Americas Quarterly - Spring 2011

In search of living voters: Liliana Rojero, an unabashed PAN supporter, works to expand her party’s base in Mexico.

Liliana Rojero has had a pas- sion for politics since she was 13 years old. Today, at 35, she is putting that passion to work. As the secretary of community outreach for Mexico’s ruling party, the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), Rojero is responsible for creating programs to engage a new generation of PAN voters. Over the next three years, she aims to spread PAN’s reach and, ultimately, help it win the

2012 Presidential election.

Rojero, a native of the state of Chi-
huahua, learned about political com-
mitment from her parents—former
state election monitors who instilled
in her the values of democracy, trans-
parency and participation. Observing
how officials from the Partido Revolu-
cionario Institucional (PRI) blatantly
manipulated election outcomes—she
and her mother would sometimes
find ballots “mysteriously” filed by
dead voters—led Rojero to see her par-
ticipation in the democratic process
as a duty. During a hotly contested
governor’s race in 1986, she was in-
spired by watching her teachers and
neighbors take their political pro-
tests to the streets and capitol. “I saw
what freedom and their votes meant
to them,” she recalls.

Hoping to bring the political process to all Mexicans, Rojero has campaigned tirelessly for the PAN—the PRI’s principal rival. She has held various party posts, including youth ac-

POLITICAL INNOVATOR

Liliana Rojero
Mexico

tion secretary, state coordinator for universities and national director for women’s political promotion.

Prior to becoming secretary of community outreach, Rojero served as the executive secretary of Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres (National Institute for Women), an agency with a $585-million budget dedicated to eliminating discrimination against women and promoting their participation in federal and local politics. She designed and implemented federal policies to provide equal opportunities for women and help them exercise their rights more fully. Democracy, she believes, cannot flourish without women’s full political participation.