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l past 6 August Ana Lilia Rivera Rivera, president of the Senate, inaugurated an exhibition in the open gallery of the Senate entitled Historical memory of population policy in Mexico, which is part of the events for the 50th anniversary of the National Population Council (Conapo). The inauguration was attended by Senator Mónica Fernández Balboa, President of the Interior Commission; Alanna Armitage, representative of the United Nations Population Fund; Arturo Medina, Undersecretary of Human Rights, Population and Migration, who signed this collaboration. Conapo is a collegiate body made up of 11 State secretariats and six federal institutions, and is chaired by the Secretary of the Interior.
The main achievements of CONAPO’s 50 years of existence were discussed, especially the decline in fertility and the slowdown in population growth, as well as the increase in life expectancy. From having 6.5 children per woman in the 1970s, we went down to 1.6 on average today, the adolescent fertility rate has dropped by half, from 135 to 50 births per thousand adolescents.
If its growth were not regulated, the Mexican population would triple by 2000, going from 45 to 152 million inhabitants. Thanks to the population policy at the end of the millennium, the population volume was reduced to 100 million. Today we are 132.3 million inhabitants and we are growing at less than one percent annually. By 2052 we will reach the maximum volume, with 147 million inhabitants. Voluntary abortion has been decriminalized in 14 states.
The exhibition begins with the note of the birth of Conapo that headlined the front pages of the newspapers, on March 28, 1974. The cover of The Universal The photograph shows the meeting between President Luis Echeverría and Mario Moya Palencia, Secretary of the Interior in those years. Then there is the image of his first general secretary, the teacher Luisa María Leal Duk, now deceased, who changed the pro-natalist population policy, opened public services for family planning and sexual education for the first time, and tried to decriminalize abortion by decision of the woman in Mexico at that time.
The image of Gustavo Cabrera, the second general secretary of Conapo from 1977 to 1982, is a recognition to the person who years before made the Population projections 1960-1980
in which he demonstrated that the demographic transition in Mexico had begun, the decline in mortality and the growth in life expectancy, and that the Mexican population doubled every 20 years. Cabrera also consolidated specialized publications in demography and sexual education, and created the National Program for the Integration of Women in Development, a precedent that, 20 years later, gave rise to the National Institute of Women; he also developed the policy of the three R’s
to regulate internal migration: retention, to stay in the place of origin and not go to swell the large cities; reorientation, to go to areas with economic potential (such as the Gulf of Mexico, in the middle of the boom oil) and relocation, to remove federal public administration institutions from the capital.
There are illustrations of paradigmatic events in this history. The International Population Prize, awarded by the UN in 1986 to Conapo, for the creation of state population councils. Posters of the important International Conference on Population held in Cairo, Egypt, in 1994, which incorporated reproductive rights as human rights; the inauguration of the Montevideo Consensus in 2013, the most progressive of the international instruments, presided over by José Mujica as president of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, accompanied by Alicia Bárcena, then executive secretary of ECLAC.
The many campaigns of Conapo are presented. One notices the change that each new generation brings to demographic culture. From that penetrating motto, which so many still remember, Small families live better
which was illustrated with a wedding cake; other posters address the fight against sexism with caricatures: How many children do I have? Ha, in which colony?… What you are is an irresponsible person who doesn’t support any of them. Let’s become less macho and more responsible men!
From the beginning, the eradication of machismo and the co-responsibility of men in sexual and reproductive life were sought. For 40 years, a wide variety of topics were broadcast uninterruptedly in the radio series Free zone. Later slogans had a more rational tone: Family planning: a decision for each couple!
, There are many of us now!
, Plan, it’s a matter of wanting
, It’s your life, it’s your future, make it safe
. Until reaching the campaigns of the current administration, more focused on women’s autonomy and respect for them: I decide my future and that of my community
, I respect her
and the one focused on eradicating forced unions I decide my life plan
The exhibition will run until August 17th at the Senate gates. It’s fun. It’s worth seeing!
* Secretary General of Conapo
