Many Latin American consuls in L.A. are led by women. MeToo is just one reason why
Since the #MeToo movement went viral in 2017, the voices of Latin American women have been amplified across politics, culture and society at large.
Alicia Villamariona is consul general for El Salvador’s L.A. office, which is the Central American country’s largest. Twelve of El Salvador’s 21 consulates operating in the United States are run by women. The city’s Diplomats Row is Wilshire Boulevard, where several Latin American consulates are clustered. Paraguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras and Ecuador are near the intersection with Normandie Avenue. El Salvador sits two blocks west of Vermont Avenue. Farther west along Wilshire lie the consulates of Costa Rica, Argentina, Colombia, Chile and Brazil, in the Beverly Hills area.
Yet another significant factor is that, across the hemisphere, more women have been accruing power as heads of state. Laura Chinchilla became Costa Rica’s first female president in 2010. In Argentina, populist president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner held power from 2007 to 2015, and recently won election as her nation’s vice president.
“I think it has to do with what I have done, with what I have contributed to society,” said the native of Guayaquil, who now conducts diplomatic relations, wields elaborate notarial powers, signs checks and visits immigrant detention centers, among other tasks. “I want to take advantage that I am a woman, I can play a good role and leave a precedent for more women to come here.”
Suyapa Portillo, professor of history and transnational studies at Pitzer College, said that having a group of female consuls has little bearing, because their job is simply to carry out the policies and procedures of their home governments, not conduct diplomacy.When she was appointed consul general of Honduras in Los Angeles, María Fernanda Rivera said she was surrounded by men, but now she feels part of a family with six female colleagues.
That change, he thinks, is being driven in part by shifting immigration patterns that are pressing Latin countries to recruit more women into public administration, including diplomacy. For Brazil, the wait was 66 years, until Thereza María Machado became the South American nation’s first female consul general in L.A. in 2005.
Those percentages have persisted even as women’s academic access is increasing. A report of the International Labor Organization, presented in Peru in August, highlights that, among working women born in 1990 in Latin America and the Caribbean, 40% have a university education, while only 25% of men do.
But change is accelerating at consulates such as Costa Rica’s, where all three of the last consul generals have been female career diplomats: Sylvia Ugalde, Xinia Vargas and, currently, Mabel Segura. Abroad, he appointed Martha Bárcena as Mexican ambassador to the United States. López Obrador also sent women to several of the most important consulates, in Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Sacramento, Denver and Philadelphia, among others.
In the case of El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele appointed a woman, Alexandra Hill Tinoco, to be the head of his diplomatic corps. Twelve of El Salvador’s 21 consulates operating in the United States are run by women. According to María Fernanda Rivera, consul general of Honduras in Los Angeles, the increase in women in these positions began in 2014, shortly after a new foreign service law that was more favorable to women took effect.
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