Mexico is experiencing a historic day this Tuesday without the adjective being exaggerated. The presidential sash has been placed on an ivory dress with embroidery, that of Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, the first woman to achieve the highest dignity of the country after 200 years of the Republic and after 65 men, generals and civilians, preceded her.
More than 35 million Mexicans celebrate that the person they voted for on June 2 takes the baton of command to begin governing. But it is not just any six-year change. The economy, security, health and education have been relegated to offer a single reading of this October 1st in a feminist key. Seven decades since Mexican women achieved the right to vote and be voted for, today the adjective historic is on everyone’s lips. The three branches, Legislative, Executive and Judicial, have been headed by women. “Not only can it be different, it has to be better, otherwise the struggle of so many women would have no meaning,” said María Guadalupe Murguía Gutiérrez, head of the PAN bench, the main opposition party. Their own people could not contain themselves with joy.
A commission of women waited on the steps of Congress for the 62-year-old president, and on this occasion there was practically not a single janitor in the chamber who was not a woman. The cries of “President, president!” They have interrupted his speech on several occasions. Sheinbaum has had her classic tribute to the anonymous women “who fought for their dreams and achieved it, and to those who did not achieve it, to those who have had to remain silent and shout alone, to the indigenous women, the domestic workers who leave their towns to support us all, to the great-grandmothers who did not learn to read and write because that was not something for girls, to the mothers who first gave us life and then everything else, the sisters, the aunts, the beautiful daughters. I don’t arrive alone, we all arrive. Today all of them arrive, who thought we were free and happy.” And she concluded: “I am a mother, grandmother, scientist and woman of faith, and as of today, by the will of the people, the constitutional president of the United Mexican States. “I’m not going to let you down.”
The day has been full of symbols and the female presence in the official and traditional rituals has been the majority: one of the great icons of the Mexican left, a fighter for feminist freedoms and rights, the nonagenarian Ifigenia Martínez, today president of Congress, has been in charge of delivering the band with the tricolor flag to Sheinbaum, a transfer between women that was also pioneering.
The president has had a speech that is more political than institutional, very partisan, programmatic, which began by praising the work of her predecessor, “the best president” in contemporary history, whom she compared to General Lázaro Cárdenas, one of the great myths of the country, almost without distinction of ideologies. Sheinbaum has had his first words for the native peoples, the greatness of the existing civilizations “before the Spanish invaded.” He then reviewed the government program, from the price of gasoline, the minimum wage or the basic basket, education, health, point by point, a speech copied from that which Mexicans have already heard many times, both in the electoral campaign and in a time she was elected president.
Sheinbaum comes to power with a left-wing party, Morena, founded by his predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with whom he has just completed a calm transition that promises continuity with some changes. With a degree in Physics and a doctorate in Environmental Engineering, she was part of the intergovernmental panel against climate change that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Granddaughter of Europeans of Jewish origin and daughter of scientists and academics like her, she has a long political career behind her that began in the Mexican student struggle. With the exception of a couple of governments of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), he is the first person to come to power without ever having had a relationship with the PRI (Party of the Institutional Revolution), which governed Mexico for decades. Quite the contrary, it was against that party, which today is almost irrelevant, against whom he gave his first political fights.
Representatives from 105 countries and 23 international organizations attended the inauguration and all nations in the world with whom Mexico maintains diplomatic relations were invited, but the 2019 diplomatic incident with Spain, following the Conquest 500 years ago, has King Felipe VI was excluded, so the “brother country”, Mexico’s second trading partner after the United States, did not have any institutional representation at the event. That’s also historic. Yes, there were, and the president greeted them, “some Spanish deputies” from the left, such as Gerardo Pisarello “and many others.”
The president’s vehicle, which traveled in the morning with her husband, Jesús María Tarriba, had difficulty leaving her street due to the influx of followers before heading towards Congress. Almost at the same time, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who on Monday left the seat of government, the National Palace, forever, was also heading his car to the same place to deliver the band, with the same traffic difficulties. The former president leaves among crowds: he has been the president with the warmest farewell in decades. “He is the most loved,” Sheinbaum said later in Congress. “See you always brother, friend, companion.”
In the capital’s square, the great Mexican Zócalo, choirs, dances have gathered and the mariachi, an international Mexican emblem, was composed entirely of women. Even today, that is not so common among the bully Jalisco gangs. Sheinbaum, like López Obrador did before, had the presence on his big day of representatives of the many indigenous peoples of the country, but in this case they were also women. In some remote mountain villages, the poor performance of mayors is still punished by vilifying them in women’s clothing in public squares. Mexico is a very sexist country, no one claims otherwise, but this October 1st it awarded the baton of command to the first woman in its history and the celebrations lasted for long hours.
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