“The gap is still open”: Soledad Orozco Ávila and the feminist vote in Mexico

Abstract

How did a conservative and religious society in Los Altos region, a privileged place of the “Cristeada” in the Mexican state of Jalisco, saw the birth and production of a revolutionary, anti-clerical, anarcho-syndicalist and free-thinking woman? She defined herself with all this caracteristics while she helped to create one of the sections of the “Casa del Obrero Mundial”, in 1924. But what is “La Cristiada? It was an armed movement in the 20s, between the government and militias of Catholics who rejected the legislation and public policies of the moment.

Based on this problem, I propose an approach, using the methods from Cultural History, to the life and the political and social activism of Soledad de Ávila Orozco. She is also a pioneer of women's suffrage in Mexico, in 1937, as an independent candidate for local deputation, in the neighboring state of Guanajuato. He won, with a wide margin of votes, but as he had anticipated, he was not allowed to hold the position. But as she said, that was not the important thing, what mattered was "open the gap and set a precedent." And what about her constituents? They belogned at different affiliations and ideologies, they were Catholics, anticlericals, and anarchists;  but mainly of them were part of the United Front for Women's Rights, grup of which she was a founding member. He continued fighting for the women’s rights until the age 84, she died in 1985.