El Mundo
Almost 100 million Mexicans will at once elect a new president, all 128 senators and 500 deputies of the two houses of Congress, governors of nine states, heads and members of local legislative bodies — a total of about 20000 elected officials.
And for the first time, two female candidates will compete for the highest state position (there is a third candidate — a man, but he doesn’t count). Moreover, for the first time in this strictly Catholic country, where the icon of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe, the main shrine of Latin America, is venerated, the head of state can become either a Jewish woman or a representative of the indigenous, as it is now fashionable to say, the Otomi Indian people.
Just for the record. Anything can happen, and if outsider Samuel Garcia, governor of Nuevo León province, who registered as a presidential candidate from the Citizens’ Movement party on November 12, wins, and like his Argentine «counterpart», passes to the highest post of head of state, it will be a testament to Washington’s brilliant and at the same time treacherous Latin American policy.
But in any case, it is Claudia Sheinbaum and Xochitl Galvez who head the list of real contenders for the presidency of the Mexican United States for 2024–2030.
One should not be surprised, however. Since some time, traditionally machista Mexico has ranked fourth out of 185 countries in the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s list of women’s representation in legislatures. Mexican women currently make up half of the cabinet and at least 50% of the members of the bicameral Congress, and head the Supreme Court. Seven of the 32 state governors are women. And now, for the first time, the highest office will go to a woman: both the ruling Morena party and the main opposition coalition have nominated female presidential candidates.
Claudia Sheinbaum has a doctorate in energy and is considered a «left-wing technocrat», a supporter of environmental protection and progressive economic policies. Until last June, Claudia Sheinbaum was the mayor of Mexico City, one of the largest and most complex cities in the world. The metropolitan area is home to 22 million people. Outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or as he is called in Mexico AMLO, — the most popular and criticized, but the real leader of the country, personally proposed Sheinbaum as a presidential candidate from the ruling Morena party (National Revival Movement), because the country’s constitution does not give the right to run for president twice. He simply does not have the capacity to repeat the «feat» of Salvador’s Bukele. This was the guarantee of Claudia’s victory in the party’s internal primaries last September.
Morena is by far the largest party in the country, at least because it has become the leading and ruling party — its governors rule 22 of Mexico’s 32 states.
Close ties to AMLO and to the U.S., have contributed to Sheinbaum’s dominance in opinion polls, which she still leads by a wide margin. Voters may consider it a great achievement to have improved the security situation during her term as mayor of Mexico City — in July 2023, the murder rate in the capital dropped to its lowest level in 16 years. This is despite the fact that seven of the world’s 10 most dangerous crime-ridden cities per capita are now in Mexico. How she did it is unknown. But she is now well known in Mexico and beyond.
Claudia Sheinbaum is running as part of a coalition of Morena, the Labor Party (PT) and Mexico’s Green Environmentalists (PVEM).
Her opponent is Xochitl Galvez, (a difficult name to pronounce), a member of the Otomi Indian tribe. Like practically all Indians in Latin America, who unexpectedly for the descendants of conquistadors entered the path of “electoral war” for power, she adheres to leftist views and enjoys the support of not only leftist voters. Galvez is a technology entrepreneur, ran the Office of Indigenous Development under President Vicente Fox (2000–2006), formed the National Commission for Indigenous Development, won the race for Mexico City neighborhood mayor from the conservative Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) party, and became a senator in 2018.
She was nominated for the presidency by a broad front that includes the PRI, a party that, in fact, has been in power in Mexico without a break for almost 100 years. She identifies herself as a center-leftist and promises to accomplish the impossible — to move from poverty to wealth. So far, this has not been accomplished in any country.
The 2024 election campaign is notable not only because it will bring a woman to the presidency. The Mayans and the Creoles have no choice: in difficult conditions in the «women’s ring» will win the one who promises to overcome crime and drug traffickers. And that’s practically …
Mexico remains in the Western Hemisphere, the main source and supplier of today’s most dangerous drugs. Both the U.S. and China are equally guilty. The number of reported murders, while still shockingly high at about 30,000 per year, has dropped slightly, but the number of missing persons without a trace (i.e., mostly perfect murders without dead bodies) has risen significantly to about 9,500 per year.
Criminal groups of both Chinese and North American origin are becoming increasingly brazen, terrorizing both ordinary residents and local candidates who refuse to cooperate with them. According to the regional sociological center Latinobarómetro, security remains a major concern for Mexicans.
No matter who wins, but Mexico, which borders the United States, will, under any president, face challenges and opportunities stemming from its geographic position as the gateway to the America, a country attractive to impoverished migrants seeking a better life in the «American Klondike».
On September 1, 1982, then-Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo, with three months left in power, announced that he would expropriate the entire banking industry amid a currency devaluation and debt crisis.
His successor, Miguel de la Madrid, then spent his entire six-year term trying to deal with the consequences of this delusional decision by paying off huge debt to bank owners.
The “debt hole” of López Obrador and his U.S. sponsors is less dramatic, but it may take several years for a female president to climb out of it.