Mexico election: Meet the women leading the race for president

As Claudia Sheinbaum, the front-runner in Mexico’s presidential election, arrives for a rally in a packed park within the colonial metropolis of Orizaba, the group begins to chant “Presidenta!”

These attending are satisfied that’s what she is about to grow to be: Mexico’s first ever girl president.

The polls recommend they could be proper.

Together with her closest rival, Xóchitl Gálvez, additionally a girl, and the one man within the presidential race a distant third, Mexico is nearly sure to set to interrupt centuries of male domination of the nation’s highest workplace.

In fluent English, Ms Sheinbaum, who belongs to the governing Morena social gathering, says the truth that each main candidates are girls is an indication that Mexican society is lastly evolving.

“It’s a logo for Mexico. I feel it’s additionally a logo for the world,” she informed the BBC.

“Mexico has been known as a machista nation for a few years. However Mexicans at the moment are ruled by many ladies and that’s a change,” says the previous mayor of Mexico Metropolis, referring to the gender parity within the cupboard and the excessive variety of girls serving as state governors.

“I see younger women who’re excited {that a} girl goes to be president. And it modifications the tradition for girls and for males.”

Mexico is a rustic the place round 11 girls a day are murdered on common and Ms Sheinbaum was fast to acknowledge that extra wanted to be completed to cut back violence in opposition to girls.

That’s simpler mentioned than completed.

Veracruz is among the 5 worst states for femicides within the nation.

Simply days earlier than the candidate’s go to to the japanese state, the physique of 23-year-old Isamar Galindo was discovered along with her fingers tied, tortured, wrapped in a blanket and dumped in a canal.

“Profound cultural modifications don’t occur in a single day,” says Ms Sheinbaum of the ingrained issues of machismo and gender-based violence in Mexican society.

All through the marketing campaign, her message has remained the identical. If elected, she says, she is going to proceed the social and political course of launched by her mentor, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Their supporters name it the “Fourth Transformation of Mexico”, evaluating it with different key moments in Mexican historical past together with independence and the Mexican Revolution.

Mr López Obrador – generally recognized by his initials as Amlo – has launched a collection of social improvement measures to alleviate poverty together with pupil grants and a common state pension.

The programmes are so well-liked that opposition candidates have been at pains to vow that they won’t scrap them.

In rallies and speeches, Ms Sheinbaum has been cautious to reward Amlo and his insurance policies.

In return, his help may convey her large dividends on the polls – maybe the presidency itself.

Opponents, significantly her principal rival, Xóchitl Gálvez, say President López Obrador is a populist and paint Ms Sheinbaum as merely his puppet, unable to interrupt free from his outsized character. The previous environmental scientist refutes the characterisation:

“I really feel positive about myself. I don’t care about this stuff they are saying.”

“In fact I’m from the identical motion as López Obrador. We fought collectively for greater than 20 years to have the federal government we’ve got, for the alternatives and rights we’ve gained for Mexicans.”

“I’m going to stay a distinct time in historical past, however I’m going to control with the identical ideas and that’s a great factor for Mexican individuals.”

The BBC requested an interview with Ms Gálvez however she declined.

In the course of the marketing campaign Ms Gálvez, who’s working for a conservative opposition coalition, accused the federal government of cronyism and widespread abuses of energy.

She additionally criticised social spending throughout President López Obrador’s six years in energy as mismanaged and erratically distributed.

“Within the face of the federal government’s failed social insurance policies, Mexicans’ month-to-month budgets are stretched too skinny. There are 9 million individuals in excessive poverty,” she mentioned within the final televised debate, promising to decrease the pensionable age to 60 from 65.

Away from the noise of the marketing campaign, excessive within the Veracruz mountains, the circumstances are perfect for rising among the best espresso on this planet.

The espresso bean is on the coronary heart of tight-knit rural communities like Ixhuatlán del Café, house to a girls’s espresso cooperative known as FemCafe.

In most Mexican agricultural co-ops, girls will not be allowed to vote or maintain decision-making roles. However at FemCafe your complete enterprise, from bean to cup, is within the fingers of ladies.

“It’s about recognising that structural inequality – that girls have a lot much less entry to land than males,” says the cooperative’s founder, Gisela Illescas.

“Though girls have at all times been in espresso manufacturing, we’ve been made invisible, denied the ability to affect the general course or the day-to-day working of manufacturing.”

In addition to producing their very own model, FemCafe members additionally run a small espresso store on the town. Gisela Illescas provided some recommendation for the following president:

“It’s not nearly being a girl however about being gender-conscious, which is a really totally different factor. For instance, the agricultural ministry has by no means been led by a girl. And a girls’s perspective in that position would make an enormous distinction to the agricultural sector,” she says.

Within the Claudia Sheinbaum rally in Orizaba, the group’s different principal chant is “la primera!”, that means “the primary.”

In truth, different nations in Latin America have had feminine presidents prior to now – together with Brazil, Chile and Argentina – however a girl on the helm in Mexico is vastly important, and lengthy overdue.

The extra complicated process, nevertheless, lies in undoing a long time of sexism, inequality and gender-based violence in a deeply patriarchal society.