Marcelina Bautista

Marcelina Bautista Bautista (born 25 April 1966) is a Mexican human rights activist and trade union organizer. She worked as a domestic worker for 22 years, starting at the age of 14. She put herself through school, graduating from the Ibero-American University and started organizing her fellow workers. She founded the organizations Centro de Apoyo y Capacitación para Empleadas del Hogar in 2000 and Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras del Hogar (SINACTRAHO) in 2015.

Early life and domestic work Marcelina Bautista Bautista was born on 25 April 1966 to a Mixtec peasant family in Tierra Colorada Apasco, Nochixtlán, Oaxaca, a town with around 500 people. She grew up alongside 11 siblings speaking Mixtec, and had aspirations of becoming a lawyer.

At the age of 14, after she completed primary school, she was forced to travel to Mexico City to work and support her family. She knew very little Spanish and wandered the streets until she found a sign reading "looking for a servant". As a domestic worker, she experienced discrimination and exploitation. She was underpaid by her employer and beaten for not knowing how to use a washing machine. She started organizing domestic workers around the same time, meeting at a north side park in Mexico City.

Bautista founded the organization Centro de Apoyo y Capacitación para Empleadas del Hogar (CACEH) in 2000. Through the organization, she promoted domestic workers' rights and started the process of their unionization.

Bautista continued organizing domestic workers and has become one of the primary activists fighting for their rights in Mexico.

Awards Premio Hermila Galindo de la Comisión de Derechos Humanos del Distrito Federal (2006) Premio de Derechos Humanos de la Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (2010) Premio Nacional por la Igualdad y la No Discriminación granted by the National Council to Prevent Discrimination (2013) Medalla Omecíhuatl (2017) BBC's 100 Women (2021)