“It was always men, men, men again, now, it’s the women’s turn!”, asserts with conviction Ximena, a small, energetic young woman, a few steps from the presidential palace, under the sun which crushes the Zocalo, the central square of Mexico city, in this spring which is hotter and drier than usual. “Claudia will change our lives, she wants to believe. Thanks to her, we will have more work and more presence in society.”
“Claudia” is Claudia Sheinbaum, well known to residents of the capital. From 2018 to 2023, the left-wing woman heads the local government of Mexico City. Physicist, doctor in environmental sciences and member of the IPCC since 2013, the leader of the left-wing coalition is now seeking to conquer the hearts of 99 million voters during the presidential election on June 2. A major election, which is accompanied by legislative and local elections. In five years at the head of the megalopolis of 22 million inhabitants, this slender woman with impeccable suits and hair always pulled back in a ponytail, has gradually emerged from the shadow of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as “Amlo”, the current president, whom she has supported in politics for many years. Aged 62 and mother of two children, the ex-mayor intends to capitalize on the popularity of her predecessor, which reaches 60%, while her six-year mandate – non-renewable – will end in December 2024.
Under “Amlo”, major unfinished projects
Further on the Zocalo, Juan holds a souvenir tent bearing the image of Amlo. Soft toys of all sizes, key rings, lighters, pins, T-shirts… the president on the left is represented with a smiling face, often wearing a construction helmet to symbolize the numerous infrastructure projects – rail, airport, energy – launched under his mandate. He also sells some magnets and dolls bearing the image of “Claudia”. “We have a lot of hope that she will be able to continue the project initiated by Amlo. It has done a lot for the Mexican economy, particularly for the weight of the peso against the dollar,” comments the plump and jovial seller. Saïd, a bank employee in his fifties, is not as enthusiastic: “Amlo is above all a lot of large unfinished projects!” Controversial projects, because management was entrusted to the army, recalls Hélène Combes, research director at the CNRS attached to Ceri Sciences Po Paris and author of From the streets to the presidency. Protest homes in Mexico (May 2024, Editions CNRS).
“Lopez Obrador’s government has focused on major projects driven by the State to create jobs, such as the pharaonic Maya train project,” explains the researcher. Without forgetting numerous social programs. For the economist Carlos Perez Verdia, former advisor to the previous president Felix Calderon, “Amlo” has rather succeeded in the economic bet, but this relative prosperity – while the country experienced a very low growth rate during the pandemic – is very largely due to a series of structural reforms spanning the last thirty years, since the signing of Nafta, the free trade treaty with Canada and the United States, in 1994, then the economic reforms of the 2010s , until the recent “nearshoring”, namely the phenomenon of companies, particularly Chinese, which come to set up at the border to benefit from the trade facilities between Mexico and the United States.
In this context, “the presence of women in the world of work constitutes a very progressive, but constant trend,” points out economist Carlos Perez Verdia. Their employment rate has increased from 33% in the 1990s to 45% today. Figures which do not take into account their presence in the informal economy, a major sector in Mexico. Among the favorable factors, the reduction in daily working hours, policies in favor of maternity leave, the drop in the birth rate – 2.2 children in the country, even falling to 1.4 in the capital – and, also, the securing transport, highlights Mariana Esquivel, from the Mexican consulting firm Simbiosis Economica. For Mexican women who take the metro in the capital, the routine consists of passing through the porch which demarcates the area reserved for women on the platform and boarding the first carriages allocated to them and to children under 12 years, a way to protect yourself from harassment.
A young tourist guide in the capital, Sebastian will vote for the other candidate, Xóchitl Gálvez, a successful businesswoman, at the head of the center-right coalition led by the PAN party (National Action Party). Originally from an indigenous ethnic group and a modest background, with a degree in computer science, the 61-year-old candidate always appears dressed in a huipuil, traditional embroidered garment. She has a long political career behind her, having worked in various institutions since 2000, often to defend the place of indigenous people. But if she is sensitive to social themes, which is typical for a right-wing candidate, she is radically distinguished from her rival by her economic liberalism. A quality that appeals to Sébastian who, like all Mexicans, works more than 55 hours a week for only a dozen days of annual leave. He does not want Claudia to win, even if “she is more liberal than Amlo, he admits. It is a pure socialist product which only distributes money to young people instead of motivating them to work and build the country. There remains, beyond these divergences, a strong trend: “that the two candidates of the most important political coalitions are women is the result of thirty years of strong feminization of political life”, indicates the researcher Hélène Combes, who notes that the Mexico is one of the rare countries to have, since 2018, a fully parity legislature, both in the Senate and in Congress, the equivalent of the National Assembly.
Awareness of femicide
Faced with these two candidates, Jorge Alvarez Maynez, from the centrist coalition, appears as an outsider. In thirty years of observing the country, Hélène Combes has seen the place of women grow in all spheres of public life – politics, thanks in particular to a quota policy; economic, through measures promoting female employment; and cultural, in Mexican literature.
Despite progress, the situation remains perilous for women. Around 3,000 women are murdered each year, or around ten per day. Feminist activists regularly organize spectacular protests where they install thousands of purple silhouettes – the color that represents the feminist struggle, like on May 25. Researcher Hélène Combes nevertheless wishes to qualify the significance of the figures: “Mexico has been at the forefront of raising awareness about femicide, and these very high rates are partly linked to ordinary violence and organized crime” , a major fact in the country. During the last television debate in mid-May, the two candidates engaged in a battle of numbers on the subject. “Sheinbaum relies a lot on its track record in Mexico, where it was able to reduce the crime rate, but also the perception that residents may have of crime,” comments Hélène Combes. Here and there, on the walls of Mexico, graffiti appear representing the faces of the victims of this silent evil which continues to consume the country, where disappearances and kidnappings of women remain realities. Young Sebastian believes that gender violence is destined to reduce as the new generation feels more aware of these issues: “Unfortunately, we have a very macho country, but with a president, I am sure that it will change the things”.
.