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By Cecilia Soto, former presidential candidate, among many positions she has held in her political career.
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It is common that when one resorts to the "a" or the "e" to use inclusive language, one is met with snickers or outright protests: "Why do you insist on this ridiculousness when the ending in 'o' includes both men and women"? As it turns out, this supposed neutrality of the "o" ending was one of the reasons, or rather, the pretext, why it took so long for Mexican women to have the right to vote.  

The 1917 Constitution draws extensively from the 1857 document. In both documents, in Article 34, which defines who are citizens, the innocent "or" is used. In both texts, Article 34 defines identically who are citizens:  

Article 34: Citizens of the Republic are all those who, being Mexicans, meet the following requirements:

Be at least 18 years old if married or 21 years old if not married;

To have an honest way of living. 

Article 35 is also identical in both constitutions: 

Article 35: The following are prerogatives of the citizens:

I. Voting in popular elections

II. To be able to vote for all popularly elected offices and to be appointed to any other job or commission, having the qualifications established by law.

IV. To take up arms in the Army or the National Guard.... 

So if "citizens" includes men and women and everyone can vote, how about making it explicit, proposed Hermila Galindo, secretary of Venustiano Carranza, during the work of the Constituent Assembly. As will be remembered, Hermila sent an initiative to grant the vote to women, but it was rejected by 166 votes against and 2 in favor.  

The secondary law of Article 35 of the 1857 Constitution explicitly stated that women were not included as citizens with the right to vote. Article 8 of the Organic Electoral Law stated:

They shall not have the right to vote or stand for election:

And after a list of possible offenders includes:

5th, The ill-entertained lazy ones

6th. The professional gamblers.

7th. Those who are habitual drunkards.  

The same article in the Election of Federal Powers Act of 1918 is very similar: 

"They cannot be electors: vagrants and habitual beggars; those who live on public or private charity; those who are subject to criminal proceedings for a crime deserving corporal punishment; those sentenced to corporal punishment, for the duration of the sentence; those sentenced by an enforceable sentence to the penalty of suspension of the vote; fugitives from justice; those who have been deprived of guardianship for mismanagement of funds or for infidelity; those who have or have had houses of public or clandestine prostitution; those who live at the expense of a public woman; those who have suffered two convictions for habitual and manifest drunkenness; gamblers; and all those convicted of crimes of electoral corruption." 

Article 37 states that the "o" is not neutral at all: 

All Mexican males over 18 years of age are electors, and therefore have the right to be registered in the lists of the electoral roll of the section of their respective domicile...etc. 

So this law, passed in July 1918, in the ultra-revolutionary Mexico of that time, had just equated women with vagrants, gamblers or customary drunkards. 

But since the Constitution - unlike the secondary law - did not in fact prohibit women from voting, since the "o" was neutral, the effervescence for the municipal vote and local deputations began. Felipe Carrillo Puerto, governor of Yucatán, called in 1922, the National Feminist Congress, successor to the 1916 Congress. He included women in local candidacies. After Carrillo Puerto's assassination in 1924, three local deputies fled their state. 

Later, in 1947, the Diario Oficial de la Federación published the law allowing women to vote and be voted in municipal elections. 

Just after the inauguration of the government of General Lázaro Cárdenas, in January 1935, rumors began about the granting of the vote to women, due to a cryptic phrase of the president. And the debate on the neutrality or not of the "o" at the end of the word "ciudadano" returned. The deputies quickly resolved the debate by concluding that paragraph IV of Article 35 of the Constitution stated that it was the prerogative of citizens to "take up arms in the Army or the National Guard" and since it was impossible for women to participate in the armed forces, the constituent deputies obviously could not have included women in the right to vote. When it suited them, they forgot the example of the adelitas and so many women who contributed to the revolutionary effort.

In 1937, with the socialist effervescence of Cardenismo and the proliferation of women's organizations and movements demanding the vote and other rights, the possibility of a constitutional reform was again raised. The President sent an initiative to the Senate, which was approved. The bill also passed the Chamber of Deputies and then, miraculously, was approved by the majority of the state congresses. The only thing missing was that once the President signed the decree, the Chamber of Deputies had it published in the Official Gazette of the Federation. This never happened because, as several researchers have documented, there was fear that women would be manipulated by the Catholic Church and by opposition movements to Cardenismo. We had to wait 16 more years. 

Between the constitutions of 1857 and 1917, there were 60 years. Then 20 years passed for the serious reform attempt of 1937 and another 16 for the reform of 1953, whose 70th anniversary we celebrate this October 17, pauses that were shortening almost exponentially. The same happens with the reforms won by the feminist movement to obtain candidatures. 12 years between the first binding quotas in 2000 and the historic sentence 12/624 of the Electoral Tribunal that forced the parties to comply with the 40/60 quota. 2 more years for the constitutional reform of parity. 5 years for the 2019 constitutional reform of "parity in everything". And four years, 2023, for two women to be confirmed as the main candidates for the Presidency of the Republic. There is much to celebrate on this 70th anniversary of women's suffrage and much to correct and fix to demonstrate that autonomous women, feminists or those close to women's causes, can deliver a better world to young women who are demanding security, peace and generous opportunities for them.

Note: I read the excellent works of Patricia Galeana, Gabriela Cano, Humberto Monteón and Gabriela María Luisa Riquelme to document the road map that led us to achieve the 1953 reform. Thanks to them and to him.
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@ceciliasotog

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