Abstract (eng)
The feminist struggle for women’s suffrage in the post-revolutionary Mexico lasted for long – from 1917 to 1953. Inspired by the British and North American women’s suffrage movement, as well as by the French and Mexican Revolution, it was particularly female teachers who were fighting for women’s political participation. Hermila Galindo’s petition to the constituent congress of 1917 triggered the suffrage movement in the post-revolutionary Mexico. In the 1920s, women’s suffrage was locally introduced in four Mexican states, however, abolished again – except in Chiapas. In the 1930s, the feminist movement for the women’s right to vote reached its peak with the organization Frente Único Pro Derechos de La Mujer. Founded in 1935, it successfully mobilized women in the entire country to demand their right to vote. Although the FUPDM made the socialist president start a reform initiative of article 34 of the Constitution, the political elite prevented its implementation at the last moment. In the first half of the 1940s, the threat by international fascism brought the women’s suffrage movement to a standstill. Additionally, the ultra-conservative national politics of this period left its mark on the feminist discourse of the Mexican suffragettes who once and for all stopped using egalitarian arguments. From 1945 onwards, however, a new discreetly-operating female suffrage movement appeared with the traditionally-arguing feminist Amalia Castillo Ledón as its leader. By the middle of the 20th century, the international pressure on Mexico to grant the political rights and citizenship to women had grown considerably. In 1952, feminist activists demonstrated the women’s interest in political participation to the president. Meanwhile, national politics had become aware of the party-political capital of the female vote. Finally, in 1953, the conservative president granted the Mexican woman her right to vote and be voted.