MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -- Feminists from across Mexico this weekend
                  launched a movement to bring down the walls around the macho world of
                  Mexican politics.

                  Cheering and applauding, more than 200 women from 26 of Mexico's 32
                  states on Saturday night agreed to set up the country's first purely feminine
                  political movement and said they may turn it into a party if the mainstream,
                  male-dominated political groups failed to listen to their demands.

                  "This is a second revolution, the revolution of the women of this country,
                  which would have been unthinkable 10 years ago," Patricia Mercado, a
                  leader of the group, told Reuters.

                  "Up until now the issue of women has not been anywhere in the political
                  debate in the media, women have stayed at home and we haven't gone out
                  to the public. But today we are ready and we will go into the elections with
                  force."

                  The new movement, called DiVersa, is aimed at making sure women have
                  their voice heard in the 2000 presidential polls, when Mexico's long-ruling
                  Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) may finally be forced to lose its
                  almost 70-year-old grip on power.

                  In a bid to turn the election campaign away from the daily debate over drug
                  trafficking, economics and corruption, DiVersa activists said it was high time
                  women entered the political arena on an equal footing with men.

                  "If women are not here, democracy will go nowhere," chanted women at the
                  first National Assembly of the Feminists' Political Group amid thunderous
                  applause.

                  In Mexican society, the woman's place is still largely regarded as being at
                  home. But in recent years, especially in the north of the country where U.S.
                  influence is strongest, more and more women have been breaking out of the
                  mould.

                  DiVersa's political platform called for the political debate to include issues
                  such as legalising abortion, equal rights for homosexuals and Indians,
                  increased financial resources for women and an end to domestic violence.

                  Mercado said the movement's objectives would be legally registered as a
                  political platform next week, and this could be the first step toward creating
                  Mexico's first all-women political party.

                  "If the political parties for the 2000 elections don't understand the need for
                  more equality and diversity for women, homosexuals and the indigenous,
                  then we may take the final step of setting up a party of our own," she said.

                   Copyright 1999 Reuters.