Amalia González Caballero de Castillo Ledón

“Will we girls have the energy essential to eliminate the standard Mexican idea of a democracy with out ladies?”1)

What feels like an oxymoron at present was the very actual query ladies all all over the world needed to face within the twentieth century. Happily, the reply to this query posed by Amalia González Caballero de Castillo Ledón would finally be affirmative – after 24 years of wrestle to acquire ladies’s suffrage. Nonetheless, the mark she left extends far past Mexican and even Latin American historical past and reaches into the very basis of our authorized understanding at present, the Common Declaration of Human Rights.

The early years

Amalia was born in Santander de Jiménez, Tamaulipas, Mexico, on 18 August 1898.2) Her widowed mom moved the household of two to Ciudad Victoria, the place she fashioned a detailed friendship with Adela Gil, the mom of Emilio Portes Gil – a tie that might later speed up Amalia’s political profession when he grew to become president of Mexico in 1928.3)

From a younger age, she was obsessed with music, theatre and poetry and earned a Bachelor of Arts diploma from the Nationwide College of Mexico.4) In 1920, Amalia married the historian Luis Castillo Ledón, with whom she had three youngsters.5)

Laying the foundations

Amalia began her profession as a secretary to President Portes Gil’s spouse and was quickly supplied a place in cultural promotion the place she based the Teatro de Masas. It was uncommon for younger wives to work ready that required them to spend a lot time outdoors the house, and he or she was solely in a position to pursue her career as a result of different ladies in her household helped with the home tasks that was anticipated of her.6)

The groundwork for her diplomatic profession was laid in 1935, when Amalia carried out a fragile mission as a consultant of the Mexican authorities in Texas through which she succeeded to resolve a long-standing battle between the state of Texas and the Mexican consul.7) Having confirmed her diplomatic expertise, she was appointed Mexico’s consultant to the Inter-American Fee of Ladies (CIM) 4 years later.8) It was on this surroundings that Amalia first met and fashioned friendships with different outstanding Latin American feminists, equivalent to Minerva Bernadino, whose allyship helped her push for change by way of their mixed forces.

Within the Thirties, Amalia based the Ateneo Mexicano de Mujeres in addition to the Membership Internacional de Mujeres to strengthen mutual assist amongst ladies from completely different fields and generations in Mexico.9)

The Declaration of Human Rights and the Fee on the Standing of Ladies

Amalia was despatched as a delegate to the Chapultepec and San Francisco Conferences, which led to the creation of the United Nations and enabled her to play an energetic position within the drafting of the Common Declaration of Human Rights.10) Not like different feminine delegates, she felt that she represented the ladies of the world and fought for the specific recognition of girls as topics of human rights, whereas others confirmed up as “delegates” first and “ladies” second and noticed no purpose to distinguish between women and men.11)

Eleanor Roosevelt, for instance, opposed the specific inclusion of girls’s rights, asserting that ladies have been already included within the phrases “human rights” and “rights of males”. Amalia, alternatively, sought to make sure that the phrase “ladies” was included as usually as attainable.12)

In the course of the drafting of the Declaration, Amalia was a member of the UN Fee on the Standing of Ladies and was elected vp of the Fee in 1948.13) Alongside ladies equivalent to Bertha Lutz, Minerva Bernardino, Isabel Pinto Vidal, Jessie Avenue, and Hansa Mehta, she succeeded in altering the wording of Article 1 of the Declaration from “all males are born free and equal in dignity and rights” to “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. The enlargement of the wording in Article 16 was notably near Amalia’s coronary heart, given the difficulties confronted by illegitimate youngsters and ladies searching for maternity assist. By renouncing “marriage” within the definition of household, the broader definition included in any other case marginalized communities.14)

UN Photograph by Kari Berggrav

Minerva Bernardino, Dr. Ophelia Mendoza and Amalia González de Castillo Ledón on the Opening of the Second Session on the Standing of Ladies

The idea of state feminism and ladies’s suffrage

Amalia noticed a necessity for formal rights as a prerequisite for reaching political equality. She envisioned the presence of girls in all authorities places of work and deliberate to attain this by way of systematic motion. Her so-called state feminism included requires the creation of a Division of Ladies (a cross-cutting federal authorities company) or for a minimal quota guaranteeing ladies’s inclusion throughout the renewal of metropolis councils.15)

The very foundation for true political equality lay in securing ladies’s suffrage, which Amalia aimed to determine in any respect three ranges of the Mexican authorities: federal, state and municipal. It took her and the opposite Mexican suffragettes 24 years and an intensive signature drive to lastly obtain the constitutional reform that established common suffrage in Mexico in 1953.16) Mockingly, the reasoning for the denial of this full citizenship was the worry of post-revolutionary Mexican elites that ladies would take a stance that was too conservative for his or her liking, whereas from at present’s perspective, being one of many final nations in Latin America to determine ladies’s suffrage could be deemed much more conversative.17)

Shaping coverage and illustration

The identical yr that ladies’s suffrage was achieved, Amalia’s public work additionally proved fruitful on a private stage when she was appointed extraordinary envoy to Sweden and Finland concurrently. Solely three years later, in 1956, Amalia was promoted to the rank of ambassador – changing into the primary lady in Mexico to carry that title in addition to the fourth feminine ambassador worldwide. In 1957, she was appointed ambassador to Switzerland. She excelled within the then male-dominated sphere and retired from her last posting as ambassador to Austria in 1970, aged 72.18)

Following her profitable endeavors on the worldwide stage, Amalia grew to become the primary lady in Mexico to carry a place in a presidential cupboard when President Adolfo López Mateos appointed her because the Undersecretary of Cultural Affairs on the Ministry of Public Training in 1958.19)

Amalia’s legacy

All through her life, Amalia remained true to her roots and expressed herself creatively by writing performs and publishing poetry alongside her political work and activism. She died in Mexico Metropolis on 3 June 1986 aged 87. All through her life, she was a trailblazer for ladies in Mexico and past – serving as a task mannequin for ladies by coming into fields lengthy dominated by males. She additionally left a long-lasting legacy by way of her management within the institution of girls’s suffrage in Mexico, and thru her contributions to creating the Common Declaration of Human Rights extra inclusive for ladies and youngsters.20)

Additional readings:

“Amalia González Caballero de Castillo Ledón: entre las letras, el poder y la diplomacia” by Gabriela Cano and Patricia Vega, Gobierno del Estado de Tamaulipas, Secretaría de Cultura, Instituto Tamaulipeco para la Cultura y las Artes, Mexico 2016.
“Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an Worldwide Human Rights Motion” by Katherine M. Marino, College of North Carolina Press, 2019.
“El disciplinamiento de los cuerpos en Cubos de noria, de Amalia de Castillo Ledón: la estrategia política de la Revolución mexicana” by Edith María Alberta Ibarra Araujo, pp. 65 ff. in “La política en el Teatro y el Teatro en la polítcia”, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico Metropolis 2023.