Mexico's 1st Woman Presidential Candidate

I ran across an article describing what appears to be Mexico’s first woman presidential candidate (link: http://news.yahoo.com/candidacy-tests-mexicos-culture-machismo-215143891.html). As a feminist, hearing about more women, such as Josefina Vasquez Mota, who are attempting to run for higher governmental positions gives me hope. On the other hand, as a Mexican-American I know how challenging it will be for Vasquez Mota to overcome Mexico’s deep-rooted machismo (sexism from men directed at women). Machismo is part of the Mexican culture. And along with machismo is Mexico’s reverence to its national religion, Roman Catholicism.  These two aspects will undoubtedly generate a storm of opposition for Vasquez Mota. While I think Vasquez Mota is courageous in taking such a visible step towards changing existing traditional standards, I find it a bit strange that she is part of the conservative (republican-equivalent) national party and is deeply devout herself. I can only imagine that such a background may be strategically useful in breaking into the machismo culture and establishing herself as someone with whom the, generally religious and conservative, population can relate to. Vasquez Mota has stated that she will not be using gender as a political platform in her campaign, once again, she appears to be aware of the consequences of coming off as too radical or liberal. In any case, she is already making gains in followers, especially younger people and women. The resistance she is currently facing frequently is made up of sexist (and idiotic) questions such as, “How will you manage the army if you are having menstrual cramps?” and whether or not she will have the courage to face criminals, to which her response was, “My answer is that courage is not a matter of gender”. She seems to think progressively but I fear that even this bit of progressive thinking will alienate her from her already skeptical and machista national audience. I can only hope that Mexico will take Vasquez Mota seriously enough as a candidate. I also hope that Vasquez Mota is only playing it safe temporarily and can eventually evolve her politics into being inclusive of more feminist ideology and break through Mexico’s tough sexist culture.