When Erika Espinosa was growing up in Mexico City, she started to see more women take on leadership roles and develop a stronger voice in society.
“Our generation could start to demand more than what we were used to as women in Mexico,” she said. “Women barely got the right to vote in previous generations, like two, three previous generations.”
That progress reached its height Sunday when Mexico elected its first woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who is a climate scientist and former Mexico City mayor. The election featured two women as leading candidates — Sheinbaum, of the Morena political party, against opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez. Sheinbaum will start her six-year term Oct. 1.
On Sunday, Mexicans who wanted to cast a ballot in the historic election waited in long lines in U.S. cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston, though many left frustrated after they were unable to vote. About 10,560 Mexicans in the Chicago area had registered to vote, WBEZ previously reported.
For women of Mexican descent living in Chicago, the historic moment has given some hope, even to those who may not have voted.
“For a lot of us especially that are in the U.S. fighting for the Latino community, fighting for immigrant rights, fighting for gender parity/reproductive justice here in the U.S., in the past eight years since [former President Donald] Trump took office, it’s been some dark times,” said Mayra López-Zuñiga, of McKinley Park. “The country has regressed in a lot of progress. I think that having Claudia win in Mexico is giving us hope that things could be different.”
The historic moment comes 71 years after women in Mexico were granted the right to vote and decades after laws have pushed for gender parity among political candidates, said Lila Abed, the acting director of the Mexico Institute at the Washington, D.C.-based Wilson Center.
But it also comes amid a backdrop of staggering violence against women in Mexico, said Abed, adding that more work needs to be done to achieve gender equity. Even Sheinbaum, Abed said, did not have the best track record when it came to dealing with feminist protests as mayor of Mexico City.
“I think Claudia Sheinbaum, hopefully, will really take into consideration the feminist movement, women’s petitions to lower violence, the need to place more attention on women’s issues,” Abed said. “I think if she doesn’t do it, she’d be really losing a unique opportunity.”
Although she couldn’t vote in the election, Linda Xóchitl Tortolero, the president and chief executive of the Chicago-based Mujeres Latinas en Accion, followed it closely from Chicago.
“It has to be just more than one woman,” Tortolero said. “I think it’s going to be really interesting to see who she selects in terms of administration — who gets appointed into all the different departments of the Mexican federal government. I think that’s going to be really important.”
Espinosa, 41, supported Gálvez, and she was among those who left the Mexican consulate frustrated after she was unable to vote. Still, she said it marked an important step in society that two women garnered the majority of the votes.
“I’m happy that finally women have the opportunity — and well, we’ve always had the right — but the opportunity is more open,” Espinosa said in Spanish.
Espinosa, whose boutique sells Mexican artisan crafts and is decorated with a colorful mural saying ‘Mexico del Norte,’ said she wants Sheinbaum to address concerns around safety and equality for women. Often, she said, women are overqualified for the positions in which they end up working.
Maria de los Angeles Murillo, who was sitting along 26th Street selling furniture on a humid day, said she didn’t think she would see the day a woman would become president. Still, she had seen progress in her native Jalisco as more women were elected to local offices.
Murillo, 61, of Little Village, said she wanted to vote in the election, but she wasn’t able to register in time.
“We hope that she does more for us as women,” Murillo said in Spanish. “That’s what we want — to have more support, and we hope that’s what happens. Even though you live here now, we could be living over there awhile later.”
Murillo has lived in the U.S. for 23 years, but she still thinks there’s a chance she could one day spend her retirement days in Mexico. Relatives who still live in Mexico seem to be doing better economically in part because of social service programs, she said.
Olga Tapia, 54, of Villa Park, said when she left Mexico 37 years ago, she felt like the country faced political corruption and offered few economic opportunities. But she’s started to see changes when she travels to her native Mexico, and she feels confident that the country will change for the better even more under Sheinbaum’s administration.
The changes motivated Tapia to vote in Mexico’s election, and she also got involved in Sheinbaum’s Morena political party in the Chicago area.
“I’m very happy with what’s going on in Mexico, and it fills me with emotion to know that Mexico is much better than when I was in Mexico,” Tapia said in Spanish. “That someday I’ll be able to return and live in Mexico, and I will be calm, happy in my home.”
Her electoral engagement doesn’t extend to U.S. politics, and she plans to sit out the upcoming presidential election. Tapia said she doesn’t think the U.S. government has done enough to help residents like herself. Her frustrations stem from the hurdles she’s faced to try to get assistance following a workplace injury.
Cook County Commissioner Alma Anaya said the interest the Mexican presidential election sparked for Mexican Americans shows that this population wants to participate in politics.
“A lot of people often write off the Mexican community of not being civically involved,” Anaya said. “I’ve heard that many times in many spaces, but we’ve seen that definitely when you really talk about issues that are important to people, people come out and they vote.”
For Anaya, who was born in Guadalajara, she knows Mexico being led by a woman won’t end all issues women face. Still, she felt excited watching the election results on YouTube.
“It’s inspirational,” said Anaya, who is the only Latina elected to the Cook County Board of Commissioners. “We know there’s a lot of work that needs to be done on behalf of Claudia and others. But I think the important part here is that we have seen a really astonishing shift in politics.”
López-Zuñiga, 35, works as a political strategist, but she’s unable to vote in the U.S. because of her immigration status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. She said she felt proud to vote by mail in Mexico’s election.
“It’s pretty incredible for me,” she said. “As someone who does a lot of electoral work and cannot vote in the U.S., even six years ago when I was able to vote for [Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Mexico’s current president] for the first time, that was huge because it’s the first time in my life as an adult I have been able to vote. And now this time around, I think it’s a pretty historical election for Mexico.”
