Navarro is the community opinion editor for the San Diego Union-Tribune. She is a transfrontiera who lives on both sides of the border.
You don't have to be a political expert to know the outcome of Mexico's presidential election, because every poll is pretty much the same: Pollsters predict that Mexico will have its first female president this year. Just wait and see.
Their survey favors Claudia Sheinbaum, the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants, a politician who served as mayor of Mexico City from 2018 to 2023, an environmental engineer and the candidate of the coalition led by Morena, a political party founded in 2011 by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
But if the candidate currently coming in second in the polls – politician and tech entrepreneur Xochitl Gálvez, the candidate of the coalition of the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) – wins, Mexico will have its first female president. But will this really be a milestone for all women in a country that faces huge problems with gender-based violence and femicide? We'll have to wait and see.
For now, this is a milestone for women in politics in Mexico: While women have been able to vote in the United States for over 100 years, in Mexico women were not allowed to vote until 1955. Since then, many Mexican women have entered politics as candidates, won many elections, and now, for the first time, the president will hold the most important seat in the country.
While the number of women in high-ranking elected office in Mexico is not high, some have set an example for public servants in holding honorable jobs, working with integrity, and contributing to their communities, while others have not. What is clear is that a good public servant is not determined by gender or being the “first” to a position of power.
I know this because among the rights of dual citizenship is the possibility of voting in the elections of both countries, and I am fortunate to be registered to vote in both California and Baja California, where I have voted for women candidates in the past, and as a journalist I have met and interviewed women politicians, some impressive and some not.
In this election, like many Mexican voters, I did my best to listen to the candidates, but my overall analysis was that all of them lacked a real strategy for addressing many of the country's most pressing issues.
Increasing violence by drug cartels, attacks on journalists, the situation for thousands of refugees and asylum-seekers from Latin America, and a water and sanitation emergency across the country are just some of the real problems facing Mexico that neither candidate sought to delve into.
Mexico's voting culture also involves voters keeping their preferences secret and the media not endorsing any particular party or candidate. But despite that secrecy, Mexico's elections have historically come under scrutiny, beginning with allegations of fraud by El Pri, the world's longest-serving political party that has elected a candidate for the country's presidency for more than 70 years, and deepening more recently as drug cartels and organized crime have flexed their power and influence.
In recent years, criminal groups have used political violence in Mexico to directly manipulate and influence elections, protecting agreed-upon incumbent candidates, killing candidates they perceive as threats during the electoral process, intimidating poll workers on election day, and storming and stealing voting booths.
With all this in mind, I'm ready to vote. In Mexico, voters can only vote by mail if they live abroad and are registered in the system. This year, Mexican voters living in other countries had the choice to vote by mail or email, or at select locations around the world, including the Mexican Consulate in San Diego. But on Sunday I intend to cross the border to submit my vote on Mexican soil and get the ink on my thumb to prove it.
With over 100 million Mexicans registered to vote for more than 20,000 federal and local offices, this will be the largest election in Mexican history. So I wonder: will this really change history? We'll have to wait and see.
