Born January 1, 1979, in Santa María Quiegolani, Oaxaca, into a Zapotec indigenous family.
Eufrosina Cruz Mendoza was born on January 1, 1979, in the small Zapotec indigenous community of Santa María Quiegolani, located in the Sierra Sur region of Oaxaca, Mexico. She grew up in a family of modest means, in a community governed by the traditional usos y costumbres (uses and customs) legal system, which in her municipality historically excluded women from full political participation.
Her early life was shaped by poverty and limited access to education, particularly for girls, as it was widely assumed in her community that women were destined only for domestic roles and marriage. Cruz defied these expectations by leaving her hometown as a teenager to pursue formal schooling, eventually becoming an accountant — a rare achievement for an indigenous woman from her region at the time.
This early experience of gender-based exclusion under customary law would become the foundational motivation for her lifelong activism. Her birth in a community that legally barred women from holding public office set the stage for a personal and political journey that would ultimately transform indigenous women's rights across Oaxaca and Mexico, making her one of the most significant indigenous women's rights advocates in modern Mexican history.