Mexican Women Gain Right to Vote in Federal Elections

Mexico's Congress amended the Constitution on October 17, 1953 under President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, granting women full political citizenship and the right to vote in federal elections. Mexican women had previously been able to vote in some municipal elections. The 1953 reform was partly a response to the Peronist example in Argentina and US cold war concerns about women's exclusion as a propaganda vulnerability. Aurora Jiménez de Palacios became the first woman elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1952.