When Claudia Sheinbaum — Mexico’s first woman president — was publicly groped during a walkabout recently, her response was striking in its restraint: “If this happens to the president, where does that leave all the young women in our country?”
The phrase ricocheted across Mexico and beyond. It captured both the routine nature of gendered harassment and the profound political implications of a society in which even the country’s most powerful woman can be violated in full public view.
The incident was trivialised by some as a momentary lapse of security. But it was emblematic of the deeper structures of machismo and misogyny that continue to shape political life across Latin America.
