06/14/2026
Eufrosina Cruz Mendoza escaped child marriage – and changed the law for millions of women.
Eufrosina, a member of Mexico's indigenous Zapotec community, grew up in the mountainous state of Oaxaca. Local traditions there said that women and girls should serve men.
"I had to get up at 3am, like my mum, like my aunts, to wait and to serve," she says. "I didn't know how a girl could laugh or play, because my eyes had never seen it."
She says her childhood was spent preparing for life as somebody's wife.
"At 12, you're ready to become the wife of a man you don't even know," she said. This was the fate of Eufrosina's sister, who was already a mother at 13.
Child marriage was not allowed in Mexico as a whole, but the state of Oaxaca had a special law, dating back to colonial times, allowing indigenous communities to self-govern.
Eufrosina was lucky. A new teacher arrived in her village and convinced her to fight for her rights – so when her father wanted her to marry at 12, she refused.
And, in 2007 she decided to stand for mayor of her local town. She won the local election, but customary laws meant that, as a woman, she was unable to take office.
"And that's when I realised that there was no institution that would embrace us as indigenous women," she says.
She didn't give up. In 2014, after years of campaigning for women’s rights, Mexico’s Senate approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing indigenous women the right to vote and stand for elections.
Today, Eufrosina says girls in her town dream of being architects and engineers.
She says that's a result of challenging the idea that things cannot be changed because they were so-called 'customs'.
"It was what violated us, and it was a system that denied us and made us invisible," she says.
Now she tells all the women she knows never to ask permission to take part in public life - something she, her mum and her sisters were always told was not for them.
🎧 Witness History: https://bbc.in/4nPVnrK
