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If you want to test the strength of your marriage, there is a foolproof system: win an election and force your partner to be at your side as president of a country for four, six or eight years, whatever the mandate requires. And then you will see if the matter does not burst at the seams. Presidential couples are subject to an inequality as intense as the obligations that the position imposes. One governs day and night and the other manages to get on with the rest of domestic and work life as best he can, that is, adapting to protocol requirements, subject to tireless public scrutiny, raising children practically alone or whatever comes up. The disagreements that arise soon become public gossip and have been well captured in some famous film series.
The chasms that the Obamas have overcome are well known, the divorce of Felipe González in Spain, that of Gabriel Boric in Chile or the rumors with Felipe Calderón in Mexico, among many others. Needless to say, women get the worst of it because, generally, it is men who govern, and even if they do, if their partner is male, they usually have fewer obstacles, looks and criticisms in their vital development. That happens because they are born a woman.
In recent weeks, the river has been sounding loud in Mexico. The media were hinting that the presidential marriage was not going through its best moments. Divorce?, everyone was wondering. Andrés Manuel López Obrador came out to deny such a prediction: “No, no, no. It is false that I am going to divorce Beatriz [Gutiérrez Müller]”She laughed. “We’re going to stay together.” She didn’t answer whether she was the one who would divorce him.
Then came the publication of the book. When first ladies, as they are often called, write, they confess. Gutiérrez Müller is a writer and academic, a woman of letters. During the six years she has spent in the National Palace, a period that is about to end, she has opted for a discreet profile, few statements, few trips and essential ceremonial appearances. She has continued with her profession at the university and cared for her son, a teenager who has found himself in some of the inclement, ungodly storms unleashed by social networks. So much so that some of her public messages were to condemn the attacks that the son of her husband’s opponent of the government, Xóchitl Gálvez, also received.
But this second plane, supposedly far from the media noise from which she has tried to protect herself, has not prevented discomforts that are exhausting for the marriage. Silent Feminism She criticizes with good arguments the undefined role that first ladies must play, a term that she rejects as outdated, sexist and supremacist. She notes the “extreme conditions” that the six years of her presidency have meant for her. Some people will have a harder time in their daily lives, some will say. But it is also true that unsolicited fame can overwhelm anyone, which is why she defends that the functions of the companion in the government be well established in the law. In this way, it is inferred, one already knows what she is in for if she goes ahead with a marriage that will make her a princess and lock her up in a palace. Because it is true that the new living conditions are not determined for them and each one is weathering the storm as best she can. “I confess that on more than one occasion this possibility [de retirarme] It has crossed my mind, but so far I have been able to survive the attempts to kidnap my will.” If the couple does not adapt to the new responsibilities, “getting divorced is a good decision,” he wrote.
Irina Karamanos came to power on the arm of Gabriel Boric, without her having stood for election, and for a time she returned to the corresponding ministries and departments the functions that by tradition had been assumed by the first ladies of Chile. During that period, the task that a presidential wife had to carry out was put under the public spotlight of half the world. Finally, she left La Moneda and the marriage was dissolved. Even that, for what anyone would ask for a little peace and privacy, was a public breakup. Once again, the media headlined: “Gabriel Boric divorces Irina Karamanos”, never the other way around. It is one of those subtle ways of blinding the female voice and leaving all the decisions and the public space for them.
There were some signs that indicated, some time before, the couple’s estrangement, curious signs. For example, she did not go out to give candy to the children on Halloween, nor was she seen at the opening of the Pan American Games. In addition, he ate alone in a restaurant and rode his bicycle without company. These are signs, of course, but above all of the foolish role that is assigned to these women, giving candy to children, accompanying their husbands at the table or in their leisure time. Wow. If such sexist conceptions did not exist, no one would be surprised if one walks or eats alone, or goes out to attend the tradition of the Day of the Dead, if he wants, since that is what he was elected for at the polls.
It is not surprising, then, that these new women find the charitable and maternal shoes of first lady tight and that many of these marriages end up exploding. They have their studies, their professions, their concerns and their own voice. And as much as they have accompanied their husbands in the political life prior to taking office, in essence it is nothing more than that, again an accompaniment, but without any additional obligations.
In some countries, campaign strategists have lamented that some wives do not want to participate in the political game, with how good they are on camera, how beautiful they are and how much presence they have. The complaint gives the measure of rejection: who wants to be a flowerpot woman at this point? Men work in politics and women do not. It is urgent to determine, as Gutiérrez Müller asks, what the constitutional obligations are and separate them from the old tradition that relegates them to macho roles. If even queens are already separating, surely they are tired of carrying the bouquet of flowers at every event. But, unlike consort presidents, monarchs cannot refuse with arguments from this century, because they are there by divine grace. And the laws of heaven are not those of earth. They are lentils, you take them or leave them.
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