MEXICO CITY (AP) – On Sunday May 28, a council of Mexican indigenous groups backed by the Zapatista rebels selected a Nahua woman as the country’s first indigenous female presidential candidate.
The Nahuas are a group of indigenous people of Mexico and El Salvador. Their Uto-Aztecan language, Nahuatl, consists of many dialects, several of which are mutually unintelligible. About 1.5 million Nahua speak Nahuatl and another million speak only Spanish. Less than 1,000 native speakers remain in El Salvador.[2]
Evidence suggests the Nahua peoples originated in Aridoamerica, in regions of the present day northwestern Mexico. They split off from the other Uto-Aztecan speaking peoples and migrated into central Mexico around 500 CE. They settled in and around the Basin of Mexico and spread out to become the dominant people in central Mexico.
The Indigenous Governance Council picked Maria de Jesus Patricio to run in the 2018 election, issuing a statement saying that “we will seek to put her name on the ballot.” Because the council is not a registered political party, it may need signatures to get Patricio on the ballot.
The council called for an “anti-capitalist and honest” government. “We don’t seek to administer power; we seek to dismantle it,” it said.
Local media described Patricio as a traditional healer from the western state of Jalisco.
The Zapatistas led a brief armed uprising for the rights of indigenous communities in 1994, but have stayed out of electoral politics.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/