Ifigenia Martínez, the almost centenarian woman who championed the fight for women’s rights, a historical reference and pioneer of the Mexican left, was fired this Monday by Congress and by the political community of all ideological currents. A mourning tribute of a body present in the session hall of the Legislative Palace of San Lázaro has marked the funeral of the president of the Chamber of Deputies, the same place where seven days before, visibly deteriorating in health, she anointed Claudia Sheinbaum, in her historic inauguration as the first president of Mexico. “She was a suffragette, she fought for the vote of Mexican women. Seeing the first woman president was something very important for her,” the president said in her morning conference this Monday. He has also clarified that the decision to attend the ceremony of the change of power, despite his delicate state of health, was the nonagenarian’s. “I can barely support myself,” were the last words that Martínez issued as president of the legislative body on October 1.
Martínez died the day after the extinction of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) was published in the Official Gazette of the Federation, equivalent to the death certificate of the leftist group that Martínez co-founded (1989) with the help of Porfirio Muñoz Ledo and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the last surviving member of the triad. The party with the banner of the Aztec sun, with glorious decades under its belt, has disappeared 35 years after its birth, victim of the power struggles within it. Six years earlier, in 2018, the nonagenarian resigned from the party she founded to follow Andrés Manuel López Obrador and support his National Regeneration Movement (Morena). The first woman to direct the National School of Economics (1967) has died with the dream fulfilled of seeing the first woman occupy the presidential chair.
Her career has marked the careers of women and men from all political parties, which is why this Monday the political forces that make up Congress have achieved consensus. The ruling party and the opposition have unified positions, all aimed at recognizing the achievements of Martínez, the woman who broke one, two, three, many glass ceilings, occupying positions unthinkable for the female gender in her time. A pioneer in many areas of public life in the country, she was the first woman to complete a postgraduate degree in Economics at Harvard University and Mexico’s ambassador to the United Nations.
“The arrival [de Claudia Sheinbaum] to the presidency of the Republic is the culmination of a struggle that generations of women have gone through, who bravely challenge the limits of our times,” said Amalia García, senator from Movimiento Ciudadano. García is the first governor of Zacatecas, one of the 32 Mexican states, and also as the initiator of the PRD.
Leaders from all parliamentary forces have stood guard around Martínez’s coffin: Adán Augusto López, coordinator of Morena in the Senate; Ricardo Monreal, his counterpart in the Lower House; Alejandro Moreno, leader of the PRI; Guadalupe Murguía, coordinator of the PAN in the Senate; Patricia Mercado of MC; as well as members of the presidential cabinet, the secretaries of the Interior, Rosa Icela Rodríguez; of Education, Mario Delgado; of Wellbeing, Ariadna Montiel; and the governors of the State of Mexico, Delfina Gómez; and from Puebla, Sergio Salomón.
“It’s time for women,” is the phrase that has been proclaimed like a mantra since Sheinbaum came to power. Martínez’s mourning tribute has not been the exception, since the participation of women has predominated. Ivonne Ortega, coordinator of the MC bench in the Lower House, has also come out to honor her. “Today the country is in mourning, it is in mourning because a historic woman left us, because an advance woman has gone before us,” said the also first elected governor of Yucatán.
The National Action Party bench has not changed the line. “A woman of firm convictions,” is how Guadalupe Murguía, leader of the Albiazule senators, has defined her. In passing, he has called again for dialogue. “Let’s rescue their vocation for dialogue and search for agreements,” he launched to conclude his participation. Noemi Luna, her counterpart in the Chamber of Deputies, has brought up the October 1 speech of “the teacher Ifigenia”, as everyone called her, because of her degree and her career as a teacher and researcher.
The president of the Chamber of Deputies has died four days after fulfilling the greatest of her dreams, seeing the first woman in the presidency of Mexico and has said goodbye to the political history of Mexico in the venue that received her three times as federal representative and from where she defended the rights to gender equality. “I myself have been through so many battles for democracy and justice, and today I feel deeply honored to witness this historic triumph,” is a fragment of the speech that Martínez prepared for days for the delivery of the presidential investiture to Sheinbaum and that his delicate health condition prevented him from speaking.
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