Breathe
By Lillian Briseño
When Andrés Manuel López Obrador launched the image alluding to the government of Mexico, he included in it five of those considered forgers of history, some of them protagonists of the three transformations prior to the fourth one we are living through. In it appear Miguel Hidalgo, José María Morelos, Benito Juárez and Francisco I. Madero, as representatives of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd transformations, and Lázaro Cárdenas, who would enter as a cachirul in the badge.
Incredibly, this picture does not correspond to the XIX or XX centuries, but to the already advanced XXI century. Incredible because, in it, no woman appears. As if there were none worthy of representing those of us who are the majority of the national population and therefore deserved to be represented in the official discourse.
It would be almost a year before the government reacted to this situation and promoted a similar image, now starring women. In it, the well-known figures of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Josefa Ortiz -of Domínguez, of course- and the not so identifiable Leona Vicario, Carmen Serdán and Elvia Carrillo Puerto would stand out.
This omission was not, however, a surprise, since it is a fact that in official history women have gone unnoticed, as if the great national heroic deeds had happened without their presence. The fact that we speak of the Adelitas in the Mexican Revolution, thus, anonymously, is an example of how we have not been able to recognize a Villa or Zapata among women, worthy of mention.
And no, it is not that they did not exist, because we can be sure that many of them "fought" during the civil war and from their respective trenches they fought and supported the revolutionaries; the same can be said of the struggle for Independence or the Reform War. What happens is that, until recently, very recently, women were considered, like many other sectors of society, as those without history.
Without history were the poor, the old, the children, the proletarians, the peasants and, of course, the women. Because culture, arts, work, motherhood, education and so many other things were relegated from the nationalist discourse, in a scenario where only wars and political history counted and were counted. Those that belonged exclusively, they said, to men.
And that was also the official historical narrative for decades, and well, it is understandable that in a world dominated by men and in which women had little political participation -basically because they were not allowed to play in that field or in many others- they were erased from all other fields in which their presence was not only important but, as in everything else, indispensable. It would be understandable, I say, if we were still in the last or previous century, but today this is inadmissible, ridiculous and offensive, to say the least.
Fortunately, several decades ago, history took a qualitative leap towards the inclusion of any subject from the past, opening and expanding the study of some of the aforementioned topics. Today, it is understood, everything is history and everything is historiable; and women occupy perhaps the first place in this crusade, as an act of justice.
That is why that image of the Mexican government has come as such a surprise in the 21st century, because the omission of women in it is an attack against historical memory, equity and inclusion for which we have fought so hard. Rescuing their presence, discovering and sharing the thousands of women's stories that are waiting to be told, would help us to have, now, a more just, complete and integral vision of our past. That is the least we could expect from "Mexico's most feminist six-year term".
Above all, because women are more present than ever on the national stage. We are 52% of the population and we will be one of the decisive factors in the next federal elections, in which it is more than likely that a woman will be president of the country. This is an example of the potential that we have and that we have achieved by breaking the glass ceiling that for a long time unfairly limited us.
Let us hope that these opportunities will be extended to many more and, now, we can begin to live in a country where there are no more women without history, without a present and without a future.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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