‘Mexico elected its first female president, we can too’

Photo Courtesy of Wikicommons

I tried. I really tried not to write this. I didn’t want to because I just have a feeling this is going to annoy a lot of people and get many, many knee-jerk reactions from people who are not going to listen to everything I have to say and just make assumptions from the headline and first two paragraphs. 

But I had one too many classes where I heard people say the exact same thing over and over again. So here I go. 

“Mexico just elected its first female president, we can too.”

“Mexico just elected its first female president, so should we.”

“Mexico just elected its first female president, we should learn from them.”

So first off, yes, Mexico did just elect its first female president this summer. Yes, that is a big deal. Yes, I get it, it is exciting to think about having a female president when in my lifetime I haven’t seen that in my country till now. 

I understand the sentiment, but I am so tired of hearing so many people say the same thing without any context. 

When I try to expand the conversation beyond the “yay, you elected a female president” of it all, I find that very few if any of the people who have voiced that know what she even stands for. They don’t know her policies, her history, or any of the things that she’s done. The farthest I’ve gotten is someone remembering that she’s an environmental scientist.

Do the people who talk about it know anything about her politics? As far as I can tell, the answer is mostly no. Do they know anything about what she’s done in the many years she spent as head of government of Mexico City? Nope. Do they know anything whatsoever about Mexican politics that doesn’t directly relate to the U.S.? Unlikely. Do they even know her name? Disappointingly, many don’t. 

So to everyone who has been using that as an argument without knowing what they were talking about, I am talking to you directly: meet Claudia Sheinbaum, the first female president of Mexico. 

You have access to Google, take some time and look her up. Read about her politics. Read about what she’s done and what she’s planning to do. And beyond that, familiarize yourself a little with Mexican politics. We are your neighbor to the south. Get to know us a little better. 

And after you do that, take this as a challenge to do the same for your own country's politics. Learn about the issues. Look into the politicians that are vying for your vote. Learn about their histories. What have they done? Why should you vote for them? Don’t just listen to what they tell you, but look deeper than that. Make sure you understand what people stand for beyond what they symbolize.  

I am calling you to change the way you discuss politics. I am calling you to stop talking about politicians like you talk about celebrities. They are not and should not be treated as such. 

And that’s what makes it so frustrating. I love talking about politics, but I want to engage with the actual ideas and issues, not with the surface-level aspect of it all. 

I would love to talk about Mexican politics with people. I would love to discuss the intricacies of what’s happening in my country, or in the U.S. I would love to talk about what’s going right and what’s going wrong, what has me excited and what has me concerned. But that is not what’s happening. 

And it’s not even that I fully disagree with the sentiment. I understand how much symbolic power a female president would hold as a beacon of equality and female empowerment. I understand how important breaking barriers is. I understand how this would make history.

But if you are going to use my country as an example, you better know more about our politics than just the gender of our president.