A place where women are not allowed to vote

A women I admire for her tenacity, bravery, courage and poise and
for coping with a terribly chauvinistic, unjust, misogynous environment
and context is Eufrosina Cruz Mendoza, who ran for mayor of Santa María
Quiegolani, who I am going to ask to address us. If you could,
Eufrosina.

My name is Eufrosina Cruz Mendoza. I am an indigenous woman who was
born in the small municipality of Santa María Quiegolani. Very few
people, perhaps only those of us who were born here, know that this
village exists and how to get to this beautiful beacon set in the heart
of the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca.

I am a woman and a professional which in Quiegolani is more of a
crime than a privilege and almost a sin. A little while ago, when I put
my case to the electoral authorities and the Congress of the state of
Oaxaca, no-one believed my story, neither the male nor the female
authorities.

Nowadays I support a different cause; I am asking for the right of
indigenous women to exercise the active and passive vote in communities
throughout Mexico. That is my dream, for no-one to steal our right to
progress and participate in the development of our villages and
communities.

My calla lilies bloom and burst with happiness as they did on March 5th when the President of the National Human Rights Commission
acknowledged the right of indigenous women in Oaxaca to vote and be
voted for, with no restrictions or exceptions; that was one of the
happiest days of my life.

Today, women’s dignity and gender equity in indigenous communities sleep as soundly as a child in his mother's shawl.

As I have mentioned before, in my government, we do not want a
country where women walk or are behind men, whether greater or small,
but a Mexico where women walk side by side with men in equal
circumstances and with equal opportunities.

Imagine a place where women are not allowed the vote, nor considered citizens. Actually, there's no need to imagine, because such a scenario is an actual reality in indigenous areas like Santa Maria Quiegolani, located in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. 27-year-old Eufrosina Cruz (left) tried running for mayor of Santa Maria Quiegolani, only to have the ballots cast in her name torn up by the town elders because of her non-citizen status. Get this: A quarter of women in similar settlements are denied the right to vote, even though a "use and customs" law states that the indigenous villages are allowed to "apply their own normative systems... as long as they obey the general principles of the Constitution and respect the rights of individuals...particularly the dignity and well-being of women." As for that dignity and well-being? Well, when the widowed mother of Martina Cruz Moreno asked the village elders for building materials to improve her dirt-floored shack, she was told to "Go get yourself a husband."
 
According to the Associated Press, six years ago, the Mexican government gave a measure of autonomy to Indian settlements under an act called "use and customs," or as Ms. Cruz calls them, "abuse and customs." Cruz is looking to get the tampered election annulled; she submitted a complaint last month to Mexico's National Human Rights Commission, and if necessary, she plans to go to federal election authorities. Maybe the same governing body that decided to protect urban Mexican women from abuse and sexism by giving them their own bus lines can do something for its more rural sisters?

As
a woman, Eufrosina Cruz is not only barred from being mayor, but from
participating in the "community labour" that qualifies male villagers
as "citizens." Those tasks include repairing roads, herding cattle,
cleaning streets and raising crops.

 
"I'd like to see the men here make tortillas, just for one
day, and then tell me that's not work," said Cruz, describing the
hours-long process of cleaning, soaking, cooking and milling the corn,
shaping the flour into flat disks, and collecting the firewood to heat
the clay and brick hearths on which most women cook.

 
During all-important village festivals, women are expected to
cook for all the male guests. But instead of joining them at the table,
Cruz says, they are relegated to straw mats on the floor. Clothes are
washed by hand, and while most homes have some form of running water,
it's often only a single spigot.

 
Cruz decided to escape that life after she saw her
12-year-old sister given to an older man in a marriage arranged by her
father. The sister had her first child at 13, and has since borne seven
more.

 
Cruz was 11 and "I didn't even know what a bus was then."

 
She travelled to the nearest city to enrol in school, live
with relatives and support herself through odd jobs, eventually
graduating from college with a degree in accounting.

 
She is single, and in a village culture where most women wear
skirts, she wears pants. Because her village has no formal jobs for
women, she works as a school director in a nearby town, and returns to
Quiegolani most weekends. That, authorities say, disqualified her from
running for mayor because she wasn't a full-time resident. But the man
who won the race also works outside the town, and there are questions
about how much time he actually spends here.

 
Cruz views the residency issue as a pretext, noting that
authorities have also banned female candidates and anybody with a
college degree from running. She said she has followed the use and
custom rules as much as she was allowed to, carefully fulfilling
lower-level duties that function as a means of testing people's
devotion to their village. For four years, she "carried the Virgin" in
a religious procession through the town, and has helped fund or
organize other festivities.

 
Cruz figured her case for annulling the elections was solid -
after all, Mexico's constitution guarantees both men and women the
right to vote. She went first to the Oaxaca state electoral council,
then to the state congress. After both upheld the election, she took
her fight to the commission in Mexico City.

 
"I am not asking anything for myself. I am asking on behalf
of Indian women, so that never again will the laws allow political
segregation," Cruz wrote to the commissioners, who may take months to
investigate the case, and who could recommend that state authorities
protect women's rights to vote or hold office. She says she'll go
higher, to federal electoral authorities, if necessary.

 
In Mexico, many local governance rules date to before the
Spanish conquest and weren't given national legal recognition until a
2001 Indian rights reform was enacted in the wake of the Zapatista
rebel uprising in Chiapas.

 
The law states that native townships may "apply their own
normative systems ... as long as they obey the general principles of
the Constitution and respect the rights of individuals, human rights,
and particularly the dignity and well-being of women."

 
Despite this specific protection, about a fourth of the
native villages operating under the law don't let women vote, putting
human rights groups in a dilemma: Most actively supported recognition
for native governance systems, and few have therefore taken up the
women's cause.

 
Cruz now travels alone from one government office to another,
always carrying an armful of calla lilies. "This flower grows a lot in
the village. Even though we don't water or care for it much, it
flowers," she explained. "It is a symbol for us Indian women."