Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Claiming Revolutionary
Citizenship
Late one afternoon in April 1937, some fifty leading su√ragists marched
en masse to the Mexico City headquarters of the National Revolutionary
Party (pnr), demanding voting rights and decrying reported abuses against
women attempting to exercise their recently gained right to participate in
party plebiscites. On reaching the pnr’s o≈ces, however, they learned that
party leader Silvano Barba González would not receive them. Undeterred,
they proceeded to the presidential residence, Los Pinos, where one of the
president’s assistants informed the group that it should seek an appointment
at Cárdenas’s Palacio Nacional (National Palace) o≈ce. Sensing a bait and
switch, the assembled activists refused to leave, declaring that they would
remain until Cárdenas saw them. At ten o’clock, as darkness settled in and
reporters left to file their stories, the women stood firm; some even threat-
ened to stage a hunger strike in front of Los Pinos. Finally, after receiving
word that Cárdenas would receive them the following morning, the group
dispersed.∞
The women who descended on the president’s residence formed a motley
crowd, including the patrician Margarita Robles de Mendoza, who split her
time between Mexico City and the Union of American Women (uma)
o≈ces in New York City, the Communist fupdm leader Cuca García, and
the middle-class members of several public employees’ and teachers’ unions.
Much like its U.S. counterpart two decades earlier, the Mexican women’s
su√rage movement attracted activists of di√erent ideological and class back-
grounds and united them, temporarily, behind a common cause.≤ Just as
Although the women’s movement lacked unity during the discordant 1931–
35 period, somewhere between fear and opportunity it had created political
openings. Building on the pnr’s founding pledge to allow women ‘‘gradu-
ally to gain access to civic life,’’ the feminist congresses and the repeated
organization and reorganization of feminist parties and confederations capi-
talized on the party’s apparent willingness to concede women full voting
rights.≥ Despite opposition from antisu√ragist politicians and public intel-
lectuals, by the mid-1930s, several su√rage proposals gained traction by
either feminizing political duties or requiring women to prove their manli-
ness in order to exercise political rights. The former group often limited
women’s political rights to the municipal realm, where housewives might
put their well-honed administrative skills to profitable use. The latter gen-
erally proposed limiting women’s su√rage to union members, property
owners, or those meeting educational or literacy requirements. The Feminist
Revolutionary Party, for example, suggested amending electoral laws to al-
low women to vote if they were ‘‘21 years old, not a member of any religious
congregation, not collaborating in any occult activities, and economically
independent and autonomous.’’∂
Centered primarily in Mexico City, the su√rage debate also took hold in
other urban areas. The Secretariat of Public Education’s Urban Cultural
Mission in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, for example, orga-
nized a forum on women’s su√rage.∑ In Torreón, an elite woman responded
to the su√ragist argument by characterizing politics as ‘‘nothing but an
infected quagmire’’ that was ‘‘incompatible with honor.’’∏ Women ‘‘should
prepare themselves for the hard struggle of life and know how to confront
every situation,’’ she contended, ‘‘but I can never conceive of a woman stand-
lished entities such as the fupdm and the uma—registered with the Ministry
of Government. The National Civic Women’s Party, for example, pledged to
‘‘work through all legal means within its reach to realize its desires: to obtain
the vote for women in the same conditions and with the same rights as
men.’’∞∞ In Querétaro, a nationalist organization calling itself Patrismo in-
verted antisu√ragist language by proposing that, ‘‘in view of men’s moral
corruption,’’ women assume all the organization’s administrative and gov-
erning duties ‘‘until this produces capable and honest results, when said posts
will pass gradually and partially into men’s hands.’’∞≤
Two weeks after the party’s announcement, the fupdm convened to cele-
brate the newly unified women’s movement. Instead, however, the con-
gress only highlighted activists’ di√erences.∞≥ The Popular Front’s big tent
covered women with explicitly opposing ideologies, precipitating inevitable
conflicts. The anticommunist Yucatecan Mercedes Betancourt de Alber-
tos chaired sessions by Communists and fellow travelers such as Consuelo
Uranga, Mathilde Rodríguez Cabo, and Otilia Zambrano. An early resolu-
tion denounced women who supported the fascist Camisas Doradas, whose
concomitant confrontations with the Mexican Communist Party (pcm) in-
fused the discussion with a heightened ideological sensitivity. During a dis-
In late summer of 1936, the uma shifted tactics, submitting to the Senate a
petition asserting that the denial of women’s voting rights resulted from a
grammatical misinterpretation of the constitution’s relevant clause. When
the constitution’s authors granted to all mexicanos the right to elect o≈cials
and to hold public o≈ce, the petitioners argued, that stipulation included
women, subsumed under the category of mexicanos rather than distinguished
as mexicanas. Therefore, granting women’s su√rage required only minor
changes to federal electoral laws rather than a full-fledged constitutional
amendment.∑∞ Other groups, including the fupdm, the Organizing League
of Women’s Action (led by Elvia Carrillo Puerto), and the Mexican Wom-
The su√ragists’ faith in Cárdenas seemed well founded. In late August in the
eastern port of Veracruz, Cárdenas announced that he would call on Con-
gress the following month to make ‘‘whatever legal reforms necessary’’ to
grant women political equality with men.∫≥ ‘‘It is not just,’’ he explained to the
assembled women’s confederation, ‘‘that we demand women’s presence in
social acts but have placed them on an inferior political plane.’’∫∂ He reiter-
ated this commitment in his annual congressional address several days later.∫∑
Given Mexico’s presidencialismo (strong presidency), advocates and oppo-
nents of women’s political rights indicated that this proposal amounted to a
presidential decree that would become law without any significant challenge.
Cárdenas’s announcement precipitated a deluge of telegrams and letters
from an array of su√rage supporters ranging from the national actors’ union
to revolutionary veterans’ widows and from the Communist Party to Ma-
sonic lodges. The longtime su√ragist Hermila Galindo de Topete, who had
Amid this legislative battle over su√rage rights, the meaning of voting un-
derwent a critical change in Mexico. In March 1938, the very month that
Cárdenas nationalized the petroleum industry, pnr leaders restructured the
ruling party as the prm, creating the political infrastructure that Cárdenas
saw as his legacy to perpetuate his vision of the Mexican revolution. While
the reorganization set out in part to resolve some of the internecine con-
flicts that plagued the party, the most important factor distinguishing the
prm from its predecessor was corporate party membership.∞∞∫ The prm
followed a model ascendant internationally, most notably in fascist Italy,
Spain, and Germany but also in non-fascist countries such as Brazil that fash-
ioned ‘‘pacts’’ between central governments and dominant labor federations.