MEXICO CITY – Sunday’s presidential election holds special significance, especially for women in Mexico and the United States.
Standing in the middle of the square, Victoria Martinez contemplated the majestic scene unfolding before her. The great cathedral of Mexico on one side and the National Palace in front of it. He missed his family, especially those living in California and elsewhere in the United States.
“I wish they were here to bear witness to history,” said Victoria Martinez, who sold corn on the cob from her makeshift stand in the middle of Mexico’s giant town square, known as El Zocalo. “This is what we all dreamed of: one day seeing a woman lead the country.”
Mexicans elected Sunday Claudia Sheinbaum by an overwhelming majority as the first female president, replacing her mentor, the outgoing populist leader, Andres Manual Lopez Obrador.
Sheinbaum’s family fled the Holocaust and later found refuge and built a new life in Mexico, where Sheinbaum was born. Known as The doctor, Sheinbaum, a former mayor of Mexico City, is a former university professor who studied energy engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a master’s degree. She then returned to Mexico City to obtain her doctorate at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
Fluent English, SheinbaumIt is The immigration story resonates across borders and into central California and Texas, where women traditionally play a key role in providing for their families, sacrificing themselves to provide opportunity for the next generation .
For Suzie Azar, the first and so far only woman to serve as mayor of El Paso, Sheinbaum’s election represents an opportunity to truly eradicate the corruption that has plagued Mexico for so long.
“I’m really excited to see a woman in this office,” she said. “I think over the years, in every Mexican presidential election, they all claim to get rid of corruption and, being a woman, she is not as corrupt as the men of the past.”
Azar nonetheless expressed concern about Sheinbaum’s political ties to incumbent Lopez Obrador.
“The fact that she’s more of a follower of the former president, who was more of a left-winger, I think there’s a fear that she’s a puppet,” Azar said. “I hope she moves away from this narrow, left-wing ideology and toward the middle ground.”
Adair Margo, a former first lady of El Paso who for decades led tours of Juárez and has an attachment to its history, including its famous namesake, Mexican President Benito Juárez, said she had “high hopes” for…
