She Inspires

MEXICO: Indigenous Woman on the Offensive

FROM the Inter Press Service News Agency

Two years ago Eufrosina Cruz was
kept from running for mayor of her home village by the
traditions and customs of her indigenous community in
southern Mexico just because she is a woman.

But she refused to back down and challenged the tradition – a
decision that brought her death threats but also dreams and
achievements that she had never imagined.

On Tuesday the 29-year-old Zapoteca Indian woman presented in
the Mexican capital a new civil society association aimed at
highlighting the deep-rooted nature of native traditions and
customs in many communities especially in the impoverished
southern state of Oaxaca where a large proportion of the
population is indigenous.

If in November 2010 women can finally vote in my village
and one of them is elected mayor I will be more than happy; it
will be the best achievement of this association through which I
promise to become even more crazy which is what people in my
village say I am Cruz said in an interview with IPS.

Her group is called Quiego short for Queremos Unir Integrando
por Equidad y Género en Oaxaca (roughly we want to come
together for equity and gender in Oaxaca). The acronym was
inspired by Santa María Quiegaloni the name of her village of
800 Zapoteca Indians located in the mountains of Oaxaca one of
Mexico’s poorest states.

Quiego plans to hold workshops and organise women’s
groups first in my village and later throughout Oaxaca and
anywhere else that we can to raise awareness on women’s
political rights and help them understand that some traditions
are no good but that we are not alone and that we have to wake
up she said.

Cruz an accountant was the first woman to attempt to run for
mayor there. Although some of the men backed her up the heads
of the local assembly said tradition blocked her from
participating as a woman.

But that denial of women’s political rights had not been loudly
protested until Cruz brought the problem to the attention of
state and national authorities.

I always said things couldn’t stay this way that it was
unfair. But I didn’t imagine that all the rest of this would
happen she said.

By all the rest she was referring to anonymous
death threats that led to police protection for her as well as
the approval of a reform of the Oaxaca state constitution at her
initiative which clearly stipulates that no local tradition can
apply if it denies the political rights of indigenous women.

But she also meant the numerous invitations to take part in
conferences and in meetings with legislators and government
officials and the decision by the Mexican government of
conservative President Felipe Calderón to award her the national
youth prize consisting of 100000 dollars for her work on
behalf of women.

Last year I quit my job (as coordinator of academic
programmes in technical high schools in Oaxaca) to dedicate
myself completely to the cause of defending our women to coming
together to talk and to gradually finding a way out of this ugly
poverty and denial of our rights she said.

Mexico is the Latin American country with the largest
indigenous population in absolute numbers which is variously
estimated to make up between 12 and 30 percent of the country’s
104 million people (the smaller official estimate is based on
the number of people who actually speak an indigenous language).
The overwhelming majority of the Mexican population is of mixed
indigenous and Spanish ancestry.

More than 90 percent of the 12 million officially counted
indigenous people live in extreme poverty nearly 50 percent are
illiterate and 80 percent of the children under five are badly
malnourished according to the human development report on
Mexican indigenous people published in 2006 by the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP).

A study focusing on gender issues by the government National
Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples also
released in 2006 states that among the poorest of the
poor among the most marginalised of the marginalised are
indigenous women.

On many occasions they are discriminated against because
they are indigenous because they are women and because they
are poor. The social systems of their own communities also
frequently exclude them says the report on
indicators with a gender perspective for indigenous
peoples.

Among the country’s indigenous people there are 636720 women
who only speak native languages compared to 371083 men. And 27
percent of native people over 15 are illiterate by contrast with
a national average of 9.5 percent. But illiteracy among
indigenous women is 34.5 percent against 19.6 percent of men.

In Oaxaca 39 percent of native women and 22.3 percent of
native men over 15 are illiterate.

Among my people many women still believe that that’s how
it should be that rights are only for men that only they
deserve to study said Cruz. But I tell them that
they have to open their eyes and change even if they are
threatened horribly like what happened to me.

Cruz left Quiegolani at the age of 11 because she did not want
to end up being married off at 13 like her sister and raising
a gaggle of children in absolute poverty.


A lot of people have helped us: journalists politicians
and women’s groups. Thanks to all of them this association has
emerged but we are still searching for more support in order to
complete our dream said Cruz. (