Breathe
By Carla Erika Ureña, *Degree in Law, specialist in Tax Law. Promoter of the Culture of Legality and the power of citizens. Member of the Executive Board of UNE Mexico.
Resistance to the recognition of women's full rights in all spheres of political, social, economic and cultural life has been constant in the history of contemporary Mexico. 106 years after the promulgation of the current Political Constitution of the United Mexican States, women have been political entities with full exercise of rights for the last 69 years, when Article 34 of the Constitution was reformed to finally recognize more than half of the Mexican population as citizens. This reform was the result of diverse and tenacious women's movements for the recognition of labor, economic and educational rights that had to be generated from the recognition of the individual power to choose in each woman, whose maximum expression was materialized in the casting of the vote in the electoral contests that took place. Women saw in the act of voting their vindication; the historical debt that the Revolution had contracted with them was finally settled with the right that, it was thought, definitively opened the way for all women in terms of equality with men.
However, in the midst of 2023, the longed-for parity that this equality was supposed to guarantee has had to become a tool of obligatory criteria for political parties in order for women to have access to positions of power that would otherwise continue to be destined almost exclusively for men. And in the six-year term of the president who has systematically undermined public policies and programs created specifically for women to enjoy independence and autonomy, the possibility of exercising the right to be voted for and to vote for a woman runs the imminent risk of being dramatically reduced by the package of reforms to various electoral-related laws popularly known as "Plan B", which leaves the 50/50 parity criterion for appointments and candidacies to the discretionary application of the parties.
On the other hand, Plan B also denies the possibility of cancelling candidacies to debtors of alimony or who have exercised family violence or sexual violence against women, measures that have been declared constitutional by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN), and recognized as "the 3 out of 3 against violence".
As every year, we women have a collective appointment with our history next Wednesday, March 8. But this year, in addition to our extraordinary circumstances of risk in terms of public and private security, there is the risk of the promotion of violence from the electoral provisions and the diminution of our political rights.
Ironically, on the same day that the Superior Chamber of the Federal Electoral Tribunal determined that the next president of INE will be a woman.
The parliamentary group of the party in power in the Senate approved Plan B, which threatens the political rights of half of the Mexican population. In the face of such a clearly serious circumstance, we women of today, like the women of the first half of 20th century Mexico, will take the Zócalo this Sunday, February 26 in Mexico City and in all the squares in the more than 80 cities that have joined this demonstration, in defense of our right to vote, to be voted for, and to ensure that our aggressors cannot hide behind their jurisdiction to evade the consequences of their violence. We will raise our courageous and determined voice to make it clear to the ministers of our highest court that our freedom and our security are not to be touched. At the same time, let us support the first woman to preside over the Court, in the face of the attacks she has suffered from the Executive Branch for the defense of judicial independence, which is so necessary for all of us at this time.
For them, those who came; for us, our struggles and our conquests; for those who are coming, our daughters, our granddaughters, let us add millions of voices in a single but firm demand: MY VOTE, DO NOT TOUCH!
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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