By Victor Iván Gutiérrez on July 5, 2024
Claudia Sheinbaum’s victory comes with popular support of the Mexican people. photo: Bill Hackwell
Claudia Sheinbaum’s resounding electoral victory on June 2 signified the majority support of the people of Mexico for the political project of the Fourth Transformation, which has been involved since 2018 in a dispute, in the face of various factors of power, to make the Mexican State the instrument of economic development, the defense of national sovereignty and the construction of a post-neoliberal regime.
Seen in retrospect, this important event was also historic, not only because this endorsement was given, for the first time in the history of Mexico, to a woman (a situation that in itself would be worth celebrating); but, above all, because the woman who won is a woman from a political movement that, since the second half of the 1980s, sought to gain access to the Presidency of the Republic through peaceful means.
This is all the more significant since, in general, the dominant groups recall with joy and nostalgia the governments of Margaret Thatcher in England or Angela Merkel in Germany, and recommend to women this path to follow if they wish to enter politics.
This attitude is largely due to the fact that the Thatcher was a key player in the implementation of neoliberal policies, both in the United Kingdom and in the rest of the world, while Merkel, with her leadership, contributed to perpetuating neoliberal dogmas, especially after the economic crisis of 2008-09.
At the polar opposite of these women, Claudia, as she is affectionately called by her followers, is set to take office on October 1, bringing with her a past diametrically opposed to that of Thatcher and Merkel: Academic at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Secretary of the Environment in López Obrador’s administration (2000-05), Head of Government of Mexico City (2018- 23), student activist in the University Student Council (1986-87) and militant of the electoral left (first in the PRD and later in Morena).
Surely these credentials caused certainty to the electorate that decided to endorse on the ballots the transforming ambition of the building of the “second floor of the Fourth Transformation”. And no wonder. In the midst of worldwide electoral processes where the common denominator is recalcitrant abstentionism or the unbridled growth of the extreme right (as observed in the United States, the European Union and some Latin American countries) since 2018, in Mexico, the advance of the electoral left has been so overwhelming, to such a degree, that it conditioned the economic and political elites opposed to the Fourth Transformation to elect a competing candidate, supposedly identified with indigenous peoples and popular sectors.
For this reason, numerous experts agree that we are witnessing the emergence of a new political hegemony, which translates as the consolidation of the consensual domination of a power bloc through shared principles such as: the preponderance of the public over the private, austerity over ostentation, honesty over corruption, the State over the market and the nation over the so-called “globality”. This shift in common sense did not happen overnight. On the contrary, it has been the result of the daily discussion promoted by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which has surprisingly been eroding the certainties that sustained, precisely, the once neoliberal hegemony and that today are in deep crisis.
From June 2 to date, events have developed very rapidly. Today, the public agenda has focused on discussing the so-called Plan C, particularly with regard to the reform of the Judiciary, a modification that has concentrated most of the attention of public opinion. However, perhaps the speed of these events prevents a thorough assessment of the enormous historical and geopolitical significance of Claudia Sheinbauam’s electoral triumph.
In the midst of so much hullabaloo, not so much emphasis has been placed on the fact that Claudia will be the first woman president, not of just any country, but of Mexico, a country that annually presents dramatic figures of murdered, raped, kidnapped and disappeared women. Also, this important historical event is taking place practically on the southern border of the United States, just at the moment when the international community is facing a dangerous situation that could lead to an existential collapse, given the disastrous participation Washington is having in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, as well as its unjustifiable indifference to the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people.
Therefore, in the dramatic international and regional context, the fact that an economic, cultural and demographic power such as Mexico sympathizes, in the majority, with postulates such as social justice, democracy and national sovereignty, makes Mexico an epicenter worthy of inspiration for those peoples who wish to transform reality and who are in favor of world peace.
Victor Iván Gutiérrez is a researcher at the National Institute of Historical Studies of the Revolutions of Mexico
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English