Women currently govern some 40 per cent of Latin America’s population. If Josefina Vázquez Mota wins Mexico’s presidential elections in July, that figure will rise to 60 per cent. “I will be Mexico’s first presidenta (female president),” Ms Vázquez said this month after she won the primary of the conservative National Action Party.

Ms Vázquez is part of a growing Latin trend. In the 1990s, Violeta Chamorro was president of Nicaragua and Mireya Moscoso of Panama. Then, in the 2000s, there was President Michelle Bachelet in Chile.

The feminisation of Latin politics has continued apace ever since. Dilma Rousseff is currently president of Brazil, Cristina Fernández president of Argentina, and Laura Chinchilla leads Costa Rica. A win for Ms Vázquez in Mexico would see the region’s three biggest economies ruled by women. And all this in countries so often assumed to be male-dominated. What is going on?

The answer is not some kind of feminist surge. In fact, quite the opposite seems to be true: paradoxically, the rise of “Latina power” has been simultaneously accompanied by a stronger embrace of traditional values.

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