Claudia Sheinbaum: Why Mexico’s First Female President Can Leave Feminism Behind

–Analysis–

MEXICO CITY — Last June, Mexico experienced a historic election with two women running for president: Xochitl Gálvez, candidate of a coalition that unites her party, the conservative National Action Party (PAN), and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has governed Mexico for 70 years, and Claudia Sheinbaum, representing the left-wing populist National Regeneration Movement (MORENA). Gálvez obtained 27.9% of the vote and Sheinbaum 59.35%, breaking the country’s historic record. Never before had a president managed to obtain such a percentage of votes. The Electoral Court confirmed her victory on August 15, although she will officially take office on October 1.

She was a scientist, physicist and engineer, specializing in energy and climate change. She was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Her father, an Ashkenazi Jew from Lithuania, and her mother, a Bulgarian Sephardic Jewish academic, both came to Mexico in 1942, joined the Mexican Communist Party and raised their daughter Claudia on issues of equality, the fight against poverty and anti-capitalism.

She was Minister of the Environment and the first elected female governor of the Mexican capital. Together with the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), she founded the MORENA party. Sheinbaum took a stand as “a feminist against the use of violence in defense of human rights” and, like AMLO, she calls herself a “humanist”, which in her own words means “fighting poverty to promote equality and social justice.”

While Milei, in Argentina, and Bukele, in El Salvador, have openly declared war on women and promised to eliminate gender perspective from laws and government bodies, Sheinbaum declared in her first speech as president-elect: “For the first time in 200 years of the Republic, I will be the first woman president. I am not coming alone, we women are all coming.”

In response to her emotional speech in which she named some of the greatest women in Mexican history, several feminist organizations – particularly those dedicated to the protection and care of victims and mothers of disappeared persons – stated that Sheinbaum is not a feminist and stressed the importance of distinguishing between being a woman and effectively defending the rights of women and girls.

Facade feminism?

This criticism is based on the fact that Sheinbaum has not publicly expressed her convictions about governing with a gender perspective during her time as the governor of Mexico City. Nor has she spoken out about abortion. In interviews, she has simply made the same cautious statement: “the Supreme Court of Mexico has already approved the right to abortion and that is what is important.” The main criticism, however, concerns the criminalization of the feminist protests of March 8, in which riot police beat and arrested activists on the orders of the then-governor.

Sheinbaum supports the militarization of law enforcement implemented by López Obrador and has made it clear that she will continue to support the growing power of the Mexican military in civilian and public security roles, despite the fact that police violence against women and journalists has increased by 33% with the country’s militarization. The president-elect claims that militarization has reduced violence in Mexico, but official figures say otherwise. Mexico has 10 femicides per day and 27,323 unsolved disappearances of girls and women.

Sheinbaum, 61, faces a divided country. Her party has been heavily criticized by parts of the educated middle class, the upper middle class and the business community, who strongly supported the opposition in rejecting López Obrador. In particular, they oppose AMLO’s populism, his systematic attacks on the judiciary, journalists and the media, and his persistent denial of violence against children, as well as his positioning to keep Mexico’s most powerful organized crime groups untouched thanks to his famous slogan “hugs, not bullets.”

Worldcrunch 🗞 Extra!

Elsewhere in the press • Electing a woman as president does not automatically guarantee the advancement of feminist principles. Although historic, the rise of Claudia Sheinbaum to the helm of Mexico, one of the countries with the highest rate of femicides in the world (1,000 in 2021), raises several questions for the country.

“Mexico is a country with deep racial and class inequality, where indigenous, Afro-descendant, and working-class women face forms of oppression that are often not reflected in the dominant political agendas, even those promoted by women in power,” writes Claudia Bravo in her recent article “Claudia Sheinbaum: A Feminism That Fits Us All?” for Mexican Digital Media Animal policy.

“While Sheinbaum identifies with a progressive agenda and is seen by some sectors as an ally of feminist causes, the question arises (…) whether her leadership will truly be able to meet the needs of all women in Mexico, or whether her approach will remain limited to a narrow vision that favors certain groups over others,” Bravo writes. — Chloé Touchard (read more about the Worldcrunch method here)

Promises promises

The new president has promised everything, just like her predecessors. She has argued that she doesn’t care if people say she will be López Obrador’s puppet and that she has her own way of exercising power. She has also assured voters that her party will make great strides in the fight against poverty and that she will include in the constitution the right to a pension for women aged 60 to 64 who have dedicated their lives to caregiving – because she would never have been able to build her career if her mother hadn’t helped her raise her daughter.

She could also be faced with the possible return of Donald Trump to power in November

She inherits a country that passed 47 decrees between 2021 and 2024, including a ban on child marriage, a national register of alimony debtors, no statute of limitations for sexual offenses, mandatory social security for domestic workers and the recognition of vicarious violence as a crime.

Mexico is the third country in Latin America (after Chile and Costa Rica) with the most women in the cabinet (44%), and Sheinbaum assures that more women will join her. But this has not convinced those who argue that it is one thing for women to enter politics in response to demands for gender equality among political leaders, and quite another for them to work towards effective gender equality for all.

The Possible Return of Trump

The new president, who will take office on October 1, could also be faced with the possible return of Donald Trump to power in November of this year. For this reason, the procedures for strengthening free trade agreements are being accelerated. She knows that Trump will tighten anti-immigration policies and increase Mexico’s already problematic policy of racism, mistreatment and expulsion of migrants from Central America, South America and the Caribbean. In addition, she will have to address the growing problem of child labor exploitation and the undeniable political power of organized criminal corporations.

Today, the MORENA party not only holds the presidency, but also governs 23 of Mexico’s 34 states and has a majority in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. With this set-up, Sheinbaum has promised to be the one to implement the so-called “Plan C” or the second phase of the Fourth Transformation. She assures that it is “Mexico’s fourth revolution, which will be won by force and not by weapons.”

Every murder of women or girls will be investigated as femicide from the outset, until proven otherwise.

This plan includes the election of judges and ministers by the Supreme Court, the abolition of the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI) and of the state regulatory commissions, and the strengthening of the militarization of Mexico (with an army that already has public works tasks and is more loyal to its party than to its country).

She also promises to implement genuine universal access to public health, eradicate corruption in state institutions, and make scholarships for low-income students a constitutional right. For women, she has promised to allocate a budget to the National Care System and pledged that every murder of women or girls will be investigated as femicide from the start until proven otherwise. And since Mexico has serious problems with access to drinking water, Sheinbaum affirms that water management will be a priority for the next 50 years, as will the implementation of policies to combat the causes and effects of climate change, including energy management in the country.

In the history of Mexico, every new president, once in power, has clearly distanced himself from his predecessor. We will see if Sheinbaum is different. In the meantime, all we can do is wait for the facts to show who President Sheinbaum really is.