Of the many terrible things that have been said about Mexico’s alleged inferiority compared to its northern neighbor, the most reprehensible wasn’t even said by a gringo.
“Poor Mexico: so far from God, so close to the United States.”
Dedicated to Porfirio Díaz, 19th century Mexican dictatorThis lament first emerged in the mainstream American press in the 1940s and has been used on the lips of Mexicans ever since. Even though there’s no evidence that Diaz actually said this apocryphal quote, I understand why it persists: it’s a major insult on many levels.
It always makes my parents’ country look inferior to the United States. It makes Mexico look lawless and profane. To have Díaz say these words is to suggest that Mexico’s government is doomed to lawlessness and impudence.
Well, who’s crying now?
on Sunday, Mexico elects Claudia Sheinbaum as presidentAnd history was made in such a way that American politics seemed as old as the Whigs themselves.
Sheinbaum will become the first female president in a country that has long been considered a masculine wasteland. Being of Jewish heritage, she is the first non-Christian to assume the presidency in a country where Catholicism still dominates the nation’s psyche, even if it does not hold the nation’s seats. She easily defeated another woman, Xochitl Gálvez Ruiz, who made history by becoming Mexico’s first female runner-up in a presidential election, even though she lost.
The United States, by the way, has broken only the last of these barriers.
Sheinbaum will be sworn in on October 1. Until then, the world will be watching the US, where a different kind of presidential campaign is heading towards its final stretch. The top candidates are two old white men Joe has held this position before and just like four years ago, they are once again facing each other. Joe Biden is contesting for the Democratic presidential nomination for the fourth time. Donald Trump is the Republican Party’s presidential candidate for the third consecutive election.
This is the kind of outdated leadership that Americans have long associated with third world countries — but no, this is America in 2024.
Americans have looked down on Mexico’s government for decades, while holding up our own as an example for the rest of the world to emulate. But in 2024, which country can boast a better track record in its presidential milestones?
Mexico elected a black president, Vicente GuerreroIn 1829, when the US Constitution still considered a slave three-fifths of a person and did not give free people the right to vote. The first Mexican president of indigenous descent, Benito Juáreztook office in 1858, when the US government was still conducting a campaign of extermination against Native Americans.
Josefina Vazquez Mota She became the first female presidential candidate for a major Mexican party, four years before Hillary Clinton became the first first lady in the US. In 2018, the current president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador He was the first winner who was not a member of Mexico’s two traditional top parties, the PAN and the PRI. In this country, candidates who are not Democrats or Republicans are seen as weirdos who threaten civilization – as are the people who vote for them.
Irma Selene Hernandez Atondo waits to vote outside the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles on Sunday.
(Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times)
This weekend, consulates across the U.S. offered in-person voting for the Mexican presidential election for the first time, but they weren’t ready for it. Hour-long queues The number of people excited to participate. Voter turnout — 60% so far — lags behind the 66% of Americans who voted in the 2020 presidential election. But most Mexicans filled out their ballots with optimism, while we did so with fear.
Mexico’s democracy is far from perfect, of course. Antonio López de Santa Anna served a total of 11 terms as president, while Díaz ruled with an iron fist for 35 years. For most of the 20th century, presidential elections were the domain of one party, PRICurrently, violence continues against political candidates, particularly those running for local office. At least 37 candidates were killed in the months leading up to Sunday’s elections, and hundreds were intimidated, to the extent that López Obrador’s administration assigned them security guards.
Sheinbaum needs to prove she is more than a follower of her mentor, López Obrador, whom critics portray as a leftist version of Trump for his cult of personality, domineering attitude toward haters and willingness to hold on to power even when not officially in office. On social media, Gálvez complained that she faced “unequal competition against an entire state apparatus dedicated to favoring its candidate,” even going so far as to accept her defeat because “I am a Democrat and I trust institutions.”
But the fact is: Mexico’s democracy worked on Sunday, at least at the presidential level. Mexicans saw the election as a chance to choose a new leader, not a fraught referendum on the nation’s future, the way many Americans view the Biden-Trump rematch. Despite her complaint, Galvez isn’t crying about a stolen election — something This actually happened in Mexico – While Trump continues to insist that he is the real winner in 2020.
Sheinbaum’s opponents are not threatening an uprising, because Trump supporters did this by storming the Capitol on January 6And never in the history of Mexico has a criminal dared to run for president, let alone win, as Trump is doing now.
Poor Mexico, really. So close to the United States, so far from a democracy that offers hope.
