Pioneers national constitutional reform for indigenous women's suffrage

In 2014, as a federal deputy chairing the Commission of Indigenous Peoples in the Mexican Congress, Eufrosina Cruz was a leading force behind a reform to the Constitution of Mexico that guaranteed indigenous women across the country the full and effective right to vote and be voted for (active and passive suffrage) within their own communities, regardless of local customary law practices that had historically excluded them.

This reform extended nationally the principle she had already achieved at the state level in Oaxaca in 2011, ensuring that indigenous women throughout Mexico's thirty-two states — not only in Oaxaca — could no longer be legally barred from political participation on the basis of gender under the guise of respecting indigenous customs and traditions.

The reform represented the culmination of years of advocacy stemming directly from Cruz's personal experience of disenfranchisement in 2007. It was recognized by human rights organizations and gender equality advocates as a transformative moment for the estimated tens of millions of indigenous people in Mexico, many of them women who had previously had no legal pathway to political office. This national-level constitutional guarantee remains one of Cruz's most significant and lasting legislative legacies, cementing her reputation as one of the foremost champions of indigenous women's political rights in Latin America.