The short video has spotlighted the pervasive issue of harassment and attacks on women in Mexico, bringing it to one of its most prominent platforms. In response, Sheinbaum announced during her regular press conference that she has taken legal action against the individual involved.
Additionally, she urged regional authorities to examine their legal frameworks and procedures to facilitate reporting such incidents for women. She emphasized the importance of conveying a “strong and unmistakable message” that women’s personal boundaries should never be breached.
Sheinbaum acknowledged the vast extent of this issue today.
“I chose to file charges because this is not just my experience as a woman, but a reality faced by women across our nation,” she stated.
Recounting her own encounters with harassment from the age of 12 while commuting to school on public transport, she shared her personal connection to the matter.
In her role as a leader, she expressed a deep sense of obligation to stand up for all women.
Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada had announced overnight that the man had been arrested.
The incident immediately raised questions about the president’s security, but Sheinbaum dismissed any suggestion that she would increase her security or change how she interacts with people.
She explained that she and her team had decided to walk from the National Palace to the Education Ministry to save time.
She said they could walk it in five minutes, rather than taking a 20-minute car ride.
Brugada used some of Sheinbaum’s own language about being elected Mexico’s first woman president to emphasise that harassment of any woman – in this case Mexico’s most powerful – is an assault on all women.
When Sheinbaum was elected, she said that it wasn’t just her coming to power, it was all women.
Brugada said that was “not a slogan, it’s a commitment to not look the other way, to not allow misogyny to continue to be veiled in habits, to not accept a single additional humiliation, not another abuse, not a single femicide more.”
Lilian Valvuena, 31, said she didn’t think Sheinbaum had really taken violence against women seriously until yesterday when she had a first-hand experience.
She hopes that work to better train police to respond will follow.
“They have to prepare them,” she said.
“They don’t know what protocols to follow.”
Marina Reyna, executive director of the Guerrero Association against Violence toward Women, said that watching the video she initially worried that Sheinbaum had minimised the assault, continuing to smile and talk calmly to the man.
But she hoped the president’s willingness to talk about it today would change how such cases are handled.
“You lose confidence in the institutions,” Reyna said.
“The people stop going to report it, because when you report it nothing happens.”
