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By Carolina De la Rosa
Editor - Ivaana C. Mitra
The opinions expressed in this article reflect the opinions of its author(s). They do not represent the views of the UCL International Relations Society, Circum Mundum, or its Editorial Team.
Mexico appears to be on track towards electing its first female President, making strides in overcoming a long track record of gender discrimination and macho culture. The 2024 Mexican elections are expected to take place on the 2nd of June with the top two leading presidential candidates being women - Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchtil Gálvez. In the most recent polls, Sheinbaum has 55% support while Gálvez has only 32%.
Claudia Sheinbaum, former mayor of Mexico City, was announced to be the nominee for Mexico’s ruling party Morena for the 2024 presidential election, as she is being highly endorsed by them and its founder, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), who is Mexico’s current president. Morena is a far left-wing populist party that highly supported the socialist governments of Cuba and Venezuela. Apart from potentially being Mexico’s first female president, she would also serve as Mexico’s first Jewish president, being of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic descent.
Throughout AMLO’s presidency, he made some questionable comments and decisions regarding Mexico’s rising issue with organized crime. One of them was with his campaign, abrazos no balazos (hugs not gunshots), to combat narcos and drug traffickers. Saying that rather than just labelling people involved in organized crime and drug trafficking as criminals, and providing strict punishment and legal consequences for anyone who decides to become involved in this, instead, the Mexican government should just combat the insecurity by providing poverty-alleviation programs as an alternative to individuals who are either involved or are in high-risk of joining organized crime. This is seen in how he changed the sentencing guidelines for drug traffickers and legalized marijuana. While AMLO did make a reasonable argument that it is often the case that individuals who choose to partake in organized crime often do so because they come from poverty and are presented with limited opportunities.
Nevertheless, that is no excuse for individuals to be involved in crime that has both killed many and has caused many to fall under drug addiction on an international level. This has resulted in Mexico experiencing a rise in violence - the most it has ever had during a single presidential term. Mexico’s homicide rates went up by 16% in 2018, with the country experiencing 15,973 killings in the first half of 2019, the highest record ever since 1997.
AMLO has also received a fair amount of other criticism for his cancellation of a new airport north of Mexico City, in Texcoco, for no apparent reason. He halted the construction of a $13 billion airport which was already under construction and resulted in a loss of $5 billion dollars in 2018. Construction had already begun under Mexico’s previous president, Enrique Peña Nieto, in 2014, as the airport would have had an X-shaped terminal designed by British architect Norman Doster, that would have been financially supported by Mexican billionaire, Carlos Slim, as an investor. Mexico was in need of a new airport as its current airport, Benito Juárez International Airport, which sits right in the heart of Mexico City, had seriously deteriorated by the early 2000s with only two functioning runways. The federal government had announced and proposed to build an airport ever since 2001, which has been pushed back by AMLO.
Meanwhile, Sheinbaum’s main opposition is Xóchitl Gálvez, a senator who represents Mexico’s conservative party, PAN. Gálvez bases her image and representation of herself around her indigenous roots as her father is an Indigenous Otomí and she grew up speaking her father’s Hñähñu language. Her political career began after working under Mexican president Vicente Fox where she was appointed as the head of Mexico’s National Institute for Indigenous Peoples from 2000 to 2006 and then served as the mayor of the Miguel Hidalgo borough of Mexico City from 2015 to 2018 before assuming the role of a senator in 2018. Gálvez’s main focus is to promote more educational opportunities within the country.
Gálvez and AMLO have been at each other's throats and have made public critical remarks against one another. AMLO has blasted Gálvez's plans of wanting to implement more renewable energy sources in Mexico and to privatize state-owned firm, Petroleos Mexicanos. Gálvez has also publicly expressed criticism of AMLO’s campaign of “abrazos no balazos”, saying in Campeche at an event that if she were to be president “no va a haber abrazos para los delincuentes y balazos para los ciudadanos” (There will not be hugs for the criminals or gunshots for the citizens.
Even though Sheinbaum and Gálvez are presidential rivals, they actually have more in common than one would think. They both have backgrounds rooted in STEM, pursuing further studies at UNAM, the best public university in Mexico. Sheinbaum has a degree in physics and a PhD in energy engineering, whereas Gálvez has a degree in computer engineering and founded her own tech company, High Tech Services, in 1992.
Mexico has made huge strides and has seen tremendous improvements with women working in politics, considering that they were not allowed to vote in the country until 1953, as they now make up nearly half of the legislature since 2021. The election of Mexico's first female president would catalyse enhanced gender equality, increased opportunities, and greater representation of women within the nation.