A Moral Politics? Gender, Catholicism, and Women's Political Participation in 1970s Mexico

Speaking at the I National Women’s Civic Congress in December 1973, the president of the newly-formed National Women’s Civic Association (ANCIFEM), Amparo Noriega Martínez, proclaimed that the “civic awakening of the woman” was the only salvation for a morally tormented and divided Mexico. The Congress marked the genesis of a women’s civic movement that impelled organized Catholic laywomen to the forefront of national politics. Over the next two decades, ANCIFEM and allied organizations forged an expansive network of activists, rallying women in central and northern Mexico behind calls for direct civic and political participation and the moral restoration of public life. The movement, which provided critical support for an ascendant National Action Party, constitutes a missing chapter in the history of Mexican conservatism, democratization, and economic transformation. 

This paper explores the origins of ANCIFEM and the women’s civic movement during the presidency of Luis Echeverría Álvarez (1970-76). It examines how largely middle class, conservative Catholic women mobilized to oppose a resurgent populism and the expansion of women’s reproductive rights, and how they selectively adapted Catholic social teachings to fashion an alternative to secular, state-led development. Heralding the “integral development” of Mexico, movement organizers blended an impassioned defense of traditional family, gender, and sexual relations with a civic vision in which intermediate associations would shield families and communities from centralized power. The paper examines how activists in the movement linked political and economic opening through a critique of state power as corruptive not only of the economy but of the values underpinning civic culture and family life.