We are on the verge of the first elections that will lead a woman to the Presidency in Mexico. It is something historic, unprecedented in our country. Something unthinkable at the beginning of the 20th century. However, women before the Revolution were already organizing against the totalitarian government of Porfirio Díaz. The vast majority of them were very young – they had been born during the Díaz dictatorship – and together with their anarchist and revolutionary companions, they rebelled against the abuses of power of the totalitarian regime in which they lived. They organized rallies, wrote anonymously in clandestine printing presses, made banners. Anarchist women were organized, to the extent that the State made a division for them in the Belén Prison – the first modern prison in Mexico with which, in addition, the penitentiary system was inaugurated – and they, the “Women of bad conduct” They had their own division there. For those rebellious women, women of bad behavior, women's suffrage was unimaginable.
After the Revolution, with the precedent of women's suffrage being achieved in the United States in 1920, the issue was put on the table several decades before it was achieved in Mexico. Finally, in 1953 it was possible thanks to the tireless fight led by Elvia Carrillo Puerto to change the decree in the Constitution that finally allowed women the right to vote. From then on, many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers voted for the first time, then without even dreaming that it would be possible that one day they could vote for a woman. Today, both candidates have been victims of numerous political gender violence. We see various expressions of hate against their bodies, against their training, their contexts, against their relationships and their respective pasts. Both know up close and in first person several of the demands for rights this 8M. Now that the campaign has started and the presidential debates are coming, it is important to know their positions in relation to abortion, public policies against femicides, against multiple gender violence, their support for seeking mothers and in favor of the community. LGBTIQ+. Both candidates use feminist rhetoric: how do they plan to face the struggles that today allow them to compete for the highest position of power in the country?
It is no small feat that in Mexico we are going to have a female president before the United States, that constant reference. More so now, in a broader context, the right is in danger in some parts of the continent. In the United States, these issues are especially violated in the face of Trump's possible return. The line that Republicans have held in favor of the federal veto of the right to terminate a pregnancy also represents a disaster in Democratic states and the outlook is still not clear. Added to this is the recent ruling in Alabama that says frozen embryos are children. This court ruling puts fertility treatments in the United States in a fragile predicament. These are some examples of the many dangers that the return of the right would entail, since in this type of abusive regimes, women's rights are always the first to be violated. For example, the case of the extreme right in Argentina.
The most sensitive, the most furious 8M on the continent, will possibly be in Buenos Aires, because it will be the first time that the Milei Government will have a political confrontation of this magnitude: politics will be made in the streets by women. Especially now and despite the anti-march protocol in force in Argentina. One of her mottos for calling is “this time we have to be there.” While in Mexico this 8M occurs during the electoral campaign season, the massive march will show the candidates how important it is to address the demands of women.
In Argentina, the march has several layers that turn it on. On March 6, two days before 8M, Milei told an audience of high school students that for him abortion is a murder aggravated by the bond and that he himself can demonstrate it from a mathematical, philosophical and liberal perspective. At the end of 2020, Argentine women won the law that approved the voluntary interruption of pregnancy and Milei described the Senate as “murderers of green scarves”, the emblem of the green tide that spread throughout Latin America as a unifying symbol that will paint different marches this day. The Milei State project, with an economic depression that is above 250% inflation and that deeply affects domestic care provided by women, eliminated the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity. In addition to the fact that recently, in a delirious act like that of Dr. Evil, he prohibited inclusive language in the Public Administration – controlling language, one of the fascist fantasies -, in addition to having already presented a bill to classify abortion as a crime. The protest in Argentina will set a precedent for fighting against the abuses of power of his current government. In recent days there have been three mass assemblies prior to 8M in Buenos Aires in which the statement they will read has been debated. Let's listen to them!
This same week, on March 4, France made history by elevating the right of women to dispose of their bodies to the Constitution. The action enjoyed broad consensus, far beyond partisan ideologies, as it should be everywhere. The long, unanimous and very emotional applause, illuminating us with the cell phone screen, before the amendment to the Constitution to protect the right to abortion, set a precedent for the rest of the world. As Mathilde Panot said on that historic day: “It is a promise for women who fight all over the world for the right to dispose of their body in Argentina, in the United States, in Andorra, in Italy, in Hungary, in Poland.” Countries in which this basic right is in danger. The achievement “we owe it to the freedom of women,” said a parliamentary leader. On this side of the pond, we long for a day like those.
In Mexico it will probably be the first large 8M after the pandemic and in front of the first president. The streets are bursting with jacarandas, the days are sunny and the flyers of the various contingents circulate everywhere. Those women of bad behavior, the anarchist women who were part of the Magonist rebellion movement and who on a huge banner declared dead the Constitution that allowed an abusive and totalitarian regime, opened the great doors to the Revolution and, eventually, to the Constitution of 1917, and, if you hurry me, that these marches to demand our rights are possible.
Times have changed and it would not hurt if they made amendments to the Constitution that name this present in feminine, for example, Chapter III of the Constitution that contains everything related to the Executive Branch is written in masculine – to the Mexican citizen, to the son of Mexican parents, to the man― and language in the Public Administration does matter and politics is also made from there (even if it is with unfortunate examples, as in the case of Milei who with a small gesture, like someone singing to him a month that perede in the pered, can destabilize it, be a political, subversive and protest gesture). As the times demand, the editorial team also considers women's articles that seemed impossible in 1917, but are a reality today. And in the international context – France as an example, Argentina as a wake-up call – that both candidates be attentive to the demands of women in the streets. Just as their candidacies broaden the horizon and make more elastic a Constitution dreamed of by women of bad conduct, let them keep in mind that their struggles, those of women of bad conduct, today also allow them to aspire to the highest decision-making position they can have. a country. Let them listen now that for the first time they will be judge and party, so to speak.
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