A Year Later, Yucatán Stalls on Indigenous Women's Day

Every Sept. 5, lawmakers at the Yucatán Congress mark International Indigenous Women’s Day with speeches, some of them in Maya. What they haven’t done, according to a group of Maya women, is turn a year-old bill into law.

The collective Maaya Ko’olelo’on has spent 12 months pressing the state Congress to approve a measure creating a State Day of Indigenous Women, a local companion to the international observance. The group says the bill has sat untouched since a Citizens’ Movement (MC) bench introduced it last year, and they’re tired of waiting.

“This 5 de septiembre, I’d like it to be different,” one member of the collective said, asking not to be named. “Not just congratulations, but real actions that help with the recognition of everything Indigenous women contribute.”

The proposal would require the state government, autonomous agencies and city halls to budget for programs supporting Maya women’s economic, political and cultural participation, rather than limiting the day to a ceremony. It also calls for a monitoring body, an observatory made up of Maya women from different municipalities, to track whether any funding earmarked for the cause actually reaches them.

Deputies Larissa Acosta and Javier Osante, both from Movimiento Ciudadano, filed the bill on the collective’s behalf last year because Yucatán rules require legislation to carry a party’s or bench’s backing. Acosta said other benches had agreed to discuss it further, then didn’t. The collective said it also approached Morena, the majority bench, but got no support, in part, its members believe, because the bill came from the opposition.

Acosta told La Jornada Maya the delay isn’t political stonewalling but a procedural step: state law requires a formal consultation with Indigenous women before the bill moves forward, and Congress only recently approved a protocol for that kind of outreach. She said her bench has been pushing the Congress’s general secretariat to start the process.

“If they feel like the communication hasn’t been constant enough, I don’t want to respond with excuses,” Acosta said. “We have to fix it.”

The collective argues the stakes go beyond a ceremonial date. Its members pointed to recent judicial elections and asked how many Indigenous women won seats on the bench, and they described ongoing barriers to health care, justice and education. Some said Maya-speaking patients still can’t always get care in their own language, and they called for formal recognition of midwives and traditional healers.

Yucatán would be following Quintana Roo, which already observes its own state day for Indigenous women. More than a quarter-million Yucatán residents speak Maya, according to Mexico’s national statistics agency, and advocates say the language and its speakers remain underrepresented in institutions built mostly around Spanish.

Yucatán’s 1916 Feminist Congress is often cited as a milestone in Mexican women’s rights history, but historians have noted that Maya and working-class women were largely left out of that gathering. The push for a modern state holiday, Maaya Ko’olelo’on members say, is partly about correcting who gets counted as part of that legacy.

Sept. 5 was chosen internationally in honor of Bartolina Sisa, an Aymara leader executed in Bolivia in 1782 for resisting colonial rule.

Fast Facts

The bill would create a “State Day of Indigenous Women” on Sept. 5 in Yucatán
Filed by Movimiento Ciudadano deputies Larissa Acosta and Javier Osante in 2025
Backed by the collective Maaya Ko’olelo’on
Proposes a citizen observatory to track state and municipal funding for Maya women
Quintana Roo already has a similar state-level observance
Yucatán state law requires a formal consultation with Indigenous communities before the bill can advance

With reporting from La Jornada Maya