Elvia Carrillo Puerto

In 1923, three decades before Mexican women won the federal vote, Carrillo Puerto and two other women were elected to the state congress of Yucatán, the first women to sit in a Mexican legislature. She had spent years organising peasant women's leagues across the state, and her brother's socialist governorship opened the door. When he was assassinated in 1924 the women were driven out of their seats under threat. Her story shows how quickly a gain that depends on one government can be reversed, and why she kept campaigning until national suffrage arrived in 1953.