The female presidents: “For the first time in the presidential elections in Mexico, two women are competing against each other. Can one of them change the country, marked by machismo and violence?” asks ZEIT ONLINE.
“On June 2, Mexico will hold elections. In addition to the presidency, around 20,000 political offices need to be filled, at the national level, in the states, and in the municipalities. These are the bloodiest elections ever: more than two dozen politicians have been killed in recent months. Often, the powerful drug cartels are behind the murders, and the perpetrators are rarely held accountable. For the first time in the country’s history – with around 128 million inhabitants, the most populous in the Spanish-speaking world – a woman will be elected to the highest office: a female president. Claudia Sheinbaum is running for the party of the incumbent left-wing populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Xóchitl Gálvez represents a broad coalition of opposition parties who want to offer the greatest possible resistance to his designated successor. (…)
Having a female president here? Mexico is one of the countries with the highest rates of violence against women.”
Gálvez often emphasizes that she, unlike Sheinbaum, does not come from privileged circumstances. Her parents are descendants of indigenous natives. According to Gálvez, she does not run as a puppet of a powerful man like her competitor. However, her problem, according to ZEIT, is that her political positions resemble those of López Obrador and Sheinbaum. To differentiate herself, Gálvez only has the issue of security. Sheinbaum also talks about security, but more on the sidelines: what is needed are perspectives for young people so they do not join the cartels. Sheinbaum acknowledges that Gálvez may be of indigenous descent, but she, as the descendant of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania and Bulgaria, also fights for the votes of indigenous people, who make up about 20% of Mexican society.
In polls, Sheinbaum leads by around 20 percentage points.
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