The state of politics across the world is in such turmoil that many people haven’t noticed that next year, Mexico will have a woman president. Yes, it’s true, in 2024 we’ll have a Presidenta for the first time in our history. Of course, it won’t be the first time this occurs in Latin America. Violeta Chamorro ruled Nicaragua in the early nineties and, in Argentina, Cristina Férnandez de Kirchner served as president for two terms in the twentieth-first century. Still, electing una Señora Presidenta in one of the most notorious macho countries in the world has to raise some eyebrows.
Under the Mexican elections’ rules, there’s not supposed to be any campaigning this early. But since politicians in Mexico follow only one rule that says: rules are for suckers, we already have the candidates doing what they call “not-campaigning”, which is actually campaigning in violation of the rules. Political analysts have been splitting hairs over these violations. The common voters, however, don’t care. All they know is that there are two candidates that are vying for the mythical presidential chair: Xóchitl Gálvez and Claudia Sheinbaum. Two dynamic women with strikingly different backgrounds.
Claudia Sheinbaum has collaborated with Andrés Manuel López Obrador since the early 2000s and it is said that the Presidente has chosen her as his political heir. To what extent she’ll continue with his so-called Fourth Transformation is not very clear. So far, Sheinbaum hasn’t been able to connect with the strata of the population that serves as the base for Morena, the party that she helped to found, and which propelled López Obrador to the presidency and Sheinbaum to the powerful position of Governor of Mexico City, the first woman and Jewish person to do so. Her record is spotty at best and she comes across as a clone of López Obrador. But she is leading in the most recent polls and is clearly the favorite to win the election. Still, there are some doubters out there because even while she tries to mimic the President in many respects, even in his pueblo way of talking, it is obvious that she lacks the connection to the people that characterizes López Obrador. This may be because Sheinbaum comes from the upper middle class. That is, she’s one of those “aspirantes” that the President detests so much.
The other major contender, Xóchitl Gálvez, wasn’t even in the presidential political race until recently. She’s a successful business woman who has played political musical chairs, jumping from one party to another, finally landing as senator for the Partido de Acción Nacional. Ironically, López Obrador projected Gálvez into the presidential race when he denied her entry into the Presidential Palace to respond to the disparaging remarks he made about her in his morning talks. He tried to take her voice away, but she ended up with a “boomvox” heard around the country. Aware of her newfound popularity, the multi-party coalition, Frente Amplio por México, put her forth as its presidential nominee earlier this year. Now López Obrador is running scared because he knows that Gálvez has a chance of reaching and converting his base to her political views. Why? Because unlike Sheinbaum, Gálvez comes from a family with roots in the underclass: her father is an Otomí native and her mother a mestiza.
Both candidates are highly educated and have been successful in their careers. But I would say that because of her Indigenous background, Gálvez can claim to have overcome more obstacles than Sheinbaum on her rise to the top. A strange similarity is that both have been accused of plagiarism in their university degree work. But that’s fine since plagiarism in Mexico is a favorite pastime of college students. Why, even justice Yasmín Esquivel Mossa of the Mexican Supreme Court has been embroiled in similar accusations for months and she hasn’t resigned yet! Mexican voters will surely overlook such peccadillos.
A final observation. If these two politicians were running in the US, we all know the press would be revealing everything they could about their cultural background, probing their Jewish and Indigenous authenticism. But so far, Mexicans haven’t made a big deal of their ethnicity, probably because for most citizens of the country those identity games are not such a big issue as they are in the politics of the US. This may be because Mexicans still see themselves as mestizos in nationalist terms. Whether or not race becomes an issue in the campaign doesn’t matter though. Next year, the elections will be monumental. Mexicans will elect much more than just the first Presidenta. If voters choose Xóchtil Gálvez, they’ll put in the presidential chair the first woman of Otomi Indigenous background; and if they vote for Claudia Sheinbaum, they’ll opt for a Jewish woman to lead one of the world’s super Catholic nations, and most macho to boot! Either way, the elections will be earth-shattering for Mexicans everywhere.
Postcards From a PostMexican 
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