She’s Staking Her Claim to Be a Leader in Mexico

They start gathering at dawn. Men in sweat-stained cowboy hats and mud-caked boots stand next to women in Indian skirts and smocks hand-woven in subtle mixes of blue, red, green and yellow.

Most arrive with sharp if rust-dotted machetes hooked to their belts.

But Antonia Perez faces the daily crowd armed only with a spiral notebook and a navy-blue backpack crammed with folders and complaint forms.

Perez, 27, is a rarity--one of the first female “municipal agents” in Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state. A Tzotzil Indian, she heads San Felipe’s unofficial local council, which is sympathetic to the Zapatista rebels and operates independently of the legal authorities.

Her job description includes the duties of justice of the peace, marriage counselor, notary public and sheriff.

“I watch over the community. I am vigilant in a way that those from the outside cannot understand,” she said.

A single mother who earns no salary, she relies on donations from neighbors to feed and clothe herself and her 9-year-old son.

Her office is a former servant’s bathroom inside a tumbledown mansion that once belonged to a state governor but now serves as the headquarters of the pro-Zapatista council in San Felipe.

Elected in February by the council, Perez arrives for work at 6 a.m. every day.

She holds a second round of office hours in the afternoon, setting up shop in a sagging gazebo in a trash-strewn park across the street.

Many in this community of 500 families on the outskirts of the mountain city of San Cristobal de las Casas ask her to help with marriage problems or to sort out property disputes.

Her office also can act as a civil or criminal court, empowering Perez and an Indian judge to order fines or community service for minor crimes. Like a small-town mayor, she approves public works projects and coordinates with state officials to improve the village’s often unreliable water, sewer and electricity services.

Chiapas’ state government has long recognized traditional Indian governments alongside town authorities elected in conventional ways.

After Zapatista guerrillas revolted at the beginning of 1994, the situation became more complicated: Rebel backers formed their own “autonomous municipalities” that sometimes operate in the same villages as town authorities and Indian councils.

Women have rarely been entrusted with leadership in any of those systems.

“Customs tell Indian communities that women cannot be trusted in positions of authority and can never represent an entire community,” said Amado Avendano, who was the unsuccessful Zapatista-backed candidate in 1994 gubernatorial elections, and who then declared himself governor in rebellion. “There was a tradition of discrimination that went back centuries.”

Avendano said that tradition began to change with the rise of the Zapatista movement, which proclaimed that women and men are equal.

“Suddenly, with their discourses and their declarations, the Zapatistas made it legitimate for a woman to hold a position of power,” he said. “But even with rebel support, it still took Zapatista-friendly places like San Felipe eight years to choose a woman as its municipal agent. It will take other communities much longer.”

Chiapas is perhaps Mexico’s poorest state. Its residents are the most undernourished and have limited access to electricity, phone service and drinking water. Its school system is the nation’s worst, and an estimated 43% of the state’s Indians are illiterate.

“In Indian communities in Chiapas, women work in the fields and then go home and take care of the children,” said Lupita Cardanas, a director of a women’s group based in San Cristobal. “They are important to each family, but not to all of society.”

Cecilio Perez, a member of San Felipe’s pro-rebel council who is not related to Antonia Perez, said her gender was never an issue in her selection as municipal agent.

“Women have always participated in politics for us, but they have never held such an important position,” the 30-year-old corn farmer said. “Ms. Perez represents the needs of our entire community, not just the needs of women.”

But some locals say they won’t take their problems to a woman.

“This is a very tough job and I do not think she can do it,” said Carlos Sanchez, a truck driver who lives with his wife and three sons in a three-room shack. “This position was not made for women.”

That view was apparent in February when a pro-government town council in San Sebastian Bachajon, just outside the city of Chilon in northern Chiapas, elected Antonia Espinosa as municipal agent.

Hundreds of people staged street protests against her and then held a new meeting to elect a man, Gaspar Aguilar. His supporters threatened to kidnap Chilon Mayor Andres Hernandez unless he changed the locks on San Sebastian’s municipal building to keep Espinosa out.

Espinosa, a 34-year-old Chol Indian, said she will keep fighting to get her job back.

“This community wanted a change,” she said. “It wanted to prove that women are capable of doing everything men are. I will one day give my people that change.”