On weekends, she rode the bus six hours back to Quiegolani, as the locals call the town. She had become a "professional," though that didn't seem to matter to her parents.
"For them, I'm not any different," she said. "When I go home, I still have to clean out the cornfields, clear the weeds, pick up firewood and make the tortillas."
Meanwhile, she watched her older sister, the one who married at 12, struggle with the demands of a traditional rural life. Today she is 41 and has nine children, Cruz said.
Still, change has come to the Cruz family as it has to many others. More families than ever are sending at least one child to college. Quiegolani now has a small middle class that includes Mendoza, the mayor, who left the village to become a schoolteacher.
The broadening horizons have changed the way many people think. Cruz thought she saw an opening that would allow her to return home and make a difference.
"A lot of the men accepted me because I had gone to college, I had a profession and I could speak Spanish," she said.
Still, in the odd calculus of social life in Quiegolani, having a college degree also worked against her. When she ran for mayor, one reason cited for disqualifying her votes was that she was a "professional."
Some residents argued that since Cruz lives much of the week in Oaxaca city, she would not help in the community labor tasks that are a key element of village life. Community citizenship in Santa Maria Quiegolani, as in many indigenous villages across the Americas, is defined in large measure by participation in communal work.
Neighbors join together to build homes and clear roads. Lending a hand in the fiestas that honor the Catholic saints believed to protect Quiegolani is mandatory.
But Cruz says she has met all of her community obligations. She helped carry the heavy statue of the town's patron saint in the procession at the village fiesta last year. And in the big meal that followed, she was even allowed a seat at the main table next to the male leaders.
"It took a lot of time, but gradually I won their confidence," she said. When Cruz decided to run for mayor, she did so with the consent and support of at least some of the male elders.
Election day began the way it always had, with several dozen men gathering around the small city hall and a single ballot box. Being a woman, Cruz could not vote for herself, nor could her small group of female supporters vote for her.
