Message #61821

[Bianca]

Cruz decided to escape that life after she saw her 12-year-old sister given to an older man in
a marriage arranged by her father. The sister had her first child at 13, and has since borne
seven more.

Cruz was 11 and "I didn't even know what a bus was then."

She traveled to the nearest city to enroll in school, live with relatives and support herself through
odd jobs, eventually graduating from college with a degree in accounting.

She is single, and in a village culture where most women wear skirts, she wears pants. Because
her village has no formal jobs for women, she works as a school director in a nearby town, and
returns to Quiegolani most weekends. That, authorities say, disqualified her from running for
mayor because she wasn't a full-time resident. But the man who won the race also works outside
the town, and there are questions about how much time he actually spends here.

Cruz views the residency issue as a pretext, noting that authorities have also banned female candidates and anybody with a college degree from running. She said she has followed the use
and custom rules as much as she was allowed to, carefully fulfilling lower-level duties that
function as a means of testing people's devotion to their village. For four years, she "carried
the Virgin" in a religious procession through the town, and has helped fund or organize other
festivities.

Cruz figured her case for annulling the elections was solid — after all, Mexico's constitution
guarantees both men and women the right to vote. She went first to the Oaxaca state electoral council, then to the state congress. After both upheld the election, she took her fight to the commission in Mexico City.

"I am not asking anything for myself. I am asking on behalf of Indian women, so that never
again will the laws allow political segregation," Cruz wrote to the commissioners, who may take
months to investigate the case, and who could recommend that state authorities protect
women's rights to vote or hold office. She says she'll go higher, to federal electoral authorities,
if necessary.

In Mexico, many local governance rules date to before the Spanish conquest and weren't given
national legal recognition until a 2001 Indian rights reform was enacted in the wake of the
Zapatista rebel uprising in Chiapas.

The law states that Indian townships may "apply their own normative systems ... as long as
they obey the general principles of the Constitution and respect the rights of individuals,
human rights, and particularly the dignity and well-being of women."

Despite this specific protection, about a fourth of the Indian villages operating under the law
don't let women vote, putting human rights groups in a dilemma: Most actively supported
recognition for Indian governance systems, and few have therefore taken up the women's
cause.

Cruz now travels alone from one government office to another, always carrying an armful
of calla lilies. "This flower grows a lot in the village. Even though we don't water or care for
it much, it flowers," she explained. "It is a symbol for us Indian women."

"The congress upheld the vote out of sheer laziness, to avoid stirring up the village or causing
a conflict there," said Rep. Perla Woolrich, a Oaxaca state legislator who supported Cruz's cause.
"In the past, use and customs represented something positive, but by now it violates people's constitutional rights. Use and customs have to be reviewed, and those practices that violate
rights have to be thrown out."

Cruz says she isn't against all customs in her village. She prefers its bipartisanship to political
party rivalry because it encourages close-knit Indian communities to stick together and underpins
their survival.

"There are really beautiful things in use and customs, if they are applied as they should be," she
said.

"Up there in the mountains, unfortunately, nobody listens to us," she says. "If nothing is done,
we'll go on the same way for another century in Quiegolani."