Of the numerous horrible issues which were mentioned about Mexico’s supposed inferiority to its northern neighbor, essentially the most damning wasn’t even uttered by a gringo.
“Poor Mexico: So removed from God, so near america.”
Attributed to nineteenth century Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz, the lament first bubbled up within the mainstream American press in the course of the Forties and has been rubbed within the faces of Mexicans ever since. Though there’s no proof that Díaz truly mentioned the apocryphal quote, I get why it has lingered: It’s an important insult on a number of ranges.
It portrays the nation of my mother and father as endlessly lesser than america. It makes Mexico out to be lawless and unholy. Placing these phrases in Díaz’s mouth implies that Mexico’s authorities is condemned to lawlessness and strongmen.
Nicely, who’s crying now?
On Sunday, Mexico elected Claudia Sheinbaum as president, and historical past was made in a means that makes American politics appear as antiquated because the Whigs.
Sheinbaum will grow to be the primary feminine president of a rustic lengthy solid as a macho wasteland. Of Jewish heritage, she’s the primary non-Christian to imagine the presidency in a nation the place Catholicism nonetheless holds the nation’s psyche, if not its pews. She handily beat one other girl, Xóchitl Gálvez Ruiz, who made historical past even whereas dropping by changing into Mexico’s first feminine runner-up in a presidential election.
The US, by the best way, has damaged solely the final of these boundaries.
Sheinbaum shall be sworn in Oct. 1. By then, the eyes of the world shall be centered on the U.S., the place a far completely different presidential marketing campaign shall be wheezing to its finish. The highest candidates are two outdated white guys who’ve held the job earlier than and are repeating their face-off from 4 years in the past. Joe Biden is working on his fourth Democratic presidential ticket. Donald Trump is the Republican Social gathering’s presidential nominee for the third straight election.
It’s the kind of hoary management that People have lengthy related to Third World nations — however nope, that is the U.S. in 2024.
People have snidely seemed down on Mexico’s authorities for many years whereas holding ours up as a beacon for the remainder of the world to emulate. However in 2024, which nation can boast of a greater monitor document in its presidential milestones?
Mexico elected a Black president, Vicente Guerrero, in 1829, when the U.S. Structure nonetheless thought-about a slave to be three-fifths of an individual and didn’t give freedmen the fitting to vote. The primary Mexican president of Indigenous descent, Benito Juarez, assumed workplace in 1858, when the U.S. authorities was nonetheless pursuing a marketing campaign of extermination towards Native People.
Josefina Vázquez Mota grew to become the primary feminine presidential candidate for a significant Mexican occasion 4 years earlier than Hillary Clinton grew to become the primary within the U.S. In 2018, present president Andrés Manuel López Obrador was the primary winner who wasn’t a member of Mexico’s two conventional prime events, PAN and the PRI. On this nation, candidates who aren’t Democrats or Republicans are handled as weirdos who threaten civilization — as are the individuals who vote for them.
Irma Selene Hernandez Atondo waits to vote Sunday exterior the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Instances)
This weekend, consulates across the U.S. supplied in-person voting for a Mexican presidential election for the primary time however weren’t ready for the hours-long strains of individuals excited to participate. The turnout — 60% up to now — lags behind the 66% of People who voted within the 2020 presidential election. However most Mexicans crammed out their ballots with optimism, whereas we did so with dread.
Mexico’s democracy is nowhere close to good, after all. Antonio López de Santa Anna served a complete of 11 phrases as president, whereas Díaz dominated with an iron fist for 35 years. For a lot of the twentieth century, presidential elections had been the area of 1 occasion, the PRI. Within the current day, violence towards political candidates, notably these working for native workplace, persists. A minimum of 37 candidates had been assassinated within the months main as much as Sunday’s elections, and lots of extra had been threatened, to the purpose that López Obrador’s administration assigned them safety guards.
Sheinbaum must show she’s extra than simply an acolyte of her mentor, López Obrador, whom critics painting as a leftist model of Trump for his cult of character, imperious perspective towards haters and need to carry onto energy even when he’s not formally in workplace. On social media, Gálvez complained that she confronted “unequal competitors towards all the state equipment devoted to favoring its candidate,” at the same time as she conceded her defeat as a result of “I’m a democrat and I consider in establishments.”
However the reality stays: Mexico’s democracy labored Sunday, at the very least on the presidential stage. Mexicans handled the election as an opportunity to elect a brand new chief, not an apocalyptic referendum on the nation’s future, the best way that too many People view the Biden-Trump rematch. Regardless of her grumbling, Gálvez isn’t crying a few stolen election — one thing that has truly occurred in Mexico — whereas Trump continues to insist he was the rightful winner in 2020.
Sheinbaum’s opponents aren’t threatening an rebellion, as Trump supporters did on Jan. 6 by storming the Capitol. And by no means in Mexico’s historical past has a convicted felon dared to run for the presidency, not to mention with a shot of successful, as Trump now does.
Poor Mexico, certainly. So near america, which is so removed from a democracy that conjures up hope.
