An Indigenous Woman Could be a Presidential Candidate Two Years from Now J. Tadeo - Global Voices
go to original October 23, 2016

Indigenous woman with child in Chiapas (SustainAbleChiapas)

In a little less than two years from now when Mexicans go to vote for their next president, it's possible they'll see the name of an indigenous woman on the ballot.

During the Fifth National Indigenous Congress (CNI), Mexican indigenous communities and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) declared their intent to nominate a woman as an independent candidate ahead of the presidential election in 2018. The announcement appeared in a document entitled “May the earth shake to its core”:

Given the aforementioned, we declare ourselves in permanent assembly and will consult the agreement of the Fifth CNI in each one of our geographies, territories, and paths to appoint an indigenous council of government whose word is carried out by an indigenous woman, a delegate of the CNI as an independent candidate who fights on behalf of the Indigenous National Congress and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in this country's 2018 presidential election.

At this time, they have not announced the name of the woman who would be nominated as a candidate.

It is important to remember that the EZLN is a primarily indigenous armed group of the extreme left who staged an uprising in 1994 in Chiapas, in Mexico's southeast region. In recent years, they have remained inactive and their most well-known leader, the Subcomandante Marcos, changed his name in 2014 to make way for a new persona identified as Subcomandante Galeano (some versions indicate that his real name is Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente).

Read the rest at Global Voices | Español

Related: Rafael Ruiz Velasco: Mexico's Zapatistas Embrace Democracy a Little Too Late (PanAm Post)

Translated by Marianna Breytman

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