Hermila Galindo was born on June 2, 1886 in the Ex-Hacienda of San Juan Avilés, Municipality of Ciudad Lerdo, Durango. She attended primary school in Lerdo, Coahuila, where she studied a short technical career at the All-girl Industrial School (Escuela Industrial para Señoritas). At the age of 13, she started private tutoring in Lerdo, Gómez Palacio, and Torreón.

Her interest in politics emerged on March 21, 1909, when at a ceremony in Torreón commemorating the birthday of Benito Juarez, lawyer Francisco Martínez Ortiz delivered a speech praising said distinguished individual and criticizing the government of Porfirio Díaz. Considering the criticism in the speech, the mayor Miguel Garza Aldape “collected the original document to prevent such words from spreading beyond the event” /1. Galindo, however, wrote the speech down in shorthand, which later became known in Durango and Coahuila. That year, she met some of the distinguished opponents to the government of Porfirio Díaz, José Peón del Valle, Diódoro Batalla, and Heriberto Barrón, and in Durango, Carlos Pantoni, who encouraged her to continue her work in spreading revolutionary propaganda.

After the success of the Maderista revolution, Hermila Galindo moved to Mexico City, where she worked as a stenographer with general Eduardo Hay, and, at the same time, she taught at the Internado Nacional de Estudios Preparatorios y Mercantiles. She became part of the Abraham González club, where she was appointed public speaker to welcome Venustiano Carranza, in charge of the executive power at the time, during his triumphal entrance to Mexico City on August 20, 1914. The intelligence and eloquence of the young woman made an impression on Carranza, who invited her to work as his personal secretary, and she later accompanied him to Veracruz, facing the imminent arrival of Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata’s troops at Mexico’s capital city.

In Veracruz, she took her first steps in journalism, in the constitutionalist newspaper El Pueblo. She published her first article “Women collaborating in public life” (“La mujer como colaboradora en la vida pública”), in a column called “Sunday chronicle” (“Crónica dominical”). In her writings, Hermila asserted that women should aspire for a better life, since they possess the same qualities as any man, “such as intelligence, will, reason, memory and sense”/2. She was a passionate advocate of Constitutionalism, reason why Carranza sent her abroad to help disseminate the ideals of the Revolution. She delivered six lectures in La Habana, Cuba, urging for closer cooperation among Latin American countries. 

Hermila Galindo founded and edited the weekly magazine “The Modern Woman” (Mujer Moderna), first released on September 16, 1915, and which was a gender-oriented publication ahead of its time that defended, among others, the woman’s right to vote. In 1916, she submitted her paper “Women in the times to come” (“La mujer en el porvenir”), which was presented during the inauguration of the First Feminist Congress held in Yucatán on January 13 to 16. In her talk, she urged for the establishment of sexual education in educational curricula, which caused her to be labeled immoral. During the Second Feminist Congress, which took place in Mérida, Yucatán as well, between November 23 and December 3 of the same year, she defended herself against  the criticism and received support from highly respected women, such as Eulalia Guzmán and Matilde Montoya, the first female physician in Mexico. During these two congresses, there was no consensus regarding the petition of full exercise of women’s suffrage. The agreement was to begin with the right to vote in local elections./3

Her ideals fighting for women’s rights prompted her to submit a proposal to the Constituent Congress, which took place in Querétaro, where she suggested that granting the right to vote to women was a major step that would include them in the country’s political life. The initiative was presented on December 12, 1916 but was rejected by the Constituents. In 1917, challenging the current electoral law, Hermila was nominated as a candidate for a federal deputy position for the electoral district V of Mexico City, and, although she did not win the election, she set an important precedent in fighting for women’s political rights. In addition to defending and disseminating the ideals of Carranza, Hermila Galindo became the greatest exponent of feminism in Mexico between 1915 and 1919. 

In September 1919, her magazine stopped being published and her relationship with Carranza deteriorated after the release of her book Un presidenciable: el general Don Pablo Gonzalez (“A presidential forerunner: General Pablo González”), in which she defended the candidacy of general Pablo González. That same year, another of her books was presented La Doctrina Carranza y el Acercamiento Indo-latino (“The Carranza Doctrine and the Indo-Latin approach”). The correspondence between President Carranza and Galindo reveals that the book enjoyed the president’s support/4. When Carranza was assassinated on May 21, 1920, Hermila Galindo vanished from the public scene. In 1923, she married Miguel Enríquez Topete. 

On February 7, 1940, she received an award for Revolutionary Merit in recognition of her extensive revolutionary action. She was considered a veteran of the Revolution for her services to the movement, and she received recommendation letters from important revolutionary figures: Luis Cabrera and Pablo González.

Her pioneering work fueled the development of later feminist movements, which demanded the constitutional amendment of article 34, which would guarantee women’s right to vote, an aspiration that was ultimately attained through a decree published on October 17, 1953 by President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, who, in recognition of her work, granted Galindo the honorary title of “Mexico’s first  congresswoman”/5. Hermila Galindo died one year later, on August 19, 1954.

Sources:

Macias, Anna, “Women and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920”, The Americas, vol. 37, num. 1, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980, pp.53-82.

Orellana Trinidad, Laura, Hermila Galindo: una mujer moderna, Mexico, CONACULTA, 2001.

Valles Ruiz, Rosa María, Hermila Galindo. Sol de Libertad, Second Edition, Mexico, UAEH-Ediciones Gernika, 2015.

1/ Rosa María Valles Ruiz. Hermila Galindo Sol de Libertad, Second Edition, Mexico: UAEH-Gernika, 2015. p.43.

2/ El Pueblo, April 11, 1915, p. 2 Digital library. Hemeroteca Nacional. Ciudad Universitaria in Rosa María Valles Ruiz. Op. Cit., p.53.

3/ Rosa María Valles Ruiz. Hermila Galindo Sol de Libertad. Third Edition, Mexico, LXIII Legislatura Federal, 2017.

4/ Ibidem.

5/ Rosa María Valles Ruiz. Hermila Galindo, Sol de Libertad, Mexico-LXV Legislatura Federal, 2017. p.182.