MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum was strolling through her city’s capital this week, heading from one government office to another, when she stopped to take selfies with a crowd of admirers.
A man approached from behind, slipped his arm around Sheinbaum’s shoulder, leaned in to plant a kiss on her neck and briefly touched her chest before an aide pulled him away.
The groping incident, which was captured on video by bystanders Tuesday, sparked outrage nationally and put renewed focus on the rampant sexual harassment faced by women here in the streets and on public transportation.
Sheinbaum, who last year was sworn in as Mexico’s first female president, has seized the chance to call new attention to the issue.
“If they do this to the president, what must happen to all the young women women in the country?” she asked Wednesday.
Speaking at her daily news conference, Sheinbaum said Wednesday that she had filed a criminal complaint against her aggressor, whom authorities said was drunk at the time of the incident and had been detained.
Sheinbaum said her government will review state laws to ensure that street harassment is categorized as a crime throughout Mexico and launch a campaign to combat the phenomenon.
“I decided to file a complaint because this is something … all women in our country experience,” Sheinbaum said. “I experienced it before, when I wasn’t president. It shouldn’t happen. No one should violate our personal space. No man has the right to violate that space.”
Like her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum, often walks the streets without bodyguards, saying she likes to be close to the people.
It is a practice that has earned her salt-of-the-earth bona fides, although it has also come under scrutiny given the high levels of violence against politicians across Mexico. Over the weekend, the outspoken mayor of Uruapan, a city in Michoácan state, was gunned down at a public event celebrating the Day of the Dead holiday despite being protected by armed police and members of the National Guard.
Tuesday’s incident in Mexico City provoked outrage across the country, with many saying it was an example of the kind of abuse faced by women every day.
“If the most powerful woman in Mexico experienced harassment, what can women who travel on public transportation or walk alone every day expect?” Ivonne Ortega, a member of Congress who belongs to Sheinbaum’s Morena party, wrote on X. “This is the reality that millions of women and girls face daily.”
Writer Brenda Lozano said on X that the incident shouldn’t be blamed on Sheinbaum’s lack of security or the fact that the man who groped her had been drinking: “The reasons she was harassed are patriarchy and sexism.”
A survey of female transit riders on 16 cities around the world by the Thompson Reuters Foundation found Mexico City had the biggest problem with sexual harassment, with 64% of respondents reporting having been victimized.
The Mexico City government has long provided women-only subway cars, and has even sought to combat harassment by arming female commuters with rape whistles.
Also on Wednesday, Sheinbaum voiced support for Mexico’s Miss Universe representative, who walked out of the pageant along with several other contestants after she was berated by a male pageant official, who called her “dumb.”
Sheinbaum made a play on an old sexist saying in Mexico: “She’s prettier when she’s quiet.”
“Women are prettier when we raise our voices,” Sheinabum said.
Times staff writer Patrick J. McDonnell and Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in the Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.
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