There are 19 days left until the end of the six-year term and Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller has decided to attend for the first time the Mornings to talk about her relationship with her husband, the president. “He invited me and I accepted because I think it is a good opportunity,” said the writer and academic, “because it generated some interest in knowing about me, about us, about this journey not only of the six-year term, but over almost two decades.” For more than 90 minutes, the researcher has answered dozens of questions from journalists: about her future, her son, the challenges she has experienced since the National Palace, her opinion on Claudia Sheinbaum, the forgiveness that Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked from Spain, her work to recover the archaeological remains, about the Moctezuma headdress, about the Yaqui extermination, but, above all, she has spoken about her marriage.
Gutiérrez Müller, 55, married López Obrador, now 70, in 2006. It was the politician’s second marriage. He was married to Rocío Beltrán, the mother of his three oldest children: José Ramón, Andrés Manuel and Gonzalo Alfonso. She died in 2003, when López Obrador was head of government of Mexico City. The president continues to write a thank you to his first wife on each anniversary. “You couldn’t lead a transformation movement without the support of a partner,” he said on Tuesday, about how “fundamental” Rocío’s support was because he was “involved, working, in building a movement to transform Mexico” touring towns and squares, with five meetings a day, and he couldn’t even take his children “to the circus.”
This Tuesday, a few months after stopping rumors of a divorce and a couple of weeks before stepping aside from the National Palace, López Obrador hugged Gutiérrez Müller and in front of the cameras, dozens of journalists and half a million viewers on social networks, he turned the Morning in a declaration of love.
—My late wife was the one who took care of my children. When she passes away, I also need a companion, because the fight continues, the struggle continues, and I rely on Beatriz, in very difficult moments, and she supports me, sustains me and gives me strength and love to move forward, to not give up.
She interrupts him, and laughs:
—My mother said when she met him: “How lucky you are, you have my daughter Beatriz!”
—That’s what my opponents, the conservatives, say, too, about how she fell in love with me? Because she’s quite in love…
—What a shame!
—What a shame!
—She is so delicate, so exquisite, studious, a doctor…
—Oh, are you a doctor of occult sciences or what?
—No, literature!! For a corncob from Tepetitán, Macuspana, Tabasco. Patarrajada Indian.
—The patarrajada Indian looks handsome.
And laughter explodes.
The scene is unprecedented for Gutiérrez Müller, who has tried to keep a low profile during these six years. “My main concern is that I am not a public person, I do not want to be public, and it was very difficult for me to be photographed, defamed, applauded. That was my biggest challenge. I have stage fright, due to a trauma I have had since I was 15 due to an event that happened to me. It is not noticeable because I work on it, but I would not be interested in being a public person,” she admitted this morning, about to leave her position as the president’s wife.
The academic had already decided in May 2018, before López Obrador won the elections, that she was not going to occupy the role of “first lady”, nor did she want the title. “I was very clear about it, I did not want to do what those who had preceded me did. I proposed to think differently about the public space of women, their presence in political life, in this case accidental, because that is how I consider myself: an accident in politics, and to leave behind stale ideas about the role of the wives of rulers,” she explained this Tuesday, on a subject about which she has even written a book, Silent Feminism.
Just as she rejected that first role, she says she now rules out taking the leap into politics herself. “I consider myself very political, but I don’t plan to run for any public office, I have been saying that for a long time, it is not the story of today. I have already paid my share of social political participation, and I feel very satisfied. This does not mean that I will not change my mind, in a sense that I accept that one should never say never, but today, at this moment, my answer is no,” she has concluded. On whether her son Jesús Ernesto López, 17 years old, would want to take that leap, she has no answer: “I don’t know, honestly. He is a young man, like all of my husband’s children, who has been raised in a highly political and politicized environment, he is the subject of many after-dinner conversations.”
Starting on October 2, a new period begins for the couple. López Obrador —who has recalled this Tuesday the importance of being close to the children— is going to live in Palenque, Chiapas, and Gutiérrez Müller is staying in Mexico City to take care of Jesús Ernesto. “We are a happily married couple. We are a very close couple, who have been through everything, like all the marriages in this world. What changes now is that he is going to Palenque, and it is where he wants to be and I have supported him a lot, because he deserves everything, because he is a person who has been a great Mexican, an opponent, then a ruler, he has worked very hard, I am a witness to his sleepless nights, early mornings, yawns, his efforts, disappointments, dreams. My husband deserves to go wherever he wants to go and to feel very happy,” the academic said straight away.
“I can’t do it, although we’ll be seeing each other very often, right? Because I have a son, well, [se ríe]we have, that he is a minor and that he has to go to school, I have a job left, we have an important job left with Jesús Ernesto, and we are now in the third year of high school, in a few months this boy will have to decide what he wants to study, I have to support him, I have to be with him. The presence of his parents is very important, we will be close to his father, but the burden, and I receive it with great pleasure, but the main burden will be mine. I need to shepherd him, accompany him, give him strength, guide him as best as possible. It is my great mission in life, and we will see how we fit in.”
“Thank you, President, for allowing me to be at your press conference,” and with a slight bow and “excuse me,” Gutiérrez Müller leaves the public scene for almost the last time.
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