, most important, women's suffrage. The only exclusively feminist demand was for women's right to vote, but it was this demand that gave the organization its cohesion and political character. Although maintaining its independence from the government and the PNR, the Frente Unico banked heavily on president Lázaro Cárdenas to aid the cause of women's suffrage. Cárdenas, in turn, saw the opportunity to garner the support of a large number of women for his far-reaching reforms. In the context of Cárdenas's effort to consolidate the support of mass segments of workers, peasants, the military, and the bureaucracy within the structure of his governing party, organized groups, including women, attracted his attention. Women were encouraged to vote in the 1936 PNR primaries as members of the party sections to which they were affiliated (labor unions, peasant organizations, women's groups), and they convinced the leadership that women voters associated with the party were not a threat. Despite an effective, unified mass organization of women willing to demonstrate, strike, and picket and the official support from an influential president, success was not forthcoming when Cárdenas proposed to amend Article 34 of the constitution to make women eligible for all the rights of citizenship. On November 23, 1937, however, the Senate and Chamber of Deputies both approved the amendment. The amendment was submitted to the states for ratification in 1938, when 16 of the 28 states had already given women the vote, and was ratified by all states by May 1939. One step remained, the formal declaration by Congress that the amendment had been ratified and was in force. Despite mass demonstrations by the Frente Unico and other organizations during 1939 and 1940 and the pleas of President Cárdenas, nothing was done. The usual explanation is that the legislators feared a backlash by masses of enfranchised women voters





against the government's reforms. They also feared that women would support the conservative opposition candidate in the 1940 presidential election. The election of Manuel Ávila Camacho marked a turning point in 1940, moderating the thrust of the Mexican Revolution and reducing the tension between church and state. The bitter defeat of the suffrage issue turned the attention of women's organizations to other goals such as child care centers, cooperatives for indigenous women, and legislation to protect domestic servants. Feminist activity in Mexico in the first half of the twentieth century reached its peak of enthusiasm and participation in the 1930´s, but the disappointing defeat of its unifying issue proved too much to overcome.
The 1940s and 1950s: Some Women, No Movement
The gradual weakening of Mexican feminism lasted over two decades. Ironically, it coincided with the gradual accession of women to full political rights. Massive foreign investment in the mid-1940´s led to industrialization and urbanization and opened new opportunities for women's economic participation. Women were granted the right to vote and hold office in municipal elections. President Miguel Alemán (1946-l952) appointed women to highly visible positions and reorganized the official party. The newly founded Partido Revolucionario Institutional (PRI, Party of the Institutionalized Revolution) included the first woman, Margarita Garcia Flores, on its national executive committee. Alemán´s successor, Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, had promised a new women's group, the Mexican Women's Alliance (Alianza de Mujeres Mexicanas), that he would support women's suffrage if elected. When the alliance's president, Amália Castillo Ledón, presented a petition with half a million signatures, President Ruíz Cortines succeeded where Cárdenas had failed. The constitution and the electoral 1aw were changed in 1953, finally giving Mexican women equal rights with men to participate in politics, almost four decades after Hermila Galindo demanded it as an act of "strict justice." Four women were elected to the national Congress in 1955, and women's voting patterns proved to be not too different from men's. In the 1958 presidential election, the first to include women voters, the total number of voters nearly doubled, but the electoral practices and political controls used by the PRI were unaltered. The fact that equal political rights were not achieved until 1953, and then only when the ruling party (PRI) was confident of political control, underscores the persistent weaknesses of the women's movement to that point. Its lack of effectiveness stemmed from its somewhat elitist character, narrow urban base, and fragmentation over class issues. Efforts to counter the ingrained sexual stereotyping made little headway and were repeatedly frustrated at critical times by the activism of Catholic and conservative groups. In its early years the movement was much too disorganized to parlay women's contributions to the revolution into political gains. At full strength, as the Frente Unico in the 1930´s, the movement lacked the political clout to carry its agenda. When the government finally acceded to the political demands of women in the 1950´s, it did so on its own terms and at a period when the women's movement had been progressively weakened and its issues were dismissed as politically irrelevant. By the late 1960´s the movement was practically nonexistent as an autonomous movement. Economic growth meant less activism in the women's movement and, in fact, most




women's organizations in the 1960´s were government-sponsored or sympathetic to the official party. Within what was effectively a one-party political system, the PRI absorbed many politically active women and channeled them into positions within the bureaucracy. According to longtime militant Adelína Zendéjas, women themselves were to blame for favoring personal interests over the collective interests of the women's movement: "They gave us the vote, and then everything went downhill, because women would not fight for women's causes but for their own personal interests, to become a director or a deputy-and they forgot everything." Inevitably, this co-optation reflected the class bias of the Mexican political system. Many of the powerful women obtained their positions through family or through affective or political links to powerful men.
The Second Wave
A new wave of feminism emerged in the 1970´s, mostly among young professionals, students, and middle-class women. This new brand of feminism was more intellectual. It questioned women's role in society and was particularly concerned with exposing the inequality between men and women in everyday life-in the daily relationship between men and women at home and in the workplace. The political opening of the Echeverría regime, from 1970 to 1976, permitted the registration of new opposition parties, gave greater latitude to labor unions, and allowed the emergence of new social movements. Women's groups voiced their criticism of the political system and expressed their grievances as an organized group. In doing so feminists were forced to confront the problems arising from the deep race and class differences among women in Mexico. The middle-class university women who constituted the core of this new wave of activist Mexican feminism were eager to build alliances with lower-class women because they perceived that feminism had the potential for radical social change at all levels. Over a dozen feminist groups, each stressing different issues, emerged during the mid-1970´s. They all agreed, however, on the need to define feminism in Mexican terms and emphasized consciousness-raising groups. A need was felt to make women at all social levels aware of their double exploitation as women and as workers and to realize the link between their daily life and oppression in the private sphere and their social sitflation. In 1972, the women's group Mujeres en Acción Solidaria (MAS, Women for Solidarity Action) became involved with striking women textile workers in an effort to build a cross-class alliance based on the new feminist ideas. This initial proselytizing effort was not very successful because most of the women workers were more concerned with union issués than with organizing as women. In general terms, this exemplified the initial difficulties in establishing cross-class alliances. The new feminist groups were more successful in attracting urban middle-class women. MAS members, for example, caught the public eye by staging a countercelebration on Mother's Day 1971, criticizing consumerism and the manipulation of women. Since city authorities thought women were celebrating motherhood, they allowed the meeting to take place, and the feminists even got national television coverage. Publications, workshops, and discussion groups flourished, giving the feminist movement wide visibility. The new adepts were militant and eager to participate in feminist groups, but the difficulty of incorporating other social groups remained a major weakness. Lack of leadership and fragmentation was also a problem for the women's movement. This fragmentation was evident in the reaction to the celebration of the





UN-sponsored International Women's Year in Mexico City in 1975. Although some groups were enthusiastic in their support, others criticized the celebration as demagogic. As in the past, differences emerged within the middle-class groups. A "bourgeois" group, the Movimiento National de Mujeres (National Women's Movement), emphasized the need for women to ally on the basis of gender without questioning the existing social order. The socialist feminists, in contrast, expressed the belief that women's subordination is caused by social, political, economic, and sexual oppression and thus that changing women's role in society required changing the social and economic conditions. Groups such as the Movimiento de Liberación de la Mujer (Women's Liberation Movement) (1974), Colectivo la Revuelta (the Revolt Collective) (1975), and the Colectivo de Mujeres (Women's Collective) were part of this political orientation and tried to combine gender and class analysis. Applying the feminist insight that "personal is political" led these women to question their social role and the class structure of Mexican society. Although reminiscent of the class-gender split of the 1930´s, the political context had changed. In the 1970´s, groups on both sides organized to enable women to participate politically outside the traditional context of male party politics, but in the cases where women chose to participate in party politics, the concept of double militancy, as women and as party members, was created. The women's movement was keenly aware of its need for autonomy from the traditional corporatist structure of the Mexican state. Official organizations and political parties, in turn, felt the need to incorporate feminist concerns into their programs. Feminist groups appeared both in the PRI and the Mexican Communist Party, and most independent labor unions also had women's commissions. Even the more conservative women of the Partido Acción National (PAN, National Action Party), who do not consider themselves feminists, began to claim their right to autonomy as women. Both independent and party-controlled feminist groups included the issues of decriminalization of abortion, stronger punishment for rapists, and assistance for battered women in their agenda. Of these, the decriminalization of abortion provoked the greatest interest and consensus among women's groups. Debates and discussions in public forums and in the media, conferences, and demonstrations led the Grupo Parlamentario de Izquierda ( Leftist Parliamentary Group), an alliance of opposition members of Congress, to introduce an abortion bill in the Chamber of Deputies in 1979. Although the bill was rejected, abortion remains a central issue for feminists and other sectors of Mexican civil society. Overcoming its initial difficulties, the women's movement gradually succeeded in building links with other broad social movements during the late 1970´s. This alliance between the new wave of feminists and the urban movements was instrumental in shaping a new mode of political participation for Mexican women that expanded in the 1980´s.
Women's Mobilization in the Popular Movements of the 1980s and Political Change: Two Cases
Ernest Laclau (1985) and Alain Touraine (1987), among others, have pointed out that Latin American social movements are defined not by the interests they repre-





sent but by the demands they make. This distinction is crucial because it implies a continuously shifting relationship between political demands and the groups expressing them. The experience in most Latin American countries is that the demands of social movements emerge in the process of organizing the groups. Besides requesting benefits from the state, popular movements insist on basic rights. According to Manuel Castells, popular social movements are enormously important because they push for an alternative social organization, an alternative use of space, and an alternative kind of city. Elizabeth Jelín argues that "what is at stake is not a new politics, but a new kind of society." In Mexico popular movements increased substantially from 1976 to 1982, when "the crisis'' became an everyday fact of life. A depressed economy incapable of sustaining economic growth and a reduction of resources increased the economic and political needs and demands of disadvantaged sectors of society. Popular movements during this period demanded housing, education, health, and a variety of other services, particularly in the poor urban areas. The success of these movements has depended on their ability to solve problems and meet demands in an effective, immediate way. Participants in these social movements in Mexico are not defined by class interest but rather by their specific demands and by their relations with the state. The proliferation of popular movements was one of the most significant political developments in Mexico during 1970-1990. For the Mexican political system, with its enormous reliance on a state bureaucracy and co-optation, autonomous self-organized urban movements present a strong challenge to the traditional system of cacique control and party machine politics. Women have been the most numerous and consistent participants in urban social movements, and their specific demands as women have been a key feature in shaping the new strategies and the modalities of political participation. In effect, women's participation in social movements is changing the way of doing politics in Mexico, both at the grassroots level and in electoral politics. The Mexican case offers additional evidence that women's participation in urban popular social movements is a key factor in the long-term process of democratization in Latin America. Women in contemporary Mexican politics wield sufficient power to be taken into account as serious political actors and have even led demands for proportional representation of women in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The usual definitions of political legitimacy and the forms by which political power has been exercised are being challenged by blurring the differences between politics and private life. By bringing personal concerns to the public arena and demanding them as rights, women have given a new dimension to what is considered political. The legitimacy of their involvement in the public political arena draws on their traditional domestic roles as mothers and providers. The election of women does not necessarily imply a change in the mechanisms of the political system, as Beatriz Paredes, the 1986-1992 PRI governor of the state of Tlaxcala and member of the national executive committee of that party, has noted, but even she acknowledges that women's movements are relevant in Mexican society today. In today's Mexico a significant number of women have moved away from party and electoral politics to a more immediate, decisive way of doing politics. Two relevant cases illustrate these processes of change: the lower-class movements in Mexico City and the civil disobedience campaign in Chihuahua in 1986. In both cases women played a key role, and their participation made a difference in the traditional male political arena.







Campamentos and Political Activism
Rural migration and high birthrates since 1940 have increased demographic pressures on Mexico City and have forced urban marginal families to establish squatter settlements known since the 19705 as campamentos, from which popular urban organizations have emerged. In the mid-1970s, encouraged by the social ideology of the Echeverría regime, these urban movements challenged private property by occupying empty areas on the outskirts of the city. In 1979, an umbrella organization known as the Coordinadora National del Movimiento Urbano Popular (CONAMUP, National Coordinating Committee of Urban Popular Movements) was established to provide national coordination for the numerous local organizations. Most of the participants in these movements were women, in many cases recent migrants to the city. They became active in the struggle for the recognition of property rights and for property legalization and basic household services (water, sewage, schools, health centers). By 1983, a women's organization, the Woman's Regional Council, was formed within CONAMUR. The Consejo Regional de Mujeres (CRM, Woman's Regional Council) sought to provide women with a forum to voice women's demands and obtain basic services for the community and organized collective kitchens, self-help workshops for women, and government-subsidized meal distribution for children. The CRM provided a space for women's issues and recognized women's need for a specific space in which to voice their grievances, express their concerns, and increase their political power within CONAMUR. As an umbrella organization, CONAMUP gave women leeway to push for their specific issues within the broad objectives of the movement. Feminist concerns received increased attention at CONAMUP meetings. At Monterrey in August 1985, CONAMUP women stated that the family, school, and Church were perpetuating patterns of women's submission and passiveness. They proposed sexual education workshops for the whole family, help for rape victims, harsher punishment for rapists, self-defense courses, and workshops to analyze the effects of the economic crisis on women. To cope with the economic crisis, they proposed the formation of cooperatives for buying, cooking, and producing food staples, as well as workshops to increase awareness about healthier eating habits and to fight against price increases. In September 1986, they organized meetings against price increases in domestic gas and school tuition and supplies. They also marched in support of World Day Against Hunger and joined forces with the "19 de septiembre" seamstresses' union to demonstrate against violence against women and denounce sexual aggression toward women in the home, workplace, streets, and health institutions. In December of that year they demanded increased services in health and day care centers, government subsidies for staples and tortillas, increases in the free-breakfast program for children and free food (despensas) on major holidays such as Christmas, Mother's Day, and Children's 'Day. These demands for basic products reflected the rising concern of women attempting to cope with a rapid decline in their purchasing power. The economic crisis of the 1980´s increased the harsh conditions faced by the urban poor. Women, in particular, bore the brunt of inflation, lack of services, and deteriorating living conditions. They became the overwhelming majority participating in urban popular movements, largely in response to increasing poverty. For some women the crisis led to depression and escapism.




However, for others participation had the effect of increasing their personal self-esteem and making them aware of their political power. As a militant woman put it in 1988, "Since I've been here I've felt a very important change. Before I had only my home and my work and went from one to the other. Now it's not only my home and my work, it's the group. I think that women are useful not only at home, and that's one of the main things I've learned in this organization." Women frequently faced opposition to their organizational activities from their husbands and sometimes they experienced domestic violence, but in many instances women gradually convinced their husbands and families that women's demands were beneficial to their families and communities. The frequent meetings, marches, and long waits to be heard by public officials often took a toll on women's domestic activities. Women made up for this by collectivizing their domestic tasks and relying on other women to share the burden. On the whole women seem to be increasingly aware of their political bargaining strength and find satisfaction with their new roles as organizers. By the mid-1980´s the demands of women in the popular movement included clear feminist issues. Responses to the economic crisis focused on strategies for survival that affected the whole family as more housewives were forced to enter the labor force; feminist issues such as violence against women also became part of their agenda.
Rebels Who Rose from the Rubble
On September 19,1985, at 7:15 A.M., a major earthquake hit the central and western portion of Mexico. The effects of this natural disaster on the Mexican political system could not have been anticipated.Specifically, for the women's movement the increased political participation in spontaneously organized groups meant a new alliance among women of different classes. The Mexican garment workers union ''19 de septiembre" exemplifies this new alliance well. The union was formed by seamstresses who lost their jobs after the earthquake practically destroyed the garment district in Mexico City. About 4o,ooo women were left unemployed. Women were outraged by the fact that factory owners were more concerned with saving what was left of the machinery than with trying to find their missing coworkers. This initial rage served as motivation for an unprecedented event in Mexico, a rapidly organized autonomous union led by women. The "19 de septiembre" is "the first industry wide union in the history of the Mexican garment industry, the first independent national union to be registered in the last 13 years in Mexico and the only trade union that is led entirely by women." By electing a female leader (Evangelina Corona) who emerged from their own rank and file, the women in this union overturned a long-standing pattern by which men led organizations consisting predominantly of women. The "19 de septiembre" union members also used traditional women's skills to raise money for their organization. They sold handmade dolls based on designs made by famous artists specifically for the seamstresses. Continuing the effort to build crossclass alliances, the feminist magazine FEM organized an auction of jewelry donated by upper middle-class women, the proceeds from which went to the seamstresses' union. The novelty of the "19 de septiembre" union went far beyond its fund-raising procedures. By organizing an autonomous union that refused to recognize the official PRI -sponsored Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos ( CTM , Confederation of Mexican Workers), they took an independent political stance in a strongly controlled labor movement. From a feminist perspective the most interesting feature of the "19 de septiembre" union is the fact that it is a collective effort with mostly women participants. Middle-class feminist organizations offered



legal advice and participated with the seamstresses in staging demonstrations, performing organizational tasks, and informing the public about the union. This network across class barriers facilitated the integration of feminist demands into the union's program. Teresa Carrillo notes that the role of the advisers has not been sufficiently explored, but it is already clear that even in this rather traditional role of advisers, middle-class urban women joined forces with urban proletarian women in confronting the factory owners and male-controlled labor movement in Mexico. So far the union has succeeded in staying outside of the corporatist state and "is breaking new ground for popular female leadership and collective action."
New Women, Same Old Politics
The 1986 governor´s race in the northern border state of Chihuahua drew considerable interest. PAN candidate Francisco Bárrio, a successful and popular mayor of Ciudad Juárez since 1983, faced the PRI candidate, Fernando Baéza, who also had distinguished professional credentials and the support of the PRI party machine. Both candidates attempted to attract the women's vote by praising both homemakers and women workers, an appeal calculated to win votes in a city where women constitute a majority of the labor force in export-processing industries and also work in the professional services and informal sectors. Women played a leading role in the political campaigns of their candidates. Female participation in this campaign ran the gamut from the enhanced role played by the spouses of both candidates to the innovative civic campaigns led by women against electoral fraud and corrupt politics. Women saw it as a feminine task to put an end to these practices. PAN women argued that part of their responsibility as mothers who must provide for their children and take care of their future is the responsibility of leaving them a more democratic political environment. These women denied that they had an individual stake in politics, justifying their political participation in the name of their children. The race also featured two female candidates contending for the position of national deputy. Clara Tórres (PAN) and Iséla Tórres (PRI) presented contrasting personal and political styles. Iséla was a candidate of working-class origin who ran a campaign based on her ability to represent the workers, especially the maquiladora (foreign-components assembly plant) workers; Clara came from a professional background that appealed to the more conservative PAN constituency. Both emphasized that being a woman would make a difference in their politics. Women participated actively in the unusually strong political confrontations that preceded the election, especially in the civil disobedience campaigns staged by PAN to protest electoral fraud. Women also took part in watching the polls and encouraging people to vote. Yet although women participated actively in the 1986 election at a time when the political arena was becoming very polarized between PRI and PAN, the parties still failed to offer women specific programs to address gender inequalities. The role of women in this campaign has been discussed by some of the women who participated in it. Most of them agreed on the need for even greater women's participation and acknowledged the changes in their personal lives that resulted from being politically active. Although women's activism in Chihuahua did not profoundly change the political agenda and women were not able to prevent an allegedly tainted PRI victory, women themselves saw a significant change in the self-conceptualization of their gender roles. One 42 year-old participant named Vicky stated: "I think that before women did not express their feelings so completely....





We, the women of Mexico, were used to accepting everything that was said to us, but all that changed, now we scream and fight for our rights." As examples of women's political participation, the elections in Chihuahua and the popular movements in Mexico City reveal very different objectives. Women in Chihuahua participated within the framework of an electoral movement, the novelty being the extent to which they engaged in the electoral campaign and their rationale for participating, their responsibilities as women and as mothers. As women and as mothers they expressed the need to "clean up politics" by defending the vote. In this defense women engaged in nonconfrontational, peaceful resistance and moral persuasion. One participant declared: "I agree with peaceful resistance. I think it's perfect because it´s a way to show our rejection of the system, to make our disagreement with h1justices felt. I think it's the best way to show the system our point of view, by resisting it peacefully.'' Women in popular movements, in contrast, concentrated on a less traditional area of political participation. These movements coalesced around immediate needs (for housing, water, schools). Demands were not presented through political candidates but directly to the state by those concerned, mostly women. In each instance, it is clear that women have become less hesitant to politicize their concerns, within or outside the context of electoral politics. These movements clearly show a new form of relationship between civil society and government, and one of the features of this new relationship is the increased participation of women.
A New Feminist Awareness
The previously mentioned cases reflect a feature common to women's movements: Although women's participation may not bring immediate changes in the political agenda of traditional parties, changes do take place in the increasing awareness women have of the importance of women's issues and of their political power as an organized group. Feminism is certainly not new in Mexico, but a new female-feminist consciousness is emerging. Unlike 1970´s middle-class femmism, which was primarily concerned with personal issues and did little to modify the course of traditional politics, the women's movement in the 1980´s proved to be innovative in it´s demand and forms of organization as well as in constructing links with lower-class urban movements. This intermingling of lower-class urban movements and the women's movement continues to occur. A popular type of feminism has emerged where women express their class demands with a feminist perspective. The distinction between female participation, women's movements, and feminism is becoming increasingly irrelevant as women incorporate their specific demands as women into a broader political agenda. This agenda formulates traditional private demands as political issues. The increasingly effective presentation of women's demands is beginning to command attention in traditional political circles. President Salinas de Gortári declared women a priority for his government. In the 1991 national election for congressional deputies, for instance, all three major parties (PRI, PAN, and PRD [ Partido de la Revolución Democrática, Democratic Revolution Party] ) included women's issues in their political platforms, although they still ran a disproportionately small number of female candidates.






Although the relationship between organized women's groups and political parties is still a difficult one, women's concerns have become politically visible and relevant. Traditional women's issues such as abortion, violence against women, and increased penalties for rapists are now part of the platforms of the major parties and government organizations. Abortion rights has been one of the issues consistently brought forward to public debate and has engaged large segments of Mexican society. As elsewhere, women in Mexico continue to be divided on this issue. The effects of this increased concern with women's issues have also been important for women as individuals. Political participation has meant a reeducation for women, and increased self-esteem often leads to greater achievement, as Alejandra Massolo's studies of the urban movement have proved. Women have also discovered that by voicing their gender-specific concerns as a group they are more likely to gain concessions from the state. Motherhood and its social practices are central to the symbols that women have used to assert themselves and legitimize their movement. Family and community concerns have been politicized. As the case of the PAN women in Chihuahua clearly shows, the formerly private responsibilities assumed by many mothers for feeding their families, allocating resources, and educating their children have been transformed into political issues for which women fight. The well-being of their families was the practical goal; their struggle to achieve this goal has been a powerful force in forming women's organizations. Women's shifting "practical gender interests" have enabled women to have a dual access to power as organizers in their own communities and as organized groups vis-á-vis the state. This new attitude among women runs counter to the stereotype of the passive Mexican woman. The feminists of the 1930´s realized the importance of women's political participation, but the main difference between contemporary feminism and that of its precursoras is that women today do not see party politics as the only space for women's issues. Feminist concerns are no longer marginal. Women's presence is felt in high official appointments; in spring 1993, for the first time, both houses of the Congress were led by women. In Mexican politics the organized women of the lower-class urban movements have become actors to contend with in the political arena. Organized groups of middle-class women such as the Mujeres par la Democracia (Women for Democracy), the Convención National de Mujeres (National Convention of Women), and the Mujeres para el Diálogo (Women for Dialogue) have been able to discuss the issues that are specifically relevant to women and to party platforms. A new breed of Mexican feminist scholar-activists analyzes and provides intellectual content for women's issues in magazines such as FEM and Debate Feminista and in monthly newspaper sections such as La Doble Jornada. The "woman question" is no longer a separate issue. By placing women's concerns center stage women in Mexico have made real progress toward erasing the idea that politics is the exclusive domain of men. In terms of organization, Mexican women have used traditional female forms of communication such as networking and inviting family, friends, and neighbors as coparticipants. Most movements do not handle substantial amounts of money, but when they have needed income they have raised it using traditional skills, such as preparing food or making handicrafts for sale, as was the case with the "19 de septiembre" seamstresses.









The relationship between activism and motherhood is a complex and increasingly complementary one. Unlike in the past, when women's position in the family limited their political activity, now being a mother legitimizes political activism, and activism is increasingly becoming a mother's activity. Children of both sexes frequently attend women's gatherings and protest meetings. Women's participation in not a new feature in Mexican politics, but, unlike some of their predecessors in the 1930´s and 1940´s, the 1980´s women organizers have not used their political prominence to advance their personal ambitions. This is particularly noteworthy in the context of Mexican politics, where political cohesiveness has been achieved by means of personal loyalties to leaders (caciquism). Women's movements organized in relation to immediate issues rather than in terms of personal ties to their leaders. Organizational methods have also been innovative and integrate practical and strategic gender interests. In general, communal self-help and group decisions have prevailed over party-line politics and acarreo (forced attendance). Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have created a new form of political organization outside the parties. NGOs may not yet offer a real challenge to the powerful Mexican state, but their influence has been felt in traditional government circles. Their community-centered activities provided a pattern for one of the most successful government organizations of the 1990´s, the Programa National de Solidaridad (PRONASOL, National Solidarity Program), which assists with community development. In the Mexican contemporary political arena the presence of women and their demands cannot be ignored. "Feminism" is no longer a dirty word in Mexican politics. Rather, in Salinas's current discourse about modernization in Mexican society, women's issues are frequently included. Furthermore, women-led inclusive groups such as Ganando Espacios (Gaining Spaces) are pushing or the increased participation of civil society by urging citizens to organize politically and have also asked for support for a new society, one that changes the power relations in the country. They also claim the right to introduce legislation outside of parties and the right of both female and male citizens to organize politically. Along the same lines, the 1993 National Feminist Encounter put forward a political platform that includes a "positive action" policy aimed at the subversion of the traditionally unequal relationship between men and women. Such demands are a real challenge to the Mexican political system. In the end, Mexican traditional political groups may yet come to grips with the fact that "democracia" is feminine.
















Notes
1. On the subject of economic participation and survival strategies, see Liliana Acero, Mujer y trabajo en América Latina (Montevideo: Gremcu, 1986); L. Beneria and M. Roldán, The Crossronds of Class and Gender: Industrial Homework Subcontracting and Household Dynamics in Mexico City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Jennifer Cooper, Teresita de Barbieri, Teresa Rendón, Estela Suárez, Esperanza Tunón, camps., Fuerza de trabajo femenina urbana en México z vols. (Mexico: Porrúa, 1989); Sylvia Chant, women and Surviva1 in Mexican Cities: Perspectives on Gender; Labour Markets and Low become Households (Manchester, England: University of Manchester Press, 1991); Mercedes González de la Rocha, Social Responses to Mexicos Economic Gisis (San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies: Uníversity of California at San Diego, 1991), 195-ZZI, and Los recursos de la pobreza (Guadalajara: El Colegio de lalisco, 1986); Elizabeth Jelin, Family Household and Gender Relations in Latin America (London: UNESCO/Kegan Paul, I99l), and Memoria Pronam Programa National de Integración de la Mujer al Desarrollo (Mexico City: Secretaria de Gobernación/Consejo National de Población, 198Z); Orlandina de Oliveira, "Empleo femenino en tiempos de recesión económica: Tendencias recientes:' in lennifer Cooper et al., ads., Fuerza de trabajofemenina urbana en México (Mexico City: Miguel Angel Porrúa, 1989); Katie Willis, "Women's Work and Social Network Use in Oaxaca City, Mexico ' Bulletin of Latin American Research IZ I (January 1993): 65-83; Fiona Wilson, De la casa al taller: Mujeres trabajo y clase social en la industria textil y del vestido (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 1990). 2. Alan Knight, "Historical Continuities in Social Movements:' in Joe Foweraker and Ann Craig, ads., Popular Movements and Political Change in Mexico ( Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1990), 90. 3. See Carmen Ramos and Ana Lau, Mujeres y revolución: ~907-~9~7 (Mexico City: INEHRM, 1993); Elizabeth Salas, Soldaderas in the Mexican Military (Austin: University of Texas 1990); Sherlene Solo, Emergence of the Modern Mexican Woman (Denver: Arden Press, 1990); Anna Macías, Against All Odds: The Feminist Movement in Mexico to 1940 (London: Westview Press, 198Z); Angeles Mendieta Alatorre, La mujer en la revolución mexicana (Mexico City: INEHRM, 1963). 4. Frederick Turner, "Los efectos de la participación femenina en la revolución de Iglo:' Historia Mexicana 64, 4 (April-lune 1967): 603-620 5. On the Mexican Revolution as a social movement and its use to legitimize the Mexican state, see Alan Knight, "La revolución mexicana: Burguesa, nacionalista o simplemente una gran rebelión:' Cuadernos Politicos 48 (October-December 1986): 5-3~; also Hector Aguilar Cumin, Saldos de revolución (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1988). 6. Divorce was authorized in Mexico for the first time on January z, lgl,. Codif coción de decretos del C Ven flstiano Carranza primer jefe del ejército encargado del poder ejecutivo de la unión (Mexico City: Imprenta de la Secretaria de Gobernación, 1990), Press, 7. C. Venustiano Carranza, "Ley sobre relaciones familiares" in Du~rio Of cial April 14, 3-71. 8. Congreso Jeminista de Yucatán. Anales de esa memorable asamblea (Mérida, Yucatán: 1916). See also Anna Macias, Against All Odds 70-80; and Carmen Ramos Escandón, "Mflieres mexicanas, historia e imágen ' FEM (November 1989): z5-31. 9. Gabriela Cano, "Es de estricta justicia: Un feminista en Las filas del constitiucionalismo:' in Congreso Inten~acional sobrc la revoh~ción mexicana (Mexico City: o. Ward M. Morton, Woman Sufirage in Mexico (Gainsville: University of Florida Press, 62), 8. 11. Ley electoral de poderesfederales June I, 1918, reprinted Mexico City: Imprenta de la Camara de Diputados, 193Z, 16-17 Zuñiga, Alúra Diaz, and Josefina Vicens. See Fabienne Bradú, Antonieta (Mexico City: FCE, Iggo); Herrera, Hayden, Frida: A Biography (New York: Harper & Row, 1983). For an oral history of the last three see Gabriela Cano and Verena Radku, Ganando espacios (Mexico City: UAM Iztapalapa, 1989). . Morton, Woman Sufirage in Mexico Il-12. 14. Anna Macias, "Antecedentes del en México en Los aflos veinte:' FEM 1l (November-December 1979): 5-3Z. I,. Macias, AguinstAII Odds 106. 16. The presence of Alejandra Kollontai as USSR ambassador to Mexico was influential for lehist women's organizations in the 19205. See Esperanza Tuñón Pabios, Mujeres que se organizan (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1992), 22. IZ. Outstanding women of the period were Antonieta Rivas Mercado, Frida Kahlo, Guadalupe 18. Julia Nava de Ruiz Sánchez. Informe que rinde la secretaria de la delegación feminista al Congreso de Baltimore ante el Centro Feminista Mexicano sobre la comisión que le confirmo la Liga National de Mujeres Votantes (Mexico City: National Library, 1922). 19. "Resoluciones tomadas par el Primer Congreso Feminista convocado par la Sección Mexicana de la Liga Panamericana del 20 al 30 de mayo de 1923 ' Debote Feminista I I (May 20. Ana Lau Jaivén, Nueva ala delfeminismo en Mexico (Mexico City: Planeta, 1987), 38. Barbara Miller, "The Role of Women in the Mexican Cristero Rebellion: Las Señoras y Las Religiosas," The Americas 40, 3 (January Iy84): 303-323. 21. Morton, Woman Sufirage in Mexico 13. z2. John Skirius, loSé Vasconcelosy la cruzada de 1929 (Mexico City: EC.E., 1978),124. 23. Macias, Against All Odds 134-137. Maria Rios Cárdenas, La mujer mexicana es ciudadana (Mexico City: Editiorial Cultura, 1940). 24. Interview with Adelina Zendejas cited in Tuñon Pabios, Mujeres que se organizan, 72. See also Adelina Zendéjas, "El movimiento femenil en Mexico ' El Dia June 21,1975. 25. Macias, Against All Odds 142. 26. El Machete October 19,1935. 27. Macias, Against All Odds 141. 28. Morton, Woman Sufirage in Mexico 30-31. 29. Ibid., 37. 3o. Macias, Against All Odds 144-145. 31. Morton, Woman Suffrage in Mexico 83-84. 32. In April 1954, the state of Baja California Norte held the first election in Mexican history in which women participated equally with men in the election of a governor, the state legislature, and members of Congress. Aurora Jiménez Palacios was the first woman to be elected a deputy to the federal Congress. In the 195s election, the four contending parties nominated 14 women among the 3,S candidates for deputy. Four women were elected, all PRI candidates. In 1958 women voted for the first time in the presidential election. Ibid., 86-87. Based on a 1958 survey of the political attitudes of men and women in Mexico, William Blough concluded that both had essentially similar attitudes about the political system, but women were less prepared politically and had more negative feelings toward the political system and that the more participatory women were, the more they favored the regime. See William Blough, "Political Attitudes of Mexican Women, loflrnal of Interamerican and World Affairs 14, z (1972): 201-224. 33. Morton, Woman Suffrage in Mexico, 112. 34. See ANFER, Participación politica de la mujer en México (Mexico City: ANFER, 3984). 35. Margarita Garcia Flores, "Adelina Zendéjas: La lucha de Las mfljeres mexicanas ' FEM 1, 20 (October-December 1976): 76. 36. Luz de Lourdes de Silva, "Las mfljeres en la elite politico de México, 1954-1984 ' in Orlandina de Oliveira, ed., Trabajo, poder y sexflalidad ( Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 37. Lau Jaivén, Nueva ala delfeminismo. 38. On the Echeverria government, see lulio Labastida, "Proceso politico y dependencia en México:' Revista Mexicana de Sociologia 39,1 (1977): 20. ~3g - Esperanza Tuñon Pabios, "Women's Struggles for Empowerment in Mexico ' in Jill b - Bystydzienski, ed., Women Transforming Politics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 98. 40. Marta Acevedo, interview, August 1981. Lau laivén, Nueva ala delfeminismo, 83. 41. Tuñon Pabios, "Women's Struggle for Empowerment:' 99. 42. Ibid. 43. Carlos Monsivais, "De resistencias y últimos recursos: Notas para una crónica del en México:' Casa del Tiempo 8, 71 (May-June 1987):17. 44. Norma Mongovejo, "El movimiento feminista en busca de hegemonia ' FEM 97 (lanuary l99l) 4 45. Marta Lamas, "Le nouveau feminism au Mexique ' Cahiers des Ameriques Latines 26 (July-December 1982): 79. 46. Maria Luisa Tarrés, "El movimiento de mujeres y el sistema politico mexicano: Analisis de la lucha par la liberalización del abort:' paper presented at the Seventeenth LASA International Congress, Los Angeles, September 24-27,1992, 22. 47. Marta Lamas reconstructs the issues and organizational alliances in y organizaciones politicos de izquierda en México ' FEM (February-March 1981): 35. 48. Although not explicitly feminist, another social movement led by a woman was the "desaparecidos" campaign headed by Rosario Ibarra aher the 1975 disappearance of her son. See Rosario Ibarra, "La voz del silencio: Las madras mflertas:' La Casa del Tiempo 8, (May-June 1987):'9. 49. Ernest Laclau, "New Social Movements and the Plurality of the Social:' in David Slater, ed., New Social Movements and the State in Latin America (Amsterdam: CEDLA, 1985); Alain Touraine, "Los movimientos sociales," in A. Touraine and J. Habermas, ads., Ensayos de teoria social (Mexico City: UAP, UAM-Azcapotzalco, 1986); Joe Foweraker and Ann Craig, ads., Popular Movements and Political Change in Mexico (London, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, Iggo); Lyn Stephen, "Women in Mexico's Popular Movements: Survival Strategies Against Ecological and Economic Impoverishment:' Latin American Perspectives (Winter 1992): 73, 96.so. Foweraker and Craig, Popular Movements and Political Change, 8. ¿4Manuel Castelis, The City and the Grassroots: A Cross Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements(Berkeley: UniversityofCalifornia Press, lg83). Manuel Castelis, Crisis flrbanay cambio social, 2nd ed. (Mexcio City: Siglo XXI, 1981). ,2. Elizabeth Jelín, Los movimientos sociales en la Argentina contemporánea: Una introducción a su estudio (Buenos Aires: CEDES, 1985); Elizabeth Jelin, camp., Cindadania e identidad (Ginebra: UNRIDS, 1987), 7.. See Carlos Tello et al., Mexico 8~: A mitad del tune~ (Mexico City: Oceano/Nexos, 83), 80.. Manuel Castelis, La cflestión urbana (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1976); Castelis, Gisis urbana cambio social, znd. ed. (Mexico City: Siglo X'CI, 1981); Castelis, The City and the Grassroots. sS. Foweraker and Craig, Popular Movements and Political Change, 3. Nikki Craske, "Women's Political Participation in Colonias Populares in Guadalajara, Mexico:' in Sarah A. Radcliffe and Sallie Westwood, ads., Viva: Women and Popular Protest in Latin America (London: Routiedge, 1993), 113. 57. José Woldemberg, "Cflotas para Las mfljeres ' La Jornada, May 27,1993. 58. Joann Martin, "Motherhood and Power: The Production of a Women's Culture of Politics in a Mexican Community ' American Ethnologist 17, 3 (August Iggo): 470. 59. Beatriz Paredes, "Algunas consideraciones sobre el ejercicio del poder y la condición femenina:' in Seminario sobre la participación de la mujer en la vida nacional (Mexico City: UNAM, 1989); Carlos Monsivais et al., "De quién es la politico?" Debate Feminista 2, 4 (September 199l): 36. Alejandra Massolo, Por amor y par coroje: Mujeres en movimientos flrbanos de la ciudad de Mexico (Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 1992),152. 61. Ricardo Hernández, La Coordinadora National del Movimiento Urbano Popular, su historia: 1980 1986 (Mexico City: CONAMUP, 1987). 62. Stephen, "Women in Mexico's Popular Movements' 73-96; Oscar Nuñez, Innovaciones democrático-culturales del movimiento urbane popular (Mexico City: UNAM, 990), 363. 63. La lornada, July 22, 1986; Alejandra Massolo, "La mujer callada jamás será escuchada:' FEM 58 (October 1987): 53-55. 64. Ricardo Hernández, La Coordinadora National, loo. 65. Patricia Muñoz Rios, "La deuda que nos cayó encima:' FEM 56 (August 1987): 33-35. 66. Stephen, "Women in Mexico's Popular Movements"; Norman Walbeck, "The Women's Movement in Mexico: Potential Links Among Grassroots Popular Movements, the Feminist Movement and the Political Left ' paper presented at the Annual Meeting of International Studies Association, Acapulco, Mexico, March 1993; Jane Jaquette, ed., The Women's Movement in Latin America (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, '99l).
67. Mercedes Charles, "Navegando par el mar de histories:' FEM 56 (August 1987): 3839 68. Amparo Sevilla, "La participación de Las mfljeres en el Movimiento Urbano Popular M,LI<" FEM 107 (November 199l): 38; Hernández, La Coordinadora Nactonal, go. (~9? For specific case studies of women's participation in urban movements afrer the 985 earthquake, see Alejandra Massolo and Martha Schteingart, Participación social, econstn/ccióu y mujer: El sismo de 1985 (Mexico City: UNICEF/Colegio de Mexico, ~987). 70. Orlandina de Oliveira, "Empleo femenino en Mexico en tiempos de recesión económica: Tenencias recientes," in Neuma Aguiar. ed., Mujer y crisis: Respuestas ante la recesión (Mexico City: Editorial Nueva Sociedad/Mujeres par un Desarrollo Alternativo, ), so. 71. Las mfljeres en Las colonias en el movimiento urbane popular (Mexico City: CONAMUP, n.d.); Opresión, explotación y organización de Las mfljeres (Mexico City: Mujeres para el Diálogo, 1988); Ricardo Hernández, La Coordinadora National, 98. 72. For the experiences of individual participants, see Elena Poniatowska, Nunca, nada, nadie (Mexico City: ERA, Iggo); also Massolo and Schteingart, Participación sociaL 73. A large number of spontaneously organized groups in which women had an active role emerged immediately aRer the earthquake. For detailed accounts of specific groups, see ibid. 74. Teresa Carrillo, Worling Women and the "19 of September" Mexican Garment Workers Union: The Sign~ficance of Gender, Michigan State University Working Paper no. 179, 1979, 2; and T~resa Car~rjllo, "Women and Independent Unionism in the Garment Industry:' in Foweraker and Craig, Popular Movements and Political Change, 231. 75. Carrillo, "Women and Independent Unionism," 229. 76. Ibid., 232. 77. Kathleen Staudt and Carlota Aguilar, "Political Parties, Women's Activists Agendas and Household Relations: Elections on Mexico's Northern Frontier," Mexican Studies 8, 78. Ibid., 94. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid., lo'. 81 . Dal ia Barrera Bassols and Lidia Venegas Aguilera, Testimon ios de pa rticipación popular femenina en la defensa del voto, Cindad lflarez, Chihuahua, 1982-1986 (Mexico City: INAH/CNCA, ~992), 92,100. 82. Ibid., lol. 83. Ibid., 98.Esperanza Tuñon Pabios, "Women's Struggle in Mexico 1970-1990," in Women Transforming Politics: World WideStrategiesforEmpowerment(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992),102. 85. Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Ideas y compromises (Mexico City: PRI, 1988), 107. 86. The PRI had 32 candidates for the Senate and 300 for national deputies. Only two candidates to the Senate and 21 for the Chamber of Deputies were women. No data are available for other parties. Monsivais et al., "De quién es la politico?" 12. 87. Monsivais et al., "De quién es la politico?" 24. Hector Aguilar Cumin, "Mfljeres en Martha:' in Despues del milagro (Mexico City: Cal y Arena, I99l); Kathleen Logan, "Women's Participation in Urban Protest," in Foweraker and Craig, Popular Movements and Political Change, 156. 88. Maria Luisa Tarrés, "El movimiento de mfljeres y el sistema politico mexicana:' paper presented at the Seventeenth LASA International Congress, Los Angeles, California, Sep~ember 1992, 33. Maxine Molyneux, "Mobilization Without Emancipation? Women's Interests, Sta~c an Revolution in Nicaragua:' in David Slater, ed. (Amsterdam, Netherlands: CEDCA gl. For the first time in Mexican history, two women presided over the two houses of Congress, Laura Alicia Garza Galh1do and Silvia Hernández, La Jornada, April 6,1993, 6. 92. Soledad Loaeza, "Las formas de participación politico de la mujer en Mexico,~' Encuentro 2, 1 (October-December 1984):136. 93. Acarreo is the PRI practice of forcing people to attend meetings by discounting a day's salary if they don't attend or by providing them with meals and small gihs if they do. 94. For a study of the political uses of PRONASOL, see Denise Dresser, Neopopulist Solutions to Neoliberal Problems (San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, Iggl).