In a moment intended to be a brief, routine walk from Mexico’s National Palace to the Education Ministry, President Claudia Sheinbaum encountered an unsettling and widely shared incident — a man, visibly intoxicated, groping her. This disturbing episode has escalated into a viral moment, starkly highlighting the pervasive issue of harassment and assault faced by women in Mexico.

The video, capturing this unacceptable act, has brought significant attention to a problem many women endure daily. Utilizing her platform, President Sheinbaum addressed the incident during her regular press briefing on Wednesday, revealing that she has filed charges against the perpetrator. She urged state governments to review and improve their laws and procedures, making it more accessible for women to report such offenses. “A clear and unequivocal message must resonate,” she emphasized, “that women’s personal space is inviolable.”

Sheinbaum expressed a profound sense of duty in pursuing legal action. She questioned the implications for all Mexican women if such an incident could happen to her, the president. “If this can be done to the president, what will happen to all the young women in our country?” she asked, highlighting her concerns.

The incident underscores a troubling reality: if even the president cannot walk safely for five minutes without being subjected to such behavior, what then must women who spend hours commuting on public transport face? This incident serves as a stark reminder of the everyday challenges women encounter.

Andrea González Martínez, a 27-year-old employee at Mexican lender Nacional Monte de Piedad, shared her own experiences of harassment on public transportation. In one instance, she recounted, a man followed her home, illustrating the pervasive and distressing nature of these encounters that many women endure.

Andrea González Martínez, 27, who works for Mexican lender Nacional Monte de Piedad, said she has been harassed on public transportation, in one case the man followed her home.

“It happens regularly, it happens on public transportation,” she said. “It’s something you experience every day in Mexico.”

Her coworker, Carmen Maldonado Castillo, 43, said she has witnessed it.

“It’s not good that men attack us,” she said. “You can’t walk around free in the street.”

Sheinbaum said Wednesday that she understands how widespread the problem is.

“I decided to press charges because this is something that I experienced as a woman, but that we as women experience in our country,” she said.

She said she had similar experiences of harassment when she was 12 years old and using public transportation to get to school. As president, she said, she felt like she had a responsibility to 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 emphasize 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 minimized the assault, continuing to smile and talk calmly to the man. But she hoped the president’s willingness to talk about it Wednesday 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.”