MEXICO CITY — Mexico's new power brokers turned up in polka-dot aprons and stretch pants. They filled the capital's imposing National Auditorium, bouncing babies and scooting after toddlers. They were moms, and they were being assiduously wooed by presidential candidate Francisco Labastida.
"You have the power!" Labastida cried to the 9,000 women. "You will decide the next president of Mexico!"
You've come a long way, baby. For years, politics was a man's world in Mexico, a ritual of tequila-lubricated lunches and macho chants. But, as the Labastida rally last week demonstrated, women have taken on unprecedented importance in Sunday's presidential election, the most competitive ever.
The female vote is especially critical to the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Its candidate, Labastida, is in a virtual tie with Vicente Fox of the center-right National Action Party, or PAN, according to polls. But the PRI enjoys an advantage of as many as 10 percentage points with Mexico's women, who tend to be more wary of change.
The party's calculations come down to this: If it extends its 71-year rule, it will be thanks to the madres in the fatherland.
Women like Maria del Socorro Perez.
"In the past, there wasn't any support for women," the 54-year-old school secretary said at the Labastida rally. "But from invitations like this, we see the parties are thinking about us."
The new attention to women reflects a sweeping change in their political participation. Mexican women didn't get the vote until 1953, more than three decades after their U.S. counterparts. For years, many didn't bother to cast ballots. But now, women make up 52% of registered voters.
The surge in participation can be attributed to a variety of factors: women's increasing education levels, feminism and the introduction in 1993 of voter identification cards. The cards were aimed at reducing fraud, but in a country in which many poor women don't drive or hold formal jobs, the credentials meant far more.
"The electoral photo ID . . . represented for millions of women the first opportunity to have identification," said Dulce Maria Sauri, the president of the PRI--and a woman. "Using the credential is an affirmation of a woman's identity."
Analysts say the PRI has an advantage among Mexican women because they are generally less educated than men, know less about politics and are more wary of change that could produce conflict.
