A young woman pushes a lady, the lady stops her with an elbow. The movement is subtle, not even an centimeter separates them. Both are lying with another dozen people on the rear window of a Volkswagen that moves slowly. Inside the car, Claudia Sheinbaum tries to organize them. “Let me take her and now I’ll take you,” she says between a selfie and another. Everyone wants a photo with the favorite in the polls. Or maybe just touch his hand. They are not stopped by the 32 degrees that hit nor by the sun that breaks the land of the State of Mexico. “Don’t forget about us,” a man shouts from afar, resigned to not entering the chaotic tumult. In a maternal tone, the candidate warns anyone who gets too close to the car: “Be careful with the tire.” It is the departure of a rally in Chalco. The entrance was another 40 minutes of hugs, portraits, autographs. People shake her, pull her, some pat her on the face. She appreciates her affection. In a campaign in which Andrés Manuel López Obrador is not present, although his name is constantly evoked, the phenomenon Claudia seeks—and it seems that she finds—her own space.
“We love her,” shouts a teenager. “I love you more,” she responds, smiling. Once they are away from the site, Sheinbaum raises the window and settles into the seat. The car is full between his team and the reporters. The candidate will have one hour until Texcoco, where the cycle of hugs will begin again. And so, three or four times a day. She doesn’t get tired, she says. “Pure people energy.” With a busy schedule like the one the Morena presidential candidate has these days, there is hardly time to eat or sleep. She gets up around six in the morning with the newspapers on her phone, exercises or meditates, and then begins the intense day that will not end until midnight. In a vast country like Mexico, she has found a moment of serenity in the long trips. Even to read a book. A biography of Benito Juárez now, and before that, a novel by Rosa Montero.
Mexico will elect its first female president in history on June 2. If she wins, Sheinbaum will be in charge of facing such a task in a country where machismo is deeply rooted. As if the challenge were less, she also has to do it under the shadow of a man who she has marked with her presence every single day of this six-year term. These mixed factors have led to misogynistic ideas, spread left and right, that accuse her of being a puppet of López Obrador. This despite the candidate’s strong character, which many who have been through her team relate in detail. “I always make fun and say: ‘Yes, López Obrador dictated my doctoral thesis to me,’” she says, amused. But malicious comments don’t affect her, she says. “I have self-confidence and I have recognition from the people. You will see it on the road starting in October 2024.”
Perhaps because of the large lead that the polls give her, or because of her calm disposition, the candidate appears very relaxed and simple. “The way we are,” she says, “you can’t make that up.” “Knowing that you are just another citizen, with a lot of responsibility, but in the end you are a person, that gives you a lot of closeness to people.” She speaks with the same depth and quietness about the importation of flower seeds as she does about the effects of neoliberalism in Mexico or the fate of the armed forces. She takes every question as if it had something at stake. And she does not show the habit, very common in politics, of avoiding questions with long answers that lead to nothing.
—Now that you were touring the country, what surprised you the most of everything you saw?
—The affection of the people of Mexico for the president. One can see it in the polls, but there is enormous affection for the historical moment we are experiencing. Yes, there are problems, not everything can be resolved in six years, and even more so after 36 years of abandonment. But in the north, in the south, it is enormous affection.
—And what worried you the most?
—Drought, because it is not a single solution. It is a social, political, legislative, and at the same time technical solution. Addressing the water shortage in the country is something that will take up a good part of our time. And the other part continues to be security, although it must be said that there are areas of the country where it is recognized that it is a more serious problem, and areas where it is not so serious. And poverty. Obviously it has been reduced, but our ultimate goal is for people to live well in Mexico.
In a marathon explanation of his possible Government, he details that it will have three new axes that will differentiate it from the current Administration. It will support the energy transition, the environment and women’s rights. He will maintain the austerity policy for those who work in the public service, but he will not skimp on what affects the Welfare State. “Most of the resources should go to the people,” he says, noting that they will be used primarily for health, education and housing. The Army, which has gained a lot of ground in this six-year term, will be left where it is. But it will also strengthen other public institutions. He will choose the members of his Cabinet with a triple criterion to meet: honesty, knowledge and conviction of public service. And he will keep his word to include all former candidates for the party presidency in the next Administration. Even Marcelo Ebrard, who when he lost the internship said that he would not submit to it, threatened to leave the training and ended up joining.
“La palomilla,” as he calls his touring team—an expression to refer to a group of friends—has arrived in Texcoco. There he will have a massive rally, which will be recorded by Epigmenio Ibarra’s camera. Everything will happen under the eye of a lieutenant colonel sent by the Army to take care of the candidate at every step. The drought he was talking about until recently is also there. A yellowish dust suffocates the air after her passage and that of a hundred people who have come to see her. A disoriented announcer will present her as a badass woman, just the word she has chosen as her rival’s slogan, Xóchitl Gálvez. But nothing about her will take away her lightened smile. Unlike López Obrador, the movement’s heir does not carry the heavy backpack of old quarrels. Her more limited political career, which she was born after many years dedicated to science and academic research – she has a doctorate in Energy Engineering – gives her a different lightness.
The day of rallies and fervor will end several kilometers further away, in Tlaxcala. At each of the events he will mention as a promise a scholarship for women over 60 years of age. Then, you will take a few minutes to explain to people why that money will go to them, and not to them. “Who are we who mainly take care of the children? Who are we who keep the home clean and cared for? Who recognizes that work?” She will bring out the teaching side of her to give a basic lesson in feminism. “As a woman president is going to arrive for the first time, we are going to recognize the work of Mexican women,” she says to the applause, more from them than from them.
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