Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday called for sexual harassment to be made a crime nationwide and said she had pressed charges after a video captured a drunk man groping her.
Sheinbaum’s call followed her five-minute time-saving walk from Mexico’s National Palace to the Education Ministry, a walk that soon generated headlines for the wrong reasons.
In a video circulating widely on social platforms, a man who appeared to be drunk stepped up and leaned in for a kiss and touched the president’s body with his hands.
Sheinbaum, 63, gently pushed his hands away, maintaining a stiff smile as she turned to face him. She could be heard to say in part, “Don’t worry.”
Sheinbaum said she felt a responsibility to press charges for all Mexican women. “If this is done to the president, what is going to happen to all of the young women in our country?”
Earlier, Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada had announced overnight that the man had been arrested.
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.
Like her predecessor and political mentor, ex-president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum tries to maintain a connection with the people, frequently diving into crowds for selfies and handshakes.
Her security detail was not immediately visible in the close-shot video on Tuesday.
Gender-based violence discussion reignited
The incident catapulted gender violence discussion to the highest-profile platform in Mexico on Wednesday, and Sheinbaum used her daily press briefing to call on states to scrutinise their laws and procedures to make it easier for women to report such assaults.
Mexicans needed to hear a “loud and clear no; women’s personal space must not be violated,” Sheinbaum said.
Sheibaum also shared her childhood experience with the widespread problem. She said she had experienced similar incidents of harassment when she was 12 years old while using public transportation to get to school.
“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.
Analysts say that if Mexico’s president is not exempt from street harassment, then it’s not difficult to imagine what women with hours-long commutes on public transportation are experiencing daily.
The incident has also 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.
According to Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first female president, she and her team had decided to walk from the National Palace to the Education Ministry to avoid a 20-minute car ride in city traffic.